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. Direct action is almost always illegal and involves situations where participants may or may not be prepared to accept arrest. It includes, but is also broader than, civil disobedience, which, as conventionally defined, requires protesters to be prepared to accept arrest. What distinguishes the new wave of direct action in Britain is an ethos characterised by an intention to affect social and ecological conditions directly, even while it also (sometimes) seeks indirect influence 5
through the mass media, changed practices of politicians and political and economic institutions. (Doherty, Paterson and Seel, 2000)
The emergence of a distinct EDA movement in Britain has been well chronicled (see especially Wall 1999). At the beginning of the 1990s a new network emerged formed by mainly young activists from existing green groups who were increasingly dissatisfied with the weakness of the non-confrontational strategies being pursued by groups such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. Some were student groups, linked through the Green Student Network. Others such as the Rainforest Action Group were able to draw on funds provided by the financier James Goldsmith. Many of these groups became Earth First! groups after Jake Burbridge and Jason Torrance, two students from Hastings in East Sussex formed a local Earth First! group, inspired by the example of Earth First! in the USA. A roadshow of US Earth Firsters was organised, including visits to Oxford and Manchester. The first mass action using the name Earth First! took place at Tilbury Docks in Essex in December 1991 in a protest against the importing of hardwoods from topical rainforests.
Between 1992 and 1998 much of the energy of local environmental direct action was taken up with sustaining protest camps, principally against new roads. Since 1998 the role of protest camps has been less central, partly because of the partial success achieved through the reduction of the roads programme, but also because many activists argued that camps were too defensive, limiting the movement to the agenda set by opponents, and because a camp-based lifestyle was difficult to sustain. Another reason for the shift away from roads was the emergence of new targets such as GM crops which were better dealt with by sabotage, extending an already existing repertoire of covert action (Wall 2000; Plows, Wall and Doherty 2001). Nevertheless it is also important that throughout this period there were significant numbers of activists whose direct action was not based in camps. There were a number of sustained campaigns co-ordinated by local EDA groups, but involving activists from different areas. For instance, Oxford has been the base for campaigns against importation of tropical hardwood, the Land is Ours – a land rights campaign and opposition to the Iliusu Dam in Turkey, as well as others. Manchester co-ordinated campaigns include those against British Aerospace for selling Hawks fighter aircraft to Indonesia, a boycott of Lloyds and Midland Banks, and Enough, an anti-consumerist campaign.
The second major change in context has been the growth of trans-national protests against, variously, global capitalism, and neo-liberalism. Since British activists played an important (though difficult to define) role in initiating this kind of protest (through their involvement in People’s Global Action, created in 1996) it was not that they changed their agenda, anarchistic ideas about organisation and the state combined with a fundamental critique of capitalism had been part of the shared identity of the movement from the beginning (Seel and Plows 2000), more that the international and anti-capitalist dimension of their praxis gained strength from the sense that they were part of a global network of opposition, which, particularly after Seattle, had forced neo-liberalism onto the defensive. 6
When speaking of the EDA movement, we are referring to a network of local groups, without any universal name, but which shares an identity based on radical ecological commitments, rejection of the legitimacy of the state, and opposition to capitalism. There is a shared culture and inter-personal ties, which means that an activist moving from one area to another can expect to be able to move into a similar movement community. The nature of this shared culture deserves more attention than we are able to devote to it here, but it is important to point out that green activist culture in Britain covers both private and public life in a form that Faucher (1999) noted was distinct in its emphasis on the consistency between ideals and private life in comparison with greens in France. Styles of clothing, speaking, what to eat, buy and how to travel are all part of the cultural fabric of EDA and a wider green milieu. We use community rather than networks because it captures the cultural and affective dimension of the relationship between activists. Nevertheless, we are also aware of the difficulties associated with the breadth of community as a concept. Even applied to a fairly exclusive and distinct group such as EDA activists, the boundaries of the community can be difficult to define, blurring with other alternative and counter-cultural groups, both ecological and anarchistic within a more diffuse milieu.
The central question in this paper is how far is the nature of the local activist community affected by the local context within which most activity takes place? In the next part of the paper we will provide an overview of activism in each of the three areas. We will then examine preliminary results from a survey of the level and kind of action in each area. We compare the alliance patterns of groups in each area and the resources available. Finally, we examine the involvement of previous generations of activists in current activist communities.
NORTH WEST WALES5 The early sixties saw a proliferation of direct action and radical campaigning in North Wales, most notably Cymdeithas y Iaith, (the Welsh Language Society) established as a formal direct action group in the early sixties. Direct action (in particular the stealing of road signs which were only in English) was from the outset the preferred strategy to achieve the group’s primary goal of legal recognition for the Welsh language. Interestingly, most direct action was a) fairly minor criminal damage and b) accountable, with the court appearances enabling discourse about the issues to be heard 'formally' in court (like much peace movement NVDA (non-violent direct action later on. Mass rallies
5 For the purposes of this project 'North Wales' is North-West Wales- the counties of Gwynedd and Anglesey. Bangor is at the 'epicentre' of this study. Very occasionally, action is mapped/ discussed outside of North West Wales- specifically, North East Wales along the A55 corridor. (The furthest direct action mapped is the GM crop rally in Flintshire in 2000). Geographically this covers quite an area- the rationale being that this is the area activists themselves would see as ‘local’ enough to concern them. 'Eco'-activists (Gwynedd and Mon Earth First!) themselves are scattered throughout this disctrict, with a predominance in the villages surrounding Bangor. The majority of eco- action mapped tends to be in Bangor and its immedite surroundings. The North Wales direct actions of Cymdeithas y Iaith (the Welsh Language Society) tend to have Caernarfon (Gwynedd) as a focus for action but it should be emphasised that this is far from exclusive. Bangor and Llandudno (Gwynedd) are also common sites of Cymdeithas action. 7 were also a common feature. The 1961 flooding of Tryweryn village, near Bala, for a dam to provide water for Liverpool, was a major catalyst for Cymdeithas action and also led to the setting up of more radical Welsh nationalist groups.
Cymdeithas y Iaith initiated a 'wave' of direct action in North Wales and throughout Wales generally, and the 60's and early 70's were a time of sustained and frenetic action. Very differently from the more 'anarchic', decentralised direct action eco- groups of the 90's, Cymdeithas has always had a very formal, hierarchical, structure- actions and long term strategies are planned in advance and decided predominantly by an elected committee. It should be pointed out that the direct action undertaken by Cymdeithas has achieved many of its goals. The Welsh language has better legal recognition and status- there is a Welsh language TV channel. The other important campaign network in North Wales during this period was CND. The crossover between Cymdeithas and CND activists was considerable6 and the radical Methodist/ Christian connection again fed into both networks. The Welsh music scene was a site of social and political crossover7. In the mid/late 70's an influx of English hippies into North Wales and especially Bangor established new countercultural networks.
New political discourses, most importantly feminism, were to the forefront and the 'scene' of soft drugs/ communal living/ squats/ wholefoods/ music blended with the more overtly 'political' campaign issues of the time- predominantly feminism and opposition to nuclear energy, with peace issues becoming important in the 1980’s. This new wave of political entrepreneurs and 'heads' made for an interesting mix on the North Wales scene as they squatted houses in local villages, planned music festivals and set up food co- ops. Crucially, this new wave of activists set up the Greenhouse - a resource centre still running today- and various campaign groups had office space there, including Cymdeithas y Iaith for a time as well as SUSTRANS (campaigning for a national sustainable transport network). Welsh classes were also run (they still are) from the centre. In terms of political/ campaign activity, peace/ anti-nuke/CND was probably the main crossover interface between the Welsh activists and the English ones8, and the shared interest in /involvement with the music scene facilitated social gelling/crossover. In the late 70's there were over a dozen local CND groups in the locality. But while there was undoubtedly political and social crossover the social networks seem to have generally remained separate; language and culture, and possibly the difference in organisational structure (Cymdeithas as a 'closed ties' network), being hard bridges to gap.
