James Orr

This audio clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. A quotation from this recording features in the book Voices for Change, published by UCL Press in November 2026 (available in print as well as a free PDF download). The full interview, along with the summaries, transcripts and recordings for this and the rest of the interview collection, is available at the British Library (Sound and Moving Image Collection, under the shelf-mark C2037). For more information, including educational materials and other resources, visit the Oral History of the Environmental Movement project website at www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:And we were feral kids, like you know we were wild. Absolutely wild. We were, well like I didn’t come from a tradition or a big tradition of hunting, shooting and fishing but that’s what we did, you know. We just ran out of the town into the freshwater lake system with the shoreline of Strangford Lough and it wasn’t bucolic bourgeois bliss like you know there’s three Bs, I never thought I’d say that. It was rough, you know, you’re often running away from people, you know. A lot of violence in the town. But my goodness when you got away on your bicycle and there was rights of way in those days which were never legally asserted but you knew you could go certain places. Or certain places you knew you couldn’t go to, you went for the chase, you know. Somebody who had, somebody who was stringing around their jacket on a bicycle, an old black bicycle, you would call them names and they would chase you round the countryside for six or seven hours until they were exhausted.British Library catalogue number: C2037/82 Project clip number: 9