Meet the Bristol mayor candidate: Oska Shaw

Oska Shaw’s mayoral candidacy was originally meant to go to the last remaining M32 maple but when the tree was felled, he stepped up.

The 23-year-old drama student is standing on a one policy platform; to raise awareness of rights for nature.

“It’s valuing the trees while they are still alive and growing – their rights to exist and persist and to be enjoyed as such,” explains Shaw.

Sitting in the morning sun at a table outside Este Kitchen on Greenbank Road, the mayoral candidate – who was announced as a surprise addition to the lineup less than a month before the elections on May 6 – casually sips a coffee as he talks about his new-found fame in the city.

“I’m not really interested in being mayor, but I do see this as an opportunity to talk about something I care about,” says Shaw, who is a veggie, punk music lover and motorcyclist.

“We need to start valuing trees in Bristol more before they are all gone. The concept of replanting a sapling somewhere else outside of the city, it’s not an equivalent contribution. There’s an imbalance going on here.”

He is proposing that trees are given the full protection of current planning policies, that those with a preservation order are given more rights and that developers pay biodiversity levies of the “true value of lost trees”.

Campaigners fought to save the ancient maple trees on Lower Ashley Road from being felled – photo by Ellie Pipe

Like his mayoral candidate role, Shaw’s involvement with the long-running Save the M32 Maples campaign happened more by accident than design.

“I used to cycle to university every day and there were these lovely maples that I always passed and then one day, there was only one left and the other two were axed on their sides,” he explains.

“I was like what the fuck’s happened here?”

Shaw went to look around the site just off Lower Ashley Road but was soon “kicked off” as it was assumed he was a member of the campaign group. He ended up speaking to one of the campaigners fighting to save the trees and agreed to come along to a rally that evening.

The student started getting up at 6am each morning and going down to hold a vigil with the last remaining maple before going on to study at UWE Bristol’s Bower Ashton campus.

“I was protecting the tree all the way up until I went home for Christmas and then I got stuck there because of the second lockdown,” says Shaw.

“While I was gone, the campaign group had the idea to raise money and put the remaining tree up as a mayoral candidate. Two weeks before I came back, they cut down the last tree, so I got back to Bristol and was like what the fuck happens now?”

A Zoom call was held and it was suggested that as the £500 had already been raised to put forward a candidate, someone should still do it to raise awareness of the cause. Shaw’s name was suggested and the rest is history.

“Circumstances have led me here,” says the student cheerfully. “I haven’t really actively made any life changes in this, I just haven’t been saying no.”

Oska Shaw wants to see trees given more protection – photo by Ellie Pipe

Born on Orkney, an island off the north coast of Scotland, Shaw lived with his mum in Edinburgh and London as a child, before settling in Eastbourne from the age of about eight.

After college, he went back to live in Edinburgh, where he worked 12-hour shifts as a care support warden on a naval base, before going on to an evening job conducting ghost tours for an extra three hours, pursuing his acting aspirations.

Shaw then enrolled on the drama and acting course and moved to Bristol, where he lived a fairly normal student life before the maples campaign. With just four weeks to go to complete his course, he has now found himself in the running for the role of mayor but is still just taking it all in his stride.

“I have had people criticise me for the decision, but I think it’s going to be OK,” says the 23-year-old, who admits many of his friends believe he’s “mental” for his dedication to the plight of trees. He adds: “My priority is my university course.”

His grandad was a woodcarver and would go out into the forest and take cuttings to work with so Shaw says he has always had an affinity with nature.

“A lot of people do not quite see trees as being alive but they are so alive – they are living and breathing,” he says, passionately arguing that the rights of such living things to be properly protected needs to be better enshrined in society.

Shaw continues: “The main argument I come up against is the social housing one – that the trees have to go because there’s a social housing crisis. And I totally acknowledge that, but I suppose what I’m saying is at what point are trees going to be the priority? If not now, then when are we going to start valuing trees? We really need to find some way of working together.”

Shaw also points out that it is often the city’s most deprived communities who are more adversely affected by the loss of trees.

Assuming he doesn’t seize a surprise victory at the polls on May, Shaw intends to head back to Eastbourne for six weeks after university with his two best friends to “make the film we’ve been talking about since we graduated from college”.

“In theory it’s going to be our break out film,” says Shaw, adding with an easy-going grin: “Or it’s going to be the film that teaches us to make the next one better.”

The mayoral candidate adds that he has been asked about the Green Party and whether a vote for him will take votes away from the Greens as the main party with most focus on the environment.

“I did talk about withdrawing,” he says. “But I’m not quite so certain now as I was then. I’m just here getting the message across about rights for nature.” As for the next step? He’ll no doubt take that in his stride when the time comes.

Main photo by Aphra Evans

Read more: Meet the Bristol mayor candidate: Marvin Rees