Gimme Shelter: Refuge, Writing, and Conservation
On the radical potential for recovery and growth offered by a song and the idea of refuge.
It’s just a shot away
I’ve been thinking a lot about refuge in recent months.
My mother was a wartime refugee. She and my grandmother were unofficially evacuated from war torn Malta in October 1942 in the belly of a B-24 bomber and flown to Egypt. From there they took a perilous sea journey to South Africa, with the original intention of rounding the cape and returning to Britain. Instead, they disembarked in Durban. The passenger ship ahead of theirs had been torpedoed in the Atlantic and the risks of continuing seemed too great. Instead, they were housed in a refugee camp (on the site of one of the concentration camps the British had used in the second Boer War in the final years of Victoria’s reign, which led to the deaths of over 40,000 – mostly women and children1) before eventually finding a room in the coastal city of East London, living off money wired by my Grandfather, at first from Malta, where he commanded an anti-aircraft battery, and then from Scotland where he was stationed to help train the army ahead of D-Day. My mother finally made it to Britain, the homeland she had never lived in, during the freezing winter of 1946/1947, which I can only imagine must have been a deeply alienating experience for her.
I only know any of this from a few remembered snippets of conversation with my now long dead mother and grandmother over thirty years ago, a letter and some photos, and things that my father (also long dead) said he’d discussed with my mother. The word refugee was never used by them, this is my own addition to the story—a recognition of that unspoken status. I think I have the bare facts straight, though memory plays strange narrative tricks. I know that the flight from Malta was directly against Churchill’s orders that British civilians should not be evacuated because it would be bad for the morale of the Maltese civilians who were suffering under the intense arial bombardments of the Luftwaffe and Regia Aeronautica, as well as being incredibly dangerous, but I can only think that the desperation of that time meant that my grandfather did whatever he could to get them out. It was one of a handful of evacuation flights that took place in October 1942. My mother had, by the age of six been strafed at in the street by fighter planes, blown through a door by a bomb blast, and been forced to live in catacombs for weeks at a time. The deprivations were severe. My grandmother gave my mother most of her rations and so arrived in South Africa looking gaunt. The experience of those years was seldom talked about, but the relief of being somewhere safe from daily horror must have been immense.
For years I didn’t think of their experience as a refugee experience, but that’s what it was. When we think of refugees it’s typically the image of those fleeing wars that come first, lines of civilians carrying a few prized possessions and pets, possibly followed by images of the desperate situations of those crammed on boats of varying sizes and suitability crossing the Mediterranean or the English Channel to reach a place of refuge, to join family or friends who have gone ahead of them perhaps, or just to find that most important thing of all, a safe haven.
War, children
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away2
Those of us fortunate to have been born into the second, third, or fourth generation who have lived without the direct experience of the violence or displacement of armed conflict forget how close these perils really are. Perhaps the Rolling Stones’ lead vocalist Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards, born when bombs still rained down on Britain and Germany, born when my mother was living as a refugee thousands of miles from a home country she had never seen, felt this truth more acutely than anyone born outside of conflict ever can as they watched the reality of war in Vietnam brought close through the medium of film reportage and the images of photojournalists such as Don McCullin. The lyrics of the song Gimme Shelter (quoted throughout this essay) when set against Richards’ moody guitar, seem to me to express the fragility of our social and civil structures, of how important it is to find refuge, shelter, from gathering crisis, whether personal, geopolitical, economic, or environmental.
I’m forever grateful for those who kept my mother alive during the war. To the thousands of merchant seaman who died in the convoys to resupply Malta, to the pilots who gave their lives in the air, and the South Africans who took in European refugees from a war on the other side of the world. These were all generous acts. It is the sort of generosity so visibly lacking in the language of contemporary political right, in the squalid posting found on the social media site formerly known as Twitter, in the dehumanising language used to describe refugees such as former British Prime Minister David Cameron’s use of the term ‘swarm’ to describe migrants3, in Theresa May’s ’Hostile Environment’ campaign and ‘Go Home’ anti-immigration vans4, and in the more recent rhetoric of the ‘Stop the Boats’ campaign of Rishi Sunak’s government. A generosity also lacking in Donald Trump’s inflammatory accusation aimed at Haitian migrants in the United States of America during a televised presidential election debate with Democrat nominee Kamala Harris that, ‘They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats. They're eating the pets of the people that live there.’5  There is a generosity, and a basic human empathy, lacking in these easy othering slurs that aim to turn people in desperate need into objects of fear and division.
