marc hudson 0:00
So, just to give you sort of an update on where the project is up to, I’m planning to interview 15 people. You are number six. So far, everyone I have spoken to has been a white male. I’m hoping to get beyond that. There’s a question later on. about who else I should speak to? Um,
interviewee
yeah.
marc
The point of the project? Well, it’s evolved. it kind of started life as an academic paper that would also be of use to the movement, 2the movement”, which we can talk about. I’m now thinking that there’s a book project in here, where, sort of I’ve, I’ve got my perspectives on things and it’s those would be interrogated by the 15 people that I interview, and sort of, hopefully bring out some fruitful discussions. So I’m probably going to approach Pluto Press with a quite worked up proposal. Whether they say yes or no, whatever happens. But I think and I think I said this to you in the, in the emails or in the opening document. The thing that I’m keen to do is put the transcripts online, so that casual readers can see them and also future interviewees can see them. So the idea would be, you know, I’ll approach other people and say, “here’s what other people said.” And then it becomes more of a conversation not just between me and an interviewee, but between me and other people who have been interviewed if that makes sense.
Interviewee 06 2:43
Yeah that makes sense.
marc hudson 2:44
Cool. So obviously, standard interview practice applies. If you don’t want to answer a question, just say “pass”. I will send you a transcript once it’s been tidied up and if there is anything in there, that you think “Oh, on second thoughts. No, I don’t want to see that ascribed to me. I don’t want that appearing anywhere or I don’t want them to ascribe to my name” then we can take portions of the transcript out – that doesn’t matter. You know, that’s doable. Nothing will go online until you’ve had a chance to check it over.
Interviewee 6
Fine
Marc
Cool. So first question. Sorry, final final thing. The interview is divided. Really into three parts one is questions about boom and bust. Second is section which is much shorter is what are you aware has been attempted to overcome this? And the third section is well, what could be done? Um, the first section tends to take the longest but the next two sections are usually a bit quicker. So, first question in the first section, you’ve read the project description. To what extent if any, do you buy the sense of a cyclical nature of UK climate activism?
Interviewee 06 4:12
I mean, I just probably view it as kind of social movement common sense – that movements move through cycles. I mean, I guess, you know, often when people are in movements, they don’t see them as cyclical. But you know, I teach economics, it’s like economics, it moves through a cycle. You know, you cannot sustain high level activity continuously. So I think we’re all on the same page with that.
marc hudson 4:48
Cool, and I mean, other people have said the same thing. And I can mention his name, because he’s said that he’s happy for everything to be public – Alastair McIntosh up in Scotland, who wrote, yeah, you know him, I mean, he talked about just about product life cycles, which is where he first really thought about the idea. Second question is this boom and bust a problem?
Interviewee 06 5:22
Ah – I guess it’s like gravity (laughs).. I mean, it’s a problem in the sense that people need to take into account and I suspect don’t. I mean, I think that’s sort of the more general point I, I’ve made what I’ve written about this stuff and other stuff is it’s the kind of Brechtian thing of making things slightly alien. You know, that we view activism as “natural” when we’re activists and get very enthusiastic. But there are constraints on it. And I think like a lot of things if you’re aware of the gravity, the constraints, the problems, biographical availability, and so on, you have some limited ability to overcome and work with them. Whereas if this is a non-problem, which you haven’t considered, it’s more likely to be a problem that erodes what you do. So it’s maybe you know, I think the the wider challenge I’d say for the whole interview is, you know, people are massively passionate and riled up to become active. And there’s a sort of innocence and passion you need to mobilize people, but a more dispassionate look at the nuts and bolts might be helpful as well.
marc hudson 6:50
So yesterday, I was walking along the canal, narrating a portion of you know, what may become “the book” – and this exact question of, you know, it’s a marathon not a sprint is one of the stats, but people don’t want it to be a marathon, partly because they perceive “we don’t have time for a marathon 2030 year long march through the institutions”,
Interviewee
Yeah
Marc
and partly as other interviewees have said, they kind of perceive this as something that they can do for a fixed period of time, and then get on with the rest of their lives. They don’t want to see themselves as having to dedicate the rest of their lives to, you know, too many meetings and disappointing processes.
Interviewee 06 7:38
Yeah. I’m certainly agreeing with that. I mean, my kind of perspectives is to see, in some sense my kind of growing green political activism as a very long term project. And in terms of individual cycles, you move through bits of your life where you’ve got less of as we know, biographical availability. Also don’t know how reflective people always are on tactics and strategy. Because different things are appropriate at different times. But yeah, there’s a lot of people you know, I think if I said sort of “fast food activism” would be insulted. But maybe they might need being insensitive because we want fast results.
You know, there is, you know, climate change climate change crisis is here. It’s manifest already So, so already it’s “too late.” But I suppose it’s a difficult thing of being passionate enough to be engaged, and engage other people but having a more sober reflection on the field of intervention. So one of the things I was thinking of was James Connelly, who’s the Irish revolutionary. And I forget the exact quote, but he’d say “in conventional times conventional action and in unconventional times unconventional action” and he’s obviously somebody moving from entirely legal activity to an armed uprising that eventually led to the independence of a country. But it still will think context. You know, the different forms of intervention are going to be appropriate in different times and in different contexts that we’re talking about direct action mobilization. You know, it’s a tactic, But we know that it can become the entire field.
marc hudson 9:48
Yes. Sidebar, there’s a song about James Connolly by an American Irish band called Black 47. And I’ll send you the link if you’re not familiar with it.
Interviewee
That would be nice
Marc
Yeah. Cool. Um so what are the causes of this boom and bust cycle?
