{"id":2345,"date":"2019-04-18T23:19:43","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T23:19:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2345"},"modified":"2019-04-18T23:33:13","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T23:33:13","slug":"killing-the-wind-of-england","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/threeworlds.campaignstrategy.org\/?p=2345","title":{"rendered":"Killing the Wind of England"},"content":{"rendered":"

How The Values-Politics of Eurosceptic, Climatesceptic Conservatives Halted Wind Energy in England
\n<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Chris Rose<\/a><\/p>\n

long post – download as a pdf<\/a><\/p>\n

[This post follows up the previous blog \u2018Brexit Values Story 2.2<\/a>\u2019 or the campaign \u2018lessons of Brexit\u2019 in values terms.\u00a0 For sources related to the below text see links in Full Wind Politics Timeline<\/a>.\u00a0 See also Condensed Timeline<\/a>, slides<\/a>, and Political Actors<\/a>].<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Delabole \u2013 Britain\u2019s first commercial wind farm (started up, 1991), Cornwall. Pic: Good Energy<\/em><\/p>\n

This is a case study in how a \u2018counter-revolution\u2019 in values-politics set back progress in tackling a major social threat, namely climate change.<\/h4>\n

It is true that resistance from oil, coal and gas interests, business as usual momentum and feeble political commitment has been effective in stifling \u2018climate progress\u2019 on many fronts in the UK: for example continued development of oil and gas, new airport capacity and \u2018offshoring\u2019 of carbon emissions embedded in imported goods.\u00a0 But this case is unusual.\u00a0 It was a notable victory for climate sceptics in which an effective pro-climate policy was stopped, rolled back and effectively killed off.<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s the story of how Britain or more specifically England, came to set aside its abundant resources of wind energy as a result of organized campaigning by right-wing Eurosceptic and Climatesceptic Conservative politicians.\u00a0 They used the threat of values-based competition between UKIP and the Tories to drive the Conservatives towards the authoritarian Settler right.<\/h4>\n

Many of the same network, certainly inspired and perhaps helped by US neocon organisations, then orchestrated the same values dog-whistles to drive the vote for Brexit in 2016.<\/h4>\n

This campaign drove David Cameron and the \u2018social liberalisers\u2019 to abandon their attempt to modernize the UK Conservative Party, turning it from pro- to anti-wind.<\/h4>\n

It\u2019s left Britain with a UKIP-style energy policy: an effective ban on its cheapest form of new renewable energy but subsidising fracking for gas.\u00a0 As a result the UK now faces significant problems in the struggle to decarbonize its economy.\u00a0 It was a significant success for climate sceptics who want to keep fossil fuel industry alive, and it happened largely below the radar of public concern.<\/h4>\n

The banishment of new wind power from England came about not through any change in public opinion \u2013 it has remained overwhelmingly positive from the 2000s to date – but through a failure of environmental NGOs and the renewables industry to turn expressive support for wind into instrumental political support at a local level.\u00a0 In contrast, anti-wind campaigners succeeded in manipulating party politics to drive the Conservatives away from the political \u2018centre\u2019, and back towards fossil fuels. \u00a0\u00a0It was a struggle between the past and the future, in which the past won.<\/h4>\n

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The Roots of the Political Backlash Against Wind<\/strong><\/h4>\n

It could be said that former Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher instigated both sides of the fight.<\/p>\n

On 20 September 1988 her Bruges speech warned against development of a \u201cEuropean Super-state\u201d, and inspired a new generation of UK Eurosceptic Conservatives.<\/p>\n

Just seven days later she delivered her equally famous \u2018climate speech\u2019 to the Royal Society in London, in which she warned humanity had \u201cunwittingly begun a massive experiment with the system of this planet itself \u2026. \u201ca global heat trap\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Margaret Thatcher calls for urgent action on climate change at the UN, 1989.\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0We need \u201cnew technologies to clean up the environment\u201d and \u201cnon-fossil fuel sources\u201d of energy.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thatcher\u2019s enthusiasm for climate action lasted a few years.\u00a0 She redoubled her urging for international climate action in 1989, and launched the Hadley Centre into climate research before being deposed by her cabinet in a row over Europe in 1990.\u00a0 By then Britain had its first \u2018non fossil fuel obligation\u2019 to fund alternative energy and in 1991, its first onshore wind farm.\u00a0 After that, and in line with scientific findings and international agreements including EU policy, successive British governments gradually ramped up their ambitions for renewables, including onshore wind which was cheaper and easier to deploy than offshore wind.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile a cohort of mainly young Eurosceptic British Conservatives joined the European Parliament in 1999, and many set about harrying the European institutions, seeking evidence of corruption and generally criticizing and obstructing process as much as possible.\u00a0 They included Martin Callanan, and Daniel Hannan, Chris Heaton-Harris, and an older man, Roger Helmer who together termed themselves the \u2018H-Block\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Roger Helmer, Daniel Hannan and Chris Heaton Harris, members of the MEP ‘H Block’ in the European Parliament
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

Helmer and Heaton-Harris shared an office in the East Midlands where they employed Sally McNamara as a press officer.\u00a0 She moved with them to Brussels and went on to the US to work for the right-wing lobby group ALEC, whose conferences were subsequently attended by all four MEPs.\u00a0 McNamara became ALEC\u2019s International Relations Project Director building up networks of contact between ALEC and right-wing British and European politicians, as well as being a columnist for The Bruges Group, named after Thatcher\u2019s seminal \u2018Bruges Speech\u2019.<\/p>\n

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Sally McNamara (from Roger Helmers\u2019 blog)<\/p>\n

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Quote from <\/em>Roger Helmer\u2019s blog in 2011<\/em><\/a>\u00a0\u00a0 Bill Newton Dunn subsequently left the Conservatives over their drift to Euroscepticism and joined the Liberal Democrats. His son is Tom Newton Dunn, political editor of The Sun.\u00a0 McNamara went on to work for US defence contractor Raytheon (see also \u2018Political Actors\u2019)<\/em><\/p>\n

