Sometimes we have to take sides and 'speak truth to power', says campaigner Heather Stroud

THERE comes a time, says Heather Stroud, when you realise that you just cannot be neutral any more. When you accept that you have to take a stance and, if you can, speak truth to power.

She first came to that realisation 30 years ago, when she and her family were living in Hong Kong. She started volunteering in refugee camps, and found herself fighting for the rights of Vietnamese boat people.

Years later, she found herself similarly campaigning for the rights of oppressed Palestinians. And more recently still, she ended up in court after protesting about fracking in North Yorkshire.

She had chained herself to the gates at the entrance to the Third Energy site at Gilling East (in a deliberate reference to the way, 100 years ago, Suffragettes would chain themselves to chairs so they couldn't be thrown out of meetings) and refused to move.

That resulted in a conviction for obstructing the highway. Last year, at York Magistrates Court, she was given a six-month conditional discharge and ordered to pay a £20 statutory surcharge. "Chaining myself to the gate was a symbol!" she told the court, defiantly.

She's 69 now, and a grandmother. So what makes her continue to be so defiant, and so unaccepting of authority?

Heather Stroud during her fracking protest

It's that question that makes her come out with that line about how we 'cannot be neutral'.

"You have to take a position," she says. "When you look at the situations that asylum seekers have fled, for example, you cannot be neutral about torture, about children being murdered, about slavery."

Her lack of neutrality very definitely extends to Israel and Palestine.

It is nonsense for anyone to claim that supporting human rights in Palestine is anti-semitic, she says. You can criticise the policies of a country like Israel without being a racist.

"Israelis are killing children because they say they are terrorists. I don't think we should be neutral about this. But to say that it is racist to support Palestine is nonsense!"

Heather will be talking about her lifetime of 'speaking truth to power' at a free event at Hovingham Village Hall on the evening of June 8.

She has called the event (at which she will be 'in conversation' with retired York PR man Hugh Venables) 'Resistance: Futile gesture or an act of supreme faith?'.

That title is an acknowledgement that many people feel utterly powerless to change the things that they know are wrong with our world.

But that doesn't mean we should just give up, she says. "I don't challenge power because I think I will win. I challenge it because it is right to do so," she says.

Heather Stroud with children in the Bethlehem refugee camp

“My message is simple. Individuals, ordinary people, standing up for truth, can make a real difference. Telling truth to power may seem hopeless and scary, but I truly believe that if we each do something small, all play our part, we can effect change for the better.”

It is very easy for those in power to label and dismiss those who seek to stand up for justice, she says. "But we have to get past that and fight for truth. I have always found that one positive action sparks another, things connect and good things happen. Before you know it, in small ways the world has changed beyond your wildest expectations."

One way in which she helped to make a small change in the world was by securing the freedom of a young Vietnamese teenager called Lan from a Hong Kong refugee camp back in 1990. Lan was one of the original Vietnamese boat people who, as a spindly eight-year-old in 1980, had taken to a boat to escape the border war between China and Vietnam.

She spent years in a refugee camp, and when Heather met her was, with about 50 other people, effectively living in a cage.

Heather documented her story, challenged the Hong Kong government over Lan's detention, and eventually secured her release.

Lan in detention in Hong Kong

Years later, when Heather found herself in court in York for her anti-fracking protest, Lan returned the compliment, with a moving citation about Heather's life and work.

Heather isn't quite sure when her own distrust of authority originally began.

The daughter of a tailor and a secretary, she grew up in the family home her parents had bought from the local council in the midlands town of Sutton Coldfield.

She went to the local high school for girls, left school to do some secretarial courses, got a job in the accounts department of the local television state, ATV - then chucked it in to become an au pair in Turkey. She quickly discovered that she didn't enjoy looking after her spoiled charges, hitch-hiked home via the Greek islands, got a job in a bookshop at Birmingham University, then trained as a probation officer.

It was a perfectly ordinary background, she says.

"I grew up believing that the government was good. I think we were all optimists at the time. We thought that the world was getting better."

But something has changed. There is a lot of corrupt power in the world, she says. And freedom of speech is being eroded.

"Free speech is under attack. We live in a world where events are changing fast and whistleblowers, writers, publishers, activists and those who ‘speak truth to power’ are increasingly being criminalised.

"The world belongs to all of us, our fate should not just be in the hands of government and corporate oligarchs. It is the people who are sovereign."

You may agree or disagree with her - but at the end of the day, it is the conversation that is important, she says.

You'll be able to join in that conversation on June 8 at Hovingham Hall...

• Resistance: Futile gesture or an act of supreme faith?: Heather Stroud in Conversation with Hugh Venables will take place at Hovingham Village Hall at 6.30pm on Saturday June 8. Entrance is free. Just turn up on the day.

TAKING A STAND

Heather Stroud's opposition to fracking is based upon the belief that we, as a species, will be committing what she calls 'ecocide' if we don't take better care of our environment.

There are genuine fears that fracking could cause water contamination, air pollution and earthquakes, she says. "And that's going to have an impact."

The irony of her opposition to fracking, however, is that her husband, chemical engineer Steve, spent his life working for oil and chemicals company AMOCO.

His job gave them a good life - they've lived in the UK, in Chicago (where Heather did a degree in literature and philosophy), in Hong Kong and in Brazil. They were also able to send their children to boarding school in Yorkshire.

She does get the irony of that, right?

Of course she does.

In the early days, she used to have arguments with her husband. "I would say 'companies shouldn't just be run for profit'". But she'd be much more questioning today, she admits.

If anything, however, her husband's expertise (he has a Ph.D in chemical engineering) gives more weight to the arguments of those who oppose fracking. "Because he's against fracking," she says.

Steve also joined his wife when, in 2009, the Strouds and fellow North Yorkshire activist Nick Hall drove a battered former NHS ambulance stacked with medical supplies thousands of of miles across Europe to Gaza as part of an international (though very much unofficial) relief convoy.

They found themselves heralded as heroes for much of the journey through Europe - but then faced a tense and terrifying stand-off with Egyptian police in the port of el Arish, before they were finally able to enter Gaza itself and deliver both ambulance and medical supplies to the Gaza Red Cross.

Now that's what you call taking a stance...