ORGANISE! for revolutionary anarchism - Magazine of the Anarchist Federation - Winter 2007-2008 - Issue 69

Grassroots Environmentalism

In this article we examine the significance of popular participation as a form of revolutionary self-activity in environmental struggles in the last century. Grassroots environmentalism was central not only to the success or strengths of individual struggles affecting single communities, but also to the building of generalised, self-consciously confrontational movements for resistance and change. In this sense it was more significant than leftist ideology or mobilisation. Some of the examples offered seem all the more relevant and interesting in the context of the current growth and success of environmental activism in the British Isles and its ability to reflect constructively on its own strengths and strategies.

“It was not only in connection with industrial disputes that the people demonstrated their readiness to take direct action. The August 1892 issue of Commonweal reported that 3,000 people had first pulled down the railings protecting a railway that had been run across common land at Leyton, near London. They then proceeded to wreck the railway itself.” ⁱ

Conventional histories of environmentalism tend to be somewhat top down, focusing on the publication of particular popular science books, or on the expression of particular theories or on the establishment of high profile lobby groups. Key events for instance would be the publishing of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, or the founding of Greenpeace, or the election of the first Green party politician. Antecedents to environmentalism are, in these histories, to be found in the early 19^th century intellectual trend romanticism, or, perversely, in Malthus, the arch justifier of inequality, who maintained that population pressure was responsible for the poverty and hunger of industrialisation.

However another history of environmentalism can be written, a history of environmentalism as a popular grassroots movement, whose different parts are variously referred to as ‘environmental justice’, ‘eco-populism’, or ‘environmentalism of the poor’.

Environmentalism is a word used to mean many different, often contradictory, things. We have the environmentalism that is the state’s effort to manage environmental problems and environmental conflicts, in the interests of the continued garnering of profit. For instance in early September this year the ‘Environment Ireland 2007’ conference took place, with representatives from various government departments and state agencies, and from a consultancy company working for Shell on the Rossport pipeline. Then we have ‘the environment’ as an investment opportunity, these days investment magazines are full of the joys of the returns on putting your money into wind farms, or into carbon off-setting. Finally we have environmentalism as a lifestyle trend and marketing niche. Witness organic food and eco washing machines and a whole plethora of similar ‘save the planet’ consumer goods. As an aspect of ‘environmentalism’, the political movement (ie lobby groups, political parties, et al) feed into this. See for instance books like ‘The Armchair Environmentalist’ or the ‘Green Consumer Guide’. A lot of this is simply greenwash - as with British Petroleum, BP, changing its name to Beyond Petroleum. It is beyond the scope of this article, but we shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking these fashions represent the successful adaptation of capitalism to meet ecological crises.

To get back to environmentalism from below, a number of different strands can be identified. Firstly, opposition to what are jargonistically known as ‘locally unwanted land uses’, that is particular sources of pollution, either existing or under development. Secondly, in situations where commonly held resources are sustainably used, and where communities are dependant upon them, environmentalism from below includes ‘defence of the commons’ from expropriation by private landlords or the state for high yield exploitation, or for new developments. This can be seen historically in England, particularly in the 16^th and 17^th centuries, but as late as at least 1816 as well, with riots against the ‘enclosure’ of fenlands and forests. It is now, obviously, more prevalent in the global South, most famously with the Chipko peasant movement in the Himalaya, India, resisting the take over of their forests for commercial forestry, forests people depend on for animal fodder and firewood and to which they have a sustainable approach. Thirdly, there are workplace based and struggles around pollution related health and safety threats.

Some less typical strands are no less significant. While ‘wilderness’ conservation is often dismissed as elitist or esoteric, and not without grounds, there have been popular struggles around access to the countryside for recreation and in defence of areas of natural beauty. A tradition of this can be traced back at least as far as the Kinder Scout mass trespass in 1932, which was one of the things that led to the establishment of national parks. Another faint and rare but significant strand is those workplace struggles which have raised the question ‘what is produced & to what end?’. Notably in Australia in the 1970s ‘green ban’ boycotts were placed by construction workers on developments judged destructive, and there were strikes against uranium mining and uranium transports. Something similar to this happened in Ireland in regard to planned nuclear plants. At the same time in Britain the Lucas Aerospace alternative development plan was proposed by the Lucas workforce, which put forward a switch from military production to socially useful production.

