The Sunday Times June 5, 2022 2GN 17
NEWS
has broken out between the Tyre Extin-
guishers, who roam the wealthier areas
of Edinburgh, and the Deflationists, who
operate in Glasgow.
They carry out nights of direct action
under a self-policed code of conduct. The
activists slip a flyer under a windscreen
wiper to alert the driver, so they do not
damage the car by attempting to drive it
with a flat tyre. They avoid targeting elec-
tric SUVs, even though they don’t
approve of them.
The two masked young men who
showed up at our rendezvous at the edge
of Hampstead Heath at 11pm last week
were polite and apologetic. They had
brought only 23 flyers, and, because they
had already deflated tyres on 15 cars, felt
it was fair to target only eight more. One
of them, Josh, who works in sustainabil-
ity, admitted: “It’s a bit Keystone Cops.”
Their normal haul across one session
is typically 40 to 50, and they claimed to
have let down tyres on 200 vehicles since
they joined the cause a month ago, target-
ing motorists in Chelsea.
Hugo, Josh’s accomplice, wore a rather
conspicuous helmet, which he fancied
gave him the appearance of a dispatch
rider before mild mockery persuaded
him to take off. He is a teacher in his latepeople suffering from the emissions are
not the lovely people of Hampstead but
the poor people who suffer the conse-
quences of them showing off.
“I am happy to piss some people off
and sometimes, hopefully, to change
someone’s mind.”
Josh reserved his ire for the policy-
makers, who should use their power to
change things for the better, he believes.
“These people are supposed to sit above
the fray and decide what the parameters
are of what is sensible and safe in soci-
ety,” he said. “I think they are allergic to
the idea of suggesting that people will
need to change their lifestyles, because it
screams ‘nanny state’ and ‘hair shirt’.
Claiming there won’t be any costs to cli-
mate change is not very helpful. In ten
years’ time it is going to be absolutely
unavoidable.”
By letting down strangers’ tyres, they
are setting themselves up as arbiters of
other people’s lifestyles. What sacrifices
have they made in their own lives?
Josh cycles in London but drives a
small Peugeot 107 on trips to Wales. His
last flight was in 2018, to a festival in Croa-
tia; since then all his trips to Europe —
including a journey to Palermo, the capi-
tal of Sicily — have been by rail. Hugo doesI’m a
teacher.
I can’t
afford to
be caughtSUV
drivers
are more
likely to
take riskstwenties and admitted that he could not
risk joining a more confrontational group
such as Insulate Britain, whose tactics
include blockading motorways and glue-
ing their bodies to the tarmac.
He believes that the law is unclear on
the nature of the offence of letting down
tyres but said: “I can’t afford to be
arrested.” He excused himself at about
1am, pleading that he had to get up early
for work.
Owners of SUVs may be dismayed to
learn that the actual business of deflating
tyres is remarkably simple, and that
neither Josh nor Hugo has so far been
challenged, let alone arrested. The trees
lining the streets of Hampstead provide
plentiful cover, and mostly the deed is
done silently, with no sudden whoosh of
air to draw attention to the perpetrator.
The men took care to crouch down on the
roadward side of the car, away from the
gaze of security cameras.
Hugo said he believed travelling in an
SUV, above other road users, gave the
driver and passengers a feeling of
control. Mild-mannered to a fault, he
eventually admitted he wanted to pull
them down a peg or two and “remind
them we are here”.
He added: “The reality is that theMembers of
the Tyre
Extinguishers on
manoeuvres in
north LondonJohn le Carré’s
private life had all
the intrigue and
betrayal of his
Cold War spy
novels. He died in
Cornwall, his last
home, in 2020
said. She added: “It’s
unfortunate. If you’re in a
public space you have to
accept that you will come in
for criticism.
“What women tend to
experience more is that
criticism will be more violent
and sexual and threatening.
And that should not
continue.”
Adler, who is fluent in five
languages, later moved to the
BBC and had postings in
Spain and Israel before taking
the £225,000-a-year Europe
editor job in 2014.
She became a near-
constant presence on news
bulletins during the Brexit
negotiations and was a
frequent target of abuse.
@iamliamkellyvicious abuse on social media
as a result of stories they have
written.
“I was intimidated, I was
scared and that continued
when I was in the Middle
East, [I got] tons of abuse,
but now with social media it’s
just more present,” AdlerAdler: BBC Europe editortime. Adler, who is the BBC’s
Europe editor, told the Hay
Festival that he wrote to her
and said: “If you care so
much about these women,
then you should go through
what they’re going through
and you need to be raped to
make sure you really
understand what they’re
talking about.”
She said she was “scared”,
adding: “I went to the police,
who said, ‘There is nothing
we can do until they attack
you’... I was scared, I just
pretended I wasn’t.”
