Wales at the Camp for Climate Action?

Kelvin Mason

Rob Newman, in a set that was surely as politically and historically informed as comedy gets, said that, when our descendants look back, the Camp for Climate Action will be the single most important moment of 2007. George Monbiot believes "a new political movement has been born", though he is surely aware that this movement has been alive and doing its best to kick for some time. Whatever else we think about the Camp for Climate Action, it was certainly a major "victory" for creative NVDA. Any yet there were just a few rainbow Peace flags fluttering among the black and red, green and black, and pirate flags at the Camp.
     Maybe, as Bruce Gagnon, of the Global Network against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, said on his recent speaking tour of Wales, the Peace movement needs to be more actively aware of the inextricable links between peace, social justice and environmental sustainability? There were only around 1,200 people camping at Heathrow; we could and should have been many more.
     On the subject of flags, there was just one draig goch Â Welsh dragon Â flying at the Camp for Climate Action. There was no Wales neighbourhood. At last year's smaller Camp in Yorkshire, Wales combined with the West Midlands and South West (England) neighbourhoods. This time around, most people from South Wales seemed to find a home in the "Westside Hood" (Bristol and South West England). Meanwhile, many of us from mid-Wales settled with good friends and comrades in the West Midlands neighbourhood. I have no idea how many people from further north in Wales were at the Camp, nor where they laid their heads. It seems, though, that altogether there were not enough of us and we were not together enough to have our own cymuned (neighbourhood/community), which is a shame: more of us need to get out more, know each other better and take pride in ourselves.
     My draig goch, which flew proudly with a well-travelled and treasured rainbow "Pace'"flag, high above the com- post toilet block near the West Midlands neighbourhood, was cut down and stolen. This was, I believe, an act of cultural censorship rather than theft. The concept and practice of Nation doesn't seem to have a place in the political geography of the new movement identified by George Monbiot. The Scotland neighbourhood did not fly a Saltire; there were no other national flags. It is a conundrum. If there had been a Union Jack or Cross of Saint George flying at the Camp for Climate Action, I would have objected. All the more so had Old Glory fluttered in the breeze. How would I have felt, though, about a Palestinian flag, a Cuban flag, the flag of Tuvalu, the South Pacific island threatened by submersion as a result of climate change? Given Wales's status as a country questing the return of its independence; given our traditional nationalist commitment to peace; and given the role smaller political communities will surely have to play in a sustainable world, I want to be able to fly y draig goch at environ- mentalist gatherings. But does anyone have any idea where to draw the nationalist line?