Tina Rothery

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 I became quite engaged in it and reasonably recognisable within the movement just because we’d have general assembly’s twice a day and I ended up getting involved in those.There was a day when Julie was down because Julie was trying to come down regularly as well. So, there was a day when we were looking for the working group that would be hosting the next general assembly; they always gathered at a certain time at a certain place. There was no one there, we were like, there is no working group, and there were all these people sitting waiting for a general assembly, and quite a number of them, hundreds. So, we thought, there isn’t anyone.So, we walked up to the front and just got the megaphone and said what we knew they would have said, you know, which is do you have stuff you want to raise, the other working groups, queue here. We just took it over that day just because you felt really embarrassed if you didn’t because there were all these hundreds of people and everyone was waiting to do it. That was it, you just got more and more confident every day.Pete The Temp was an amazing poet who sprung out of a box and screamed “Now is the Winter of our Discount Tents” and I instantly fell in love with the art and the poetry of activism. Then I hung out with a guy, Jamie Kelsey Fry, who was super-intelligent and works as a writer for the New Internationalist. He got me involved in stuff and then I got involved in the press group with Ronan, and just all of these connections.I was fascinated and at home and suddenly, in all the ways I’d lived my life, nothing felt more like home than activism; it was just like a way of being. It didn’t make me have to commit to a home or anything. So, I carried on with Occupy.British Library catalogue number: C2037/16 Project clip number: 78