ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the character, tactics and targets of public campaigning groups. It focuses in particular on delineating the wide range of the single-issue groups themselves, on relating them to the changes in contemporary political culture, and on describing their use of the media and their targeting of political parties, the courts and local government. Many pressure groups in the 1980s and 1990s resorted increasingly to the courts to politicise issues, force local and national governments and businesses to carry out their responsibilities and exert pressure for changes in the law. Public campaigns often - although not invariably, involve different kinds of groups to those involved in more conventional political lobbying. Thus, some outsider groups, run bureaucratically and hierarchically from London or a major city with minimal public participation, are quite similar in organisational terms to sectional and insider groups.
