By the afternoon of 22 March 2018, a crowd had gathered in the Gambian fishing village of Gunjur. Police had arrived by truck. Rumours were circulating that arrests would be made. 

After months of frustration and anger, Golden Lead, the Chinese-owned plant that had become the lifeblood the village’s fishing trade, had been given a seven-day ultimatum. Villagers removed a factory pipe that was allegedly pumping waste directly into the ocean. 

Local environmental activist Lamin Jassey said: “The police didn’t stop us. They just said we should remove it peacefully. I think they too felt for us.”

Depleting resources

In 2015 whispers of the factory’s arrival were being shared in the community. Initially, villagers were welcoming.

Badara Bajo, director of the Environment Protection and Development Group of Gunjur, said: “They were going to build a road from the main highway to the village and they said they were going to employ about 600 people. They were not able to build a good road and were unable to employ the number of people they promised.” 

Around 80 people were employed when operation started in 2016. Residents disapprove of the factory’s use of ocean caught bonga shad (Ethmalosa fimbriata), for animal feed export to China. 

Jassey said: “At first we heard the company would process sardines. For us living here every day bonga fish is the cheapest source of protein that everybody can have.”

Bajo explained: “When the company started the fishermen they were catching large numbers, trucks full of fish and a high demand. This made the price [of fish] rise up.” Reared animal meat is too expensive in rural areas where 60 percent of the country’s poor squeeze a living.

International tensions

Gunjur is emblematic of a rising tension in Africa-China relations in The Gambia.

Since President Adama Barrow took office last year, Gambia has continued to seek Chinese investment to kickstart a struggling economy and a youth unemployment rate over 40 percent. 

Compared to a decade ago, China has surpassed Europe and the United States to become Gambia’s biggest trading partner. 

But Chinese firms are frequently accused of disregarding environmental standards in Africa.

Gambians successfully protested the planned use of part of a forest monkey park for a conference center being built by Chinese developers recently.

Legal action

Golden Lead was taken to court by Gambia’s environment agency (NEA) last June. It was forced to take immediate measures to treat its wastewater and pay a fine of $25,000 for flouting environmental regulations in an out-of-court settlement. 

Jassey said: “They decided to remove the top pipe but without us knowing they had a second one there. We realised that the small fish and crabs are dying.”

The factory denies the waste pipe removed by villagers was still in use. Leo Huang, co-manager at Golden Lead, said: “the NEA took us to court and said we should cut the pipe, we made water treatment plans after the case had finished and the pipe was already cut.” 

He added that workers felt threatened over the incident of March 22. Huang said that “people were shouting at us.” 

Isatou Touray, formerly Gambia’s trade minister, and now its minister for health and social welfare, did not respond to efforts for a comment on the incident. 

Development plans

Five of those involved in the pipe removal were later arrested and put on trial, including Jassey.

The events in Gunjur ignited further protests in the neighbouring village of Kartong against Mauritanian owned and Chinese run fishmeal factory JXYG.

A large demonstration took place on 30 June against Nessim fishmeal factory in the coastal village of Sanyang, in Gambia’s western region. Following this, the Gambian government announced the temporary closure of both JXYG and Nessim due to waste pollution. 

The Gambia aims to increase fisheries as a percentage of GDP from 6.4 percent to 15 percent by 2021, as part of development plans. This will require an increase in annual fish catch from 53,719 to 74,000 tonnes. 

Some 200,000 Gambian livelihoods depend on its fishing sector. But most fish in Gambia’s waters are already fully or over exploited, due to decades of free-for-all fishing. Just 4 percent of West Africa’s stocks are fished at sustainable levels. 

Unsustainable practices

Fisheries expert Dyhia Belhabib explained: “The very presence of fishmeal factories often means that local fish processors can no longer afford to have access to that fish because the factories give out really competitive prices.”

She added: “the consumer can no longer afford to buy the fish [caught] within their own waters.”

Sainey Darboe, who edits Gunjur News Online, explained the fears being heard amongst many villagers: “They are engaging in unsustainable practices.

“My mother used to sell fish and would carry buckets of fish from the boat to the beach. It was what paid for my education.”

In contrast to the factories cash buys for fish from local fishermen, women who dominate the fish trade in Gambia buy on credit, paying fishermen back once they make a profit. 39-year-old fish smoker Adi Jobe explained: “Now the fishermen don’t want to do credit because they say they will just go to the Chinese and get cash.’

Waste dumping

In the town of Kitty Tambana, 20 kilometres away from Gunjur, local resident Besenty Gomez patrols his community everyday: “I take photos, I take videos for people to see. I send them to the Ministry of Health and to the NEA.”

On 23 January 2018, Gomez’s images prompted health authorities to visit the dumpsite. The subsequent report from Gambia’s Ministry of Health and Social Welfare confirmed the waste was from a nearby hospital and from JXYG, the fishmeal plant in Kartong. 

While the environment agency took steps to temporarily shut down JXYG, the report advised that the area be fenced off to prevent further dumping. This has not been done.

The Ministry of Health declined to comment on its own report and why recommendations were not implemented. Dr Samba Ceesay, deputy director of health at the Ministry of Health & Social Welfare, responded: “since this issue is a sensitive one, I have decided to refer you to the permanent secretary to give you the ministry’s position on the matter.” 

Permanent Secretary Cherno Omar Barry said: “I admit it is a major concern and it is not our wish to see an outbreak of any disease but the dumping of waste in unspecified places causing environmental pollution is more under [the] Environment [agency].”

Severe dangers

Seedy Touray, a local hotel manager, said that villagers fear a return to the old days of politics under former president Yahya Jammeh, who ruled for 22 years. 

Before signing the affidavit to sue Golden Lead, Touray says his mother telephoned to warn him against it.

When Touray’s brother criticised the ex-regime on local radio, soldiers in a pick–up truck came looking for him. He fled to neighbouring Senegal and returned when Barrow became president. 

Touray said: “I might end up losing my life … But at the same time, this is my livelihood.” 

The smell from the factory has affected tourism, he explained. “My business is forcing me to step out and to speak out for my rights.”

Industrial imposition

There are local fishermen who like the presence of the factories.

Kebba Jobe, a 24-year old fisherman, said: “You have more of a chance to sell your fish.”

But ongoing protests compounded by the repeated encroachment of foreign industrial vessels has diminished approval. Jobe said: “At night sometimes there are more than 10 or 12 industrial boats in our artisanal zones. They fish and go. We get less fish.”

Darboe explained: “We have a very different president to Yahya Jammeh which is a good thing. 

“But the voice of the young is not really taken seriously. What people aren’t seeing is the long term effects of overfishing and damage to the environment. They are more interested in the immediate gains.”

