Vivienne’s Diary – July

Tues 1 July:  Invitations to go out 4 nights in a row, unusual for me – as you know I like to stay at home except on special occasions when I go to the theatre or classical music concert. Tonight, Virgin Air launch of the uniforms we designed. We did enjoy doing this collection, not only uniforms for stewardesses but for all the different functions down to masseurs and waiters. The stewardesses really did look nice. Whoever did their hair, it was good, all caught up from the back and high on the head. I liked the steward’s uniform the texture and subtle colour-mix of threads in the fabrics.

One shirt collar was too small – I hate small collars usually, we’ll change it. The fabrics are the most eco-friendly, we worked on that. Blondie played at the event – she must be so bored having to do these private parties. Me, too. 

Wed 2 July: Bryan Adams’ picnic to raise money for the Bryan Adams Foundation to support BLESMA, Blind Veterans UK, Combat Stress, SSAFA and War Child. Venue: the Chelsea Hospital with operatic concert in the church. This Wren building is immaculate, the Golden Mean, a harmony between aspiration and restraint. Bryan sang a little at the beginning. He has an incredible voice. No wonder he loves singing, he still does one gig a month world-wide and this gives him the time to do other things he’s interested in – his photography and time spent with his family. He’s a good cook: vegetarian. We talked to Eva Herzegova  and husband Gregorio.

Thurs 3 July: Tracey Emin’s birthday at Mark’s Club. Too many people for Tracey to be able to talk to us. Haven’t seen her for ages. She says the answer is that she will come and visit us – just her – and stay 24 hours. Her agent is Jay Joplin of White Cube. His father is so proud of Jay. He was saying, “Do you know my son?”  The look I gave him caused Jay to rush in and tell him – Vivienne doesn’t like modern art.

I was so pleased to find Eva and Gregorio there again and talk to them some more. They are such kind sincere people; he adores her and always wants to hear her opinion. She has 3 small boys, hard work. Eva remains a super -model, so strong and powerful – a force to be reckoned with. She looks bigger than she is but size 8 or 10 fits her perfectly, still.

Fri 4 July: Sharon Osbourne invited us to come and see Ozzy perfom in Hyde Park. I thought it was nice of her to think of us, though she and daughter Kelly do wear our clothes from time to time. I do like heavy metal but I’ve never listened to Black Sabbath or any of the others except I do recognize heavy metal and if I ever hear a bit of it I like it. I know Kelly a little from the way she supports good causes and victims of injustice and I found the family friends interesting to talk to; they had a pretty good idea of what’s going on in the world. Sharon’s tough, she banished one regular gate-crasher, no messing.

Anyway, I still haven’t heard Black Sabbath, we were at the back of them in the wings where you only hear noise and feel the beat. Ozzy just ran to one side then back to the other side waving his arms and the whole audience copied him waving like a sea of corn. It’s a shame my son Ben wasn’t with us. He once split himself laughing describing how funny Ozzy can be. We left just as they were finishing so as not to get caught in the exodus. Thank you Sharon, we enjoyed ourselves and we are sorry we didn’t stay to meet Ozzy but we were tired. We could have rushed over to Jerry Hall’s party in Richmond – we love her but we have too much to do to rave.

Mon 7 July:  Our dear friend Rosita, our production partner in Italy, came to stay with us for a week at home. She comes each day to work, to understand the prototypes and the variations she must do for the sample collection and eventual main production.

Thurs 10 July: Shami Chakrabarti is a friend of Vanessa Redgrave and my P.A., Tizer, had suggested that we should meet. We biked over after work to a restaurant in Hammersmith where we were excited to meet Vanessa but Shami warned us that she would have to leave early(ten-ish) to appear on T.V. to comment on the sneaky activity of the government( with Labour acceptance) in driving us further down the road to surveillance.

Vanessa is dead clear against it. My opinion of governments is that they are so stupid it won’t make any difference one way or the other if they have the means to check what I’m doing, except that they’ll be making mistakes all over the place, getting the wrong people as victims of their paranoia, not supplying reasons for kidnapping people beyond the claim that they have secret information, then they’ll bang them up and throw away the key – But they do that already! (creeping acceptance because we always think it happens to other people).

Anyway this goes a lot further – right up to Orwell’s world of 1984 – we’re all potential victims and at the same time most of us think the secret information exists and accept that governments have a right to get it and act upon it. Remember in “1984” Big Brother didn’t exist, but people thought he did – So! There would have been no need for computer files of secret information – governments could just pretend if they wanted.  They relied on people informing on each other – Winston, the hero – the daughter of his neighbour informed on her dad; Winston himself, because he hated the system, exposed his feelings to a man who turned out to be an agent for the system and thereby Winston walked into his own trap. As well as this, the system just picks out arbitrary victims (especially today, if you happen to be Muslim – check out what happened to Shaker Aamer).

