On a gloriously sunny day in June of 2013 I drove my dark green Audi A4 Estate car from my home in Dorset to Balcombe in West Sussex of England. In the rear I had packed everything I needed for a short stay at the new Anti-Fracking Camp which had been established the day before. Balcombe is famous for its amazing railway viaduct but otherwise it is a blink-and-miss-it village in a very rural part of England’s ‘green and pleasant land’.
I intended to sleep in the rear of the car and cover it over with a sheet tucked into the window frames for privacy. I arrived at the site after driving around a Police barrier and found a small but happy crowd of protesters setting up a very basic camp.
Over the following weeks I was elected to be the Camp Treasurer simply because my lovely car happened to have an alarm system and our fast growing donations tin was bulging with cash.
During my long life I had often been a secretary and so taking the minutes of meetings and producing basic accounts was familiar territory for me. I was very privileged to take on the roles of Treasurer, Info Tent Manager, Toilet Cleaner and Water Procurer. I facilitated daily meetings in the big round multi-coloured Circus tent where we discussed everything. During one such meeting it was proposed that we stopped calling ourselves protesters and adopt the name Protectors and this was unanimously voted into practice.
The camp grew every day as new people joined us. By August, under a blazing sun we were feeding over 200 people twice a day at our well fitted kitchen. I was towing a huge water bowser back and forth from a supporting neighbour’s house to keep the camp supplied. In this video grab you can see me waiting in my car to reposition the filled water bowser. By then our camp was really huge.
We had our own reporters. Among them was the Truthferret Films crew who recorded a lot of footage, including this interview with me:
When the drilling at Balcombe came to an end we packed up and went home to recover. It had been a long tough exhausting summer.
I filled my time at home by setting up a Facebook group called Anti Fracking International and writing articles to alert the public that we had not defeated the frackers and there was still a long way to go.
I opened a Twitter account using my own name with the tag @2013Boodicca and began to build a following.
By November of 2013 I was once again on the road. This time to Barton Moss near Salford, Manchester where a fledgling camp was being set up to defend against Igas and their drilling plans.
One of my friends jokingly named my car ‘Boodicca’s Chariot’ as I pulled onto the camp at 1am, towing a donated trailer tent. The police officer on patrol at that moment hailed me, “Hello Fran!” he said and I realised that he had been one of the many officers who were being trained in crowd control, with us as their guinea pigs at Balcombe.
Image: One of the first things I did was to smudge the camp as a blessing!
Over the following several years my dark green Audi estate, Boodicca’s Chariot, was running up and down the country, visiting and attending every camp that was set up. I must have driven thousands of miles, giving talks and raising funds for the Protectors Travelling Fund which I had set up initially to support the Protectors who wanted to go to Barton Moss, a long way from home for many of us. I was also hitting the road campaigning for Brexit, it was a hectic time here in Britain.
In December of 2016 a small team of Protectors successfully prevented Infrastrata from drilling into the Jurassic Coast near Swanage in Dorset and we felt the tide turn. Boodicca’s Chariot was still going strong, through all kinds of mud and weather on the front lines against the Frackers.
In November of 2018 I was interviewed about fracking on the Richie Allen Show and wrote a supporting article which blew the truth of the toxic fracking industry out to a global audience. Listen to the 2nd hour here:
From then on the Frackers had lost the battle. All we needed was a couple of minor earthquakes in Lancashire and it was curtains for Big Oil and Gas plans to pollute Britain. The Protectors had won, but my health had suffered enormously.
A New York journalist from Rolling Stone magazine visited me in 2019 after he had listened to my chat with Richie Allen. He referenced me in his blockbuster article of January 2020, entitled America’s Radioactive Secret.
Sadly, there came a point when I could no longer drive my beloved work-horse Chariot. I had begun to suffer from radiation sickness and I reluctantly had to let her go to the knacker’s yard. She had given me 250,000+ miles in her lifetime and had been breaking down a few times but essential parts and repairs would have cost more than she was worth. I couldn’t bear to watch her being towed away from me and I realised that my independence was going with her.
