George Monbiot

This audio clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. A quotation from this recording features in the book Voices for Change, published by UCL Press in November 2026 (available in print as well as a free PDF download). The full interview, along with the summaries, transcripts and recordings for this and the rest of the interview collection, is available at the British Library (Sound and Moving Image Collection, under the shelf-mark C2037). For more information, including educational materials and other resources, visit the Oral History of the Environmental Movement project website at www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:So three important lessons that day. The first is we can’t be effective alone. You have to, obviously there was no way of bringing anyone else into the equation at that point but you know we are only going to succeed if we combine with other people. Second don’t go home for lunch. And third is that the greatest flaw in the human psyche is obedience. And I have subsequently seen that our instinct for obedience overrides our instinct even for survival. It is the most powerful of all human instincts is to obey and that is what lets us down time and again. And you know the results of my obedience were absolutely devastating to me. And I think that was a moment at which I really started to question some of the nostrums with which I had been brought up.British Library catalogue number: C2037/84 Project clip number: 12