Interviewee 06 10:14
That’s an interesting question. I’m not really sure. I think it’s something that you know, I guess with your project, you’re going to investigate. I mean, you mentioned an interview talking about product cycles. And I teach introductory economics that kind of feeds me. If you talk about the economic cycle it manifests. But different economists have got very different causations. I haven’t kept up with all the literature but I wonder whether it’s something which is more posed as exists rather than was actually discussed what the factors are that cause it? I mean, I guess some direct action works on an implicit or explicit attitude of getting media publicity. So I mean, I think it’s entirely legitimate. I think there’s other reasons for doing direct action, but there’s going to be a media cycle you know. You price, you know, in terms of the stats, I forget the term is about “process events.” You know, reportage that kind of thing..
Then there’s obviously a cycle to kind of individual level of people’s energy and commitment on how long that can be sustained. And then, as we know, there’s also with social mobilizations how enemies and enemies, authorities allies react. So it may be if we think of like the, the, you know, the Environmental Action in the late 90s, which are something I participated in that you come up with a novel strategy, like locking on and then the authorities find ways of dealing with it.
Yet another thing might be economic cycles, because biographical availability is important. So if you have, you know, economic recession you know, maybe that gives people more biographical availability. So, a Keynesian thing would be it’s the business people becoming pessimistic and investing less and that kicks off on site economic cycle. I don’t know whether there’s a neat you know, even with a Keynes is right about that. In terms of economics. And I don’t know whether there’s like the same, you know, something equivalent in with social movements. And of course, then what’s interesting is, you’d have different cycles Interacting.
Marc
Yes.
Interviewee
Yeah. But I mean, it’s good that we’re kind of problematizing it, isn’t it?
marc hudson 13:18
Especially good that “great minds think alike.” (both laugh) Because on my canal yomp, I was thinking about the cycles that you’ve mentioned, also, obviously, the political cycles of when’s the next election and how open is a political party to trying to capture some of that energy in its battle either to retain government and demonize the opposition or to demonize the government when you’re the opposition. And of course, you know, all of these cycles as you say, interacting, maybe egging each other on, dampening each other down. And it’s very, not easy, but it’s, it’s not difficult to create a narrative after the event that explains why it was inevitable.
Interviewee
yeah.
Marc
But before actually having predictive power beforehand, not so easy. Yeah. Cool.
Interviewee
Interesting topic, isn’t it?
Marc
Yeah. And to be honest, one of the things that inspired me to do this project is to talk to people like you. I mean, because I don’t see these conversations happening in public at all.
Interviewee
No
Marc
I see much more mundane conversations, just before we came on this and I’m probably going to edit this bit out but just before I came on this call I read, I well I had to skim it because I was so angry about it. A piece on the Guardian by someone who’s involved in extinction Rebellion, and it was just so shallow.
Interviewee laughs
Marc
And after, after four or five years, you’d really hope that they had engaged a bit deeper, but they’ve been drinking their own kool aid for a long time. And it’s depressing…. Anyway, moving on.
Interviewee
Anyway,
Marc
which kind of kind of comes to the next question. Do you think other people in the movement think that this boom and bust is a problem?
Interviewee 06 15:23
I don’t know. I mean, I think I have a certain distance really. I’ve got particular projects and particular ways of doing things and I think I maintain a sort of voice there. It’s difficult to tell. But basically, what I tend to be involved with at the moment is my parish council politics. And then, you know, Marxist Leninist politics of a stripe. So I’ve probably got a quite a strange experience, although it I mean, I tend to kind of try and think “what’s the most useful intervention?” And I may misread, but I’m constantly interested in what’s the most I think is the most useful intervention. Then kind of theorize what I’m doing and then once Ive theorized which is possibly an alternate efficient approach….
marc hudson 16:31
Compared to what though? I mean, it sounds very sensible because otherwise you’re just a cork bobbing along on someone else’s stream.
Interviewee 06 16:47
Um, but I think things on the whole can be a bigdisconnect between academic literatures and people’s lived experience. And also, you know, there can be maybe, you know, barriers between generations. I mean one of the things with the kind of 90s anti-roads mobilization, which is the one thing I’ve kind of participated in and studied is that did seem to be a certain amount of learning from previous generations. You know, even if it’s the physicality of how to make a cup of tea in benders and so on for people from Greenham. You know, so I think the extinction rebellion, I mean, I’ve always kind of thought “this isn’t gonna get off the ground” and always been proved wrong. So there have some modesty in terms of extinction rebellion. But I not being that close to it. I wonder to what extent it has had a dialogue with a generation before.
marc hudson 17:54
I’m not much closer than you but my I have a little evidence and supposition, “not much.” And I tried to get those dialogues going in Manchester and there was a complete lack of interest on the part of the XR people. And other people who I’ve interviewed report the same because the XR people on the whole have a “piss off granddad, you are irrelevant” mentality, as we saw, sort of trying to distinguish themselves from Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace. And you know, there’s a legitimacy to that.
Interviewee
Yeah yeah
Marc
The past efforts haven’t worked. That doesn’t mean though, that you failed to engage and interrogate, but I think, yeah, I think we’re on the same page there. So next question. I think
Interviewee 06 18:44
inevitably we are we have got some sure we’ll have some differences, but we have had dialogue before and have got some shared things and you know, I think maybe with this conversation, we’re identifying particular directions which are interesting. So I think yeah, there is a similar kind of this contradiction between “you want to mobilize people” and part of that may be you know, mobilization links with antagonism. You know, politics is finding an enemy. And part of that antagonism is a generation you view as having failed. So certainly with the anti Roads mobilization there were very “piss off” friends the earth Greenpeace” people and so on. But they’re always they’re quite open. Because it’s, I think they have the real strength of weak ties. So people who might be quite conservative NIMBYs with roads they’d interact with, and trade unions they’d intertract with. Obviously all these things that aren’t even but they did seem to be some building of wider coalitions. Which I think is one of the things which is interesting with Extinction Rebellion, possibly getting off the point is it’s a politics of polarization[1] . And that’s great for getting attention. And I think to some extent, that’s been very successful, it’s got things on the policy agenda. But then there’s going to be a trade off in terms of, you know, fewer alllies. So the things to be considered. But of course, we know what people want is very clean “”this is what we do” And social change, isn’t that clean is it.
marc hudson 20:31
Well, what you know, it’s not what’s interesting is that Extinction Rebellion has oscillated wildly on this because there was that initial “we’re all in this together, the police are our friends” thing. Then they took a pop at the NGOs. Then they claimed they were beyond politics, which is of course, you know, a very old “neither left nor right, but in front”.
