‘Are you a green Guide’? Conservation, environmentalism, and citizenship in the British Girl Guides Association, 1986-1992

ABSTRACT

This article explores the meaning and significance of environmental education within the British Girl Guides Association (GGA) in the period 1986–92. It considers how the youth organization reconceptualized meanings of citizenship in the wake of increased public and political concern surrounding the world environment. In doing so, it builds upon our understanding of the organization, by exploring changing understandings of citizenship within the movement in the context of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s Britain. It argues that a growing awareness of environmentalism in the latter half of the twentieth century saw a move towards an ideal of planetary citizenship, with members being encouraged to become agents of environmental change through their engagement with environmental issues and humanitarianism. This marked a shift in an organization that had long emphasized nationalistic ideas of duty and service, as organizational periodicals played a significant role in establishing in popular discourse an idea of green citizenship, which crossed geographical boundaries. Yet the organizational focus on world conservation also reinforced traditional models of citizenship, with an emphasis on civic duty and individual responsibility, which were reinforced in the social and political climate of the 1980s. Indeed, the construction of green citizenship within the organization was forged within, and reinforced, Thatcherite discourses of active citizenship and consumer duty, which had underpinned Thatcher’s ‘green turn’. Moreover, reflecting the emphasis on traditional gender roles in the 1980s, the green citizen was a gendered concept with girls encouraged to prepare for their roles as both young green consumers and future green homemakers. Therefore, green citizenship, as it was mobilized in the GGA, was a nebulous entity that was underpinned by a variety of contemporary socio-political discourses and played out on a variety of spatial registers, from the global to the individual.

KEYWORDS:

• Enivronmentalism
• citizenship
• youth organizations
• informal education
• Thatcherism

In 1989, Today’s Guide, a monthly magazine aimed at members of the popular youth movement the British Girl Guides Association (GGA), printed a quiz that asked readers to consider: ‘Are you a green guide?’ The quiz, which had become a popular format for the magazine, declared to readers:

Are you so ‘un-green’ that you think the greenhouse effect is the new single by the Hothouse Flowers? Are you helping the hole in the ozone layer to grow that little bit bigger? Now’s your chance to find out how much you are doing to make this world a green and pleasant land … ¹

The author, Justine Chatting, a regular contributor to the publication, then went on to include questions on the use of plastics, solar power and recycling, emphasizing the importance of the individual in making meaningful lifestyle changes that would positively impact the environment. In doing so, Chatting linked both a knowledge and understanding of environmental issues and individual environmentally conscious actions, with notions of good citizenship for members. This was not new; the organization, along with others, had historically presented conservation of the rural as a route to becoming a good citizen.² However, following the ‘green surge’ of the late 1980s, there was a shift in the way the natural world was framed within conceptualizations of citizenship in the movement, with a move away from ruralism to a focus on global environmental issues. Subsequently, nationalistic understandings of civic duty, which had previously dominated the educational agenda of the organization, were, under the banner of the environmentally conscious citizen, reconfigured around global notions of citizenship. Yet, as Chatting’s emphasis on the actions of the individual reader suggests, older models of civic responsibility remained, reflecting the social and political conditions of the period.

This article builds upon our existing understanding of the citizenship training provided by the British GGA, which was formed in 1910 to prepare girls for their role as mothers of the British Empire, through an analysis of the place of environmentalism in the informal education of the movement from 1986–92, a period which saw increased concern regarding environmental issues amongst politicians, the media and the public alike. Yet few historians have explored the role that youth organizations and their publications played in encouraging an interest in environmental issues. Indeed, at this time, the GGA maintained significant membership (with 715,000 uniformed members in 1987) and was thus a significant force for the education of girls; but little consideration has been given to the way that the training of the organization shifted to reflect changing social mores and attitudes in the 1980s – a time in which, as Stuart Hall argued, Margaret Thatcher ‘remade’ British society along ideological lines, reshaping constructions of British citizenship as she did so.³ At this time, Thatcherism’s rejection of post-war discourses of social citizenship that had been framed around social rights saw an emphasis on active citizenship, which was focused on individual responsibility and participation in the community.⁴ Meanwhile, her emphasis on ‘Victorian values’ meant that ideas of citizenship continued to be gendered, as the traditional family unit, and the importance of the mother within it was reinforced as a central lynchpin of British society.⁵ A study of the GGA thus provides historians with a useful case study to consider how organizational constructions of citizenship were formed within and framed by wider societal changes of the period. Indeed, while the 1980s saw the flourishing of numerous social movements (such as environmentalism) that challenged Thatcher’s hegemony through collective action, a study of the organization can reveal how such movements could be popularized and ultimately reinforce traditional concepts of citizenship.⁶

Through an analysis of a case study of the primary organizational magazines Today’s Guide (later renamed Guide Patrol in 1992) and Guiding, this article interrogates how contemporary discourses of citizenship were reflected in the environmental education in GGA magazines throughout the period 1986–92. In doing so, it builds upon recent revisions of our understanding of the 1980s, which have attempted to explore the ‘multiple trajectories’⁷ of the period ‘beyond the cast of Margaret Thatcher’s long shadow’⁸ to consider how these political and ideological shifts were lived out and sometimes contested in the experiences of the British people.⁹ Anabela Carvalho argued that political understandings of environmental change have been ‘historically produced, contested, and transformed by discursive practices’.¹⁰ For this reason, organizational magazines provide us with a unique lens through which to understand the environmental education within the organization, as well as how the focus, aims and agenda of the movement shifted to reflect social changes that were occurring in this period.¹¹ Of course, the content in these magazines (which by the end of the period had a low circulation) only provides us with a select view of the movement, as Guiding was, and still is, a very localized activity, with experiences being shaped by the locale and personalities within individual Guiding groups. Despite this, the magazines do provide space for the voices of members and leaders through letters pages and local articles, which gives us insight into how individuals responded to the content and suggested activities, and reveals how members were ‘active participants’ in shaping discussions about the environment.¹² The magazines thus provide historians with a useful lens to analyse the discourses within which the movement framed girls’ education, but also how this was shaped from within by the girls themselves, albeit this was limited by the dominant adult voice and editorship of the magazine.¹³

Utilizing organizational magazines, this article identifies how a growing awareness of environmentalism in British society in the latter half of the twentieth century saw a move towards global understandings of duty and the construction of an idea of planetary citizenship within the GGA, as members were encouraged to see themselves as agents of environmental change and given the knowledge and tools to ‘save the planet’. The first section of this article will demonstrate that ‘going green’ marked a significant shift in the movement, as the GGA moved away from nationalistic discussions of the environment and emphasized global notions of citizenship and social-democratic ideas of community. Members were encouraged to see themselves as agents for change both internationally and within their local communities and were positioned as members of the environmental movement. However, as the second section will explore, at the same time discussions of the environment both reflected and reinforced Thatcherite discourses around duty and individualism, with discussions of ‘green citizenship’ being built upon traditional ideas of moral and civic duty, which re-emerged in the 1980s in response to Thatcherism. Members were encouraged to undertake fundraising activities and contribute to the conservation of their local environment, reflecting the dominance of active forms of citizenship in British society in the latter half of the 1980s. Alongside this, as explored in section three, everyday acts of consumption were highlighted as being important routes to good citizenship. This reflected the way that Thatcherite discourses of individual responsibility and consumerism shaped discussions of the green citizen at this time. This was an implicitly gendered concept, framed by the understanding of girls as both young green consumers and future green homemakers, as expectations of emotional labour and domestic labour reflected the gendered models of citizenship that were reinforced in Thatcher’s Britain and remained after.¹⁴

