It’s the coal station workers who make the planet worth saving
Not that long ago, for an article that never quite happened, I took a tour around Kingsnorth power station. This was just after environmental activists had staged a week-long ‘Climate Camp’ there. ‘Environmentalist?’ said my taxi-driver. ‘Journalist,’ I told him. He seemed surprised. Such is my debonair professional demeanour. He’d done quite well out of climate change activists, it turned out. It was seven miles from the train station to the power station, and cannabis and hand-woven teepees can really weigh you down. If no one was looking, or if it was raining, they’d often sneak a lift. A taxi-driver with an eco-friendly car, perhaps like the one in The Flintstones, could have made a fortune.
It wasn’t the most exciting tour, if I’m honest. ‘This is where we keep the coal,’ they said, next to a big pile of coal. ‘This is where we press the buttons.’ I wasn’t allowed to press the buttons. I asked. The turbine hall was like a space-age cathedral, with great shafts of light cutting down over curled, roaring machines. What sticks in the mind, though, is the quiet, old-fashioned dignity of everybody who worked there. And how frightened they were.
‘You can bring a photographer,’ the PR had told me, beforehand, ‘but you can’t take pictures of any of our staff.’ That was thanks to Climate Camp. With jeering crowds at the gates, and after a couple of break-ins, the station had eventually gone into lockdown. Under siege, the engineers had called their wives, laid out their sleeping bags in the canteen, and mildly continued with the solid, miraculous business of holding back the darkness. They were shaken, though. In the past, when people had asked them what they did, they had always felt proud.
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