Network crossover also occurred during Greenham Common when women from all networks went to Greenham (at Newbury in Berkshire (southern England) together on hired coaches. During the early/ mid 80's PAWB- People Against Wylva B, a campaign
6 I.NW interviewed about this period was active in both networks and recalls much active interconnection) 7 In interview I.NW and B.NW both flag the 'cool', politicised music scene as a fun, vibrant and essential aspect of this counterculture. 8 B.NW speaking at the feb 2001 Cynefyn y Werin conference (theme: Wales and Globalisation ) about direct action in North Wales made the same point. Interestingly she also felt that more general network crossover in terms of finding ' common ground' to mobilise on was really taking off now and that attempts (outside of shared campaigns such as CND) to do this in earlier decades were ' ahead of their time' 8 against the second nuclear power station proposed for Anglesey- ran its campaign from the Greenhouse. This was a successful campaign- Wylva B was shelved. Cymdeithas activists continued to take direct action in the 80's but all networks appear to go through a more 'dormant' phase during the late 80's/ early 90's. Interviews show that older activists moved into NGO campaign activity. Animal rights activist F.NW was unable to catalyse direct action mobilisations when he arrived in Bangor during this time.
In 1993, seemingly inspired by the eco- direct action 'wave' happening in England, students at Bangor university and others set up an Earth First! group- Gwynedd and Mon Earth First! and started taking small direct actions about issues such as mahogany in DIY stores. Again initially comprised of people from outside the area, over the years GMEF! has attracted people with local ties. Approximately a third of the current group (2001) are local Welsh speakers. Throughout the mid 90's the group held a number of small actions (many people during this period were spending time outside of Wales on protest camps such as the M65 and (Solsbury Hill), using the Greenhouse as a network centre.
In the mid- nineties, the rave/free party scene took off, with regular outdoors raves attracting hundreds of people who benefited (at least initially) from the fact that North Wales police were more tolerant than their Southern English counterparts who were keen to implement the new powers ascribed to them under the Criminal Justice Act (1994). Whilst many ravers and travellers9 were from England, the North Wales rave scene was also very ‘homegrown’. Second generation hippy kids, children of the first wave of English hippies who had stayed in the area, were at the forefront of the local rave scene as were other local Welsh youth. North Wales police had become more draconian by 1997, and the number of free parties declined.
The main campaign focus from 1994 onwards was the proposed greenfield housing development at Brewery Fields. Early EF! activity catalysed the residents into action and EF! NVDA and the more 'traditional' campaigning of the residents sat side by side. Action crystallised during Spring 1998 when the first plots of land earmarked for development were squatted at the last minute and a camp set up. Eventually evicted, the protest forced the council to compromise- a percentage of the land was saved for a nature reserve. This camp, which attracted much publicity, did much to establish EF! as a local, community-orientated campaign group in the area and probably was crucial in helping to pave the way for the network crossovers of the past few years. In 1997 the animal export blockades in the South of England spread to North Wales and local/ national animal rights activists blockaded animal exports at Holyhead, an action repertoire which would be ironically used by the farmers themselves with a very different rationale a few years later.
The EF! national summer gathering was held in North Wales in 1996, and whilst there was involvement with other local campaign groups who were invited to the gathering by local EF!ers, in general the gathering was much less well networked- into the local area
9 There was a large Traveller site in the area at Dorothea Quarry for most of the 90’s. A smaller traveller site just outside Bangor has recently been evicted. 9 as compared with the second 'hosting' of the gathering in North Wales in 2000, which had Welsh classes, bilingual literature, and workshops by Cymdeithas y Iaith as an integral part of the event. Roughly coinciding with the start of this research, it is significant that a 'new wave' of coalition- type actions against 'common enemies' was being initiated. Previous to this, crossover ties between EF! activists and other local networks remained minimal. (As with earlier generations of local activists, peace being a major crossover- the North Wales ' Stop the Hawks!' campaign run by local women, mostly with Cymdeithas y Iaith involvement, also included some local EF!ers).
In the last year, several events, actions and networks have had explicit network crossover. Triggering much of this would appear to be the increasing anti- globalisation focus of many disparate campaign groups. Many groups came on the EF!-organised anti WTO rally in Bangor on N30 in 1999. Another coalition trigger was the recent Terrorism Act, the clauses of which have been seen by a range of organisations as undermining civil rights to protest. A demonstration in Bangor about the Act in May 2000, organised by EF!ers, had speakers from PAWB, Cymdeithas, animal rights, Gwynedd Stop the Hawks, and the Communist Party. All these groups and more have become part of the Welsh 'repeal the terrorism act!' coalition. At the beginning of 2000 the North Wales 'branch' of 'Cynefyn y Werin' (Common Ground) was established. The aim of Cynefyn y Werin is to be an umbrella group, a network which is a resource for disparate campaign groups who have a common focus. Globalisation, and local/environmental/ community sustainability are increasingly explicitly seen as commonly held themes by a range of groups in the coalition which includes most Welsh NGOs and activist groups.
Finally, no discussion of direct action in North Wales would be complete without a mention of the direct action taken by farmers. From the 1997 BSE crisis, North Wales farmers have been instrumental in taking direct action to protect their livelihoods. The Holyhead blockades of Irish Beef by farmers in 1997 set the agenda for action repertoires which were used again to great effect in the Stanlow refinery fuel blockades in September 2000. It is quite possible, given the (often) anti- globalisation, pro local production/consumption agenda of 'prime movers' in the North Wales farming communities, that there could be sustained crossover with 'green' activist and campaign networks.
MANCHESTER For most of the 1980s, as in every major urban centre, CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) campaigning was a major focus for the left. In 1984 there were 51 local neighbourhood CND groups in Greater Manchester area (17 of which were in Manchester City Council area). As well as these groups there were specialist groups such as the Greenham Support Group, council workers, scientists and journalists against nuclear weapons. While there were regular local activities such as peace petitions and marches, most direct action meant travelling to military bases. There were no significant targets for direct action in the city itself. Moreover, the local authority, which was dominated by the Labour Party, backed the local peace movement by initiating (in 1980) a trans-national campaign for local authorities to declare themselves nuclear free zones and continues to employ a worker to co-ordinate this. Greater Manchester CND and several local groups 10 survived the downturn in membership and activity in the late 1980s and were able to maintain an office and employ a local worker through the 1990s, albeit with a much reduced level of membership and activity.
As peace movement activity began to reduce in the late 1980s a One World Centre was established combining the offices of several NGOs and campaign groups. Long-standing mainstays of the alternative scene such as On the Eighth Day (a workers’ co-op café and wholefood shop) and Grass Roots radical bookshop were joined by new initiatives such as the Ethical Consumer magazine and Limited Resources (selling ecologically-sound produce). The energies of the local left were mainly taken up by battles within the Labour Party, first over the extent to which the local authorities could incorporate the insights of feminism, anti-racism and other new social movements and then over how to respond to the reduction of powers and restructuring of local government by the Conservative governments of Thatcher and Major. Trotskyist groups were important both within the Labour Party in which Militant was strong, and outside it, with the Socialist Workers Party having a strong local base in the City, which remains to the present day.
Manchester Green Party was very small, and has never won a seat on the local authority. But it was individuals from the Green Party, along with other local environmental activists, who got together with students to form the first local Earth First! group in 1990. Although, importantly, they did not use the name Earth First! until later, this group worked together on already existing campaigns such as the Lloyds and Midland Boycott (targeting these banks because of their role in the arms trade and Third World debt) and on actions against importers of hardwoods from tropical rainforests. Although it included local people, the Earth First! group of the early 1990s was student-based. Meetings were in the students’ union and green SU officers provided access to office facilities. At this point Manchester Earth First! was a tight-knit group of 20-30 activists who went on actions and socialised together. Many of this group have remained active in Manchester for over ten years and still make up an important part of the activist network.
An internationally famous music and ‘free party’ scene made Manchester an icon of youth culture in the late eighties. In a reaction against the commercial colonisation of this culture, parts of the rave scene worked with direct activists on street parties, and later on squats of empty buildings, such as the Hacienda night-club. The first Manchester RTS was in the city centre in 1995. The cross-over between direct action and the free party scene was facilitated by the growth of Hulme as an alternative ghetto, in which the free party scene, a more nebulous counter-culture and direct activists coincided. Since at least the late 1980s New Age Travellers had been staying in Hulme during the winter because it had many empty flats suitable for squatting.