This Author

Nosmot Gbadamosi is a freelance journalist reporting from West Africa. She can be reached on Twitter @nosmotg. This article was written with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and Internews’ Earth Journalism Network. 

Sarayaku is an indigenous Kichwa community from a remote part of Ecuador’s southern Amazon. A delegation has travelled to the capital city of Quito to present a bold and visionary proposal that aims not only to protect their own 135,000 hectares of pristine rainforest, but to protect indigenous territories worldwide. 

The proposal, the Kawsak Sacha Declaration, also seeks to promote the indigenous worldview, which sees nature as a living entity, to be respected and coexisted with.

The Sarayaku believe that a shift towards this perspective could be the key to mitigating the unfolding global environmental crisis.

Living forest

The concept for the proposal came from the kawsak sacha, or living forest, itself and was transmitted to the community via their shamans (yachaks in the Kichwa language), who act as intermediaries between the rainforest and those who protect it. 

The Kawsak Sacha Living Forest Declaration (LFD) is a counterproposal to the prevailing extractivist model that has already wrought untold damage in Ecuador’s northern Amazon and around the world.

Instead of seeing Sarayaku territory as an inert space to exploit for resources, the Declaration describes the rainforest as a living entity with consciousness, constituted by all the beings within it, including those from the animal, vegetable, mineral, spiritual and cosmic worlds.

The Declaration asserts that the territory is subject to legal rights and demands that these rights be upheld. It also declares that the area be free of any type of extractive activity such as oil exploitation, mining, logging and biopiracy. 

Though it was born from the indigenous cosmovision, the Declaration is a concrete proposal based on existing national and international law.

Legal ratification 

In 2008, Ecuador became the first country to award legal rights to nature in its constitution, which also states that any person, community or nationality can demand the State to uphold these rights.

Furthermore, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples states that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their spiritual relationship with their territories, and to conserve and protect these territories.

From deep in the Ecuadorian Amazon, the Kawsak Sacha Declaration was borne by canoe to Quito, where the Sarayaku delegation delivered it to representatives of the Ecuadorian State at a launch event on July 26.

The next step is to demand the legal ratification of the document via the National Assembly or the Constitutional Court. If the State refuses to recognise the Declaration, it will be defying its own constitution and international law.

The Sarayaku have called for international organisations and indigenous peoples to adopt the proposal and are planning to present it to the UN.

Global audience

It won’t be the first time the Declaration has been given a global audience.

After being adopted by the Assembly General of the Original People of Sarayaku in 2012, it was presented in Paris at the global climate change conference, COP21, and to the President of France, François Hollande, in 2015.

Earlier this month, it was well received at the international Fostering Community Conservation Conferencein Montreal.

The Declaration was inaugurated in Ecuador with a four-day exhibition and conference from 25 to 29 July that showcased Sarayaku’s way of life, culture, and vision, including exhibitions and demonstrations of ancestral medicines, ceramics, handicrafts, gastronomy, face painting, singing and dancing.

A Kichwa house was built in El Arbolito Park and will remain there, a gift to the city of Quito.

Violated rights

A series of panels were held to discuss extractivism and defence of the rainforest.

The events were attended by international NGOs Amazon Watch, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Women’s Earth & Climate Action Network (WECAN), as well as the Presidents of national indigenous organisations CONAIE and CONFENAIE.

The launch of the Declaration coincided with the 6th anniversary of the historic ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which found that the Ecuadorian Government violated the rights of the Sarayaku people by allowing an oil company to prospect in their territory without consultation.

In 1996 the Argentinian oil company CGC, accompanied by soldiers, carried out detonations, felled trees, dug more than 400 wells and buried more than 1.4 tons of high grade explosives in Sarayaku territory.

The community was unaware that their land had been concessioned to an oil company until armed men arrived in helicopters.

Key players

In 2018, Sarayaku is once again threatened by oil exploitation. The Ecuadorian Government are planning to auction 3 million hectares of largely virgin rainforest in the XI Oil Round, or Ronda Sur.

Three of the oil blocks cover nearly all the Sarayaku territory, the borders of which are being planted with flowering trees to symbolise the community’s peaceful resistance and defence of their territory via the Kawsak Sacha Declaration. 

The Sarayaku people’s hopes for the Declaration go beyond the protection of the 135,000 hectares that lie within their borders.

The proposal was presented to the State on behalf of all indigenous peoples with the hopes that other nationalities will use it to uphold the legal rights of nature in their territories.

With indigenous peoples acting as stewards of 95 percent of the planet’s most threatened biodiverse regions and key players in the fight against climate change, the Declaration could have a global impact.

Leading resistance

It’s a bold vision for a village of 1400 people living deep in the Amazon, but, looking at their past achievements, it’s impossible not to take the Sarayaku proposal seriously.

Beyond their legal victory against the Ecuadorian State, this is a community that has launched a professional football team; sailed a canoe down the Seine; and created a documentary, Children of the Jaguar, which won Best Documentary at the National Geographic Film Festival. 

The Sarayaku call themselves the People of the Zenith, referring to an ancient prophecy of their ancestors claiming that they would be a pillar of resistance after other communities had surrendered, a beacon of light as strong as the sun at noon. 

When asked what drives his community to keep fighting to defend the Amazon, Sarayaku leader and former President José Gualinga referred to this prophecy: “The Sarayaku resistance is based upon our deep connection with the rainforest, which even our young people still maintain, and our unity.

“The Sarayaku community functions as a single organism, like a human body. We resist in fulfilment of the ancient prophecy of our ancestors. We have seen what has happened to our brothers in the northern Amazon region, who have not only experienced the destruction of their territories by oil exploitation, but have suffered a spiritual impoverishment.

“They have been dominated, silenced, humiliated. They are alive but not alive. We, the people of Sarayaku, cannot allow that to happen to us.”

This Author 

Bethany Pitts has been working with indigenous communities in Ecuador since 2013, especially those defending their territories from extractivism. She is currently writing the Moon Guide to Ecuador & The Galapagos Islands (2019), which will be the first international guide book on Ecuador with a focus on eco- and community tourism.

The age of the internet has made the spread of information much faster and more reliable. People are learning about everything that starts trending on Twitter or ends up as a news segment. For the most part, that information has to do with current events, and some of that leans toward the environmental side of things.

Because people can learn more about what their carbon footprint is and how it impacts the earth, everyone wants to go green. People switch out plastic bottles for reusable ones and turn off their sprinklers earlier than they used to.

But going green is more than getting an eco-friendly car. Like most things, it starts in the home. If you’re considering getting a new home or building one from scratch, read on so that you can learn about which method is more earth-friendly and if it’s right for you.

