Comparing Radical Environmental Activism in Manchester, Oxford and North West Wales1

1 Comparing Radical Environmental Activism in Manchester, Oxford and North West Wales1 Brian Doherty, Alex Plows and Derek Wall School of Politics, IR and the Environment, Keele University Keele, Staffs ST5 5BG United Kingdom Tel. 00 44 (1782) 583452 Email: [email protected] Paper for the Workshop on Local Environmental Activism European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions Grenoble, 6-11 April 2001 DRAFT: Not for Quotation . INTRODUCTION This paper is based on work in progress, analysing the communities of activists involved in ecological direct action (EDA) in Manchester, Oxford and North Wales in the UK. As such, we are only able to present some initial findings here and hope that this paper and the feedback from the workshop will allow us to further develop the later stages of the research. We will provide an overview and comparison of the general characteristics of EDA communities in each area, concentrating on description rather than theory. Each of us has carried out previous research on environmental direct action (EDA) in Britain (Doherty 1998, 1999a, 1999b, 2000; Plows 1997, 1998, Seel and Plows 2000; Wall 1999a, 1999b, 2000) dealing with the emergence and evolution of the movement at a national level. This research, allied to our experience as activists in this and similar movements led us to the view that a deeper understanding of the nature of the movement could only be gained by studying activism at the local level. The first reason for this is because there is no single organisation, no national office or administrative centre, or any other formal national co-ordinating structure for this movement. Instead, it is a network of groups based in local areas, some calling themselves Earth First! groups, others with 1 The research for this paper was funded by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council (UK) as part of its research programme on Democracy and Participation. 2 different names, but sharing a common identity, form of action and linked by network ties. There is also a national network of those involved in environmental direct action - activists meet at Winter and Summer Earth First! gatherings and sometimes to plan national campaigns or particular protest actions. There is a regular (approximately monthly) national newsletter called Action Update, the editorship of which is rotated between local groups annually, and other national-level publications such as the more reflective and discussion-based journal Do or Die! In the last two or three years email news lists have also become more important. Personal ties and solidarity based on common participation in protest actions over the past nine years have created strong bonds between activists from different areas. The separation between local groups is also blurred by the frequent movement of individuals between local areas. But, despite this, the national community of activists does not have the regular face-to-face interaction that characterises local groups. Moreover, most action is carried out by local groups, either in their own locality or travelling together to join in national actions. Thus local activism and local communities of activists still have a distinct space. The second reason is that we wanted to investigate what ties existed between those involved in ecological direct action (EDA) and other political groups. There has not been much research on cross-movement ties at local level2 and yet we believed that at local level there were considerable overlaps and ties between EDA groups and other political or social movement groups. We were also interested in whether there might exist a network of activists, perhaps from different movements, that had maintained an alternative, counter-cultural community over time. Thus were new activists able to draw upon networks already established in each locality by previous generations of radical activists? Third, examining activism at a local level means that we are more likely to be able to identify a fuller range of activists, from marginal to more central participants. Those involved at a national level are more likely to be core activists. Moreover, we know that there are activists who focus mainly on local action. Fourth, we were able to compare the nature of EDA activist communities in different areas, which is our main focus in this paper. We chose areas with contrasting structural (see table 1) and cultural characteristics. Gwynedd and Mon (Angelsey) in North West Wales are rural, largely Welsh-speaking3 and one of the heartlands of Welsh nationalist politics. Oxford is an affluent medium-sized city, in the prosperous South-East of Britain and it has been perhaps the most consistently strong local centre for green activism in Britain in recent decades. Manchester City Council ranks third in the UK’s index of deprivation for local authorities, is part of a major urban conurbation (Greater Manchester) and is regarded by direct activists as one of the major sites for local activism, but had a weak green tradition prior to the 1990s. 2 For an exception see Carroll and Ratner (1996) and for networks between environmental groups in Milan, see Diani (1995) 3 In the 1991 Census 73 % of the population of Gwynedd and 63% of the population of Anglesey were Welsh-speaking. In Gwynedd Welsh is the main medium of instruction for 94% of primary school pupils. 