Angela Francis

This clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. It will feature in a book published by UCL Press in 2026. The full interview, along with the rest of the collection will be searchable on the British Library’s Sound and Moving Image catalogue and the interviews will be accessible onsite at the British Library in St Pancras from February 2026. For more information visit www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:I think we are weaker as a sector by not having and being attractive to such, to as a diverse set of thinking as we should have. And how we correct that. I only had I think one experience of speaking up about lack of ethnic diversity in a, in a kind of a, it was a relatively informal sort of conversation, and then two of the younger people in the organisation at the time came over to me afterwards and were really exercised and excited that I had said something. And I realised how infrequently I talked about those issues. And maybe in my approach to those sectors is just to kind of get on with my job and do the best I can do. And expect people to judge me by my behaviour. I don’t often tackle it explicitly. And I think it was important for those young people coming through the sector to have somebody who was a couple of generations above them saying what they felt was true and hadn’t heard be acknowledged as a problem. And I think I did a bit of a reset then and I was like actually I do need to do this. It’s not good enough just to sort of be in the sector and- Because I think otherwise it implies you think it’s fine. And I don’t think it’s fine. I think there are, there’s weaknesses for the sector and it’s not good enough.British Library catalogue number: C2037/87 Project clip number: 163