Budget-friendly

When someone in your life is building their dream home, it’s all they can talk about. You’ll hear about how they’re having problems deciding between paint swatches and building materials, even down to cabinet handles. It’s not a secret that building a home requires a lot of time and energy, and people wanting to go green have an even bigger challenge.

Organisations that can make a difference have formed, including the UK Green Building Council. They aim to help people improve the sustainability of the environment through the construction process. From planning to maintaining, they have resources for anyone building.

What building is going to cost you will be different depending on how you want your home built. There’s no denying that upfront costs will be more expensive if you’re going to include solar hot water panels or energy-efficient insulation. At the same time, green products will save you money in the long run. If there’s a chance you could move out of your home in the near future, you might be better off buying.

Since more people want to go green in their homes, the odds of finding a green home are better than ever before. Still, the UK is struggling to reduce their overall levels of greenhouse emissions. There are over a million homes in the UK with poor energy insulation, and even though the government is providing incentives for homeowners to go green before selling, it’s been a slow change.

If your home isn’t green enough for you, you don’t need to tear it down or sell it to improve the efficiency of your lifestyle. Green renovations happen all the time and could be more budget-friendly than you might think.

Carbon footprint

Ever wanted to redo your hardwood floors? Get that dream accomplished and stay green while you do it by sticking with reclaimed wood. Reclaimed wood takes 11 to 13 times less energy to produce than new wood because there aren’t any trees to transport and process.

You can also triple-glaze your windows to keep warm air trapped in the winter. If you look for a glaze that has a lower U-value, you’ll find that it’s less expensive than other glazes. It will have a slightly lower thermal performance but still save you money and energy.

The short answer is yes, building a new home can be environmentally friendly, but that’s not your only option to go green. Building with the environment in mind means you’ll be paying much more upfront, and you might not want to go that far into debt or have to spend time saving that much before starting your project.

Instead, weigh the pros and cons of renovating vs. selling your home. The effects of doing any of these options can still help minimise your carbon footprint without costing you more than you’re willing to spend.

This Author

Emily Folk is a conservation and sustainability writer and the editor of Conservation Folks.

“My career as a cabinet minister began with quite a bang,” Lord Lawson recalled in his autobiography. And his first act was to sell of the oil-producing BNOC run by the state-owned British Gas. He installed Martin Jacomb, his trusted friend and merchant banker, as a non-executive of the government’s Gas Corporation Board.

“These three eminent businessmen could not be pushed around by anyone. They also kept me better informed than my officials were usually able to do,” Lawson would explain. Jacomb will reappear in our story thirty years later when he would be appointed a trustee of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

The privatisation of Britain’s oil industry did not have public support. “The usual lack of enthusiasm for abandoning State ownership was reinforced in the public mind by the feeling that North Sea oil was a unique national asset which should remain strictly under national political control,” Lawson observed drily.

“It was difficult to find a way of privatising BNOC without succumbing to the charge that the government was relinquishing ownership of a priceless national treasure to speculators, foreigners or multinationals.”

In fact, the public seemed very keen on keeping the energy sector in public ownership. “The Labour Party could win four out of five general elections between 1964 and 1974 on a programme of more and more sweeping nationalisation,” Lawson himself observed years earlier.

Black gold

But since when did the views of the British public amount to much? They were not Oxford educated economists. How could they possibly know what was good for them?

The public might also have wanted to raise billions in taxes for the new discoveries of oil in the North Sea to help fund the National Health Service, the new comprehensive schools, and broader welfare state.

But Lawson knew better. North Sea oil was discovered in 1969 and would, it has since transpired, be the last significant find anywhere in the world.

The “black gold” began to pour in 1976 and by 1982 Britain had, for the first time in its history, become an oil exporter—and the government took £8 billion in revenues—accounting for £8.50 out of every £100 collected by the taxman.

The Labour government, then proudly socialist, presented the radical suggestion that the country should invest in the new, unearned riches for the benefit of future generations. 

But Lawson knew better. “The idea was sensibly rejected by the Treasury,” he recalled in his memoirs.

“It seemed to me rather more sensible to use North Sea tax revenues to reduce government borrowing, to cut taxes where this could be done on a sustainable basis, and generally to improve the climate for enterprise.”

Billions in taxes

The decision to let the oil industry reap more of the benefits from the oil bounty was in part a result of lobbying from within the industry itself. “When the Conservatives came into power in 1979, they inherited a tax regime which was stifling development,” Clive Wright, then director of corporate affairs at Esso, told me.

“We had a series of consultation with the Conservatives. The Conservatives listened, and they loosened up the tax regime which unleashed a lot more investment in the North Sea so that fuels which were marginal became attractive to develop.”

Lawson and Howe abolished one tax which alone effectively handed £2.4 billion back to the oil industry. Lawson cut other taxes to the benefit of oil.

The reforms “went considerably further than my officials thought the Treasury would be prepared to contemplate,” Lawson would boast.

It is an abject and total tragedy that this great, good fortune was not instead use to finance a new age of clean energy.

Perhaps the gush of oil could have been used to help heat the homes of Britain’s poorest families? Apparently not. Lawson in fact raised the cost of heating homes and cooking for every family in the country at the same time as cutting billions from the taxes of Big Oil.

Gas prices

Today, Lawson has become the great champion of low gas prices. The Global Warming Policy Foundation – his climate denying charity –  launched a campaign against new levies on gas bills to pay for climate change mitigation. It was based on dubious statistics.

But back then it was a very different time. Taxes on major corporations were being used to support families by subsidising household gas bills.

And Lawson would, as energy minister, put a stop to that. He continued the hike in gas prices started by his predecessor, Lord Howell, that very nearly doubled domestic gas bills over just three years.

The price rise also left businesses burned.  This was at the time “a highly unpopular policy”, but Lord Lawson “succeeded in carrying it through in full, and no political disaster ensued”.

Lawson was even able to turn public fury into a political advantage. “I sought to make a virtue of necessity by inserting in my political speeches the assertion that this was a government that would always do what was right, regardless of short-term popularity,” he smiled to himself. “It usually went down pretty well.”

The price rise would, of course, fatten the British Gas turkey in time for the great Christmas giveaway. It would be a private company and its shareholders who would grow rich from charging the poor more for their bills.

History records that the very first privatisation resulted in the government assets being sold off on the cheap. Lawson blamed his advisors for underpricing the sale.

Political storm

“This led to an enormous political storm, with Labour accusing the government of ripping off the taxpayer, and deliberately selling state assets on the cheap to its friend in the City.”

Lawson claims he was “deeply humiliated” at the time, but concluded that his giveaway “may have been no bad thing”.

