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Environmentalism in Sweden: National Peculiarities and Global Developments

Between the 1960s and 1970s, Sweden established itself as a prominent, even pioneering, actor in international environmental politics. The country was the first to pass comprehensive environmental protection legislation (1968) and hosted the United Nation’s first Conference on the Environment in Stockholm (1972).Footnote 1 The early protagonism of the Swedish government in this field and the long tradition of incorporation of social movements’ claims in the state apparatus fuelled a trope in most related research: the early institutionalization of the Swedish environmental movement, which began in the 1970s and affected developments in the following decade.Footnote 2 However, other scholars have stressed that around 1970 a new generation of activists came forward; whereas the previous ones had conceived environmentalism as engaging in observing and studying nature, these young people increasingly devoted themselves to social criticism and direct action. This shift marked the emergence, in Sweden and more generally in western countries, of the “modern” environmental movement.Footnote 3

This chapter aims to explore the development of this movement in Sweden in the 1980s, i.e. in that “middle-earth” between the formative period of a renewed environmental movement (1960s–1970s) and the completion of its institutionalization at the global level in the 1990s. Theories of political opportunities structure have overlooked that the relation between the political arena and the complex galaxy of environmental groups was far from being uncomplicated. The chapter focuses precisely on this multifaceted interplay, which is studied through two cases of bottom-up mobilization, one at the national level, the anti-nuclear campaign, and the other at the local level, the struggle against the Scandinavian Link. In this way, this study aims to show that motives and means of environmental protection can be very different according to context. How were institutions regarded by these activists? How did they experience the relationship between representative and direct democracy, both in principle and in concrete terms (dialogue/confrontation with institutional representatives)? By addressing these issues, this chapter aims to contribute to research on social movements with a more nuanced understanding of their oscillation between the institutional and the confrontational level.

Previous research has highlighted that in Sweden, as well as in Norway and Finland, two quite different forms of activism have confronted each other: one has been given an outstanding role within the corporatist decision-making process, while the other has been generally openly intransigent in its demands, resulting from a well-established tradition of “anti-modern naturalism”.Footnote 4 The first unequivocally anti-establishment stance within Swedish environmentalism can be traced back to this cultural legacy. On the occasion of the first United Nation’s Conference on the Environment in Stockholm, an alternative conference was organized by Alternative City (Alternativ Stad), the Stockholm branch of Friends of the Earth, founded in 1969 and Nature & Youth Sweden (Fältbiologerna), the youth organization of the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (SSNC, Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen, founded in 1909), which became established in 1948. The latter contested the institutionalist strategy of its mother organization and pressed for direct action and radical democracy.Footnote 5 The ambivalence of environmental activism is somehow echoed in the oscillation of research on social movements between the appreciation for those that emerged between 1960s–1970s because of their ability to successfully challenge the institutional constraints of formal organizations, and later claims that the institutionalization is to some extent inherent to political mobilization in itself.Footnote 6 In order to enhance more nuanced theoretical frameworks, this chapter makes use of Manuel Castell, Sidney Tarrow and Charles Tilly’s theories, which point out that beneath the surface of even institutionalized social movements, there may be collective forms of mobilization that are, at least in part, contentious. Together with studies bringing into research the way social movements interact with institutions and other movements, these theories will highlight how different components of a social movement may relate in varied forms to institutions, depending on the historical and political context.Footnote 7

The sources are, besides secondary literature, bulletins and publications of the groups and associations involved in the two campaigns examined in this chapter, as well as related media articles.

The Emergence of the Nuclear Issue

The notion that nuclear power was environmentally friendly was well established in late 1960s Sweden. Ever since the 1950s, nature-conservation bodies had hoped that the new technology would preserve untouched wilderness from the advance of civilization.Footnote 8

In the 1970s, the anti-nuclear power movement spread through different political coalitions in Europe and North America and played a pivotal role in the rise of a transnational environmental movement.Footnote 9 In addition to the New Left, it was fuelled by the peace movement; focusing, from the late 1970s, on opposition to nuclear weapons, it went hand in hand with the development of campaigns against the civil uses of nuclear energy.Footnote 10

