Environmental campaigning in the age of misinformation

With the axing of the plans for a Galloway National Park this week, this analysis of the comparisons of the campaign against the Park with the campaign against the deposit return scheme is especially prescient.

Notes

The blog was originally posted on 18 December 2024. And re posted 30 May 2025 the day after the announcement, by the Scottish Government, that the Galloway National Park is not going ahead.

This blog originally came out on the day that The Ferret revealed major landowner backing for the No Galloway National Park group.

How to bring down an environmental campaign

When the Scottish deposit return scheme, a popular, well-tested, and successful policy measure to increase recycling rates, was subject to a concerted campaign that ended up bringing it down, I wrote a long analysis of the anatomy of the campaign against it. 

To my great surprise we now find ourselves in the midst of a remarkably similar campaign against one of our other key areas of work, National Parks, and this blog explores some of the similarities we are experiencing.

My previous analysis on the campaign against deposit return detailed how a positive campaign with cross-party support, and all the evidence behind it, had, in the course of around six months, been turned into a millstone around the neck of the Scottish Government and a football in devolution politics.

We had started the campaign for deposit return in 2015 because it was a proven way to deal with the huge amounts of drinks-related litter in the countryside and around our towns and cities. A few years before this, in 2011, we launched a campaign for a new National Park for Scotland with the Scottish Campaign for National Parks. The Scottish Government eventually committed to create a new National Park in 2021 and it is now this policy which is coming under attack from a campaign with remarkably similar tactics.

I have decided to write a blog on the tactics of these campaigns having experienced them first hand. These tactics have also been used against other modest environmental and progressive policies, including Low Emission Zones, 20mph zones in Wales, and even 15-minute neighbourhoods and electric cars. I will cite these other campaigns in parts, but most of the examples here come from my own experience in deposit return and National Parks.  

Some may think it unwise to publicise the methods which can successfully bring down environmental and progressive campaigns, for fear that people will deploy them. However these tactics are already widely in use by the PR companies that these campaigns employ. My view is that it will be far more effective that these methods are in the open and people can start to recognise them when they see them.

Here goes… So you’re trying to bring down an environmental / progressive policy, where do you start?

1. Find a PR company 

The first thing to do is to find yourself a PR company with connections in the right-leaning press.  

The first signs that the No Galloway National Park campaign was working with a PR company came in a piece in the Scotsman. It was not billed as an opinion piece, but one little phrase jumped out at me in the middle explaining that he had been involved with giving the campaign some support. It turns out that the author of the piece, John McLellan, a former editor of the Scotsman and Scottish Conservative Party media chief, was not giving friendly advice but was acting for Media House International, a PR agency, which is highlighted on their website.¹  

Media House International, is a PR company which has represented a variety of causes including a campaign against the Glasgow low emission zone, and Jack Irvine, the founder, ran campaigns for Nigel Farage, represented tax havens and, way back, ran Brian Souter’s campaign against the repeal of section 28.

Further down the news section of the Media House website, there was an article noting that they had been ‘vigorously representing‘² campaign group Lochaber National Park No More’.

The Lochaber anti-National Park campaign launched in January 2024 with a media fanfare saying that it had thousands of supporters, a claim repeated in many outlets including the Herald, which said that the campaign group had more than 6000 supporters online. 

The earliest article we can find citing the numbers is 24 January  The online supporters came from a private Facebook group called ‘Lochaber National Park NO more” However this had, until 19th January, been called “Coronavirus Scotland School Chat Worried Parents”, a forum for parents from all over Scotland with concerns about lockdown and school closures, and had 5.9K followers at that time, according to Facebook’s records. So these 6000 supporters had been ‘borrowed’ from a group which had nothing to do with National Parks, and was a Scotland-wide group.  And yet it was used as the headline in media articles and the figures continued to be cited for months (see in this article in March).

It is impossible to know whether Media House International knew who these ‘supporters’ of the anti-National Park Campaign were at the time, nor whether running this story was part of their ‘vigorous representation’ of Lochaber National Park NO More. But we do know, thanks to the article on the Media House website at the end of July, that they were celebrating their win on behalf of the Lochaber Campaign, where the lead campaigner vows to ‘fight on’, and that, a few days later, on 2nd August the first story about the launch of the Galloway campaign came out.

2. Try to make the issue seem divisive

So much of the media we are seeing is hell bent on representing the issue as divisive and sowing discord. We experienced this with Deposit Return, despite it being one of the best-tested and most implemented policies for increasing recycling rates – having been used in 57 separate countries and states, some for over 50 years. 

