The Steeple Times

Category: CAMPAIGNERS

  • Barbara Smoker (1923 – 2020)

    Barbara Smoker (1923 – 2020)

    A promoter of “causes many of us now take for granted,” Catford born campaigner and humanist activist Barbara Smoker believed in surviving “on her wits” and “making an extra bit on the horses.” She once “embark[ed] on a crusade around the neighbourhood, telling all the kids that there was no Santa Claus… [so that she could prove to them] they were being made fools of, and I was only saving them from this indignity” and amongst her many other pronouncements was to announce that “an eternity in heaven – that would be hell.” Pro-alphabet reformist Smoker also claimed to have manufactured the first ‘Make Love, Not War’ badges and in 2013 gave the following advice in The Oldie: “Don’t always be obedient. Obedience is overrated. You’ve got to work out your morality for yourself, not do everything you’re told. Obedience can be more of a vice than a virtue.” Amongst her written works were My Godforsaken Life and Good God! A String of Verses to Tie Up the Deity.

  • Emily Bolton

    Emily Bolton

    A Shackleton Award winning campaigner who “fights miscarriages of justice and demands reform,” practicing solicitor Emily Bolton is married to Reprieve founder and one of “Britain’s most powerful civil rights lawyers,” Clive Stafford Smith. This Dorset born stonemason’s daughter, herself, founded the Centre for Criminal Appeals in the UK in 2011 after previously representing wrongfully convicted prisoners in the United States through the George Soros funded Innocence Project in New Orleans. She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and Tulane University and her work trying to highlight the flaws in the 2011 convictions of the ‘Freshwater Five’ fisherman is clearly illustrative of her tenacity and dedication. Bolton’s sterling efforts in this regard were quite correctly highlighted in an April 2020 in-depth analysis of this most likely bungled case in the Guardian and in 2017, she tellingly commented: “Human beings make mistakes, and no system has more human parts than the criminal justice system. If it can’t identify and rectify its mistakes, it is doomed to repeat them.”

     

  • Jessica Jackson Sloan (born Jessica Hurst)

    Jessica Jackson Sloan (born Jessica Hurst)

    Born in Alabama in 1982, Jessica Jackson Sloan has morphed from a high-school dropout with a baby and a drug addict, jailbird husband in 2004 to, most bizarrely, one half of a “criminal justice reform dream team” with Kim Kardashian in 2020. “Steely-eyed blonde,” divorced and the co-founder of #Cut50 – a bipartisan effort aimed at reducing America’s incarceration rate – this Santa Clara University of Law graduate became Mayor of Mill Valley City Council in Marin County, California in 2015 and got herself involved with her “famous reality star legal apprentice” thanks to Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Jackson Sloan claims to want to “craft better policies that help, not hurt,” yet the choice of the somewhat shady company she keeps will continue to leave many questioning this plainly fame and power hungry woman’s true motivations.

  • Dame Louise Casey DBE, CB

    Dame Louise Casey DBE, CB

    In 2018, Tony Blair’s former ‘homelessness tsar’ Dame Louise Casey “blasted” Theresa May’s government as anything but “kind.” A former director of Shelter and head of the Rough Sleepers’ Unit also, Casey became an advisor to Boris Johnson to review how to tackle rough sleeping in February 2020. Educated at Goldsmiths, University of London, this history graduate spoke for the nation during the coronavirus crisis when she announced: “It’s time for everybody in our country to step up… I hope common sense prevails.”