Interviewee
Yeah, yeah
Marc
That they may have deliberately borrowed from the German Greens or may just be echoing it. But I think they’re all over the place, basically, and they’re kind of flailing and they didn’t really have a theory of change. And what’s interesting is that, you know, Climate Camp the last iteration which by the way was I’m sure you’re aware, sort of supported behind the scenes logistically by Greenpeace – Climate camp, at least, you know, for all its many, many faults, did try to articulate a theory of change. I mean, it was it was batshit and nonsensical. But it but it was there. Whereas extinction rebellion sort of thought seemed to say, we’re going to bring down the government and the state, which are distinct entities, then we’re going to hold citizens assembly, and then there’s magic resolution, where as soon citizens assembly has decided then there will be no implementation issues. There’ll be no pushback from the bureaucracies, there will be pushback from business associations
Interviewee
Yeah, yeah
Marc
or anything. I mean, it was it was the most deluded kind of magical thinking. And I think that actually repelled a lot of – or at least some people who had been involved in previous climate movements. They just couldn’t get behind the very strange theory of change that Extinction Rebellion had.
Yeah.
Interviewee 06 22:27
I’ve got a number of thoughts on this
marc hudson 22:28
Go, go, please.
Interviewee 06 22:30
I mean, some of them you would have seen in the climate book that you were so helpful with which I appreciate. Yeah, I mean, I would say there is a theory of change. So having looked at the Roger Hallam, “common sense in the 21st century” book, and I’m sort of repelled seems to be very simplistic, very problematic. But I think there’s in game theory, people talk about “trembling hand equilibrium”. Sometimes when you get things wrong, you have a positive effect for other reasons. So I think positively, thoughI completely disagree with the Roger Hallam book and wince at bits of it, with it’s sort of naivety it is an articulated theory of change. I think what’s problematic with it, is it’s kind of based on the regime change, which I think is inappropriate because it’s not simply “there’s a kind of emergency and billions of people are going to die. This evil regime isn’t taking enough notice. Let’s replace them.” It’s as we know, “climate change is a product of you know, economic forces, cultural forces, it is more strongly embedded.” You know, and it’s not just a matter of when we’re removing the head of state you know, guillotining in a non violent way your government and then having citizens assembly. Instead, it’s a product of capitalism.
However, what I thought was positive while being sceptical about the whole thing. It did get massive attention. It does polarize people. It does get things in the media. And it did really put climate change on the agenda. So with my sort of reformist hat on as a parish councillor, that was useful for riling people up and getting attention. And then for a parish council point of view going what can we actually do on the ground? So I mean, I’ve got my dogmas but my dogmas are very much you need very extensive political change. And you need to get rid capitalism, which is not an easy project. But equally you have to be on some practical reform as well. So I’d be sounding pretentious if I talked about Hegel. It’s a moment in the change you need because it polarizes and get media attention, but it’s not the only moment. And the “3.5” stuff is just not.
marc hudson 25:21
And what was most terrifying about the 3.5 stuff is people who you would expect to know better, who probably did. Well, but you know, I had the experience in Australia,
Interviewee 06 25:37
completely on it when
marc hudson 25:41
I was in Adelaide in 2019, briefly when this 3.5% theory of change was, you know, really peak moment – between the two rebellions basically – when they could say this stuff with a straight face. And I saw an I won’t go into details, but I saw a senior Australian academic spouting this stuff with precisely zero hedging or reflection. And this was a person who really, really ought to have known better… Their job over the previous 30 years must have made them understand that you can’t just take a number like that and as you say, you know, devised in study of properly oppressive regimes where the police and the secret police knock on your door at three o’clock in the morning and you are not seen again by your family for five years.
Interviewee
Yeah yeah
Marc
And transplant it onto an advanced capitalist liberal democracy with all of the it was I couldn’t believe my years. Aaaaanyway.
Interviewee 06 26:53
The thing is, it is like semiotics. Most politics are semiotic that it’s constructing emotionally charged signs. And there’s always this trade off? If you’ve got something to win people around? It’s like emotional, simple. It’s a sign it’s invested with emotions. And that’s not a map of social change. But if you’ve got a map of social change, maybe that doesn’t inspire people to actually make the social change. So there’s an inevitable contradiction. But it is frustrating. I mean, I generally fail political changes in theorised at all. So I’ve got huge differences with the sort of Roger Hallam common sense. Yep, it pains me but this is an attempt to theorise policical change. But you know, you got to you got to keep a degree of skepticism. You do.
Um, you’re certainly not like you’re gonna build and build and build and polarize and have a revolution and then get rid of the British government. I’m just back from a very disappointing conversation with the Crown Estate about cycling (laughs)
marc hudson 28:17
We can edit that bit out if you need to. Yeah, you can have you can have all these wonderful high flown ideas and then you bump up against some part of the local state or quango. And you realize that it would just take decades. Anyway.
Interviewee 06 28:33
Yeah, I mean, I think certainly some some activism around here is you know, we’re aware of what the institutions are. Most institutions we kind of interact with are positive about some climate change reforms. So sometimes you have people who you think would be your enemies, and you can actually get the further than you might think. So again, when I think this is sort of romance of direct action. All politics, isn’t it is very binary and good people, bad people and you have your nonviolent revolution against the bad people. Sometimes bad people do good things and good people do bad things.
marc hudson 29:24
But we’ve swallowed this kind of Manichaean view.
