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| NEWS | By RICHARD OSLEY |
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Dad’s tribute a year after death in rainforest IT was the Christmas that never was for Emily Craddock’s family – a heart-breaking festive season which nobody felt like celebrating. For three days, friends and relatives of the missing Greenpeace environmentalist, who disappeared in the Brazilian rainforest, waited for news that she was safe and well. But the call never came and, on December 15 last year, the anxious wait came to a devastating end with the tragic confirmation that her body had been found in the remote waters of the Xingu River. Marking the first anniversary of the 27-year-old’s death, her father Malcolm has paid tribute to his campaigning daughter. “We are still grieving for the loss of our wonderful daughter Emily,” he told the New Journal. Ms Craddock, who lived in Egbert Street, Primrose Hill, had been part of a team of protesters trying to thwart illegal timber loggers hacking down sections of rainforest. A former pupil at St Mary’s Convent in Fitzjohn’s Avenue, Belsize Park, and Quintin Kynaston in Swiss Cottage, she fell overboard from Greenpeace’s Arctic Sunrise campaign vessel on which she worked as a radio technician. Fatefully, she had first seen the boat in 1999 during a visit to Australia, where it was docked after a campaign against Japanese whalers. Her family described her as an “eco-warrior” who joined Greenpeace when she was just nine. In a touching message to the New Journal, Mr Craddock added: “We would like to thank all of our friends and colleagues in Camden for their very moving help and support.” In an online diary – written just weeks before her death – Ms Craddock said Greenpeace activists were wary of the threat from the loggers. She wrote: “We are highly unpopular and this is not a place where disagreements are solved by meetings around a table.” But she regularly expressed her determination to stop loggers damaging the environment. Mr Craddock – director of film company Picture Palace, responsible for prime-time drama series such as Hornblower and Sharpe – thanked the priests who have helped the family over the past year. “We are grateful to the Reverend Robert Atwell at St Mary’s in Primrose Hill,” he said. “And to Canon Daniel Cronin at St Mary’s Hampstead.” The father and daughter were regulars in the west stand at White Hart Lane, where they cheered on their beloved Tottenham Hotspur. Ms Craddock, a graduate of Loughborough University, played for Spurs Ladies team and was known by fellow players as ‘Blanch’ after a hero, Danny Blanchflower, the legendary Tottenham player of the 1960s. Since Ms Craddock’s death, Greenpeace has organised a tree-planting in her memory. And news from South America that the Brazilian government has created two large protection reserves totalling two million hectares has cheered grieving friends and relatives. Mr Craddock said: “Emily would have been so proud that Greenpeace has achieved this victory.” |
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