Fifty five years ago, on this day, May 8th,
But it was rather by luck than design that FoE’s first action, the return of bottles to Cadbury-Schweppes’ offices on Saturday 8 May 1971, achieved phenomenal publicity and launched FoE onto the public’s attention. As Weston remarked “The bottle dump event was really a media coup for FOE. That style of political activity had not been seen in Britain before and was, until then more associated with the American system of pressure group politics” (Weston 1989: 35).
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385ppm. As of 2026 it is 430ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The broader context was that concern about pollution, resources running out, overpopulation, etc, were all growing steadily in the late 1960s helped by the Torrey Canyon oil tanker disaster, and then the Santa Barbara oil spill, the Earthrise photo, etc, various pollution incidents.
The specific context was that in the UK, the main environment group at that time was the Conservation Society, but it was small-c conservative, and didn’t want to do eye-catching stunts. Therefore there was an ecological niche for other actors. And here we see Friends of the Earth doing a brilliant publicity stunt, leaving lots of empty bottles that would otherwise go to landfill en masse outside Downing Street. Very visual, very obvious.
What I think we can learn from this is there is a time when these sorts of stunts will work. You have to look at what’s happening within the broader social system.
What happened next. These stunts have diminishing returns. “Hippies protest,” @man bites dog”, but as late as 2006 loads of coal were being dumped outside Downing Street by Greenpeace.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
Also on this day:
May 8, 1972 – “Teach-in for Survival” in London
May 8, 1992 – UNFCCC text agreed. World basically doomed.
May 8, 2008 – Carbon Rationing Scrapped
May 8, 2013 – we pass 400 parts per million. Trouble ahead.
May 8, 2015 – denialist denies in delusional denialist newspaper