She drew parallels
between her experiences in
Austria and how female
journalists continue to be
treated today, often finding
themselves the targets ofLe Carré
felt guilty
about his
affairsLe Carré was no stranger to
such intrigue. Born in 1931,
his real name was David
Cornwell, and while an
Oxford student he worked
covertly for MI5, spying on
far-left groups. When his
conman father, Ronnie, was
made bankrupt in 1954, le
Carré taught first at the prep
school Millfield, then French
and German at Eton before
joining the security service.
He moved to MI6, the foreign
intelligence service, and
wrote three novels under an
alias before his spying career
ended when the Soviet
defector Kim Philby revealed
the identity of British agents.
The author had three sons
with his first wife, Ann, and
another with his second wife,
Jane, whom he married in- His youngest son, Nick,
writes novels under the name
Nick Harkaway. Le Carré died
aged 89 after a fall at home in
Cornwall in December 2020.
Jane, who was 82, died just
two months later.
Fittingly for a former spy,
le Carré had many secrets —
It may be the great
spymaster’s last mystery.
Who will break four decades
of silence to come forward as
John le Carré’s “secret
mistress and muse”?
A hitherto unknown
author, writing under the
pseudonym Suleika Dawson,
is to publish a new intimate
memoir of the spy novelist
called The Secret Heart. It is
billed by its publisher as a
portrait of le Carré “by the
woman he kept secret for
almost half his life”.
Dawson first met le Carré
in September 1982 and
worked as a researcher and
abridger for his audiobooks.
Their affair started the
following August and
continued until the late
summer of 1985; it resumed
for six months in March 1999.
Le Carré was married to his
second wife, Jane, for the
entirety of the affair.
In a plot worthy of one of
the George Smiley novels,
Dawson’s real name and age
are unknown. The
pseudonym is believed to be
inspired by Zuleika Dobson,
the title and main character
of a 1911 satire by the essayist
Max Beerbohm. Dobson is an
attractive young woman at
Oxford University with whom
men fall in love at first sight.
All of the male
undergraduates commit
suicide at the end of the novel
because she does not return
their affections.
Liam Kelly
Arts Correspondent
The BBC journalist Katya
Adler has revealed she
received rape threats early in
her career, including a
handwritten letter from a
man who said she needed to
experience a sexual assault to
be able to report properly on
the subject.
Adler, 50, was working as a
reporter for ORF, the
Austrian state broadcaster, in
her early twenties and
covering the Kosovo war,
when she did a series of
articles about Serbian troops
raping Kosovar women and
girls. She received hate letters
after the reports aired,
including from a man in
Vienna, where she lived at theLiam KellyI was threatened with rape over
Kosovo coverage, says Katya Adler
The spy who came into the bedroom:
le Carré’s secret mistress tells all
and was a serial adulterer.
Adam Sisman, author of John
le Carré: The Biography,
published in 2015, said that
there was a “general
knowledge within the family
that their father’s personal
life was not blameless”, but
he tended to keep his
extramarital adventures
“pretty secret”. When Sisman
first told le Carré he wished to
write a biography, the author
told him the two “problem
areas” to write about in his
life were his time as a spy and
his affairs, “or what he called
‘my reckless personal life’ ”.
Most of his infidelities have
largely remained hidden from
public view, in part to spare
the feelings of his family.
Sisman said that he had
“compromised” and shied
away from revealing too
much about his affairs
because he felt “queasy”
about hurting Jane. He did
reveal, however, that when le
Carré was married to Ann, he
started a relationship with
Susan Kennaway, the wife of
his friend, novelist and
screenwriter James.
Sisman said that le Carré
felt “guilty” about his
indiscretions, but being an
adulterer and a spy had
“similarities that it doesn’t
take a genius to identify”.
Sisman twice met Dawson,
who is British, while he was
researching his own book, in
a style reminiscent of a
rendezvous from le Carré’s
novels. He was introduced to
her via a literary agent friend
and first met her in EalingBroadway, west London.
Dawson said that she would
not tell him what she looked
like in advance, and they
used a rolled-up newspaper
as a signal. When Sisman told
le Carré he had met his
former lover, “he groaned”.
“She’s an attractive
woman, intelligent, and I can
see why David was attracted
to her both physically and
personally,” said Sisman.
“She’s an interesting person.”
There was also a “big age
gap” between the pair.
As well as helping le Carré
abridge his audiobooks,
Dawson helped him with
research for A Perfect Spy,
which is seen as his most
autobiographical novel,
featuring an intelligence
officer with a conman father.
“She will reveal things not
just about le Carré, but also
his work. There are clues to
his own personal life in his
novels. The two are much
more closely related than
people imagine,” Sisman said.
“The Spy Who Came in from
the Cold is related to his first
extramarital adventure ...
Out of that adventure, misery
and angst came, that was the
grit in the oyster that
produced the pearl.”
