Robin Russell-Jones

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:Toby Butler: And presumably was this with Friends of the Earth? It was their campaign are we talking here? Or was it CLEAR’s campaign?Robin Russell-Jones: Which one are we talking about?Toby Butler: Oh sorry, the background radiation.Robin Russell-Jones: Oh that was all Friends of the Earth.Toby Butler: Friends of the Earth, okay.Robin Russell-Jones: Yes, yes.Toby Butler: How did, did you feel that they moved as well? Kind of were they happy to-Robin Russell-Jones: Well I was working very closely with a great campaigner there called Stewart Boyle. And had been involved with Friends of the Earth in the seventies. He’d been involved in the Sizewell public enquiry which [interviewer’s addition: almost] actually bankrupted Friends of the Earth. The enquiry, you know, the result of the enquiry was that the Sizewell nuclear facility could be built. But that I think it was Lord Flowers who Chaired it but he said that the nuclear industry should only expand if they could solve the problem of waste disposal. Which of course they have never done. But so Friends of the Earth did achieve something but they [interviewer’s addition: almost] bankrupted themselves because the enquiry was very expensive. So when I came along and our Des came along and Jonathan came along we sort of basically resurrected Friends of the Earth because they were at a very low ebb.British Library catalogue number: C2037/39 Project clip number: 41