Sandy Boyd

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:Sandy Boyd: Went from there to university and nothing really happened much for me during that time. Like Youth and Resistance did good work. We did lots of, I learnt a lot more about who I am and politics and stuff. And then the most transformative probably period of my life, second to COP, happened in January of 2023, last year. And that was I went to Lutzerath in Germany which, or Lutzi, and that had been, it was a town, sorry a village on the edge of a coal mine the biggest coal mine in Germany. And they were expanding it and there had been a long running fight for years to not have the expansion happen. And I think the Greens when they got into power in Germany managed to negotiate to save like six other villages around it, like Keyenberg and stuff. And these other villages. Which was slightly false because I can’t remember why but for one reason all the power, electricity, water and services had been cut off to those villages, so no one really lived there anymore. The people who did had to rely on activists for like mutual aid work to actually just survive. Like this Government pretended they’d save these villages and they’d abandoned them. That’s one thing. So yes we arrived- We, our friend Lucy was travelling back from Poland on a holiday because they’d been spending time with their family in Poland. And were like, ‘Oh LOL, this is happening. Do you want to go to it?’ And then me and my partner Rosie were like, ‘Ah, why not? Let’s go.’ We didn’t really understand what it was. And basically there was a squat in this tiny little village of Lutzerath that had basically all been demolished and there was just this one farm left with a bunch of barns, the old farmstead itself and then a whole encampment of tree houses and beautiful- And it had been turned into this most beautiful anarchist like queer liberation space that had lived together for two years. And I had met loads of people who had been there and told me about it and like, you have to go to Lutzi before it gets demolished. It’s this beautiful space where they talk about Rojava and anarchist liberation. And what they had done is-Saskia Papadakis: They talk about what sorry?Sandy Boyd: They talk about like how to just live together in a free society, like they got sent solidarity messages from the, like the independent like Rojava in Northeast Syria, from the Zapatistas, they all sent messages being like, this is fucked, stop it, when it like got evicted. And I just like, I’m like that’s such an insane sort of people to know about this squat in Germany. And yes I’m trying to do it justice. There will people who know about this a lot more than me. I only visited it just as it got evicted. And but yes I think what I began to understand is, when I arrived there was, that’s what I’m trying to say, this was a place to fall in love with. And we were there for six days and we left the day just as the police basically closed it off and sealed it off, we got out because we couldn’t afford to get arrested. And that like you forgot the coal mine and the climate crisis even existed and you just wanted to defend it because it was beautiful and it had artwork and it felt a safe space and everyone was nice and you got free food and you got to practice what we want society to be. And I realised that for the last two years thousands of people had travelled through this community in summers and done camps there and just visited. And basically there’s a, with like German like forest occupation is like a big thing, it’s well practised in Germany, they know how to do it. And they have a thing called Day X where they have like different codes, like Red, Yellow, Green. And like when it’s Green it’s chill, clearing season hasn’t started, it's not autumn yet so they don’t chop the trees down. So you can come and it will be safe. Yellow is, it’s clearing season. Red is like the eviction order has been given. Like this is going to be intense. And Day X was called on January 6th or January 4th or something just as we were like getting on the bus to go. And we were like, aargh. And we get there and like because basically over Christmas it was like thirty people living in this place. And when we got there it was going back up, there was probably about 200 people there. As we were kind of about to leave there was about 4,000 people living there in barns and treehouses and tunnels and like huts. It was just insane. And like we moved into, when we arrived we first got in Keyenberg, this beautifully run camp on the outside of Lutzi, which was like the support camp. And we were like, just the organisation was fantastic. And we got a shuttle bus every- There was a shuttle bus every ten minutes being driven by volunteers to Lutzi. You’d get, you drop off and you had to walk up this road. We got followed by a police van all the way up. We didn’t, it was really fun, we didn’t move out of the way, it was like a little bit of petty disobedience, slow them down. And you enter and you get met on the front gate by this person in a full like black bloc with ski mask over their head, there’s a kind of fire pit and they’re like, you know, and sort of big muscular sort of anarchist dude. And you’re like, ‘Hi.’ [laughing] And then you go in and as you slowly get passed a really intimidating checkpoints that are meant to scare the cops off, you kind of get into this warm place with food, free food for anybody. Like the kufa, the kitchen for all, and these treehouses and pride flags everywhere. And like the Die Paula which was like the most radical part of the whole place, was like a queer only barrier which meant like- And it had a big massive pride flag on the front door and it was just like, it’s just, it felt safe and it felt community. And we stayed in the farmer’s barn. The farmer was still living there who’d fought the court. He’d fought this battle, legal battle for years. And as we arrived he was packing up his entire 200 year old family life into the back of a wagon and driving off. And he got very upset and very emotional about it all and it was very intense I think. And we basically moved into this barn and there was, like I say there was like six people sleeping in that barn. And when we left it had, like the stairs to the top floor had been removed by activists. There were like maybe 100 people living in this- Like defend- Ready to occupy this barn. There was food for days and it was just this sort of insane anarchist, totally autonomous organising that was so quick and so, so rapid.But yes that entire experience, there’s so much in there about like sort of place and land and what it’s like and how important it is to defend the community and have that be what you are fighting for. And I think it’s taught me a lot about how we build power as a movement and how we can- How important just reproduction work, repro work as the Germans put it, sort of cooking, feeding people, looking after each other. And how, if we, you know, in Germany the movement I think is so strong because they have so many pockets where people just live completely devoid of the state. They don’t work because they bin dive for food. They live off benefits whatever it is. And if you look at the history of the UK movement, I’m really interested to learn about this more, but what people say is that like there was a time when a lot of people lived in housing cooperatives and lived off benefits and all these things. And at that time the social movement was so much stronger and more vibrant than it is now because people were able to devote their entire lives to it. So it’s all of these things that have changed again maybe put it even further I think towards a new set of politics and activism that I am now doing now, which is things like Climate Camp Scotland, trying to build like a- Like an action scene that can do a lot of powerful direct action but minimises repression and minimises policing. And minimises the power that police can have. As well as trying to build community and capability in our ability to turn up in a place and stay there and hold the place and things like this. Which is why I’m developed kitchen collectives and stuff.British Library catalogue number: C2037/25 Project clip number: 210