Hannan had been the first director of the European Research Group in 1993, and went on to become a founder of Vote Leave, the official Leave campaign in the 2016 Referendum.\u00a0 Heaton-Harris later said that he was a \u201ca bit of a greenie\u201d when he first joined the European Parliament but became a climate sceptic after meeting Bjorn Lomborg in 2001.\u00a0 Helmer also credits Lomborg for his antipathy to action on climate change, and used his position in the European Parliament to host meetings of well-known professional sceptics, and even fund anti-wind energy posters in the UK.<\/p>\n

Back in Britain all that many people knew about \u2018Europe\u2019 was the continuing civil war inside the Conservative Party which had dogged Prime Minister John Major before his defeat by pro-European Tony Blair in 1997.\u00a0 That and stories about rules on bent bananas created by Daily Telegraph writer Boris Johnson.<\/p>\n

In real life, Britain was also changing.\u00a0\u00a0 From the 1980s to the 2000s the balance of values in UK society had inverted<\/a>.\u00a0 Settlers went from being the mainstream to the smallest values group, and the Pioneers took their place.\u00a0 \u2018Tribal\u2019 political alleigances were diminishing because such identity politics is an inherently Settler feature [1]. \u00a0Consequently, the Pioneers and Prospectors were increasingly important in determining elections.\u00a0 CDSM values surveys showed that Blair appealed to many Prospectors as well as Pioneers and with the help of his deputy John Prescott, Blair\u2019s New Labour hung onto enough of the traditional Settler vote to win two more General Elections in 2001 and 2005.<\/p>\n

No More Nasty Party?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reliance on a traditional authoritarian Conservative pitch appealed to the Settler base but that was shrinking and it was not enough for Michael Howard to win the 2005 General Election.\u00a0 So a Conservative leadership contest began, and young David Cameron entered it with a modernizing agenda, wanting the \u2018detoxify\u2019 the Conservative Party and attract more younger and female voters (Prospectors and Pioneers) on the Blair model.\u00a0 Cameron\u2019s ideas were supported by Theresa May who in 2003 said that people saw the Conservatives as the \u201cnasty party\u201d and that, had to change.<\/p>\n

But in Brussels the newer Eurosceptic MEPs seem to have found a political \u2018madrassa\u2019 and agitated against the old guard of pro-European Conservatives, wanting a break with the mainstream European Parliament conservative bloc the EPP.<\/p>\n

They rallied around rightwing candidates for the leadership, such as Liam Fox.\u00a0 So to attract the support of the Eurosceptic wing of the party, Cameron promised that if leader, he would break with the EPP and form a new group of conservativse in the European Parliament.\u00a0 It proved a fateful decision, putting Cameron on a slippery slope of trying to appease the right and being pulled rigthwards. \u00a0As the Europhile centrist Tory Kenneth Clarke said later, \u201cIf you want to go feeding crocodiles then you’d better not run out of buns\u201d as if you do, they come for you.<\/p>\n

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The BBC reports Cameron\u2019s leadership campaign success <\/em><\/p>\n

Elected Leader in December 2005, Cameron symbolically changed the Conservative \u2018torch of freedom\u2019 logo to a green tree.\u00a0 He actively courted socially liberal Pioneer causes such as overseas aid, and groups like Oxfam but in 2006 he also made good on his commitment to the Eurosceptics and pulled his MEPs out of the EPP. This created a new more right-wing bloc, the ECR.\u00a0 Ultimately this break with the EPP would isolate Cameron from mainstream conservative leaders in the EU, undermining his attempts to win a referendum on European membership by first securing a \u2018better deal\u2019.<\/p>\n

At home Cameron ran the local election Conservative campaign with the slogan \u201cvote blue, go green\u201d.\u00a0 To demonstrate his commitment to acting on climate change in 2006 he visited the Arctic with WWF and \u2018hugged a husky\u2019. He also pledged support to the Friends of the Earth campaign for a Climate Change Bill.\u00a0 By this time Cameron was pulled in two directions: one \u2018progressive\u2019 and \u2018reflexive\u2019,\u00a0 reinventing the Conservatives to attract Prospectors and Pioneers, the other, \u2018anti-reflexive\u2019, a rearguard action, retrenching to please ageing, increasingly right-wing party membership. The Eurosceptic outriders of the ERG hated the greenery and new softer more liberal Conservative agenda.\u00a0 In 2007 Cameron had a wind turbine fixed to the roof of his London house but he was under increasing pressure from the Eurosceptic right and the green tree logo went blue by August.<\/p>\n

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Cameron\u2019s roof gets a turbine (PA)<\/em><\/p>\n

At the 2010 General Election Cameron declared that if elected, the Conservatives would form the \u201cgreenest government ever\u201d, although by now the tree logo had morphed into Union Jack colours.<\/p>\n

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Tory Party logos 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010 onwards<\/em><\/p>\n

Cell-Mates Rather Than Soul-Mates<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Conservatives won the most seats of any party but failed to get a majority and went into coalition with the Liberal Democrats led by Nick Clegg.\u00a0 The LibDems were committed supporters of more renewable energy but their long-standing values base was a small tight section of the map, lying almost entirely in the Pioneers.\u00a0 As the survey below shows, it was the mirror image of the Conservative values base at the time.\u00a0 In government the two parties were more cell-mates than soul-mates.\u00a0 The coalition was an alliance of convenience rather than conviction.\u00a0 Although after the inconclusive result of the General Election, many saw co-operating to form some sort of government as in the broader national interest, the partnership threatened the political integrity of both partners.\u00a0 There was some ideological overlap between libertarian free-traders of both parties but they were atypical members.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 With almost no values overlap (values = deep seated attitudes and beliefs), it was an inherently unstable partnership which didn\u2019t feel right to most of the natural supporters of either party.<\/p>\n

\"\"Values maps of the political parties in 2012\/3.\u00a0 There is almost no overlap between Conservative and LibDem, making the coalition feel un-natural to most supporters, and inherently fragile.\u00a0 But there is total overlap between UKIP and the Conservatives, making the Tories vulnerable to defections.<\/em><\/p>\n