Protest camps were also important in Manchester. Activists from the city supported the camps at Stanworth against the M65 near Blackburn and there were small camps in 1995 and 1996 on the route of the new M66 motorway in East Manchester. Between January 1997 and May 1997 several camps were established in woods due to be destroyed to build a second run-way at Manchester Airport. The evictions of around 150 campers took over three weeks. New camps were established close to the Airport in 1998 to protect 11 trees due to be cut down by the airport and around 30 people were evicted from these in 1999. Smaller scale camps and squats were also used within the city to defend a pond in Hulme (1995) a vacant monastery in Gorton (1996) and small wood in Longsight (1997).
The Airport campaign was a watershed for Manchester in two ways. First because it was the last of the occasions at which camps became a major national focus for the direct action movement and one result of this was that there was a considerable influx of activists who had come to join the Airport protest and decided to move to the city after the 1997 evictions. Independently, a number of those who are currently among the key activists also moved to the city at about this time. The second result was a sense of division between camp activists and city activists which affected the subsequent camps at the Airport and a later camp in the Peak District (30 miles from Manchester). While many Manchester activists spent time at the airport, and the office and material support networks were mainly based in the One World Centre, which was in the city and run by direct activists, there was a sense that city activists had not done enough to support the camp. This feeling was even greater for those involved in the Arthur’s Wood Airport Camp after 1998. At the end of 1999 a camp was established at Nine Ladies Stone Circle near Bakewell in Derbyshire to prevent quarrying, and although people from Manchester were among the campers, most of the material support came from Sheffield. Throughout this time city activists spoke of the need to do more to support these camps, but many were themselves busy with other campaigns and not willing to give these up, a position that was not always understood by campers.
Among the initiatives taken by campaigners was the initiation of a network called Fresh Air Now (FAN). Activists targeted the local city council with a mixture of media stunts and by standing candidates in local elections. The network was initiated by Earth Firsters! but a wide variety of groups participated, including the Green Party, the Pedestrian’s Association and friends of local parks.
Another important initiative, taken by some of those who founded Earth First! in Manchester and who initiated FAN was the creation of Manchester Environmental Resource Centre Initiative (MERCi). A group of four activists began to seek funding for a building that could serve as a resource centre for campaign groups, a meeting space for local community groups but which could also help to push sustainability in its broadest sense with in the city. It took over two years to find sufficient backing to buy a building and another 18 months to convert the building. By 2001 they had secured over £1 million in funding form a variety of sources, including the European Action Fund and the National Lottery. The initiators remain essentially unpaid volunteers. The success of the project depended upon establishing a new relationship with the City Council, which had previously been targeted by some of those involved with MERCi.
MERCi provides office space for a variety of campaigning groups such as CND, Manchester Wildlife and Omega, a human-rights group. MERCi also runs practical courses on environmental construction, and works with local community groups on initiatives to promote sustainability in the area and submits reports to planning and other local development agencies. While it is well known that MERCi has its roots in the 12 activist community and MERCi policy remains radical – for instance, it avoids working with groups that accept sponsorship from pariah companies such as Shell, its political role is to facilitate community-based sustainability, and this means that it is not directly associated with illegal direct action.
However, this does not mean that there has been a shift away from direct action in Manchester. In the past two years Manchester activists have been involved with several of the major anti-capitalist protest such as June 18 (1999), Mayday and Prague 2000, combining protest in Manchester with travel to the summits. There have been five ‘Okasional cafes’, temporary squats which provide food for donations, host meetings and cultural events. But nor would it be true to characterise this as a shift from the environment to anti-capitalist protest. Both local and global environmental themes remain important, and Manchester activists were among those who disrupted the UN Conference on climate change in the Hague in October 2000, while others carried out a week of direct action on climate change issues in the city.
In comparison with North Wales and Oxford, there is more direct action protest in Manchester and Manchester has a more autonomous and self-sufficient alternative scene. There are more resources and the activist community is larger, and there are sufficient local targets to prevent activists having to travel to London or elsewhere for more than the occasional large events.
OXFORD Like both Manchester and North Wales Oxford has a long history of radical political activism and protest, but in recent decades it has been particularly well known as a centre of green activism.
In the 1970s the ANT (Alternatives to Nuclear Technology) helped resource direct action against Britain’s civil nuclear power programme. Activists within the group also established alternative technology workshops, while an environmental thinktank the Political Ecology Research Group helped provide technical information on the dangers of nuclear energy. Friends of the Earth helped resource ANT and anti-nuclear activists went on to found a local green political party the Oxford Ecology Movement (OEM). The creation of OEM illustrates how protest politics and more conventional political participation are often closely linked within the area. OEM merged with the UK wide Ecology Party in 1980, which became the Green Party in 1987. The local Green Party is often described as the strongest in Britain and in 2000 the Green Party formed a coalition with the Liberal Democrats to take control of Oxford City Council. Many of the present Green Party councillors have taken part in direct action. The local Labour Party has also helped resource direct action against nuclear weapons and in support of the miners.
In the early 1980s Campaign ATOM (Against the Oxfordshire Missiles) opposed the stationing of nuclear missiles at local airfields such as Upper Heyford. Permanent peace camps were established within the county and activists from 13
Oxford helped mobilise support for the women’s camp at Greenham Common in Berkshire. The town also contained vociferous support groups during the miners’ strike of 1984/5 who collected for miners families and picketed the power station at Didcot. Network crossover has been common with anti-nuclear power activists becoming involved in Campaign ATOM after 1980. During the miners strike, a motion asking Campaign ATOM to support the miners’ union was though rejected.
Oxford is a resource rich environment for direct action. East Oxford has become increasingly important over recent decades as a centre for activists. The local radical bookshop EOA books situated on the Cowley Road provided protest literature, box numbers for groups and office accommodation for PERG, Campaign ATOM and a succession of other radicals. University graduates, lecturers and media professionals living locally have taken part in and resourced direct action. Oxford has spawn dozens of NGOs many of which some like the present Corporate Watch and Undercurrents are closely linked to the direct action movement. The original Oxford Committee for Famine relief, which evolved into Oxfam in the late 1940s, is one example. The student group People and Planet (then known as Third World First) was created in the 1970s. Oxford’s importance as a centre for resourcing direct action and green campaigning right across the UK makes it a significant area to examine if we are to understand the nature of contemporary protest participation.
During the early 1990s one of Britain’s first Earth First! groups grew out of the Rainforest Action Group. The Earth First! newsletter was edited from the city for a period when an environmental direct action resource centre the Earth Ark was established on the Cowley Road. In 1992 Oxford EF! activists organised the occupation of the Timbmet timber yard on the outskirts of the city in Cumnor Hill. Nearly five hundred individuals from across the UK blockaded the site and took control of the yard in protest at the importation of timber from tropical rainforests. Oxford EF! edited the national EF! newsletter in 1992 and joined with residents and Green Party activists in small actions to reduce traffic in the city. The group was refounded in 1995 and became strongly involved in resourcing road protests in southern England most notably at Newbury. In 1998 the former LMS rail station was occupied to try and prevent the building of a business centre funded by an arms dealer. Several street parties where hundreds of party goers reclaimed road space took place in the same year. After the LMS occupation the EF! group dissolved but its place was filled by a small collective which produced Oxycetlene, a free local environmental and community action newsletter distributed mainly in East Oxford.
1999 saw an important and iconic action near the village of Watlington, when a crowd of 600 individuals including pensioners and young children, destroyed many acres of a genetically modified oil seed rape crop. While activists have resourced large nationally important actions such as Watlington, two local struggles have been important during the 1990s. Since 1993 members of the local Trades Council have demonstrated on a monthly basis against the Campsfield 14
Asylum Seekers’ Detention Centre. Radical environmentalists have participated in these calls for freedom, while a mobilisation often involving thousands of demonstrators succeeded in closing Hillgrove Farm, where vivisection animals were bred. In the new millennium local direct action has focused on anti-globalisation and anti-genetics protests.
FORMS AND LEVELS OF PROTEST Analysis of the record of protests carried out by EDA groups (see Table 2) as reported in the (approximately monthly) Earth First! Action Update10 suggests that 1999 represents the peak of activity. There were 297 separate protest events in 1999 out of a total of 1293 in the nine years surveyed. However, the number of protests may not be equivalent to the level of protest activity. The rise in actions in 1999 is probably a result of the decline in protest camps by the end of 1998.
