ABSTRACT

Environmental policy in Britain, at least until the latter decades of the twentieth century, has been characterised as politically uncontentious, focused - in terms of implementation - at the local level, essentially gradualist and pragmatic in its development since the mid-nineteenth century, dependent on technical expertise and based on an approach that emphasised informal regulation through negotiation by interested parties rather than by use of formal standards of control (Lowe and Ward, 1998). Even in the first decade of UK membership of the European Community, despite two Environmental Action Programmes, there was little by way of major impact on this domestic style of environmental management. Indeed, policy developments tended to reinforce this distinctive approach. However, by the mid-1980s, it had become clear that the UK policy stance was not as successful as had been expected and domestic practices were being challenged by both other European governments and European Community environmental programmes. The UK was accused of insularity and labelled "the dirty man of Europe" (Rose, 1990), challenges echoed within Britain by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, and by environmental pressure groups, which turned to the European Community institutions as a powerful ally in their campaigns against the inadequacies of UK environmental policies and practices. The approach taken to environmental issues changed in the second half of the 1980s. Margaret Thatcher, UK Prime Minister throughout the decade, became convinced of the political, and possibly scientific, importance of addressing the global environmental agenda. The daily broadsheet newspapers began to appoint environmental specialists in the mid-1980s.