The Green Breakthrough of 1989: meaning, significance and legacy edited by James McKay and Jean-Francois Mouhot The Green Breakthrough of 1989: meaning, significance and legacy Acknowledgements This seminar was funded by the Leverhulme Trust, as part of the ‘Non-governmental organisations in Britain, 1945-1997’ project Principal Investigator: Professor Matthew Hilton University of Birmingham ICBH Witness Programme Programme Director: Dr Michael D. Kandiah All rights reserved. This material is made available for use for personal research and study. We give per- mission for the entire files to be downloaded to your computer for such personal use only. For reproduction or further distribution of all or part of the file (except as constitutes fair dealing), permission must be sought from ICBH. Published by Institute of Contemporary British History King’s College London Strand London WC2R 2LS and NGOs-UK, University of Birmingham The Green Breakthrough of 1989: meaning, significance and legacy Held 14 October 2010 Institute of Historical Research Senate House, University of London Chaired by James McKay Paper by James McKay and Jean-Francois Mouhot Seminar edited by James McKay and Jean-Francois Mouhot NGO-UK - Non-Governmental Organisations 1945-97 Leverhulme Trust project, University of Birmingham Institute of Contemporary British History Contents Contributors 7 Citation guidance 9 Introductory paper 11 Chronology of events 17 Seminar transcript 21 Contributors Chair: JAMES MCKAY University of Birmingham Witnesses: ROBIN GROVE-WHITE A freelance writer for TV, radio, press and advertising in the UK, Canada and US, 1963–70, then Assistant Secretary, 1972–80 and Director, 1981–87 of the Campaign to Protect Rural England. He continued his career in academia and retired from Lancaster University as Professor of Environment and Society in 2005. Professor Grove-White was also Chairman of Greenpeace UK, 1997–2003. JULIA HAILES After extensive world travel and an early career in advertising and TV production, Julia Hailes joined forces with John Elking- ton. She co-wrote eight books with him – and one without, including the bestselling Green Consumer Guide in 1988, which went on to sell over one million copies worldwide. In 1987 she co-founded (with John) SustainAbility, an environmental consul- tancy and think tank. Since leaving in 1995, she has continued working as a campaigning consultant, writer and speaker, work- ing for many blue chip companies, as well as NGOs and government departments. STEPHEN JOSEPH Co-ordinator, Youth Environmental Action, 1977–8 and Direc- tor: Youth Unit, Council for Environmental Conservation, 1978–82 and Youth Participation Unit, British Youth Council, 1982–5. He has been Executive Director of Campaign for Better Transport (formerly Transport 2000), since 1988. GEORGE MEDLEY Graduated with a BSc in Horticulture and worked for over 20 years as manager in various agribusinesses in Ceylon, India and the UK and later as Managing Director of Glaxo Laboratories in India before becoming Director of WWF-UK (World Wide Fund for Nature) from 1978-1993. From 1993-2002 he was Treasurer for the Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and then President. PETER MELCHETT After an early career in politics (Whip at the Department of the Environment 1974-1975, Parliamentary Under-Sec. of State, Department of Industry, 1975–76; Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, 1976–79) Peter Melchett became Chairman, 1986–89, and later Executive Director, 1989–2000, Greenpeace UK. Since 2001 he has been Policy Director, Soil Association. In addition, Peter Melchett was President, 1981–84 of the Ram- blers’ Association, and Chair of Wildlife Link 1979-1987. SARA PARKIN International Liaison Secretary, 1983–90, Speaker, 1989–92 and then Chair of the Executive Committee of the Green Party-UK, 1992. She has been founding director, since 1994, and Trustee, since 2006, of Forum for the Future. NICHOLAS SCHOON Environment Correspondent of the Independent newspaper from 1990 to 1998 before joining the Secretariat of the Royal Com- mission on Environmental Pollution, where he worked as a policy analyst. He then worked as communications director for the Campaign to Protect Rural England, and has been editor of the ENDS Report since 2007. CHARLES SECRETT Joined Friends of the Earth in 1980 and worked as campaigner and then as campaign co-ordinator from 1987. After a short break, he became director of Friends of the Earth, 1993–2002. Since 2004 he has been Chair of LDA Health and Sustainability Advisory Group and of the Board of Triodos Bank Renewable Energy Fund. ROGER GEFFEN Joined the London Cycling Campaign in 1989. He joined the anti-road direct action campaign at Twyford Down in late 1992 and represented the LCC on the Oxleas Alliance, a partnership ranging from WWF to Earth First!. He