We are seeing this, too, with National Parks, which are incredibly well-supported. The most recent published Nature Scot Public Opinion Survey which surveys a representative sample of the Scottish population stratified for age, gender, socio-economic group and geographical location asked about support for new National Parks in Scotland. The survey of 1010 adults, published in 2023, shows that 89% support the creation of new National Parks in Scotland either strongly (44%) or tend to support (45%), with only 3% opposed. Interestingly, groups most likely to strongly support the creation of new National Parks included residents of the South of Scotland (56%) and residents of rural areas (52%). 

The rural-urban divide is also being emphasised by those against National Parks,  but recent research commissioned by Scottish Environment LINK shows that those living in rural areas are deeply concerned about the state of the environment and strongly motivated by the need for environmental protection.

Despite this – much of the media reports on the subject of the proposed new National Park stress how divisive the issue is.

These articles that frame the environmental issue as a source of discord and division are at the heart of any anti-campaign. Here are a few examples from The Press and Journal, The Herald, The Express, STV.

… and back this tactic up on social media

Many campaigns for well-supported and progressive policies are subject to a social media pile-on. For example the National Trust has been experiencing much of this kind of interaction on social media as part of the campaign against them and Ceilia Richardson, their Director of Communications, has written eloquently about dealing with it. This is over and above the usual healthy debate that can be had in these forums: it’s hard to define the line, but from the inside it becomes clear when it’s been crossed.

This action can change the whole tone of the debate, despite the fact that many of these posts are coming from the same small group of people, and eventually those who support an issue locally stay quiet for fear of the pile-on. And, importantly in the case of a policy with in-person consultation meetings, are less likely to show up at the consultations.

We certainly experienced this with Deposit Return. A Whatsapp group that had been gathered to oppose Deposit Return would post links to positive stories we posted on social media and there would be a resulting ensuing pile-on and trolling. We noticed a complete change once the final delay was announced and the whatsapp group administrator took some time away: there was no negative response to our social media posts at all, only supportive ones.  

For deposit return this worked well on Twitter because decision makers are seeing the discourse and getting a skewed view of what people think about it.  

A particularly egregious example of this is the campaign against 20mph zones in towns and villages in Wales met an extremely active social media campaign against them, operating in this kind of way. However, it was revealed that the Facebook groups against the policy were being run by a Conservative Councillor from Sunderland, who, unbelievably, had actually campaigned for 20mph limits in his own Ward.  

…and accuse the other side of ‘Dirty Tricks’

At the start of October the No Galloway National Park campaign accused the Galloway Park Association of ‘Dirty Tricks’. The basis of this accusation was that three ‘no national park’ banners had been taken down. The implication in the news articles was that this was a coordinated action from the pro-park campaigners. This media release from Media House International was considered newsworthy enough to report in the Scotsman, the Express, local papers in Dumfries and Galloway, Farmers Weekly, the Times and many other places.  

We had come across this ‘Dirty Tricks’ accusation before – it reminded me of some press in relation to the deposit return scheme where there was also a ‘dirty tricks’ headline, this time accusing proponents of deposit return of dirty tricks. This came in relation to the moment when the anti deposit return Whatsapp group had advised small producers not to sign up to the scheme before the deadline, warning them of financial implications and suggesting that an Internal Market Act exemption, required since 2020, would not be granted. An outside observer examining this situation might wonder legitimately wonder which side the dirty tricks were on. The failure of Scottish Government to sign up small businesses, as a result of this speculative messaging, was then used to imply there was a systematic problem with the scheme (more detail in my blog on deposit return). 

This tactic may be aimed at making it seem that both sides are culpable in playing a dirty game and undermining the case and arguments of the proponents. It also means that the narrative of the issue being divisive can take hold more firmly.  

3. Labels matter, and they stick

We noticed that the media started to refer to the ‘Controversial Deposit Return Scheme’ early on in the anti-campaign, way before there was any shift from the consensus. From that first instance they managed to reach a point that almost all media outlets would prefix Deposit Return with ‘contentious’, ‘controversial’ or ‘troubled’.

Opponents also always referred to it as ‘Lorna Slater’s Deposit Return Scheme’ in order to distance it from the SNP administration who they were hoping would cancel it. This allowed them to make personal (and misogynistic) attacks on Lorna Slater, the minister at the time, but it also distracted from the fact that all key aspects of the scheme were put in place by the SNP administration and the Green Minister was simply responsible for implementation. 

We saw the first instance of the policy of a new National Park being called ‘controversial’, a couple of months ago in an article in the Express. The press release came from Media House International and was sent to us by the Express journalist working on the story. This repeated the ‘dirty tricks’ line, and referred to the policy for a new National Park as ‘contentious SNP/Greens plans’. 

The entire article was precipitated by the very un-newsworthy event of APRS, Scottish Campaign on National Parks (SCNP) and Galloway National Park Association (GNPA) writing to NatureScot to ask that there should be ways of contributing to the consultation in writing ‘for local people who would rather not attend an in-person meeting or drop-in events’. We published it on the resources pages of our website, where we publish all official letters. Somehow this was picked up by the No campaign and they managed to make a story out of it that was published in the Express.  

4. Create misinformation and confusion

The anti deposit return scheme delivered a blinder on misinformation with ever escalating alarmist headlines about the ‘Armageddon’ that was about to strike Scotland if Deposit Return would be allowed to go ahead. This excerpt from my deep dive into the campaign against deposit return gives a flavour:

“Deposit return could  ‘destroy’ firms,  would force wine producers out of Scotland and will be ‘catastrophic’. The cost of a pack of water bottles would go from £3.50 to £11, Scots would “travel 7.5 hours” to avoid deposit return, Scotch whisky could be banned from shops in Scotland, and a story that a tiny craft brewery in Cambridgeshire had printed ‘not for sale in Scotland’ on their cans went into every media outlet across Scotland. 

But because these far-fetched figures were now in the papers they started to be quoted – in other media outlets and in Parliament. In a debate at Holyrood an MSP quoted a brewer saying that the costs passed onto shoppers could be as much as 40p per container and the Scottish Wholesale Association claiming that up to 40% of brands could disappear from Scotland. There was so much misinformation in the media. Politicians laid in with wildly alarmist quotes: Penny Mordant MP claimed that deposit return will be “worse than Brexit” Fergus Ewing MSP that it is “immoral”, MSPs said that it would cause “economic carnage” and that it even threatens “Armageddon”

So one way to deliver the misinformation is to find people to say it and then “put it in quotes” in the article, as has been done in the examples above. But you have to start somewhere to get people worried and concerned enough in the first place, and without the facts on your side.

In the case of National Parks the regulatory environment is almost the same whether inside or outside the park. The planning system (apart from for wind farms) is the same, the forestry grants and farm subsidy schemes are the same. Any differences relate to access to additional funds, assistance and advice if you are in a National Park, which of course no one has to participate in. The figures show that a slightly higher percentage of proposed developments get permission within National Parks than the national average.

There is actually one small difference in planning legislation, but it just goes to highlight how little the change to a National Park will actually impact on bureaucracy. In National Scenic Areas (of which there are three in Dumfries and Galloway) and in National Parks, the area of barn that a farmer can build without having to apply for planning permission is 465m2 rather than 1000m2 in other areas.

So how do you get the narrative that there would be tonnes of red tape, and no one would get planning permission to stick?

In the case of National Parks, as far as we have been able to work out, this was initially done by the publicity of a survey of farmers by the NFUS. This survey was reported in a Herald opinion piece at the start of the anti-National Parks campaign which reported on farmer concerns on bureaucracy they picked up in the survey. This was then reported again and again as the views of farmers are on national parks and, when it is said enough, becomes the dominant narrative.  

5. Create a survey for your supporters to answer 

Surveys are also a good way of getting traction in the media, we did this ourselves during the deposit return campaign, using respected independent company Survation which uses recognised methodology and transparent reporting.  However we have seen untransparent surveys, which made no attempt to make them representative of the population, being quoted in media stories about the National Park without scrutiny. 

This article in the Daily Mail, for example, cites as evidence for opposition to the Cairngorm National Park, a survey put out by a facebook group in Aviemore which was circulated on various anti-national park forums.  This survey is also quoted on the Parliament petition from Lochaber National Park No More and was repeated by Fergus Ewing MSP to Cab Sec Mairi Gougeon during her evidence to this committee. 

Press coverage in September came from a survey of NFUS to its members and wider audiences which was widely distributed on forums against the National Park. 

These surveys are not public and cannot be interrogated, and went to a very biassed group to answer.  No one has yet put it better than Yes Minister on how the questions in a survey can skew the outcome. It is vital to be transparent on how the survey was delivered, who was surveyed and what questions were asked. If these are not possible to see in the public domain, then the media should not be publishing these figures. It should be obvious that if surveys are distributed largely on forums against the park you will get a view against the park, and that is why the only ethical way to deliver surveys is through independent and professional survey companies such as YouGov, Survation, Ipsos Mori etc.  

