The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures created by author Elisabeth Beresford, originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. They live in burrows, where they aim to help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in creative ways. Although Wombles supposedly live in every country in the world, Beresford's stories are concerned with the lives of the inhabitants of the burrow on Wimbledon Common in London, England.

The characters gained a higher national profile in the UK in the mid-1970s as a result of a BBC commissioned children's television show which used stop motion animation. A number of spin-off novelty songs also became hits in the British music charts. The Wombles pop group was the idea of British singer and composer Mike Batt.

The Womble motto is "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish". This environmentally friendly message was a reflection of the growing environmental movement of the 1970s.

Background

In 1968, Elisabeth Beresford took her young children for a Boxing Day walk on Wimbledon Common, where her daughter Kate mispronounced it as "Wombledon Common", sparking the idea of the Wombles in her mother's mind. On getting home, Beresford wrote down the idea and started developing the characters and storylines. She developed most of her Womble characters around members of her family, and named them after places the family had associations with.

The WOMBLES (White Overalls Movement Building Libertarian Effective Struggles) are a loosely aligned anarchist and anti-capitalist group based in London. They gained prominence in the early 2000s for wearing white overalls with padding and helmets at protests, mimicking the Italian group Tute Bianche.

History

The group was founded by some of those who came together as the September26Collective to organise transport to Prague for actions to disrupt the meeting of the World Bank and IMF, on their return. Since then they have participated, and helped organise, various protests, including the Halloween 2002 protest, and May Day 2001, Thessaloniki, €uroMayDay and Gleneagles. They claim to operate in a "non-hierarchical but self-disciplined way".

"On Mayday 2000 the cops gave [the protesters] a good kicking", their website says. In response to this, the group was started to provide "self-protection from the depredations of the constabulary" (the police).

They have since abandoned their trademark white overalls because they found it made them too visible and open to attack, instead favouring clothing that enables them to be anonymous.