Interviewee
Yeah yeah
Marc
There’s a David Rovics. song called “I’m a better anarchist than you.” I don’t know if you’re familiar with it?
Interviewee
No
Marc
Okay. I’ll say it’s very, very funny. It is exactly about this question of the pure and the good, versus all those hopeless squares. Next question, which may seem a bit left field, but there is a method to my madness. What metaphors have you heard activists use to describe the growth or growth and demise of their organization, or of their movement?
Interviewee 06 30:10
I’’m trying to think. There’’s some things around wave so sending waves. I don’t suppose they’d use planes taking off. I mean, Extinction Rebellion I think is quite rich in this isn’t. There’s kind of I can’t think of like the metaphor but it is a kind of like I think they use the lily pad thing. But it’s like exponential growth, isn’t it? I think I haven’t done like a careful search through their literature. But certainly, it’s like, you start off with one or two people. And you have a process and you draw people in and then you have this rapid growth. To which some extent they’re very successful at doing. So there’s some kind of maths of an exponential process.
marc hudson 31:05
They talked about starting fires as well, you know that there situation is a tinderbox and it just needs one spark sort of thing. But of course, fires are more problematic
Interviewee 06 31:15
Are you familiar with the phrase. A single spark will make make a prairie fire.
marc hudson 31:24
Yes, it’s whether the Weather men Weather Underground used it in the in the 70s.
Interviewee 06 31:29
Yeah, that would come straight from Mao. Because the great thing about Mao was he was a poet. So he could he mobilize people and get them to do what he wanted for good or for ill!
marc hudson 31:44
Next question, what do you think other people “in the movement” in inverted commas? Think of the causes of growth and especially decline? How do how do people explain sort of growth and especially decline?
Interviewee 06 32:06
I think one thing I did come across quite a bit was with the, like anti capitalist movement, anti globalization movement, around the turn of the century. That with the twin towers that sort of destroyed the movement. You know, so you get things that might delegitimize movement, take people’s energy. I mean, that certainly came up. I mean, I guess sometimes it’s success. Because I mean, if you look at the anti-roads Movement, other than I think once more road in Surrey, it didn’t directly stop any roads. But the roads programs stopped. I mean, that massive expansion run out of momentum. I mean, it’s difficult to say how much that was done to activists in the media or how much it was of the British fiscal economic cycle. But I think that would that would come in. And there’s certainly some awareness. I mean, think about the 90s that there will be shift in attention. You know, you’d have particular issues like, you know, people in interviewed for my PhD, or some of them would be involved in mobilizing against the first Iraq War. And then you move on to something else. Those come in,
marc hudson 33:45
Which again, segues beautifully to the last question in the first section, which is by far the longest section, people from other movements, I’m thinking peace, anti-nuclear, feminism, gay rights, etc. Do you think they perceive the same pattern in their movements – boom and bust – and any reflections on how boom and bust is talked about in any of those other movements
Interviewee 06 34:17
I don’t know that I have direct knowledge and then of course there is we know the phrase ”the multi-organizational field” and I’m sure we’re both aware that you can essentialise- well anything – but you can’t essentialise environmental direct action. It’s going to have an overlap with other direct action struggles and other environmental struggles. So I’m not sure I mean, I guess you’re thinking
Interviewee 06 38:40
Right, can you hear again,
marc hudson 38:41
I can I do apologize. Normally, you’re the first person that that’s happened with, take it as a compliment! So where we were up to is you were saying we can’t essentialist environmental direct action, it’s going to have overlap with other direct struggles, and other environmental struggles.
Interviewee 06 39:11
Yeah. And then maybe part of I don’t know how they theorize it, but maybe, you know, events and attacks and media. You know, I’m thinking of all of like the anti-trans stuff at the moment. People then having to mobilize in support of trans friends. Whereas it wasn’t something where they was maybe mobilization in the same way. You know, maybe part of the anti roads movement is they started building more roads
marc hudson 39:51
To think about it dialectically always which is such a challenge. It is so hard to think dialectically.
Interviewee 06 39:58
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s the Elinor Ostrom saying, you know, it’s a fundamental kind of Ostrom ian School and Ostrom mobilizer. I certainly wouldn’t want to be accused of saying anything original about Elionor bless her but, um, you know, her thing would be complexity, where she’s looking at sort of economic problems, it was, you know, beware you need to bring in natural science and culture and so on. And the difficulty, isn’t it, is that if you think about things, in very simplistic ways, is too simple to explain anything but it’s easy to articulate, to mobilize. And the more layers of the complexity, the better picture you get. But you can get lost in the thickets. So it’s, you know, maybe the question of what’s the appropriate level of complexity. What’s simple enough without being too simple,
marc hudson 40:54
analysis paralysis you can get into, but, I mean,
Interviewee
that’s quite a good phrase.
Marc
But the flip side is, is generally
Interviewee 06 41:05
We’re on the flip side of not enough analysis.
marc hudson 41:07
We really are. I mean, one of the things that’s again, I was talking about on the canal yomp, and I’ve talked about before, is the way that these incredibly oversimplified moments of history are used. And the one that Just Stop Oil is using the minute is the Freedom Riders de sac, attempting to desegregate interstate transport in like 1960. And there are so many bad consequences to using those sorts of over-simplified myths. But anyway,
Interviewee 06 41:43
Anyway, I’m just thinking about how Mississippi State is trying to close down any control in Jackson, Mississippi, where you’ve got local government and some people in local government involved in eco-socialism, and that, you know, Freedom Rider struggle wasn’t you know, it’s not been entirely won. Yeah
marc hudson 42:08
I mean, the terror that the white supremacy has when black people start organizing and taking control of their own lives. I mean, it terrifies them.