Yet there is more to it, which is that people have been blacklisted and never got a job since they were involved in union activity, or other opposition to government policy. This is made clear in Steinbeck’s “Grapes of Wrath” and is a universal fact. And it takes us right to the fact of “Thought Police”.

I may write this out more carefully and completely for Climate Revolution and separate to the Diary. There is still a lot to think about. (We’re starting to think it could happen to us).

Shami said that an American friend of hers who had recently visited her was a bag of nerves, thinking that because of who Shami is she would be under surveillance and that she, herself, would be marked as a dangerous threat.

A week later when Pamela came over and made an appointment to go to see Julian Assange, her son feared she would not be allowed to return to California. Julian and Edward Snowden are America’s most wanted men – because they defy it. Surveillance causes blanket fear and acceptance of Big Brother. In “1984” people came to love Big Brother as their protector – even their protector from themselves.

I had seen Vanessa in Euripides’ play, “Hecuba”, about five years ago. After the battle of Troy the Trojan Queen, Hecuba (Vanessa) was a prisoner of the Greeks. Her future was slavery; her husband, King Priam, was dead and one by one her many children had been killed. She had passed beyond the stage of human suffering – where just to get up from the ground where she has fallen asleep, just to manage that, to rise – is now inhuman: to continue to live you must harden yourself. Nevertheless she has to find a way to bury the body of her son. Then through the treachery of Odysseus she must suffer the sacrifice of her last remaining daughter, Polyxena. Hecuba kills the two little sons of the chief who commits this last crime.

When you finally become such a monster, Vanessa said that what she had to deal with was “revenge is the only catharsis”. Her experience as a lifelong campaigner for the Palestinians against the inhumanity of the Zionists must have prepared her for this.

Vanessa told me that when they took the play to Brooklyn the director had the whole theatre dressed like a camp with tents amongst the audience from the balconies down to the stage. That was really something – and a big sell-out!

Mon 14 July: To the BBC building, Westminster, to pre-record my view against fracking which we did outdoors with the Thames and Parliament in the background.

After the five dates of our tour against fracking to which the pro-frackers had not come, Joe, myself and our team wondered what to do next. The pro-frackers had evaded our challenges; there didn’t seem much point in continuing to invite them. Nevertheless, though we hadn’t had our skirmish in the battle, we had alerted the media throughout the country to the fact of the battle.

Wed 16 July: Now the BBC had invited me to take part in the midday news programme. They showed the videos (this bit is called “Soapbox”) and then I and the politicians on the panel – Ken Clarke and Liz Kendal (Labour) – were interviewed. (BBC Daily Politics)

I got one point across…..It is not true that fracking in America was a success. Now it has peaked the frackers have lost money and are going bankrupt.

Ken Clark waffled on, reassuringly; in effect reassuring us that he did not know what he was talking about. When I had a chance to reply, I didn’t play the game of polite reply. I just said, “Everything Ken Clark just said is completely wrong!”, then demolished his main claim. Liz Kendall was just as bad; speaking for Labour she said she was pro- fracking so long as safeguards were ensured. If she had ever applied one decibel of brainpower to the problem she would know that safeguards are impossible.

Listening to them I put my head in my hands. Having done so, I kept them there a second so the camera could catch it.

This, and that I took care to look good, were the most important weapons I had in such a short time to discuss the most important fight the Brits will ever face. Don’t you see, it’s the first step we have to take to stop climate change? How can we fight the second battle if we don’t fight the first?

I know that politicians don’t care a toss even if you manage to expose their stupidity – especially old hardened ones like Ken Clark – they’re too complacent in their power and the support they get from the media.  Nevertheless I asked Cynthia to tweet on my behalf  “It’s terrible that Ken Clark  and Liz Kendall  don’t care what happens to people.”

There is a trick I must remember next time (if ever) I speak on T.V.: whatever the question , answer with the one thing you want to say. I should have chosen to say, “These wells which take up the space of Trafalgar Square will be all over the country. Your house price will drop by 25% and because of this the whole economy will collapse for 10- 15 years. Because we’ll be waiting for them this long before they can get enough gas.”

Meanwhile look at the piece on Help! – Part 3 which suspects that fracking is really just a bluff on the part of the government. But it also explains that we have to fight it anyway, and why it’s so vital to do so.

Sat 19 July: Train to the Latitude Festival with film-maker Lorna Tucker, her cameraman and Tizer, who brings a picnic we eat on the train. Duffy’s twin sister, Katy (not identical) meets us off the train as she works for Greenpeace. I do some interviews (hot weather). John Sauven will interview me and Frank Hewitson (Arctic 30) on stage for Greenpeace. Tent packed. John tries to find common factors in our lives. He talked about our childhoods – what made us rebels.