In some countries—the United States, West Germany, France and Sweden—the dispute over nuclear power reached an unprecedented intensity. However, the outcome of the mobilization varied considerably, depending on political input structures: where they were not responsive, as in France and West Germany, governments stuck to their original policy choice; where they were open to protest, as in Sweden and the United States, a reorientation towards new policies was triggered.Footnote 11

In the spring of 1973, Sweden’s ambitious nuclear energy program became far more controversial than in most other countries. The positions of the parties on this issue challenged the standard Socialist–Nonsocialist cleavage. While long-time enemies such as the Social Democrats on one hand, and the Moderates and the Liberal Party on the other hand, stood up for nuclear energy, the Left Party—the Communists and the Centre Party joined the anti-nuclear front between 1973 and 1975.Footnote 12

In the 1976 election, the nuclear issue played a crucial role. The leader of the Centre Party, Thorbjörn Fälldin, became the first non-Social Democratic Prime Minister after 44 years. However, once in power, he had to compromise with his allies, i.e. the other two pro-nuclear centre-right parties; although some success was achieved, the nuclear program was far from being dismantled. This situation damaged the Centre Party’s credibility with anti-nuclear groups. After the Three Mile Island incident in March 1979, the nuclear debate changed radically in Sweden; the Social Democratic leadership announced a more cautious approach to nuclear power and agreed to hold a referendum on this issue, thus meeting an old request of the Centre Party and the Left Party—the Communists.Footnote 13

The referendum was held on 23 March 1980, with three options to choose from. Line 1 and Line 2 stated that nuclear power would be phased out as fast as possible and no further nuclear plants would be constructed. Briefly, both options did not propose a rapid phase-out. The Moderates were behind Line 1, while the Social Democrats and the Liberal Party supported Line 2. Line 3, supported by the Centre Party, the Left Party—the Communists and the Christian Democrats required nuclear power to be phased out within 10 years. Reactors not yet loaded were not to be commissioned, and continued expansion was to be stopped immediately.

The line between pro-nuclear and anti-nuclear positions in the referendum was fine, as they all aimed at a gradual phase-out of nuclear power plants; what differed was the speed at which this process was to go. It was the Line 2 option that prevailed in the end. In brief, the outcome of the referendum was to allow the construction of the already planned reactors and to phase out nuclear energy by 2010.Footnote 14

The People’s Campaign Against Nuclear Power

When the referendum was announced, the People’s Campaign NO to Nuclear Power (Folkkampanjen NEJ till kärnkraft) was started; it was not a new organization as it had been active since the year before under the name of People’s Campaign Against Atomic Energy (Folkkampanjen mot atomkraft). The initiative to create a bipartisan umbrella organization stemmed from the Environment Coalition (Miljöförbundet), founded in 1976.Footnote 15 About 40 organizations joined the People’s Campaign, from traditional environmental groups, such as Friends of the Earth (Jordens Vänner), to church communities, peace activists and feminist movements, small Socialist and Communist parties not represented in Parliament, as well as the Centre Party and the Left Party—the Communists. In addition, two dissident groups of pro-nuclear parties took part in the campaign: the Social Democratic Work Group for an Alternative Energy Policy (SAFE) and the Liberals for Energy Alternative (LIFE). The main spokespeople of the campaign were the president Lennart Daléus (activist of Friends of the Earth) and two political representatives: the Minister of Social Affairs Karin Söder (Centre Party) and the former leader of the Left Party—the Communists, Carl-Henrik Hermansson. Another prominent figure was the former Social Democratic Minister, Ulla Lindström. Local committees were established throughout the country. Interestingly, in the final phase of the referendum campaign, while the supporters of Line 1 arranged their main event at the sober Berwald Hall in Stockholm (March 16) and those of Line 2 showed their popular roots through a meeting at the People House (Folkets hus) also in the capital (March 10), the People’s Campaign NO to Nuclear Power chose the streets, consistent with its character of mass movement. The national demonstration on March 15 took place in more than 100 municipalities, gathering around 100,000 people.Footnote 16

Although after the referendum the Swedish government officially took the magnitude of public opposition into account and ordered no new plants,Footnote 17 it became clear that the supporters of nuclear power (the Moderates as well as the Social Democrats) had no intention of giving up.Footnote 18 And neither did the People’s Campaign. Whereas in countries such as the USA and West Germany the anti-nuclear power movement was replaced by disarmament movements in the early 1980s,Footnote 19 in Sweden (as well as in Italy)Footnote 20 the mobilization went on and, if anything, was enriched by the synergy with the peace movement.