He then sold off British Gas showrooms, despite huge public anger. “The government’s opponents were remarkably successful in portraying the privatisation of this state-owned chain of shops… as an ideologically inspired attack on the British way of life.”

The sale was based on Hayek’s idea that the state should not have a direct hand in the economy. Unless, of course, the state takes the form of the armed forces and the intervention involves putting down unions.

Documents published for the first time following a Freedom of Information Act request by the author show that in his first month in office [October 1981], Lawson drew up secret plans to mobilise the British Army to break a strike among oil tanker drivers.

Lawson did his very best as energy secretary to befriend Saudi oil ministers, but his blundering efforts made this a task fraught with difficulty and intrigue.

A fortnight after being appointed energy secretary, Nigel Lawson invited Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the Saudi oil minister and “de facto leader” of the world’s first oil cartel, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), to London for an official luncheon [Lawson, 1992: 191].

OPEC was at the time deeply unhappy that Britain was selling North Sea oil cheap into the international markets, believing this would devalue their own supply.

Congenial companion

“I found the highly intelligent, soft-spoken, Western-educated Yamani a most congenial companion,” Lawson remembers.

The following Spring, Yamani began lobbying the British energy secretary hard to raise the oil price. Lawson, a free market advocate, publicly stated the government would not control prices, instead but initiated a secret ploy to carry favour.

“It would not have helped Anglo-Saudi relations to have sent Yamani away completely empty handed,” he later explained to the public he had deceived.

“I therefore undertook to persuade the British National Oil Corporation to be as discrete as possible in lowering the reference price for North Sea oil”.

At the Saudi oil minister’s request, he also issued a press release saying that Britain would not increase its production of oil. This, however, backfired, because oil production did in fact increase in 1983—for which Lawson would pay later.

Lawson was warmly received by Yamani when he travelled to Saudi Arabia in April 1983. “Yamani gave a luncheon in his own home in my honour,” he recalled.

“He invited a number of his cabinet colleagues and their wives—something our then ambassador, James Craig, told me was a most unusual gesture of friendship.”

Lest I be corrupted

The Saudi oil minister presented Lawson with a gift, a long spouted Arab silver coffee-pot. Lawson complained later: “I had to hand them over to the department, lest I be corrupted”.

Lawson was responsible for the sale of the British oil in November that year. The night before the state asset was sold on the market, Lawson’s friend Yamani gave an interview to a relatively unknown newspaper in Kuwait expressing his “gloom” about oil prices.

The interview, Lawson believes, sabotaged the sale, and the privatisation was, once again, a disaster. The energy minister had been outsmarted.

Lawson’s final act as energy minister was to break up the state monopoly on the supply of power.

In May 1983, he brought in the Energy Act. The legislation allowed private electricity generators to sell energy to customers directly for the first time.

Hayek’s free market ideal was becoming a reality. He would also look back fondly on his tenure when writing his 1992 autobiography “In many ways my short stay at Energy gave me more pleasure than any other job I have had before or since”.

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk. 

A classic origin story: when I was 16 I wrote a song called ‘Planet Earth’ over a grime instrumental for a reflective alternative worship service that my brother and his friend were running at church one Sunday evening. 

Despite including such powerful sentiments as “If this is Mother Earth, When did she give birth?”, and a chorus that begun with “What wood you do about Deforestation” and ended with “Does it (referring to my powerful environmental message) make you stop, like a station”, it wasn’t quite enough to inspire the world to change its ways.

Ten years later I’ve teamed up with Chris to try again, this time with more comedy, and fewer ‘ation’ rhymes.

New habits

I’ve always tried to be conscious about the world that we live in, whether through overly earnest teenage raps or even last year attempting to go vegetarian for lent because of the impact of the meat industry. This was in turn met by Chris writing a song about feeling betrayed that we could no longer eat meat together, but as we explore in this new song even he is considering a meat-free Monday every once in a while.

I got married in January and my wife Grace constantly inspires me to be better and calls me out on stuff when I forget.

For our wedding we saved money by making it BYOB and instead put that towards providing keep-cups for our guests as wedding favours to save on having to use plastic cups on the day, but also we’ve loved getting pictures of them using them since and hoping that’s trickled out into fewer single-use cups being used.

We’ve since moved to the seaside in Margate so as well as upgrading my diet to be vegetarian-apart-from-locally-caught-fish-and-chips-on-special-occasions, it’s a lot more shocking to see the amount of waste people leave on the beach and the impact it has in the sea.

Being on the road a lot, it’s easy to get into a habit of buying lots of food and drink in packaging, but my reusable water bottle and keep-cup have been lifesavers – especially on the occasional overnight megabus! Recently Chris has got good at shouting ‘No!’ before anyone puts a straw in our drinks. 

Zero-waste song

In this year’s show we’ve tried to tackle more serious issues, such as the end of the world and the power that fear does or doesn’t have over us – especially regarding newspapers and immigration. 

We’ve loved pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone and seeing where it’s led.

To this end Chris had the idea for a ‘Zero-Waste Song’. It’s honestly one of my favorites from the show. There’s also a beyoncé/teletubbies mashup that is arguably a less serious issue but still important. 

In our songs as well as in our lives, we figured there’s no point just having a go at people and trying to make them feel rubbish about themselves when it comes to the environment. People tend to switch off and disengage, so we’re very much trying to meet people where they are and encourage gradual change.  

Comedy is also brilliant way to change the way we look at things. The first verse of the song involves us trying to explain certain things to someone looking back from the future. What’s a sachet? It’s a tiny saucy stash-et. It feels like that sort of thing will stick with people maybe more than a powerpoint presentation. 

Spreading hope

We’re excited to see if it does make more of a difference than my teenage efforts. 

We’ve also expanded our merch for this year! We have organic bamboo t-shirts made in a factory powered by solar and wind energy (don’t even worry about it). 

We’re also getting 150 reusable cups made that say ‘The Way Things Are Is Not The Way They Have To Be’ – the chorus of the song – that hopefully people can take out and spread the love with.

Although we do realise that if nobody buys them then all we’ve done is manufactured another 150 cups – so we really hope some people come along to see us at the Fringe or on tour and buy them.

This Author

Harry Baker  is one half of the comedy/rap/jazz duo Harry and Chris. They perform ‘Harry & Chris Save The World’ at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe at Just The Tonic, The Mash House to 25 August 2018 at 2:25pm, ahead of a nationwide tour from 2 October. More info and tickets are available here. 

Whale sharks – the world’s largest fish – roam less than previously thought. Local and regional actions are vital for the conservation of this globally endangered species, according to a new study by researchers from the Marine Megafauna Foundation, University of Southampton, and Sharkwatch Arabia.