I said that my life was ideal. My parents loved their children, I lived in the country, that I became self-aware when experience pressed upon the rebellious nerve: why must things be this way and not that? – And particularly regarding injustice and suffering: why should I be so lucky? When I look back, I think this is what shaped my life.

Frank said how he looked up to his wonderful father. He mentioned that in WWII his father was told to shoot a prisoner. He took him round the back of the hut, he wouldn’t do it, and told him to run. That must have been scary for the prisoner; it’s a well-known way of killing somebody – to tell them to run and then shoot them in the back.

I seized the opportunity to talk about the overriding problems we are now in a position to understand because we can stop climate change if only enough of us would act now. Urgent! The only way out of this is:

This, of course, would change the world completely because a green economy is a world without war. Wars, since history began, have been waged to secure a monopoly on land for raw materials and exploitation of its people for cheap labour. We could say therefore it’s inevitable and that by combating climate change – transferring from a world of finite resources to a sustainable world of peace – we will get the world we want – eventually. The only thing is “eventually” is too long.

My most important message: young people are idealistic. They could topple the present rulers – by working through the social media. In Climate Revolution we have to work with young people. I think it’s our best chance. Governments could not ignore them like they seem to ignore the rest of us.

Nevertheless, things could change and quickly; I think the anti-fracking campaign is a test of government against people and we will win; the old power is crumbling. Argentina is bankrupt, the US owes $17trn. The oil and fossil fuel companies are losing money and the petrodollar could collapse – which means that the US would collapse.

Frank told of his time in gaol. Cold…bad, bad, bad. There for 67 days. Didn’t know if he would be there for months, years or forever.

Communication – the only means.

Each day, he made string out of bits of whatever. At night, he tied a note on the end with the name of who he wished to receive it. At night, the prisoners hung these out of the window and, swinging them so that they caught in each other’s strings, they passed them along. After about four hours you received a reply – there were many cells on different floors and it took time. The only person who ever opened the note was the recipient. Frank is a solid fighter for Greenpeace. He won’t give up.

We got on the train home while it was still light. It stopped at every stop; we had to change and they held the train for us while we ran over the bridge. Then we stopped again at every stop and got into Liverpool Street at 12 midnight. The best part of the day for me was the last couple of stops when groups of youngsters got on (ravers). They would be between 18 and 20 years old. A black boy sat down in the seat beside us, a medium sized Afro with a rolled handkerchief tied round. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, he was so good to look at, he was talking all the time to some friends behind us. His friend was good-looking too, he looked a mix between African and Indian, proud features; big. When we got off I saw that their friends were 3 white boys, not one more handsome than the other. They were so lovely together. In the streets lots of clubbers were around, girls in high heels with platforms (difficult to dance in?) They looked really glamorous, they were dressed like film-stars. I didn’t know it was like that, really happening! But what the hell music do they dance to nowadays? Surely if there was anything, we would get to know.

Mon 21 Jul: Went to see Julian Assange. We were happy to see each other. It’s been a long time, we’re both so busy.

As in “1984” governments misrepresent the truth and give out false history; but what makes our world different is that there is also a true record of facts called Wikileaks! – a whole library which denies the official view,  an archive accessible to all. So simple, so clever: anyone who wants to do so can publish the facts and the official powers that be can do nothing, Mr. Obama – All they have to do is preface their exposure of the true facts with “Wikileaks says…” and then they are immune from censure.

I know no one who knows better what’s going on in the world than does Julian. I hope he’ll like a plan I have of getting this knowledge out in book form.

Julian said something to me which is deeply philosophical:  he doesn’t really believe anything unless he experiences it. The example was the rings of Saturn. When he was younger he loved astronomy and he loved the rings of Saturn. Once he saw Saturn through the telescope and saw the rings for himself. Then he knew that before then he hadn’t believed. Therefore though he doesn’t believe in climate change the weight of opinion that it exists imposes upon him the same opinion, that it exists, (I just looked up the word opinion. “Judgement or belief based on grounds short of proof, provisional conviction, view held as probable.”)

Tue 22 Jul: Pamela called in at work. She had been supposed to come to see Julian with me but she got held up. So off she went on her own. Andreas and I saw her later that evening at a buffet dinner at the studio of our mutual friends, Phillip Treacy and Stephan, together with Pamela’s husband Rick and son Branden who is over here with us doing a work placement and 2 other friends of Phillip.

She was excited about Julian, he gave her advice of how best to be effective with her new Pamela Anderson Foundation.