campaigned on other anti-road direct action protests throughout the 1990s and was part of a group of activists who revived the ‘Reclaim the Streets’ campaign after 1995. He has been involved with the Climate Camp since its beginning in 2005. From the audience: CHRIS CHURCH Worked at Friends of the Earth from 1984 to 1986; Chair of the UK Low Carbon Communities Network. MATTHEW HILTON Professor of Social History, University of Birmingham. CHRISTOPHER ROOTES Professor of Environmental Politics and Political Sociology and Director, Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movement, University of Kent. NEIL KINGSNORTH Friends of the Earth BRIAN DOHERTY Keele University Citation Guidance References to this and other witness seminars should take the following form: Witness name, in ‘Witness Seminar Title’, held [date of seminar], (Institute of Con- temporary British History, [date of publication], [full internet address of seminar]), page number of reference [use the number given in the header at the top of the page referenced]. For example, to refer to George Medley’s remarks about professionalism in NGOs: George Medley, in ‘The Green Breakthrough of 1989: meaning, significance and legacy’, held 14 October 2010, (Institute of Contemporary British History, 2012, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/ich/witness/archives/Political/green.as- px), pp.35-36. For Harvard reference style, use (ICBH Witness Seminar, date of publication) in the text, and the following style in the bibliography: ‘Witness Seminar Title’, held [date of seminar], Institute of Contemporary British History, [date of publication], [full internet address of seminar home page]. For example, to refer to George Medley’s remarks about professionalism in NGOs: ‘The Green Breakthrough of 1989: meaning, significance and legacy’, held 14 Oc- tober 2010, Institute of Contemporary British History, 2012, http://www.kcl.ac.uk/ innovation/groups/ich/witness/archives/Political/green.aspx. For fuller guidance on the citation of all types of electronic sources, please refer to the H-Net Guide at: http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/about/citation/general.html 10 The Green Breakthrough of 1989 Not to be reproduced without permission. Introductory Paper James McKay and Jean-Francois Mouhot1 Background The British environmental movement, as we know it today, largely emerged from three successive waves of organisational growth.2 The late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw the forma- tion of groups principally concerned with protection and preservation, such as the Commons, Footpaths and Open Spaces Society (1865), the National Trust (1895), and the Society for the Pro- motion of Nature Reserves (now the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts) (1912). Socially elite, these groups typically sought to protect Britain’s countryside and built heritage from the perceived rav- ages of industrialisation and urbanisation, and drew on broader cultural influences from romanticism to the arts and crafts movement. Similarly, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (est. 1889), initially formed to fight the fashion industry’s demand for rare birds’ plumage, can be read as an attempt to protect nature from the intrusions of modernity. During the inter-war period, protection and preservation of the rare and beautiful was comple- mented by a focus on more everyday amenity. As motor-cars and the developing transport infrastructure opened up the countryside, its socially elite guardians in the early environmental movement were joined in turn by planners and urban designers from the professional middle- classes (Council for the Preservation of Rural England, 1926) and those seeking to secure the countryside’s leisure and amenity function for the working population (Ramblers’ Association, 1935). Until the mid twentieth century, then, Britain’s environmental movement was predominantly focused upon preservation and amenity issues in the local and the national spheres. The third great wave of environmental organisations, most of which were formed in the dozen years between the Torrey Canyon oil spill (1967) and the Three Mile Island accident (1979), broadened the scope of the environmental movement to encompass global questions of population, resource use and degradation. While many of these groups were formed in Britain (Conservation Society, 1966; People (later the Green party), 1973; the Green Alliance, 1978), others were North Ameri- can imports, with Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace establishing their UK arms in 1971 and 1977 respectively. The new perspectives promoted by third-wave groups were explored through a range of high- profile publications. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962) explored pesticide contamination of the food