Tamsin Omond | |
---|---|
Personal details | |
Born | 19 November 1984 |
Political party | Scottish Greens (March 2022 – present) |
Other political affiliations | Green Party of England and Wales (until 2022) |
Education | Westminster School |
Alma mater | Trinity College, Cambridge Open University (MA) |
Website | Official website |
Tamsin Omond (born 19 November 1984) is a British author, environmental activist and journalist. They have campaigned for the government of the United Kingdom to take action to avoid climate change. [1]
Tamsin Omond was born on 19 November 1984. [2] They were educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. [3] They went on to complete a master's degree in ecology and social justice with the Open University.
In 2009, Omond's book Rush – The Making of a Climate Activist was published. [4] In 2009 Omond was placed in the Sunday Times's Top 30 Power Players Under-30. [5] They were also placed in 56th place in the Independent on Sunday's 2009 "Pink List", a list of the 101 most influential gay men and women in Britain. [6] In 2010, they created a political party called The Commons which planned to engage young people in voting and promote sustainability in the local area. [7] It was praised by the journalist Giles Coren. [8] They received 0.2% of the vote. [9]
Omond originally campaigned as a member of the activist group Plane Stupid, although the group said in 2012 that Omond had stopped working with them. [10] They are a founding member of the activist group Climate Rush. [11] They have organised a number of high-profile protests, including scaling the roof of the House of Commons to protest against aviation, for which they were arrested and bailed on the condition that they did not enter Parliament. In October 2008, they breached this condition by organising a 500-person "rush" on the Parliament of the United Kingdom. [3] This led to them being re-arrested and threatened with imprisonment due to their breach of bail. Instead they were then bailed with a strengthening of their bail conditions to ban them from going within one kilometre of Parliament. [12]
Omond has also organised protests against the expansion of London Heathrow Airport. [13] Omond has said that their activism has been inspired by the Suffragettes, who had campaigned using direct action for Women's suffrage in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 20th century. An independent film has been made about Omond's connection to the campaigning techniques of the women's suffrage movement. Omond dressed as a suffragette for an anti-car protest targeting Jeremy Clarkson. [14]
They were a founding member and activist in the climate protest movement Extinction Rebellion. [15] In that capacity, they spoke at the Port Eliot Festival in 2019 about the group's campaign for people to not buy any new clothes for a year. [16]
In 2021, Omond's second book Do Earth - Healing Strategies for Humankind was published. [17]
Omond later joined the Green Party of England and Wales. [18] In the 2015 general election, they were the party's candidate for East Ham, where they received 2.5% of the vote, finishing fourth. [19]
Omond ran as a candidate on a joint platform with Amelia Womack to be co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales in the 2021 Green Party of England and Wales leadership election. [15] Omond's candidacy is believed to be the first time a non-binary person has stood for the leadership of a national party. [15] Omond and Womack said that their joint candidacy "was aimed at getting more young people involved in the party" and offering "young intersectional feminist leadership". [15] The election was in the event won by Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay. [20]
On 1 March 2022, Omond announced that they had left the Green Party of England and Wales, criticising party processes such as conference being "used by terfs as tools to exclude and humiliate trans people." [21]
In late January 2022, Omond tweeted about "a mid term plan" to move to Glasgow with their partner and join the Scottish Greens. [22] On 2 March 2022, they tweeted a screenshot showing that they had joined the Scottish Greens, saying that they were glad for the party's "trans inclusive actions" and that they could be in "the arms of a party that listens to marginalised people and takes inclusion seriously" and that they planned to move to Glasgow the following year (2023). [23]
Omond is trans and non-binary, and uses they/them pronouns. [15] They previously worked as head of global campaigns at the cosmetic company Lush. [24]
The Green Party of England and Wales is a green, left-wing political party in England and Wales. Since October 2021, Carla Denyer and Adrian Ramsay have served as the party's co-leaders. The party currently has four representatives in the House of Commons and two in the House of Lords, in addition to over 800 councillors at the local government level and three members of the London Assembly.
The Scottish Greens are a green political party in Scotland. The party has seven MSPs in the Scottish Parliament as of May 2021. As of the 2022 local elections, the party sits on 13 of the 32 Scottish local councils, with a total of 36 councillors. They held two ministerial posts in the first Yousaf government following a power-sharing agreement with the SNP from August 2021 until the end of the Bute House Agreement in April 2024, marking the first time Green Party politicians formed part of a government in the UK.
Caroline Patricia Lucas is a British politician who was the leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2003 to 2006, 2007 to 2012, and 2016 to 2018. She was Member of Parliament (MP) for Brighton Pavilion from 2010 to 2024. She was the Green Party's first MP and their only MP until the 2024 general election.