Together these findings suggest that the GGA played an important role in popularizing environmentalism at the end of the twentieth century. However, while historians have identified how social-democratic movements and ideas, such as the ‘new green’ movement, challenged the Thatcherite emphasis on the individual in the 1980s, the emphasis on ‘going green’ within the British GGA worked both with and against hegemonic constructions of citizenship, as collective globalized understandings of citizenship continued to work alongside contemporary constructions of the active citizen. Green citizenship within this context was a concept that emphasized individual duty and women’s role as household consumers and homemakers, reflecting the discourse of Thatcher’s ‘green turn’. Such findings thus support scholars who have suggested that ‘green citizenship’ was, and still is, a complex and nebulous concept, which could embody both liberal traditions alongside more conservative conceptualizations, focused on obligation and duty.¹⁵

‘Going Green’: global environmentalism and the good citizen

In January 1990, an article in Today’s Guide, the organizational magazine aimed at members of the GGA aged around 10–16, declared that ‘Man has polluted the earth’s three vital elements – air, land and water, and it’s making our world seriously ill. But there is hope.’¹⁶ Meanwhile, a later piece in the June of that year addressed concerned readers: ‘The earth is dangerously polluted, acres of rain forest are being destroyed and many species are threatened. It’s not all doom and gloom though.’¹⁷ These are examples of how both magazines frequently identified the drastic nature of environmental change, which was presented as being an urgent and pressing issue by the end of the twentieth century. Perceived to be a product of modern times and of the ‘search for a more comfortable way of life’,¹⁸ environmental problems such as pollution, animal extinction and deforestation were represented as being a distinctly modern and unprecedented global concern. This was an idea that was also reflected in the contribution of members to the magazines. When interviewed in 1990 about the ‘mess that the world is in’, one member of the 3^rd Windsor Guide Company told the magazine that:

I think it’s really horrible that people are killing animals off and polluting everything. If we carry on everything will become extinct and children won’t be able to see all these things. Life will become pretty boring.¹⁹

Her statement reflected the apocalyptic attitude underpinning popular discussions of environmental concerns in both the magazines and in wider culture at the end of the twentieth century.²⁰

The mid-1980s in Britain saw the revival of ‘New Green’ environmentalism, notable for encompassing a range of social issues and being framed more by an ecocentric understanding of the earth and its relationship to humanity.²¹ At this time, influenced by attention-grabbing environmental disasters, particularly Chernobyl in 1986, the growing presence of environmental issues on the agenda of the European Union and the rising popularity of the Green Party, the British public became increasingly environmentally aware.²² This awareness led to a rise in membership of various environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as UK branches of Friends of the Earth (formed in 1971) and Greenpeace (formed in 1977), which Alwyn Turner argues is evidence of ‘a growing cultural groundswell that was, by the end of the decade, hard to ignore’.²³ Together these trends led to what Christopher Rootes and others have termed the ‘institutionalization’ of environmentalism in Britain by 1990, which was followed by the growth of environmental protests in the early part of the decade and the increased engagement of the younger generation with environmental issues, exemplified by cult figures such as the young environmentalist ‘Swampy’.²⁴ Moreover, while social background could often determine engagement with green issues and particularly green activism, discussions of environmental issues were increasingly popularized through television and news media.²⁵ For example, children’s television programmes, including the popular BBC shows Blue Peter and Newsround, informed viewers about environmental issues, which reflected the perception that children were interested in learning about such topics and also demonstrated the perceived importance of green issues to ‘would-be’ green citizens.²⁶ This section will explore how the GGA encouraged members to engage with world environmental issues and increasingly linked ‘green’ knowledge with good citizenship for members. In doing so, the emphasis on internationalism that had been present in the movement for some time replaced nationalistic understandings of national identity, as good citizenship was reconfigured around notions of a collective global community under threat from environmental disaster.

Reflecting the growing awareness of green issues in British society in the mid-late 1980s, GGA magazines increasingly addressed environmental issues throughout the mid-1980s and early 1990s. As one Guide from Cheshire, who contributed quite frequently to the letters page of Today’s Guide, wrote: ‘I am very worried about our world. It is dying rapidly and will not heal itself quickly unless we do something about it.’²⁷ Once again echoing the urgent tone of the magazine and other contributors, this member also stressed the importance of individual responsibility, with the use of ‘our world’ and ‘we’ emphasizing the role of young people in improving the situation.²⁸ This contribution thus reflects a self-awareness of the place of the organization and its members in an increasingly environmentally conscious world and how the magazine could act as community builders, in this case by encouraging a feeling of collective responsibility for the environment. In 1990, Guiding, the magazine aimed at young adult and adult members, declared that ‘[a]nimal rights, conservation and a healthy lifestyle have become key issues in the caring 1990s’.²⁹ Meanwhile, a Today’s Guide article of that same year noted that ‘[a]lthough the Girl Guides Association had always been conservation-minded, it has recently become very trendy to be seen recycling and conserving’.³⁰ Here the magazine emphasized the Girl Guides as forerunners in an environmental movement, with members represented as providing hope for the future of the planet. The significant presence of green topics in the magazine in this year suggests that, by 1990, an awareness of and concern about global environmental issues had been established within the organization.

However, while magazine contributor Marina Brown commented in 1991 that ‘going green’ was a recent ‘fad’, it is important to note that an emphasis on conserving the environment within the organization was not new in 1990.³¹ Historically the GGA had utilized a programme of educational activities, outdoor recreation and achievement badges to construct an ideal of citizenship that focused on gendered ideas of morality, civic duty and preparedness, which in the words of Sarah Mills ‘codified’ good and bad behaviour and reinforced ‘ideological behaviours, bodies and environments’.³² The natural world, and particularly rural spaces, were at the centre of such moral geographies of citizenship, as the GGA, along with other movements, drew upon nationalistic and romanticized ideas of the rural to frame their citizenship training.³³ Subsequently, the countryside was a symbolic space in which changing understandings of citizenship in the mid-twentieth century were worked through and developed. This continued in the 1980s, as the movement continued its emphasis on the conservation of Britain and particularly rural spaces. For example, building on the movement’s long history of community service and conservation, in the early years of the 1980s, the organization advertised their ‘Adopt and Cherish Project’, which encouraged members to take an active role in restoring an area of their community, to make a more ‘Beautiful Britain’ in their words: ‘large or small – a telephone box or a village green’.³⁴ However, while there remained an emphasis on conservation of the countryside, discussions of the natural world within the organization shifted in the mid-1980s, as global conceptualizations of citizenship became increasingly dominant within the movement, with members being told to think globally about the environment as part of their role in a worldwide sisterhood of Guides.³⁵

This was part of a much broader celebration of internationalism within the organization, with international content being one of the most prominent continuities and reoccurring themes within Guiding magazines throughout the 1980s and early 1990s. Members were regularly given information on Guiding around the world. For example, the regular feature of Today’s Guide in 1980, ‘Guides Overseas, Far and Wide’, explored the different experiences of members across the globe in monthly updates, while the late 1980s feature, ‘Window on the World’, introduced readers to the cultures and environments of different countries. Additionally, in more entertaining formats, Guides were taught about other countries. In the early 1980s, for example, a regular comic book style-cooking feature, ‘Souperkook’, introduced members to foreign delicacies such as Brazilian caramelized banana and Liberian rice bread, and also suggested activities including group exploration of global fashion.³⁶ This internationalism was also not a new development. Since its inception, as Kristine Alexander has shown, the Guide movement had fostered an ideal of ‘international sisterhood’ and cooperation, through world education, pen-pal schemes and international camps.³⁷ However, while in the early twentieth century this has often been underpinned by imperial discourses, by the 1980s, the idea of an international sisterhood had largely been removed from such imperial imaginaries and was framed by an emphasis on global citizenship, with a focus on common worldwide issues, including gender equality and environmental concerns.

