Haf Elgar

This clip is from a series of 100 life history interviews with environmental campaigners in the UK, 1970-2020. It will feature in a book published by UCL Press in 2026. The full interview, along with the rest of the collection will be searchable on the British Library’s Sound and Moving Image catalogue and the interviews will be accessible onsite at the British Library in St Pancras from February 2026. For more information visit www.royalholloway.ac.uk/ohemQuotation:Haf Elgar: It’s only really through my experience in Brussels and the European parliament and working with all these NGOs that I realised oh no, actually I can be a campaigner and influence from the outside and be just as effective or maybe more so.Barbara Brayshay: That’s really interesting because I think a lot of local environmentalists, grassroots environmentalists probably don’t really know that, don’t know how that work gets done.Haf Elgar: The influencing, yes. I guess I’ve been fortunate that because I have worked from the inside, I know how that works. So I can testament that it really was the influence of NGOs that could impact policy.Barbara Brayshay: There might be a view that NGOs are generally opposing legislation rather than actually contributing their expertise and knowledge to developing the legislation.Haf Elgar: Yes, in general it’s much more invisible work, isn’t it? It’s on the inside and you see the protests on the outside. Quite often, especially with organisations like Friends of the Earth, both happen at the same time. So you picket outside calling for stronger legislation but you’re also having meetings inside to suggest how that can happen. That’s the method of working that really appeals to me and that I didn’t realise existed really until I was working.Barbara Brayshay: That’s what I was interested in exploring with you because that combination of policy and protest together is a kind of modus operandi of a lot of the environmental movement.Haf Elgar: Yes. You don’t have to choose between them and it’s always a balance and you choose your tactics depending on the analysis of the situation but they’re not contradictory. I think that’s one of the many things that I learnt from Brussels. So really when I was considering next step and moving home, it was only really the NGO sector that I was interested in. I wasn’t looking for jobs in parliament or inside government or anything like that.British Library catalogue number: C2037/76 Project clip number: 119