Ooh, a storm is threatening
Ooh, a storm is threatening
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Ooh yeah I'm gonna fade away
We live in a time when war feels closer to those of us in comfortable Western European democracies. The brutal war in Ukraine hints at the possibility that wider conventional warfare in Europe, once unthinkable, might once more be possible. We have seen refugees from Ukraine welcomed into the homes of middle class British families and extended the kind of welcome and charity frequently not offered to those who come from conflicts further away. Perhaps a European war frightens us into more action, more kindness, allows for a greater empathy. Then why not extend that empathy to those who arrive from Africa and the middle East? Is this simply racism, an antipathy based on cultural and ethnic difference?
The obvious response from the political right is the usual, ‘ah, but the migrants that cross the channel are economic migrants, not true refugees at all’. The fact is that during this century the effects of climate change will be felt most in the less temperate zones of the planet, and that these areas will probably see more war, more famine, more disasters that result in population movements, vast displacements of millions of people. The likelihood is that if you are reading this article, and are under a certain age, you will either become a climate refugee or be in a place of climate refuge at some point in the coming decades. There is likely to be displacement even within our own borders as  low lying coastal areas are abandoned to the rising waters and insurance costs—will the displaced people be abandoned as ‘economic migrants’? The label ‘economic migrant’ disguises the many and growing numbers of ‘climate refugees’ seeking a better and safer life6 such as the one million Somalis displaced by drought in 2022. Hotter temperatures lead to poorer agricultural yields, resulting in famine, and impacting jobs and livelihoods. Extreme weather events might also cumulate to render areas uninhabitable. The effects of climate change might also lead to domestic or geopolitical instabilities and exacerbate or lead to civil conflicts or wars in some regions, leading to population displacement. The question we will all face, sooner or later, is whether to provide refuge. Whether to give shelter. Whether to be humane to other humans.
The crisis faced by humanity is one that is already impacting non-human populations. This crisis of climate is also a crisis in the natural world. The loss, degradation, and fragmentation of natural habitats which has occurred as the result of the growth and success of the human being as a species in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is now being compounded by climatic changes which affect the range in which certain species might thrive, or in extreme cases, lead to a direct loss of the conditions needed to sustain species. Species are already migrating, but the speed of the change is too swift for many to adapt without direct intervention from humanity. Globally wildlife abundance has fallen by 73% over 50 years, in what is a catastrophic loss of species7. Biodiversity is in staggering decline. The United Kingdom is frequently cited as one of the most nature depleted countries on the planet, with the 2023 State of Nature report8 revealing a marked decline in all aspects of the natural world since 1970.
Gimme, gimme shelter
Mmm, a flood is threatening
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away
The idea of the refuge gives us hope. It is filled with radical potential for recovery and growth. In a biological sense a refugium is a habitat which has ‘potential to protect species from difficult-to-manage threats such as changing climate, extreme events (e.g. drought, fire) and biotic effects (e.g. disease and invasive species)’9 . The idea of the refuge in conservation science allows for the creation and protection of places from which populations of species might recover (e.g. reserves), as well as a places in which to experiment in promoting biodiversity and bio-abundance (e.g. rewilding and habitat restoration)—we might also think of the field of conservation science itself as a kind of refuge through which we can, as a species, better understand the natural world which sustains us. This kind of intervention can only work with legislative help. The legal protections for habitats and species are relatively weak, but in recent years politicians and developers have proposed weakening them further or have criticised the interventions of government bodies tasked with overseeing the environment, such as Natural England and the Environment Agency10. The reality is that it can take longer to get an area designated as Site of Special Scientific Interest or a Special Area of Conservation, and thus protected from development, than it can take for a developer to seek planning consent.
This is the reality that campaigners and ecologists have faced in Norfolk (England), where an important concentration of Barbastelle bat maternity colonies have been threatened by the planned construction of a new highway through their woodland and riverine breeding and feeding grounds. With considerable effort from ecologists and Norfolk Wildlife Trust the area is now listed as a candidate for protection, but the decision is probably a couple of years down the line and the planning schedule for the road moves far more quickly. The odds are therefore often stacked against nature in a small island where successful governments like to make their mark with bold infrastructure and house building targets, legacy projects that cost the natural world far more than anyone properly calculates.  The true legacy being the declines revealed by the previously referenced State of Nature report in biodiversity and bioabundance. We need to take refuges seriously. Special Sites of Scientific Interest, Special Areas of Conservation, Wildlife reserves, designated Ancient woodlands, Marine Conservation Zones, rewilding projects—these are the lifeboats, the arks, that will carry our world through a dangerous present and near future to a point of recovery. The journey of these arks will be intergenerational. We must look to the long term and dream big.