6. Find a group that already feels vulnerable and make them feel more threatened

Small businesses are at the bedrock of communities. They have the sympathy of local people and the ear of local politicians. They are also often really stretched for time and financially, especially in his economic climate. We saw the anti deposit return campaign target small producers and hospitality with scare stories about the impact that it was going to have on them. This was aided by a vacuum of information from the Government on what they should expect and what support they would get.

The result was a lot of extremely worried small business owners, often key employers in their communities, getting in touch with their local MSPs and getting active to campaign against it. 

The anti-campaign exploited this by turning each one into a headline. It was relentless, every concern expressed by another small producer is another story. So there are endless possibilities for articles. Every single day there was another small brewer who said they were going to be ruined. And the papers printed every one.

This is such an effective method as you don’t necessarily need to do any coordination – if you spread alarm effectively and make the issue appear divisive enough, then they will feel genuinely threatened by the change that is coming – having had not enough information from the authoritative sources, and the misinformation fills the gap. They enthusiastically join the anti-campaign because they’ve been convinced it’s necessary to protect their livelihoods.

In this case of the National Parks the group targeted for this has been farmers, certainly a group which are the bedrock of rural communities, and we have seen some articles highlighting individual farmers and their concerns, but it is nowhere near as prevalent as in deposit return. The fact that this campaign hasn’t managed to put a different local business owner in the headlines every single day with a different story shows that there is not the skepticism amongst businesses that the anti campaign is trying to portray. Perhaps there is more a feeling of hope that, a National Park could be a good thing generally for the economy of Galloway.

7. Make sure whoever is funding and backing your campaign isn’t visible. 

Every campaign needs money, a lot of which will go to pay the PR company. In these campaigns, finding where the money comes from can be a real challenge.  With the deposit return scheme it was extremely well concealed and, only at the very end once the final delay was in place, did we get some clues as to who was behind it. You can read the speculation in the full analysis. But what we did learn from this is that those who are backing these kind of campaigns stay quiet during the campaign itself.  

In the case of National Parks, it would be very revealing if we could find out who is behind the PR push. Paying a major PR company such as Media House International does not come cheap, and the work they have put in thus far must have been time consuming. Plus they have managed to coordinate sending out a campaign leaflet to every household in the area of the Park to arrive on the same day as the official consultation papers – in many cases folded within the pages. This is evidently a very professional job, with some well-heeled backers. 

An investigation by The Ferret has thrown a little light on this, showing backing by major landowning interests in the family of ex-Tory MP and previous Secretary of State for Scotland, Alister Jack. This support appears to be concealed as the email address of Alister Jack’s Brother, James Pringle Jack’s, came off the No Galloway National Park website as soon as Rob Edwards started to make enquiries. The ‘No’ website was made by the company owned by Alister Jack’s daughter and her husband.

According to Who Owns Scotland, James Pringle Jack owns three large estates near Castle Douglas amounting to nearly 2000 hectares, and four other estates in Ayrshire, Skye and Kintyre. He is also a member of the limited liability partnership which owns Annandale Estate which is 4567 hectares, near Moffat.

As we said in our quote to the Ferret:

“It is important to know where the funding for campaigns comes from. To find that this campaign, which bills itself as grassroots, is being backed by major landowning interests, puts the whole campaign in a new context and begs the question of where this campaign is finding the money to employ a major PR company who are evidently doing a huge amount of work on their behalf

“The owners of estates in the South of Scotland or, indeed, anywhere else, are entitled to make their views on a National Park for Galloway known. However the public deserve that this is done in a transparent way, and, where messaging and campaigning is funded by major landowning interests, this should be made clear”

In conclusion – I am writing this in the midst of the campaign, rather than an analysis after it was all over (as I did with deposit return) there is likely to be a lot more to say about it over the coming weeks and months.

For those who have also read my analysis of the campaign against Scotland’s deposit return scheme, you will probably be as astounded as me to find that Alister Jack pops up in both narratives. I have to admit that I nearly fell off my chair when I found out this link to the No Galloway National Parks campaign, as we are a very small charity with three part time staff and have three main areas of work, two of which have been attacked by coordinated and well funded campaigns. We are going to have to keep on the ball when it comes to our third key area of work our Green Belts campaign ….

We are an absolutely minuscule charity with three part-time staff, please consider joining us or making a donation!

If you want to read more information about National Parks, please see the Scottish Environment LINK reports below:

1. https://web.archive.org/web/20241112121537/https://mediahouseinternational.com/campaigners-against-scottish-governments-galloway-national-park-plan-condemn-dirty-tricks-by-opposition-activists/ ↩︎
2. https://web.archive.org/web/20241112120656/https://mediahouseinternational.com/victorious-campaigners-vow-to-continue-with-challenge-to-new-national-parks/ ↩︎