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How might politics build a lasting environmental movement
17 September 2024
James Baggaley sits down with best-selling author Guy Shrubsole to explore how new coalitions might be built with a focus on the ordinary and everyday.
This interview appears in the latest edition of the UCL Policy Lab magazine. To find out more about Policy Lab and get the latest news events, sign up for their newsletter .
As we glide through the English countryside - on that most endangered of species, an on-time mainline train - I flick through a whole stack of notes ahead of my meeting with Guy Shrubsole. His book Who Owns England? was an instant bestseller, and The Lost Rainforests of Britain was another hit – winning huge acclaim from across the political spectrum.
With these works and many others, he has become a key thinker in today’s environmental movement. Shrubsole’s ability to marry campaigning fire with a captivating love of the natural world has inspired millions. He allows us to rethink what a modern environmental movement might look like.
In preparing to chat with Shrubsole, I also found myself reading Margaret Thatcher’s last speech to the UN as Prime Minister. Speaking to the assembled leaders and diplomats, she spoke not of the majesty of markets or the evils of communism – the international battles which had come to define her. Instead, on that mild autumn evening in New York, that doyen of free market capitalism spoke of the delicate beauty of our natural world.
As she did so often, Thatcher invoked the Old Testament to express her profound conservatism. “…we are the Lord’s creatures, the trustees of this planet, charged today with preserving life itself— preserving life with all its mystery and all its wonder”.
The speech sought to alert fellow leaders to the looming threat of climate change and the need for us all to respond. Environmentalism was to be seen as a duty, not just to oneself, but to something bigger—to the nation and, for Thatcher, God’s green earth.
I finish the speech just as we pull into the small town in Devon where Shrubsole lives today. Mrs Thatcher would know this place as well as any other part of Tory England. Yet today, as Shrubsole points out, she might be surprised by its political shift, rural England is changing, in part driven by the emergence of a new environmentalism.
In the general election this year, a whole host of deep blue seats have switched to Labour and Liberal Democrat, with Greens making headway in a nearby rural seat. To Shrubsole, so much of this is down to a connection to place and the natural world – a connection that runs deep.
“Environmentalism is the sleeping giant of British politics.” Echoing the words of the late Robin Cook, Shrubsole makes a case for an environmentalism that respects and values those who have been ignored for too long—something I doubt I would find in early drafts of Thatcher’s speech.
For Shrubsole, this is a progressive moment, and it must be seized if we’re to make change with genuine, lasting support.
“There is a long history of environmentalism within the Labour movement and the left, in being interested in access to nature, and the quality of that environment. Often this is forgotten”. He believes there is an importance in understanding how environmentalism is understood by the many, not the few, if we are to have long-term change, not just on issues such as net-zero but also on how we think about access to land.
“Nature isn’t just a ‘nice to have’ for rich folk or the middle classes. It goes back to that expression ‘bread and roses’. Of course, we need to sort out the costof- living crisis, making sure that we’re bringing down energy prices, and ensuring that people have a fair wage. But there are daily moments that really matter for people in terms of being able to see a sunset or enjoying time out in nature and experiencing the rest of the living world. Those things are fundamental to us all.”
While reading Tom Baldwin’s recent biography of Sir Keir Starmer, Shrubsole was struck by how the new Prime Minister appeared to share this value. As Baldwin recounts, his dad would take the young Keir and his siblings to the Lake District on holiday every summer, something he recently relived in a poignant election campaign video with former footballer Gary Neville.
“His family met Alfred Wainwright, and made friends with him,” adds Shrubsole. “Wainwright is the champion of fellwalking and access to the Lake District and has written all these amazing, illustrated guides. I hope that it has stayed with Starmer and means that he’s interested in things like nature and access to the outdoors.”
The importance of natural space and place has been shown not only in Shrubsole’s writing but also in recent ʼһ and More in Common research, where support for environmental policies remains strong.
