Amid the chaos and uncertainty caused by the Brexit vote, it’s perhaps not surprising that other pressing issues have been pushed to the back of the collective consciousness. Yet with the perspective of a man approaching his 80th birthday, Satish Kumar is convinced that the fallout from the UK’s decision to leave the EU is only a temporary distraction from what should be humanity’s overriding preoccupation – its vital but strained relationship with nature.
“Brexit is a distraction. We are all ultimately one earth, and one humanity, and one destiny. All our divisions are kind of illusory,” he says, each point articulated forcefully. “Whether you are English or German, it’s a secondary identity. We are all members of one community. With this Brexit, this referendum, they are all getting excited to create all these divisions, [but] it’s a distraction, a waste of time.”
Kumar speaks with the conviction of a true believer, but also with 43 years’ experience as editor of Resurgence, a constant voice at the core of the environmental movement that has just celebrated its own 50th birthday. The bi-monthly magazine, which features everything from advice about living off the land to weighty analyses of global economics, has a small print run of 14,000 copies, about 1,400 of which are distributed outside the UK. Since 2012 Kumar has also been able to reach an audience 10 times larger via the Ecologist website, which was taken over by the trust which owns Resurgence and became part of the magazine renamed as Resurgence & Ecologist.
The Ecologist was founded a couple of years after Resurgence in 1969 by Teddy Goldsmith (brother of James), and until 2012 was run by his nephew, Zac, who in May lost his bid to become mayor of London. As the younger Goldsmith became more and more involved in politics, first as an MP and then as the Conservative mayoral candidate, the magazine suffered, going online only in 2009.
“It was losing money, and then Zac said ‘How can we do something? I don’t want to close the Ecologist – it’s a legacy of Teddy Goldsmith, it’s a big beautiful name. Why don’t we keep something, why don’t we merge together?’,” remembers Kumar. “Resurgence was a bit more philosophical, more artistic, and more, you could even say spiritual. The Ecologist was more scientific, more political. These two things together are a very strong brand now.”
Goldmith’s personal brand has taken a battering after his campaign was accused of trying to exploit prejudice against Sadiq Khan, the Muslim Labour candidate who won convincingly. Kumar insists the campaign didn’t reflect Goldsmith’s true character: “In my view he was badly advised, he is not racist,” he says. “He is a very, very compassionate person, a unifying, compassionate person. Maybe there were some mistakes made [but] he at heart is a very broad-minded person and not in any way racist.”
Whatever the failings of the campaign, Kumar thinks that merely having a prominent green voice run for mayor helped the environmental cause, something he says Goldsmith should focus on if he returns to life in the public eye. “Zac should devote more time to environmental concerns, and be more like a statesman to address the issues where people and plants are affected rather than any petty politics.”
Unlike Goldsmith, who was born into wealth, politics, publishing and environmentalism, Kumar practically stumbled into the role that would make him a torchbearer for the movement and its counterculture roots for more than four decades. Back in the early 70s he was visiting the UK as something of a celebrity. A follower of Gandhi’s teachings living in India, at the age of 26 he had embarked on a walk for peace over 8,000 miles across four continents between Moscow and Washington, capturing the imagination of anti-war campaigners around the globe.
EF Schumacher, the influential economist and author of Small is Beautiful, who was then associate editor of Resurgence, asked him to take over the magazine, which was based in Kentish Town, north London, and had just 500 subscribers. Initially, Kumar says, he had no intention of relocating to the UK and becoming an editor. “I said ‘Mr Schumacher I am only visiting England. I am here only for a month or so, and I am going back to India.’ And he said, ‘Why are you going back to India?’ I said, ‘I am Gandhian, and I work for a Gandhian movement.’
“He said, ‘Satish, there are many Gandhians in India, we need one in England. So stay here and make Resurgence a Gandhian magazine.’” Kumar eventually agreed to take over the editorship on condition that Schumacher would contribute to every issue. He then embarked on a surprisingly clear-eyed strategy for bringing some rigour to the publication process. “The magazine was coming out not on time, not regular, because the volunteers were not doing it very properly, and the number of readers was going down. When I took over, I made one pledge, that never would the magazine be late for even a day, and for 43 years I have kept that pledge.
“And second thing, I said we would not borrow or go into an overdraft or go into the red. We would always have money before we put out the magazine. While I have been editor we have managed to keep in the black.”
He also managed to steadily expand its circulation, leveraging his minor celebrity in “the right circles”, along with the names he got to contribute alongside Schumacher, such as “back to the land” guru John Seymour and economist and journalist Barbara Ward. “I wrote to everybody saying that now I had become the new editor thanks to Schmacher and other people, if you renew your subscription even if it’s not due – it was only £3 or £4 back then – then the next issue I will make sure you will get it and then regularly after that. Out of 500, 300 people sent their renewals ... within a year it was up to 1,000 subscribers.”
Kumar ran the magazine with his wife June Mitchell, who he had met in London. Kumar commissioned and wrote, while Mitchell handled production and subediting. “She was an equal partner, 50/50,” he says. “Without her the magazine would not have been possible.” To get closer to the life they were espousing, the couple and the magazine relocated to Devon in 1979 (“when the sun is shining we can go out, and it’s raining we can be in the office”) where it is still produced.
Though Resurgence has never had a mass audience, by sheer dint of its longevity it has helped guide the environmental movement as it evolved from its 60s roots. “One of the things about Resurgence is it’s never gone away,” says Greenpeace UK executive director John Sauven. “I think one of the interesting things about it is that it has kept alive the flame of many ideas that were part of the counterculture movement of the early 70s and late 60s.
“They went out of fashion during the 80s, we had ‘small is beautiful’, then we got ‘big is beautiful’. But in a certain way it is becoming fashionable again. We have been going into a series of crises, what Reagan and Thatcher started in the late 70s and early 80s, that has almost reached a peak.”
Its influence goes far beyond its readership, he adds: “Resurgence is small circulation, but when you look at the writers that write for it – such as the former Archbishop of Canterbury – they represent a much broader, bigger aspect of society. Where it becomes influential, it’s not that there are millions of people reading it, but that these people are contributing to it and contributing these ideas.”
On his 80th birthday later this month, Kumar is standing down as editor-in-chief, but he isn’t settling for an easy retirement. He will stay on at the Resurgence Trust and advise his replacement, Greg Neale, who for two years has overseen the print magazine. He is also preparing another walk in September, this time along the 50 miles from the source of the Thames to Oxford, followed by a sustainability festival at Oxford University’s Worcester College.
He remains absolutely confident that the ideas he has been championing will come to the fore once again, and as he points out, nature itself has a way of getting the public’s attention. “There may be some more crises to come. Some kind of environmental crisis, global warming, climate change – people dying of heat, in India people are dying of heat, in China people are dying of heat, also the flooding, flooding in Britain, flooding in India, New York was flooded.
“These kinds of natural disasters will make people even more aware how much technology, economic growth, recession [are] all temporary. The future is green without any doubt.”
