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ABSTRACT
This article analyses the cross-border connections of activism against the civil use of nuclear power in Great Britain and West Germany during the 1970s. Through a novel synthesis of the existing literature and broad new source material, it aims at a more differentiated insight into the nature of transnationalism and its importance for anti-nuclear power activism. The article advances the first comprehensive historiographic investigation to date on British activism against the civil use of nuclear power which emerged during the second half of the 1970s, albeit as a relatively weak movement. A central argument of the article is that anti-nuclear power activism was significantly marked by transnational reference spaces, but that this transnationalism was ambiguous because its scope and intensity were often rooted in the specific national contexts and simultaneously had nationally specific repercussions on the activists. The comparative perspective reveals interesting peculiarities. In the UK – except for Scotland – restricted transnational openness, mostly to English-speaking and transatlantic ties, went along with an especially limited dynamic and impact of the movement. The anti-nuclear movement in West Germany, conversely, was exceptionally strong, and developed a regionally rooted, nationally shaped and cosmopolitan-oriented self-image that included high inclinations towards transnational openness. It was exactly this openness which, in return, contributed to further enhancing a specific West German identity of the movement, entailing practices of direct action and sometimes even violent behaviour.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Sonja Levsen and Kiran Klaus Patel, who initiated this publication project and monitored it with inspiring commitment, as well as the other authors of this special issue for useful comments. My thanks are also due to my colleagues from the ‘History of Sustainabilities: Discourses and Practices since the 1970s’ research project at the Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. A number of anti-nuclear power activists, who are mentioned in the notes, provided helpful information and material, for which I am grateful. Finally, I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful suggestions and Susan Richter and Katharine McEnery for linguistic proofreading.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. On Wyhl see note 10, and on Seabrook see note 87.
2. See, also for the quotes, SCRAM No 5, April/May 1978, 6–7. See additionally SCRAM No 4, February/March 1978, 2; SCRAM No 6, June/July 1978, 3–6, 12; Undercurrents No 28, June/July 1978, 3; “The French join Scots at sit-in,” Express, May 7, 1978; “Rally Pledges to Halt Power Plant,” Glasgow Herald, May 8, 1978; Klinke, SCRAM.
3. Protesters lived on site from September 30, 1978 until construction began on November 14, 1978. See “Torness: An Atom of Truth?”, Edinburgh Evening News, November 2, 1978; “Police Oust Protest Group: It’s Bulldozed! Demo Cottage Goes Under,” Edinburgh Evening News, November 14, 1978.
4. E.g. in their 1978 “Declaration of Nuclear Resistance,” the Torness protesters claimed: “Our stand is in the defence of the health and safety of ourselves, of future generations and of all living creatures on this planet.” See leaflet with rally programme “Torness Reactor – Scrap it,” May 1978. Accessed July 29, 2020. http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/scram-archive/
5. See Mende, “Nicht rechts, nicht links”; Rothgang, Die Friedens- und Umweltbewegung, 54–70.
6. The ambiguity of the English term ‘national’ poses certain difficulties for the analysis. It designates the nation-state level, but it can also refer to ‘small nations’ without their own state. In the following I shall label as ‘transnational’ only those contacts and commonalities which transcended the borders of nation-states.
7. To some extent, my findings build on Holger Nehring’s research on the British and West German protests against nuclear weapons during the 1950s and 1960s. Nehring argues that these movements were marked simultaneously by cross-border dimensions and national or regional perspectives – and that especially in the Federal Republic of Germany, the 1950s and 1960s ‘discussions about the military use of nuclear energy prefigured the tropes which were to resurface in the environmental movements of the 1970s and 1980s’. See Nehring, “Cold War,” quote on 150; Nehring, “National Internationalists”; Nehring, Politics of Security.
8. There was no noteworthy anti-nuclear activism in Northern Ireland during the investigated time period, as the country did not have its own nuclear power stations, and there were no plans to build any. Northern Ireland had its own electricity grid and electricity market, separate from those of Great Britain. Also, the political situation in Northern Ireland did not allow alternative protest movements to evolve.
9. On the ‘ecological turning point’ see Kupper, “Die ‘1970er Diagnose’”; McNeill, “The Environment”; Engels, “Modern Environmentalism”; Uekötter, Deutschland in Grün, 137–49. Societal debates on energy questions were triggered in particular by the 1972 report to the Club of Rome, “The Limits to Growth” and by the 1973 oil crisis. See Kupper and Seefried, “A Computer’s Vision of Doomsday”; Graf, Oil and Sovereignty.
10. First critiques of civil nuclear power had already been voiced during the 1960s, within the contexts of the far-right World Union for Protection of Life. See Radkau, Natur und Macht, 303–4. On the Wyhl protests, see, in particular, Engels, Naturpolitik, 350–76; Rusinek, “Wyhl”; Augustine, Taking on Technocracy, 93–125; Bürgel, Das Kreuz, 167–78; Tompkins, Better Active; Milder, Greening Democracy, 19–128.
11. Tompkins, Better Active, 16. On Gorleben, see Schmiechen-Ackermann et al., eds., Der Gorleben-Treck; Poggendorf, Gorleben; Tiggemann, Die “Archillesferse.” On contacts between West German Gorleben activists and East German opponents to the nuclear waste deposit at Morsleben (GDR), which developed tentatively in the late 1980s, see Kirchhof, “East–West.”
