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A Decade's Journey with Friends of the Earth

Frank Kennedy, November 2009

Since regional working began, over a decade ago, Frank Kennedy has been the face of Friends of the Earth (FOE) in the North West - promoting FOE policies and getting involved with a wide range of environmental campaigns and policy work. For much of that time he has been a member of the North West Transport Roundtable's Core Group, contributing to its work and helping to organise meetings. Along with many FOE staff, he was affected by a recent re-organisation and re-prioritisation within the organisation, brought about by the recession, and he has decided to take voluntary redundancy. He has written this reflective article for us, looking back to his appointment as a key environmental NGO officer.

I can confidently state that over my eleven-year stint as North West regional campaigns coordinator for Friends of the Earth I've forgotten more about environmental campaigning than I knew when I began the job. I can only hope I've retained enough to be helpful in any future roles.

The same applies to my fund of stories about travelling around and beyond the region in pursuit of environmental protection. All the same, enough of these for more than one article readily spring to mind.

To set some context: until October 1998, FoE had just one regional staff person, based in Leeds, covering the whole of the North. Her job entailed helping local groups from Northumberland to South Cheshire - and the Isle of Man - with their recruitment, smooth running, training needs, and any little local difficulties.

She also got stuck into site battles like stopping peat extraction from the Pennines; dressed up with the best of our stunt artists to promote our major national campaigns on the ground and in the media; and was seeking to make us a cog in the wheel (or a spanner in the works, if necessary) of three growing regional planning machines. No wonder she was pleased to see me arrive! I had to take on these roles for the North West alone. Luxury!

My first year in post saw me working on three priorities that have been crucial to anything we've achieved since. I short-listed locations for our first NW office; my manager came up from London and particularly liked the Comtechsa building in Duke St, Liverpool; in May '99, I moved in, and have been happily based there ever since.

I visited nearly all of our (then) 26 local groups, from Carlisle to Nantwich. This gave me new insight into rail travellers' widely varying experiences, according to line, operator, destination and status of station. (I think only in the case of Nelson was a bus - from Manchester - the better option, though Burnley was a moot point. I'll deal separately with the Manx experience!)

I'd worked with local campaign groups before, both in a paid and voluntary capacity. Yet this was an intensive learning period, in several ways.

I still owned a car until 2003, but made a point of never driving on FoE business, apart from about four occasions to carry equipment. Public transport shuts down well before bedtime, except in major cities, so to be usefully present at an evening meeting, I often accepted overnight hospitality. If you stay with people, you gain a deeper sense of what drives them, and of their local "realities".

FoE and other campaigning organisations like to use the strapline "think globally, act locally". It's our local activists who are striving - efficiently or otherwise - to achieve a better quality of life where they live. So our campaigns must tell a story that resonates with them and in their neighbourhood. That's the approach I've tried to take, at any rate.

The third invaluable use of my time early on was to help set up coalitions and networks. Most crucial among these, in terms of influencing the region's planning agenda - and reminding politicians and officers what their many references to "sustainable development" should actually mean - was the North West Environment Link (NWEL).

Others included the North West Waste Forum and MARGJIN (Merseyside and Region Global Justice Issues Network), which help illustrate the range of issues a FoE "generalist" campaigner covers.

MARGJIN includes regional and local representatives of such NGOs as Oxfam, WDM, CAFOD and Christian Aid, and its development mirrors the way global priorities attracting local support have shifted. Up to four or five years ago, trade justice would have been the main theme of our discussions and events, but more recently - as in FoE's own head office-led campaigning - climate change has taken over, as its impacts on the world's poor have come to be realised, along with the threat to the future of us all.

Initial funding for regional transport networks - the Transport Activists' Roundtables (TARs) - had already been identified, so my initial role was merely to ensure that transport campaigners among FoE local groups were aware of the NW TAR's launch in 1999. Many came, reflecting the number of locally threatened new roads and bypasses, poor cycling and other facilities. It was clear to me that transport, closely followed by waste/recycling, was the main over-arching concern for our groups - with food and energy supply not far behind.

Of course, 'transport' issues are a wide range of environmental and (anti) social concerns, as this September's Local Transport Plan training day emphasised. Both its workshop topics and the varied backgrounds of its attendees bore witness to the "joined up thinking" approach we need decision makers to apply. Held, like that first TAR open meeting, at the St Thomas Centre in Ardwick Green, it was a fitting occasion for me to wear my NW TAR Core Group hat for the last time.

Whether 'green' campaign groups formally act separately or as a unit - in regional strategy hearings, public inquiries such as the recent Mersey Gateway (where local knowledge and commitment from Halton FoE group was complemented by regional and national experience, especially from CPRE and the TAR network) or simply in exchanging views with government and business - we gain expertise and credibility from pooling our knowledge and skills. Where local authorities used to consider us irritants, they now frequently see us as allies. The danger, now that what we were saying over a decade ago, certainly on climate, has become public policy, is that NGOs become co-opted to optimistic plans without the power to achieve. We still need groups of local residents, who may not have the long words, but who can see the links between jobs, the environment, community safety and a decent quality of life.

I'll sign off with a non-scientifically generated half-dozen "highs and lows" from the past eleven years. There are many more, of course, but these ones certainly come back to me unprompted!

Least sustainable day: my car-free travelling was rather undermined when I arranged to visit Isle of Man Friends of the Earth one February, before discovering that winter sailings to and from Liverpool only happen at weekends. So my outward trip had to be a flight, if I was to make the meeting they'd set up for me with the Manx environment minister. After considerable delay at Liverpool Airport, my 'plane took off, only to find the fog re-gathering around the island. We circled twice, then had to return to sunny Liverpool. Eventually I paid my visit in May - by boat.

Most embarrassing moment: missing the last train from Oxford Road to Liverpool with my then Head of Department, after one of those many Manchester meetings that began again in the pub. I hadn't realised how much faster my walking pace was than his.

Most nerve-racking: another Manchester rail story: deadline day for Regional Spatial Strategy responses which had to be in hard copy at Government Office, Piccadilly Tower, by 5pm...my train sat for seven long minutes awaiting platform clearance. Officials had a minor argument as to whether I'd had two or three minutes to spare, while I got my breath back.

Least fun: trying to get our flimsy home-made 'ark' upright in the teeth of a gale on Southport beach with sand blowing into our eyes - all in aid of a photo-opportunity to highlight the importance of the upcoming Kyoto parties' conference. I don't think the photographer even came; we had to take our own shots.

[Least fun, really: staring at the pc monitor trying to spot the flaws in hundred-page strategic waste documents and the like, where the developers' cunning plans were wrapped up in screenfuls of techno-drivel.]

Most appreciated: Friends of the Earth's annual interest-free loan: (1) for my season ticket between Ormskirk and Liverpool - especially for the years when Merseytravel permitted this to include buses as well as trains over most of Merseyside; (2) one year, for a folding bike. This has been terrific for busy trains and trips to London, once got me into an argument with a Crewe bus driver (Arriva later apologised) and just occasionally led me to be over-ambitious, like the evening in Brighton when I rode away from our national conference on what I thought would be a short side-trip to see my brother's family. Very wide, Brighton, and extremely hilly.

Proudest achievement: The quality and detail of the work featured in our Longsight report, which so eloquently joins up environmental transport concerns with community travel needs, makes me especially happy to have been involved in that project. I could, however, take some pride in anything that Friends of the Earth has achieved, as much of this would simply unravel without high-level appreciation of our 'grassroots' presence in many communities, our strong links with both community and specialist groups and experts, as well as our own expertise. To have played a part in this relationship-building in North West England has been my privilege and, considerably, my pleasure.