The natural world became increasingly important to this understanding of the global citizen within the organization, as notions of green citizenship crossed ‘geographical and temporal boundaries’,³⁸ particularly in response to growing concerns about a variety of issues, including the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect, deforestation, acid rain and the extinction of animals. Thus, what had once been an organization primarily focused on creating a ‘Beautiful Britain’ was now encouraging members to work towards a better world. This ‘green agenda’ was varied, covering a range of issues and concerns and reflected the broad and diverse nature of the green movement in the later years of the twentieth century.

In the magazines, the emphasis on ‘going green’ was primarily achieved through the inclusion of articles on a range of environmental topics, including recycling, the greenhouse effect, Save the Whales, acid rain and various natural disasters. Such articles became prominent from the mid-1980s onwards, reflecting the growing interest in climate change in the popular press of the time, which rose significantly after Margaret Thatcher’s 1988 speech to the Royal Society, when, according to Anabela Carvalho, she transformed climate change from a ‘scientific matter into a political issue’ and remained a prominent part of the magazines into the 1990s.³⁹ The magazine articles gave detailed information about the science behind environmental change, as they were deemed to be important reads for those Guides aiming for their Conservation achievement badge. In 1988, Today’s Guide published an article that introduced and explained the key terms that were essential to the badge, including the meaning of ‘ecology’ and ‘conservation’, which readers were informed they would be assessed on.⁴⁰ Readers were also regularly given a level of scientific information concerning environmental issues. In December 1988, Today’s Guide discussed the topic of acid rain in its regular feature on nature, ‘Walk on the Wildside’. The article explained the role of traffic pollution in creating Nitrous Oxide, the main cause of acid rain.⁴¹ Meanwhile, in October 1987, readers were given a ‘balanced view’ on animal experimentation.⁴² Such articles also introduced members to environmental NGOs including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Vegetarian Society and the Recycling Association. This reflected the institutionalization of environmentalism at a time when organizations came to play an important role in the ‘production and dissemination of knowledge’ concerning environmental issues.⁴³ For example, in the 1988 feature on acid rain, it was suggested that readers purchase the Friends of the Earth Tree Health Guide or acid drop ‘kits’ from the youth environmental group Wildlife WATCH.⁴⁴ Such suggestions were frequent and reflected the way that the magazines presented their content as being one step on a long educational path for their members. Therefore, while Julian Matthews identified that coverage of environmental issues on children’s television could be simplified, the content of the magazines suggests that youth movements tackled environmental issues in more detailed ways.⁴⁵

Despite this, articles on environmental issues also included alarmist language to emphasize the urgency of the issues being discussed. For example, in 1989 Nick Skinner, a contributor to Today’s Guide, informed readers that ‘[p]ollution from cars, power stations, the use of aerosols and smoke from the burning of rain forests are resulting in a rise in the world’s temperature. Within our lifetimes, the world could become a very different place.’⁴⁶ He continued that the ‘heat trap’ caused by such changes ‘would make it impossible for life as we know it to exist’.⁴⁷ While based on scientific facts, the phrasing of the article stressed the dire situation and bleak future that faced readers, if they did not act now. Later in that same year, the magazine warned readers of the impact of cars which ‘scar the countryside and plough through our towns’ leading to ‘traffic jams that choke our cities’.⁴⁸ Through emotive language such as this, various articles and advertisements depicted the environment and wildlife as being the victims of human action. In 1989, for example, an advertisement for a ‘whale competition’ referred to ‘man’s brutal treatment of the gentle whale’.⁴⁹ Meanwhile, contributor Alison Matthews informed readers of Today’s Guide in 1989 that dolphins were ‘friendly, lovable creatures … in very serious danger – from man’.⁵⁰ A similar tone was struck by regular contributor Justine Channing in October 1991, when the author stated: ‘While you’re reading this article, animals are being drowned, burnt, starved and shot by man all over the world. … If things are allowed to carry on like this, one third of all living things will be wiped out by the year 2050.’⁵¹ Together, these articles, and many others, painted a bleak picture of a future in which humans had destroyed the natural world; they also reflect how notions of green citizenship can, as Teena Gabrielson identified, ‘entrench or privilege particular constructions of the natural world and human relations to it’.⁵²

This emotive language and urgency was a central element of calls to action within the movement. In 1989, contributor Nick Skinner declared to readers of Today’s Guidethat: ‘The big issues involved in the greenhouse effect can only be solved if all the governments in the world get together to stop pollution. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do your bit to help.’⁵³ A year later, Today’s Guide asserted: ‘It’s time we all got down to the serious business of Saving the Planet.’⁵⁴ Knowledge of green issues thus became central to understandings of citizenship within the organization, as readers were encouraged to become ‘friends of the planet’⁵⁵ by working towards the Conservation badge and learning about the key issues through the magazines, as well as their engagement with local environmental organizations.

Members were thus encouraged to envision a better future and to play an active role in achieving this. In July 1988, as part of its regular page ‘Live Issues’, Guiding magazine contributor Pat Herbert introduced readers to the ‘Global Co-operation for a Better World International’ project, which aimed to encourage individuals to contribute to discussions about the future of the planet. In covering the topic, the magazine suggested that Guiders might like to get their companies or packs involved in discussing ‘What kind of world do you want?’⁵⁶ As a starting activity, it was suggested that Guiders start with a minute silence to ‘think and imagine themselves in a future world’; alternatively, they could ‘try a short meditation to a background of John Lennon’s Imagine’ before asking Guides their own ideas on what would make a ‘better world’.⁵⁷ While it is difficult to know how far this suggested activity was used by Guiders, its inclusion in the magazine is revealing, as it exemplifies how some in the organization hoped to empower members to see themselves as architects of the future. Indeed, when advertising the ‘Kodak Conservation Awards’ for the World Wildlife Fund in 1987, the magazine celebrated how young people were being empowered to get involved in conservation and decide ‘how they want it to be; young people organizing themselves to achieve their aims’.⁵⁸ Thus members were positioned as agents of change, with members being encouraged to contribute actively to environmental causes in a variety of ways.

In particular, the magazines empowered readers to see themselves as agents for change in their local communities, positioning members as part of environmentalism as a social and political movement. For example, in 1989, a Today’s Guide quiz asked readers to consider how much paper was appropriate to use for a local church fête, and members were told to write to their local authorities for more information on paper-saving schemes.⁵⁹ Similarly, in 1990, when members were informed that a good starting point for saving the Earth was to work towards their Conservation achievement badge, they were advised to contact their local town councils or Members of Parliament, to make them aware of environmental concerns that were impacting their local areas.⁶⁰ Later that year, it was suggested that readers write to their local councils about the provision of bottle banks and other recycling facilities in their towns.⁶¹ At the heart of this was the expectation that members would think about and monitor the impact of global environmental issues on their localities and consider their roles in improving their local environments. In 1991, for example, Marina Brown highlighted that ‘going green’ was about thinking globally, such as campaigning to save the rainforests through fundraising, while at the same time acting locally. For example, the problem of litter was one that Brown suggested all Guides could address, firstly by organizing litter-picking activities and, secondly, by contacting local councils to ensure the provision of extra litter bins.⁶² Moreover, articles occasionally quite explicitly urged members to get involved with environmental protests in defence of the world environment. In 1991, when Today’s Guide asked readers to consider ‘How Green Are You?’ they suggested to members that those who ‘put the planet first’ had ‘probably started petitions to protest against a company’s abuse of the environment, as well as having written letters to the government.’⁶³ This is significant as it suggests that, as Stephen Brooke has noted with regard to lived experience at the time, citizenship was understood ‘across a wide spatial register, from the local to the national to the global’.⁶⁴