However, the Conservatives were<\/em> electorally threatened in a very direct way by the rise of UKIP, whose values base (right arrow) was entirely inside the Conservative one, and very Settler.\u00a0 UKIP\u2019s share of the vote at General Elections had increased from under 1% in the 1990s to 3% in 2010, and its share of the vote at European Parliament Elections rose to 17% in 2009.<\/p>\n

So Cameron was in a values bind.\u00a0 He had embraced a modernizing project to take the Conservatives into power by attracting Pioneer voters but ended up as the leader of a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.\u00a0 They were almost entirely Pioneers but their members mainly disliked the Conservatives, and the LibDems were in turn seen as \u2018holier than thou\u2019 and \u2018do-gooders\u2019 by many in the Settler and Golden Dreamer (Prospector) wing of his own party, who were \u2018instinctively\u2019 climate sceptic and preferred UKIPs ideas to those of the LibDems.<\/p>\n

Climate scepticism came easily to the socially-conservative Settler motivational values group as it is pre-disposed to avoid change and signs of change, whether to the landscape or to culture (eg immigration).\u00a0 As a result, across the world, Settlers are at the epicentre of climate scepticism where it exists, and invariably the last to support new behaviours, ideas or technologies.\u00a0\u00a0 As it happens, although they are only 25% of the population (and 30% of the electorate), the UK has a larger proportion of Settlers than almost any other country.<\/p>\n

The overlapping values base of UKIP and the Conservatives meant both were competing for the support of the most instinctively climate sceptic people in the UK (below).\u00a0\u00a0 Which meant the seemingly esoteric issue of wind technology could be a live electoral issue in Tory-UKIP competition.<\/p>\n

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This climate scepticism also coincided with anti-immigration sentiment \u2013 agreement with \u201cthere are too many foreigners in my country\u201d – and, as seen earlier (Brexit Values Story parts 1, 2.1 and 2.2), disapproval of the EU.\u00a0 So although UKIP\u2019s three main policy planks \u2013 anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-wind \u2013 were often seen as limited and eccentric by more mainstream politicians in the early 2000s (Cameron called UKIP \u2018fruitcakes\u2019), they made perfect sense as a values platform with which to peel away support from the Conservatives.<\/p>\n

In January 2006 David Hanley of the University of Cardiff wrote in Politico that \u2018Tories of all shades remain very frightened of UKIP, especially younger candidates who have confronted it and had to explain why Tory policy on Europe is less red-blooded\u2019.<\/p>\n

Luff\u2019s Bill<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2009 Conservative MP Peter Luff proposed a wind farm (habitation) bill, to keep larger wind turbines 1.5 miles away from houses.\u00a0 Luff said he was not a climate sceptic but pointed out (rightly) that rules for compensating local householders and planning restrictions were both more robust in other countries than in England and\u00a0 Wales.\u00a0 He had been contacted by \u201cextraordinary\u201d numbers of people from around England, concerned about large wind turbines that were going to be put up near their homes.<\/p>\n

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Luff\u2019s bill was introduced under the \u201910 Minute Rule\u2019 and got nowhere but it created a template for policy opposition, and help was on the way.<\/p>\n

Chris Heaton-Harris began campaigning against wind farms as early as 2008, at Brixworth in Northants, while he was still a MEP rather than a MP.<\/p>\n

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From the <\/em>Brixworth Bulletin in 2008<\/em><\/a> \u00a0The author seems sceptical that the meeting had in fact been organised by local parish councils<\/em><\/p>\n

When elected in 2010, Heaton Harris used his maiden speech to attack the \u201cfolly\u201d of wind farms and reintroduced Luff\u2019s Bill as a \u2018proximity\u2019 Bill.\u00a0 That too failed but when in 2010 the government tried to rationalise planning rules in a NPPF or National Planning Policy Framework, anti-wind campaigns were gifted a way to make their cause part of a national issue and to align with established groups such as the CPRE (Council for the Protection of Rural England).<\/p>\n

By 2011 a raft of larger countryside groups were opposing the NPPF and the Daily Telegraph had started a \u2018Hands off Our Land\u2019 campaign.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Heaton-Harris pointed out that the NPPF contained a \u2018presumption for sustainable development\u2019, which he said meant a presumption in favour of wind farms.<\/p>\n

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Heaton Harris\u2019s book on Kelmarsh and a UKIP guide to fighting wind farms, both published in 2012<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In early 2012, prompted by an Inspectors decision in favour of the Kelmarsh wind farm despite opposition of local councils, Heaton-Harris, who was Chair of the ERG from 2010 to 2016, invited all Conservative MPs to a meeting.\u00a0 On January 30, 101 of them and a few other MPs signed a letter to David Cameron.\u00a0 It demanded a \u2018dramatic\u2019 cut in funding for onshore wind, and a rewriting of the planning rules so that \u2018local communities\u2019 could easily stop wind farms.<\/p>\n

A meeting with Cameron and his energy and planning Ministers soon followed, and the Conservative pro-wind policy started to be dismantled.\u00a0 It began the slow death of Cameron\u2019s seven year experiment in greening the Tory Party and his attempt to steer the Conservatives into Prospector-Pioneer territory.\u00a0 In 2015 the Conservative manifesto would announce that \u2018we will halt the spread of onshore wind farms\u2019.<\/p>\n

By March 2012 it was reported that local opposition to windfarms had tripled since 2010 following political and media attacks focused on landscape impacts and subsidy, even though most people still supported having wind farms nearby.<\/p>\n

By April 2012 Chris Heaton Harris was announcing \u201cthe beginning of the end\u201d of onshore wind, and in June Lincolnshire County Council adopted a policy of not approving wind farms within 10km of any village, effectively excluding new wind from the county.\u00a0 In October that year Heaton Harris launched a lobbying company \u2018Together Against Wind\u2019 to coordinate and raise funds for a national network of local campaigns to pressure Ministers.<\/p>\n