Interviewee 06 42:26
[And then there is a] kind of the distinction between maps and metaphors, that metaphors simplify and mobilize. But if you’re using a metaphor instead of a map you’re not really gonna get very far are you?
marc hudson 42:40
That’s brilliant. Is that you? don’t mean that in a surprised way. I mean, “was that something you came up with?”
Interviewee 06 42:49
Well, in the last five seconds,
marc hudson 42:53
Well, no, it’s perfect. It’s absolutely perfect. And I will use it and I will credit it to you.
Interviewee 06 43:03
I came up with prosperity without growth.
Marc
Oh!
marc hudson 43:17
um, so second section is quite short. And there were two questions. The title of the section is resolving the boom and bust all or coping with the boom and bust because you never resolved these things. What has been attempted if anything, so the first question is, “what if anything, have you tried to do to overcome this boom and bust in groups that you have been part of and what happened?”
Interviewee 06 43:47
Well I don’t know that I really have. I mean, I think when I was involved with a bit of the kind of anti-road stuff, it was more you know, being a sort of movement entrepreneur. And I tend to be more “How can I kind of start things off, show solidarity, put people in touch with other people.” So I think at start of the kind of anti-roads movement, I think of other people like George Marshall, who were quite good as being sort of movement entrepreneurs. But I don’t think people are thinking consciously or when the cycle’s down. It’s just this difficult task of you know, getting it to cycle up. And then I suppose part of getting the cycle up there might be relevant to smoothing the cycle out is getting people linked in with kind of previous movements. You know, people learn. And I teach in economics, so just think of sort of Keynesian approaches the economic cycle, where you’re trying to kind of increase activity where it’s low and decreasing when it’s too high.
marc hudson 45:12
So what would the activist equivalent of “digging holes and filling them in” be I wonder?
Interviewee
(laughs) why I suppose it would be discouraging and encouraging.
Marc
So “we’re having a march about how you should not come on marches” Yeah.
Interviewee 06 45:36
I mean, I think I’ve always kind of been with myself and with other people, in terms of, personal cycles around it that you can’t like have full-on activity all the time. So you have to kind of pick your moments.. And try to think strategically about what’s effective to do. So in person, I tend to kind of think what is a good intervention in terms of my life commitments and political context?
And I suppose it’s being very sensitive to the, you know, the particular context you’re in. I mean, I sort of describe myself as a Leninist with a small l, and what I take from Lenin is not “let’s build a small rubbish political party and oppress people.” You know, but, you know, to me what what’s really important about Lenin is he was the thinker of the context. So in some senses, the context is always going to be different. And it’s certainly very different from revolutionary Russia, and we’re not maybe doing the same thing. But just getting people to kind of theorize the context and think what is the context we’re in? What’s the government doing? What’s the opposition doing? What are the forces that are arrayed against us? Maybe there’s quite modest things we can do to kind of push things a bit. And constantly sort of questioning the context.
marc hudson 47:15
You’ve answered one of the questions in the next section, which we will come to. Let me try out an idea that I had again on this now-infamous canal yomp
Interviewee
Which is which canal were you on?
Marc
The Trent–and-Mersey. It was a three hour walk with a weighted backpack of bricks and so forth. And oats for the, the swans and the moorhens and the coots and it was lovely. But the idea is this, is that obviously a lot of the answers that people have been giving me about sort of trying to cope with boom and bust have really been about trying to keep a specific group alive. Because to try and intervene at the stage of boom and bust you really obviously need to be one, be able to see it and two, be able to try and do something before the boom really takes off.
And my idea was this; is that while the boom is happening no one is listening to you because they really believe that “this time it’s different.”
Interviewee
Yeah.
Marc
Then there’s the sort of plateau at the top of a boom, where people are thinking, “well, this is a minor pause. And then you know, exponential growth will continue soon,” So they’re still not listening to you. And then when it starts its death spiral, they’re heading for the exits, their heads are in their hands, and they’re really not in the mood to listen to someone who they fear is simply going to tell them “I told you so.” “You should have listened to me.”
Interviewee
(Chuckles)
Marc
And then when everything which is maybe the subtext or the above the fold text as well. And then of course, when the boom when the bust has finally happened, people are lost to activism. They’re burnt out, they’re cynical, they’re depressed, and they’re still not in the moodto think about what could we have done differently because they’re full of self recrimination, guilt, despair, etc.
So I’m not convinced there was ever really a time when there will be an audience for this message that “things go through boom and bust things are a marathon, not a sprint,” nobody wants to hear that fucking message.
Interviewee
Yeah, no
Marc
Anyway, on that cheerful note, moving on to second question is, have you seen other people try to manage this or or take ameliorative or palliative action in response to boom and bust? And if so, what happened?
Interviewee 06 49:59
I’m not sure. I mean, in some ways, I’ve experienced more, I’’m not doing Green Party stuff at the moment but when the Green Party seems to have like big surges of membership and then it declines. But I’m not sure people have really thought it through.
marc hudson 50:18
That certainly with my experience in Manchester when they had a huge surge, they just did not know what to do. And they didn’t even know that they didn’t know.
Interviewee 06 50:28
No. One thing I would say in people defenses if I look at sort of Marxist movement. This huge literatures and vitriolic debates and it’s all theory and strategy. And quite often it doesn’t mobilize anybody. Quite vigorous debate. But how much this theorizing actually informs because what you get is within small groups in a small left-wing groups, lots of debate about strategy, tactics, internal differences direction and then that becomes a substitute sometimes for your engagement. I mean, even in political parties like the Green Party internal staff is important. But it can be kind of a substitute for anything in the wider world.
marc hudson 51:26
“Narcissism of small differences” applies
Interviewee
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Marc
and people, people keep watching Monty Python and the Life of Brian and laughing because they don’t realize it’s about them. Yeah, they think
Interviewee 06 51:41
One of the things that was striking me is it’s a different one, isn’t it? But “What have the Romans ever done for us is a good distraction from “what of the Normans ever done for us?” Which is nothing just steal our land and keep it.
marc hudson 52:00
a very effective state that that performs sort of extraction and control duties
Interviewee
Yeah,
Marc
you’re the second person to bring up the Normans in this in this interview sequence
Interviewee 06 52:15
I must have picked up some of wilderness ideology this morning from the Crown Estates, “so we’ve got people cycling. I mean, my goodness”
marc hudson 52:32
the magical thinking that’s going on, I mean, the whole everyone seems drenched in magical thinking at the minute academics, business.