Despite what social media arguments might suggest, Britain is not divided when it comes to climate change. People’s belief in, and relative support for, what might be called the net-zero agenda cuts across ages, voting patterns and social groups. And yet, the politics of climate and ecology feels just as scratchy as the rest of British politics – it is at least presented to us as a culture war ready to blow, a tinder box of misrepresentation and misunderstanding. And hallenges remain for politicians about maintaining support for net-zero in the age of populism.
It’s a theme we see in a new generation of environmental thinkers. There is now an increasing recognition that a contemporary agenda of change involves building environmental politics and policy that has a connection to place, people, and community, not just to scientific abstractions.
Shrubsole points out ideas in his own neighbourhood which could go some way to seeding and nurturing support for ongoing change: the community hydro dam helping deliver renewables, or the push for a community-led redevelopment of a now unused dairy by the station. These small yet significant local icons have the potential to become beacons of a shared vision and story – one that is grounded and has respect for the local, while seeking ultimately to tackle the most global of challenges. In the recent uprising of anger on sewage, Shrubsole witnessed how local community engagement has allowed for improved outcomes.
“The River Wye, for example, is one of the few rivers where there is a clear right of access. And I think it’s no coincidence that the Wye has become one of the flashpoints over river pollution. Although they don’t own the river and don’t have any legal title to it, people feel a sense of belonging to it”. A shared valuing has resulted in a better stewardship of something that can serve the community and the nation.
Shrubsole is also quick to return to the need to see these assets as not simply ‘nice-to-haves’, but ‘ncreasingly necessary’ as we get hotter and hotter summers. “Not everyone is going to travel all the way to the coast,” he explains. “But as a way to cool off in a hot climate-changed summer, being able to have a dip in the river is a good thing.”
The chance to cool off on a barmy summer evening is a right we can all get behind.
Which brings us to access and ownership, the key themes of Shrubsole’s . “We have a right to roam over just eight per cent of England, and the countryside here is still littered with Keep Out signs,” Shrubsole tells me. “Yet go to Scotland, and you have a right of responsible access to the vast majority of the Scottish countryside. That’s thanks to some far-sighted legislation brought in the last time Labour was in power in Scotland, the Land Reform Act 2003. It’s an amazing feeling crossing the border into Scotland because you instantly get that sense of belonging, even as a visitor – of being welcome in the countryside. No aggressive Keep Out signs, for one thing! And the more that people feel a sense of belonging, the more that encourages care for nature and your local area.
Shrubsole pauses. “That same Land Reform Act did something else too” – it gave the public in Scotland a Community Right to Buy. Meaning hundreds of communities have been able to take back control of land in their locality; sometimes for affordable housing, sometimes to create local nature reserves. It’s had an amazing impact – over half a million acres of land in Scotland are now owned by communities. And again, it’s boosted people’s sense of belonging and concern for nature. The town of Langholm, for example, recently bought up a Duke’s grouse moor and they’re turning it into a nature reserve.
“It’s great to see the new Westminster government bringing forward plans for a Community Right to Buy in England now, too. Given that one per cent of the population owns half the land in England, there’s a real sense in many communities – rural and urban – of having no control over your area and the land you depend upon.”
Suddenly, breaking off, Shrubsole points over towards a shallow bend, a small hollow in the riverbank where the sun reflects up, allowing us to see the small bird hovering above. It is a kingfisher, electric blue, skimming over the River Dart.
Shrubsole turns to me. “You’re so lucky. We don’t always get to see them.” I lean forward, captured by the moment – frozen by just how beautiful the unremarkable riverbend is – the bird – almost painted against the summer’s day.
It’s a reminder of just how much natural beauty we have on our doorstep. A beauty that rests on our actions and sense of service to the natural world.
Enough beauty to melt the heart of an Iron Lady and a toolmaker’s son – perhaps even enough to sustain a political movement.
is published on 12 September by HarperCollins.