Issue Three: Resistance Isn’t Futile

It wasn’t what any of us expected, the judge thought wearily. The hem of his robe was covered in congealed earth and green wisps of torn grass from the river bank. It would need dry cleaning again. As yet the Ministry of Justice hadn’t been able to agree on clothing conventions for trial days outside court buildings, even though it had been some time since they had been forced to start doing it.

Giving the natural world legal personhood had sounded like such a noble idea when it had been floated in Parliament. And it was, of course, but then the cases started coming. It was awkward enough to have animals come into court to testify to the callous way they had been treated. But rivers and beaches and mountains? The courts had to go to them, whatever the weather.

This particular river had made a particularly compelling case. The water company had filed years of reports, plans, costings, minutes of committees and so on, but when you picked it apart, they’d never actually done the work. They had just produced paperwork that suggested they had done it and the money had vanished.

Starved of maintenance and poisoned by seeping waste  the river was dying, reduced to a turgid brown smear in the landscape. The prosecution had shown images of the powerful, dancing torrent it had been, full of life and the centre of the local community. Today, the court and the observing public and journalists had had to hike to its source to be able to talk to it, so weakened had it become.

The defence team and the water company lackey had tried to shelter under an ineffective umbrella, both from the drizzle and from the prosecution’s increasingly outraged narrative. The river was sobbing, telling the assembled crowd of its decline, and the faceless company officials who had ignored its pleas for help. The defence lawyer had done his best to suggest his client was a victim too, unable to stop the general public abusing the countryside, but the river had raised its thin voice to point out that the water company was supposed to be its protector and had abandoned it to its fate. The journalists, scribbling furiously, would make much of that in tomorrow’s headlines.

The clerk stepped daintily around the last puddle, an enamel mug of coffee in each hand. He handed one to the judge, felt in his coat pocket, and produced the end of a packet of hobnobs.

‘Prosecution says, if it would be proper and not count as offering bribes, would you like a biscuit?’

‘I don’t think he needs to bribe anyone in this case. That river was one of the most convincing plaintiffs I’ve ever seen.’ Justice Peters waved thanks through the gathering gloom.  ‘Only question is, will the shareholders volunteer to do the right thing or need they be forced.’