A campaigner's life: taking the opportunities

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When a young Lyn Goldsworthy was sent to a meeting during negotiations on establishing regulations for potential mining in Antarctica in the 1980s, she was new to campaigning and had never done anything like it before. That's where it all started. Here, she looks back at that time and her first early foray into professional activism.

I’d been involved in many things, writing letters and things like that, but no big professional campaigning. I got sent to this meeting to be part of the lobby team. I was with the team that did activist stuff around the edges, and someone while I was there said that I would be a very good political advocate.

I'm still not sure why. I think it's because I have mild cerebral palsy. My brain works in a slightly different way to other people's brains. So sometimes I think things through very fast and other times it takes forever to get round to “oh, that’s what they were actually talking about.” This was actually very useful. For campaigners, it’s called taking advantage of opportunities.

When someone says something and other people react, quite often I’m still thinking about it, so I don't react. It looks like I'm very calm and peaceful, and I can take advantage of that.

Also, sometimes I can go bang bang bang very fast and that looks terribly astute and strategic. Both of those things gave me an advantage and I think that is why people thought I'd be a very good advocate. My attitude at the time was, "Oh, okay, fine, I'll learn how to do that."

Sign protest activism there is no planet b Markus Spiske on Unsplash — "You have two different jobs when you're either on the inside or the outside. " Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

The next meeting I went to I was on the inside, I was on a delegation. You have two different jobs when you're either on the inside or the outside.

On the outside, your job is to get the message out to the general public and to keep public pressure on the inside negotiators. On the inside, your job is to keep the delegation that you're on to their brief, or try to strengthen their brief and watch what everybody else is doing and feed that back to the outside team.

This is really in-depth campaigning. This is not 101 campaigning, this is 201 or 301 campaigning. And it takes quite a lot of work to be able to feed stuff back without giving yourself away because you're usually under a confidentiality rule.

Often, campaigners who are on the outside don't like campaigners that are on the inside, because that's where the compromises are made, and you tend to be linked to the compromise. Like it's all your fault and you should have done better.

You’ve got to remember there's only one or two of us on the inside, particularly in those days, and we don't have any more influence on the inside on the governments than the outsiders. Most of the influence is in the lead up to a negotiation.

And that's how I got involved in doing this kind of campaigning.

Lyn Goldsworthy

Oceans and Antarctic conservation and governance.

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When someone says something and other people react, quite often I’m still thinking about it, so I don't react. It looks like I'm very calm and peaceful, and I can take advantage of that.

The next meeting I went to I was on the inside, I was on a delegation. You have two different jobs when you're either on the inside or the outside.

Often, campaigners who are on the outside don't like campaigners that are on the inside, because that's where the compromises are made, and you tend to be linked to the compromise. Like it's all your fault and you should have done better.

And that's how I got involved in doing this kind of campaigning.