These are ideal types, generalizations. In fact these strands may be present in the same struggle. For instance, the practises of the Raybestos Manhattan company’s plant in Cork, Ireland, were opposed by both residents’ groups and its workforce. The aforementioned Chipko movement contained both ‘defence of the commons’ aspects, and an element of opposition to locally dangerous environmental destruction. Likewise the trends focused on in conventional histories of environmentalism interconnect with environmentalism from below, for instance, the writings of Barry Commoner have an influence in American ‘eco-populism’, while local ‘citizens initiatives’ and mass national anti-nuclear power protests fed into the development of the German Green Party, and some Friends of the Earth sections have an ‘environmental justice’ perspective. On the other hand there was Friends of the Earth participation in the ‘Environment Ireland 2007’ get together mentioned above. In addition some local oppositions to particular developments can contain dubious elements, for instance when major players in the tourism industry, or wealthy stud farm owners, object to projects that they think will cut into their profits.

The rest of this article is going to look at environmentalism from below through two instances, the environmental justice and anti-toxics movements in the United States, and the European anti-nuclear power movement. It should be stressed these are just two examples of the many possible. These examples help show us what is possible and probable in the contemporary West. The global South is replete with further instances of environmentalism from below, important, interesting and admirable, but of less practical import to us here.

Anti-Nuclear Europe:

In the 1970s, across what was then the nine states of the European Common Market, the predecessor of today’s European Union, a massive expansion of nuclear power was planned. Initially this was to involve 160 new nuclear facilities, but the French state alone planned for to have hundreds by the end of the century. Growth in the nuclear sector was also on the cards elsewhere, such as in Sweden, the United States, and Spain. Opposition began in the early part of the decade, reaching a crescendo in 1977, and at a highpoint for a few years after that.

In 1977 German New Left publication Kursbuch saw these struggles as a way out of the ghettoization of the far-left commenting:

“In the movement against the nuclear power stations… it seems possible to overcome this isolation. These initiatives came into being quite independent of the left. The left only took notice when they began to mobilise the population…Wyhl was certainly no affair of tourist demonstrators, that was a people’s action, a people’s movement. The citizen didn’t just fall into line this time, they took the initiative themselves.” ⁱⁱ

Wyhl was the location of the first big battle of the movement, where the construction site for a nuclear power station was occupied first by a few hundred people, and then, a few days later, after the first occupation was cleared by 650 police, a second occupation took place involving over 20,000 demonstrators. Campaigners built a hüttendorf, a protest camp, on the site. These protests were multi-national, Wyhl being near to France and Switzerland, and successful, as the courts ordered a halt to construction.

Following this the governments moved in a more repressive direction. A reactor construction site at Brokdorf, Germany was turned into a fortress over night, and one demonstrator was killed and two disabled, in a police ambush in Creys-Malville, France.

The 60,000 strong demonstration in Creys-Malville was against the proposed construction of the type of ‘fast breeder’ reactor which would produce the fuel for nuclear power plants. As well as the conventional tear gas and batons, police used grenades which left metre wide craters and were of similar explosive force to military issue grenades. The prefect, or local governor, in charge, had experience of running repression in Algeria, and openly stated that he was ready to deploy live ammunition against the unarmed crowd. The other establishment reaction to the Creys-Malville protest was to attempt to divide people on nationalist lines. It was described as ‘the second German invasion and occupation’ and Germans were particularly singled out for arrest, imprisonment, and other violence. Ironically enough the reactor itself was actually a pan-European project, with German, Belgian, Spanish and Italian involvement.

The international co-operation against the nuclear machine was presaged by other struggles along the Rhine. Previously, a successful campaign had been waged against a lead plant next to a village on the French side of the border with Germany. A rota was drawn up so that each week the site would be occupied by groups from different villages from both countries.

The violence in France, and associated internal dissension, had a demobilizing impact, except for in the case of successful position to a nuclear development in Plogoff, Brittany. But state violence did not have quite this impact in Germany. A banned demonstration at Brokdorf in February 1981 was 100,000 strong, despite police blocking people from getting to the area and the train service being shut down. The highpoint was reached in 1980 at the proposed nuclear power station at Gorleben, which again saw a protest camp occupation of a construction site. It took 8,000 police to clear it, at that time largest post-war police deployment. These protest camp occupations also involved setting up ‘people’s colleges’ which featured a wide range of workshops and discussions.