Previously, genetic research indicated that whale sharks mixed within distinct populations in the Indo-Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, respectively. The findings are published today in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series.

This new study used stable isotope analysis, a biochemical technique, to demonstrate that whale sharks feeding at three disparate sites in the Western Indian Ocean (Mozambique and Tanzania) and the Arabian Gulf (Qatar) rarely swim more than a few hundred kilometers north or south from these areas.

Electronic tags

Dr Clare Prebble, who led the research as part of her PhD project at the University of Southampton, said: “Whale sharks are amazing swimmers, often moving over 10000 km each year, and they can dive to around 2000 meters in depth. Biochemical studies tell us more about where they go and what they do when they’re out of our sight.”

The researchers used isotopes of nitrogen and carbon that have similar chemical properties, but vary in their atomic mass. Ratios between the heavier and lighter isotopes of these elements vary naturally across different habitats in the marine environment.

For example, more of the heavier isotopes are found in near-shore environments than offshore. These ratios stay consistent as they are passed up through the food web, from tiny marine plants to top predators, and therefore provide a record of the animal’s feeding and movement behaviors. Stable isotope analysis thereby provides a ‘biological passport’ for whale sharks.

Electronic tags are commonly used with marine animals to record their movements and diving behaviors.

However, the challenge of keeping them attached to a large shark, while minimizing disturbance, has meant that only short-term deployments (weeks to months) have been possible.

Unique patterns

This study used tiny samples of skin tissue from wild, free-swimming whale sharks. These small pieces of skin, collected over 2–3 years at each location, were sufficient to reconstruct the sharks’ movements and feeding preferences over the weeks and months prior to sampling.

Values of both carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes differentiated at each site. To complement the biochemical analysis, the researchers also took photographs of the natural markings on each whale shark to identify and track individuals over a 10-year timeframe.

Every whale shark has a unique spot pattern, similar to a human fingerprint. The team recorded 4197 encounters with 1240 individual whale sharks within these three countries.

Only two sharks moved between sites, both swimming around 2000 km north from Mozambique to Tanzania.

Taken together, these findings indicate that there are limited movements between these major aggregation sites over months to years. These results have implications for the conservation of this endangered species.

Local protections

Prebble added: “The best data available suggests that more than half of the world’s whale sharks have been killed since the 1980s.

“Although the Western Indian Ocean remains a global hotspot for the species, even the largest feeding areas only host a few hundred sharks. Our results show that we need to treat each site separately, and ensure good conservation management is in place, as the sharks may not re-populate if they’re impacted by people’s activities.”

The study stresses the need to protect these filter-feeding sharks at the areas where they come together in numbers, particularly where human pressures are also present.

Whale sharks are an incidental catch in coastal gillnets, which are frequently used in Mozambique and Tanzania. The Arabian Gulf is a huge oil shipping area where vessel strikes pose a major threat to the sharks when they are feeding near the surface.

Dr Simon Pierce, Principal Scientist at the Marine Megafauna Foundation and a co-author on this study, commented: “Whale sharks are fully capable of swimming across oceans, but it seems like the juveniles, at least, are choosing not to. They like coming back to the same sites each year to take advantage of predictable feeding opportunities.

“Looking on the bright side, that emphasizes that local protection can have a major benefit for the recovery of this endangered species. The rewards can also be felt locally, with whale shark tourism now worth over $100 million each year around the world.”

Population distribution 

Earlier this year, colleagues reported that whale sharks regularly visit Madagascar to feed, which has led to a growing ecotourism industry between the months of September and December.

To date, none of the sharks identified in Madagascar have been seen outside that country, further reinforcing the results from this new study. 

Dr Clive Trueman from the University of Southampton concluded: “Interestingly, most sharks found at these feeding sites are juvenile males of less than nine meters.

“To truly assess how populations are globally structured and distributed, we need to learn more about where the sharks go once they reach adulthood. They may well move out of our sight to feed and breed in deeper offshore waters.”

The study was supported by WWF Tanzania, Shark Foundation, Aqua-Firma, Waterlust, Maersk Oil Research and Technology Centre, Qatar Ministry of Municipality and Environment, PADI Foundation, Rufford Small Grants, and two private trusts.

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Marine Megafauna Foundation. The MMF was created in 2009 to research, protect and conserve the populations of threatened marine megafauna around the world. The study – Prebble et al., ‘Limited latitudinal ranging of juvenile whale sharks in the Western Indian Ocean suggests the existence of regional management units’ – was published on 9 August 2018 and available here

The decision by Theresa May’s government to allow the building of a third runway at Heathrow Airport is unlawful, according to a formal legal action which has begun at the High Court. Opponents to the decision argue that it fails to address the country’s climate change obligations.

The legal challenge brought by Friends of the Earth challenges the legal basis of the government’s decision to designate the Airports National Policy Statement (NPS), the policy framework for expansion at Heathrow Airport devised by the Transport Secretary Chris Grayling, which gives the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow.

Lawyers Leigh Day, on behalf of Friends of the Earth, filed papers with the High Court this week asking for the Airports NPS published in June to be quashed.

Paris Agreement

The environmental campaign charity claims that the NPS fails to account for all the impacts on future generations, who will be left with the adverse consequences of growth from aviation-increasing climate impacts. 

In the papers filed at the High Court Friends of the Earth argues that the government’s Airports NPS is unlawful as it amounts to a breach of the UK’s climate change policy, as well as its sustainable development duties, due to the following:

•    It does not explain how it takes account of domestic targets for greenhouse gas emission reduction under the Climate Change Act 2008;

•    It does not factor in the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C;

•    It fails to factor in the non-CO2 climate impacts of a third runway, such as the emission of nitrogen oxides, which generate warming effects of a similar magnitude to CO2 emissions;

•    It does not lawfully and fully consider the likely impact on future generations of a third runway, who will be stranded with the climate-damaging infrastructure.

Liz Hutchins, Friends of the Earth’s director of campaigns, said: “The government’s airports strategy completely ignores its obligations to tackle climate change – this is short-sighted, incredibly reckless and we believe it is unlawful.

“Allowing the aviation industry to pump more pollution into the atmosphere will make it far harder to prevent catastrophic climate change – and leaves future generations to suffer the consequences.

Catastrophic change

“It’s time to end our reliance on the fossil fuels that are already roasting our planet and threatening peoples’ lives, homes and livelihoods.”

Rowan Smith from the public law team at Leigh Day said: “Our client believes that the expansion of Heathrow Airport will jeopardise the UK’s ability to make the very deep reductions in Greenhouse Gases that will be necessary to prevent global warming from causing catastrophic, irreversible impacts for the environment and future generations.