12. Tompkins, Better Active, 87.
13. See for numerous examples: BNA EG 7/191. Many events had only a couple of dozen participants. The risks of nuclear power stations had first been discussed in alternative, environmentalist and peacenik forums starting around 1970. For instance, contributions in The Ecologist, one of Britain’s most important and oldest environmental magazines (founded in 1970), and in Undercurrents, a periodical published starting in 1972, testify to early critical discussions about nuclear power in the UK.
14. Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Sixth Report.
15. Die Windscale-Untersuchung.
16. See SCRAM No 5, April/May 1978, 6; Undercurrents No 28, June/July 1978, 3; Resurgence issue 69, July/August 1978, 6–8.
17. See references in note 1 and SCRAM No 10, February/March 1979, 1; SCRAM No 11, April/May 1979, 1; SCRAM No 13, August/September 1979, 12; SCRAM No 14, October/November 1979, 3. For an analysis of the Torness events, see Welsh, Mobilizing Modernity, 165–82.
18. See “Anti-Nuclear Campaign Steering Committee – Minutes of Meeting 30/3/80, London,” in Primary Social Sources Programme: The Left in Britain, 24; “A.N.C. Newsletter,” in ibid., 41–2; Note by Brian F. Potts (BNFL), “March for a Nuclear Free Future – Harrisburg Day Rally in Trafalgar Square on 29 March 1980,” April 1, 1980 BNA AB 48/1829.
19. Salisbury, Secrecy, 198.
20. Important anti-nuclear power organizations in the UK, being independent from the peace movement’s Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), included Half-Life, the Scottish Campaign to Resist the Atomic Menace (SCRAM), Friends of the Earth (FoE) and the Anti-Nuclear Campaign (ANC). Relevant periodicals were, in particular, SCRAM and Conservation News. One of the prominent anti-nuclear power activists was Walt Patterson. Moreover, government files (see relevant endnotes in the following) show that state actors, too, did not subsume the anti-nuclear power activism of the 1970s under the peace movement. Within British literature, however, only Welsh (who is himself a former anti-nuclear power activist) in his book Mobilizing Modernity, along with Butler and Bud, United Kingdom, understand anti-nuclear power activism to be an issue on its own. Apart from that, there are a few social science studies written from a non-British and comparative perspective that classify the British anti-nuclear power movement as a distinct social movement: See Murphy, “Von Aldermaston nach Greenham Common”; Rothgang, Die Friedens- und Umweltbewegung; Rüdig, “Maintaining a Low Profile.”
21. For a general perspective – with little reference to the UK, however – see Presas i Puig and Meyer, “One Movement or Many?”
22. See Brown, “Green Politics,” 358 and 360.
23. Most recently, including comprehensive overviews on literature, see Kirchhof and Trischler, “The History behind West Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out”; Augustine, Taking on Technocracy; Milder, Greening Democracy; Tompkins, Better Active.
24. A first historiographic approach is offered by Butler and Bud, United Kingdom. Helpful social science studies are: Welsh, Mobilizing Modernity; Rothgang, Die Friedens- und Umweltbewegung; Murphy, “Von Aldermaston.”
25. The article analyses four West German and four UK anti-nuclear periodicals: 1) Was Wir Wollen; 2) Atom Express: Zeitung der Initiativen gegen Atomenergie; 3) BBU Aktuell: Zeitschrift des Bundesverbandes Bürgerinitiativen Umweltschutz; 4) Öko Mitteilungen: Informationen aus dem Institut für angewandte Ökologie; 5) SCRAM: Energy Bulletin; 6) Undercurrents: The Magazine of Radical Science and Peoples’ Technology; 7) Resurgence of Small Nations, Small Communities and the Human Spirit; and 8) Conservation News. I am particularly grateful to Pete Roche and Mike Sharples, who digitized and provided me with material on the Torness protests. These documents can now be accessed via: http://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/scram-archive/ Accessed July 29, 2020.
26. Besides the studies mentioned in note 27, see Augustine, Taking on Technocracy; Butler and Bud, United Kingdom; Engels, Naturpolitik, 344–76; Murphy, “Von Aldermaston nach Greenham Common”; Roth, “Neue soziale Bewegungen”; Rothgang, Die Friedens- und Umweltbewegung; Rüdig, “Maintaining a Low Profile”; Rusinek, “Wyhl”; Wagner, “Contesting Policies”; Welsh, Mobilizing Modernity.
27. See Brand, ed., Neue soziale Bewegungen; Joppke, Mobilizing Against Nuclear Energy; Kiersch and von Oppeln, Kernenergiekonflikt; Kitschelt, Politik und Energie; Nelkin and Pollak, The Atom Besieged; Rucht, Modernisierung.
28. See Kirchhof and Meyer, “Global Protest”; Kirchhof, “Spanning the Globe”; Meyer: “Where do we go”; Milder, “Thinking Globally”; Milder, Greening Democracy; Tompkins, Better Active; Tompkins, “Grassroots Transnationalism(s),”; Tompkins, “Alle Wege”; Tompkins, “Generating Post-modernity.” In addition, see also Bösch, “Zur glokalen Formierung”; Gildea and Tompkins, “The Transnational”; Hughes, “Civil Disobedience.” Hasenöhrl, in accordance with the overall approach of her book, situates Bavarian anti-nuclear power initiatives primarily within regional contexts. See Hasenöhrl, Zivilgesellschaft und Protest, 457–71.
29. This applies in particular to the works by Milder and Tompkins. Tompkins’ book looking at activists in West Germany and France seems to distrust generalizations along national lines and concludes that (although ‘national contexts were never fully irrelevant’) ‘the opposition at the grassroots level to nuclear energy in West Germany was never entirely distinct from that in France.’ Tompkins, Better Active, 236–7. Milder analyses ‘the relationship between anti-nuclear protest and West German democracy,’ asking in particular about the movement’s effects on the national framework; conversely, his analysis does not establish any significant influences on the movement by national framings. See Milder, Greening Democracy, 1–18 (4).
30. The formulation is taken from Sidney Tarrow. See more in detail on p. 6 and in note 46.
31. In order to avoid the inappropriate notion of ‘region’ for Scotland and Wales, I shall use the term ‘subnational’ as a subordinate category.
32. Christian Götter is writing a book on local reactions to the construction of nuclear power plants in the UK and West Germany. Accessed February 5, 2021. https://www.deutsches-museum.de/forschung/forschungsbereiche/wissenschaftsgesch/umweltgeschichte/gespaltene-gesellschaft/
33. See schedule by FoE for the Windscale demonstration in London on April 29, 1978 Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis, Petra-Kelly-Archiv 2860; Note by Brian F. Potts (BNFL), “March for a nuclear free future – Harrisburg day rally in Trafalgar square on 29 March 1980,” April 1, 1980 BNA AB 48/1829.
34. See Meyer, “Nature,” 74–6; Sonnert, Nationalismus und Krise, 205–11, 322; Milder, Greening Democracy, 146.
35. See Sturm, Nationalismus, 160–2. ‘Small is Beautiful’ ideas were inspired by Leopold Kohr and Ernst Friedrich Schumacher.
36. At this time, Scotland and Wales had an exceptional administrative position, as there were national government ministries for Scottish and Welsh affairs. But, they did not have their own parliament or government. See Harvie, “The Politics of Devolution”; Hübner and Münch, Das politische System Großbritanniens, 50–67.
37. Milder, Greening Democracy, 51–91.
38. For some examples, see “For your Diary,” SCRAM No 10, February/March 1979, 12; “Saturday 5 May,” SCRAM No 11, April/May 1979, 1; SCRAM No 17, April/May 1980, 11.
39. Numerous examples and also photographs can be found in Was wir wollen. Starting in January 1978 the magazine had a subtitle in dialect: Was Wir Wollen: Nachrichte üssem Dreyeckland und ussem rescht vu dr Welt.
40. Milder, Greening Democracy, 82, 87; Tompkins, Better Active, 98.
41. For a telling example, see the songwriter Walter Mossmann’s rewriting of the nationalist song ‘Die Wacht am Rhein,’ entitled ‘Die andre Wacht am Rhein’ (1974). See Tompkins, “Generating Post-Modernity,” 510. Welsh notes this same interpretation pattern for Cornish activists, who saw the Central Electricity Generating Board ‘as an intruder from “up country”’ and denoted ‘the otherness of the English’. See Welsh, Mobilizing Modernity, 193.
42. See Friend, Stateless Nations, 8–72.
43. See in depth and with further biographical references (but focused on the present) Brown, “The Dynamics of Frame-Bridging.”
44. See Engels, Naturpolitik, 357–8; Tompkins, “Towards a ‘Europe of Struggles?,’” 130.
45. Quote from Milder, Greening Democracy, 151. For West Germany, this interplay of local and transnational references has been analysed in particular by Bösch, “Zur glokalen Formierung,” Milder, Greening Democracy, and Tompkins, Better Active. See also Kirchhof and Meyer, “Global Protest,” 181.
46. See Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism, 35–56, quote on 42.
47. For instance, the violent behaviour of French law enforcement agencies during the Malville demonstration in 1977 provoked a wave of international solidarity. See the documentation in: Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft, ed., Kriminalisierung, 98–120. The feeling of belonging to an ‘oppressed’ region could also bring about solidarity with native peoples in other continents who were suffering from uranium mining. On West German Support for Australian activists, see Kirchhof, “Spanning the Globe.”
48. See Milder, Greening Democracy, 133.
49. SCRAM No 11, April/May 1979, 1; Was Wir Wollen: Besetzerzeitung Wyhler Wald, August 15, 1975 8 (“Die Atomkraftwerksseuche ist international: leisten wir internationalen Widerstand”).
50. See Kirchhof and Meyer, “Global Protest,” 166, 181.
51. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism, 60.
52. In response, in 1978 the Organization for Information on Nuclear Power legally protected the logo in order to make sure that financial gains would go exclusively to environmental and anti-nuclear movement. See “Lächelnde Sonne,” BBU Aktuell No 2, January–February 1978, 47.
53. Tompkins outlines a global (but somewhat selective) map showing cooperation between anti-nuclear regional hot spots of the 1970s. See Tompkins, Better Active, 72.
54. See Hasenöhrl, Zivilgesellschaft und Protest, 458–9.
55. The organization was initially called Euregiokonferenz; the name was changed later to EuKo – Deutsch-niederländische Konferenz gegen Atomanlagen in der Euregio und im Münsterland. See “Wat mut, dat mut … Geschichte und Entwicklung der Euregio Konferenz,” in Atomzentrum Euregio, ed. by Deutsch-niederländische Konferenz gegen Atomanlagen in der Euregio und im Münsterland, 4th updated edition, 49–51, in Stehsammler zu “Gronau EuKo,” Sammlung zur Anti-AKW-Bewegung, Archiv Papiertiger, Berlin.
56. See Kaijser and Meyer, “Nuclear Installations.”
57. See Tompkins, Better Active, 84–100.
58. This kind of approach allowed activists ‘to make fun of [state] power in fact,’ Tompkins, Better Active, 98–100 (100). See also Milder, Greening Democracy, 87–8.
59. Bösch, “Zur glokalen Formierung,” 155–6.
60. Some of them, however, were detained by the police at the border. See Tompkins, Better Active, 1, 16, 95.
61. See “Demonstration in Almelo am 4. März,” BBU Aktuell no 2, January/February 1978, 9; telephone interview with EuKo activist Udo Buchholz, May 19, 2020 who mentioned that there were around 8,000 West German participants at the Almelo rally, which mobilized a total of around 40,000 demonstrators. Overall, it seems that the Dutch–German cooperation was not very intense on a day-to-day basis and rather pragmatically restricted to information exchange and some concrete occasions like rallies and court hearings.
62. The referendum turned out to be a success for the opponents of nuclear power. See Hasenöhrl, Zivilgesellschaft und Protest, 451.
63. See Tompkins, Better Active, 77–8. Another example is SCRAM supporting Breton activists by buying some potential building land for a nuclear power station, because the expropriation procedure was hoped to be more bureaucratic and lengthier if some land was owned by foreigners. See SCRAM No 9, December 1978/January 1979, 10. (The tactic of buying very small parcels of land in order to complicate the expropriation procedure had already been used at Larzac and was then imitated by anti-nuclear activists in Brittany.)
64. This applies for Native Americans giving lectures on uranium mining, e.g. on October 4, 1979 in Edinburgh and on November 2, 1979 in Truro (Cornwall). See SCRAM No 14, October/November 1979, 8; Note (AERE Harwell), “Truro Friends of the Earth Meeting – 2 November 1979,” November 8, 1979 BNA AB 48/1829.
65. At the mass demonstration in Bonn in 1979, for instance, the civil rights campaigner and municipal employee of Harrisburg, Cathy McCaughin, delivered a speech, as did Native Americans and Aborigines of Australia who suffered from the consequences of uranium mining in their homelands. “Harrisburg ist nicht vorbei,” General-Anzeiger, on October 15, 1979.
66. German activists participated in large numbers in demonstrations abroad, e.g. at Malville (1977), Almelo (1978), Torness (1978/79) and Plogoff (1980). Furthermore, prominent individuals from Germany were important, for example Petra Kelly, who is present with numerous publications in the analysed magazines of the anti-nuclear movement in the UK. She also took part in many bigger and smaller UK mass rallies. Her personal papers held at Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis in Berlin testify to a very broad and intense personal network with UK activists. See Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis, Petra-Kelly-Archiv 1941, 2859, 2860. See also Milder, “Thinking Globally.” Another example is Robert Jungk. See Undercurrents No 28, June/July 1978, 3; as well as note 18.
67. See Meyer, “Where do we go.”
68. The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and the Department of Energy closely observed such events and apparently perceived them to be generally rather harmless. See, e.g. the accounts in BNA EG 7/191; AB 48/1829.
69. See Klinke, SCRAM; Williams, The Nuclear Power Decisions, 289.
70. See comprehensive material in: BNA, EG 7/191.
71. See the remarks on the Torness protests in the introduction.
72. In May 1978, the carnival was supported by activists from West Germany, the Netherlands and France (among them Brice Lalonde), by foreign media material and declarations of solidarity. In May 1979 the famous US environmentalist and founder of Friends of the Earth, David Brower, was among the speakers at the festive mass gathering in Torness. See SCRAM No 4, February/March 1978, 2; SCRAM No 5, April/May 1978, 6–7; SCRAM No 6, June/July 1978, 3–6, 12; SCRAM No 8, October/November 1978, 9; SCRAM No 10, February/March 1979, 1; SCRAM No 11, April/May 1979, 1; Undercurrents No 28, June/July 1978, 3.
73. See Undercurrents No 28, June/July 1978, 3; “Anti-Nuclear Campaign Steering Committee,” 24; “A.N.C. Newsletter,” in ibid., 41–2; Note by Brian F. Potts (BNFL), “March for a Nuclear Free Future – Harrisburg Day Rally in Trafalgar Square on 29 March 1980,” April 1, 1980 BNA AB 48/1829.
74. Dave Elliott, for instance, frequent author in Undercurrents, participated in an anti-nuclear power conference in Kassel in 1977. Tony Webb from the ANC participated in an international strategy conference planning meeting in Amsterdam in 1980. See Undercurrents No 24, October/November 1977, 2; “Anti Nuclear Campaign – Newsletter 4 – June 1980,” in Primary Social Sources Programme: The Left in Britain, 45–51, here 50; “Anti Nuclear Campaign – Newsletter 5 – July 1980,” in ibid., 52–65 (64).
75. It was not possible to find evidence on whether these political actions were organized collectively with French activists. See SCRAM No 6, June/July 1978, 8–9.
76. See “Anti Nuclear Campaign: Campaaign [!] Report,” November 1980. In Primary Social Sources Programme: The Left in Britain, 83–97 (88).
77. For detailed examples within the context of the Wyhl protests, see Milder, Greening Democracy, 64–5, 84, 133; Tompkins, Better Active, 88–90; Tompkins, “Grassroots Transnationalism(s),” 124–6.
78. Tompkins, Better Active, 77–8.
79. Welsh, Mobilizing Modernity, 161–3.
80. On the West German peace movement of the 1980s see Schregel, Der Atomkrieg.
81. See Tompkins, “Alle Wege,” 161–7. As an example for the direct reception of the Larzac model, see the PhD thesis by the anarcho-pacifist and anti-nuclear activist Hertle, Larzac. On the “Fight for the Larzac” generally, see Gildea and Tompkins, “The Transnational”; Terral, Larzac, 29–205.
82. See Bouvier, Französische Revolution; Wirsching, Vom Weltkrieg zum Bürgerkrieg?, 342–8.
83. Milder, Greening Democracy, 64.
84. On Kaiseraugst see Kupper, Atomenergie und gespaltene Gesellschaft.
85. Visitors came from France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Luxemburg, the United States and the UK. See Tompkins, Better Active, 15–16; Milder, Greening Democracy, 114; Welsh, Mobilizing Modernity, 163.
86. On the Fast Breeder Project Malville and the protests against it in a transnational perspective, see Le Renard, “The Superphénix.”
87. On transfers between Wyhl and Seabrook, see Hughes, “Civil Disobedience.”
88. See, e.g. the title of an article in BBU Aktuell reporting on protests against the planned Irish nuclear power plant at Carnsore Point: “Irland auf dem Weg nach Wyhl. Nach dem 1. Anti-Atom-Festival in Carnsore Point formiert sich der Widerstand,” BBU Aktuell no 5/6, 1978, 70–3.
89. See e.g. “Anti-nuclear Demo Arrested,” Undercurrents 22, June/July 1977, 5; Dave Elliott, “The Battle of Seabrook,” Undercurrents 23, August/September 1977, 9–10; “The Clams Are Coming (Again),” Undercurrents No 28, June/July 1978, 4. See also Welsh, Mobilizing Modernity, 163–5.
90. See pictures with ‘German supporters’ in SCRAM No 6, June/July 1978, 6; “Eminence Verte,” Undercurrents No 28, June/July 1978, 3. A documentary film on the 1979 Torness rally ends with an aerial image of the construction site area, where activists designed a huge lettering saying: ‘No Thanks’ and – in German – ‘Nein Danke.’ See Alistair Scott and Mike Sharples, “On Site Torness 1979.” Accessed July 29, 2020. https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/8500
91. See “Protest Tractors Roll in,” Edinburgh Evening News, June 20, 1978; BBC Open Door film made with SCRAM, screened on BBC2 on November 2, 1978. Accessed July 29, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = 8LsrHGDjl5I
92. Tompkins, Better Active, 16.
93. The Gorleben protests were directed towards the government of Lower Saxony based in Hanover because this Land had leading responsibilities in the location decision for Gorleben, licensing issues and the accomplishment of the project.
94. See Bannink, ed., Strahlende Plakate, 174–6. An important US example was the five Madison Square Garden concerts that were organized in New York in September 1979 by the activist group Musicians United for Safe Energy in reaction to the Three Mile Island accident, which attracted audiences of up to 200,000. Probably the most important events in West Germany were the Anti-WAAhnsinns Festivals during the 1980s, directed against the construction of a nuclear reprocessing plant at Wackersdorf.
95. “Anti Nuclear Campaign: Campaaign [!] Report,” November 1980, in Primary Social Sources Programme: The Left in Britain, 83–97 (93).
96. Patterson, Nuclear Power (nine reprints); Jungk, Der Atom-Staat. (By 1986, 77,000 copies of Jungk’s book had been printed in German; it was translated into seven languages.)
97. Todd and Alty, eds., An Alternative Energy Strategy; Krause, Bossel, and Müller-Reißmann, Energie-Wende. In the UK, the study by the Centre for Alternative Technology was followed two years later by a study by the US- and UK-based non-profit foundation, The International Institute for Environment and Development: Leach et al., A Low Energy Strategy. This latter study found wide reception in science and politics. However, The International Institute for Environment and Development was much less interlinked with environmental or anti-nuclear social movements.
98. On Jungk see Seefried, Zukünfte, 134–53; Oberloskamp: “Intellektuelle und die Janusköpfigkeit,” 111–14; Tompkins, “Generating Post-Modernity,” 516–7.
99. Lovins, Soft Energy Paths.
100. This is the analysis of a Department of Energy official in a confidential note, [December 1977/January 1978], BNA EG 7/229.
101. Was Wir Wollen and Atom Express (both of which exhibited a strong regional component) did not include any book reviews at all during the 1970s. Early issues of Öko Mitteilungen narrowly concentrate on publications by the Öko Institut. Both Öko Mitteilungen and BBU Aktuell only very occasionally contained general book reviews during the 1970s.
102. See Öko Mitteilungen no 2, 1979, 12; Öko Mitteilungen no 3, 1979, 8; BBU Aktuell no 5/6, 1978, 58; BBU Aktuell no 11/12, 1979, 50–1.
103. Very few texts from non-UK or non-US sources were reviewed, among them Werner Biermann’s “Plutonium und Polizeistaat,” Robert Jungk’s “The Nuclear State” (an English translation of which had been published in 1979), and “Solar versus Nuclear: Choosing Energy Futures” by the Swedish authors Mans Lönnroth, Thomas B. Johansson and Peter Steen (English edition Oxford 1980). See Resurgence issue 72, January/February 1979, 17–26; Resurgence issue 80, May/June 1980, 36; Conservation News No 91, March/June 1985, 8.
104. This is true for the federal West German state as well. The 1960 Atomic Energy Act granted the pivotal authority to the federal government, while the Länder were authorized to enforce the law on behalf of the federal government. Against this background, the Länder exercised certain competences, e.g. concerning location decisions and licensing procedures, but the federal government was entitled to issue instructions and to exercise supervision over the Länder. Furthermore, the fundamental decision about whether to use nuclear power or not, extensive RD&D subsidies, risk insurance questions and the set-up of a repository for nuclear waste were the responsibility of the federal government. On the 1960 Atomic Energy Act see Müller, Geschichte der Kernenergie, 11–18.
105. Nehring, “The Growth,” 397; Brand, “Vergleichendes Resümee,” 320.
106. On British nuclear weapon secrecy see Salisbury, Secrecy. Frank Uekötter is currently publishing a book on nuclear power politics and democracy in West Germany. Accessed January 27, 2022. https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/history/uekotter-frank.aspx
107. For a tabular overview of the expansion of nuclear capacities for electricity generation in both states. Accessed January 4, 2020. https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/UnitedKingdom/UnitedKingdom.htm; https://cnpp.iaea.org/countryprofiles/Germany/Germany.htm
108. See for some examples “Nuclear Power – the Issues and the Dilemmas,” Conservation News No 72, February/March/April 1979, 2; Note, “Meeting on the Theme ‘What Nuclear Power Costs You,’ organized by the Bedford Anti-Nuclear Group, 10 October 1980,” October 14, 1980 BNA, AB 48/1829; Note “I.C.A. Seminar 4 June 1980– Walter Patterson on the “Vulnerability of Nuclear Energy”’, June 5, 1980; BNA, AB 48/1829.
109. Murphy, “Von Aldermaston nach Greenham Common,” 149.
110. This is illustrated, for example, by the fact that Members of Parliament repeatedly participated in anti-nuclear rallies and even delivered speeches at such events. See, e.g. “Smallscale not Windscale,” Resurgence issue 69, July–August 1978, 6–8; Scott and Sharples, “On site Torness 1979.” Accessed July 29, 2020. https://movingimage.nls.uk/film/8500. For the way in which anti-nuclear positions were taken up by Members of Parliament in parliamentary debates, see Oberloskamp, “Energy and the Environment.”
111. Brand, “Vergleichendes Resümee,” 325. On flexible state responses to anti-nuclear power protests in the UK, see Rüdig, “Maintaining a Low Profile.”
112. See Welsh, Mobilizing Modernity, 193–6. For further examples, see SCRAM No 9, December 1978/January 1979, 4–5; “Anti Nuclear Campaign – Newsletter 5 – July 1980,” in Primary Social Sources Programme: The Left in Britain, 52–65, here 54; SCRAM No 15, December/January 1979/80, 5; “Torness: An Atom of Truth?; “Police Oust Protest Group;” SCRAM No 10, February/March 1979, 1; SCRAM No 11, April/May 1979, 1; SCRAM No 13, August/September 1979, 12; SCRAM No 14, October/November 1979, 3.
113. On the British student movement, see Chun, Wortgewitter; Kundnani, “Great Britain”; Bruendel, “1968.”
114. The only Member of the Bundestag who articulated anti-nuclear positions during the 1970s was the ex-CDU, now independent deputy, Herbert Gruhl. See Bösch, “Taming Nuclear Power,” 81. Within a minority of the Social Democratic Party a certain opposition to nuclear power did gradually emerge in the late 1970s. See Kiersch and von Oppeln, Kernenergiekonflikt, 43–8; Tretbar-Endres, “Die Kernenergiediskussion.” Felix Lieb’s PhD thesis on the evolving positions of the Social Democratic Party in the fields of environmental and energy policies is currently in print.
115. This imputation was largely unjustified. Although there was an extremist left-wing fraction among West German anti-nuclear activists with a clear propensity to violence, large proportions of the movement were no radicals. Furthermore, the movement and the later Green Party also included conservative elements that hailed from the tradition of protecting nature. On the ambivalent political perceptions of anti-nuclear activism in West Germany and on its ambivalent political references and attitudes towards violence see Hanshew, Terror and Democracy, 163–91. On the ideological origins of the West German Greens see generally Mende, “Nicht rechts, nicht links”; Milder, Greening Democracy.
116. See Roth, “Neue soziale Bewegungen,” 26–31; Wagner, “Contesting Policies.” Sabine Mecking is currently preparing a publication on police responses to anti-nuclear power protests in West Germany.
117. Roth, “Neue soziale Bewegungen,” 38. On the relation between alternative milieus and new social movements in West Germany, see Rucht, “Linksalternatives Milieu.”
118. See Tompkins, “Generating Post-Modernity,” 509–10.
119. Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Sixth Report, 128.
120. See ibid., 81–2 and 128–30.
121. This aspect seems to have been more prominent in places with a pronounced separate identity. A pamphlet on Torness protests, for example, concludes: “Somehow the democratic system has gone badly wrong, and we now have the authoritarian spectre of a nationalized industry imposing its will on the people.” See the pamphlet written by Torness activist Pete Roche, Torness Nuclear Power Station, 2. The nationwide ANC had a subgroup working on “Civil Liberties,” which, however, did not stand out for particular activism or public visibility in comparison to its other working groups. See “Anti Nuclear Campaign: Campaaign [!] Report,” November 1980. In Primary Social Sources Programme: The Left in Britain, 83–97 (92); “Anti Nuclear Campaign – Newsletter No. 4 – June 1980,” in ibid., 45–51 (48); “Anti Nuclear Campaign – Newsletter 5 – July 1980,” in ibid., 52–65 (61).
122. The parallelization of nuclear power and the Holocaust can be traced to the implicit interpretation that in both cases the ambivalent potential of modernity tipped towards the negative. On the idea of nuclear power as a negative excess of Janus-faced modernity, see Oberloskamp, “Intellektuelle und die Janusköpfigkeit,” 101; Peukert, Die Weimarer Republik, 271.
123. Jungk, Der Atom-Staat.
124. See, for example Wüstenhagen (head of the Citizens’ Initiatives for Environmental Protection BBU), “Nachbemerkung: Widerstand ist Pflicht,” 113. “Atommacht Deutschland. Die Wiege stand im 3. Reich,” Atomexpress 15 (1979), 29–35; “Sie haben versagt,” Die Zeit, May 23, 1986 (poem published anonymously by Inge Aicher-Scholl and others). This interpretation pattern has been analysed with regard to the West German peace movement of the 1980s by Eckart Conze, who, however, does not map out in detail the continuity from the anti-nuclear power movement of the 1970s to the peace movement. See Conze, “Geschichte als Argument.”
125. It is striking that this self-perception of activists, who often viewed their campaigns as a fight against fascist threats, sometimes sharply contrasted with the way they were perceived from the outside. For example, during a mass rally against the construction of the fast breeder reactor at French Creys-Malville in 1977, the press fell back on anti-German stereotypes to describe the German participants as particularly aggressive. See the press review in: Gewerkschaft Erziehung und Wissenschaft, ed., Kriminalisierung, 18–27; Tompkins, Better Active, 94.
126. Tompkins comes to this same conclusion for Wyhl activism. See Tompkins, “Towards a ‘Europe of Struggles?’” 127–32. Even the Dutch-German action group EuKo – Deutsch-niederländische Konferenz gegen Atomanlagen in der Euregio und im Münsterland, whose name explicitly refers to the first Euregio established in 1958, was apparently not oriented towards the alternative idea of a “Europe of the Regions.” As to activist Udo Buchholz, the name was rather a pragmatic denomination of the implied localities. Telephone interview with EuKo activist Udo Buchholz, May 19, 2020. A notable exception in the UK is the Conservation Society, which, in numerous issues of its periodical Conservation News regularly reported on the activities of the European Environmental Bureau (without, however, giving much room to any direct political engagement of the Conservation Society in this European federation of environmental non-governmental organizations [NGOs]).
127. For Malville, see Tompkins, “Towards a ‘Europe of Struggles?,’” 132–8. A telling example for this kind of perception is found in an account by a West German activist addressed to Torness protesters, which argues that the West German state acts as the main driving force ‘to build an atomic Europe.’ The conclusion reads: “We have to resist it. Torness will be an important step forward in our European resistance.” See Wolfgang Gröning, “The German Experience,” SCRAM No 5, April/May 1978, 8–10.
128. They wanted to bring “about Europe through protest, breaking down national borders with solidarity.” All quotes Tompkins, Better Active, 81–2. See also Tompkins, “Towards a ‘Europe of Struggles?’” 138–43.
129. In both states, churches also acted as protagonists in the debates about nuclear power. In the UK, the Council of Churches organized a prominent panel for a hearing on the fast breeder in 1976, the proceedings of which were published shortly thereafter. In West Germany, the Protestant churches were particularly engaged in the debates. Around 1980, the West German Catholic Church also critically commented on nuclear power. The churches were part of a transnational Christian community of faith and dialogue. At least in the case of Protestant and Anglican churches, critique of nuclear power by religious actors thus constituted a conveyor belt through which transnational discourses on nuclear power, which were based on religious considerations, diffused into the national context. See documents in BNA, EG 7/205; Gosling and Montefiore, eds., Nuclear Crisis; Kroll, “Protestantismus und Kernenergie”; Schüring, “Bekennen gegen den Atomstaat”; “Erklärung der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz zu Fragen der Umwelt und der Energieversorgung,” September 23, 1980; “Predigt von Kardinal Höffner am 23.9.1980 im Dom zu Fulda,” “Eröffnungsvortrag ‘Mensch und Natur im technischen Zeitalter’ auf der Vollversammlung der Deutschen Bischofskonferenz, Fulda, September 1980,” September 22, 1980 all documents in: BArch Koblenz, B 136/10,203.
130. Milder, Greening Democracy, 127–8. For more detail on the BBU, see Engels, Naturpolitik, 332–8; Mende, “Nicht rechts, nicht links,” 53–60.
131. With a particular focus on Brokdorf, see Augustine, Taking on Technocracy, 126–60.
132. The Öko-Institut Freiburg is a dissident ecological research institute that emerged in 1977 out of the Wyhl protests. Daniel Eggstein is currently preparing a PhD thesis on ecological research institutes in West Germany.
133. Meyer: “Where do we go,” 223; see also Meyer, “Bürgerschaftliches Engagement,” 63–4.
134. Milder, Greening Democracy, 200–37 (237). On the West German Greens more generally, see Mende, ”Nicht rechts, nicht links.”
135. Greenpeace, which was founded in 1971 in Canada, attempted to expand its activities to Europe only starting in the mid-1970s. In both the UK and West Germany, the rather hierarchically structured NGO was present in anti-nuclear power protests to a certain degree, yet it did not play a significant role on the grassroots side of the movement during the 1970s. For a general history of Greenpeace see Zelko, Greenpeace.
136. See documents in: BNA, AB 48/1829; Archiv Grünes Gedächtnis, Petra-Kelly-Archiv 1941, 2860.
137. See Rothgang, Die Friedens- und Umweltbewegung, 52–4.
138. Examples are the adjustment of British events to the US “International Sun Day” on 3 May 1978 (see SCRAM No 5, April/May 1978, 6), as well as the scheduling of the big London demonstration on 29 March 1980 – one day after “Harrisburg Day.”
139. The number of participating groups rose to 175 in 1980. Initially, the ANC cooperated with FoE, but the cooperation was discontinued in 1980. See “Anti Nuclear Campaign Affiliated Groups and Organisations,” [June 1980], in Primary Social Sources Programme: The Left in Britain, 13; “Meeting of A.N.C. 23rd. February, 1980, at Liberal Club, London,” in ibid., 68–9; “Anti Nuclear Campaign: Campaaign [!] Report,” November 1980, in ibid., 83–97; SCRAM No 15, December/January 1979/80, 3.
140. Also, for the UK case, the sources studied offer fewer indications of concrete action orientations towards the European level. There were scattered smaller initiatives like the organization of a public discussion on “Nuclear Wastes and the EC” in Ayr (Scotland) in 1979, the Scottish Conservation Society going to the European Court of Human Rights in order to prevent a public inquiry which might reverse a decision that had been taken against test drillings, and asking for a Europe-wide referendum on the civil use of nuclear power, and the ANC planning to lobby institutions of the EEC. See “Nuclear Wastes and the European Community. A Meeting at Ayr Town Hall, 4 June 1979,” BNA AB 48/1852; SCRAM No 12, June/July 1979, 12; “Anti Nuclear Campaign – Newsletter 5 – July 1980,” in Primary Social Sources Programme: The Left in Britain, 52–65 (62).
141. The author of this article is currently working on a book project, which analyzes the impact of environmental concerns on West German and British energy policies during the 1970s and 1980s.
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Eva Oberloskamp
Eva Oberloskamp holds a research fellowship at the Ludwig Maximilian University (LMU) Munich. She studied history, economics and Russian in Bielefeld, Paris and Warsaw, and she holds a double doctorate in history from LMU Munich and Université Paris IV. Her research fields include the history of intellectuals, European integration and counterterrorism. She is inter alia author of: Fremde neue Welten. Reisen deutscher und französischer Linksintellektueller in die Sowjetunion 1917–1939 (2011); Codename TREVI. Terrorismusbekämpfung und die Anfänge einer europäischen Innenpolitik in den 1970er Jahren (2017); and co-editor of Germany and European Integration, along with Mark Gilbert and Thomas Raithel (2019). At present, her research focuses on the influence of environmentalism on energy policy in West Germany and the UK since the 1970s. Current publications include: ‘Towards the German “Energiewende”: Ecological Problems and Scientific Expertise in West German Energy Policies during the 1970s and 1980s’, in Work in Progress, edited by Frank Trentmann et al. (2018); and ‘Energy and the Environment in Parliamentary Debates in the Federal Republic of Germany, United Kingdom and France from the 1970s to the 1990s’, in The Environment and the European Public Sphere, edited by Christian Wenkel et al. (2020).