Ambiguities of transnationalism: social opposition to the civil use of nuclear power in the United Kingdom and in West Germany during the 1970s

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyses the cross-border connections of activism against the civil use of nuclear power in Great Britain and West Germany during the 1970s. Through a novel synthesis of the existing literature and broad new source material, it aims at a more differentiated insight into the nature of transnationalism and its importance for anti-nuclear power activism. The article advances the first comprehensive historiographic investigation to date on British activism against the civil use of nuclear power which emerged during the second half of the 1970s, albeit as a relatively weak movement. A central argument of the article is that anti-nuclear power activism was significantly marked by transnational reference spaces, but that this transnationalism was ambiguous because its scope and intensity were often rooted in the specific national contexts and simultaneously had nationally specific repercussions on the activists. The comparative perspective reveals interesting peculiarities. In the UK – except for Scotland – restricted transnational openness, mostly to English-speaking and transatlantic ties, went along with an especially limited dynamic and impact of the movement. The anti-nuclear movement in West Germany, conversely, was exceptionally strong, and developed a regionally rooted, nationally shaped and cosmopolitan-oriented self-image that included high inclinations towards transnational openness. It was exactly this openness which, in return, contributed to further enhancing a specific West German identity of the movement, entailing practices of direct action and sometimes even violent behaviour.