Not even the choice of institutional engagement from some of the leadership of the People’s Campaign (in particular, Per Gahrton, a former member of the Liberal Party, who had become a key founder of the Swedish Green Party in 1981)Footnote 21 affected the bottom-up campaign. Significant initiatives were the so-called “Barsebäckmarscher”, protest marches against the boiling water nuclear power plant located 20 kilometres from Copenhagen (the Danish government pressed for its closure during the entirety of its operating lifetime).Footnote 22 A dozen marches were organized by different environmental organizations between 1976 and 1986.Footnote 23

However, there were other forms of struggle, which often took the form of protests against soil surveys intended to verify whether the rock was suitable to accommodate a nuclear waste dump, for instance in Ovanåker (where in February 1981 some of the inhabitants taking part in the boycott were sentenced to daily penalty payments),Footnote 24 Kynnefjäll, Voxnadalen, Godmark, Kiruna (where Sami, too, protested) and Tränningen. In all these places an intense activity of study of nuclear waste began and the results disseminated in crowded public assemblies. That was not enough, however; the activists patrolled the roads leading to the areas selected for the surveys. Numerous committees “Save…” (followed by the name of the municipality) were founded wherever such tests were announced. “Rädda Tränningen” was founded in April 1981; in three months hundreds of activists guarded the six roads leading to the woodland 24 hours a day. In the spring of 1981, the People’s Campaign decided to establish a Waste Cycle Committee, which sent a letter with questions to all the members of Parliament and the executive committees of political parties.Footnote 25

Women’s contribution to the anti-nuclear movement was noteworthy from the early steps of the referendum campaignFootnote 26; it appeared as a natural development of women’s care for life and was consolidated over the following years.Footnote 27

In 1981, the People’s Campaign, together with several environmental, feminist, solidarity and peace groups and associations, among them the Environment Coalition, Future in our Hands (Framtiden i våra händer), Friends of the Earth, Women’s Struggle for Peace (Kvinnokamp för fred), The Swedish Society Against Painful Experiments On Animals (Nordiska samfundet mot plågsamma djurförsök), The Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society (Svenska freds- och skiljedomsföreningen), started Alternative Campaign (Alternativkampanjen). The ambition was to carry on the push that emerged after the referendum to point to “positive alternatives, which flow from a holistic view of human beings in their responsible mutual interplay and in their relationship with nature”.Footnote 28 The underlying belief is relevant with regard both to Inglehart’s value change theory and the relation with politics: “an increasing number of people have started questioning the dominant values in contemporary society. These are materialistic values, which are – often – based on short-sighted economic thinking. And these are the ones which govern our behaviour. For instance, the political parties all aim for growth […]”.Footnote 29 What did “positive alternatives” mean practically? And how did the struggle have to be performed? The answers were different, of course. According to Friends of the Earth, limited sabotage actions were not enough: as the social development was destructive in itself, what was needed was the creation of self-contained unities able to convert production and distribution so as to meet actual human needs, at the same time as society as a whole was challenged.Footnote 30

There was also some significant defection, however. While the activists of Friends of the Earth made it clear from the beginning that they did not mean to restrain themselves to environmental issues but rather place them in the more general societal context,Footnote 31 Nature and Youth Sweden decided not to join the campaign as its activists preferred to focus on environmental issues without intertwining them with peace and social problems.Footnote 32

The link between environment and peace, under the joint opposition to civil and military nuclear power, was highlighted from the beginningFootnote 33; the People’s campaign took part in large peace demonstrations, e.g. the Peace Meeting in Gothenburg, on 15 May 1981.Footnote 34 However, the activists of the People’s Campaign had different opinions about the relationship between the two movements. Whereas some of them were not inclined to give up the focus on nuclear energy,Footnote 35 others considered it necessary to shift to an anti-imperialistic stance.Footnote 36

