By Kevin Doyle - Kevin Doyle Blog, February 16, 2015
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.
The town of Wyhl is located in south-west Germany in the state of Baden-Württemberg, not far from the Alps. Wyhl and its hinterland is largely agricultural and is also rich in terms of natural beauty. Even so, in the early 70s, Wyhl was chosen as the preferred location for a nuclear power plant. The technology had been under development in West Germany since the 1950s but it was really only in the late 60s and early 70s that the German state moved to make nuclear power the cornerstone of its future energy needs.
There was immediate opposition to the proposal in Wyhl and over a number of years planners and politicians were lobbied to oppose the project – all to no avail. In February 1975, building contractors moved onto land near the town to prepare for construction. A few days later local activists and farmers occupied the site and prevented preparatory work from progressing. The police intervened and removed the protestors but the subsequent publicity – which exposed heavy-handed police tactics – drew attention to the struggle in Wyhl. A short while after nearly 30,000 people – including large numbers of students from nearby Freiberg University – converged on the site and all work was halted on the construction of the power station. Less than a month after, faced with ongoing protests and occupations, the grand plan to make Wyhl nuclear was abandoned. In an ironic twist the site for the power plant was later turned into a nature reserve.[1]
The victory at Wyhl is considered to be one of the first major successes of West Germany’s impressive anti-nuclear movement which held sway mainly in the 1970s and 80s. Other significant confrontations were to follow – such as that at Grohnde[2] and Brokdorff [3] – but Wyhl is noteworthy for the decisiveness of the victory. How did this happen? A key factor was local involvement and resistance. A second feature was the willingness to commit to direct action – such as the site occupations. A third and vital factor was the movement’s ability to win practical support in large numbers when the West German state opted to use its repressive hand. This wider support and solidarity was vital to what was eventually achieved.
The German green movement was an important component of the broad anti-nuclear mobilisation in that country. They played a role in building that struggle and were, at the same time, fundamentally influenced by it. Local activity, which focused on local issues and which utilised local action, was a key ingredient in growth. Grass roots participation was also highly valued as was consciousness-raising around the issues and concerns of the day. In other words before the greens ever became Die Grünen, the political party, they were a coalition of all sorts of practical activists – citizens action groups, campaigners against nuclear power, anti-militarists and pacifists as well as anti-capitalists.[4] Politically speaking they drew their membership largely from the radical left – anarchist, New Left and Maoist ideas were all part of the mix – but no one ideology wielded a decisive influence.[5]
Two factors were important to the political challenge that the green movement came to represent. The first was the emerging importance of “environmentalism” and “ecologism” as political issues. Seen from the perspective of today, environmentalism and concern about the earth’s resources appear to be a mainstream issues, but back in the early 70s, concern about the impact of human development on the earth’s ecology was decidedly new.[6] Central to this was the green perception that capitalism itself was a key part of problem that the environmental movement faced. Capitalism’s unrelenting demand for growth, its voracious search for new markets and cheaper raw materials were core to its dynamism. Yet these same elements were directly at odds with the earth’s environment and green movement’s contention that the planet had exhaustible, finite resources that needed to be carefully managed and minded. For this reason significant sections of the Green movement held that social and economic transformation away from the dictates of the ‘free market’ would have to take place if the environment was to be saved.[7]
A second factor was that the early green movement was also about a different way of doing things. Its evolution – as indicated by protests such as that at Wyhl – emphasised grassroots involvement and participative democracy. But in practice too there was a commitment to doing things ‘a different way’. This translated into an anti-professional, participatory and decentralised attitude to party organisation. Horizontal organisational forms were favoured over traditional ‘top-down’ arrangements, as were internal organisational practices that promoted and maintained grassroots empowerment and participation.
The overall praxis then – maintaining a radical organisational form that encouraged and facilitated participation as part of the process of building a movement for change – was seen as core to the green perspective.
Key protests such as that at Wyhl had been successful because such actions were locally based and relied heavily on the active participation of grassroots members. However this ‘local’ nature of the early green movement also meant that from early days and in some regional areas, sections of the greens also openly intervened at city and regional level elections. These initiatives were initially tactical and relied heavily on the emerging movement’s ability to exploit the rivalries that existed between the dominant political parties in West German politics – the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats.[8] Broadly speaking these electoral initiatives fared well (winning modest, locally valued concessions) with the result that there was increasing openness to using such methods if the opportunities presented themselves. In the early days these electoral tactics were used in conjunction with (or parallel to) tactics involving direct action.[9] This parallel approach – using extra-parliamentary action alongside a visible parliamentary presence – was an old strategy of the Left’s and quite viable.[10]
Inevitably, however, the greens moved to consolidate this base of operations and this culminated in the formation of the German Green Party (Die Grünen or The Greens) in 1980 at Karlsruhe.[11]