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“Unprecedented Change”? What does a corporation in transition look like? – notes from the Shell AGM 2016
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Jun 9, 2016
“Innovation and care are in our DNA”, says the soft female voice-over that accompanies the new promotional video by Shell. We, the attendees at the corporation’s 2016 Annual General Meeting in the Circus Theater, Scheveningen, sit comfortably in our red velvet seats watching the massive screen above the heads of the Shell directors on the...
Drawing Red Lines – from Paris to Ffos-y-fran
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Apr 29, 2016
I watched the twitter feed and followed the news early last December filled with a mixture of excitement at what unfolded in Paris and mild envy of companions who were immersed in the ebb and flow of events around COP 21, the 21st Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC. As the reports of the...
6 reasons why #Budget2016 really really shouldn’t subsidise North Sea oil even more
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Mar 15, 2016
Osborne is announcing his #Budget2016 on Weds, and there’s lots of pressure from the oil barons for more subsidies and tax cuts. Their income has been hit by the falling oil price, and in all those years of bonanza profits they never thought to save for this rainy day (even though it was predictable given the mostly cyclical...
Breaking: The Struggle to Free the Bus: The Twists, the Turns and the Conspiracies
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Feb 24, 2016
BREAKING Guest Blog by Ken Henshaw, Social Action, Nigeria The extraordinary behind-the-scenes story of the Bus memorial seizure and the struggle to release it, on the day of the 3rd Hearing to release the memorial to Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8. Show your support – follow and tweet @GreatOgoni, @Kenn_Henshaw, @S_DouglasCamp. Support the Movement...
We will Remember them – those who were hung and those who executed the hanging
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Nov 19, 2015
Here again. Standing before the white Portland Stone cenotaph of the Shell Center. A crowd of fifty or more in silent attention as the names of the dead are read out: Saturday Dobee Nordu Eawo Daniel Gbooko Paul Levera Felix Nuate Baribor Bera Barinem Kiobel John Kpuinen Ken Saro-Wiwa The chief mourner is Lazarus Tamana,...
‘Return’ – new poem for the Bus by Sai Murray
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Nov 6, 2015
This summer, Platform commissioned Sai Murray – poet, writer, and spoken word supremo – to write a poem about the Bus’s journey to Ogoniland. Sai made some stunning political connections to other struggles, connections in all these years we had not made ourselves. John Ruskin once said “The best response to a work of art...
Release the Bus memorial NOW: Artists, campaigners and others speak out!
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Nov 6, 2015
Twenty years ago, on 10th November 1995, the Nigerian writer and activist Ken Saro-Wiwa was executed, alongside eight colleagues, for crimes they did not commit. They were campaigning against Shell’s exploitation and environmental destruction of Ogoniland in the Niger Delta of Nigeria. As a Living Memorial, The Battle Bus, a large-scale mobile interactive steel sculpture...
Nov 10th Artists on why Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni struggle matters
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Nov 5, 2015
The Bus memorial to writer and campaigner Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni 8 has been seized by Nigerian military. On Nov 10th it will be 20 years since the executions of Ken and the other Ogoni men by Nigeria’s then military government for protesting against Shell and other oil companies. Shell still have not started...
RELEASE: ‘Living Memorial’ to Ken Saro-Wiwa seized by Nigerian Customs
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Nov 5, 2015
RELEASE: ‘Living Memorial’ to Ken Saro-Wiwa seized by Nigerian Customs Thursday, November 5th, 2015 Suzanne Dhaliwal – [email protected] +447772694327 UK contact for images and interviews Memorial sculpture to murdered activist seized at Lagos port by Nigerian Customs Customs chief was on tribunal that condemned Ken Saro-Wiwa to execution; Shell stands accused of conspiring in the...
Seizure of Ken Saro-Wiwa Memorial Bus #bus4ogoni9
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Nov 3, 2015
This statement is issued to call public attention to the seizure by the Nigerian Customs Service of a “Living Memorial” to Ken Saro-Wiwa donated by Platform – friends and colleagues in the United Kingdom – to the Ogoni people. The memorial is a sculpture of a bus made in remembrance of the struggles of Ken...
Head looking backward the bird flies forward – a night for Ken Saro-Wiwa in Peckham
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Nov 3, 2015
[In 7 days’ time it will be 10th November – the 20th anniversary of the executions of Ken Saro-Wiwa and 8 Ogoni colleagues. This blog is a response to a powerful poetry event at Peckham Platform last Friday, inspired by the work and life of Ken Saro-Wiwa. Come to the events on Nov 10th –...
This Bitter Earth – rendering the invisible visible
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Nov 2, 2015
During my leave over the summer I was really glad to catch the performance Arctic Requiem outside the Shell Centre in August. Here’s a piece I wrote about it, prior to Shell’s decision to cease drilling in the Arctic Ocean. The rain lashes down. A strong south westerly drives it along the Thames, across Jubilee...
