Environmentalists and Conservationists: Terrorising the Countryside

Abstract

This chapter moves from political concerns to broadly environmentalist concerns. It describes the historical divergence of progressive environmentalist groups from conservative conservationist groups that occurred early in the decade and how this split is embodied in two very different types of terrorist novel. The first, championing animal rights and ecology as its core concerns, is largely written for an urban, left-wing audience and can be seen to lay the theoretical groundwork for the eco-terrorist of the 1990s. The second type of terrorist novel centres on the country house as a symbol of British rural conservation at threat from municipal planning authorities. Largely satirical, the aristocratic terrorist heroes of these texts raise questions about the pleasurable potential of fictional terrorism. Terrorist heroes are then seen to provide catharsis for traditionalists tired of the welfare state.