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The Together Against Wind campaign run (2012 \u2013 17) by Chris Heaton Harris and later his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Thomas Pursglove MP \u2013 from the internet archive.\u00a0 \u00a0It was most active in 2012.\u00a0 See also Political Actors doc. <\/em><\/p>\n

Acute versus Diffuse<\/strong><\/p>\n

While public opinion remained overwhelmingly pro-wind, strong opposition to wind was concentrated in a small segment of older right-wing voters likely to vote for UKIP or the Tories.\u00a0 Yet only a handful of activists were needed to manifest local \u2018community\u2019 opposition, and to populate a photo for the local press or a Facebook post.<\/p>\n

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Roger Helmer MEP and Chris Heaton-Harris MP in 2013 meeting with REVOLT campaigners in Lincolnshire<\/em><\/p>\n

It is possible that the anti-wind campaign recruited some supporters from the \u2018Countryside Marches\u2019 co-ordinated by the pro-hunting group Countryside Alliance in the 2000s. \u00a0\u00a0In a Values and Voters Study<\/a> (2005) I wrote<\/p>\n

\u2018The Countryside Alliance and its campaign for \u2018rural values\u2019 and foxhunting, pitted a Settler-dominated group against a largely disinterested and mostly esteem-driven \u2018urban majority\u2019. (Although in London, over 40% of the population is made up of inner-directed Pioneers). At first their numbers panicked Ministers but it soon became apparent that demographics were against them: they represented a highly mobilised but tiny group of people, and for all their huffing and puffing, were natural followers rather than activists. In a war they would have been natural soldiers but in a political campaign their traditional conservatism and inability to make common cause with other groups in society, worked against them.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

The Alliance held \u2018marches on London\u2019 which reached 300,000 (2002) but as these went on it showed their real base was limited.\u00a0 The anti-wind campaign did not make this mistake: it organized a top down co-ordination of protest populated with \u2018community\u2019 actors.\u00a0 It focused on organising and pressuring MPs locally, where its numbers seemed big enough, and on letter writing to Ministers who were in any case already being briefed to respond to their demands.\u00a0 It then aligned with other established organizations on a case by case basis.<\/p>\n

Since 2011 Heaton-Harris had been publishing a guide \u2018Fighting Wind Farms\u2019 and offering to help local campaigners around the country.\u00a0 The anti-wind movement set about organizing constituency by constituency support to local groups, while the mainstream environmental movement mainly remained focused on national and international climate policy.\u00a0 The anti-wind campaign had the upper hand as it mobilized a small number of very motivated people who could exert acute pressure on a very sensitive target (Conservative electoral fears), whereas the pro-wind lobby was vast but its effect was very diffuse.<\/p>\n

Like Major before him, Cameron was now dogged by Eurosceptic insurrections.\u00a0 In October 2011 he suffered the biggest \u2018biggest ever\u2019 rebellion by Tory MPs over whether there would be a referendum on Europe and only avoided defeat through support from the Opposition. \u00a0<\/strong>LSE political Blogger Pete Radford wrote that Cameron had \u2018little room to manoeuvre\u2019 and the right were \u2018picking apart his liberal conservative project\u2019. Of the 81 Conservative rebels, \u2018a massive 49 were new MPs, elected in 2010\u2019 and, noted Radford: \u2018the party is no longer split between sceptics and non-sceptics but \u2026 hard sceptics and soft sceptics\u2019.\u00a0 Since May 2010, there had already been \u201822 Conservative rebellions over Europe\u2019.<\/p>\n

A Systematic Shut Down<\/strong><\/p>\n

Over the three years following the 2012 Heaton-Harris letter, Cameron\u2019s Ministers conducted a systematic shut-down of the onshore wind industry, which continued from 2016 under Theresa May.<\/p>\n

First the industry was demonized and existing funding was wound back. Then planning rules were turned upside down to create a presumption against onshore wind, making wind farms almost impossible to build.<\/p>\n

To achieve these ends, the Conservatives overcame opposition from their junior coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats.\u00a0 Anti-wind politicians were installed to deliver the change, such as Conservative Energy Minister John Hayes who Cameron asked to \u201cdeliver a win for our people\u201d on wind farms.<\/p>\n

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Eric Pickles \u2013 as planning Minister, called in and cancelled many wind farms<\/em><\/p>\n

Local Government Minister Eric Pickles was deployed to put the brakes on wind projects already in \u2018the pipeline\u2019.\u00a0 In 2013 he revised planning rules to give more weight to local concerns about landscape and \u2018heritage\u2019, and by March 2014 had intervened to take 35 wind farm planning appeals away from inspectors. \u00a0He took extra powers to intervene and extended them until the 2015 election, and by November 2014 he had halted 50 wind farms. This, it was said, at the cost of \u00a3500m and 2000 rural jobs.\u00a0 At least one wind farm was stopped despite having local Council support.<\/p>\n

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2014 \u2013 Pickles kills off Killington wind farm despite community and Council support <\/em><\/p>\n

A new financial \u2018framework\u2019 was introduced, ostensibly to protect consumers from higher energy bills but in practice it was used to cut funds for renewables while subsidies for oil and fracking were increased.<\/p>\n

Finally, when the rapidly falling cost of new onshore wind and largescale solar-pv meant they became by far the most cost-effective way to generate electricity, and so would have beaten bids using coal, oil, gas or nuclear in the Contracts for a Difference auctions, large onshore wind and solar \u00a0were excluded from the government-controlled energy marketplace when the government simply did not hold the relevant auctions.<\/p>\n

While this process wasn\u2019t exactly secret (see the large number of media reports cited in the Timelines), it was stealthy and obscure, involving gradual adjustment to\u00a0 technical orders way below the radar of popular attention.\u00a0\u00a0 The mainstream media mainly covered the issue through individual site conflicts with a particular angle of interest (eg at Naseby Battlefield in Northants or at Big Field in Cornwall where it divided the Church of England and its sustainability policy from some parishioners).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Changes to energy policy often explained through personality conflicts within the coalition government (2010-15), such as when pro-renewables Ministers like Ed Davey or Greg Barker were replaced or stood down. \u00a0In the classic manner of a government u-turn, the throttling, starving and eventual exclusion of onshore wind avoided any dramatic moment of decision that might create an opportunity to critics.<\/p>\n

