Tony->> OK, ex-BBC local radio journalist, researcher, reporter and land rights activist.

Brendan->> Ex-truck driver, ex-scaffolder, ex-tug-boatman, ex-business student, sick of Babylon. Saw reports about The Land Is Ours (TLIO) several years ago in The Guardian and thought, "Yes, I'll go and do that." Here I am.

Tony->> Right, for me, first of all it's actually a question of staying sane. In the world around us I find that it's really important rather than just concentrating on problems around the world, of which there are almost an infinite number, to actually be engaging with the roots of those problems and looking at solutions to them.

Brendan->> For me, I always had a fundamental gnawing feeling as long as I can remember right into my early childhood that the world the way it's created by Babylon is something I don't want to be part of. And that's been compounded by growing political awareness of the grotesque maldistribution within society. And to me the most fundamental resource that seems to be based on is land. I think land is the key issue.

mp->> What originally politicized you?

Tony->> Well, journalism politicized me, once I actually met some of the people who were running things and realized what absolute creeps they are. It politicized me, it made me have a deep-seated mistrust of those in power and the motives of some people who wish to attain those forms of power. One particular occasion I was with someone while they were being interviewed for News Night, British television program which a lot of the politicians watch in the evening, and I saw the way that this politician transformed as the camera was switched on, then transformed back when the camera was switched off. It was obvious that there was some kind of acting going on here, that this guy was really stroppy. It was just a really deep-seated mistrust. And also, another thing was an understanding, after visiting the Third World, of the way that the Western countries, particularly through debt, are absolutely destroying people's lives in the Third World. And I felt a very strong sense of responsibility for that, being from this part of the world. I couldn't wash my hands of it, so I felt that was an important reason to be politicized and be active in this part of the world, is for the benefit of people I've never met and I'm never likely to meet.

mk->> How about you?

Brendan->> For me it was kind of a different process. I used to be a truck driver, I was always a manual worker. And I gradually perceived from the early 1980s onwards that what you would call the American Dream over there was actually going backwards if you were a working class person doing a manual job. After a few years I thought, "Well, my real income and my real standard of life isn't growing, it's going backwards." And it's the way it's happening in this country under right-wing government, that the people at the bottom end are being made poorer so people at the top end are being made richer. And I started reading a few political books, and I thought "Shit, I can equate this with what's happening to me." I worked for this firm for nearly ten years, and I worked out that at the end of ten years my real income was about thirty percent lower than it had been when I started with the firm. And I thought, "This is unbelievable!" And you were getting into this real overtime economy where everybody at the firm worked Saturdays and Sundays, you know? It became the norm. So, basically to get less money than you had ten years ago you were working like bastards, but it was such a subtle and such a gradual process people didn't realize they were just being totally shafted. And it just became more and more obvious. And I thought, "I'm not fucking having this!" So, I sold my house and got rid of my mortgage and decided I'd go to college and see what it was all about.

 

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