Pat Bushell

I became politically aware in 1969 when, at the age of 23 and with a 3 year old daughter, I became homeless.  At that time bed and breakfast accommodation for people with children was never offered; if you were without a roof the children were taken into care by social workers, using force if necessary.  In desperation I joined a squat that was occupying mainly council owned houses in Ilford, Essex, and as a result of that campaign I got somewhere to live and homeless families are at least offered temporarily B&B housing.    

I grew Green during the 1970s, learning about Acid Rain, the Ozone Hole and the Greenhouse Effect, and joining the Ecology Party which became the Green Party, in the early 80s.  I would say I experienced a dawning feeling of the truth and enormity of the changes to come, rather than being persuaded by scientific evidence.  Then in 1989 I had a profound spiritual experience in which I learnt about what was explained to me as “The Great Plan for the Earth”.   

In the local elections of 1990 I stood as a Green Party candidate in order to be able to vote Green myself for the first time, and taking 12% of the vote.  Later on the same year, with my partner Trevor, we left our jobs, house and country and cycled to Italy, where we lived and worked for five years in Padova in the North East.   

We returned when Trevor became a mature student at Plymouth University, and although I greatly miss Italy and my Italian friends, I have felt ever since that I was, in some sense, in the right place.  On a visit to Totnes in early 2007 I discovered Transition, and found the first and only movement I have come across that is actually planning for a realistically different sort of life and future.