Edward Goldsmith’s environmental work joined ideas to practical campaigns. As founding editor and publisher of The Ecologist, he made the magazine a forum for arguments about industrial development, pollution and the survival of traditional societies. With fellow editor Robert Allen, he then helped turn those concerns into A Blueprint for Survival, a proposal for radical changes to society that became an influential text for the early Green movement.
Early life and an alternative outlook
Edward René David Goldsmith, widely known as Teddy, was born in Paris on 8 November 1928. His father, Frank Goldsmith, was German Jewish; his mother, Marcelle Mouiller, was French. Goldsmith attended Millfield School in Somerset and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1947 to 1950, graduating with honours.
At Oxford he rejected what he regarded as the reductionist, compartmentalised approach of mainstream academic thought. He sought instead a way of understanding societies and the world as interconnected systems. After National Service as a British Intelligence Officer in Hamburg and Berlin, he tried several business ventures. Much of his spare time, however, went to studying the questions that would shape his later writing.
During the 1960s, Goldsmith travelled around the world with his close friend John Aspinall. He came to see the spread of economic development and industrialisation not as straightforward progress, but as a source of social and environmental damage. His sympathy for traditional peoples and his criticism of industrial society became recurring themes in both his editorial work and his own philosophy.
A magazine and a manifesto
Goldsmith helped establish The Ecologist in 1969 with Robert Allen, Jean Liedloff and Peter Bunyard, whom he had met through the Primitive People's Fund. The journal gave space to subjects that included organic farming, alternative technology, pollution, deforestation, soil erosion, nuclear accidents and the effects of large dams. Goldsmith also used it to develop his thinking about the connections between society, science and the biosphere.
In January 1972, Goldsmith and Allen brought out A Blueprint for Survival. Signed by more than 30 scientists, including Julian Huxley and Peter Medawar, it called for a radical transition towards a largely decentralised and deindustrialised society. The authors warned that social breakdown and damage to the planet’s life-support systems could not be treated as separate problems. The book sold more than half a million copies and was translated into 16 languages, making it a major work of the early Green movement.
The manifesto’s account of viable societies drew on the authors’ view of existing tribal peoples: small communities, low-impact technologies, sustainable use of resources and a close relationship with the natural world. Goldsmith’s argument was not simply that environmental damage should be limited. He challenged the assumption that economic growth and industrialisation were necessarily signs of progress.
The ideas also entered electoral politics. The Blueprint helped inspire the People party, which later became the Green Party. Goldsmith stood for People in the Eye constituency in Suffolk at the February 1974 general election. His campaign warned of desertification linked to intensive farming and attracted press attention with a camel supplied by Aspinall. Goldsmith lost his deposit. In 1979 he stood again, this time for the renamed Ecology Party, in the European elections.
Campaigning, community and international work
In 1973 Goldsmith and members of The Ecologist team moved from London to rural Cornwall. They bought farms and tried to build a small, relatively self-sufficient community, while continuing to produce the magazine. The attempt put some of the questions raised in the journal into daily practice, as well as keeping its editorial work close to the land and farming.
Goldsmith also took part in local opposition to a proposed nuclear reactor site at Luxulyan. In 1977, when the Central Electricity Generating Board threatened to drill on farmland there, Goldsmith was among those who organised a continuous sit-in. Local people blocked the entrance and maintained round-the-clock protests. The High Court allowed the drilling to proceed, although the site was not later developed into a reactor.
His links with environmental campaigns extended beyond Britain. In 1974 he spent four months with the Gandhi Peace Foundation in New Delhi, comparing the Gandhian Sarvodaya movement with the European ecology movement. He formed close connections with Indian environmental activists, including members of the Chipko movement, and the experience influenced his approach to environmental campaigning.
In 1984, Goldsmith and Nicholas Hildyard began publishing a multi-volume study of the social and environmental effects of large dams. Their work became part of a wider challenge to the role of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in financing development projects. In 1989 Goldsmith helped organise an international campaign against forest destruction. It gathered more than three million signatures, which activists delivered to the United Nations in New York. Goldsmith and others occupied the organisation’s main lobby to press for action, and later met US senators, including a group led by Al Gore.
In 1991, with financial support from his brother James, Goldsmith established the Goldsmith Foundation. It supported non-governmental organisations campaigning against environmentally destructive activities and groups working to provide sustainable alternatives.
Developing an ecological worldview
Goldsmith’s writing extended beyond magazine journalism and campaigning. His The Stable Society, published in 1978, set out his critique of industrial society and his interest in sustainable social arrangements. He developed a systems-based view of the biosphere, treating its parts as interdependent, and became an early proponent of the Gaia hypothesis.
In 1990 he left the editorship of The Ecologist, handing it to Nicholas Hildyard, to concentrate on his philosophical work. The result, The Way: An Ecological World View, was published in 1992. It brought together decades of thought on how societies, living systems and the environment affect one another, and on the problems Goldsmith believed industrial development had created.
His positions were not universally shared. Goldsmith’s political outlook differed from socialist currents within the Green movement, and his association with a Paris symposium organised by the Groupement de recherche et d'études pour la civilisation européenne led to disputes with colleagues at the magazine. In 1997, after a split with its editorial team, he returned to run The Ecologist and brought in the International Society for Ecology and Culture as its editorial team. Such disagreements formed part of the reception of his work, alongside the respect he received from people across the environmental movement.
Goldsmith received the Right Livelihood Award in 1991 for his critique of industrialism and promotion of sustainable and socially just alternatives. His later work included support for ecological organisations and for international publications associated with The Ecologist. He died in Siena, Italy, on 21 August 2009, aged 80.
Why Edward Goldsmith deserves a place in British Legacy
Goldsmith’s British legacy rests in part on the institutions and arguments he helped establish here. He was an Anglo-French environmentalist who made Britain a base for sustained editorial work: The Ecologist, founded in 1969, gave readers a place to encounter reporting and debate on pollution, farming, nuclear risks, deforestation and the treatment of traditional communities. His work with Robert Allen on A Blueprint for Survival then carried a challenge to industrial growth beyond the magazine’s readership. Its wide circulation and influence on the early Green movement helped make environmental questions part of political discussion in Britain.
His contribution also connected public argument with organised action. Goldsmith campaigned at Luxulyan, built links with Indian environmentalists after working with the Gandhi Peace Foundation, and helped mobilise an international response to forest destruction. His books, especially The Way, set out an ecological worldview that treated human society and the natural world as interdependent. Goldsmith’s ideas were contested, and his political differences with colleagues matter to an honest account of his career. But his enduring significance lies in the concrete work behind them: a magazine, a manifesto, campaigning networks and a body of thought that gave British environmental debate a distinctive and challenging voice.
Sources
Edward Goldsmith — revision 1362789906 · Edward Goldsmith
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