24 | BIGISSUE.COM 19-25 AUGUST 2019

The Big Issue: You have been politically engaged for all of your career. Is

there an urgency to your current campaign that wasn’t there before?

Vivienne Westwood: The problem is staring us in the face and it wasn’t

staring us in the face earlier on. That’s why at the turn of the century Henry

Ford could say “history is bunk”, the future is going to get better and better.

But it started with industrialisation and things have actually gotten worse

and worse, and now we face mass extinction.

But we are making some progress, thanks to Greta [Thunberg] and the

school strikes and Extinction Rebellion. They’ve forced our government to

declare a climate crisis and set targets.

Having said that, we can’t keep stalling. The targets used to be 2020,

now they’re 2050. It’s always forever in the future. It’s never here! But we’re

facing real problems right now, so we need to take action.

What do you feel are the main things stopping us from taking quick,

decisive action?

The tricky thing is that even if the government wanted to achieve a target

of 2020 or 2030, they couldn’t until they stop the rotten systems that feed

it. Imagine that climate change is a fire and they’ve agreed: ‘Yes, we’ll put

water on that fire.’ The problem is, they’re throwing petrol on the flames

at the same time. The petrol is the operation of the financial system that

is making it worse. How can anything change in real terms if they don’t

disrupt the corrupt systems in place?

What do you think should be done?

One of the things I’m calling for is a stop to the subsidy to fossil fuel.

It’s £5.3tn a year. Plus, we need to stop the subsidy to industrial fishing

because if you don’t, there’ll be no fish in the sea in 10 to 30 years. And

you’ve got to start to implement the one-world tax – that will be a

total structural and societal shift.

What exactly is the one-world tax?

It’s basically the old land tax. What we’re aiming for is that no one

owns the land, it’s just administered and there’s only one kind of tax

• we call it rent. You don’t own anything, you just pay rent. It’s about
  community – liberty, equality, fraternity.
  For example, if you asked the executive body to rent a piece of land
  to build a house they would give you permission to do that. Then if
  you decided to build another house and you wanted to rent this one,
  then you could do that. So the people who rented the house would
  pay you – the landlord – rent, and you the landlord would still have
  to pay that ground rent to the public purse. That’s the way the public
  purse funds the National Health Service and other national needs.
  I think this is the future. Fred Harrison [author, economic
  commentator and corporate policy advisor] has been campaigning for
  it for years and together with a collective of NGOs, we’re planning a
  convention on the topic.

We’re in a time of political change, with a lot of activism swelling

up from younger generations. How does it feel to see so many

grassroots protests gather momentum?

It’s absolutely incredible and wonderful to see. You’ve got Greta’s

guys – those people who protest with their parents every month. It’s

really, really great. Also, Extinction Rebellion are doing a very efficient

protest, it’s really good and it’s great that it’s not aggressive, it’s a

passive thing. They’re really managing that so well.

how can

anything

change if we

don't disrupt

the corrupt

systems?

Tee and sympathy

Westwood visited Julian

Assange while he hid

out at the Ecuadorean

embassy and considers

him a good friend