"The incongruence of Gandhi has a different slant. Anyone who sees inhim a paragon should pick up Kathryn Tidrick’s masterful biography of themahatma. During his time living in South Africa, he found his Britishmasters marching off to the Boer War – and ran after, begging them to enlisthim and his fellow Indians. A few years later, the British again paraded outto the provinces, now to the Zulus who rebelled against oppressive taxesand had to be flogged and mass executed into submission, and again Gandhiasked to serve. To his disappointment, he was taken on only as a stretcherbearer and nurse on both occasions, but in his autobiography he claimed hisshare of martial glory by arguing that medical staff are as indispensable towar as any soldiers on the front. ‘Gandhi famously resisted any use ofviolence’, runs the standard characterisation, here in the words of yetanother writer who thinks the climate movement should model itself on themahatma. Did he? Perhaps the Boer and Zulu episodes were youthfulblunders?"

Militancy was at the core of suffragette identity: ‘To be militant in someform, or other, is a moral obligation’, Pankhurst lectured. ‘It is a duty which every woman will owe her own conscience and self-respect, to women whoare less fortunate than she is herself, and to all who are to come after her.

"More than that: private capitalists and capitalist states are often impossible to tell apart, the latter behaving and investing just like the former."