In the mid-1980s, the People’s Campaign showed signs of exhaustion; internal critical voices pointed fingers at the movement’s increasing bureaucratization and taming, as well as activists’ growing average age.Footnote 37 The Chernobyl disaster (first recognized, outside the USSR, by the Swedish nuclear plant in Forsmark) reignited the public debate. Although its resonance varied from country to country in Europe, it fuelled an understanding of modern society as a “risk society”.Footnote 38 Two years later, the Swedish government decided to anticipate the phase-out and to close one unit in Barsebäck and one in Ringhals in 1995 and 1996 respectively (yet the decision was reversed in 1991). However, the 1988 election was dominated by environmental concerns, but mostly about pollution; the Green Party entered Parliament for the first time,Footnote 39 but nuclear power no longer topped the agenda. The internal confrontation on the role and goals of the People’s Campaign intensified in that period.Footnote 40 Someone even questioned the very existence of the campaign.Footnote 41

In some sort of assessment of the first 10 years of activity, a female activist pointed out that what was once a mass movement named People’s Campaign Against Nuclear Power had turned into an organization with approximately 5,000 activists and limited resources, and unlike its origins argued not only against nuclear energy but also nuclear weapons.Footnote 42 The controversy over the name issue opened the new decade, the 1990s, opposing those who believed that the one in use was still topical to those who were persuaded that it was time to leave it behind and to adopt one more in line with the purposeful program of the campaign (in short, supporting alternatives energies).Footnote 43

Interestingly, in the light of the more confrontational climate that would characterize the following decade, the 1989 congress of the People’s Campaign passed a resolution committing the activists to support civil disobedience actions as long as they were consistent with lines of actions well under way and not makeshift.Footnote 44

Towards a New European Transport Network

The crisis affecting the People’s Campaign went hand in hand with the shift in the environmental movement (not only the Swedish) from nuclear to infrastructure issues. The early 1980s were in fact a turning point in the European debate on future transport and traffic systems. In 1983, the CEO of Volvo, Pehr G. Gyllenhammar, promoted the Round Table of European Industrialists (ERT). Seventeen European businessmen met in the Paris boardroom of Volvo in April. They agreed on the need to create an organization that would be able to convey its stance on the state of the economy to European political leaders. ERT worked at both national and European levels as an advocacy group intended to restore Europe’s competitiveness. At the outset, this organization played a crucial role in the planning of the Oresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden as part of its European Link project aiming to improve the European infrastructure network. Later on, the ERT promoted the earliest projects of the Trans-European Networks such as the Fehmarn Belt Bridge between Denmark and GermanyFootnote 45 and the High Speed Railways Turin-Lyon.Footnote 46 ERT has been, according to some experts, “the hidden force guiding the European Union’s agenda”Footnote 47; at the same time, infrastructure planning provided fertile ground for many transnational connections and transboundary issues and protests. For instance, the so-called “Danube Movement” was a case of cross-border environmentalism that emerged in the area between Vienna, Bratislava and Budapest in the fight against large-scale dam projects.Footnote 48 It was one of the turning points in the development of environmental movements in Eastern Europe.Footnote 49 In Italy, the first rumours about a high-speed train that would connect Turin and Lyon circulated in the late 1980s, giving rise to one of the most durable and fighting movements (with transnational ties) in the social history of Europe between the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries.Footnote 50

Although this kind of locally based protest is often stigmatized as the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) syndrome, the reasons behind it are to be found in a more general concern about the environment and health damages.Footnote 51

The idea of a fast connection over the Oresund had a long history,Footnote 52 but in the mid-1980s it acquired more solidity: the “Scandinavian Link” (Scan Link) project, aiming at connecting Oslo with Hamburg, provided for the building of a bridge between Malmö and Copenhagen and a highway along the western coast of Sweden.Footnote 53 The recession that hit the Swedish economy (particularly industries in Malmo) in the mid-1970s, the economic isolation of Copenhagen from the rest of the country, and the poor integration between the Swedish and Danish economies were all arguments put forward to gain support for the project.Footnote 54

Several inquiries were conducted to assess the logistic and economic implications of Scan Link, both in Denmark and Sweden; interestingly, in the mid-1980s, the Swedish (Social Democratic) government felt obliged, because of the status acquired by environmental issues in society, to appoint a commission with the task of estimating specifically its environmental consequences.Footnote 55

