Hugo Tagholm

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:Hugo Tagholm: I love the climate movement but I do sometimes worry that climate is very abstract for people and the impacts and the way its presented as very dark and doom laden. And we’re presenting a new front to stopping big oil in the UK seas which is the marine front, the marine protected areas that we need to conserve. The whales, dolphins and sea birds that people know and love. The beaches they love. The areas of coastline that they live and work on. And those things are really true and real to people and tactile and tangible and understandable. And so we believe this is a new and important and positive part of that movement to stop big oil from continuing to expand its grasp on our seas. We’ve got a rich history sadly of oil spills in the UK. The Sea Empress in 1996, the Braer oil disaster in 1993.Barbara Brayshay: Torrey Canyon.Hugo Tagholm: Yes Torrey Canyon in Cornwall. Tanker disasters don’t really happen so much anymore but offshore day in, day out and we’re tracking this with new data satellite technology and data. We’re seeing regular big oil spills from the production of oil. They’re hidden out of sight, out of mind. Just as combined sewer overflows were hidden out of sight, out of mind, ten or fifteen years ago. But it was finding the data and promoting the data that brought us to this point where it’s now top of the news agenda. So again I see all of these things as opportunities where things aren’t quite in the public space yet, whether it’s industrial fishing or oil spills offshore or the destruction of our marine habitats by any industry. Where it’s not in the public space yet I see that’s the headroom of environmentalism of where we can drive new campaigns and awareness forward.British Library catalogue number: C2037/61 Project clip number: 46