Interviewee 06 52:43
It’s universal, isn’t it? Really, it’s not I mean, I think one of my things is, you know, getting more of a link up between theory and activism. And as we know, academic careers are so fraught because it’s either like we’re on short term contracts, so we’ve got some permanent contracts and then don’t have any time to do anything and the cycles of publication and so on and paywalls. This is something you do do and you publish stuff and you put it on your blog, and so just getting some some social movement theory, you know, getting that dialogue between activists and the kind of theory. I don’t think I’ve been good enough on this but certainly what what struck me as I got into the social movements there in the 90s, is that there’s a whole grammar of very useful concepts, some of which are very simple if it’s like “biographical availability”, but they’re still useful. And it would be nice to get those kind of built into movements.
marc hudson 53:59
I could not agree more.
Interviewee 06 54:01
better than Marxists movements. I call myself a Marxist because it’s easier than reading Hegel, isn’t it?
marc hudson 54:07
Pretty much everything is easier than reading Hegel.
Interviewee 06 54:11
There’s some theory which is you know, it’s a toolkit which is not entirely inaccessible.
marc hudson 54:18
Yeah, Agreed. Agreed. Even just simple talk of you know, “initiator movements” and “spin off movements” is an I’ve had the experience of talking to people quote, ordinary people, unquote, who have no real history in social movements, have no real theory. But as soon as you explain biographical availability, there you go. “Yeah, of course.” But they’re happy there’s a phrase for it.
Interviewee 06 54:53
Sort of continuous running my small Politics of Climate Change undergraduate module with small numbers and saying, “Hey, some of you are going to be passionately engaged with climate change, and I want you to be able to think about what’s the most effective way of doing it. Some of you just want a course to enjoy.” So one of the lectures is social movements and getting over to the idea that repertoires are action repertoires of contention, that it seems common sense that we do. But you know, there are other ways of doing it. You know, that might have got through to one and a half people.
marc hudson 55:31
But, I mean, we were talking earlier about I don’t think we used the exact term but the fetishization of, of direct action or of contentious politics.
Interviewee
Yeah, yeah
Marc
The you know, the problem is if the only tool you’re aware of is a hammer,
Interviewee
Yeah
Marc
then all your problems are like nails and you know, if then if the nail isn’t going down, then just hammer it twice as hard. “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”
Interviewee 06 55:58
[inaudible’ Ostrom . She did a whole nice you know jointly produced book she worked very collectively. And it’s like methodological diversity. So as academics, we need to be methodologically diverse. You know, certainly trying to impress that, but yeah, it’s in a variety of fields, and academics are as bad as anybody else, it’s “one tool” economists, econometrics. And then you have a massive fight about people who want to do stuff which is more qualitative. And your mathematical models I’m not against people using mathematical models. And so on, But they’re gonna be more sophisticated. If there’s some qualitative input when you when you’re developing them
marc hudson 56:50
but they hate, qualitative stuff, the quants.
Interviewee
Yeah They hate
Marc
you know, it’s precise, classic physics envy, but not even real physics,
Interviewee
Yeah yeah
Marc
you know, this bizarre simulacrum of what they think 19th century physics was. Anyway. Final section. We’re back to the capital L or small L Lenin. What is to be done? If anything? There are questions here the first one. What do you think could be done by you and by others to help social movements, especially the climate movement, sort of understand and cope and, you know, benefit from the good bits of boom and bust? What resources and circumstances would be required to help you and help other people help the movement deal with this? If someone could wave a magic wand.
Interviewee 06 58:00
Yeah, I mean, I think I think publishing you know, like “Social movements for activists kind of publications” will be really, really good. And I think that will be something worth doing. Some more resources in terms of publishing workshops, those kinds of things. The problem is nobody ever comes to a position or anything through argument and rationality, including us. You know, it’s like how do you kind of build trust to have the conversations? You know, so things you know, the, in terms of like, I mean, there’s quite good stuff on climate change communications in terms of like George Marshall and lots or other people. And it’s maybe how we could use that in terms of talking to activists because culture trumps everything. You know, that people, what any of us believe is more to do with identity than constructing a logical scheme. So, you know, the more you can work with people and build trust, then maybe you get an ear. And just patiently trying to kind of say, I mean, it sounds maybe to top down, you know, social movements. You know, are contested, it’s not natural at this, like one thing you should do, and just trying to get people to question it a bit more might be useful.
marc hudson 59:44
Of course, the more credibility you have with some groups, the more you [may] lose it with others. So, yeah, there will be people who won’t listen to you till you’ve been arrested and charged several times, and been through the things that they’ve been through. But then as soon as you’ve been arrested and charged several times, you become persona non grata to other groups. So it will need it will need a broad range. A couple more questions. This one’s always hard to say with a straight face. “Could the governmen/lstate do anything to help overcome [starts laughing] this boom and bust? What resources and circumstances would be required?”