3 The choice of locations also reflects the reputation that areas have within the national EDA network. Oxford and Manchester are have both played an important role in co- ordinating national campaigns and along with Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, London Newcastle and Norwich are regarded as among the strongest activist communities. EDA groups in all these cities have edited the national newsletter at some point since 1992. North Wales can be compared with a second group of locations in which there has been fairly consistent activity from a smaller group of activists – such as Cambridge, Nottingham, Totnes (Devon), South Somerset, Lancaster, York, Guilford, Exeter, Warwick and Swansea. There is also a more nebulous group of major cities that have had intermittent EDA groups – such as Sheffield, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bradford and Liverpool. There have also been EDA groups in other towns and cities, but The presence of at least one university in each of these towns provides some explanation for why there is an EDA network in the area, but since there are now few student activists and there are also many university towns without EDA groups or where EDA groups are weak, the presence of a university is not sufficient to explain why some activist communities are stronger than others.4 Manchester now has very few student activists, although the initiators of Earth First! in the city were mainly students. Although some Oxford activists came to the city to study, those who formed the EF! group moved to Oxford to set up a Rainforest Action Group, because of the strength of existing green networks. Resources from the students union were much more important to EF! in Manchester in the first half of the 1990s than to Oxford EDA networks. In Bangor, the University continues to play an important role in providing a source for recruiting new activists and through the resources that students there can gain access to. For instance, the students union was able to help with childcare for the national Earth First Summer Gathering in 2000. Gwynedd and Mon EF! also has joint meetings with student People and Planet (Third World Solidarity) and Green groups. 4 As part of a protest event survey of EDA activity we examined protests reported in Earth First! Action Update between 1992 and 2000 for six locations: Manchester, Oxford and North Wales, Stoke-on-Trent, Birmingham and Dyfed in West Wales (pop 352,000). In Stoke-on-Trent there are two universities, but no EDA groups and we found only 1 EDA protest during the 1990s. In rural Dyfed there were four protests, all in Aberystwyth, a small university town (pop. 13,500). In Birmingham and the West Midlands conurbation (excluding Coventry) which has four universities there were 31 protests, most by local EDA groups, although some of these, such as the protests against the G8 Summit in June 1998, were organised by groups from other areas. In contrast there were 19 protests in North West Wales, 67 in Oxford and 104 in Manchester, excluding the involvement of groups from these areas in protests in other locations. 4 Manchester Gwynedd Oxford Population 2.6 million 118,000 142,000 (1997) (Greater (Ox.City) Manchester) 611,000 428,000 (Oxfordshire) (Manchester City) Persons per Sq Km 3,690 (Manchester 46 3,087 (Oxford City) City) Average Weekly Earnings (1998) £356 (Greater £316 £395 Manchester) (Oxfordshire) % of adult pop claiming income 20% (Manchester No Figs 7% (Ox. City) support (1999) – state benefit for City) 5% poorest of population. 12% (Greater (Oxfordshire) Manchester) % of single parent households 12.8% No Figs 6.6% (Ox. City (1998) (Manchester City) Council) New Housing Starts 1,522 (Manchester 155 722 (Ox. City, City, 1998) (1997) 1998) GDP per head (UK=100) 109 Greater 68 110 Oxfordshire 1996 Manchester South 72 Greater Manchester North Table 1. Socio-Economic Profile of Manchester, North-West Wales and Oxford Sources: Matheson and Holding, Regional Trends 34 (1999) and Statistical Service for the Welsh Office (1998) The Ecological Direct Action Movement in Britain When activists refer to their own movement many now call it simply ‘the Direct Action Movement’. But direct action has no clear definition in academic or activist discourse, so it is important to be clear about what is meant when using it. When we use the term ecological direct action we refer to: protest action where protesters engage in forms of action designed not only or necessarily to change government policy or to shift the climate of public opinion through the media, but to change environmental conditions around them directly.

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