Last summer, thanks to my son, I moved to a much bigger ground floor flat and there is space for me to keep a mobility scooter. I found one for sale locally and it is in fabulous condition. I called it Spiffy McZoom at first and I sent a photo of it to my good friend, Arbz in Northern Ireland. He, being the gleeful joker that he is, gave it a few tweaks with photoshop….
and Spiffy McZoom was immediately renamed:
😉 Boodicca’s Chariot Mk2 😉
Presently, for the winter, the new Chariot is tucked up warm and cosy in our spare bedroom but who knows what adventures we will share when the weather warms up a bit?
Don’t worry, I will certainly keep my lovely subscribers informed!
A very short clip of me greeting Sonia Poulton, the journalist who had given me an hour long phone interview on her TV programme in which I spelled out our objections to fracking (now sadly lost footage!). She arrived at Barton Moss Anti Fracking Camp very late on New Year's Eve after running around the country chasing stories. She was with her husband and daughter. We were absolutely thrilled to see her. Every time I see this piece of film, I well up. It gets me right in the feels because I was already very ill then and trying to put a brave face on it....
https://youtu.be/wbANtNzRS54
Two weeks later I told my companion from Dorset that if I did not drive home that night I would not be fit to do it tomorrow. I drove through one of those slamming, blinding storms all night. I had a fever so high that I did not notice how cold it was. Mid January 2014, wild weather and the beginning of the end of my robust good health. Was it the radioactivity from the gas well? Or was it the low flying Cessna plane that sprayed us with a toxic cloud in broad daylight? Or was it the electro-magnetic radiation from mobile phones? Who knows, truly....
However, we lost a lot of good people after that to major aggressive cancers. I was one of the lucky ones, it only sickened me very gradually, giving me a heart attack, a stroke, emphysema and oedema but I ain't dead yet! So onwards, huh?
I retrieved some of my interviews and videos (those that are left) and you can find them all linked together on this post:
https://francesleader.substack.com/p/all-my-recorded-interviews-and-video
I always find interesting, but even moreso puzzling, how the exact same tactics are used to this day, across the globe, as they ever were since the Romans developed them, and spread their filth about.
It is past time to clean the Temple.
As long as we allow ourselves to be dictated to- even by supposedly well meaning sorts, and are willing to imbibe in the Pax Romana, by taking our sustenance from, and paying our lives' into their contrived prison system (which foremost imprisoned the Earth her Self, and then the mind's and bodies of the human workforce), enabling those that would gladly dictate to the world that the only way is Hedonistic Greed for those blind-willing enough to consume such a blood feast, or the mass consumption of the pap that they will dole out as moldy morsels to you, and I (should I allow) in the form of our long lives spent working at their saltmines, all while the devil's are laughing at the Destruction from their golden towers---- if such is what the bulk of "humanity" is willing to accept, just to stay a (luke)warm body, to eat, and to creep around on our belly's, lapping at the tyrant's feet, cringing at their lashes, hiding back from the cruel reality of which we are all Participants, and will not Stand Up to the rampant tyranny, willing to trade the worm's life for a Real Life, but will instead mope in the corner, waving the flag half-heartedly, well... common sense should give a strong clue as to the eventual outcome- to which we few are now bearing witness to These Dark Days.
It is of the Utmost Importance to withdraw from participating within the old, failing ways of civilized modernity, and to smash the clocks and the wheels, to burn the money, and go back to the simple roots, digging our hands into the Earth- not to rob her, but to heal and protect Her, along with what remains of our tattered Dignity, and to grow brighter in our re-discovered worthy aims, which have nothing to do with racking up physical treasures as lead weight, but only our pure and loving experience here, inter-acting in a balanced, wholesome way with All of the worthy bounty presented here for our kind and thoughtful use- not as Nazi jack-booted thugs, surely.
Is this Utopian Bosh that I speak of?
Only those not committed to Truth will allow theirselves to sit on their nethers in complacency, with full consent given to the lie and the liar's spewing them,... never willing to be the change, but waiting for some outside saviour, such as Christ or the Buddha to lend all the Required Efforts-- only those will give up without ever giving Life their full attention, and I am not gladdened by such waste, as I hope that none of you here are, and perhaps our efforts will wake at least a few soul's to the Writing upon the Wall.
Bless you for your efforts, Frances, and for not being an armchair activist, but getting your own hands dirty, and even taking a techno-bullet in the process.
See you There!