I barely knew Pete Taylor, although I am aware that your view of him is
not unique. However I believe your comments are substantially devalued
by your remaining anonymous.

It seems sad to me that several subscribers feel unable to reveal their
identities here.

Royce


FreeFire wrote:
>
>
> Over the past few days, there has understandably been much talk,
> sadness and some postings on email lists about Pete Taylor (of
> Greenbank) who died last week.
>
>
>
> Well, I know that one isn't meant to speak ill of the dead, etc. but
> I'm sure that I can’t be the only person who is breathing a sigh of
> relief now that Pete Taylor is gone from us. Of course I don't like to
> think of anyone dying alone in an asthma attack, I'd rather he'd
> realised his various dreams/fantasies of moving to Ireland or Spain.
> But, in reading and hearing some of the (frankly nauseous glorifying)
> tributes to him, I wonder if we're talking about the same Pete Taylor
> (?) And if we are, then I think that this genuinly meant counter
> will perhaps be uncomfortable, but not out of place.
>
>
>
> I certainly don't want to rid our community of difference, of
> mavericks, of 'characters', far from it, but Pete Taylor was a hateful
> (full of hatred) angry man who could be aggressive and violent when
> he'd drunk too much or when he was psychotic. He was an entrenched
> misogynist and would also pick on disabled people in the area as
> objects of his hatred. There are people – adults and children who
> still bare the scars of his persistant episodes of terror against
> them, some are still here and others had their lives made such a
> misery that they felt forced to leave the area.
>
>
>
> I think now, as I did while he lived, that he raised some difficult
> moral conundrums for us that we could hardly acknowledge - a tireless
> environmental campaigner who did have a 'love' for the planet, but who
> also had something of a deep-set hatred of those people who live on it
> (particularly those of a female gender and those physically weaker
> than him). Somehow the ‘environmentalist’ (representing much that is
> ‘good’) seemed to stop us seeing the bad bits.
>
>
>
> Whilst I don’t want a community that holds resentments and grudges, I
> do question how forgiving the 'green' lobby and wider community were
> of this man - I wonder why they could somehow see no further than
> ‘Pete the local /character/’, ‘the maverick’ or 'Pete, the bolshy
> activist/campaigner' and sat by and watched, laughed off or took his
> tireless rudeness, aggression and even violence with little in the way
> of challenge. This was a man whose ‘green politics were more akin to
> the (‘right wing’ and ‘redneck’) early US Earth First movement than
> anything that I thought that most green lobbyists here (including UK
> EF offshoot movements) would sanction. A man who’s social politics
> were more BMP than ‘liberal’.
>
>
>
> Yes, we may have lost something in Pete dying, but if the local
> community and worse, the green movement needs and makes a hero of
> someone like this, then I really do worry about our priorities.
>
>
>
> I feel an overwhelming sense of relief and can’t but think that the
> area will be a better and safer place without him.
>
>
>
> (Fashionably) Anonymous.
>
>
>
>