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A 2014 story from The Guardian about a long running battle to win approval for Good Energy\u2019s \u2018Big Field\u2019 wind farm in Cornwall which divided a community (and split the church), and led some people to say they would switch from voting Conservative or LibDem to UKIP (it was ultimately rejected).<\/em><\/p>\n

The natural proponents of wind were the renewables industry and the green NGOs but the task of organizing a meaningful defence seemed to fall between them. The wind industry itself relied on a legalistic approach and proved generally inept at mobilizing public support, in some cases becoming its own worst enemy.\u00a0 The wind-delivery system was high handed and remote, designed to be backed by top-down central government policy, not to have to win support bottom-up against local opposition.<\/p>\n

Divided \u2018Greens\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The environmental NGOs failed to organize constituency-level campaigns for wind, perhaps partly because they had relatively little engagement with Conservative voters, and perhaps in part because it was assumed that the provisions of their great achievement, the Climate Change Act, would ensure energy policy kept moving in the \u2018right direction\u2019.\u00a0\u00a0 The NGOs secured sustained cross party backing on climate policy (with the exception of UKIP) but not on energy policy.<\/p>\n

The NGOs were also split, with local CPRE groups and sometimes the National Trust and Wildlife Trusts taking an active role in opposing wind farms, which in practice helped fuel and legitimize the Heaton-Harris campaign.<\/p>\n

Most active NGO engagement focused on the readily achievable, such as promoting school or community renewables projects, or on advocacy of policy arguments rather than organizing.\u00a0 There was for example, no demonstration of the scale of the wind or solar industry in terms of jobs, such as by bringing workers together when it was still a burgeoning business.\u00a0 The wind industry and the green NGOs never turned overwhelmingly favourable public opinion into an effective lobby.\u00a0\u00a0 In contrast, although the anti-wind lobby represented just a tiny sliver of public opinion, when their activism was inserted into the machinery organised by Heaton Harris and his fellow travelers, it exerted enormous political leverage.<\/p>\n

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From Blown Away by the ECIU, 2017<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Green Crap\u2019, \u2018Green Taliban\u2019, \u2018Green Blob\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

If a British government is hell-bent on pushing through a policy and using its many opportunities to propagandize to support it, then unless there is some telling moment of conflict for opposition to rally around, it is almost impossible for civil society to withstand it.<\/p>\n

In 2010 the Conservative Manifesto Conservative manifesto promised to \u2018unleash the power of green enterprise and promote resource efficiency to generate thousands of green jobs\u2019.\u00a0 It spoke of \u2018our responsibility to be the greenest government in our history\u2019. \u00a0Its vision is for Britain was to be \u2018the world\u2019s first low-carbon economy\u2019.\u00a0 All that went out the window as the Tories aped UKIP.<\/p>\n

With a political strategy of trying to out-UKIP-UKIP, Conservative Ministers did little to challenge the barrage of anti-environmental propaganda emanating from Nigel Farage, who for example wildly exaggerated the size of wind subsidies (six fold).\u00a0 The new narrative about onshore wind held that at best, it was a necessary evil, and invariably an imposition on communities and a burden on electricity bill payers.<\/p>\n

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George Osborne used the 2011 Conservative Conference to denounce green regulation<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2011 amidst widespread criticism of \u2018austerity\u2019, Chancellor George Osborne singled out \u201ca decade of environmental laws and regulations\u201d for \u201cpiling costs on the energy bills of households and companies\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 In 2012 Osborne took to calling green industries, environmental NGOs and government energy officials the \u201cgreen Taliban\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In 2013 Cameron told aides to \u201cget rid of all the green crap\u201d from energy bills.\u00a0 Rather than fighting climate change by creating the world\u2019s first low-carbon economy, investment in renewable energy was framed as a danger to be controlled.\u00a0 Osborne had a \u2018Levy Control<\/em> Framework\u2019 set up.\u00a0 Opposing onshore wind farms became the poster-child for a more general abandonment of environmental ambition.\u00a0 In 2014 Owen Patterson declared he was proud to have fought against environmental NGOs as Environment Secretary, denouncing them as the \u201cgreen blob\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

On losing his job at DEFRA Owen Patterson MP denounced the \u201cgreen blob\u201d and then delivered a talk promoting fracking at the climate-sceptic front group the GWPF<\/em><\/p>\n

Following Cameron\u2019s capitulation to Heaton-Harris\u2019s 101 Tories in 2012, Ministers adopted the framing of communities as victims of wind energy.\u00a0 John Hayes, who Peter Lilley found \u201con my side\u201d and \u201cuseful\u201d at the Department of Energy, announced \u201cwe can no longer have wind turbines imposed on communities\u201d.\u00a0 In 2014 Energy Minister Michael Fallon promised that if the Conservatives were elected in 2015, \u201cchanges to planning rules will \u2026 give communities more power to reject onshore wind\u201d.\u00a0 In 2015 Kris Hopkins, a Conservative communities minister, said wind turbines could be \u201ca blight on the landscape, harming the local environment and damaging heritage for miles around\u201d.<\/p>\n

The message was clear: the Conservatives were no longer on the green side but on the side of those who climate-sceptic journalist James Delingpole described as Shire Tories (or those aspiring to be) who believed \u2018their country home \u2026\u00a0 is their castle\u2019 and did not expect \u2018to have their peace disturbed\u2019, or \u2018their views ruined\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u2018UKIP Can Deny Us A Majority With 5%\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the other hand, to extract political benefits, the government still had to signal the political logic to its own followers.\u00a0 Most of this can be found in conservative blogs and comment pieces in conservative newspapers citing \u2018sources\u2019.\u00a0 For example in May 2012, the creator of ConservativeHome website Tim Montgomerie, who had previously explained the electoral benefits of Cameron\u2019s green repositioning, warned:\u00a0 \u201cUKIP doesn’t need to get 10% to cause us damage. A 5% or 6% vote share will be enough to stop us winning many of the marginal seats that are necessary for a Conservative majority\u201d.<\/p>\n