Earth First! Actions 1992-2000
350 300 250 200 National Total 150
Reported 100 50
Number of Actions 0
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Year
Figure 1 Protests Reported in Action Update 1992-2000
Protest camps generate few separate events, but since they usually last for several months and sometimes more than a year, they are a particularly intensive form of action. Protest camps were particularly large and numerous between 1995 and 98. Moreover, we know from interviews that covert action11 (‘pixieing’) in which construction sites and machinery is damaged is common at protest camps, but for obvious reasons, is rarely reported, even within the activist press. Thus while protest camps were larger and more numerous it is likely that there was more unreported pixieing. In 1999 and 2000 there was an increase in covert actions against GM crop test sites, which while not publicly claimed by named groups, were more likely to be reported – since it was politically important that the trial programme was seen to be inoperable and also so that other activists would know which sites to target. The apparent decline in activity in 2000 is sufficiently marked to
10 Action Update reports protests by all EDA groups not only those who use the name Earth First! 11 On covert action and the methodological problems in analysing it see Wall, Plows and Doherty (2001). 15 suggest that fewer actions were occurring.12 In interviews activists also note a decline in the number of actions, suggesting that now fewer targets are chosen more carefully.
Levels of action in each of the three areas differ considerably and the pattern of action in each area reveals interesting differences from the national pattern. Since these results are
Levels of EF! Protest in Manchester, Oxford and North Wales
40 35 30 25 Manchester 20 Oxford 15 North Wales 10
Number of Events 5 0 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 Year
Figure 2 Levels of EDA Protest in Manchester, Oxford and North Wales based on a very preliminary analysis of an uncompleted protest event survey they may have to be corrected later. The analysis of events reported in the Earth First Action Update will be supplemented with further analysis based on local EDA newsletters, which may alter the pattern and will certainly increase the numbers of events in each area. A further difficulty with data based on national sources is that it is difficult to identify the involvement of groups from the three localities in events outside their areas. Local newsletters and qualitative sources will allow us to increase the accuracy of our identification of these cases. In Figure 2, events in each locality and events outside the locality in which we know the local group was involved are combined
The first notable peak of activity in Manchester in 1996, a year in which there was a slight decline in national activity, was due the energy of diverse local campaigns such as the Fresh Air Now and the opposition to the M66. The dramatic decline in 1997 and 1998 is very probably a reflection of the effect of the airport protest in the first half of 1997, which despite increasing activity in Manchester reduced the number of reported events. Thereafter, although there was a second camp in the city in the Summer of 1997, described by one activist as ‘a very pleasant eviction’, it seems most likely that activists were ‘burned out’. A second factor was the withdrawal from confrontational action of
12 However, another factor may have been the growth of an email news list. Activists may have chosen to report fewer actions through the Action Update as a result. Further analysis of postings on this list (‘Allsorts’) will help to answer this question. 16 several key activists in 1997, in order to try to establish MERCi (the environmental resources centre).
In Oxford, the lower levels of action in 1996 (compared with Manchester) and 1997 were probably a reflection of the role played by Oxford activists in the Newbury bypass campaign in the first four months of 1996. Oxford is close to Newbury and activists form the city were more heavily involved with the bypass campaign than those from Manchester or North Wales. Newbury is mentioned by many activists nationally as a turning point, following which many of those involved since the early 1990s felt exhausted and either retired or took a break from activism. The dramatic peak of activity in 1998 appears to be due to the emergence of what can be called ‘issue opportunities’ (Welsh 2000) specific issues that facilitate mobilisation. One such was the campaign against the Hillgrove cat farm near Oxford, which became the target of a national campaign for animal rights activists. Others were provided by local development plans opposition to which generated considerable local support. This included the demolition of the old LMS station, which was squatted by EDA activists.
In North Wales the pattern of action is very similar to Oxford until 1998, when Gwynedd and Mon Earth First! established a protest camp at Brewery Fields, which seems to explain the reduction in the number of events. Following the partial success of the camp, the small group of activists were too tired to be able to relaunch actions until later in 1999. In 2000 there was a considerable increase in activity and this was certainly due to the impetus provided by new campaigning opportunities through new Welsh-focussed alliance networks. For North Wales actions involving travel to other locations represent a higher proportion of events. This is partly because it is harder for a smaller group of activists to initiate protests when there are fewer bodies to take part, and partly because of the absence of some of the most common targets of action locally.
Another possibility is that the movement of a few key individuals in or out of a local activist community might shape the level of activity. At the micro-level events such as a break-up between two activists can have a significant effect on the whole community. While there is sufficient continuity in each area to show that the community survives activist turnover, the effect of particular individuals leaving or joining will require more investigation. Certainly activists are well aware of this as a causal factor:
these things are cyclical and the Oxford scene went into decline for various reasons, partly it was personality clashes actually. I remember it being very optimistic when it started 'we don't do ego, you know 'this is just for the cause' you know this kind of stuff an you actually genuinely believed this for quite a while and people's egos start to take over and people start having massive disagreements and there was a big split within Corporate Watch which really fucked things up quite badly and never really recovered, also people went off in different directions some people went off doing national campaigns, people went to squatting stuff, some people went to be artists, people got interested in other things. (interview with Ox-F) 17
The range of issues that radical groups take up is broad-ranging and not restricted to environmental issues. Any attempt to survey the specific claims made in EDA protests needs to be qualified by an acknowledgement that the meaning of specific issues depends on the identity of the movement. For instance, a protest in which a site is defended against construction, is seen by EDA activists as a battle about systemic and global questions, such as environmental and social justice and state oppression. It is worth remembering Touraine’s (1995) distinction between a social movement and mobilisation over particular issues here. Yet, even if all EDA protests tend to raise broader themes, each event also raises more specific issues. The data about claims in table 2 provides evidence about the specific claims made in protests that occurred in each of the three localities.13 Although there are differences between the three areas it is notable that the same issues arise in each and that local action is sometimes in support of campaigns in other areas. This is not surprising given the existence of national EDA networks and national campaigns. For instance, Manchester activists targeted the local operations of a construction company involved in building a new motorway in Glasgow in 1995 and North Wales activists trashed a quarry being used by a company for road-building across Britain in 1994. Differences in the proportion of different types of claim made in each area do not reflect differences in the frames or identities of local groups, rather they are a result of the availability of targets and the issues that arise locally. The higher proportion of defence of landscape, forestry and ecosystems in North Wales and Manchester in comparison to Oxford reflects the absence in Oxford of major construction sites equivalent to Manchester Airport ,or the quarries, A55 (a new road) and new housing in North Wales. Conversely the high proportion of actions in the broad non-environmental category of democracy, human rights, anti-military and animal rights14 reflects the number of animal rights actions at Hillgrove (11 out of 97 events) and other locally- specific targets such as Campsfield Detention Centre (5 events).
Location Claim landscape, Opposing Pollution Democracy, Total 2cnd Total ecosystems, construction, and human rights, claims claim Events forestry, transport and energy anti-military, (n) (n) resource communication animal rights, NA extraction systems pariah (n) companies Manchester 18.3 36.6 11.6 33.6 164 44 104 Oxford 11.3 30.9 9.7 47.4 97 37 67 N. Wales 26.5 35.3 11.8 26.5 34 4 19 Total 16.9 34.6 11.2 37.3 295 85 190 Table 2 Issues raised as a % of total claims made in each area
13 The figures exclude protests in other areas in which groups from the three areas took part because doing so allows for a clearer analysis of the effect of local context on the type of issues raised in protests. 14 It will be possible to further sub-divide these categories in later analysis. Moreover, animal rights is an example of an issue that is better analysed through local newsletters. Actions at Hillgrove received coverage in Action Update because they were part of a national campaign. However, local actions by animal rights groups in Manchester are reported only in the local EDA activists’ newsletters. 18
The other two types of issue, pollution and energy and opposition to construction are consistent across the three cases. Only in North Wales was there any action targeted at a nuclear power station and this was because it was the only plant in any of the three localities. In Manchester (Fresh Air Now) and Oxford (Oxford is Choking) there were specific anti-pollution campaigns. Campaigns against genetic modification also fall into this category. Around a third of total claims relate to opposition to construction, but this is one of the issues that tended to decline after 1999 as the road-building programme was cut and the second runway at Manchester Airport neared completion. Claims related to democracy and targeting of pariah companies remained consistent over time, though the specific targets altered – for instance, from Lloyds and banks to Macdonalds after 1996. Anti-military protests also increased in the last years of the millennium. Other claims such as opposition to repressive legislation, or action targeted at oppressive regimes in other countries remained fairly constant.