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  • Mark McGowan (AKA The Artist Taxi Driver and Chunky Mark)

    Mark McGowan (AKA The Artist Taxi Driver and Chunky Mark)

    Whilst many a taxi driver no doubt gets bored whilst waiting between fares, Clapham born Mark McGowan decided to put his spare time to good use and turned himself into ‘The Artist Taxi Driver’ in 2010. This self-employed eccentric shares satirical videos attacking political parties and injustice with his 59,000 subscribers on YouTube on a daily basis and he never fails to rise to the occasion. He has 120,000 followers on Twitter, is an ex-football hooligan,an  ex-associate lecturer at the Chelsea College of Art and now sells his own works (painted on newspapers) online also. Refused entry to the Frieze Art Fair for five nights in 2010 for rightly daring to suggest it was elitist, “passionate ranter” McGowan champions the belief that “the role of art is to challenge.” He counts Frankie Boyle, George Galloway, John McDonnell and Ricky Tomlinson amongst those he’s interviewed in his taxi and was described in the Guardian in 2015 as producing “online polemics” that are “moving traffic.”

     

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8RiSvP9-mQ
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sATLUyTb9w
  • David Bishop (AKA ‘Lord Biro’ and ‘Bus-pass Elvis’)

    David Bishop (AKA ‘Lord Biro’ and ‘Bus-pass Elvis’)

    Described by the BBC as “a serial fringe candidate,” Broxtowe, Nottingham born ‘Lord Biro’ attended the late paedophile Jimmy Savile’s funeral dressed as Elvis. He threw a 99p bunch of flowers into his grave as “a mark of respect.”

     

    A divorced painter and decorator, wacky David Bishop adopted his first moniker (‘Lord Byro’) in honour of Lord Byron and later replaced the ‘y’ with an ‘I’ to stand against everyone from Eric Pickles to Neil Hamilton and Robert Kilroy-Silk.

     

    An artist and poet also, Bishop primarily campaigns as the ‘Church of the Militant Elvis Party’ and has a website named GrumpyOldElvis.co.uk. His wacky policies have included:

     

    – Imprisoning Cherie Blair to prevent her talking about her sex life.

    – Placing CCTV in the bedroom of Nick Clegg.

    – Bono for Pope.

    – Going to Antarctica to shout at icebergs to “stop melting.”

    – Turning public schools into pound shops.

    – Introducing moats around houses.

    – Legalising and nationalising cannabis and calling it British Grass.

    – Free neutering for cats and Boris Johnson.

     

  • Lotti Henley (born Princess Windisch-Graetz of Austria)

    Lotti Henley (born Princess Windisch-Graetz of Austria)

    In spite of being born in 1925 in a castle in Austria, West London based mother of two Lotti Henley spends days feeding the homeless and destitute. Enthusiastic and dedicated to “caring for food,” this nonagenarian community heroin co-founded the Plan Zheroes charity in 2011 as part of her “vision of a world where no one will be living in food poverty.” A refugee and nurse herself in the Second World War, Henley was forced to suck stones to trick her stomach into thinking it was full and now her motto is: “Too blessed to be stressed and it’s true… I’ve never forgotten hunger… Do not waste food, pass it on to a charity geographically close… It doesn’t take an awful lot and it’s awfully fun… 39% of all in landfill is food and it’s all good food.” A truly wonderful lady working for a sadly ridiculously necessary cause.

  • Chen Si (陳思)

    Chen Si (陳思)

    Made famous in the film Angel of Nanjing, Chen Si has saved over 300 lives at the world’s most popular suicide spot, the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China, since 2003. This kindly gent has been described as an “unlikely guardian angel” and wears a coat emblazoned with the caption: “Cherish life everyday”.

     

    Chen Si (陳思) - Made famous in the film Angel of Nanjing, Chen Si has saved over 300 lives at the world’s most popular suicide spot, the Yangtze River Bridge in Nanjing, China, since 2003. This kindly gent has been described as an “unlikely guardian angel” and wears a coat emblazoned with the caption: “Cherish life everyday”.

     

  • Livia Firth (born and also known as Livia Giuggioli)

    Livia Firth (born and also known as Livia Giuggioli)


    In May 2016, Livia Firth daftly announced: “I celebrated reaching 30,000 followers on Instagram… I bought confetti”. (more…)