PARTIES AND MOVEMENTS
successes, causing projects to be abandoned, delayed or amended, there have
also been countless failed campaigns where the LULU gets built regardless.
Typically, enthusiastic local campaigners are impotent against the combined
power of profit-seeking corporations and governments anxious not to impede
economic development (Gould et al. 1996 ). Where local campaigns are suc-
cessful, it is usually because of external factors. One study of local campaigns
in Britain shows how any limited success was largely ‘dependent on action
or inaction at other levels’, such as national government, the European Com-
mission, transnational corporations or the involvement of the mainstream
environmental lobby (Rootes1999b). Thus the conventional methods of the
long-running (1979–96) local campaign against a proposed nuclear power sta-
tion at Druridge Bay, Northumberland, finally succeeded when the British
government introduced a moratorium on the building of all nuclear power
stations (Baggott 1998 ).
Many local groups, recognising the limitations of operating in isolation,
have built links with other like-minded grassroots groups. Consequently,
thethird category of grassroots group refers to the development of coali-
tions and networks among local environmental groups, which is particu-
larly marked in the USA (Gould et al. 1996 ;Schlosberg1999b). National
coalitions that have co-ordinated campaigns against toxic hazards include
theCentre for Health, Environment and Justice and the National Toxics
Campaign, which claim to be in contact with up to 10,000 and 7,000 local
groups respectively (Dowie 1995 :133). There are also many regional groups,
such as the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition in California and the Work on
Waste (anti mass-burn incinerators/pro-recycling) in New York State. These
coalitions have arisen from a common wish to share scientific and techni-
cal information, learn from each other’s experiences and pool resources in
jointly run campaigns. An additional catalyst has been a widespread disen-
chantment with the smooth professionalism of mainstream environmental
groups. Grassroots activists frequently criticise the ineffectiveness of public
interest group campaigning, the refusal of the established groups to endorse
direct action, their willingness to get into bed with big corporations and
their focus on the Washington lobby.
The environmental justice movement condemns the mainstream organi-
sations for concentrating on ‘universal’ issues such as wildlife and natural
resource protection, whilst ignoring those environmental hazards that hit
poorer (often non-white) communities hardest (see Box6.4). The environmen-
tal justice movement brings the issues of class, poverty, race and gender to
theforefront of environmentalism. It holds that, because environmental
hazards are inextricably linked to inequality, solutions will not be found in
the middle-class issues of conservation and preservation, but in transform-
ing entrenched economic and political structures. Environmental justice
is thus a practical political expression of both the social justice principle
of ecologism and the socialist critique of environmentalists as middle-class
elitists (see Chapter3). The environmental justice movement clearly offers a