The next month Benedict Brogan of the Daily Telegraph wrote that George Osborne would throw \u2018red meat\u2019 to party members and use finance to \u2018kill\u2019 onshore wind \u2018stone dead\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Guardian reports a Greenpeace sting video in which Chris Heaton Harris explains how he arranged for an \u2018anti wind\u2019 candidate to stand in the 2012 Corby by-election, and \u201cthere\u2019s a bit of strategy behind what\u2019s going on\u201d.<\/em><\/p>\n

Other Conservatives were prepared to tolerate support for UKIP\u00a0 so long the overall effect was to make the party more Euro- and Climate-sceptic, and anti-wind.\u00a0 At the Corby by-election Heaton Harris was caught on camera by Greenpeace saying he \u201cdidn\u2019t give a toss\u201d if the \u2018anti-wind candidate\u2019 James Delingpole (who Heaton-Harris had helped to stand despite himself being the official manager of the Conservative campaign), was to endorse UKIP.\u00a0 He simply wanted to get opposition to wind energy \u201cwritten into the DNA\u201d of the Tory Party.\u00a0 His fellow East Midlands Conservative MP, arch Euro-sceptic Peter Bone, wrote in 2014 that UKIP was a \u2018good thing\u2019 because it would pull the Conservatives back to the right.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Bone, Farage and (right) Pursglove in Northamptonshire for the launch of GO Movement (Grassroots Out) a pro Brexit group, in 2016.\u00a0 Bone and Pursglove both spoke at the UKIP Conference despite being Conservative MPs.\u00a0 Photo from Northampton Chronicle<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Enough Wind Already<\/strong><\/p>\n

Many reports had it that Osborne and his Treasury team were pro-gas including fracking, and it suited them to divert financial support to the fossil fuel gas rather than wind.\u00a0 At least in the short term, the growing public dislike of fracking was simply ignored, and once fracking development began, it was mainly in Labour not Conservative constituencies.<\/p>\n

To maintain some claim to no longer be the \u2018nasty\u2019 party, Osborne ring-fenced funding for the NHS but sacrificed greenery.\u00a0 Private polling may well have indicated that this was a bulwark against loss of Conservative votes to Labour, which was more important than any loss to the LibDems or Greens.<\/p>\n

An awkward obstacle remained the statutory carbon budget system set up through the Climate Change Act which had become law in 2008 under the Climate Change Committee.\u00a0 The clear logic of this is to reduce Britain\u2019s carbon emissions and progressively decarbonize the economy.\u00a0 But so long as the government could show overall emissions were falling (which they did, mainly because the final tranche of coal power stations was being closed down) the government could claim its climate policy was succeeding.<\/p>\n

As well as overall emission targets and carbon budgets, the government had energy plans with targets and obscure sub-targets for proportions of power to be generated by renewables.\u00a0 Chris Heaton Harris used these to frame onshore wind as having already received \u2018too much\u2019 funding. Then by focusing on the short not even the medium term, the government used this to justify withdrawing \u201csubsidies\u201d: it found a way to claim that there was already \u2018enough wind\u2019.\u00a0 The reference target was 2020, and an end to finance was brought forward a year to 2016.<\/p>\n

Political Consequences<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cameron and Osborne dropped wind energy in a short term bid to see off the Eurosceptic Tory right.\u00a0 In the end it failed because the same lobby also forced them into an EU referendum which they lost.<\/p>\n

\"ES<\/p>\n

Chris Heaton Harris became a government whip under Theresa May and then in 2018 a Minister in the Department for Exiting the European Union (DEXU) responsible for preparing for a no-deal Brexit, until he resigned on 3 April 2019 over a delay to Brexit.\u00a0 Last year he caused outrage in Universities when he wrote asking for the names and notes of academics lecturing on Brexit.\u00a0\u00a0 According to his constituency website he is still campaigning against wind and offering to help local campaigners object to wind farms.<\/p>\n

Voices That Were Not Heard<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since Cameron\u2019s volte face became apparent in 2012, the wind industry, carbon finance and risk experts, NGOs, the Climate Change Committee and Parliamentary committees have repeatedly criticised the government for stifling onshore wind just as it has become the cheapest form of new energy.\u00a0 They point to an opportunity cost: onshore wind offers huge economic and climate benefits, and lots of skilled jobs.\u00a0 But finance for renewables projects and the wind-construction industry itself is highly mobile, so when there are more favourable opportunities elsewhere, the investment simply moves and its voice is no longer heard.<\/p>\n

The larger wind companies are also invested in off<\/em>shore wind, complicating their relationship with government which has been able to point to significant increases in offshore generation as a success story.\u00a0 Plus although community energy schemes have been a victim of the jihad against wind, nearly all of Britain\u2019s onshore wind has been delivered by large companies.\u00a0 The paucity of community owned schemes (common in countries like Denmark) also meant that there were few community level voices raised to express support for wind when the campaign began.<\/p>\n

Stirrings Of A Rethink<\/strong><\/p>\n

When Osborne and Cameron backed a reversal of policy on wind, Osborne in particular promoted fracking as an energy alternative. Quite aside from the obvious contradiction between a new dash-for-gas and climate policy, and the likely unpopularity of fracking locally, from the start, geologists had warned that the UK\u2019s frackable gas resources were not comparable with those in the US.\u00a0 They expressed doubts about the viability of the putative UK fracking industry.<\/p>\n

