Mobilizing Science for Political Activism: The New Urban Left and British Anti-Nuclear Politics, 1980–85

While political activism and social movement mobilization in Britain and elsewhere have received considerable scholarly attention, the role that scientific knowledge and experts assume within these processes has so far been neglected. This article thus examines science mobilization, that is the marshalling of expert knowledge, institutions and practitioners, for political activism. Through a case study of the New Urban Left (a loose municipal movement on or even to the left of the Labour Party) and its anti-nuclear politics in Britain at a time of increased fears of nuclear war from 1980 to 1985, it offers a new perspective on science, political activism and democratic participatory practices of knowledge-sharing more generally. New Urban Left activists mobilized science to oppose British government policies on nuclear deterrence and civil defence in three areas: by issuing alternative civil defence literature; by declaring and maintaining Nuclear Free Zones (NFZs); and by engaging with the nuclear winter hypothesis about the likely climatic effects of nuclear war. Each of these realms corresponds to one mode of activism: a ‘code of protest’ to visualize the effects of nuclear war; ‘emotional practices’ such as events around NFZ declarations; and the ‘glocalization’ of international science at the local level.