The Gorleben campaign continues to this day. The almost annual transportation shipments are met with blockades in both France and Germany, even though in 2004 one young protester in France was killed after the waste carrying train failed to halt before the piece of rail track to which he was chained to. The protests have restricted but not entirely halted the area being turned into a hub for the nuclear industry. There is an active temporary storage area for nuclear waste there, but the planned nuclear power station, waste reprocessing plant, and permanent waste storage facility have not been built.

In Wackersdorf, Bavaria, Germany, in the late 80s, another prospective nuclear waste reprocessing project was defeated.The response of an unsympathetic observer hightlights the social basis of the protest:

“Stunned Germans watched unprecedented scenes on their TV screens as old ladies led masked Autonomen away to hide them from the police, and farmers wielded shovels and pitchforks against the police”. ⁱⁱⁱ

In Carnsore, in the south east of Ireland, the state planned to build four nuclear power stations. The site was temporarily occupied in August 1978 with perhaps as many as 25,000 people attending a free festival there. The plans for a nuclear Ireland were defeated. In part, particular circumstance led to this. The controversy around the project coincided with the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in the United States, and economic down turn also pushed the nuclear plan down the agenda. However the prospect of mass direct action was clearly a major factor, given what was happening on the continent. One opposition politician counselled that the Government should at least hold an open public inquiry lest they end up with “something like the new Tokyo Airport shambles on our hands at Carnsore”.^iv This was a reference to the long running battle against the expansion of Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan. The minister responsible for the Irish project talked about sending the army in against “20,000 hippies”.^v In addition some of groups involved in the anti-nuclear movement clearly and unambiguously took a ‘by any means necessary’ stance. At the same time as this was a campaign against uranium mining in Donegal, in the north east of Ireland. This campaign successfully employed a wide range of tactics from the most respectable to the highly illegal.

The European anti-nuclear struggles were formed by a confluence of relatively strong post-68 New Lefts and mobilisations by communities adjoining the sites of proposed plants. The latter led the way in the early days. This movement was also the greenhouse for the development of ecological politics. The oil crisis was the pretext for nuclear expansion, and this led to a questioning of ‘growth economics’, which was variously interpreted as either the inherent ‘grow or die’ nature of capitalism, or a ‘growth ideology’ without any social context. The nuclear power issue also provoked a further questioning of technology. Traditional left wing politics was focused on the apparent inefficiency of capitalism when it came to increasing production, and was unquestioning of particular technologies. Now it became clear that more and more production and more and more growth was in fact a threat to survival

.

The anti-nuclear cause was also related to increasing state repression. ‘The nuclear state is a police state’ went the slogan and, obviously it was related to nuclear weapons.

Often, but not always, the anti-nuclear movement went forward meeting the opposition of traditional left parties, and trade unions. It should also be remembered that the anti-nuclear struggles were not a singular phenomenon, very similar struggles took place around other issues, such as the expansion of Frankfurt airport in Germany, or the expansion of Larzac military base in France, and the final of the four Carnsore gatherings was much taken up with the issue of non-nuclear toxic production. Although we do not live in a nuclear free Europe, the movement considerably impacted on the extent of the blossoming of nuclear power.

Environmental Justice in the United States:

In the United States recent decades have witnessed the development of two overlapping, but distinct, movements; anti-toxics and environmental justice. It should be stressed that by movements here we mean the linking together of particular local struggles across space and time into a unity. With regard to opposition to local sources of pollution, this movement forming process seems much more advanced in the U.S. than in Britain or Ireland.

The situation in the United States is also often extreme, as can be seen in Pellow’s description of the environmental injustice experienced by a black community in Chicago:

“Built on a landfill in 1945 on the edge of an old industrial and ‘sanitary’ dump (or ‘sewage farm’), Altgeld Gardens is now home to 10,000 residents. The neighbourhood is 97 per cent African American, 62 per cent of whom live below the poverty level, and is surrounded by more than 53 toxic facilities, including landfills, oil refineries, waste lagoons, a sewage treatment plant, cement plants, steel mills, coke ovens, and incinerators.” ^vi

The anti-toxics movement got going in the wake of Love Canal, which was a school and residential development built on land which had been a dump, and in which hazardous wastes were still buried. One prominent activist from the campaign to compensate Love Canal residents, who were forced to move, went on to form the Citizens’ Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes (C.C.H.W.). She, Lois Gibbs, was getting more and more people in similar situations contacting her after mass media coverage of Love Canal.

