The Scouring of the Shire: Fairies, Trolls and Pixies in Eco-Protest Culture

Folklore, Oct, 2001 by Andy Letcher

At Newbury, however, it was my experience that pixieing (as eco-sabotage) was more often talked about than actually practised, and that when it did occur it was performed by a minority of protesters. Although the majority of protesters are committed to non-violent direct action, there is still much debate within the movement about whether damaging machinery or property constitutes violence. Though only a minority of protesters are actually happy to commit eco-sabotage, a much larger number support it in principle. An example of this occurred at a reunion rally at Newbury where a site office and some cranes were set on fire. Tens of protesters caused the damage, but they were cheered on by many hundreds of protesters who stood watching.

In justifying these actions, protesters are attributing a higher morality to the forces of nature (as symbolised by fairies) with which they see themselves allied. A common slogan among protesters is "Gaia told me to do it," Gaia being the Earth Goddess, or Mother Earth. Nature is seen as benevolent and representative of a higher morality. In contrast, mere human morality is seen as tarnished or corrupt. As protesters are adhering to a higher morality--the preservation of the natural world--breaking human laws is deemed to be justifiable.

This morality has been given a theoretical basis under the rubric of "deep ecology." This is a biocentric philosophy which sees humanity's needs as secondary to those of the natural world. It is the preservation of species diversity, rather than humanity, which is of prime importance. Deep ecology has been very influential in the American environmental protest movement, but less so in Britain (Gottlieb 1996; Benton and Short 1999; Taylor 2000; Letcher, in preparation). More recently, Adrian Harris, a practising eco-pagan, has argued that British protesters adhere to a morality which he calls "sacred ecology" (Harris 1996). Criticising most environmental philosophy as being a product of the post-enlightenment preoccupation with rationalism, and hence a part of the cause of our ecological problems, Harris argues that sacred ecology emerges from a gut feeling, or embodied response, to the natural world. It is a hardline expression of the aesthetic tendency outlined earlier:

   There are a lot of valuable insights in both Deep and Social Ecology, but
   they are fixed in the Western philosophical tradition which goes back
   beyond Aristotle and which, I would argue, is the root of the whole
   problem. For it is a way of making sense of the world which is profoundly
   cerebral and which assumes a Universe of concepts, language and logic which
   has no place for the mystical which lies beyond words ... What is required
   is another way of knowing, a Sacred Ecology which moves beyond the cerebral
   to bring us to a direct experience of wholeness rooted in the body ... It
   is a somatic, physical knowing which comes from experience (Harris 1996,
   151).

   We act to protect our Earth because we know, in every cell of our bodies,
   that our lives, our communities and our land are sacred (ibid., 153).