Members were also actively told to share their ideas about conservation and the environment within the magazines, shaping organizational discussions on the issue. In January 1990, Today’s Guide asked readers ‘Does pollution make your blood boil? What are you doing to help clean up your area? Don’t keep it to yourself – write to Write NOW [the letters page] and tell the world!’⁶⁵ Two months later the magazine questioned: ‘What do you think about Green issues … ? Why not write and let us know?’⁶⁶ Letters, as we have seen, detailed the passion and enthusiasm that readers had for ‘going green’ and detailed the efforts of individual girls and their families to save the planet, particularly in the early 1990s. Yet they also reveal the way that girls felt empowered to demand change both from the organization itself and from wider society. In December 1990, for example, a member from Cheshire, who had contributed to the magazine on numerous occasions, questioned why the GGFF had chosen a children’s charity for its Christmas fundraiser rather than an environmental cause. She wrote: ‘I think the money should have been put to help save the world. After all, if there was no world, then there would be no world, then there would be no children? Am I right?’⁶⁷ Additionally, the magazine also received criticism for its use of non-recycled paper. In June 1990, a member of the Robin Patrol of the 84^th Bristol (St Peter’s) Company demanded action from Today’s Guide on this issue. The member wrote passionately that:

After a Patrol debate about the environment we came to the conclusion that everything nowadays seems to be damaging the ozone layer. … We would like to know if you use recycled paper to print TODAY’S GUIDE. … We really enjoy your magazine and it would be comforting to know that you are doing everything possible to save our planet.⁶⁸

These letters demonstrate the way that members could feel authoritative on environmental issues and took calls for action seriously. Although they are lone voices, this letter suggests that members were collectively having discussions about green issues and, most importantly, demanding change. This is not to say that their letters had an impact. Nonetheless, they are evidence of the way that the magazine gave members a voice on such issues and demonstrates that the girls themselves believed they had a role to play in ‘saving the planet’, reflecting the way that active forms of green citizenship were embedded into discussions of green issues in the 1980s and early 1990s.⁶⁹

This section has argued that an emphasis on green issues in GGA magazines reflected the growth of new environmentalism as a social and political movement in the 1980s and 1990s, as the movement increasingly played a role in mainstreaming environmental concerns at the end of the twentieth. As a result, global notions of citizenship became increasingly prominent and overtook in significance the more nationalistic emphasis on civic duty that had earlier in the century dominated the education of the organization. Through an emphasis on green causes, members were encouraged to be agents of change by thinking globally and acting locally. In doing so, the movement constructed girls as political citizens, with a role to play in environmentalism as a collective, global social movement. This is not, however, to suggest that old notions of civic duty declined. Indeed, as the next section shall consider, in the context of Thatcherism, discourses of active citizenship framed the environmental content of the magazines, which regularly stressed volunteer service and contribution to the community through conservation efforts and fundraising.

Fundraising, volunteerism and the active citizen

Historically, fundraising had long played a role in the GGA, which as a charity relied on donations and subscriptions to maintain its activities. The 1980s, however, saw the significant presence of the discussion of fundraising initiatives within the magazines. Members were regularly reminded to contribute to the Girl Guide Friendship Fund (GGFF), a donation scheme set up in 1964 intending to support Guiding around the world, particularly in countries that were deemed to be ‘disadvantaged’. The fund financially supported Guides from a range of countries facing a variety of issues, which included the impact of natural disasters. Contributions to the fund were represented as being an important part of supporting the worldwide ‘sisterhood of Guiding’ and a ‘token of love and friendship which exists between Guides throughout the world’.⁷⁰ In 1985, members of the Brownies (a younger section of the movement) were challenged to ‘turn a cup of tea into a meal for a hungry child’ by organizing a charity tea party to raise funds for ‘hungry children in Africa’⁷¹ with Save the Children; in 1989, Today’s Guide advertised World Vision’s ‘24 hour famine’, which challenged members to go without food for a day to raise money for the same cause. The frequency and prominence of such fundraising adverts and articles within the magazines reflected how fundraising was, in the words of Today’s Guide, ‘part of being a Guide’⁷² and therefore directly linked to ideas of good citizenship within the organization. The frequency of these moral appeals reveals how understandings of citizenship within the movement drew upon nineteenth-century models of respectable citizenship, philanthropy and charity, to call members to action. This can be seen as a direct response to Thatcherite welfare policy, which saw the growth of ‘common-sense humanitarianism’ with the formation of charities and public relief campaigns, for both domestic and international causes.⁷³ Yet, as Lucy Robinson has argued, it must also be understood within Thatcherite discourses of active citizenship, in which individuals were responsible for community welfare, and had a moral obligation to contribute to addressing societal ills.⁷⁴

Such ideas framed the way members were encouraged to engage with environmental issues, with members encouraged to see it as their moral obligation to protect the environment through fundraising for world environmental issues such as whaling, deforestation and global warming. In 1987, it was suggested to readers of Guiding to support the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) by doing a sponsored ‘Walk for Wildlife’.⁷⁵ In 1988, Today’s Guide also told readers to take part: ‘If you’re mad on wildlife and would like to do your bit to protect Britain’s vanishing species, why not take part in the Heinz [food processing company] Walk for Wildlife.’⁷⁶ Additionally, in that same year, Guiding encouraged readers to learn more about and contribute to, the Animal Welfare Foundation, which was researching animal pain.⁷⁷ These initiatives reflect the way that environmentalism had been both institutionalized and commercialized by the end of the 1980s, as key environmental organizations or sponsored retail companies often implemented fundraising. Yet, readers of the magazine were also expected to design and implement their fundraising activities. In 1990, a Today’s Guide article by Justine Chatting introduced readers to the range of options for raising funds and encouraged them to be inventive with their activities. Suggested fundraising activities included: sponsored ironing – ‘to give your mum a rest’ – bathing in baked beans or a sponsored smile.⁷⁸ It was also suggested that members should merge environmentally friendly actions, such as recycling or litter picking, with fundraising. Chatting told readers that:

Sponsored walks can be a bit dull when you’re doing one for the twentieth time! Try something like a sponsored dog walk or a litter pick (sponsored per bag of rubbish you collect) – while you’re walking you can give a pet some exercise or clean up the environment at the same time!⁷⁹

Meanwhile, members were frequently given information on recycling drives, which could help raise money for, and awareness of, environmental issues and conservation groups, or for those ‘keen to be green’⁸⁰ could be a useful way of raising funds for the GGA.