“In no sensible terms can this be described as sustainable development, when the additional costs of carbon-offsetting and the global warming potential of non-CO2 emissions from aviation do not feature in the government’s plans.

Smith continued: “The government has a legal duty to take into account climate change policy and the Paris agreement it has committed to with the global community, the Airports National Policy Statement does not adequately consider those factors and we therefore will argue that it is unlawful.”

A decision on whether there will be a full hearing about these issues is expected to be made this Autumn.

This Author

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This story is based on a press release from Friends of the Earth. For more information visit its website.

Even the sunset is sponsored by the global resource industry in Gladstone, Queensland. Looking west in the early evening, you cannot help gazing at the three tall chimneys of the power plant as they interfere with the yellow disc just about to sink below the horizon.

It is a vibrant industrial city, one of the world’s largest coal ports, with two large alumina refineries, an aluminium smelter, three LNG (liquid natural gas) plants, a cement factory, a cyanide factory, and much more. It is prosperous, thriving and energetic.

But there is a Faustian dimension to the contracts signed by workers and executives: these industries threaten people’s health, pollute the local environment, and contribute to global climate change.

Industrial landscape

Approaching Gladstone airport in a smallish propeller plane from Brisbane, you notice the contrast between the serene greenery of the remaining forest cover and the raw brutality of the small open-pit mines and construction areas.

There is a clash between the blue Pacific Ocean and the crimson pools of bauxite refuse from the alumina refinery; green pastures next to barren fields of red wasteland reminiscent of Martian landscapes; beaches and suburbs rubbing shoulders with smokestacks and warehouses. 

Before landing, you catch a glimpse of the industrial port facilities that define the boundary between city and sea. There are hundreds of empty coal wagons on railway side tracks. Then you see the distant metal structures of the LNG terminals on Curtis Island, the cranes at the wharf, and the foreign cargo ships waiting to load.

Gladstone is a child of globalisation. Since the industrialisation of the then fledgling rural town began in the 1960s, its population has mushroomed along with the growth of its export-oriented, resource-based industry. 

Change has been rapid, and has turned the city into the undisputed industrial hub of Central Queensland. Yet with globalisation comes vulnerability and powerlessness.

Industrial powerhouse

Until 1967, Gladstone was mainly integrated with the surrounding countryside and had no fossil-fuel related industry. 

Its cornerstone enterprise was Swift’s meatworks, which grew in importance and prosperity as a supplier of tinned meat to Allied forces during the Second World War. 

The meatworks were closed down in 1963, and on the very same site, one of the world’s largest alumina refineries was opened in 1967. It would eventually get its electricity from the coal-driven power station on the edge of town, opened in 1976. The alumina would eventually be turned into aluminium at the nearby Boyne Island Smelter from 1982. 

With the opening of the Moura railway line for transporting coal from the interior of Queensland in 1968, and the construction of a coal terminal at Barney Point, Gladstone had, in the space of just a few years, become a fully-fledged industrial city.

Industrial developments in the Gladstone region have continued at an uneven pace. 

A second alumina refinery has been opened in Yarwun west of the city; Cement Australia operates a factory at Fisherman’s Landing just north of Gladstone and a mine in Mount Larcom to the north-west; there is a quarry, a chemical factory and many auxiliary activities – scaffolding, mechanical workshops, transport companies and so on – adding to the industrial, and industrious, face presented by Gladstone to the visitor.

Research expectations

The main research question raised by my recent research in Gladstone concerns local responses to these changes, and the unintentional side-effects of rapid industrial growth more generally. 

No matter where you look, there are signs of industrial activity and growth. Wherever you turn, there are visual, audible and sometimes olfactory reminders of industry.

Fine coal dust settles on your window sills and garden chairs, city beaches are deserted due to the visible pollution of the water, the dredging of the western harbour to allow large ships to enter has been fraught by controversy and environmental concerns. 

There is a constant hum of distant machinery and din of heavy trucks passing through the Port Access Road intersecting the city centre.

I had expected to devote much of my attention to exploring ambivalence around climate change and the use of fossil fuels. It stands to reason that people who depend on fossil fuel-intensive industries for their livelihood should take a sanguine position towards questions to do with climate change and environmental destruction. 

Still, considering the recent (and ongoing) controversies around LNG developments and dredging, the relative lack of environmental anxiety and wariness towards the fossil fuel industries initially came as something of a surprise.

Limited options

Although the green movement is vocal, well-organised and at times influential in Australia, it is all but invisible in Gladstone. 

In the 2012 Queensland elections, the Green Party got 2.1 percent of the votes in the greater Gladstone region (602 votes), compared to 7.54 percent in the State. 

As one of my interlocutors said, if Greenpeace would offer him a sustainable job enabling him to pay his mortgage and his daughters’ education, he would take it immediately, but for the time being, he had no other option than holding on to his factory job.

Instead of widespread environmental activism, what I found in Gladstone was a strong commitment to industrialism. Admittedly, this was coupled with an anxiety about health risks, and a somewhat muffled concern with the local and global environmental destruction wrought by fossil fuel-based industrial activity. 

Yet, with the exception of a few heroic green warriors, some of whom have formed the Gladstone Conservation Council, attitudes to industrialism are on the whole positive. Unlike in cities like Melbourne and Sydney, green voices seem largely powerless.

This Author

Thomas Hylland Eriksson is a professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo. His recent book, Boomtown: Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast (July 2018) is available to buy from Pluto Press.  

The most ambitious and high profile rewinding project in the UK – with six lynx being reintroduced to Kielder for a five-year trial period – has received a boost. Landowners covering 700km2 of potential habitat for the medium-sized cats have now approved access.

Michael Gove, the environment secretary, and Natural England continue to consider the Lynx UK Trust licence application for a trial reintroduction of Eurasian lynx to Kielder Forest in Northumberland. 

If the trial is successful, it could lead to a wider reintroduction of the lynx in other parts of the UK such as the Scottish Highlands.

Team effort

Advocates expect the lynx would bring a range of benefits, helping to control and reduce the UK’s over-populated deer numbers, reducing damage to forests and improving habitat for smaller animals in the process.

Expert analysis has also estimated a potential tourism value of tens of millions of pounds for the local rural economy, based on similar reintroduction projects in Europe.

Dr Paul O’Donoghue, the chief scientific advisor for the Lynx UK Trust, said: “I think this speaks volumes for the confidence in the trial reintroduction plan we’ve laid out, and the potential it has for improving the local ecosystem and expanding the local tourist economy. Literally every landowner we have approached has given permission.

“We’ve got an incredible team of ecologists, four wildlife vets and highly experienced reintroduction specialists ready to start work, with a combined 300 years of experience between them.