The Mobilization Against the Scan Link

Due to its huge and long-term impact, the Scan Link was regarded from the beginning by the environmental movement as a crossroad, in the same way that nuclear power had been in the late 1970s and early 1980s.Footnote 56 The mobilization against the Link began as early as December 1984 and intensified in 1985, when the government announced the “Uddevalla package of measures” without consultations with civil society. The campaign took the form of study and educational activities, demonstrations and blockades to prevent the start of construction.Footnote 57 In April 1985, the committee “Save Bohuslän” (Rädda Bohuslän) was established in Ljungskile; at the same time, the women of this municipality founded the group “The Crazy Mothers”, named after a performance by Amnesty International on Argentinian mothers. For years they demonstrated against the Link on Friday afternoons along the E6 motorway.Footnote 58 In the region, the Scandinavian Link was one of the hot issues in the 1985 electoral campaign; “Save Bohuslän” organized a heavily attended assembly where local politicians from all parties had to make clear their stance.Footnote 59

On 12 October 1985, the Environmental Coalition promoted the “Counter-Link” (Motlänken), i.e. an umbrella organization that gathered together 100 associations, including the youth organizations of all political parties (with the exception of the Moderates), as well as Christian groups and trade union organizations.Footnote 60 Several local committees were established (in Gothenburg, Skania, Uddevalla among others).Footnote 61 In the following months, the contacts with the Danish activists against the Link intensified, including through a relay from the Norwegian border to Copenhagen that took place in the spring of 1986.Footnote 62 In addition, “Action to stop the bridge!” (Aktion stoppa bron!), inspired by the People’s Campaign Against Nuclear Power, organized joint protests in Malmö and Copenhagen. In June 1986, despite the extended mobilization against it, the municipality of Uddevalla approved the project; however, only the Social Democrats and the Liberal Party were in favour.Footnote 63 In December, one of the rare direct confrontations between a representative of the national government, the Social Democratic Minister of Communication, Sven Hulterström, and the inhabitants of the area affected by the project, took place.Footnote 64

Although several representatives of the Social Democratic Party (both at the local and national level) were against the Link,Footnote 65 on 3 September 1987 the government passed the building of a highway from Stora Höga to Uddevalla. One of the first actions of the environmental activists in the region was to start an “Adopt a tree” campaign.Footnote 66 On 2 October at Ödsmål, the activists hugged the trees to prevent the site workers from starting construction.Footnote 67 They explained that their source of inspiration was the Tree Huggers of the Chipko movement, a social and ecological movement consisting of rural villagers, mostly women, active in India in the 1970s. After that, the media labelled the Swedish activists as Tree Huggers, tooFootnote 68; whereas in the beginning this nickname was not welcomed, the activists later turned it into a source of pride.Footnote 69 From the Chipko movement, the Swedish Tree Huggers took methods of struggle based on three NOs: to violence; to drugs; to relationships with party politics.

The start of the construction site in the Ödsmål valley a few days later (6 October) gave rise to one of the strongest and most prolonged cycles of civil disobedience in SwedenFootnote 70: about 300 people immediately mobilized to stop the work.Footnote 71 The “occupation” of the forest went on for one week. For days the activists expected the arrival of the police at any moment, but nobody came; they found out later on that the policemen had no idea about the way they should deal with demonstrators or which law was to be applied to disperse the protesters.Footnote 72 Finally, the police evicted the activists on 13 October.Footnote 73 Hundreds of people from Ljungskile, Gothenburg and the Ödsmål valley had joined the protest. They had received practical support from the farmers around the area and sent thousands of letters, leaflets and vouchers to those opposing the Link all around the country.Footnote 74 On 21 October, about 400 people gathered in Cederlund (in the Ödsmål valley) and then moved to the forest to prevent the building of a road. The police removed Sara Lidman by force, together with about 350 activists.Footnote 75 Lidman, a well-known writer and activist, gave an impromptu but very passionate speech.Footnote 76 It was the largest civil disobedience action in Sweden in the post-war period; all participants in the protest were convicted for opposing the construction of the highway by climbing the trees destined to be sacrificed.Footnote 77 In October 1987 an initiative consistent with the well-rooted Swedish tradition of popular education was launched: for almost a year, the Ekenäs school in Ödsmål, north of Stenungsund and very close to the planned highway, hosted a People’s University; every Sunday people (including entire families) from various municipalities of Bohuslän joined to listen to experts and discuss the impact of the highway on the region, while at the same time enjoying moments of conviviality. A group of mothers from Majorna, a district of Gothenburg, decided to start their own study activity focusing on pollution in their city and its impact on public health.Footnote 78

