A blast from the past .. and ever since

The pictures of Vicky Pryce leaving Southwark Crown Court today were interrupted by a protestor waving a placard about the Fukushima accident. (see video below)

The protestor, who is unceremoniously bundled out of shot whilst shouting about his human rights, is Stuart Holmes, whom I first met almost 30 years ago when he starting demonstrating outside the autumn party conferences.

His big issue in those days was cigarette smoking, and indeed his campaigning in the mid-’80s met with some success, and he persuaded several of the then metropolitan county transport authorities to put SMOKING KILLS signs on the sides of hundreds of their buses.

Mr Holmes, from Manchester, seemed rather less fanatical in those days, though just as passionate and committed.  So much so that in 1986  I did a short item about him for Channel 4 News, which you can see below: