The national and the local: Relationships among environmental movement organisations in London

Abstract

It is frequently asserted that national environmental movement organisations (EMOs) have, as an unintended consequence of their public relations strategies, a tendency to ignore local activists. Using a variety of research methods – participant observation, semi-structured interviews, a survey and network analysis of national, regional and local EMOs in London – we explode that myth. Although national EMOs cooperate mostly with other national EMOs, they do not turn their backs on local campaigners. On the contrary, several highly influential national EMOs (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and Campaign to Protect Rural England) seek to involve grassroots activists. Local campaigners make surprisingly few demands on national EMOs, understand that national EMOs have resource constraints, and do not generally feel marginalised.

Notes

1. A protest business is a campaigning organisation for which docile supporters who contribute financially are more important than active members. Policy is made in an oligarchic fashion, and supporters influence policy through their capacity for exit. Political action is taken by staff rather than supporters. Staff shape the perceptions of followers by providing them with partial information, and supporters tend to be interested in narrow issue areas (Jordan & Maloney, 1997: 22).

2. Rootes (2007: 60, note 3) notes that the word ‘member’ means different things to different EMOs; and that some include ‘all donors and volunteers as members’ whereas ‘others restrict “membership” to formal subscribers’.

3. Rawcliffe shows how EMO budgets have increased, for example, FoE's budget rose from £306,285 in 1985 to £3,839,325 by 1995.

4. Barkan (1986) found reformists had similar complaints about radicals in the southern civil rights movement.

5. Similarly, in the 1980s, Greenpeace stole the limelight from FoE on whales, and the seal pelt issue from IFAW.

6. This statement cannot be made with such conviction in 2006, because Greenpeace has, since 2002, worked hard to reinvigorate its connection with the grassroots, and now has a busy ‘active supporters unit’ (Torrance interview, 2003).

7. Note, however, that most national environmental NGOs in the US never had grassroots membership (Bosso, 2005).

8. Two smaller areas were chosen to sample local groups because local EMOs are numerous in London. See Saunders (forthcoming) for details of sample selection.

9. A further 6% were returned unanswered, some with a message informing me that the organisation had folded, others claiming that the organisation was unknown at the address to which the questionnaire had been posted. This is to be expected given the nature of collective action. As Knoke (1990) suggests, the environmental movement, especially at the grassroots level, is known to experience periodic attrition and renewal as organisations fold when issues are resolved or activists ‘burn out’, and new ones form to cover new issues or take their place. Although it seems low, this response rate is not drastically lower than the expected average response rate of 50% for SMO surveys (Klandermans & Smith, 2002), and Ansell's (2003) response rate for a similar survey of US EMOs (40%). However, not all respondents provided data on their network links. In all, 114 listed their five most important links with other environmental organisations at each of the national, London-wide and local (borough) levels. Because the data are explored relationally, there is no danger of misrepresenting the structure of the network (see Saunders, forthcoming).

10. A DL is a text-based format for entering network data in UCINet. Essentially it is a list of organisations and the network links that they mention. For instance, if CPRE lists FoE, Greenpeace, Wildlife and Countryside Link and WWF as four out of five top links, the following partnerships would be listed: CPRE FoE, CPRE Greenpeace, CPRE WildlifeCountrysideLink, CPRE WWF. The same would be done for each organisation's elected choices. UCINet converts data inputted in this format into a socio-matrix (Borgatti et al., 1999).

11. It may be that the lists of local collaborators or information providers/receivers are too numerous or too difficult to rank. Anheier (1987: 579), for example, warns of the bias that ‘power and size differentials’ are likely to yield as ‘smaller organisations tend to be well aware of informal and cooperative relations with larger organisations, but not vice versa’.

12. The main component of a social network is the largest linked group of actors in a social network. A component analysis singles out isolated organisations and small groups of actors not linked to the main network. It is easily performed in UCInet.

13. Ealing Wildife Network consists of the Brent and River Canal Society, Ealing Allotments and Gardens Society, Ealing Wildlife Trust, Friends of Litten Local Nature Reserve, Ealing Badger Group, London Bat Group, Hounslow and Ealing Conservation Volunteers, Northolt and Greenford Country Park Society, Ealing Watch Group, West London Organic Wildlife Gardeners Association and Ealing WWF.

14. According to Roberts and Robertshaw (interview, February 2004), London Wildlife Trust have been gesturing about bringing local groups under tighter control for years. Due to lack of people power, in practice there has been little change except for Chiswick Wildlife Trust's changed ‘label’ from a management committee to a steering group.

15. Part of my participant observation in FoE London office included organising a database of activists signed up to various campaign update lists. In the main these were local group members, but activists from a wide range of other (mostly reformist) organisations had also signed up. These links may not register among the top five most important links.

16. A small but vocal minority of participants in the Waste Advisory Group have objected to FoE's campaigning shift from incineration to ‘Reduce Resource Use’. During January 2004, FoE had only one live incineration campaign to support. Watson sees that the debate within local councils and nationally has shifted to a recognition of the need to reduce the amount of waste produced at source. FoE will continue to support local incineration campaigns, but this will be done at a national rather than local level by waging arguments about how incineration should not receive subsidies and seeking ways of making recycling more economically attractive (Watson interview, January 2004).

17. John Stewart contacted Steven Tindale, Greenpeace Executive Director, and secured a pledge that Greenpeace would contribute its expertise in direct action to the campaign.

18. This is a pseudonym.

19. Sartori attributes this partly to the community website, where local groups can now download briefings, application forms for the local groups support fund and so on, rather than have to phone or email her and wait for a postal or email response. Apparently the phone used to ring much more frequently.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Clare Saunders

Clare Saunders is Research Associate in the Centre for the Study of Social and Political Movements at the University of Kent at Canterbury. This research is based on her PhD funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Saunders, 2005).