28 The Times Magazine
and decide which ones to attend? “You just
hear about stuff or get a call.”
To get a phone signal, you have to swipe
through the laundry hanging over the wood
burner, climb over the bed and hang out by
the window. That’s where you get a call about
an “action”.
“Of course it’s exciting,” says Hooper. “You
feel you are doing something that matters.”
But is protesting addictive? I mean,
apart from tunnelling or hanging out of trees,
Hooper does other things. In Merthyr Tydfil,
he hung himself under a bridge so that lorries
couldn’t pass underneath.
Does he get a buzz from the action-man
stuff? “No. It’s my belief in saving our planet,”
Hooper says. “But of course it’s also about
meeting brilliant people on the journey.”
He talks with affection about protesters
from his Swampy days 25 years ago. There
were Muppet, Jester and Disco Dave. He was
recently in touch with Animal, a girl who
was 16 when they burrowed underground
at Fairmile.
“Animal’s got kids now,” he says. So, it’s
exhilarating and friendships are forged. But,
you know, do they ever win?
“I think there’s a chance we will stop HS2,”
he says. “The government estimates it will
cost £97 billion, but it’ll be double that. You
could make public transport free for that sort
of money.”
When Dan Hooper was Rory’s age he was
working at a toy shop called the Entertainer
in the leafy town of Amersham, in
Buckinghamshire. Then he fell in love with a
girl from Exeter and went down there to join
the hunt saboteurs. By 1994 he was involved in
the road protest at Solsbury Hill in Somerset.
The Newbury bypass and Fairmile protests
followed. His mother and father were a bit put
off by his left-wing anarchist politics after
reading in the Daily Mail what he was up to.
“What’s the official line?” Hooper asks Clare.
“They worried,” she says. “They got anxious.”
But things have come full circle. Hooper’s
parents still live in Buckinghamshire where
HS2 is a highly emotive issue. They get it.
“My mum worries about me and Rory
going underground. but she also knows people
who have lost homes and jobs due to HS2.
They see the devastation to wildlife. I think
they are typical of people who didn’t quite
get the threat to our environment but are
listening now.”
It’s a tough life, protesting. People might
occasionally honk their horns in support
or buy you a coffee, but the Hoopers live a
parsimonious life. Clare works one day a week
counselling and then looks after the children
and her elderly dad. Hooper plants trees or he
and Rory pick berries and acorns for money.
“The farmers let us onto the land to collect
berries or acorns to sell and they get a cut,” he
says. “But if you’re not consuming too much,
you don’t need much, do you?”
On Fridays, residents convene at Jim Jams,
a party in Jim’s tipi. And when there is a new
moon residents heat rocks and put them in
a tipi to create a sauna. Then they take off
their clothes, enter the tent and dance or bang
drums. Afterwards they jump in the stream.
“There’s all sorts going on,” says Hooper.
“You don’t have to do any of it. There was a
Rainbow Gathering [an international hippy
movement] near here recently and Clare took
them vegetables. It’s not for me. I don’t see the
point of sitting round in a field doing nothing.”
Tonight they are going to have leftover
curry and then they might continue playing
the board game Risk, which is laid out on the
table. They are also partial to the medieval
fantasy game called Warhammer.
Then they’ll get a call. There’ll be a new
“action”. Hooper is ready with his brickie’s
hammer and pickaxe already in the car.
“Protest works,” he says. “It’s what changes
things. That’s what I don’t understand aboutthe Alok Sharma speech. Is he saying that
protesting is OK? If he is, the government has
got a funny way of showing it.”
Hooper is worried by the Police, Crime,
Sentencing and Courts Bill, which he says
will give the police increased powers to stifle
legitimate protest.
I point out that police treatment of Insulate
Britain protesters who recently blocked the
M25 angered many. People couldn’t get to
work or visit loved ones in hospital and the
police seemed to stand by and watch.
“I must admit I was a bit surprised by that
too,” says Hooper. “I’m not going to knock the
police, because that’s not fair, but at Euston
they were more heavy-handed. They didn’t
have enough bailiffs so they climbed into the
trees. Police should not be up in the trees.”
I recycle. I use my bike. I try not to buy
too much crap. But I found weeing outside
in a stiff wind hard. And I’m sorry, but I’m not
gathering acorns for a living.
“We do have a car,” Hooper says.
Clare tells me that they used to boil the
kids’ nappies and put them through a mangle.
“We did. Now we share a communal washing
machine,” Hooper says, then shows me a
cucumber he bought at a Co-op 13 miles away.
“See? We do need shops. We can’t grow
everything all year round.”It’s totally unfair, but I find myself wanting
to know how many other luxuries they enjoy.
“I haven’t been on a plane in 20 years and
the children have never flown,” says Hooper.
“We do buy underwear from Marks &
Spencer,” admits Clare.
What about kids? Surely, simply having
them is as big an issue as high-speed trains or
a new bypass? I have five and I know every
one of them is like running a Range Rover.
“It’s a bit late now but, yes, we have talked
about it,” he says. “Each child will consume
more stuff. All I can say is we are trying to
raise them to be responsible about the planet.”
“I’m definitely not having children,”
says Rory.
“I think all children say that at 17,” says
Clare. “You don’t need to decide now, do you?”
“No, I’m not having them,” he insists.
The Hoopers are welcoming and never
self-righteous about the way they live. In fact,
it’s heart-warming how they squabble about
ordinary things. Clare teases Hooper about
the way he has been grinding his teeth in his
sleep since coming home from tunnelling.
“For weeks, he’s still in there,” she says.
“His nervous system is still totally wired.”
And they can laugh about their middle son,
who isn’t interested in protesting. He wants to
be a Premier League footballer.
Sometimes he even threatens to work
for HS2.
“He’s good at making things and could well
be an engineer. If he wants to wind us up he
says he might go help build it,” laughs Clare.
“I hadn’t heard that,” says Rory. “That is
such a wind-up.”
“Everyone rebels, don’t they?” she insists.
“As long as they are kind and happy, I don’t
mind what my children do in life.”
Dan Hooper certainly rebelled. And
when he climbed out of that Devon tunnel
in 1997 and became Swampy, the secretary
of state for the environment was Tory MP
John Selwyn Gummer. After that it was
Labour’s John Prescott, then Margaret
Beckett and on through Labour to George
Eustice today.
Do you remember any of them? It’s
an important question, because when he
needed to exemplify a globally recognisable
eco-warrior, Alok Sharma didn’t choose
politicians. He chose the skinny guy in front
of me drinking tea from a Mr Man mug in a
Welsh hut.
“Being Swampy did mess with my head,”
he says. “I never wanted the attention.
But I feel the stakes are now so high I’ll do
whatever it takes. Twenty-five years ago I was
a hippy up a tree. I was a bit of a laugh. But
what has happened since? A pandemic, forest
fires, deforestation, floods. I think for a lot of
people the laughing has stopped. It’s getting
pretty serious now.” nThey can laugh about
their middle son – he
wants to be a Premier
League footballer