Britain, France, and the European Union - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 92

United Kingdom. There are 100,000 Friends of the Earth, organized in
two hundred chapters throughout the British Isles. Rachel Carson's Silent
Spring had a British edition in 1962. Britain participated in the first Earth
Summit at Stockholm in 1972, where the Scandinavians and the Germans
took the opportunity to accuse the United Kingdom of causing acid rain
because of the sulfur its factories and electricity-generating plants emit-
ted, which drifted across the North Sea.
The government established a national Department of the Environment
in 1970, which also included responsibility for housing and local gov-
ernment. This was a bit of a surprise because the Conservative Party
unexpectedly won the election that year, and the issue of the environment
had not figured in the campaign. Within a few months, the new depart-
ment faced a crisis when municipal sewerage and sanitation workers went
out on strike, provoking tension between the national and local levels.
In 1997 it became the Department of the Environment, Transport and
the Regions, and the next year it issued its first sustainability statement.
In 2001 transport was split out, and it became the Department for the
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). The department's pro-
grams tend to rely on voluntary compliance. Local governments continue
to have responsibility for water and air pollution control for minor prob-
lems, while the Environment Department addresses larger ones. In the
past local programs had not always proven adequate. For example, four
thousand people died from the Great Smog in London in 1952. This trag-
edy led to the 1956 Clean Air Act. In the 1960s evidence grew that sulfur
oxides from burning coal were drifting across the North Sea to fall as
acid rain in Scandinavia. Damage from coal pollution was already widely
known in Britain. In 1957 an accident at the nuclear plant at Windscale
had spread radioactivity across the north of England. During the 1970s
Parliament passed the Poisonous Waste Act, the Water Act, the Control
of Pollution Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Support was bipartisan,
coming from the Labour Party when it returned to power in 1974.
From the end of World War II to the 1980s, the British economy grew
slowly. One ironic benefit was less air and water pollution, but the economic
situation was dismal. Many blamed the nationalization of industries like
coal, steel, and transport by the Labour Party starting in 1945. Others
blamed the loss of the Empire and its foreign trade. Even as the Empire dis-
appeared, however, Britain stayed out of the European Common Market,
which, to the chagrin of the British, was enjoying its Economic Miracle.
At first the United Kingdom did not want to join Europe, reflecting its