The EDA repertoire is primarily based upon confrontational and often illegal forms of action. Analysis of the events surveyed here confirms that groups in the three areas use the same repertoire.15 As Table 1 shows, occupations and blockades, protest camps and property damage, all of which involve illegal and confrontational action make up more than half the reported forms of action used in each area. Moreover, the less confrontational forms of action such as leafleting are often used alongside illegal forms during the same event. For instance, office occupations, Reclaim the Streets parties or disruption of shareholders’ meetings usually involve leafleting, although this is not always mentioned in the reports.16 It is also important to bear in mind that demonstrations and rallies such as those in London on June 18 1999 often also involve significant confrontational action.
Although there are some differences between the three areas, these are less significant than the fact that groups in all areas use all these types of action. The higher number of gatherings in Oxford reflects its convenient location for national events and the fact that EDA activists are often involved in co-ordinating national campaigns. The high proportion of occupations and blockades in Manchester is probably due to the role played by Manchester activists in the Lloyds and Midland Boycott and a campaign against British Aerospace, which centred upon occupying workplaces. The high proportion of protest camp events as a proportion of events involving travel by groups from all three locations to another area, reflects the importance of some key protest camps such as Newbury as national campaigns for the direct action movement. It is also notable that for both Manchester and Oxford the number of local actions they carry out is much greater than the number of national actions outside their area, whereas in North Wales there are more national than local actions, although it is only when we have examined local sources in more detail that we will be able to confirm this finding with more confidence
15 More detailed data on the forms of protest used are given in Appendix 1. 16 The low proportion of leafleting reported in national events involving groups from all three locations is very likely a reflection of space in reports. 19
Other area: all Three North Areas Manchester Oxford Wales Involved Signatures/leaflets/judicial 9.1 8 13.5 2.2 Demonstrations 13.1 19.2 21.6 12.4 Gatherings 7.7 11.2 5.4 2.2 Occupations/Blockades 47.8 39.2 32.4 39.3 Protest Camp Events 13.8 9.6 18.9 31.4 Damage/shoplifts 6.1 6.4 5.4 10.1 Other 2.3 6.4 2.7 2.2 Total Forms (n) 297 125 37 89 Total Events (n) 136 81 20 30
Table 3 Forms of Action By Location
Given the nature of direct action-type protest it is not surprising that most protest actions are carried out by small groups of Earth Firsters! Seventy-seven percent of events reported involving all six areas surveyed involved only one group. Of 183 events where numbers were reported only 13 involved more than 500 people, 9 between 100 and 500, and the rest less than 100. Most actions involve 10-20 activists and it is safe to assume that the events where numbers were not reported mostly involved small groups.
The findings on the targets of EDA protest are particularly stark. By far the most common targets were companies and trade associations, representing just over 50% of the total. The state made up the only other significant target at 44.4% of the total, divided between public institutions (27.5%) and Government and Ministers (17.2%). MPs, parties, trade unions barely figured (see table 4). In part, the role of companies reflects their involvement in construction projects, but it also extends to other issues such as banking, GM crops and the arms trade.
Targets Number Percentage of Valid Targets State/Public Institutions 125 27.2% Government/Ministers 79 17.2% Companies/Trade Associations 232 50.5% Private Persons 10 2.2% Other Associations 7 1.5% MPs/Parties/Unions 3 1.3% Valid Targets (n) 459 Cases Not Applicable (n) 147 Total No. of Events (n) 303
Table 4 Targets of Action
20
Most targets (53.6%) were local, often the local branch of a national or international company. National targets made up 29% of the total and international targets 17.4%. But the scope of the issues at stake in the protest revealed an interesting difference from the level of the target group in that issues of international scope (35.1%) were more frequent than those of national scope (25.8%) (see Figure 3). Nevertheless, as with defining the claims made in protests, it is not always easy to separate these categories for EDA since
Scope of Issue
140
120
100
80 No. Of Events 60
40
20
0 Local National International
Figure 3: Scope of Issue at Stake
the interpenetration of local, national, and global is particularly obvious in the discourse of EDA. This raises the question of what local space is like for EDA groups in these three locations.
TERRITORIAL ZONES While the activist community is essentially defined by a shared culture, at local level it is also based on daily interaction, which is made easier when activists live in the same districts. Activists in Manchester are concentrated in South and Central Manchester and there are large parts of the city that they never reach. As E-Man comments:
Its, I guess, more difficult to communicate because people, that's why people congregate in certain areas of Manchester, I guess because it just makes things easier. Its just too big if every one is really spread out. But what it means is that you can ignore whole sections of the city, as if they don't even exist to direct action, and only focus on say south and central Manchester. You know, you just completely ignore a whole section of the city, just because it's beyond your capabilities.
One of the consequences of the post-1997 influx of new activists into Manchester was that many moved to several streets of 1930s redbrick council flats in Hulme very close to 21 the city centre. Prior to this more activists had lived in Longsight, Chorlton and other areas, a little further out from the city centre. The ‘Redbricks’, as well as some nearby more modern flats ‘yellowbricks’ have come to constitute an alternative ghetto, the nearest that Britain has to the similar, but larger alternative zones of Kreuzberg in Berlin or St Pauli in Hamburg. There are probably around 200-300 mostly young people living in flats in Hulme, who are part of a loose, culturally-defined alternative milieu. There is a community pub where activists make up a large part of the clientele, a community garden in which organic food is grown, some of which is then cooked for the cheap weekly ‘People’s kitchen’ run by activists in the pub. An intranet provides low cost internet access and a quick and reliable means of distributing messages. The walls of the estate carry notices of activist events and music. The Earth First! office moved from Equinox Housing Co-op in Longsight to Hulme in 1998.
This geographical concentration has had a significant impact on the nature of the activist community. Most meetings now take place in Hulme and actions are often organised by mobilising groups of friends and materials available on the estate. One consequence of this is that some people within the networks hardly need to step outside Hulme and can live largely within the alternative ghetto. For some of the activists living outside Hulme this isolation has created barriers. Many of the early founders of EF! live outside Hulme and some of those involved in projects such as MERCi that involve more networking with less radical groups comment that Hulme is too introverted. One Earth First! activist living in Hulme commented that it would be easy to organise actions by just going to people that you know living in that area. Although he personally made a deliberate effort to try to save discussion for the Earth First! planning meetings, he recognised that many people mobilised actions based on the networks of their friends.
The concentration of activists in Hulme is seen by some as having prevented new recruits from joining the network. Most activists in Manchester have either been involved since the early 1990s or were already involved in EDA before moving to Manchester. Since almost all of these activists were students at some point during the 1990s it is significant that there are now very few new student recruits.17 When meetings took place in the student union it was easier to get students involved. And in Bangor where there are joint meetings between student and EF! groups, there has been much more student involvement than in Manchester.
Oxford activists are concentrated in East Oxford in an area around the Cowley Road. Located here is the tiny suite of offices housing The Land is Ours (land rights campaign, Undercurrents (video/alternative media), Corporate Watch (quarterly magazine providing research on corporate injustices) and more recently Rising Tide, a climate change group. Close by is the Inner Bookshop, East Oxford Resource Centre, Uhuru Wholefoods and the Magic Café (vegan/vegetarian). In contrast to Hulme, however, the area is more mixed, with many straight residential houses and more middle class and white. Hulme,
17 It was notable that when a student involved in an occupation of a University building to prevent the expulsion of an overseas student came to speak to the Riotous Assembly (monthly activists’ forum) there had been no contact between students and local Earth Firsters! 22 although redeveloped in the 1990s, has the signifiers of British inner city life, (negative) poverty, no trees, fly-over motorways and (positive) a large Afro-Caribbean population.
D-Ox who has lived in both Manchester and Oxford said:
I just didn't see the same sort of cultural set up here [in Oxford] that we had and I still think exists in Manchester. And now that I am here I don't see that cultural set up because there is a whole green lifestyle thing but it is liberal and it is comfortable and because it is a pleasant place to live and people want to keep it a pleasant place to live. I don't see the people challenging structures in the same way as people are in Manchester. And just before I left Manchester I lived in a place called Hulme which is quite wealthy in lots of ways but also a really exciting mad place because its one of the cited mad places but it was the kind of place that you get the constant level of anger as it was poor and it we have some activists for neighbours and that definitely does something for your psyche.
