‘The Roding is sacred and has rights’: the hammer-wielding barrister fighting for London’s forgotten river

‘I came in with a sledgehammer and smashed the path open’ … Paul Powlesland, activist-barrister, on the River Roding in Barking, east London. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian

The last yellow sycamore leaves spin downwards as vast beds of reeds whisper in the wind. An ancient oak stretches huge branches across the glinting water and, for a moment, London’s third biggest river looks as graceful as it did two centuries ago.

Then my walk with Paul Powlesland on the banks of the River Roding collides with contemporary Britain. There is a tributary, sending a steady trickle of sewage into the main channel. A flashy new block of riverside flats, failing to provide residents with any greenery or way to access the river. Further along, heaps of fly-tipped rubbish and the recent relics of camps created by desperate people without homes: mouldering mattresses, discarded needles and excrement.