Green campaigners ‘ineffective and bureaucratic’

The green movement is "out-of-touch, ineffective and bureaucratic", according to the campaigner who spent a decade leading Friends of the Earth in the UK , which celebrates its 40th anniversary on Wednesday.

"Worryingly, in every major green group, managers, administrators, communicators and fundraisers outnumber campaigners and researchers. Interminable meetings, not action, are the order of most days," wrote Charles Secrett, FoE executive director until 2003, in an article for the Guardian.

He later told the Guardian: "The evidence of failure is there for all to see, as environmental problems are getting worse, not better."

He said current campaigners were too often "conservative and unimaginative"