At Downing Street in 1984 & protesting against Pershing missiles
Katharine Hamnett has spent the morning handing out fliers that read: ”London Fields Caution Danger Unacceptable Risk of Biohazard”. Last week she discovered that the local wild-flower meadow had been sprayed with Roundup, a glyphosate-based herbicide.
“I’ve been giving leaflets out to women with babies because I was so concerned,” she says, attacking a plate of pad Thai. “I thought they were young single mums. Then I looked at their clothes and thought, ‘F—. Nothing but Isabel Marant. A touch of Chloé, a bit of Saint Laurent.’ And I realised they were City lawyers taking their baby breaks. Which is even better, because they can help me out with the legal stuff.”
They probably will, too; Hamnett appears to be something of a fixture in Hackney. Over the course of our hour-long lunch at a pub on Broadway Market in east London, near where she lives, she is regularly accosted by locals wishing to discuss the herbicide’s effects. “I’ve really blown it now,” she says, as yet another dog-walker stops for a chat, arresting progress on her noodles. “I like to keep a low profile, you know.”
Hamnett is famed for rustling into Downing Street in 1984 to meet Margaret Thatcher wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with: ”58% don’t want Pershing”. Last week she was protesting outside Gap on Regent Street to highlight the brand’s refusal to back Bangladesh safety rights a year on from the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory… Read more