“This will be an exceptionally rigorous, scientifically-led reintroduction trial using cutting edge technology to monitor these cats in stunning detail. Everything is in place to deliver a world class project that will breathe life into Britain’s dying forest ecosystems.”

Apex preditor 

Wildwood Trust, has extensive experience in the conservation and reintroduction of protected species and managing large carnivores, as well as working closely with Government regulators, such as Natural England and DEFRA, developing conservation licensing systems for a range of threatened species such as water voles, dormice, red squirrels and European beaver. The Trust has recently joined the Lynx UK Trust reintroduction team. 

Peter Smith, the director of Wildwood, said: “Our ecosystem desperately needs reintroductions like this; apex predators are critical for controlling species like deer which can overpopulate and cause serious damage to natural habitats.

“Lynx aren’t the complete solution, but they’re a keystone element in the construction of one. We’re very happy to be making a big commitment of time, staff and resources to this project, and thoroughly believe the time is perfect for these shy animals to come back to the UK.”

Lynx have been successfully reintroduced in countries across Europe.

They have proven themselves to be of no threat to humans anywhere they live, and that they present a very limited threat to sheep farmers, with the average Eurasian lynx killing one sheep every two years.

Insuring sheep

Lynx UK Trust have already arranged insurance for every sheep in the UK against lynx attacks, backed by Lloyds Syndicate ARK Speciality Programs, a specialist division of Lloyds of London headed up by Richard Bryant

He said: “I hope this insurance cover will provide sound financial security for the Trust so they will be able to generously compensate farmers if any of their sheep are injured or killed.

“Having assessed all the science and research on lynx predation we’re very confident that sheep attacks will be rare, so if our support can help make a trial reintroduction practical it’s a great opportunity for us to do something really positive.”

O’Donoghue added: “There’s a perceived threat to sheep which has come largely from baseless National Sheep Association scaremongering, the union has avoided every opportunity to engage with the project and seem to have no interest in their members benefitting from the extensive opportunities a reintroduction could bring. 

“Lloyds will insure their sheep, farmers will have an incredible opportunity to diversify their businesses and benefit from the increased tourism into the area, and we’ve laid out a range of investments we want to make into predation mitigation. These would reduce attacks by any predator, including foxes and dogs. 

“There is literally no evidence that lynx will have any significant negative effect on sheep farming, quite the opposite. We can’t let completely unsubstantiated rhetoric take priority over scientific evidence, economic evidence and incredible public support, and I’m hugely excited to see that all of the Kielder region’s major landowners have now confirmed their approval for what we hope to do.” 

This Author 

Marianne Brooker is a contributing editor for The Ecologist. This article is based on a press release from the Lynx UK Trust. For more information visit their website.

An excitable Keith Joseph met with Ralph Harris of the Institute of Economic Affairs and his deputy Arthur Seldon at one of his favourite Westminster restaurants, Lockets, in February 1974.

Joseph was at the time a member of the Shadow Cabinet and the third most influential politician in the Conservative party. He had invited his close friends from the IEA to lunch so he could get their clearance to set up a rival free market think tank.

His new Centre for Policy Studies would be overtly political and use the methods of the Socialist Fabians to win the battle of ideas in favour of radical liberalism within Britain’s natural party of government.

This was cloak and dagger politics. An audacious, secret, plan to challenge seize the party leadership, win the forthcoming election and install a new Cabinet dedicated to making Hayek’s economic prescriptions official policy for the first time. “My aim was to convert the Tory party,” Joseph would later explain.

Joseph would become known even among his closest friends as the “Mad Monk” in part because of the purity and forcefulness of his political thought. He would concede that he was “a convenient madman”.

Offer Encouragement

He had relied on Harris’s instruction and help in economics and social policy, devouring the stack of books, reports and articles that the IEA recommended over the previous months.

“Harris assured Joseph that he was not troubled by the fact that there would be two organisations promoting roughly the same message. In fact Harris and Seldon could not have been more helpful,” records Antony Fisher biographer Gerald Frost.

The CPS was in fact “the logical next step” in the battle against the State. Antony Fisher was just as welcoming of Joseph’s bold move and paid a visit “to assure him of his personal support and to offer encouragement”.

Joseph was the Marcus Brutus of his time, convinced that disloyally disposing of his leader, Edward Heath, would be good for his party, his city, his empire. He was the leader of this conspiracy.

Strangely considering his part in the internal leadership coup, Lawson would describe his friend Joseph as being: “Tormented by self-doubt, devoid of guile, and with a passion to educate, he laboured under the delusion that everyone else, friend or foe, was as intellectually honest and fundamentally decent, as lacking in malice and personal ambition, as he was.”

Provoking Wrath

Heath was deeply suspicious that his colleagues were secretly plotting a leadership bid but gave his approval to the new think tank only half convinced it would study Polish economic policy. “Heath’s intention must have been to give Joseph a chemistry set with which he would hopefully blow himself up,” said one contemporary.

Joseph recruited Margaret Thatcher as vice chairman of the CPS in May 1974. “His was a risky, exposed position, and the fear of provoking the wrath of Ted and the derision of the left-wing commentators was a powerful disincentive – but I jumped at the chance,” Thatcher recalled years later.

“From Keith and Alfred I learned a great deal. I renewed my reading of the seminal works of liberal economics and conservative thought.

“I also regularly attended lunches at the Institute of Economic affairs where Ralph Harris, Arthur Seldon, Alan Walters and others – in other words all those who had been right when we in government had gone wrong – were busy marking out a new non-socialist economic and social path for Britain.”

Joseph prescribed Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom as required reading. Gerald Frost, was a member of the CPSboard and would hand books and reports to Richard Ryder, Thatcher’s political secretary, for her to read over the weekend including the latest output from the IEA.

“Joseph was also responsible for ensuring that Mrs Thatcher struck up relations with the IEA directors, and through them, Hayek and Friedman,” recalls Frost.

The new Conservative think tank operated on an annual budget of £150,000 from private donors – which included the largess of the tobacco companies.

Hung Parliament

The official founding meeting of the CPS was held in Room G of the House of Commons on 12 June 1974. Joseph was joined by Thatcher and Sherman and also an industrialist named Nigel Vinson.

Vinson had written an article for the IEA and shortly after was called by Fisher and taken to lunch. Vinson was invited by Fisher to join the board of trustees of the IEA.

Vinson agreed because he “admired him hugely”. Thirty years later he told me: “That’s the link between the IEA and the Centre for Policy Studies: that’s me. I, Maggie Thatcher and Keith Joseph, we were the first three directors of the Centre for Policy Studies.”

The IEA, he explained, wanted to form opinions over decades and also protect the charitable status as educational rather than party political. The CPS, on the other hand, wanted to transform British politics in the next months and years.