Evidence suggests that members responded to calls for fundraising. A study of Guiding activities in 1989 revealed that within a 36-week period members would raise money for their Guiding unit an average of seven times and for charity four times.⁸¹ The successes of such fundraising were also celebrated regularly in the magazines, as the activity was the embodiment of Guiding principles, particularly service to others. Girls were often proud of their fundraising efforts and wrote to the magazine to report their successes. In 1990, a Guide from the 1^st Romsey Company in Hampshire told readers of her patrol’s charity work:

For our Patrol’s Christmas Good Turn we organized a Greenpeace evening. It included a sale of homemade tree decorations, a talk, live music and a sale of sweets, biscuits and drinks. We got our Patrol Entertainment pennant and raised £25.52 for Greenpeace.⁸²

The letter thus evidences the way that fundraising activities for environmental issues were undertaken, as members felt empowered as a community to ‘do their bit’ for the environment. Moreover, it is, once again, evidence of the way NGOs were embedded within discussions of ‘green issues’ in the magazine, with members engaging with a range of groups in a variety of ways.⁸³

Yet, alongside the emphasis on world issues and fundraising, members were also encouraged to participate in voluntary service to their local community, as they were consistently taught to protect and conserve their local landscape through regular advice and guidance, competitions, challenges and projects. Mirroring the earlier emphasis on local conservation, in 1985 readers were set an outdoors challenge related to ‘Caring for the out-of-doors’, which included keeping the local community free of litter for four weeks and contacting a local conservation society.⁸⁴ While in September 1989, Guiding encouraged the movement’s leaders to get involved in Richard Branson’s ‘Pondwatch’ scheme, a nationwide project which asked volunteers to ‘adopt a pond or stretch of canal with the aim of protecting the plant and animal life’.⁸⁵ Giving, in the words of the magazine, ‘the whole community the chance to improve its own environment’.⁸⁶ Discussions of conservation were thus couched in a discourse of active citizenship which, encouraged by Thatcher, emphasized the importance of community participation in the place of state support.⁸⁷ This was solidified through conservation competitions and challenges, run both within the organization and by external stakeholders, through which members were publicly rewarded or celebrated for their conservation efforts. In 1988, for example, an environmental competition asked competitors to improve one square mile of their neighbourhood and attracted over 2000 entries. It was won by six Girl Guides from Writtle village near Chelmsford, who were rewarded with a trip to Australia and a visit to the set of the popular television soap Neighbours. The Guides, who had undertaken litter picking, tree planting and cleaned the local village hall and war memorial, were celebrated by the Assistant Chief Constable for Suffolk as doing work that was ‘an important social and environmental investment for the future’.⁸⁸ Such activities thus reflected the way that the movement reinforced Thatcherite notions of active citizenship, which emphasized service to the community and individual contribution.⁸⁹

This section has argued that the emphasis on green citizenship within the GGA during the 1980s and early 1990s was framed by longer traditions of civic responsibility and volunteerism, which had re-emerged in British society because of Thatcherism. Mirroring the Thatcherite emphasis on active forms of citizenship, the movement continued to emphasize the importance of conservation of the local environment. At the same time, as the next section will argue, environmentalism within the organization was framed by the Thatcherite emphasis on consumer citizenship, with members encouraged to change everyday behaviour and particularly consumption habits to protect the environment. As a result, discussions of good environmental citizenship for girls emphasized the importance of girls as citizen-consumers and was often framed by expectations of members’ domestic role, with girls encouraged to become ‘green consumers’ in both personal and household consumption.

Being a green consumer and homemaker

In August 1991, Today’s Guide ran a fashion feature that advertised ‘Caring Cosmetics’, which highlighted cruelty-free makeup. Members were told that all products were made without animal testing: ‘So you can look good, as well as feel good, when you wear them.’⁹⁰ This advert and many similar features like it was a reflection of the way that individual consumption choices became central to understandings of green citizenship within the GGA and within the green movement more generally at this time.⁹¹ As Marina Brown told readers of Today’s Guide in 1991: ‘Choosing the goods you buy can influence the planet’s future.’⁹² Such statements are evidence of the way that, through an emphasis on ethical green consumerism, the organization was reflecting broader constructions of green citizenship at this time. As Ruth Oldenziel and Heike Weber have shown, mitigating the impact that humans have on the environment via the production and consumption of goods, in the form of actions such as recycling, have a long histor,y but were consolidated in the 1970s as they gradually became a central part of becoming an ethical consumer.⁹³ Indeed, as Matthew Hilton has identified, building on post-war models of consumer citizenship, the 1980s saw green consumerism ‘come of age’, with numerous consumer boycotts and the growth of ethical consumption as a ‘lifestyle’, encouraged by targeted advertising.⁹⁴ However, an emphasis on responsible consumerism at this time also reflected Thatcherite discourses of citizenship, in which ‘Citizens were being reconfigured as consumers’⁹⁵ and consumer choice was presented as a fundamental right of a free-market economy.⁹⁶ Indeed, Thatcher herself explicitly emphasized the importance of shopping green, suggesting that it was one of the principal ways that the British public could help improve the planet. In a 1989 TV interview for Channel Four, for example, she reminded viewers that: ‘Public opinion is very powerful. If you shop in supermarkets, you know you will deliberately go for aerosols, for example, that are ozone-friendly.’⁹⁷ This rhetoric was echoed in the magazines; as Marina Brown told readers of Today’s Guide in 1991: ‘Choosing the goods you buy can influence the planet’s future.’⁹⁸

The importance of consumer choice to becoming a green citizen was twofold. Firstly, readers could buy fundraising items, such as specially marked cans of Pedigree Chum or Whiskas to support World Animal Day in 1991 or Hedgehog’s Revenge, a 1989 board game sold to raise funds for the Royal Society for Nature Conservation.⁹⁹ These activities once again reflect the way that mainstream commercial companies were addressing a variety of green issues. Secondly, the magazine emphasized the importance of consumer choices as a political statement, which would lead to real change. Marina Brown told readers of Today’s Guide in 1991: ‘If you buy environmentally friendly products, more will be made and the manufacturers of non-biodegradable ones will eventually go out of business or be forced to change.’¹⁰⁰ Subsequently, readers were urged to express their concern about a range of issues (including the ozone layer and animal welfare) through their purchasing decisions. In 1989, Today’s Guide advertised a Clairol Ozone Friendly Hairspray, in which members are encouraged to ‘do their bit for the environment’, by cutting down on the aerosols they use. The advert reminded readers that:

Experts say that conventional aerosol sprays have helped create a hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica the size of the USA. So next time you buy a hair product check the small print – and make sure it’s not damaging the ozone layer.¹⁰¹

Similarly, consumer choice was also at the heart of the quiz with which this article began, which included questions on topics ranging from supermarket carrier bags to the choice of milk, gardening and gift-giving. The quiz questioned readers:

It’s your mate’s birthday and you want to get her a really nice, ‘green’ present. What would you buy her? … The problem with fancy chocs is that they usually use far too much paper and plastic in their wrapping. None of the Body Shop products are tested on animals and you can take the containers back to get a refill which saves a lot of waste.¹⁰²

Individual consumption was thus positioned at the centre of the discourse surrounding green issues. The magazines emphasized that global warming would have an impact on the personal lives and health of members and that it was the duty of each member to change their behaviour to prevent further damage. Accordingly, everyday acts such as driving, preparing food or disposing of waste were configured as essential elements of being a good global citizen. In a 1989 article on recycling, for example, readers were reminded by contributor Nick Skinner that ‘before you throw the rubbish in the bin, think about the planet’.¹⁰³ The magazine also stressed the personal repercussions of global warming. While Justine Chatting denied that deodorants could give you cancer, she did inform readers in 1989 that members might want to ‘cut back’ on the use of deodorant because the chlorofluorocarbons in aerosols decrease the ozone layer, and thus could ultimately give you skin cancer.¹⁰⁴ Furthermore, in the early 1990s, the magazines increasingly acknowledged the environmental and health benefits of vegetarianism and suggested members revise their eating habits to become more environmentally friendly. In 1990, when members were asked ‘How Green Are You?’ the quiz informed readers that if you gained a high score, it was likely that ‘you take environmental issues very seriously and try to live in a way that doesn’t damage our planet. You are probably a vegetarian or vegan and you’ve certainly tasted organic food.’¹⁰⁵ We can thus see the way the figure of the consumer citizen was being constructed, as members were encouraged to make ethical, globally conscious decisions as consumers to ‘go green’. This reflects, as Andrew Jones has identified, the way British society was ‘reshaped’ during the 1980s with the emergence of ‘individualised and market-driven forms of action articulated through the realms of consumption’.¹⁰⁶