The struggle continued, with several civil disobedience actions.Footnote 79 In December 1987, some members of the Chipko movement took part in a demonstration with about 700 people; the Tree Huggers confronted 20 truck drivers who supported Scan Link and were fed up with the inconvenience to traffic resulting from the ongoing protests.Footnote 80 Sometimes the activists reached an agreement with the police to leave willinglyFootnote 81; others times they had to face the police’s brutal response.Footnote 82 On the occasion of the demonstration on 24 February 1988, which—unlike the previous ones—had been announced, the police arrived in advanceFootnote 83 and set police dogs on protesters, leaving some people in need of medical treatment.Footnote 84 According to the Tree Huggers, the decision to build the highway, made by the government without any legal basis, and contradicting the right of human beings to preserve their natural environment and their own homes, paved the way to the police’s violent handling of the protests. Whereas struggles non-violent at all, legally motivated by a state of necessity, were charged with and prosecuted for “disobedience to Powers that be”, police brutality was never sentenced.Footnote 85

In January 1988 the project was officially launched, thus reinforcing concerns about deforestation, which at that time was felt at a European level. For instance, it alarmed many in West Germany, and eventually, the government intervened severely to contain air pollution, which had given rise to international concern since the early 1970s.Footnote 86

Conclusions: A Multifaceted Movement

Although the high degree of institutionalization of the environmental movement has become a trope in research on social movements, especially when it comes to the Swedish case, the anti-nuclear movement and the struggle against the Scandinavian Link show that the movement that emerged around 1970 had different forms of expression.Footnote 87 On one hand, the activists of these two campaigns, although dedicating most of their energies to direct action, did not refuse in principle to have a dialogue with institutions. On the other hand, research shows that even professional and bureaucratic organizations such as Greenpeace and WWF, as well as the more traditional and country-based Societies for nature conservation, can resort to direct action. This is one of the ways environmental organizations and groups maintain an autonomous relationship with the institutional sphere (including the Green parties), which is a requisite for shaping their own identities.Footnote 88

This chapter highlights that direct action was far from being absent from the repertoire of Swedish environmentalism in the 1980s. The underlying reasons must be traced back to the widespread dissatisfaction with the political establishment (starting from the Social Democratic Party)Footnote 89 and a critique of the capitalist way of life inherited from the radicalization of the 1970s but which, in the following decade, acquired new nuances that were less ideological and, in the case of the mobilization against the Scan Link, even emotional, due to the inhabitants’ strong attachment to the territory affected by the infrastructure. “The issue of the Oresund bridge seems to give raise to a debate about the society we would like to live in, in the same way the issue of nuclear power did”.Footnote 90 Although focusing on a single issue, the People’s Campaign Against Nuclear Power and the mobilization against Scan Link formulated a vision of an alternative society, inspired to peace with Earth and among human beings.

Even if the legacy of the 1970s was clear in the methods of struggle and in the rhetorical repertoire, environmentalism as a challenge to the traditional left-right scale was openly theorized, due to the dependence of both political sides on the growth paradigm.Footnote 91 The relationship with all the “isms” (Marxism, socialism, liberalism, capitalism) was interpreted in diverse waysFootnote 92 and went hand in hand with the need to rethink the Welfare State.Footnote 93 Did “welfare” mean owning cars, boats and summer houses or, rather, a better work environment, jobs for everybody, good-quality housing and communication, no pollution etc.?

