Paving the Way: The Rise of Direct Action against Road-Building and the Changing Character of British Environmentalism
| Author | Brian Doherty |
| DOI | 10.1111/1467-9248.00200 |
| Date | 01 June 1999 |
| Published date | 01 June 1999 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Paving the Way: the Rise of Direct Action
against Road-building and the Changing
Character of British Environmentalism
BRIAN DOHERTY1
Keele University
Sustained protests against the building of new roads in Britain since 1992 signal the
emergence of a new social movement dimension in British environmentalism. The
growth of direct action has occurred outside the existing environmental pressure
groups and this more radical green politics has undermined the view that the British
state was able to prevent confrontational environmental protest. Small numbers of
protesters have been able to make a major impact on the political agenda through a
combination of technical ingenuity, tactical astuteness and determination. Models of
political opportunity structures have become dominant in explaining the emergence
and character of social movements but because they lay too much emphasis on the
calculation of costs and bene®ts by movement actors they are of little help in analysis
of this case. Rather, the case of the anti-roads movement suggests that further
attention needs to be paid to the identities of the movement's founders in explaining
their actions and lends credibility to the (much criticized) claim that new social
movements are qualitatively new.
In 1991 the British environmental movement was well-organized and well-
supported but politically moderate. It was assumed that there was no prospect
of a more radical environmental movement emerging and no likelihood of
signi®cant protests on environmental issues. Yet in that year new radical
environmental protest groups emerged which posed a challenge to this estab-
lished view of the environmental movement. This article attempts to explain
why these groups emerged so suddenly and unexpectedly and why they were
able to achieve considerable political impact in what appeared to be unpromis-
ing circumstances. The most important factors in this explanation are changing
values among British young people in the early 1990s, dissatisfaction with the
strategies and performance of the existing environmental pressure groups and
the ability to draw on the resources and ideas of an existing, but largely
invisible, alternative milieu. These factors are examined in the ®rst part of the
article in order to show why these protesters rejected the existing environmental
movement. The political context plays a role in explaining the development of
the movement but, contrary to the theoretical expectations of political oppor-
tunity structure models, the emergence of these protests in the early 1990s does
not seem to have been the result of a calculated assessment of the opportunities
1 I would like to thank the referees for Political Studies, and also Rosemary O'Kane and Chris
Rootes for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.
# Political Studies Association 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main
Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
276
The Changing Character of British Environmentalism
available at that time. In examining the political context it will be argued that
what determined the decision to protest was less a calculation of the costs and
bene®ts of acting at a particular moment and more an ideological view that
action within the existing institutions was inappropriate and ineective. It is
argued that the importance of counter-cultural ideas, ideologically-justi®ed
resistance to formal organization and non-violent direct action makes these
protest groups the ®rst signi®cant example of environmental protest by a new
social movement in Britain.
The Two Wings of the Anti-roads Movement
When the Conservative government announced Roads for Prosperity2 ± its plan
to make a major investment in the British road network ± in 1989 the muted
criticisms that were expressed came mainly from environmental pressure groups.
By 1997 the original plans for the roads programme were in disarray. The
protests that had developed against new roads were not the only reason for this;
the need to cut public spending and a more sceptical attitude to road transport
from within sections of the government also played a role. But the protests
received major attention in the media and helped to shift the agenda towards
criticism of the priority given to roads in transport policy. The occupation of the
site of the M3 extension at Twyford Down in 1992 was the ®rst major direct
action protest against road-building. The struggle over Twyford Down proved
to be a catalyst for further attempts to obstruct the building of new roads
in Newcastle (1993), Bath (1994), Blackburn (1994±5), Glasgow (1994±5),
Wanstead (1993) and Leytonstone (1994) in London, Thanet in Kent (1995),
Fairmile in Devon (1995±7), Ashton-under-Lyne in Manchester (1995±7) and
Newbury in Berkshire (1995±6). In each case the campaign against a new road
was based upon an alliance between two distinct groups. The ®rst was a local
group, the second was made up of direct action protesters. In most cases the
local group had opposed a particular local road scheme for a decade or more
but had exhausted all legal avenues of opposition, including public inquiries.
The character of the local groups tended to re¯ect their area. In auent areas
such as Winchester (close to Twyford Down), Bath3 and Newbury, local groups
were led by individuals who were local establishment ®gures, including some
Conservative voters. In other areas, such as Leyton, Manchester and Glasgow,4
groups were more working class and anti-Conservative. None of these groups
was homogeneous socially or politically, but all worked with the direct action
protesters. Notwithstanding some tensions, local groups with no previous
experience of protest participated in attempts to obstruct the building of new
roads alongside activists from the green counter-culture.
It is the latter group which has received most attention from the media and
public and carried out the most spectacular feats of endurance in occupying the
sites of new roads. The eco-protesters (author's term, not one used by activists)
are mostly young, in their twenties or late teens, in education or choosing to live
2 CM 693, Roads for Prosperity (London, HMSO, 1989).
3 See P. North, `Save our Salisbury', Environmental Politics, forthcoming.
4 See B. Seel, `Strategies of resistance at the Pollok Free State Road Protest Camp', Environmental
Politics, 6 (1997), 108±139.
# Political Studies Association, 1999
BRIAN DOHERTY
277
on a low income and most are in eect full-time political activists. Becoming an
eco-protester means making a commitment to a lifestyle based mainly in protest
camps or communal houses, in which many possessions are shared, income is
minimal, and codes of conduct that minimize impact on the environment are
observed. Full-time roads protesters mostly have little concern with formal
ideology, even of a green kind, but share a belief that `do-it-yourself political
action' is the only viable means of improving democracy and overcoming the
ecological crisis. Many celebrate earth spirituality and identify with pre-
industrial traditions which they counterpose to modern instrumental ration-
ality. Their concerns are broader than opposition to roads or even narrowly
environmental issues, embracing more general questions about power and
politics, such as the centralization of power in the British state, land ownership,
and the curtailments of civil liberties enacted in the 1994 Criminal Justice Act.
Although the campaigns against roads have been the most high pro®le of the
eco-protests, the same groups have also carried out actions against banks for
their role in Third World debt, against importers of tropical hardwoods, and
protested over quarrying, open cast mining and the second runway at
Manchester Airport (1997). This radical wing of the environmental movement
is, therefore, based not simply on opposition to roads but is prepared to use
disruptive protest to highlight what are seen as more fundamental failings of
modern society. There are no formal organizations within this network, but
much of the co-ordination and exchange of information occurs through the
loose network of Earth First! groups which were ®rst established in Britain in
1991. Although inspired by the earlier example of Earth First! in the USA,
British Earth First! groups are less concerned with wilderness preservation and
have been in¯uenced by British traditions of non-violent direct action based
upon site occupation and protest oriented towards public opinion.
The Signi®cance of Direct Action for British Environmentalism
Until the 1990s there had been no sustained direct action protests on environ-
mental issues in Britain. The country appeared to have very strong environ-
mental pressure groups but these had mainly used the increase in resources
which followed the rise in environmental concern and support in 1988±90 to
invest in their own organizations. After this time, environmental groups
employed more sta, carried out more research and spent more on marketing in
order to maintain the recruitment of supporters.5 As Rawclie noted in 1992,6
environmental groups had adopted business practices in order to meet the goal
of organizational survival. The spectacular rise in the numbers of those paying
subscriptions to the two most radical campaigning groups in the late 1980s
meant that it was harder for the government to dismiss them as marginal,
particularly when...
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