Kaerast’s NewsCloud Journal

Let me take you back to summer 2005. It was the G8 summit in Gleneagles Scotland and UK activists were suddenly very busy after years of being badly organised. During this time, three important things happened which has affected the UK activist scene ever since.

There was a campsite set up in Stirling which was as eco-friendly as possible given the limited resources and short-term nature of the event. It was advertised everywhere as the “eco-camp”, with being green as important as actually being a base for other actions. A handful of people liked this camp enough to want to do it again next year, only next year the G8 was in Russia and they had no excuse to set up a camp in the UK - so they decided to create a camp just for the sake of being green. Had big business decided to do something just to show they are green, most activists would have called it a cheap publicity stunt - but I digress. And so the climate camp was born, and out of that climate change became one of the major issues that UK activists now campaign on - and with this year’s camp taking place outside Heathrow, the climate change activists are increasingly concentrating on aviation.

One of the major actions during the G8 was a blockade of the Faslane nuclear base. The people involved with this enjoyed it so much that they wanted to do it again, and it led to a year-long campaign against the base. Many of the activists involved with this were anti-Faslane activists, rather than anti-nuclear activists or even pro-peace activists. This is evidenced by the lack of activity at other military and nuclear bases around the country, the declining interest in Iraq and the poor turnout for the DSEi arms fair in London last month.

To a much lesser extent, something similar happened with the protests outside the Dungavel immigration detention centre. A DVD had been produced explaining why Dungavel is bad, and what happens in Scotland. This DVD got sent out to people interested in immigration across the UK and bolstered interest in No Borders groups.

So as a direct result of the G8 summit in Scotland, we now have three very strong issues that UK activists are spending much of their time on. The leaders of issue-based campaign groups claim this is a major success, and the activist scene is doing an awesome job. However, that’s not entirely true. Whilst these three issues are receiving a lot of attention, other issues don’t receive major attention unless somebody from one of these three groups suggests it. Activists outside these three groups who are trying to get themselves known in order to gain some say over what is and isn’t important are considered “publicity-seeking wannabe-celebrities”.

Palestine, the Iraq war, Afghanistan, queer-rights and human rights in general aren’t receiving the attention they deserve because the people high-up in Faslane 365, Climate Camp, and No Borders don’t do anything about them. Groups who are interested in these issues are no longer cool, and don’t receive the publicity they deserve.

The recent fascination with Burma is an exception. Reading this, you’d expect Burma to have been pushed by one of the three previously mentioned groups. It wasn’t. It was pushed by big business who want democracy in Burma so that they can move in and exploit workers there. In a previous article I wrote on the Burma issue, I got called up on the sources used - every single one of them was a front for, or funded by, American Neocons or American businesses; the best video explaining the situation in Burma was funded by Reebok.

So how do we go about challenging the hold these three groups have over the UK activist scene? How do we affirm the fact that those of us uninterested in climate change are indeed still activists? How do we show that our work in building communities and making our world a better place is just as worthwhile as going on route-marches? Nobody is bothering to answer these questions, they’re simply carrying on campaigning on their issues which the rest of the country no longer considers important.