North Wales is a sparsely- populated rural area (see Table 1) and consequently there are fewer EDA activists than in Manchester and Oxford because there are simply fewer people in the area. Most activists are clustered in the Bangor area, either in Bangor itself or in the many outlying villages within say a 10- mile radius. Some are scattered further afield. Whilst the rurality of the area makes socialising much harder than it is in Oxford or Manchester (and reliance on public transport is also a key factor here), North Wales EF!ers do tend to have strong affective ties to each other and to socialise outside campaign activity, in contrast with Manchester. The countercultural ‘hippy’ scene and the social facilities provided by the Student Union combine to provide a vibrant social scene. Music, art and permaculture/ land use projects are common social hubs. The Greenhouse, the resource centre set up by campaigners in Bangor in the late 70’s, continues to provide a focus for activists but over the years its role has changed (mostly through the necessity of self- financing) to that of primarily providing NGO office space rather being than a place where activists ‘hang out’ much any more.
Activists, students and other local campaigners who have access to IT are in regular contact through email chat groups18. Set up in Summer 2000, these have turned out to be a resounding success and a vital way of keeping in contact and passing campaign information around geographically dispersed activist networks. No similar local email lists exists in Oxford and the Hulme intranet only works within the Redbricks estate. In the absence of ‘squat caffs’ and decent public transport, these email groups go some way to enabling more vital activist chat/ social crossover to occur- for online activists, at least, IT is an invaluable resource.
Despite the existence of strong social ties to each other, the activist/ hippy networks in North Wales are not insular but on the contrary have very eclectic social, campaign and work ties This is in part due to the fact that many people in EF! and the wider countercultural scene are local to the area, went to local schools, and have Welsh as a
18 [email protected] is the North Wales list; [email protected] links activists across Wales. 23 second language. (This has also aided network crossover with Cymdeithas y Iaith).19 It also has to do with the land -use projects (such as dry stone walling and reforestation) which many people are involved with, which often involves working with local landowners. There is also a strongly voiced commitment to local community integration, linked to discourses on rural sustainable development as an alternative to globalisation. A recent music evening / art exhibition held in Mynedd Llandegai village hall by local EF!ers and others from the wider social network was attended by most of the village. It was a truly community event.
In all three areas, the nature of the physical environment and particularly in North Wales the cultural traditions of the area are important to activists’ and shape their attitudes to mobilisation.
ORGANISATIONS Oxford is distinct from the other two areas in that it no longer has an active local Earth First! group, or any similar group, or a regular activists’ planning and networking meeting . Oxford was the base for one of the first Earth First! groups in the UK when the Rainforest Action Group moved its London office to Oxford in 1992, but the local group dissolved during the Newbury bypass campaign which became a priority for Oxford activists in early 1996.
Yet, the movement is not equivalent to the organisation. The absence of an Earth First! group does not mean the absence of EDA networks. As the record of events shows EDA protests have continued in Oxford, and, as in Manchester and North Wales, there is a community of people who spend most of their waking hours engaged in EDA activity. As one Oxford activist (Ox-F) pointed out, after EF! meetings ended:
Corporate Watch was much more significant as a meeting place as a community if you like because all the people who were doing Corporate Watch were also doing other stuff and it was almost the same group who were doing the Reclaim the Streets stuff in Oxford and so we would have meetings in other peoples' houses where basically things would get done. There as a particularly good meeting about the Halloween Party, it developed kind of critical mass and it got exciting and it began to snowball lots of people began to get involved in which case that's when you know something's going to happen.
Oxford is also distinctive in its role in providing professional services for the EDA community nation-wide. Corporate Watch, the Land is Ours, Undercurrents, Rising Tide
19 Cymdeithas y Iaith activists in North Wales tend to be deeply rooted in their local communities, often going back generations. They also have a distinct identity as first language Welsh- speakers. There is a distinct Welsh social scene, from Welsh halls of Residence at the University, the vibrant and (from the 60’s onwards) very political Welsh music scene, to the solid social base of the local villages and Welsh Chapels. Welsh activists may cross over politically with local eco-activists, and get involved in each other’s campaigns to an extent, but there is a limited amount of social crossover.
24 and the Activist Legal Project (?GEN?)are all involved in carrying out research, training or administration for the national or international EDA community. As Ox-D says:
So, so I have always seen Oxford as an active place but very much as a different space to Manchester and here now I work in an office here and I still, it is a conscious effort for me to make sure that activism is still a part of my life because it would be easy to get into the, ‘in Oxford we sit in offices and we do not even do so much organising, we do good research and filming or whatever and good work’.
One activist involved with Reclaim the Streets in London, commented that Oxford could be considered a kid of dormitory town for direct action. Yet, he and others from Oxford play an important role in national events such as June 18, Prague and Rising Tide. It is perhaps this orientation away from Oxford that led one activist from the city to comment that he felt that the EDA community was more national than local.
Another possibility is that the strength of the Green Party on the local council affects the kind of action that people are willing to carryout. Yet, since Green Party councillors have themselves been involved in EDA and the local Green MEP has been arrested several times in the past year, it seems that fear of embarrassing the local party is unlikely to constrain local activists. In fact, Oxford activists regard themselves as fortunate to be working in an area where people are generally receptive to green ideas and attribute this to the strength of local green networks.
Politically, its [Oxford] good in the sense that there is a community of people who are concerned about environmental stuff with the Green Party and you know that you've got a kind of a latent body of support more so than you might do in somewhere like High Wycombe which doesn't have that kind of tradition and again it is probably to do with the middle-class high middle-class content that you have in Oxford people and also the police were generally very friendly you didn't have a conformational situation such as developed in London so you didn't have to have all the paranoia and security that went with direct action stuff. (Interview with Ox-F)
Moreover, the absence of a local Earth First! group is compensated for by the existence of other structures that help to maintain the community. A local alternative newssheet (Oxyacetelyne) presents fortnightly news. In all three areas, activists meet informally in local centres such as those around Hulme and MERCi, at the Greenhouse and the University in Bangor and in the many alternative projects in East Oxford. Regular social evenings such as ‘Catweazel’ attract many activists in Oxford and regular music benefits and parties also make up the social fabric of the activist community in each area.
Like Oxford, Manchester has a plethora of activist-seeded ‘organisations’. However, while some are more autonomous sub-groups such as the ‘Primal Seeds’ genetics activists, others are really sub-groups of the local EDA network. One activist pointed out that there had been a deliberate decision to set up multiple groups of this kind, but that 25 these groups were not really separate from Earth First! and the proliferation of groups tended to be confusing for newcomers. In this sense what appear to be mutiple ‘organisations’ are really projects that exist within the same network of activists.
In 1998 the fortnightly Manchester Earth First! meetings became too large and unwieldy to function as effective planning meetings and so a new forum was created called Riotous Assembly to carry out the networking and publicising role of action, leaving EF! meetings to focus on practical issues, such as planning for actions. EF! meetings occur fortnightly and usually around a dozen of the pool of 25-30 activists attend. Some of those who do not attend EF! meetings are involved in affinity groups that carry out covert action, which is not even reported to other activists, because of concerns about security (see Plows, Wall and Doherty 2001). Riotous Assembly is attended by 30-40 people and usually consists of a presentation and sometimes a discussion on a particular issue – recent meetings have included a Zapatista video, discussion of the Plan Colombia, feedback from those who went to Prague and a speaker from US Earth First! The other role of the meeting is to report-back on actions and announce forthcoming events. Parallel EF! and open monthly direct action meetings occur in several other places such as Brighton, Norwich and Nottingham, but not in Bangor or Oxford.
