From a pub chat to the supreme court – meet the woman who beat big oil

Sarah Finch, newly named as campaigner of the year, tells David Taylor how her group's long fight against fracking in Surrey has huge implications for fossil fuel projects in the UK

- David Taylor

There was a moment in the early days when Sarah Finch and her fellow campaigners thought all was lost.

They were challenging plans to turn a rural area a few miles from Gatwick into the new Texas, drilling for millions of barrels of oil in the Surrey countryside.

Finch and her friends at the Weald Action Group argued that Surrey county council should consider the impact burning all that oil would have on climate change. The UK had signed up to legally binding net-zero targets in the 2015 Paris agreement.

"But it got permitted, with a cursory discussion of the climate aspect," Finch said. "We went to the pub afterwards, really downcast." By the time the drinks were finished, though, they had come up with a plan that would set them on a five-year journey through the UK courts.

Their campaign, which began with funds raised from raffles and sponsored walks, would take on national significance and Finch, a 61-year-old mother of four, would have her name enshrined in law. Because, eventually, the campaigners won and overnight, the Finch ruling changed everything about the way the UK deals with new fossil fuel schemes.

Finch has always been involved in environmental activism. "As a child in the 70s, I was very worked up about acid rain and tropical rainforest and nuclear war and stuff, and that has always been my big passion."