In May this year a small group of environmental activists and academics met in Hebden Bridge Yorkshire for a weekend conference entitled: ‘Talkshop: Radical Environmentalism and DiY Culture’. This is a brief report of the event and some of the projects that have emerged from it.
I organised Talkshop with Tom Cahill of the Institute for the Environment, Philosophy and Public Policy at Lancaster University, a long time friend, intellectual and activist. It was probably his idea although I have also laid claim to whatever credit or blame is associated with it. Talkshop was not really a conference, despite our billing it at such before and since. Its semi-ironic title should have been a clue towards our intentions; we felt, and still feel there is an urgent need for those, including ourselves, who have populated the radical environmental milieu over the years, to reflect a little on our history, our present and our future. Talkshop was a gathering, a space for reflection and a tentative step along a path we feel needs to be trodden more often.
We invited friends and acquaintances of differing generations from differing backgrounds with a wealth of experience between them. These included members of the Centre for Alternative Technology and Laurieston Hall, an organiser of the Big Green Gathering and activists from GeneWatch, Reclaim The Streets, Earth First! and the peace movement, as well as various chroniclers of environmental activism including a videographer, and two carefully chosen academics. There were feminists, anarchists, socialists, liberals and libertarians in a variety of differing green hues! Our contention was that in some way or other these people are involved in the same movement or cluster of movements and can broadly be described as radical environmentalists despite the fact that we could no doubt have argued for the entire weekend as to what this ‘radicalism’ might mean in practice. In the end there was no need.
No papers were delivered at Talkshop, although both the invited academics were asked to write a short piece outlining what they believed the academy could offer to environmental activists and these were distributed to those wishing to engage with this as a subject for discussion. Instead of the usual format we scheduled long relatively open sessions and relied heavily upon our facilitator, who did an excellent job in allowing us, as participants, sufficient space to engage thoughtfully with our collective history and potential futures. For example, the first serious session of the weekend involved us collectively filling out a time line of personal and political events, the events that have shaped our lives as activists. A roll of paper wound its way around the walls of our conference room and we carefully filled out somewhat proudly and somewhat awkwardly the events we had been involved in, the actions undertaken, our political standpoints and reactions to social and political changes over the past thirty or forty years. What emerged constitutes a vibrant history of struggle, of social change and rising awareness of the centrality of the environment as a cause for mobilisation. No period was without comment, or without some form of social and environmental activism. This chronology was to act as reminder for the rest of the gathering how the hidden and public history of radical environmentalism has sparked personal, political and cultural change and it remains an effective and emotional account of the bonds and feelings such collective action can give rise to.
The following sessions, thematically organised under the headings of ‘present’ and ‘future’ raised many issues which will be familiar to anyone who has participated in campaigning and protest: unity in diversity, democratic decision making, communication, widening participation, philosophy, tactics and strategy were all discussed. What emerged was no doubt different for different people and is therefore extremely difficult to summarise given the obvious complexities of the above issues, however a number of interesting connections between people who had not previously met were made, and these will no doubt prove fruitful in a variety of ways.
From my perspective, the paradoxical and contradictory nature of the terms used to collectivise people came to the fore once again, could we really claim these diverse people for the same ‘movement’? What aspects of their struggle did they recognise in the actions of others, was it campaigning, living, or working in different and distinctive ways that unified them? These questions are not easily resolved and at times it appeared as though the prioritisation of one form of action or structure over another would prevail in determining who was ‘inside’ and who ‘outside’ this movement. Equally, there was concern that issues of race, gender, disability and age sometimes disappear within activist discourse so that ‘green’ becomes ‘white’ for all intents and purposes, whilst the issue of other social divisions is treated as passé. These are important points when considering how the radical environmental milieu might continue to develop and mobilise inclusively and they were addressed thoughtfully, if not always to everyone’s satisfaction.
The unsurprising, but wonderful aspect of Talkshop more generally, and once again I speak from a personal perspective, was the desire to think creatively, to countenance opposing viewpoints and a willingness to interrogate particular organisational structures. Examples of this tendency included the openness of Reclaim The Streets and Earth First! activists to a variety of suggestions concerning the strategic choices available to them and a sense that they considered it useful to talk at length with people who were sympathetic but outside their immediate groups. Additionally there was a warm reception given to academic input on historical comparisons between types of social movement and forms of collective action, and rapt attention given to the accounts of older activists for whom consensus decision making structures and the practical skills of living with the land were less issues of contemporary debate and more a regular feature of everyday life. My abiding feeling was that these exchanges were valuable, thought provoking and necessary.
Sometime after Talkshop had ended and we as organisers had let out a collective sigh of relief having realised just how much we, and seemingly others had enjoyed it, an idea occurred to us. If such gatherings were helpful in providing a reflective space and facilitating networking amongst people and organisations that may not regularly get the opportunity to meet, then why not do more of them. Why not try to access resources which would enable us to catalyse future meetings of a similar or more specific type, to collect materials which could be advantageous to differing organisations and promote skills sharing and training that could be used by a host of activist groups. As both Tom and I also teach in different settings about environmental movements, we are also concerned to make available the knowledge that emerges from these movements in as egalitarian way as possible and to highlight the potential futures they offer and the means through which these futures might be achieved. To these ends, we have formed a co-operative with two other activists/researchers and called it Shifting Ground. This co-op will aim to carry out at least some of this work, combining small gatherings with interactive forums that make use of a variety of methods and technologies to network, reflect upon and teach about radical environmentalism and social activism more generally. As a project it is in the first stages of its infancy and it may yet fail unremarked amongst similar grand ideas. However, we remain excited by its possibilities and I look forward to being able to report future events in ECOS.
Graeme Chesters is Research Fellow in the Centre for Local Policy Studies at Edge Hill University College. His e-mail address is graeme@chesters.freeuk.com.