George Joshua Richard Monbiot is a British journalist, author, and environmental and political activist. He writes a regular column for The Guardian and has written several books.
The Wales Green Party is a semi-autonomous political party within the Green Party of England and Wales (GPEW). It covers Wales, and is the only regional party with semi-autonomous status within the GPEW. The Wales Green Party puts up candidates for council, Senedd, and UK Parliament seats.
Plane Stupid is a UK-focused group of environmental protesters who state their aim as wanting to see an end to airport expansion for what it sees as "unnecessary and unsustainable" flights. It is a loose association of autonomous regional groups, and is funded by donations.
Climate Rush is a UK organisation that campaigns on various environmental issues related to climate change. Their website states that, "We are a diverse group of women and men who are determined to raise awareness of the biggest threat facing humanity today - that of Climate Change". The organisation was founded in October 2008 by a group of eleven women, including Tamsin Omond. They have organised various protests using direct action to highlight their cause. They model their actions on those of the suffragettes who campaigned a century ago to gain women the right to vote. Members of the Women's Institute have campaigned alongside members of the organisation.
Stella Judith Creasy is a British Labour and Co-operative politician who has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Walthamstow since 2010.
Amelia Helen Womack is a British Green Party of England and Wales politician. She served as the party's Deputy Leader from 2014 to 2022. She is a co-chair of the People's Assembly Against Austerity, and co-founded Another Europe Is Possible.
Mohammad Shahrar Ali, known as Shahrar Ali, is a British politician and university manager who served as deputy leader of the Green Party of England and Wales from 2014 to 2016.
Helen Crawfurd was a Scottish suffragette, rent strike organiser, Communist activist and politician. Born in Glasgow, she was brought up there and in London.
Aimee Knight is a British transgender activist and former politician. She was a rising star in the Green Party and its equalities spokesperson. In 2018, her father, who had been her election agent, was convicted of raping a child and she was no-fault suspended during an investigation into safeguarding failures by the party. She subsequently joined the Liberal Democrats in 2019 and was suspended after tweets appeared on her fiance's account stating he fantasized about children having sex, which she attributed to hacking.
Extinction Rebellion is a UK-founded global environmental movement, with the stated aim of using nonviolent civil disobedience to compel government action to avoid tipping points in the climate system, biodiversity loss, and the risk of social and ecological collapse. Extinction Rebellion was established in Stroud in May 2018 by Gail Bradbrook, Simon Bramwell, Roger Hallam, Stuart Basden, along with six other co-founders from the campaign group Rising Up!
Anthony Gerard Damien D'Adam is an Australian politician. He has been a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council since 2019, representing the Australian Labor Party.
The LGB Alliance is a British advocacy group and registered charity founded in 2019 in opposition to the policies of LGBT rights charity Stonewall on transgender issues. Its founders are Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, Allison Bailey, Malcolm Clark and Ann Sinnott. The LGB Alliance describes its objective as "asserting the right of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men to define themselves as same-sex attracted", and states that such a right is threatened by "attempts to introduce confusion between biological sex and the notion of gender". The group has opposed a ban on conversion therapy that includes trans people in the UK, opposed the use of puberty blockers for children, and opposed gender recognition reform.
Saoi O'Connor is an Irish youth climate activist who began the Fridays for Future strike in Cork, Ireland in January 2019.
Kaukab Stewart is a Pakistani-born Scottish politician who has served as Minister for Equalities since May 2024. A member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), she has been the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for Glasgow Kelvin since May 2021.
Sasha Johnson is a British woman who has been an activist and member of Taking the Initiative Party (TTIP). A student of Ruskin College, she was involved in the Rhodes Must Fall protest, and with Black Lives Matter and Kill the Bill protests.
The 2021 Green Party of England and Wales leadership election was held from August to September 2021 to select a new leader or leaders of the Green Party of England and Wales. It was triggered by Jonathan Bartley's announcement on 5 July 2021 that he would be standing down as party co-leader. Bartley had been co-leader of the party since 2016, initially serving with the party's Member of Parliament (MP) Caroline Lucas. Sian Berry, who had served as co-leader with Bartley since 2018, did not seek re-election with a new co-leader or by herself.
For Women Scotland (FWS) is a Scottish campaign group that opposes proposed reforms allowing individuals to change their recorded sex in legal documents by means of self-declaration. The group campaigns against changes to transgender rights and has been described as anti-trans, as trans-exclusionary radical feminist, and as a "gender-critical feminist group".