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The UK Climate Camp protests of 2007 are an important moment in an ongoing analysis of the success of ‘green protests’ in the UK. A legacy of knowledge transfer between activist groups, NGOs and UK publics is visible; in the initiation and development of recent climate-related protests, their key frames (the stakes raised), targets and forms of mobilisation, and the allies the protestors were able to attract. Defining terms (success in particular) is difficult, due to multiple differences in aims and objectives among a variety of social actors. The paper identifies a complex spectrum of green perspectives among activists and broader green networks. UK green protest success is defined and identified in terms of capacity building; protest waves spanning several activist generations have framed important sustainability citizenship stakes with broad public resonance and uptake. The use of protest tactics among broader publics is also a significant legacy. However, the mainstreaming of green stakes and their co-option — ‘green washing’ — is causing clashes between ‘strong green’ and ‘weak green’ perspectives, particularly around issues of green consumption, power relations and political economy. These struggles over green stakes and strategies re-emphasise long-standing difficulties with defining protest success. This is an ongoing narrative.British Politics (2008) 3, 92–109. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bp.4200081 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct action campaigns against new roads in the UK received much attention, but campaign groups were locally organised and little is known about how they worked. Protests by three local environmental direct action groups in the years 1992-2001 are examined. Their repertoire was confrontational, targeted mainly at business and the state. Most protests were small-scale and most were unreported in either local or national media. In the larger groups, in Manchester and Oxford, most actions were carried out locally and direct action groups worked mainly alone. In the smaller Bangor group, campaigners sometimes needed alliances with less radical groups to campaign effectively, and travelled more to events outside their locality. Environmental direct action groups remain largely autonomous from strategic alliances. Their protests are challenges to the norms underlying political and capitalist institutions rather than calculated attempts to influence government. Evidence that their actions were affecting public debate sustained and revitalised action more than did changes in political opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract We describe and analyse the fuel protests in the UK in September and November 2000. We draw on theories of social movements to explain the success of the first of these protests and the failure of the second. We show how the loose, network forms of organisation contributed to the success in September, and the attempts to impose more formal organisations helped to cause the failure in November. We also show how the success of the protests depended on the articulation of the aims of the protesters with dominant social forces in British politics, in particular the oil companies, the police, and the mass media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]