C.C.H.W. is a networking and support node for campaigns against local pollution, or proposed hazardous developments. By 1988 the C.C.H.W. group had networked with 4,687 local groups, and by 1994 over eight thousand. Characteristically this movement is working class and often led by women

The seminal event for the environmental justice movement was a campaign against the establishment of a dump for PCP contaminated soil in Warren County, North Carolina.

This culminated in a direct action blockade and the arrest of five hundred people.

Warren County’s per capita income was the lowest in the state, and 60% of its population was black, Afton, the community adjoining the proposed dump, was 84% black. Environmental justice therefore brings some of the themes and ideas of the civil rights struggle to bear on environmental issues. Its main focus is on the disproportionate impact of environmental problems on low income ethnic minorities, in the context of the racial hierarchy within the American working class, resistance to it, and the consciousness formed through these factors. However, it states that:

“…all of the issues of environmental racism and environmental justice don't just deal with people of color. We are just as much concerned with inequities in Appalachia, for example, where the whites are basically dumped on because of lack of economic and political clout and lack of having a voice to say "no" and that's environmental injustice.” ^vii (There has been long running opposition to strip mining and to mountain top removal, which is a more pronounced version of strip mining, in the Appalachian region).

Another part of the context is the fact that the big environmental lobby groups and NGOs in the United States have been exceptionally conservative. In one instance their lobbying efforts involved producing a plan as to what each federal government department should be doing, excepting the housing and labour departments, these apparently having nothing to do with the environment. Also it seems to be the case that the radical alternative to these groups, Earth First!, was, in the 80s at least, almost exclusively concerned with ‘wilderness’ preservation.

What the environmental justice movement focuses on, the disproportionate exposure to environmental risk, shouldn’t be thought of as peculiar to the United States. Such local struggles against polluting plants or dangerous developments are to be found in many places. In 1999 a Friends of the Earth study in the UK found that 660 sources of industrial pollution were in areas where the average annual income was below £15,000 while only 5 were to be found where the average annual income was over £30,000. They are to be found earlier in history also. For instance in southern Spain in February 1888 the army carried out a massacre of people demonstrating against the Rio Tinto Zinc mining company, the victims included striking miners, and peasants angry at the company’s pollution. The singular nature of these American movements, singular in terms of the English speaking world, isn’t to be found in the particular local struggles, but in the fact there is a movement which unites them.

Moving Forward:

The opening passages of this article spoke of the many different types of environmentalism. In the case of histories this is in part an attribute of the bias of the intelligentsia (after all many histories of anarchism will focus on theoreticians to the detriment of movements). In addition the more long lasting a group is, and the more formally organised, the more historic record it will leave behind it. However in the different variants of environmentalism what we can see is different class interests.

State centred and market centred forms of environmentalism express the needs of capital. The focus on individual consumption allows the opening of new market opportunities, through new products, obscures the social roots of environmental crises and allows environmental rhetoric to be used as a weapon in the class struggle against the working class. This is seen in the water and bin charges battles in Dublin. The state’s imposition of this double taxation on ordinary people, while the super rich got tax evasion amnesties and corporations the lowest tax rate in the E.U., was justified in terms of ‘paying our way for our waste’ and ‘preserving resources’. This does not mean that a libertarian socialist society would not involve marked alterations to consumption. It means that the focus on individual consumption within capitalism actually has the opposite impact from that intended by genuine, but mistaken objectors.

However, much of this ‘consumption spotlight’ originates not in error but in the deliberate intent to obfuscate, as with greenwash, or to sell products, as with ‘green consumerism’. Similarly the ‘we are all responsible’ line, from the most powerless to the most powerful, conveniently obscures causes. In addition, as environmental crises threaten the profitability of at least sectors of capitalism, the state as the management system of capitalism, must attempt to address the problems. (Whether it can, which is doubtful, is beyond the remit of this article).