However, the emphasis on green consumption within the organization was also a reflection of the centrality of consumerism to constructions of girlhood at this time. The teenage consumer, which had emerged as a dominant economic force earlier in the century, had been increasingly targeted through magazines and advertising throughout the post-war period.¹⁰⁷ This was increasingly addressed by the organization which, throughout the 1980s and 1990s, frequently acknowledged the consumer power of members by including advertisements and product reviews within its pages. In 1989, Today’s Guide included the ‘Test Run’ page, in which members reviewed all manner of consumer items, including sleeping bags and personal stereos.¹⁰⁸ Fashion items and music articles were also included, in which readers were encouraged to learn about and participate in the latest trends. This was partly about attracting members, with the magazines attempting to gain and hold the attention of the teenage audience, and partly a reflection of the way that modern girlhood was understood through the prism of consumerism. Thus, while Jim Gledhill has argued that the organization in the 1960s found it ‘uneasy’ to successfully balance the needs of the modern girl with the agenda of the organization (and the parents), it could be argued that in the long 1980s the magazine acted as a gateway between the educational aims of the organization and a self-consciously ‘modern’ agenda.¹⁰⁹ This was particularly true after the rebranding of both magazines in the late 1980s and early 1990s, which was deemed particularly successful by some members. According to one member of the 18^th Woodford (All Saints) Company in London writing to the magazine in 1990, the new look had ‘the ingredients of a successful teenage magazine’ and had ‘given the image of the Girl Guides a much-needed face lift, and will go some way to killing the fuddy-duddy reputation of our Association’.¹¹⁰ The emphasis on consumer choice, particularly with regard to dietary habits or beauty regimes, within the magazines can thus be understood as part of how the organization was attempting to address the needs and wants of the ‘modern’ girl, which was once part of a much deeper period of questioning and change within the movement at the end of the twentieth century.¹¹¹

Yet, while the construction of the green consumer within the magazines reflects an attempt to address the changing lives of adolescent girls at this time, the emphasis on environmental issues also reveals how articulations of green citizenship were built on traditional notions of gender roles in contemporary Britain. Indeed, while the organizations’ brother movement, the Boy Scouts Association, had begun accepting older female members (15–20) in 1976 and became fully mixed by 1991, an understanding of the distinctive needs and experiences of girls continued to underpin the activities of the GGA.¹¹² Subsequently, discussions of green consumption within the magazines frequently included the expectations of the domestic role that girls would fulfil.

Members were encouraged to influence consumption within the domestic sphere, by stewarding and shaping the consumption of family members. In 1990, Today’s Guide asked readers to assess ‘How environmentally friendly are you at home?’ and make themselves aware of the aerosol cans, washing powder, washing-up liquid, cleaning materials and bleach that were in their household.¹¹³ Meanwhile, Marina Brown told readers in 1991 that a ‘green’ Guide should guarantee their household was energy efficient, for example by ensuring electrical appliances were always turned off, and even went as far as to suggest that Guides should investigate their loft for insulation, as this would keep the house warm and cut down on the need to use energy.¹¹⁴ In making these suggestions, the authors were often reflecting on the gendered nature of work within the home, which at this time remained largely intact. Indeed, the expectation that girls would help their mother with the housework was evident from a 1990 article on ‘How to … have a Veggie Christmas’, in which it was suggested that members should give their mum ‘a break’ by volunteering to cook the Christmas dinner.¹¹⁵ Similarly, the nature of the questions in the ‘Are you a green Guide’ quiz from 1990, also written by Chatting, reveals the continued expectation that girls were ‘helping out’ around the house. The quiz posed scenarios asking readers what they would do, such as ‘Your mum asks you to nip down to shops to get her a few bits and pieces’¹¹⁶ and ‘Your mum’s fed up with the milkman because he doesn’t deliver on time. She asks you to pop out and get a couple of pints.’¹¹⁷ Therefore, despite the significant modernization of the movement at the end of the twentieth century, we can see how gendered expectations remained. Reflecting the reassertion of normative gender roles in Thatcher’s Britain, girls were understood as being able to influence household consumption due to the expectation of their role within the domestic sphere.

This gendering of green citizenship was also reflected in the language and tone of the magazine, as underpinning discussions of environmental issues within the magazines was often an expectation regarding girls’ emotional investment in the environment. For example, the emphasis on caring was central to the ‘Adopt and Cherish’ competition early in the decade, with the word ‘cherish’ emphasizing the expected attention and commitment that Guides would need to give to their chosen area. Moreover, this emphasis on the practice of caring for the environment and wildlife could also be more explicit regarding emotions. Contributor to Today’s Guide, Heather Gorst, warned readers in 1986 that when visiting the countryside they should be ‘caring and responsible enough to take any litter back home with you, for as far you know a cow may swallow a plastic bag with fatal results or a fox can cut a paw on some broken glass’.¹¹⁸ Warning readers not to pick flowers or disturb baby animals, she concluded: ‘Do remember at all times that wild animals and birds are nervous and sensitive creatures, so respect them as such. Use patience, understanding and love, and all will be well.’¹¹⁹ The discussion of conservation thus reflected the gendered discourse that framed discussions of environmental action, as well as the way that emotional labour had been and remained enshrined within Guiding.¹²⁰

Moreover, the importance of protecting the environment was regularly framed around the impact that environmental destruction would have on the health and well-being of the future generation. In an article on cars in 1989, readers of Today’s Guide were informed that acid rain could ‘damage children’s brains’.¹²¹ Meanwhile, when in 1990 the movement provided a ‘Holiday for Chernobyl’s Children’, a participant in the scheme commented: ‘When they arrived they were pale-skinned and tired-looking, but to see them now, rosy cheeked and laughing, is wonderful!’,¹²² highlighting the impact that the nuclear disaster had had upon the health and well-being of the children. This rhetoric reflected the language of Thatcher herself who, on World Environment Day 1989, declared to the country: ‘I invite everyone to re-dedicate themselves on this World Environment Day to secure “Our Common Future”. We must resolve today to pass on this future intact to our children and our grandchildren.’¹²³ Significantly, members echoed this concern themselves, and often referred to children in their correspondence with the magazines. In 1986, a leader from the Royton District Ranger Unit in Lancashire informed Guiding that the use of nuclear fuels risked ‘our children and our children’s children contracting leukaemia, or any of the genetic disorders connected with radioactive discharge. Our children’s health is too high a price to pay for the nuclear industry.’¹²⁴ Similarly, in 1991, commenting in Today’s Guide on illegal rubbish tips, one member informed the magazine that ‘I think that this type of uncaring behaviour should be stopped and the tips cleared up. As well as being an eyesore, many innocent young children and animals could be hurt on such illegal dumps as these.’¹²⁵ Clearly then, the alarmist rhetoric of magazines filtered into the opinions and concerns of the readers, with gendered discourses around the environment reflected in readers’ letters.¹²⁶ This emphasis reflects a tendency within the green movement for women to be attributed the more caring or nurturing roles.¹²⁷ However, it was also a reflection of how Thatcherite discourses of gender were evident within the movement’s environmental education. The green citizen was thus an implicitly gendered concept, framed by the understanding of girls as both young green consumers and future green homemakers.