Again, however, the scale of the alternative milieu in Manchester makes it somewhat distinctive. The main Earth First! activists – constituting a group of around 25 at most, are not tightly-knit socially in the way that they were in the early 1990s. While the activist network is larger it is also less based on tight friendships than in smaller towns:
that's exactly what it is that makes Manchester more like London in that way. I mean London has obviously got way more people than we have, and it's a way big city. We've got a similar sort of thing, and sometimes its really great because what it means is that you can call on lots of different networks. So you've got the whole animal rights network, that's there, and we live among them and work with from time to time and you've got that whole techno free party scene, who we've done quite a lot with. And they are quite different outlook, and are quite political to some degree, and are with us when they want to be, and we need them and hopefully vice versa. So we have really strong links. And then you've got all the people who are have ever been involved in Manchester Earth First! and some of them are doing totally different things. Like that whole crew that are doing MERCi and a number of other different things like that people are focusing on in their lives like(?) whatever. So they don't get involved in Manchester Earth First stuff but when you are doing something that needs every one to pull together, quite often you find that it will work, that's why you can get 1000 people, or 800 - 1000 people on May Day, where did they all come from? It’s just that you are calling on an awful lot of people and lots of those might come to one meeting every 3 or 4 months or you know whatever. They might turn up and work really really hard on a project and then you will never see them again and then they might turn up two years later. It like that, the network spreads really wide, and in some ways that's really brilliant, because it means that you don't get too claustrophobic in one small group. 26
(Interview with D-Man)
But, this also means that Manchester lacks the closed ties that seem to characterise groups in other places:
The core Earth First Group doesn't gel at all really. There's a people with, I guess, there's people with quite similar political outlooks but quite different personalities, so we don't socialize together at all really. We don't hang out, so you don't get an affinity, there's no sort of we're not a tight knit group really and we occasionally work together but whatever you are working on its different people each time really. And then a lot of the people who you've worked with in the past, there's a lot of different political outlooks, a lot of different ways of working a lot of different levels of experience, a lot of different things that people are prepared to do. So it comes like going to Prague and you know Manchester pulled out all the stops for Prague. We did lots of public meetings, we did the national Earth First discussion about Prague, that weekend and then we did an open training day in Manchester, a direct action training day. We did loads and loads of outreach stuff plus internal training stuff but it comes to going to Prague, and we don't go as a group from Manchester, there's maybe like a couple of different affinity groups of 4 or 5 people and that's. You can get that, you can get affinity between 4 or 5 people but you can't get affinity from Manchester as a block of people there's not enough cohesion in personalities and that sort of thing. (Interview with D-Man)
Manchester activists more than those in the other two areas tended to place Earth First! as a specific group within a wider alternative scene in Hulme, Longsight and other central parts of the city.
ALLIANCE PATTERNS North-West Wales stands out as having the widest network range of links to other campaigns and groups. As noted, CND campaigning provided an important bridge between the English alternative incomers and Welsh language campaigners:
And you know there was quite a lot of people on those Welsh classes who were quite left wing politically and a lot of them were involved in CND. …I met a lot of people through Welsh classes, and am still involved politically with some of them who went al the way with learning Welsh and became involved not only with CND but also with our (Cymdeithas) campaigns. Yes definitely CND in the early 80s was important and the Greenham campaign. You had women from Cymdeithas and Plaid Cymru, a lot of them in this area going down to Greenham and getting very involved there. (Interview with I-NW)
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However, the new younger activists who formed Earth First! had few ties to these groups until they built ties with local communities through their joint opposition to a greenfield housing project in Bangor. It took a while to re-establish network crossover ties that had been established in the 80’s but had biodegraded somewhat by the early 90’s. Significantly, many of the older Welsh peace/ CND/nuclear power/human rights activists were still in the area and these ties began to be picked up as EF! strengthened as a local network in the late 90’s. A further impetus to cross-movement networking was provided by the interest of majority world solidarity groups and churches in opposing the current dominance of neo-liberal forms of globalisation, an issue that is central to the praxis of EDA.
Another important catalyst for cross-movement networking is the tendency of left groups in Wales to organise within Welsh national structures. Welsh national identity provides a basis for cross-movement structures that is absent in Manchester and Oxford. While organising as Welsh groups is a long-standing practice, the creation of the Welsh Assembly in 1999 has provided an indigenous focus for Welsh campaigning. This was evident in a coalition initiated by Earth First! to campaign against new terrorism legislation in 2000. The local rally organised in Bangor included messages of support from the leader of the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru and speakers included animal rights activists and representatives of groups such as Save the Children. A demonstration outside the Welsh Assembly organised by EF!, aimed at encouraging the Assembly to oppose the new legislation was supported by the Archbishop of Wales.
A networking coalition Cynefyn y Werin (Common Ground) was established in North Wales in January 2000 to bring together groups with a common interest in opposing neo- liberal form of globalisation. Many of these groups are Welsh NGOs, charities and Church groups with a traditional focus in campaigning for human rights etc in Third World countries- discourses which increasingly have led them to critique globalisation and favour local production/ consumption and fair trade. Such discourses and the acceptance of Non-Violent Direct Action (NVDA) as a legitimate strategy (though peace and Welsh language connections- Cymdeithas y Iaith is also part of the coalition) have produced an inclusive network (Gwynedd and Mon EF! is also a member) with resources and potential. Again, Welsh politics provides an important background as prime movers in this network aim to help set the political agenda/ domestic policy specifically in Wales via representation to the Assembly. For others this may not be as important as the coalition’s potential to help their own actions and provide resources (not least people for demonstrations network).
Links with the Socialist Alliance (a coalition of socialist-left groups which includes the SWP) were also stronger in North Wales than in the other two areas. Members of Gwynedd and Mon EF went to several Socialist Alliance meetings and discussed joint campaigns (primarily against the privatisation of public services). In Manchester, in contrast there was much greater scepticism about the SWP and the Socialist Alliance and although there were some joint meetings, including a public meeting to discuss Prague, relations were not warm. The Manchester EF activists’ newsletter published an account 28 of life inside the SWP from an ex-party member, stressing its hierarchy and narrow dogmatic ideology.
In Oxford links with the left occur mainly through the participation of a few EDA activists in the campaign against a Refugee Detention Centre at Campsfield on the outskirts of the city. Yet, because there is no current forum for EDA within the city, support for the campaign against Campsfield depends on the commitment of a few individuals rather than a collective strategy.
These differences are not absolute. Welsh activists too began to be disillusioned with the Socialist Alliance when they realised that it was more focused on fighting elections than campaigning locally, but they made more efforts than those in Manchester (and Oxford?) to explore common ground. The burgeoning anti- globalisation alliance in North Wales may also now split over the recent custard pie- ing by EF activists of Clare Short, Minister for Overseas Development during a speech she made at Bangor University in support of the globalisation of trade. There may well be some insurmountably deep divides between some NGOs and the ‘no compromise’ strategies and attitudes of Earth First!. The key difference is that such an alliance would not have been attempted in Manchester or Oxford.
Explaining Differences in Alliances
In North Wales EDA activists are not strong enough as a separate network to rely just on their own social group to provide numbers. So they make alliances with anybody who has remotely anything in common with them in order to spread the costs of taking action. Manchester EF!ers can afford to be more choosy and, for example, not approach Christian Aid or other NGOs but stick within their own more ‘radical’ political networks when mobilising. Given the specific types of network opportunities and circumstances North Wales provides eco-activists, it is hardly surprising that this should be the case. Thus students, NGOs, charities and even political parties (the Welsh Socialist Alliance and even Plaid Cymru20 on occasion) are almost always approached when activists are planning action.
Institutional and cultural factors also provide local opportunities. Institutionally, the creation of the Welsh Assembly has provided an focus for Welsh campaigners seeking alternative source of legitimacy. The cross-party coalition of Labour and Liberal Democrats that controls the Welsh Assembly is more vulnerable to political pressure than MPs at Westminster, though this is clearly a contingent factor. Nevertheless the relatively weak Labour vote in the Welsh Assembly elections was seen as a message asserting Welsh criticism of Labour’s failings regarding Wales. Being able to speak for a nation,
20 For example, Plaid Cymru councillors and MPs/AM s sent a message of support to Bangor activists mobilising on “n30” in solidarity with the Seattle anti- globalisation protestors. Plaid Cymru leader (at the time) Dafydd Wigley sent a message of support to the Welsh ‘Repeal the Terrorism Act!’ coalition demonstration in May 2000. However, EF!ers have also clashed- bitterly- with the Plaid Cymru- dominated Gwynedd council over their decision to give planning permission for Brewery Fields. Plaid Cymru at local party level is an enigmatic mix of the very radical and the very reactionary. 29 albeit in a very qualified sense, is important here. The Green Party, although in joint control of Oxford City Council with the Liberal Democrats since May 2000 has not been targeted by local activists in the same way. Local government lacks powers to make even the symbolic steps that were used to signal leftist commitments in the early 1980s.