The folkhem (the vision put forward by the Social Democrats in the late 1920s of a society where the divide between privileged and poor would be broken by applying the rules of a harmonious family)Footnote 94 was no longer seen as the “People’s House” but rather as the “Companies’ House”, to mean that politics (and the Social Democrats were no exceptionFootnote 95) was subordinated to business and as such not reliable.Footnote 96 Even mainstream media noticed that both the national and the local governments were ready to satisfy Volvo’s requirements once the company announced its intention to establish a plant in Uddevalla, in return for the construction of the highway: jobs in exchange for increased hydrocarbon emissions.Footnote 97 On the contrary, environmental activists received the Roundtable of European Industrialists’ plan for a network of highways across Europe as a threat not only to the environment but also to labour and social rights.Footnote 98 At the same time that these militants mourned the golden age of the Welfare State (yet criticizing its economic prerequisite—growth), the rise of neoliberal ideology and policies was radically undermining its social and political assumptions.Footnote 99

A growing disconnection was felt by activists (especially those mobilizing at a local level) between human beings’ (and nature’s) rights and a democracy that was perceived as “representative” only in theory; its failures could be overcome only by forms of direct democracy.Footnote 100 This condemnation motivated the reversal of the link between Law and Justice. A recurring theme developed by the confrontational soul of the environmental movement was that the actions of the government were illegal because they bypassed the ordinary democratic process: in the face of the urgent nature of the work (nuclear power as well as the highway), there was no time to accomplish all democratic requirements.Footnote 101 The true Law, the activists argued, was on their side: “We who here write our names have been forced by all our consciousness to break consciously the official Swedish Law in order to safeguard our and next generations’ right to a people-friendly environment and to participation in the decision-making process that affects our future. We claim our right to faith in future”.Footnote 102

The gap between the Law’s and the activists’ language was made very clear: “The first is a language which considers itself based on facts and scientific evidence. It keeps feelings and emotions at a distance. Things are not called by their right name. Rather, they are turned into technical expressions, which spirit away the flesh and blood of the very actions. On the contrary, we speak a language in which things such as tree, child, life, love and death are called by their right name. We allow ourselves to show our despair, our joy and our hope. I am not aware of legal terms suited to all of that. I allow myself to doubt that they exist”.Footnote 103

In this light, civil disobedience was regarded as an obvious choice—and a symptom of the crisis of democracy.Footnote 104 “A society which punishes persons who want to prevent crimes against the environment to the same extent as the companies which commit such crimes does not deserve to be defended”.Footnote 105 Civil society was never given the chance to speak on the building of the highway included in the Scandinavian Link, it was reminded; consequently, the only way to make one’s voice heard was to hinder physically the implementation of the project.Footnote 106 As one of the Tree Huggers explained, “From a strictly legal point of view, I might have committed a crime. Yet, from a moral perspective I have not. In the longer term, the positive effects of my act will exceed the negative ones”.Footnote 107

However, there was a remarkable decline in the level of civil disobedience events in the late 1980s-early 1990s. In the 1988 election, after a campaign dominated by environmental concerns raised by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, the Green Party, for the first time, secured representation in the Swedish Parliament with 5.6% of the vote, suddenly becoming one of the largest Green parties in Europe.Footnote 108 Although this result was praised by environmentalists, the choice for what was left of the People’s Campaign was to maintain its independence from party politics, relying not uniquely on the Green Party but also on candidates elected in the Centre Party and the Left Party—the Communists.Footnote 109 In 1991, the tide had turned; the fall of the Soviet empire catalyzed public attention. In the general election, environmental issues didn’t top the agenda as had been the case in the previous election. Whereas the classic environmental concerns of the 1970s (industrial pollution and nuclear energy) declined in importance, others, such as animal rights and conservation, gained exposure; infrastructure issues remained a target of protest throughout these two decades.

In Sweden, as in most Western countries, environmental activism underwent changes in the 1990s, both in the methods of struggle and the substance of the claims. In general terms, a relatively autonomous and coherent environmental movement was replaced by a multifaceted and diffuse array of actors and groups promoting quite different items on the environmental agenda, often in the name of sustainable development and focusing primarily on global issues. The landscape of environmentalism polarized between a new generation of activists, performing more flexible, limited and often more radical forms of actions resulting from a more militant understanding of environmentalism,Footnote 110 and increased environmental consciousness and professionalization.