Sisman added: “My
perception of the women he
got involved with was that
they were interesting,
intelligent women with
interesting careers. They
certainly weren’t bits of fluff:
he liked women with whom
he could have an equal
relationship. I suppose that it
is to his credit, even if the
idea of infidelity is not.”
Joel Simons, publishing
director for non-fiction at
HarperCollins, said fans of
the spymaster’s work will
relish the new book. “You can
absolutely draw the parallels
between real life and fiction,”
he said. “She was a secret
part of his life ... It will satisfy
a lot of readers the way that le
Carré constructs things.”
Dawson’s book will be
published on October 27,
which may overshadow the
publication of A Private Spy, a
new collection of the author’s
letters spanning his
childhood through the Cold
War until his final years,
which will be released two
weeks beforehand.
Le Carré’s estate said: “We
have no comment to make on
the publication of this
memoir but wish its author
Suleika Dawson all the best.”Clouds are captured forming the shape of the United Kingdom over Bristol’s Clifton suspension bridge as the
country celebrates the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The forecast is variable for street parties today Weather, page 31QUEEN AND COUNTRY
ROBERT BROWNE/SWNSJONATHAN PLAYER/REX/SHUTTERSTOCKYou’ve let the planet down, so
we’re letting your tyres down
A young man in a mask crouches down by
the back wheel of a Mercedes G-class,
fiddles with the valve, inserts a single
dried bean into the cap and pushes
down. A few seconds later, as the air
hisses out, he is walking nonchalantly
away from the scene.
He is one of a new breed of activists,
calling themselves the Tyre Extinguish-
ers, who are taking on climate change
one mung bean at a time.
The G-class, or G-Wagon, which is
6ft 5in high, weighs 2½ tons and does
only 26 miles to the gallon of diesel, is the
brashest of SUVs. Even here, at midnight
in Hampstead, northwest London, where
the streets are thick with Range Rovers,
Land Rover Discoverys, Audi Q8s and
BMW X5s, it is a trophy for those bent on
making it socially unacceptable to own
these vehicles in urban areas.
The campaigners say SUVs are a “dis-
aster” for our climate and the second-
largest cause of the global rise in carbon
dioxide emissions in the past decade.
This broad category accounts for more
than 40 per cent of Britain’s car sales,
even though very few of the people who
drive them do so off road.
According to the co-ordinators of Tyre
Extinguishers, at least 3,000 cars have
had their tyres deflated in the UK, but the
true number is likely to be much higher
because many are not reported. The
group’s website gives instructions on
how to do it and invites anyone, wher-
ever they are, to get on with it.
It tells activists they must first unscrew
the cap from the tyre valve and then
insert a small bean, green lentils or a bit
of gravel. When the cap is screwed back
on, the foreign object will push down on
the pin in the valve and the air will start to
hiss out.
The unofficial record is 250 tyres
deflated in one night in early May in
Brighton and Hove. In Scotland a rivalry
Nicholas Hellen Transport Editor not have a car but recently took a flight toMarseilles, in the south of France, his first
in four years. He said: “I’d love to take a
train wherever I can, but sometimes it’s
unaffordable. We’re all hypocrites, aren’t
we? I don’t buy new clothing. I would
love to insulate my house but I am not the
owner. We don’t eat meat; we buy renew-
able energy. But I’m not perfect — I’m not
Jesus.”
Baron Browne of Madingley, former
chief executive of BP, found his tyres had
been let down last month and a flyer
wedged under the windscreen wipers.
He found the message hard to take:
“Attention — your gas guzzler kills. We
have deflated one or more of your tyres.
You’ll be angry, but don’t take it person-
ally. It’s not you, it’s your car. Psychologi-
cal studies show SUV drivers are more
likely to take risks on the roads. SUVs are
unnecessary, and pure vanity.”
The car, a Mercedes, was a modestly
sized electric SUV. Browne said: “We
were appalled, because our car is elec-
tric. And what if we had needed to use it
for an emergency — to go to hospital or
something? It is right to tackle climate
change, but this is the wrong way to go
about it.”
Even if the message is not winning
hearts and minds, it is nonetheless con-
vincing some people to bow to the cam-
paigners rather than continue to be tor-
mented. One motorist recently wrote to
the campaign co-ordinators saying: “Hi.
I’ve had my Volkswagen Tiguan targeted
twice by you guys. I’m looking at replac-
ing it with a Passat estate, which is not an
SUV. I presume this is OK, as it’s far more
aerodynamic and uses less fuel. Also
safer for pedestrians and cyclists.”
Another wrote: “I am thinking of
buying a new car but am seriously put off
by your actions. Would you class a Seat
Arona as a SUV? I do not want the hassle
of getting deflated tyres.”
Names have been changed
@NicholasHellenClimate activists armed with mung beans are targeting gas-guzzling SUVs — and leaving self-righteous flyers
250
The unofficial record number of car
tyres deflated in one night in BrightonPETER TARRY FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES