‘Please Havering remember Ella’-Breathe For Ella.

Today, Ruth Kettle-Frisby from Mums for Lungs, Havering Climate Coalition and Romford Quakers writes in the Havering Daily about Breathe For Ella.

Wednesday 15th February 2023 marked the 10th anniversary of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s avoidable passing at only 9 years of age. Breathe For Ella took place on London’s South Bank, whereupon Dryden Goodwin’s Breathe was scaled up and projected onto the Rambert building.

I feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to be part of this gathered space in what was a heart breaking, poignant, deeply moving; and yet distinctly light, energising and life-affirming celebration of the incredibly loved daughter, sibling and friend that Ella was.

Ella is ‘the first person in the world to have “air pollution” listed as a cause of death’, and this historic acknowledgement of structural injustice was fought for by the determination of her mother, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah. Rosamund identifies clean air as a human right; not the current privilege that only non-marginalised people are able to enjoy. She has successfully passed Ella’s Law through the House of Lords – an immense achievement – and continues to campaign for Ella’s Law to be passed in Parliament. It seems truly astonishing that the precious right to breathe clean air isn’t already enshrined in British law given that the ‘annual mortality of human-made air pollution in the UK is roughly equivalent to between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths every year’.

I attended Breathe for Ella as a member of Mums for Lungs: a group of parents who share important information to raise public awareness about air pollution, and campaign for School Streets and other schemes to protect our health. Havering is the greenest (in terms of green spaces) London borough, but it’s also one of the boroughs ‘with the highest number of air pollution-related deaths’. I try to be as vocal as possible in raising awareness about the health benefits of the ULEZ expansion locally, countering various claims made by a local MP and others condemning the ULEZ expansion in outer boroughs like our own with evidence-based facts. So you see, Rosamund’s message has rippled its way across to outer boroughs like Havering where dedicated parents and residents here come together to try to assuage peoples’ sincere concerns. 

It’s high time to do the right thing and uphold the basic health and wellbeing needs of marginalised people in our communities before any more lives are lost: people with Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic backgrounds, and those who live in the most deprived areas. These are the people who bear the brunt of the most harmful impacts of air pollution, while being the least responsible for our shared polluted air.  

Breathe for Ella presented a unique opportunity for us to stand together, to listen, to see with fresh eyes, and to reflect. We held precious Ella’s memory in our hearts, which we outwardly acknowledged in our support for Rosamund’s urgent demand for the manifestly basic human right to breathe clean air. Currently children like Ella are forced to breathe air that is polluted with nitrogen dioxide, and with particulate matter that’s so small, it cannot be filtered out by the lungs; air that exacerbates asthma symptoms, stunts children’s lung growth, and causes serious health conditions. Air that simplyisn’t safe for us to breathe.

Powerful truths were delivered by each arrestingly talented young performer with integrity and heart. Similarly, in eachspeech, no word was wasted, each savoured. I found myself feeling very grateful to Sadiq Khan for everything he does in his capacity as Mayor of London for social justice. I am only too aware that he endures a constant stream of vilification for listening to Rosamund, to the facts, to leading health experts, and for acting responsibly as Mayor of London. It was humbling to listen to him speak plainly and simply about the ULEZ expansion as a necessary health intervention to save lives that are just as precious as little Ella’s; his warmth towards Ella and her family coming across with equal clarity. 

I don’t think I’ve ever been so captivated listening to a speaker as I was when listening to Rosamund herself. Shespeaks with a markedly fluid eloquence about her beloved daughter Ella, and how love spreads beyond Ella to every child and every person, particularly marginalised people who are most at risk from adverse impacts of air pollution. She delivered her message with dignity, with hope for a future of generations to come, and in no uncertain terms. 

As I gazed up at the projected portrayal of Ella’s ever-devoted mother, it seemed to consolidate the speeches, performances and sense of connection among the guests. Someone once said to me, ‘the problem is, how do you visually conceptualise air?’. Well, Dryden Goodwin shows us how! The striking and tenderly sketched form of Ella’s mother, elevated and empowered truths about the wonderous fragility of the human body to which she courageously bears witness. Each animatedtransition a breath – reminiscent, I thought – of the incrediblevisual access you can get to a growing embryo during a first ultrasound. This one putting the enduring tenderness of love, loss, and injustice into dynamic public relief. In Dryden’s words, ‘[a]s it’s clear we don’t all breathe the same air, the role of empathy will play a vital role’.  High up on the wall, Rosamund morphs into fragments of herself; disintegrating, leaving but bare threads suggestive of form, before piecing together all of life’s substance in another momentary breath. It was as if mortality in its robust vitality, is being unravelled breath by breath, in rhythm to a mother’s truth. 

Never until this evening had I really stopped to think about the autonomic process of breathing. When you do this, it starts to hit home just why clean air is a human right. What is more fundamental to humanity than the life-sustaining involuntary act of breathing in and out, continuously – past childhood, at the very least. Many of us grow up with the old adage that there’s nothing more important than our health, and it’s time we lived this axiomatic truth for the sake of children just as precious as Ella. 

The evening will stay with me always. Empirical evidence from Imperial College London was knitted seamlessly together with beating hearts and talented young minds in song and spoken word. Each speech and performance moved me in its own unique way, reminding me of the meaning of love, shared joy, and the pressing need for social justice – for everyone to be ok. 

I’m filled with gratitude for all Rosamund’s work in getting us this far.  In a tweet, she replied to me that ‘My aim as always is to try to make the invisible; visible’. This inspirational woman is achieving her goal every day. Making the invisible visible is no easy feat, but that is exactly how the evening could best be described. 

I urge my neighbours in Havering to remember Ella, and to think about this basic truth: that air pollution – as a result of what feels normal, even necessary to us – is in fact responsible for precious little lives like Ella’s being cut short before they reach double figures.

For the sake of our basic human right to breathe, I urge Jon Cruddas, Julia Lopez, and Andrew Rosindell to back Ella’s Law in parliament, and I encourage as many Havering residents as possible to write to their MPs to do the same.

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