Thus nationalism, and a tradition, which is particularly strong in North West Wales, of using direct action, facilitates cross-movement networking. Most people working in Welsh NGOs, charities, campaigns etc have got direct experience of taking direct action (mostly Welsh Language) or they work/ socialise with people who have done so. There is as already mentioned a strong crossover also between Welsh Chapels and a radical peace tradition- Cymdeithas y Cymod, for example, is a Welsh Church network/ organisation with a long history of radical dissent and peace action.
Geography also plays a key role, the rurality of the area providing different opportunities for network/ social crossover. Living and often working in the countryside enables activists to make contact with farmers, for example, in an everyday setting in a way urban activists are unable to do. Activists are thus in a position to be more sensitive to the problems faced by rural communities and to structure their discourses and action strategies accordingly. In a similar vein, farmers are able to hear green ideas at first hand. Activists have been establishing ‘weak ties’ links to the farming community since the BSE crisis where a commitment to direct action and an anti- supermarket discourse were established as common bonds. Co-ops, farmers markets and sustainable rural economies are other key crossover issues. Thus whilst veganism and animal rights issues remain key elements in many North Wales activists’ political identities, there is also a pragmatism and a willingness to engage in dialogue brought about through direct contact with rural communities.
Finally, the importance of the micro level should not be forgotten; although it is harder to be definitive about this as yet, the political/ strategic predisposition of prime movers in each area’s networks is also a factor. To an extent, the amount of network crossover is dependant on how much of a priority is accorded it by the people who trigger mobilisation, and on how open (even how friendly) the networks are to people outside their immediate social and political scene. Another related explanation might lie in the political balance within local Earth First! groups. It is possible that North Wales Earth Firsters! are ideologically closer to socialists than those in other areas. However, our research on the political identities of activists does not support this conclusion. While almost all EDA activists interviewed regard themselves as on the left, they are also almost all adamant that they reject what they see as the hierarchical organisation and narrow focus of existing socialist groups such as the SWP. Moreover, GMEF has ties not only to the Socialist Alliance, but also to a broad range of development charities, Welsh nationalists and ad hoc ties through individuals to groups such as the farmers involved in fuel protests. In short, their networks are not wholly left-oriented.
Finally, it is important to note that North Wales EF! does not play the same role that Manchester and Oxford activists do in national Earth First! Activists from both the latter 30 are more involved with organising national campaigns and both cities continue to be the base for several such campaigns.
TIES WITH PREVIOUS GENERATIONS Research on continuities between generations of activists is one of the most promising elements of social movement research since, as Whittier’s (1995) research on feminist activists in Columbus Ohio shows, it can provide useful evidence about changes in identity and how movements or activist communities are sustained over time. Other research on continuity is based upon establishing that there were previous examples of similar forms of action, or cultural expressions, rather than on direct ties between activists. McKay (1996, 1998) has criticised those among current EDA networks who fail to recognise the importance of their immediate heritage in counter-cultural free festivals and other counter-cultural traditions of the 1960s-1980s. Welsh has emphasised the importance of collective capacity building (Welsh 2000b) in assessing the long-term effects of direct action networks. Beginning with his analysis of the small-scale non- violent direct action (NVDA) carried out by Torness Alliance and similar groups in the late 1970s in Britain, Welsh shows how many of the organisational forms, such as the commitment to non-hierarchical and consensual forms of working, and many of the debates, such as the politics of gender in protest camps, and differing views on the justification of violence were very much the same in the 1970s as they are in the current EDA. Welsh attributes the increase in direct action protests in Britain (on which see Doherty 1999, Rootes 2000) to two factors, first, the diffusion of protest repertoires through ‘civil sociations’, in which direct activists and other social groups work together and second the increasing sense that national governments are incapable of resolving national political problems, a point that has more general application than just to Britain.
Diffusion can take place in many ways. As well as direct ties with activists, news reports, and even TV dramas (Wall forthcoming) can provide a source of information and example which might be taken up by groups without any direct contact with experienced protesters. And yet, the often illegal, EDA repertoire does not appear to be taken up by many groups.21
It is at local level that you would expect to find most evidence of continuity between generations of activists. We already know that in some of the major protest camps, there were people from earlier protest camps. For instance, women who had been at Torness were among those who helped to establish Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (Welsh 2000). And women from Greenham helped on early Earth First! actions in the UK and at the anti-roads protest at Twyford Down in Hampshire in 1992 (Wall 1999a).
We are interested in examining this continuity at local level, which is where one might expect to see most evidence of it. However, cross-generational ties differ between the three areas. There is most evidence of these in North Wales. For instance, a member of the Torness Alliance was among those who worked on the successful campaign against Wylva B in the mid-1980s, and as noted, ties between the English (mainly middle class)
21 One exception is the Disabled Action Network which has used many similar tactics to EDA and at local level in Manchester there are close ties between activists form both networks. 31 alternative left and the Welsh nationalist networks were made during the peace movement campaigns of the 1980s. One reason for the strength of these ties is the longevity of the Greenhouse as a base for meetings, offices and resources. But since each of Manchester and Oxford has similar institutions, this is not sufficient explanation. The primary reason is the scale of the radical population. In larger cities, there are so many campaigns and centres that it is difficult to get to know everyone. There are many more campaign groups. In areas like North West Wales, there are fewer local issues to mobilise on, a smaller base of activists and more incentive to work together. The next stage of research will provide more evidence on the cross-generational ties in Oxford and Manchester.
CONCLUSION The organisation, mobilisation and strategy of EDA groups has mainly been examined hitherto at national level, or through studies of protest camps (Seel 1997; North 1997). The national and local EDA communities overlap, but there is a distinct space for the local communities. It is also clear that local contexts do shape the character of EDA. This is clearest in North Wales where radical political traditions and Welsh identity, along with a lack of activist numbers have led to more networking with other groups. Manchester provides the strongest contrast in having a more self-sufficient activist ghetto which leads to a more exclusive culture, evident for instance in the refusal of local activists to engage with the mainstream media. Yet Manchester EDA is not a monolithic community. Those activists involved with MERCi, for instance focussed more on the social justice and community activism because they were affected by working in a city with high levels of poverty.
In Oxford the strength of local green networks and the presence of many individuals who have played a key role in the national movement has provided resources for local direct action, but the parallel national focus, combined with the proximity of London seems to have led to a decline in local activity since 1998. Manchester also plays a role in national campaigns but has a stronger regional identity, evidenced by the regional days of action (‘Doin it up North’) which do not exist in the South. This distinction between Manchester and Oxford is even greater for North Wales.
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Appendix 1 Protest Event Data
Table Detailed Data on Forms of Protest by Location
North All three Manchester Oxford North Wales areas Manchester involvement Oxford involvement Wales Involvement involved Signatures/petitions 2 2 1 Referendum 1 Distributing leaflets 14 1 6 4 Illegal flyposting/graffiti 1 2 1 Non-verbal protest 1 4 2 Cultural Performance 8 2 6 3 1 2 Non-commercial positive action 7 2 6 1 1 1 Indoor assembly 12 2 5 2 1 1 Public rally 11 3 13 2 7 1 7 Demonstration march 4 6 2 Procedural complaint 2 1 Litigation 6 2 2 Blockade 13 4 5 1 4 2 Preventing Work 18 16 12 3 3 13 Sit-in 33 18 9 3 3 15 Protest Camp 20 2 3 3 5 14 Site defence construction 7 3 1 2 1 4 Resisting eviction 8 1 2 1 1 10 Hunger strike 1 3 Ethical shoplift 6 1 Minor attack on property 8 1 3 4 Crop Trashing 2 1 1 Major attack on property 1 2 4 Aggressive bodily contact 1 Pie-ing 1 Street Party 5 4 2 Shareholder action 10 4 5 1 1 Banner-hang 10 4 5 1 2 Critical mass cycle protest 3 1 1 Sqaut Café 4 Illegal Export 1 Other 5 1 4 1 2 Not applicable 197 27 170 10 40 3 169 Total Events 104 32 67 14 19 1 30