Conclusion

In August 2021, the GirlGuiding (previously the GGA) website informed visitors to the site that one of the key roles for members of the organization in the twenty-first century is as ‘Planet Protectors’ and, as part of this role, members are encouraged to work towards the Conscious Consumer badge, informing that it will teach them to ‘Be conscious about what you buy, and make a real difference to people and the planet’. In recent years, with the growth of youth environmental activism centred on the issue of climate change, there has been increasing interest in the role of children and youth in environmental politics. Yet, in declaring their members as ‘Planet Protectors’, GirlGuiding is building on a long history of notions of environmental citizenship within the organization. This discourse of planetary citizenship and consumer influence, as this article has demonstrated, can be charted back to the 1980s, when GGA magazines published an increased number of articles, quizzes, comment pieces and letters on the issue of environmentalism, urging readers to learn more about the green movement and to engage with a range of environmental issues. This was solidified in the early 1990s when Today’s Guide published a quiz which encouraged readers to ‘put the planet first’ by making environmentally conscious lifestyle changes. The quiz, which was an excerpt from Debbie Silver and Bernadette Vallely’s The Young Person’s Guide to Saving the Planet (1990), ended by emphasizing the importance of individual action, exclaiming to readers: ‘What you do does count!’¹²⁸ To some extent, this content represented an important shift in organizational discourses of citizenship. As nationalistic concerns about the rural were subsumed by wider concerns regarding the destruction of the planet, environmentalism became central to the construction of global citizenship within the organization. This marked a significant shift in the GGA’s citizenship training and solidified the long-term move towards internationalism, which had begun in the interwar period. Girls were urged to see themselves as members of a global collective of members (‘sisterhood’) and as part of an important social movement. Evidently, the organization and its media played a central role in popularizing green concerns and giving prominence to green citizenship at the end of the twentieth century.

However, a case study of the GGA also reveals how, as scholars have identified, green citizenship was a nebulous and politically fluid concept, shaped by the social and political context in which it emerged. Indeed, while on the one hand, meanings of green citizenship emphasized members as part of a global collective, which stemmed from an institutional emphasis on internationalism, on the other it emphasized the importance of individual action, including volunteer service and fundraising, reflecting the continued presence of traditional models of civic responsibility that were reinforced in the context of Thatcherism in the 1980s. Notions of global citizenship thus worked alongside an emphasis on active citizenship, as members were encouraged to participate in political discussions in a multitude of everyday spaces. At the same time, understandings of green citizenship within the movement also built upon neoliberal ideas regarding individualism and consumerism within British society in the 1980s. Green citizenship was thus constructed on several spatial registers: the global, the local and the individual, reflecting the way that, as Chris Moores and Florence Sutcliffe-Braithwaite have identified, neoliberal ideas about individualism and citizenship were embedded in the daily lives of the British people in the 1980s. Thus evidently, as Sarah Kenny has suggested, everyday social and cultural spaces, including GGA periodicals, were sites in which political discourses were disseminated, lived out and negotiated.¹²⁹

Indeed, members actively played a role in shaping the environmental discussions that were being had within the organization, with members feeling empowered in their role as future green citizens. Girls were thus positioned as vital actors in social and political change and were at the forefront of driving the green agenda in the organization. This is significant. Histories of the GGA have long established the difficulty the movement had in providing an education for girls that both embraced modern shifts in girlhood, while at the same time reinforcing the dominant role of women in society.¹³⁰ A case study of the environmental education of the organization reveals that such tensions continued at the end of the twentieth century. Indeed, while GGA members were empowered to influence change, a study of the environmental content of the magazines reveals how, to an extent, gendered discourses remained within the movement. Indeed, discussions of ‘going green’ were implicitly gendered, with expectations of girls’ domestic responsibility and emotional labour underpinning the magazines’ discussions of members’ roles in creating environmental change and ‘saving the planet’. The green citizen was thus a gendered concept, which drew upon long-established ideas of women’s roles in British society. Girls were positioned as agents of environmental change, but largely in their role as young green consumers and future green homemakers.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sian Edwards

Sian Edwards is a Senior Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Winchester, UK. Her first monograph, Youth Movements, Citizenship and the English Countryside, was published in 2018 by Palgrave Macmillan and explores the place of the countryside in the citizenship training of mid-century youth organizations. Her most recent research interests include popular environmentalism and youth culture at the end of the twentieth century and the experiences of rural youth in post-war Britain.

Notes

1. Today’s Guide, October 1989, 35.

2. Edwards, Youth Movements; Matless, Landscape and Englishness. See also Roberts, “Cultivating an ‘Earthy Paradise’”; and Lorimer, “Happy Hostelling in the Highlands” and Mills, Mapping the Moral Geographies of Education, chapter 5. For a discussion of how conservation education became a vehicle for nationalism and patriotism in Britain (and elsewhere) in the early twentieth century see Marsden, “Conservation Education.”

3. This included 241,411 Guides and 16,991 Ranger Guides. Figures are taken from the Guide Census. Guiding, January 27, 1988. For the most recent and significant work on the GGA see: Alexander, Guiding Modern Girls. Notable exceptions to this pre-Second World War focus include: Proctor, Scouting for Girls; Gledhill, “White Heat, Guide Blue”; Edwards, Youth Movements. There has also been significant work in the field of human geography and sociology, see: Kraftl and Mills, eds, Informal Education. For a discussion of Thatcherism and concepts of citizenship see: Hall, ‘The Great Moving Right Show’; Lenon Campos Maschette, “Revisiting the Concept of Citizenship,” 2.

4. Hilton, Moores & Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, `New Times revisited'; Grant, “Historicizing Citizenship in Post-War Britain,” 1203.

5. For further discussion of gender and the family in Thatcher’s Britain see: Reinhold, “Through the Parliamentary Looking Glass”; Purvis, “What was Margaret Thatcher’s Legacy’ for Women?”; Anderson, “Empire’s Fetish”; Beers, “Thatcher and the Women’s Vote.”

6. Payling, 'Socialist Republic', 612. See also Payling, ‘City limits’.

7. Ibid., 21.

8. Brooke, “Living in ‘New Times’,” 21.

9. Moores, “Thatcher’s Troops?”; and Sutcliffe-Braithwaite, “Discourses of ‘Class’.”

10. Carvalho, “Representing the Politics,” 1.

11. Although it is important to note that publication within the magazine did not mean that the movement endorsed the ideas or topics being discussed.

12. Catherine Sloan, “Periodicals of an Objectionable Character,” 769.

13. Kristine Alexander has discussed the importance of reading adult sources such as these ‘against the grain’. Alexander, “Can the Girl Guide Speak?,” 142.

14. This study ends in 1992 when there was a change to the Guiding handbook and a ‘second and more sustained wave of environmental protest began’ after the election of John Major. Rootes, “Britain,” 48.

15. Horton, “Demonstrating Environmental Citizenship?,” 127–8.

16. Today’s Guide, January 16, 1990.

17. Today’s Guide, June 18, 1990.

18. Today’s Guide, June 18, 1990.

19. Today’s Guide, January 17, 1990.

20. Turner, Rejoice! Rejoice! 325.

21. Norris, “Are we all Green now?,” 329. Jodi Burkett has discussed the shift from anthropocentric to ecocentric views on the environment in her work on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Burkett, “The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament,” 625.

22. Turner, Rejoice! Rejoice! 325–6, 328.

23. Ibid., 326.

24. Rootes, “Britain,” 20 and Paterson, “Swampy Fever,” 151–2.

25. Norris, “Are we all Green now?”, 320, 338; Hilton, “Politics is Ordinary,” 235.

26. Matthews,“Making It Our Own,” 561. See also: Hawley, “Children’s Television.” Popular children’s cartoons and television also disseminated green ideas on an international scale. See: Kujundžić and Mišík, “Powering up the Technodrome” and King, “Captain Planet and the Planeteers.” Green citizenship was a concept that emerged from several shifts, including changing understandings of ownership of the environment through debates such as the right to roam, a growing awareness of the universality of human rights and the increasing environmental concerns, and became prominent in discussions of citizenship at the end of the twentieth century. Dean, “Green Citizenship,” 491.

27. Today’s Guide, May 15, 1991.

28. Julian Matthews has noted the use of this language in Children’s television coverage of environmental issues to “engender a sense of belonging”. Matthews, “Making It Our Own,” 558.