Joseph went on a speaking tour while Britain was in tumult. Edward Heath had taken on the mining unions and lost.

The election in February had delivered a hung parliament and when negotiations between the Conservatives and Liberals collapsed, Labour formed a minority government. Harold Wilson and his Labour party won the second general election of the year, on 10 October 1974, but only by three votes.

“The result was much less of a disaster for the Tories than it might have been,” according to Geoffrey Howe, who would later become chancellor under Thatcher. “We had lost, certainly. But disaster had been averted”.

It was well understood that Heath would not last long as Tory leader. After the election he put Thatcher in charge of housing, and she in turn asked Nigel Lawson to join her clique.

Weathy Stockbroker

Lawson was born in Hampstead, now one of the most desirable parts of the capital, in March 1932. His father was a successful City of London tea merchant and his mother’s father was a wealthy stockbroker.

His childhood home was “complete with nanny, cook and parlourmaid”. Lawson during his formative years immediately after the war developed the distinctive distrust that would make him amenable to the free market philosophy.

“It seemed to me that in every respect the socialism the Labour Government was seeking to put into practice went against the grain of human nature – not least its Utopian disregard of original sin or of what Anthony Quinton has called ‘man’s moral and intellectual imperfection’.”

Lawson won a maths scholarship and went up to Oxford University to study philosophy, politics and economics under the tutelage of professor Roy Harrod, an ardent Keynesian.

He specialised in philosophy and was influenced by the Linguistic Analysis school which would prove a useful foundation for his elegant rhetoric during his political career.

He joined Chatham, the “somewhat decadent high Tory dining club” and played poker. After university he joined the navy and in 1955 married Vanessa Salmon, a wealthy tobacco heiress. He then joined the Financial Times as an oil correspondent.

His son Dominic, currently a climate sceptic columnist, and his celebrity daughter Nigella, were both born during this period. Lawson then moved from the newsroom to the political backroom.

Oliver Poole, chairman of the FT and of the Conservative party, recognised his shrewdness and way with words hired him as a speechwriter to Harold MacMillan, the prime minister. Lawson would edit the right-wing Spectator and then the city pages of the newly launched Sunday Telegraph when in 1970 he stood unsuccessfully as an MP for Slough.  

He was finally elected to Parliament on the eve of his 42nd birthday in 1974 and in the same year had a hand in drafting the Conservative party manifesto, committed the Tories to creating an ministry for energy and then found himself in Thatcher’s policy group.

“This was my first experience of working with Margaret,” Lawson would note. The proximity to Thatcher meant proximity to Joseph who at that time was the free market cabal’s great hope for leadership.

Lawson  recalled: “Keith was the founder member of the group of Tory radicals which, under Margaret’s leadership, were the government’s driving force during the first two Thatcher parliaments. The only other full members of that group were Geoffrey Howe, Norman Tebbit and myself.”

Delinquents and Denizens

Howe made it clear that he wanted Joseph to join the leadership. “I [told] Joseph that he would have our support if he chose to stand, and no doubt others were doing the same. Keith seemed willing to accept the challenge.”

But then disaster. Joseph would during the course of one speech wreck his leadership ambitions on the rocks of public good will and tolerance. “The balance of our population, our human stock is threatened”, Joseph warned at Edgbaston in October 1974.

“A high and rising proportion of children are being born to mothers least fitted to bring children into the world and bring them up.”

He continued: “Many of these girls are unmarried, many are deserted or divorced or soon will be. Some are of low intelligence, most of low educational attainment….they are producing problem children, the future unmarried mothers, delinquents, denizens of our borstals, sub-normal educational establishments, prisons, hostels for drifters!”

The blame for this apparent malaise was clear. “The Socialist method would take away from the family and its members the responsibilities which give it cohesion”.

Almost before he had sat down after the address there was a storm of protest across the country. Many working class families were deeply offended and Joseph was “accused of being a racist and an advocate of eugenics”.

The speech would in fact do for Joseph just as the “rivers of blood” had killed the political career of his close friend and fellow IEA advocate Enoch Powell years earlier. He was no longer a serious contender for the Conservative leadership and future prime minister.

“Keith, naive rather than deliberately provocative, was genuinely surprised by the fuss,” according to Howe. “Sadly, I concluded that Keith’s judgment was too erratic for him to be entrusted with leadership of the party.” [Howe, 1994: 89].

Hostility to Women

Shortly after the speech a humbled Joseph called at Thatcher’s offices at the Houses of Parliament. “I am sorry,” he told his unofficial campaign leader. “I just can’t run. Ever since I made that speech, the press has been outside the house.

They have been merciless. My wife can’t take it…and I have decided I just can’t stand.” The free market advocates had to decide what to do. They were deeply unhappy at the prospect that Heath and his national consensus would grind on for ever.

Thatcher’s ambitions were limited to that of chancellor, especially because of the hostility to women that dominated the Conservatives at that time.

Her husband, Denis, had sold the family oil business to Castrol in the 1950s for what would today be many millions.

She was therefore comfortably off enough to risk everything. “Look, Keith, if you’re not going to stand,” she said finally. “I will.”

Thatcher’s victory in the election for the Tory leadership was decisive. Two days later she met with the 1922 Committee of Conservative back bench MPs. “The room was packed,” Howe recalls.

“Tears came to my eyes. The Conservative Party had elected its first woman leader…By her almost reckless courage she had won their support, if not yet their hearts. A new bond of loyalty had been forged.”

Thatcher quickly assembled her team. She surprised almost everyone by making Geoffrey Howe, the IEA supporter and member of the Mont Pelerin Society, her chancellor and therefore putting him in charge of the country’s economy.

In doing so, she looked over Keith Joseph, although he remained at her side as a policy advisor. Howe concluded: “Keith Joseph was widely, and rightly, seen as the man who had blazed the trail for Margaret’s victory.”

She then recruited a team of young, privately-educated free market thinkers to help her meet the terrifying prospect of confronting Harold Wilson – still a “cunning and attractive parliamentary performer” – in the House of Commons.

The Gang of Four was led by Nigel Lawson.

Adam Curtis, the BBC filmmaker, captured the significance of this moment in the transformation of British political life. “She turned to the Institute of Economic Affairs to create the policies for a future government. What Fisher and Smedley had dreamt of twenty years before had finally happened.

“Once upon a time their Think Tank had been marginalised and despised – now it was at the centre of a counter-revolution that was about to triumph.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist, founder of Request Initiative and co-author of Impact of Market Forces on Addictive Substances and Behaviours: The web of influence of addictive industries (Oxford University Press). He tweets at @EcoMontague. This article first appeared at Desmog.uk.