It’s just a kiss away
I tell you love, sister
It's just a kiss away
Substack is one such refuge. Many of us have come here from other online platforms that have, due to their ownership, their popularity, their algorithms, become unusable and unhealthy spaces where people frequently feel unable to publicly and authentically express themselves for fear of trolling, death threats, or just general hostility. Others have sought out Substack because it provides an alternate avenue to traditional publishing, which throws up so many barriers to reaching a readership. It can provide a space in which we can freely experiment with our writing, with forms of expression and representation, to find out what works. It is a space where we can kiss away.
The writing workshop is also a refuge. We think of the workshop perhaps as a place, a room in which people meet to write to various prompts and exchange their writing, but when it is working well it is much more than this, it is a haven, a shelter, a place of potential and growth. It is a space in which to make, mend, and build—that, after all, is the original artisanal sense of the work ‘workshop’. As a space the workshop is mobile and can be recreated in many different settings. In creative writing, both the act of storytelling and the space of the writing workshop, create a refuge from which to describe and imagine positive ways of negotiating environmental crisis.
I recently put this to the test, trying out a methodology. I was invited by Norwich Writers Rebel to facilitate a visit to the woods threatened by roadbuilding in the Wensum valley. I offered to run a walk and write workshop, showing the writers where the road would pass, explaining how it would impact both habitat and species, and pausing for a couple of writing exercises. It was the first time I’d run a workshop outside of Higher Education and outside of the confines of a purpose made seminar room. We stopped in ancient woodland likely to be affected by the road and I began by encouraging participants to develop their objective and subjective attentiveness to their surroundings firstly by closing their eyes and listening to the environment they were in—the sounds of the trees, birdsong, shotguns in the distance, traffic as well—and then to observe carefully a single area of the woodland, the idea being to build up a body of observational notes. Next, we moved to a part of the wood close to the River Wensum flood plain where I have found flint tools in the past. I took them to an ancient oak and passed around the flint tools. I asked them to imagine and describe this habitat 6,000 years ago, 500 years ago, and 500 years into the future. As I gave these instructions a loud tractor passed behind me in the neighbouring field, spraying the crops, as if to remind us that this land is always used, always lived in, and has not really been wild in any real sense since the beginning of the Holocene. The final part of the exercise invites the writers to imagine alternatives to the impending destruction of the road, to imagine futures which do not end with a climate ravaged and depleted natural world. I didn’t leave enough time for people to share their writing, but after a few weeks the first poems began to appear, shared on the Stop the Wensum Link campaign group’s Facebook page, and I began to appreciate just how potent the portable workshop space can be for creating authentic responses to crisis.
When ‘intuitive concepts become popular and widely applied, there is a risk that they become ambiguous and lose value’ 11, and the interchangeable use of refuge and refugium might limit the usefulness of the concept as a strictly scientific sense. However, the potent suggestion that the refugium or refuge provides an area in which ‘negatively affected biota’ might outwait crisis to expand once suitable conditions return12, makes it a concept of great potential for writers seeking alternatives to bleak catastrophism when confronting environmental crisis. Rather like the term biodiversity, which once coined in the biological sciences, has become a widespread and normative term in the popular media13, the idea of the ‘refugium’ beyond its scientific definition offers a metaphor for communicating the need to protect, restore, and create habitats to policy makers and the public at large. The workshop as a refuge offers a space in which to dream, hope, and imagine alternate futures or ways of being in the world. We need more refuges, we need to build them larger, to connect them, to make them resilient enough to give shelter to all of us, every human and non-human, not only to weather the coming storm, but to lessen it, and to grow new ways of being in and with the world.
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All the lyrics quoted in this article are from the song Gimme Shelter by Rolling Stones.
K.E. Selwood, H.C. Zimmer, Refuges for biodiversity conservation: A review of the evidence, Biological Conservation, Volume 245, 2020, 108502, ISSN 0006-3207, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108502. p. 1
K.E. Selwood, H.C. Zimmer, Refuges for biodiversity conservation: A review of the evidence, Biological Conservation, Volume 245, 2020, 108502, ISSN 0006-3207, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2020.108502. p. 2
Keppel, Gunnar & Van Niel, Kimberly & Wardell-Johnson, Grant & Yates, Colin & Byrne, Margaret & Mucina, Ladislav & Schut, A.G.T. & Hopper, Stephen & Franklin, Steven. (2011). Refugia: Identifying and understanding safe havens for biodiversity under climate change. Global Ecology and Biogeography. 21. 393 - 404. 10.1111/j.1466-8238.2011.00686.x.
Morar, Nicolae ; Toadvine, Ted & Bohannan, Brendan J. M. (2015). Biodiversity at Twenty-Five Years: Revolution Or Red Herring? Ethics, Policy and Environment 18 (1):16-29.