Thirty Years of Creative Resistance - Friends of the Earth Australia

with its work on waste minimisation,
uranium, hazardous chemicals and high
temperature incinerators. Other groups
that did similar work, particularly the ACF
and Greenpeace, were large enough
and balanced enough by their ‘traditional’
green campaigns that they were able to
continue to build profile and influence while
FoE’s national presence waned.
They also had larger infrastructure, more
aggressive membership programs and
separate fundraising departments. FoE, in
contrast, neglected to establish this type of
infrastructure and prioritised decentralised
action over consolidation of functions. It
is interesting to imagine what may have
happened if FoE had ‘professionalised’
its fundraising, lobbying, and membership
development functions – as was
happening elsewhere in the movement
at this time – while maintaining its radical
structures and politics.
In spite of decreased national profile and
influence, FoE’s campaign work continued
to yield results. As one example, the efforts
of David Vincent and others on recycling
were significant. FoE was an early and
consistent voice calling for the setting of
national targets for a recycled materials
purchasing policy.
As forest blockades at Nightcap, the
Franklin, Daintree, Errinundra in eastern
Victoria, and elsewhere captured the
public’s attention in the early and mid
1980s, some in FoE expressed concern
at what they saw as a backwards step
in the development of the environment
movement in Australia. This related to a
growing tension that saw middle class
‘greenies’ setting themselves against
working class people from the timber
industry.
In many ways, the conflict over forestry
operations became the benchmark of
what the broader community perceived
as ‘environmentalism’ in the 1980s and
much of the ‘90s. Some in FoE felt that
direct action in the forests was ‘anti
worker’, ‘elitist’ and ‘highlighted the
wider environment movement’s lack of
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strategy for social change, isolation
from other social movements, and lack
of understanding about the processes
which bring about environmental
destruction’. Faced with an increasingly
disinterested and unresponsive Federal
Government, many activists decided to
focus the bulk of their attention on those
implementing forest policies, rather than
on those who were setting them.
Earlier class-conscious, socially
engaged environmental activism, as
epitomised by the Green Bans and
Environmentalists for Full Employment,
was increasingly being eclipsed by an
apolitical analysis and middle class
environmentalism. FoE grappled with
these changes and sought to continue
broad-based alliances outside the
increasingly narrowly defined green
movement.
Uranium mining operations at Ranger
continued with FoE, the ACF and other
groups keeping a watchful eye on
FoE 30 Years 40