By 2018 Cabinet Office documents unearthed by Greenpeace showed that whereas the shale gas industry had anticipated 4,000 horizontal wells by 2032, government projections now put the figure at just 155 by 2025.\u00a0 For several years opposition by environment groups and local communities delayed any commercial fracking.\u00a0 (In April 2019 INEOS and Quadrilla, the only firms to actually try fracking for gas in the UK, were lobbying for relaxations of earthquake rules, with INEOS saying it might pull out altogether).<\/p>\n

Yet over the same time period of 2012 to 2019, costs of new onshore wind generation fell dramatically.\u00a0 It was not surprising that this happened as the technology matured.\u00a0 It had been predicted and the falling cost of onshore wind and solar pv was, after all, one reason the government was already considering a cut in \u2018subsidies\u2019 in 2012.<\/p>\n

Even so, Together Against Wind was claiming in 2014 that \u2018new forms\u2019 of generation would cost twice as much as coal or nuclear (at \u00a350\/MWHr). By 2017 Arup said new onshore wind would be as cheap as gas and half the cost of nuclear at Hinkley.\u00a0 The subsidy requirement for offshore wind, which was still allowed to compete in auctions, fell by 50% between 2015 and 2017.\u00a0 In 2017, Cornwall Energy put the cost of new onshore wind at \u00a340\/MWH, others at \u00a346\/MWH, both less than new gas.\u00a0 \u00a0In 2018 the Climate Change Committee urged the government to use \u201csimple, low-cost\u201d options such as onshore wind and efficiency to cut emissions in the 2020s.\u00a0 Ostensibly, it has always remained government policy to de-carbonize at \u2018least cost\u2019.<\/p>\n

No doubt this prompted some in Whitehall to argue for policy on wind energy to be \u2018revised\u2019, although by now a lot of investor interest has been lost. In 2016 ENDS reported that the UK had dropped to an all-time low of 14th<\/sup> place in Ernst and Young\u2019s ranking of country attractiveness for renewable energy Investment (behind Morocco, Brazil, Mexico and others). In 2018 the Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee called the fall in renewables investment \u201cdramatic and worrying\u201d and questioned the UK\u2019s ability to meet its legally-binding carbon reduction targets.<\/p>\n

Even in the Conservative Party, voices have once again been raised in support of onshore wind.\u00a0 In 2017 Sam Hall from Bright Blue <\/em>wrote at Conservative Home:\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong>\u2018Polling shows \u201870 per cent of Conservatives are concerned about the impacts of climate change\u2019\u00a0 and \u2018Conservatives have a more positive view of renewable energy forms like solar, tidal, offshore and onshore wind, and biomass, than they do of nuclear and fossil fuels. Even more remarkably, new onshore wind developments, which the last Conservative manifesto pledged to halt, are supported by a majority (59 per cent) of Conservatives, provided they did not receive any subsidy\u2019. Also in 2017, \u00a0Simon Clarke, Conservative MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland wrote an article at Conservative Home: \u2018<\/em><\/strong>The case for lifting the national bar on onshore wind\u2019.<\/p>\n

It seems that like Europe, wind energy is a political football within the Conservative Party, and is being kicked about by the same two sides.\u00a0 In 2018 the Daily Telegraph reported that the row over onshore wind \u2018threatens to re-ignite\u2019 within the Tory party after \u2018energy ministers Claire Perry and Richard Harrington alarmed their backbench colleagues by revealing that they are working on ways to support future projects.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Some Tories open to onshore wind: Claire Perry MP, Richard Harrington MP, Sam Hall of Bright Blue and Simon Clarke MP<\/em><\/p>\n

In 2018 Business and Energy secretary Greg Clark announced that the \u201cenergy trilemma\u201d was \u201ccoming to an end\u201d. Cheap power, \u2018 he said \u201cis now green power\u201d. \u00a0Zero subsidy say Clark should be a principle, and \u201cit is looking now possible, indeed likely, that by the mid 2020s, green power will be the cheapest power. It can be zero subsidy\u201d.<\/p>\n

It would probably be wrong however to imagine that the Civil Service is wholly impartial or united on this topic, or that economic and ecological rationality outweighs values judgements or ideology in Westminster, and therefore onshore wind power is now certain to be re-started. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

For one thing, a decade of sustained anti-wind propaganda has left a mental footprint in the perceptions of MPs.\u00a0 A July 2018 YouGov found just 8% of them knew that onshore wind farms are now the cheapest new source of electrical generation. 12% thought it was nuclear.\u00a0 They also overestimated opposition to onshore wind. \u00a0The latest government survey showed just 2% strongly oppose onshore wind but only 9% of MPs believed the figure to be less than 5%.\u00a0 Most guessed that \u2018strong opposition\u2019 was above 20%.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0<\/em>Energy and Climate Change Public Attitudes Tracker,\u00a0<\/em>BEIS \u2013 from Chris Goodall\u2019s blog<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Source:\u00a0Energy and Climate Change Public Attitudes Tracker,\u00a0<\/em>BEIS from Chris Goodall\u2019s blog<\/p>\n

In 2017 a detailed analysis of the long-running government tracker poll on wind by Chris Goodall, blogger at \u2018Carbon Commentary\u2019 revealed that \u2018just 1 person between 16 and 44 from the entire interview panel [of 2000] was \u2018strongly opposed\u2019 to wind\u2019.\u00a0 Goodall wrote: \u2018Across all age ranges, wind seems to be rising in popularity. The only group with more than a few opponents are those over 65. And yet the reduction in those opposing onshore wind has been fastest in this age range. Media coverage shouldn\u2019t start from the assumption that people don\u2019t like turbines. Wind power is popular. Vastly more popular than fracking\u2019.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m told that confronted with this evidence and even the fact that onshore wind is more popular in rural than urban areas, a senior Conservative MP just flatly refused to believe it as it did not reflect his postbag.\u00a0 The obvious explanation is an effective and well organized campaign of a very few people made to appear like a lot.<\/p>\n