Interviewee 06 1:00:27
The state is antagonistic and we know from things like SpyCops. You know, don’t think states are completely uniform. But then I’m sort of embedded in local government and maybe getting somewhere with local government. I may be completely deluded.
marc hudson 1:01:38
Yeah, I mean, I think interesting, because one of my interviewees made the point that you know, there is more wiggle room, perhaps with regional government than Westminster. He had mentioned the Welsh Assembly, and then another interviewee sort of in response to me, articulating that said, “Yes, but it’s it’s easy to over-romanticize the local” and he pointed to sort of the experience of Manchester City Council which is totally dominated by Labour, sort of in a in a Stalinist fashion, but with batshit “neoliberal inward investment at all costs mentality” they’re sort of Stalinist Hayekians…
Interviewee 06 1:02:30
[laughs] I have probably more sympathy for both Stalin and Hayek than most people you’re talking to, but I do find a lot of New Labour very, like repressive really … see my 50 years it’s the Green Party thing.
marc hudson 1:02:46
Um, no, I haven’t. Sorry, well,
Interviewee 06 1:02:49
Hayek’s interesting thinker. But yeah, there is a sort of neoliberal thing and then you repress any dissent at all.
marc hudson 1:02:56
Sorry, you mentioned 50 years of the Green Party. Is that a new document that you’ve put out?
Interviewee 06 1:03:00
Um, no I just in a small thing for bright green?
marc hudson 1:03:04
please do send that through that would be that’d be great.
Interviewee 06 1:03:07
It’s ephemeral, it’s a small thing. Yeah, I mean, I think it’s look at the context because in different contexts, different things are appropriate. And it’s good, one of the Ostrom things was like institutional mapping, and the need to sort of institutional mapping, see what the institutions are. What particular forces are, who’s operating. Some very much, you know, Ostrom is really good thinker, Lenin’s a really good thinker and of course Ostrom. You go well that she’s come entirely from the right and Hayek and so on, and Lenin, this has led to all sorts of dreadful things, but they’re both like thinkers of context and I think with a lot of academic politics, it does tend to be different binaries. And you know, you know, what I’m kind of interested is like how you can construct tools that then you know how you can use concepts to change things. So, you know, looking very carefully at the context and the opportunities with the context. I don’t know whether it’s relevant. I mean, I think one of the things is when counter-movements, you know, because we’re seeing an eruption of kind of like anti Vax, 15 minute cities, kind of mutational counter-movements. And they are social movements as well. And they have potential to restrict change. You know, so I think that’s something which, you know, often isn’t again on the agenda for people like Roger Hallam, if you have counter movements. What, if anything, can you do with counter movements?
marc hudson 1:04:55
I mean, that’s the other hilarious thing. Sorry. I don’t mean to turn this into a “let’s beat up on Roger Hallam’s lack of a sense of history,”
Interviewee
Laughs
Marc
but in 2019, he was saying, “you know, we’re going to fill the jails and this whole system, and just like Martin Luther King did.” And if you bothered to actually look, King was defeated in this in Albany, where they saw him coming. They emptied the jails of all the petty criminals that they would normally be locking up. They contacted all the jails nearby and said, “Could you please be as empty as possible because we’re going to need you for overflow.” And Martin Luther King’s movement was defeated. And it’s like, absolute, willful ignorance about what counter-movements can do. It was astonishing to me, and people are just swallowing this crap. Anyway.
Interviewee 06 1:05:57
Yeah. I mean, I think quite often Roger Hallam’s achieved a lot more than I’ve achieved. So I’m not entirely critical of Roger Hallam. But I think there’s a general tendency,
marc hudson 1:06:06
I don’t think you’ve burnt out 10s of thousands of people. And I think that’s what is actually what Roger has achieved is he has created cynicism and burnout and despair. And you did not do those things, or have not done those.
Interviewee 06 1:06:23
But I’m trying to be modest and I think he’s got some virtues. But I think the kind of problem I get a lot of the time, and I founda lot with the Green Party is you know, the crisis is so urgent that we can’t waste any time thinking about it strategically. And again, in Roger’s defence, I’m critical of a lot of his strategy, but at least he has tried to think strategically. I think we find a lot of it wrong or oversimplified, but most of the time we think you know, the idea of strategy is entirely absent from green movements. And again, writing to be critical as Green parties. It’s, let’s select a lot of nice people versus bad people. That’s as far as our social theory goes. You know, that’s, that’s, that’s entirely inadequate and problematic.
marc hudson 1:07:14
Which leads nicely to the next question. “Could could mainstream NGOs and I’m thinking you know, the usual suspects Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, I don’t know RSPB, Oxfam, whatever, do anything differently, to help the broader social movements individuals, grassroots groups cope with boom and bust? What resources/ circumstances would be required for these mainstream NGOs to be able to do that?
Interviewee 06 1:07:45
I think that’s more [inaudible].. And again, it would be the context is quite often like with individual is in which post in which organization and competition for funding and all the things we know But you know, if you’ve got officers and websites and so on you can publish literature and make it more accessible to people as some NGOs do about, you know, communication and building trust and so on. And I think probably one sort of lever in here is I’m kind of very focused on institutions. So as we know, the individual action, you know, to locking on, hairshirtism, and not them sort of flying around the world. And getting really revolution. Change is difficult, but, you know, just having this institutional level that you know, places I work for my local church, parish council, kind of saying, “what can you do concretely in terms of climate action?” is often a missing dimension.
But again, I suppose what we like is the very Manichean isn’t the right pronunciation of like good and evil. You can you can just modestly scale up by engaging with institutions. I mean, like, you know, I’m a solid church going atheist then like, my local church is very good for climate change. And I’ve said hey, “you are preaching about climate change, why not get some solar panels?” And got some solar panels? And it’s not enough but you know, just just with the snow Parrish running through everything. So what could we do differently? And if gain is somebody on the left, one of the things that may or may not fit with your your work, is just just talking to workers. So that climate change actually is slightly off the point. The starting point is to say to everyone who works for the Council, what do you think we can do? So one of my other criticisms are some sort of Roger Hallam Extinction Rebellion, is workers are entirely invisible. And even if you’re not coming from particularly Marxist point of view, workers have to build the, the solar and the wind and plant the trees and do the stuff. And if you know, there’s a lot of like expertise that people have and that that can be forgotten. So again, I think that might be something for NGOs, you know, look at that, that they dimension.