The state must also manage environmental conflicts, head them off from the path of popular struggle, and divert them into labyrinths of bureaucracy and ‘consultation’. In contrast, the environmentalism which by direct action stops a road or a nuclear plant is an expression of our needs for a viable living space against the needs of capital for particular developments. An expression of this is the desire to move towards a post-capitalist society, where production is based on fulfilling social need rather than shareholder gain, and that need of course includes a habitable and pleasant environment. This is an expression of the interests and the needs of another class; of another form of class struggle, from below. This is not a glib response to the ‘revolution versus reform question’, not a proposal to wait for the glorious day. It means maximising disruption from below because this forces reform but is also a building block of revolution.

Genuine environmentalists who take up the state and market centred strategy of lobbying for change, or promoting alternative technologies, are repeating the error Marx identified in early socialists:

“The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society?”^viii

Even Murray Bookchin, one of the foremost of the left greens, saw ecological crises in terms of a ‘general human interest’. If this is the case, it is an interest mediated through class into contending interests, contending ways of managing the problem. One way strengthens capitalism, and hence, from our point of view, maintains the environmental problem, the other way undermines capitalism, and hence makes a small step towards dealing with the problem. These different tendencies are not necessarily clear cut and distinct in the real world. They can exist in the same movements, same actions, and even the same individuals. This is the ideological dominance of the ruling class and also how our own ideas are formed and shaped within capitalist society and hence the replication of features of that society, or of ideas congenial to our rulers, within opposition movements. Many opposition movements form structures mirroring the hierarchy of capitalism.

A class struggle interpretation of grassroots environmentalism faces two possible arguments. Firstly that, in the anti-nuclear case, the developments were situated in rural areas, with a predominantly ‘peasant’ or ‘petit-bourgeois’ population, although it has long been held that a movement to socialism involves the leading role of the working class and the participation of other subaltern classes. Secondly there is the idea at large, mostly spread from academia, that environmentalism is a creature of a ‘new middle class’, that is of white collar employees. Apart from the fact that such strata are a part of the working class, there is evidence for the exact opposite, with, in some instances, greater support for environmental goals found among people in blue collar occupations.

What the experience of the two examples of environmentalism from below can tell us in regard to moving forward today, is particularly how durable and popular environmental movements are formed. The experience of the anti-nuclear movement is especially relevant here. As we have seen it came about through the combination of two factors, firstly a staunch mobilisation among residents of the most immediately effected areas, and secondly a relatively strong anti-capitalist political scene, with at least some propensities towards direct action and libertarian forms of organisation. These two strands combined in a common willingness to fight together.

It is of course impossible to lift from one moment in history a form of struggle and plant it in the present. There was a particular context, such as a general higher level of class struggle and hence wider politicisation, confidence, solidarity and combativity. However, it is surely from the recent past and from similar societies that we can draw lessons for today. In addition we shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties faced then. The movement in Germany in the mid-70s faced trade union organised counter-demonstrations. Ireland was then a markedly conservative country, as it had been for much of the 20^th century. In France the combination of state violence and a turn to electoral politics seems to have collapsed much of the movement.

From drawing this lesson from the European anti-nuclear experience we can see part of the significance of this year’s Convergence for Climate Action, the North American sister camps to the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow. The two North American camps explicitly stated among their aims that of promoting “environmental justice by supporting communities that are fighting dirty energy developments in their backyards”. One was part of the annual Mountain Justice Summer against mountain top removal in Appalachia, and the other in an area of Oregon, where there is local community opposition to a liquefied natural gas terminal. The Heathrow camp was less explicit about this, but nonetheless deliberately organised in conjunction with residents opposing the expansion of the airport.

Similarly Rossport Solidarity Camp involves supporting a community based resistance to Shell and the state’s destruction of a part of the West of Ireland. Likewise with the camps and occupations and actions in Trebanos, Milford Haven, Cilfrew, and the Brecon Beacons national park, all on the Welsh leg of the route of a high pressure gas pipeline. This isn’t to be blind to the many problems with these events and campaigns. However a perfectly formed movement isn’t gonna arise from our nice thoughts. We have to work with the existing possible sparks of new movements.