In autumn 2018 energy blogger Professor David Toke asserted that the Treasury still aimed to change policy so that \u2018almost all future development for renewable energy in the UK will be stopped. Continued incentives and tax breaks for nuclear power, shale gas and conventional power stations will, however, remain in place.\u2019 It wanted to end Contracts for a Difference (CfDs),\u00a0 end \u2018all incentives to solar pv, including for solar power exported to the electricity distribution system\u2019, and \u2018the carbon price floor which makes fossil fuel more expensive and non-fossil sources relatively cheaper\u2019. \u00a0The war is far from over and as things stand, the anti-wind lobby is winning.<\/p>\n

Enemies of Science and Regulation<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Matt Reed\u2019s blog investigating UKIP and wind<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Reflexivity\u2019 and \u2018reflexive modernity\u2019 is an esoteric idea but an important part of it is that society reinvents itself and its systems by acting on scientific advances in understanding.\u00a0\u00a0 As Matt Reed wrote in a 2016 blog, UKIP\u2019s online propaganda activity on wind farms it is part of an anti-reflexive backlash or counter-revolution, in which scientific knowledge and understanding is rejected. \u00a0This is why it aligns with same psychological, political and ideological divide as, for example, climate scepticism and rejection of scientific evidence about the dangers of smoking. \u00a0He quotes Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway, in their book (and film) Merchants of Doubt, How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming<\/em>: \u00a0\u00a0\u201cthe enemies of government regulation of the marketplace became the enemies of science\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

From Roger Helmer\u2019s blog<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Farage doing a bit of values signalling (the packaging refers to health warnings)<\/em><\/p>\n

So the staying of wind in England is very much about an interruption of modernity and a sacrifice of the public interest in favour of those private interests with a vested interest in perpetuating the profitable conditions of the past. \u00a0Which is why it is not surprising that rejection of the seemingly apolitical option of onshore wind power became a symbol in the service of \u2018Euroscepticism\u2019, and a way to actualize a dream of how some would like the world to be (we don’t need renewable energy), rather than how it needs to be (actually we do).<\/p>\n

Conspiracy Footnote <\/strong><\/p>\n

There was obviously a co-ordinated campaign by ERG members and other Conservative right-wingers to get the Cameron government to drop wind, and then a campaign by many of the same MPs, in collusion with Ministers, to dismantle the onshore wind industry in England.\u00a0 This seems to have involved Tory right-wingers well beyond Heaton Harris, such as Peter Lilley.<\/p>\n

But was there a conspiracy or an organised effort with foreign influence behind the killing of the wind in England? \u00a0 I don’t know.\u00a0 More like a convergence of interests perhaps.<\/p>\n

Reed suggests that opportunism rather than strategy explains the largely imaginary mobilization of a \u2018rural vote\u2019 by UKIP but the line between opportunism and planned action, is a rather grey one, as has been the line between UKIP and the right wing of the Tory Party.<\/p>\n

It is true that there is a trail of breadcrumbs which certainly show connections.\u00a0\u00a0 The political bonds between players such as ALEC in the US who Heaton Harris asked for help from in his political project and who responded positively (what the help was, we don\u2019t know), and Bjorn Lomborg and his fellow Eurosceptics like Liam Fox and Roger Helmer and Daniel Hanahan are real enough.\u00a0 As were theirs also to the US right-wing.\u00a0 \u00a0As are the links between the climate sceptics of Tufton Street in London and the US right-wing funders, and those from them to the fossil fuel industry (sometimes one and the same).\u00a0 NGOs like Desmog and journalists like George Monbiot have spent a much longer time looking into<\/a> the Eurosceptic-Climatesceptic ecosystem.<\/p>\n

As to Heaton Harris\u2019s links to Trump whom he hoped would speak at an ill-fated fundraiser for his campaign front \u2018Together Against Wind\u2019 back in 2012, was that imaginary or real?\u00a0\u00a0 Trump, he told putative donors, was one of his \u2018biggest supporters\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One of my \u2018biggest supporters\u2019 wrote Heaton Harris in a mailer for an anti-wind fundraiser<\/em><\/p>\n

At the other extreme perhaps, it may be just a coincidence of values, the politics of property interests, and the unintended side effects of the NPPF, which brought together groups like the CPRE and the Eurosceptic-Climatesceptic right-wing, through figures such as David Montagu-Smith.\u00a0 He was Chairman of West Northamptonshire CPRE and is and was Chairman of Rathlin Energy, an oil and gas firm involved in fracking.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

David Montagu Smith<\/a> of CPRE and Rathlin Energy (from a Protect Our North Coast<\/a> video)<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Protect Our North Coast opposed fracking development by Rathlin in Northern Ireland<\/em><\/p>\n

Others don\u2019t think it is coincidence, for instance Renewable energy consultant Alison Fogg.\u00a0 She wrote at Spin Watch about her experiences of anti-wind campaigning in the South West in\u00a0 \u2018Connecting The Dots: A Firsthand Account Of How The UKIP Surge Drove The Tories To Sabotage The Renewables Industry\u2019<\/em>.\u00a0 That describes how in 2014 she found that it was almost impossible to get positive press coverage in the local North Devon Journal<\/em> because of links between UKIP, the \u201cSlay The Array\u201d campaign against an offshore wind farm, and the local branch of the CPRE, whose chair, Penny Evans, had stood for UKIP.\u00a0 She recalls that: \u2018At one Slay the Array meeting, a 59-year-old supporter of the Array plans was ejected after asking too many questions. This man was then beaten up. And that was at a renewable energy event\u2019.\u00a0 The main suspect \u2018was\u00a0described by police\u00a0as \u201cwearing a purple jacket with a UKIP badge\u201d\u2019.<\/p>\n

The US right-wing still funds anti-renewables campaigns and the authoritarian anti-modern British right \u2013 such as the ERG and UKIP \u2013 which so successfully inflamed Settler reflexes, has links to its American cousins.\u00a0 They share a joint dislike of the \u2018progressive\u2019 public interest politics of the EU, making them bedfellows over Brexit.\u00a0 It is their attitudes and beliefs rather than that of the people of England who have so far won out in determining energy policy.<\/p>\n

View a timeline in slides:<\/strong><\/p>\n