29. Guiding, November 1990, 32.

30. Guiding, October 1990, 38.

31. Today’s Guide, April 21, 1991.

32. Mills, “An Instruction in Good Citizenship,” 127.

33. Edwards, Youth Movements; Matless, Landscape and Englishness; Roberts, “Cultivating an ‘Earthy Paradise’”; Lorimer, “Happy Hostelling in the Highlands.” See also the forthcoming work: Mills, Mapping the Moral Geographies of Education, chapter 5. For a discussion of how conservation education became a vehicle for nationalism and patriotism in Britain (and elsewhere) in the early twentieth century see: Marsden, “Conservation Education.” For a discussion of social rights and the countryside within the GGA and Britain generally see: Edwards, Youth Movements, 15–20, 251; and Matthew Grant, “Historicizing Citizenship in Post-War Britain,” 1191–2.

34. Today’s Guide, February 1983, 30–1.

35. This is not to suggest that there were no ongoing debates about conservation and the use of the countryside in British society. See: Hill, “Acid House and Thatcherism” and Halfacree, “Out of Place in the Country.” For a longer history of debates around conservation in this period see: Howkins, The Death of Rural England, chapter 10.

36. Today’s Guide, February 1988, 14–15.

37. For discussions of internationalism within the GGA before the 1980s see: Alexander, “The Girl Guide Movement and Imperial Internationalism,” 44. See also: Edwards, Youth Movements and Citizenship, 230–40.

38. Lister, “New Conceptions of Citizenship,” 52.

39. Carvalho, “Representing the Politics,” 4.

40. Today’s Guide, June 18, 1990.

41. Today’s Guide, December 1988, 12–13.

42. Today’s Guide, October 1987, 25.

43. Rootes, “The Transformation of Environmental Activism,” 4.

44. Today’s Guide, December 1988, 12–13.

45. Matthews, “Making It Our Own,” 559.

46. Today’s Guide, July 1989, 10–11.

47. Today’s Guide, July 1989, 10–11.

48. Today’s Guide, October 1989, 10–11.

49. Today’s Guide, December 1989, 29.

50. Today’s Guide, November 1989, 40–1.

51. Today’s Guide, October 1991, 8–9.

52. Matthews, “Making It Our Own,” 558; Gabrielson, “Green Citizenship,” 441.

53. Today’s Guide, July 1989, 10–11.

54. Today’s Guide, April 1990, 30–1.

55. Guiding, December 1990, 38.

56. Guiding, July 1988, 10–11.

57. Ibid.

58. Guiding, January 1987, 6.

59. Today’s Guide, October 1989, 35.

60. Today’s Guide, June 18, 1990.

61. Today’s Guide, July 1990, 26.

62. Today’s Guide, March 1991, 30.

63. Today’s Guide, April 1990, 30–1.

64. Brooke, “Living in ‘New Times,’” 28.

65. Today’s Guide, January 17, 1990.

66. Today’s Guide, March 1990, 6.

67. Today’s Guide, December 1990, 15.

68. Today’s Guide, June 1990, 15.

69. Today’s Guide, July 1991, 18.

70. Today’s Guide, May 1980, 48.

71. Guiding, July 1985, 13.

72. Today’s Guide, June 1991, 21.

73. Jones, “Band Aid Revisited,” 199.

74. Robinson, “Putting the Charity Back,” 410–11.

75. Guiding, June 1987, 11.

76. Today’s Guide, October 1988, 9.

77. Guiding, August 1988, 12–13.

78. Today’s Guide, May 1990, 46.

79. Today’s Guide, May 1990, 46.

80. Today’s Guide, March 1991, 33.

81. Guiding, August 1989, 22–4.

82. Today’s Guide, May 1990, 15.

83. Rootes, “Enivronmental NGOs.”

84. Today’s Guide, January 1985, 18–19.

85. Guiding, September 1989, 12.

86. Ibid.

87. Moores, “Thatcher’s Troops.”

88. Guiding, August 1989, 7.

89. Nam-Kook, “Revisiting New Right Citizenship,” 225.

90. Today’s Guide, August 1991, 4.

91. McCormick, British Politics and the Environment, chapter 6.

92. Today’s Guide, April 21, 1991.

93. Oldenziel and Weber, “Introduction: Reconsidering Recycling,” 347–8.

94. Hilton, Consumerism in 20^th Century Britain, 313, 317. See also: Parker, ‘The role of the consumer‐citizen in environmental protest'. For a longer history of the relationship between consumption and citizenship see: Trentmann, “Bread, Milk and Democracy.”

95. Alex Mold, “Making the Patient-Consumer,” 510.

96. Edwards, “Financial Consumerism,” 213.

97. Margaret Thatcher, TV Interview for Channel 4 (London Ozone Conference), March 7, 1989. https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107597 accessed July 1, 2021. For further discussion of Thatcher’s approach to the Environment see: McCormick, British Politics and the Environment, chapter 6.

98. Today’s Guide, April 21, 1991.

99. Today’s Guide, October 1991, 9 and Today’s Guide, March 1989, 7.

100. Today’s Guide, April 21, 1991.

101. Today’s Guide, January 1989, 21.

102. Today’s Guide, October 1989, 35, 39.

103. Today’s Guide, January 1989, 16.

104. Today’s Guide, June 1989, 11.

105. Today’s Guide, April 21, 1991.

106. Jones, “Band Aid Revisited.”

107. Tinkler, “Are You Really Living?”; McRobbie, Feminism and Youth Culture; O’Neill, “People Loves Player’s.”

108. Today’s Guide, January 1989, 28–9; Today’s Guide, Aphttps://www.scouts.org.uk/volunteers/inclusion-and-diversity/including-everyone/girls-and-women-in-scouts/ril 1989, 27.

109. Jim Gledhill, “White Heat, Guide Blue,” 78.

110. Today’s Guide, June 1990, 15.

111. Changes include the revision of Guiding uniforms (1981 and 1990), the introduction of a new Guide handbook (1992), and changes to the wording of the Guide Promise (1993) and Guide Law (1996).

112. The Scout Association, “Girls and Women in the Scouts,” https://www.scouts.org.uk/volunteers/inclusion-and-diversity/including-everyone/girls-and-women-in-scouts/, accessed August 15, 2021.

113. Today’s Guide, June 1990, 18–19.

114. Today’s Guide, April 21, 1991.

115. Today’s Guide, December 1990, 16.

116. Today’s Guide, October 1989, 35.

117. Today’s Guide, October 1989, 35.

118. Today’s Guide, May 1986, 11.

119. Ibid.

120. Alexander, Guiding Modern Girls, 201.

121. Today’s Guide, October 1989, 10–11.

122. Guiding, December 1990, 49.

123. Margaret Thatcher, “Our Common Future,” World Environment Day message, 3 June 1989. https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/107678, accessed, July 1, 2021.

124. Guiding, December 1986, 50.

125. Today’s Guide, February 1991, 14.

126. Gendered discourses around the future of the earth were also present in anti-nuclear campaigns in Britain throughout the post-war period, including at the 1980s anti-nuclear protests at Greenham Common. See Burkett, “Gender and the Campaign” and Liddington, Feminism and Anti-Militarism since 1820.

127. Autio, Heiskanen, and Heinonen, “Narratives of ‘Green’ Consumers,” 49.

128. Today’s Guide, April 1990, 30–1.

129. Kenny, S. “A ‘Radical Project’”, 559.

130. Alexander, Guiding Modern Girls; Edwards, “Doing Nature”; Gledhill, “White Heat, Guide Blue” and Magyarody, “Odd Woman, Odd Girls.”