History has a lot to teach people today, lets look at an example from activism, back in October 2013, a urgent message from the very lively Balcombe Anti Fracking Camp set out a familiar dilemma for grassroots activism. The fallow on smaller Wisborough Green anti-fracking camp was being established on private land, with limited amenities. It was a step camp, for people to recover there energy to pass on the skills and equipment. The landowners wanted it to remain focused on stopping fracking, rather than becoming a general travellers’ site or party space. A space for building unity with the local community and maintaining the trust of landowners to help create a precedent for next camp.
The intention was understandable, protect the space, build local support and prepare for the many other sites where resistance would be needed. But there is a sadly normal side to this story, the camp was soon torn apart by a disruptive individuals. The damage was demoralizing and hindered preparations for the next camp in Manchester. Then, in a separate incident, equipment gathered for the Manchester camp was taken and scattered by another group of activists. This knocked the growing #actavisttech project that cam from the tech space at Balcombe backwards, despite its earlier pioneering success of building solar power and practical infrastructure.
This is an example of the hidden costs of grassroots failure, were the damage goes beyond one camp. Equipment disappears, preparation time is lost, trust breaks down and people who have put in months of work become exhausted or leave. Projects lose the capacity to carry lessons and practical skills from one campaign to the next.
It is a recurring issue of how grassroots projects lose years of work in a short time. People build useful things together, but unresolved tensions, destructive behaviour and a lack of effective ways to deal with conflict soon undermine the effort. But the problem isn’t simply a few difficult people – it is tempting to tell this story as a battle between the committed activists and a few #loons but sometimes people really do behave destructively, and communities do need ways to protect themselves. But if we keejerk response is to blame individuals, we miss the recurring wider lesson.
Grassroots organizing brings together people with different needs, expectations and ideas about freedom. Some priorities the political campaign and relationships with local communities. Others want open spaces with fewer restrictions. Some focus on practical infrastructure and long-term preparation; others are drawn to the immediate energy of protest, then the is the party crew, these differences do not automatically make a project fail. The trouble starts when we have no shared way to discuss them, balance boundaries, resolve disputes and then respond when someone damages the work of others.
The example of Balcombe legacy raised a real question about who the camp are for and what responsibilities came with using land. But to balance this restrictions imposed without meaningful discussion create resentment, just as a refusal to accept any boundaries destroys the trust projects depends on. Neither blanket control nor unlimited individual freedom is enough to sustain a commons.
In the case of #actavisttech, the work at #Balcombe demonstrated that activists can build useful solar power and infrastructure. That knowledge and capacity should have been a foundation for future camps. Instead, conflict and the loss of equipment set the project back. This is a form of social waste, when we keep rebuilding things we have already learned how to build because we struggle to maintain the relationships and shared responsibilities that allow the work to continue.
It is one of the recurring problems of grassroots activism, we can be good at mobilizing against an outside threat but much less capable of dealing with tensions inside our own communities. So how do we mediate this? how do we move beyond the false choice between authoritarian control and letting everything descend into personality conflict. The answer is #KISS development of practical, shared ways of dealing with everyday conflicts before they destroy the work we need.
- First, agree on the purpose of the space, be clear about what the camp is trying to achieve, who it serves and what responsibilities come with participation. These agreements should be discussed openly, not left to emerge through arguments and informal power.
- Second, make boundaries accountable. Landowners, organizers, infrastructure crews and camp participants may have different responsibilities. But those differences need to be visible, decisions about access, safety and shared equipment should be proportionate, explainable and open to challenge.
- Third, create ways to mediate disagreements early, by trusting people to find ways to raise concerns before tensions become public confrontations. Use facilitators or mediators that are accepted by the people involved, make space for different accounts of what happened, and seek workable agreements. Mediation does not mean excusing destructive behaviour; it means trying to resolve conflict before they spread.
- Fourth, protect shared resources – equipment, solar systems, tools and supplies represent collective labour. Agree who is responsible for them, how they can be borrowed or moved, and what happens if they are damaged or removed without consent. Where there is a serious risk of theft or harm, practical safeguards and clear consequences matter.
Finally, learn collectively, after a conflict, record what happened, what worked, what failed and what needs to change. The point is not to create a bureaucracy or a permanent committee of gatekeepers. It is to make sure the next camp does not have to learn the same lessons through another round of damage.
This is where the idea of composting becomes useful, we need to break down the failures, recover the lessons and turn them into something that can nourish the next project. We should not pretend the damage did not happen, but neither should we let it become the only story we tell. The challenge is to build grassroots communities that can handle disagreement without destroying their own capacity to act. That means combining openness with responsibility, autonomy with mutual aid, and clear boundaries with meaningful participation.
The #OMN approach is to make those relationships and processes visible, rather than imagining that either technology or blinded goodwill will solve everything. The #4opens can help us keep the data, tools, standards and decision-making open to scrutiny, while the human work of trust and mediation makes the infrastructure usable.
Grassroots power is not just our ability to gather, protest and build. It is our ability to work through conflict, protect what we create together and pass that capacity on to the next generation of action. That is how move past composting the same failures over and over, and start growing something more durable that we need.