marc hudson 1:10:17
Couldn’t agree more. And that’s my critique, instantly, realizing, and calling it movement building, because you’re not by insisting that the way people engage is through a march. You’re not engaging them to, for them to engage other people and to build skills and to build resilience. And you know, the absence of workers is just another astonishing thing. So the final question
Interviewee 06 1:10:47
People like being asked, as well, I mean, that’s maybe a way to have this conversation is ask people what you think, have some openness.
marc hudson 1:10:55
It’s labor intensive, of course. I mean, I wouldn’t be doing this if I were still in full-time employment. This is specifically a project that I can do because currently I’m an I’m unemployed. Final questions
Interviewee 06 1:11:07
Back to biographical availability and
marc hudson 1:11:09
availability, though. You could turn this interview protocol that I’ve got into sort of email questions. You wouldn’t get the same quality of back and forth of dialectic, but you know, it is the kind of thing that organizations could, in theory do, if they were motivated, but the payoff the payoff is so long-term and intangible and it’s always easy just to like think “no in this in the time that we spent navel gazing we could have, you know, done a protest somewhere or fired off some letters to the editor” or whatever. It always gets pushed down the to do list. Final question in the in the third section, and then there’s just a couple of wrap up questions. I’m also conscious that the Zoom is going to cut out we should be okay. So we should be okay. But if we need to go to a third one, if you’re okay, I can quickly see your this.
This is a question that’s kind of changed shape a little bit. And it’s this; “what, if any other responsibilities have experienced activists in quote marks during times of abeyance as the streets empty and as organizations wink out of existence?”
Interviewee 06 1:12:26
Um, well, keep talking about movements but also, you know, times of activist mobilization they’re not the only form of political intervention. And there are things you can do
marc hudson 1:12:41
Such as?
Interviewee 06 1:12:43
Keeping it short.
marc hudson 1:12:49
go long, because this is a really important question. This is going to be a
Interviewee 06 1:12:54
just think, in terms of like the political context and the personal context. Like you say, you shouldn’t just fetishize direct action. There are different forms of intervention. And you know, I use the example of like, Irish republicanism, which is seen as a violent extreme movement you know, Republicanism has worked through, you know, struggle civil rights, you know, entirely legal you know, mature move. I’m certainly not saying environmentalist can engage in struggle, but, you know, you’re mature about movements. tactics are only tactics, they’re a means to an end. You know, different forms of intervention you can take. And certainly reading and theorizing is helpful as well. Activist reading groups would be good.
marc hudson 1:13:56
Well, that segues into this penultimate question. What have you seen or read, activist academic fiction, nonfiction, that speaks well to the issues that we have been talking about and that you think I and other people should read?
Interviewee 06 1:14:15
I’ve been I’ve been kind of very taken with this kind of literatures around base building. You know, in the US and people like Carly Akuna that that kind of literature I think. Yyou know, I’m always gonna say Read More Lenin remember Ostrom and that’s gonna piss people off. But lately they’re, they’re very useful theorists. I remember theories don’t have to be right. Or good. You know, we’re getting away from binaries. People can be useful to read even if you disagree. You know, but I think, you know, again, people like Ostrom there’s a materiality it’s like what the context is and looking at the complexity
And kind of literally, about political communication, and getting some scarcity, about free. Well, it’s the Hayley Raven book on freewill that we think we have very well and we’re entirely autonomous, you know, but we’re so embedded in influence and seeing how we’re embedded in it might give us a bit more chance to have autonomy. So it’s probably pitching quite a high level really,
marc hudson 1:15:29
but different strokes for different folks. That’s I’ll get the details from you later. Let’s see if we can.
Okay, final question. And this won’t appear online. I won’t include this in I will include it in the transcript, but it won’t be online. Who else should I be talking to about this thing?
Interviewee 06 1:15:57
I don’t know, I’ll have a think and Iand get back to you.
marc hudson 1:16:00
So I’m keeping it. The two criteria are UK. I’m sure these issues play out similar ways different ways. In you know, Germany, we’ve
Interviewee 06 1:16:12
I mean George Marsahll I mentioned several times I don’t know whether he’s somebody on your list or George Marshall would be good to talk to
marc hudson 1:16:16
he was the author of one of my favorite ever pieces, which is “no one ever is to blame,” which appeared in Do or Die. Where he was had the experience of handing out what was essentially carbon budget carbon rationing pieces, propaganda in the mid-90s. And realizing that everyone had different reasons for pushing back and it’s a really, really nice short piece.
Interviewee 06 1:16:50
I think some of these sort of younger Green Party Councillor types in places like Oxford might be
marc hudson 1:16:54
excellent. Yeah, I mean, my other criterion is it has to they have to have been involved for more than five years, because life is too short to listen to people, whose only experience is Extinction Rebellion.
Interviewee
Laughs
Marc
My life is too short. Maybe if I were a few years younger.
Interviewee 06 1:17:17
I mean, I’m sort of on the left and mainly talking to sort of climate activists in their 20s so quite good. Because generally the far left in Britain is like terrible, really, possibly slightly different.
marc hudson 1:17:32
I thought after the SWP collapsed, we might see some more imaginative groups, but we haven’t really, as far as I can tell. I mean, I don’t pay a lot of attention.
Interviewee 06 1:17:42
Yeah, there’s some stuff happening people in the Young Communist League do quite interesting stuff. There’s people that come across, they’re a bit more thoughtful. The Soviet Union collapsing I think, yes, SWP thought that would be good and SWP collapsing would be good but
marc hudson 1:17:58
it takes more than the absence, you need to build from a base element. Got 10 seconds, thank you so much. I’ll get this transcript soon, not imminently. Because I’ve got the job interview. Thank you so much.
Interview conducted BEFORE “The Big One” in April 2023 which was explicitly non-NVDA, to broaden appeal.
marchudson.net 