The Times Magazine 25t last month’s Cop26 climate
conference in Glasgow, the
cabinet minister and conference
president, Alok Sharma, made
an extraordinary claim. Sharma
reminisced about the early days
of climate concern, reminding
his audience of the Nineties eco-
warrior Swampy who “spent his
time occupying trees and tunnels”.
He sounded wistful and told his audience of
global financiers and power brokers that it
was now people in boardrooms, banks and
on trading floors who embodied the spirit of
the smiley, dreadlocked environmentalist.
“You, my friends, are the new Swampys,
so be proud,” he told them.
I am sitting in Swampy’s front room. The
original Swampy that is, 47-year-old Daniel
Hooper. Actually it’s not the front room;
there doesn’t seem to be one. I’d say it’s the
central portion of a medieval “roundhouse”
made of wood, straw, lime and horse hair
situated in a valley in the wilds of west Wales.
There’s a kitchen area and a couple of
bedrooms leading off from the centre, which
is dominated by a wood burner. I am trying
to get near the wood burner but there are
two large cats in the way.
“We need Tubby and Alvin [the cats] because
with this lifestyle there is a danger of rats,”
says Swampy. “They’re a pretty good defence.”
We have established some ground rules.
I should take my muddy boots off. Second, I
should stop calling him Swampy.
“People tend to use Dan,” he says. “But
yeah, the fact that Swampy as a concept still
means something to people I suppose is good.”
Hooper didn’t hear the Sharma speech. He
was on his 20th day in a tunnel in Wendover,
Bucks, protesting against the HS2 high-speed
rail project. However, his 17-year-old son,
Rory, heard every word. Rory was in Glasgow
campaigning. He couldn’t believe it.
“It was darkly funny for a minute. I mean,
Swampy is my dad. But then I realised it was
blatant ‘greenwashing’, taking credit for activism
which you have been against all along,” he says.
Perhaps Sharma was right. There are new
Swampys out there. But not in banks or on
trading floors. This one is a callow teenager
sitting on a battered sofa playing on his phone.
But what should we call him? Swampy 2.0?
I ask him if he has a cool protester name like
his dad’s.
“No, just Rory,” he says.
“Well, he did have one, but no one used it,”
says his dad.
I ask him what this protester name was.
“Names don’t really matter, do they? It’s
action that counts,” says Hooper fils tartly.
He’s dead right of course. Swampy and son
are back in business and this time we should
probably take them a bit more seriously.The Hoopers moved here 18 years ago,
and spent 10 years living under canvas with
three small children before building their
roundhouse 7 years ago.
“You need five years under canvas to really
decide if you can live here,” says Clare.
I can’t believe what she’s saying. I’ve done
three days at a festival with children and
longed for death.
“No, it’s beautiful. You’re connected to
nature. In winter all the tipis huddle by the
stream for a sense of community. It’s amazing.”
There are currently about 80 people living
at Tipi Valley. Chez Hooper is a solid structure.
The roof is wood, cardboard, then a plastic
damp-proof layer topped with turf. They
have solar-powered electricity and water
filtered from the stream. Rory has his own
roundhouse next door.
“He likes his own space,” says Clare as
Rory thumbs away on his phone.
They grow vegetables, there’s no TV and
no fridge (food chills in a metal bin in a shed
or in the stream). Nor is there internet, though
they do get a bit of phone signal.
I drank a lot of coffee on the drive down
and I badly need a loo. I can’t see one of
those either.
“Just wee outside,” says Clare.
“But away from the house if you can, not
against the door,” adds Hooper.
Do you remember 1997? Liam and Patsy
were on the Vanity Fair Cool Britannia cover.
Tony Blair became prime minister. Princess
Diana died and JK Rowling published her
first Harry Potter novel. But in January that
year “Swampy” was the tabloid joke, the last
eco-warrior yanked out of a 30ft-deep tunnel
at a road protest at Fairmile in Devon. HisA
There’s no TV and no fridge. Nor is there internet.
‘Just wee outside,’ says Swampy’s partner, Clare
Dan and his partner, Clare, and, I think
(I hope) Rory, have welcomed me into their
snug eco-home to discuss their life in protest.
But it is a bugger to find. You drive to the
western end of the M4, up some A-roads,
down some B-roads, down a track before
parking, then stumbling down a muddy valley
into a Hobbit landscape. A hippy called Chris
started Tipi Valley in 1976. Not without reason
his founding principle is said to have been,
“They won’t be able to arrest us because they
won’t be able to f***ing find us.”
“He’s buried over there,” says Clare, waving
in the direction of a forbidding hillside.Hooper at home with his
partner, Clare, and RoryProtesting in 1997, against the proposed second runway
at Manchester airport, above, and at Fairmile in DevonTOM JACKSON, SPACE PRESS, APEX PHOTO AGENCY