In towns and cities across the UK from 2016 to 2019 pro-European activists took to the streets flying EU flags and adorned with the EU’s yellow stars on blue. The big London marches got most publicity, but street stalls, leafleting, demonstrations and other assorted street and online activity flourished nationwide. Triggered by the narrow win for Brexit in June 2016, it was a public display of pro-Europeanism on a scale never seen before in Britain.
Yet all this is barely mentioned in most books on Brexit. Books by journalists such as Tim Shipman (All Out War 2016, Fall Out 2017, No Way Out 2024, and Out 2024) or by academics such as Meg Russell and Lisa James (The Parliamentary Battle Over Brexit 2023) and Chris Grey (Brexit Unfolded 2021) focus mostly on the high politics of Brexit – the actions of the government and leading politicians, the battles in parliament, and the EU negotiations.
Even in Shipman’s long tomes (1,600 pages cover June 2016 to December 2019) anti-Brexit activism is only mentioned briefly and mainly in terms of the People’s Vote campaign formed in April 2018 and the big London marches. Prior to that, he cursorily dismisses the idea of a second referendum as a “fringe pursuit of extremists” (Shipman, Out, 2024, p.150). Yet the People’s Vote, though led by some prominent people, was formed in response to grassroots demands for a stronger anti-Brexit stance than the defensive messages of most pro-European MPs and journalists after the referendum.
The first comprehensive study
The Failure of Remain by academics Adam Fagan and Stijn van Kessel, is described by the authors as “the first comprehensive study of the UK’s grassroots anti-Brexit movement’. It provides a refreshing antidote to the many elite level analyses of Brexit. The authors focus on the “genuine grassroots movement” that emerged after the 2016 referendum in contrast to the more limited mobilisation in the 1975 referendum and the ‘Stronger in Europe‘ campaign prior to June 2016 (p. 8).
As an activist myself I was looking for answers to questions such as: Was our strategy at fault? Could activists have campaigned differently and better? Perhaps others, notably MPs and party leaders, were at fault? Or were the political hurdles simply much too high?
An early chapter sets up an analytical framework which draws on social movement theory and the politics of the EU in Britain. The aim is to explain the formation, organisation and efficacy of social movements. It is in three parts and consists of (i) the “political opportunities”: the political system, parties and institutions, and the public debates, discourses and norms, (ii) the “mobilising structures”: the strategy, tactics, actions and resources of campaigners, and (iii) the “framing processes”: how anti-Brexit messages were framed by activists (pp. 31-38).
A key element of the analysis is “the strategic dilemmas of liberal movements defending established institutions” (pp. 38-40). The anti-Brexit movement was predominantly liberal-left and internationalist. Such movements tend to draw on the rhetoric of hope and change and look forward to something better. Yet the core anti-Brexit objective was the defence of the status quo: Britain’s decades-long membership of the EU.
Grassroots campaign emerges
The lack of any major political party to defend the idea of EU membership in the aftermath of the referendum (seen by activists as hugely flawed) provided the catalyst for grassroots mobilisation. They argue that the “political opportunity structure was therefore conducive to the initial emergence of the movement” (p. 64).
Conversely, though, the political context was not conducive to success. Despite the impressive mobilisation, “the relative closed and centralised nature of the political system … the absence of elite allies … and the prevailing discourse” (p. 64) all limited the efficacy of the movement. There is no formalised system for social movements to feed concerns to politicians or senior civil servants. Access depends on goodwill and this was lacking, particularly after the referendum defeat.
Faltering support for EU membership among the leaderships of the main political parties also made it difficult to establish leading allies. While the Labour party itself and most of its MPs were strongly pro-EU, its leader Jeremy Corbyn, historically Eurosceptic and wary of losing voters in Brexit areas, was ambivalent and not an ally. The strongest elite ally was the leadership of the Liberal Democrats, but after the 2015 general election they were reduced to only eight MPs and were “mere bystanders” in post-referendum decision-making (p. 56). It was very difficult to make an impact on political elites.
Mapping anti-Brexit activism
The empirical heart of the book draws on interviews with activists, a survey, and campaign materials. There was grassroots activism under the Stronger In campaign prior to the referendum, but it was centralised and “insignificant” compared to after the referendum. The grassroots initiative grew from frustration with Open Britain (the successor to ‘Stronger In’), and its pale ‘respect the referendum’ stance. A widespread, if disjointed, activism grew in 2016 and 2017. While there were attempts at national co-ordination (for example by Britain for Europe), it wasn’t until the People’s Vote campaign started in April 2018 that one clear objective emerged.
The authors show that activists were predominantly middle-aged and older, middle-class and white, and struggled to reach out beyond this demographic. Local groups did attempt to reach out and new national groups were established such as ‘Our Future, Our Choice’, aiming to mobilise younger people but the young remained largely disengaged.
They also show that campaign techniques (street stalls, leafleting, marches, and encouraging people to write to their MP) were largely conventional. Some creativity is acknowledged such as the Brexitometer, which became widely used on street stalls, the action outside parliament directed to the national media and MPs, and social media activity. Despite this, they argue that “part of the movement’s difficulties in reaching out to a wider audience can also be related back to its rather traditional forms of action” (p. 97).
Message framing
The final empirical chapter describes the broad range of messaging developed by activists. Grievances about the disinformation of the Leave campaign and concerns about Brexit were central and there was no clear articulation of Britain’s future relationship with Europe and the EU. They show how “the majority of local campaigns relied heavily on diagnostic frames that highlighted the adverse effects of Brexit … rather than presenting a positive vision of the EU and the United Kingdom’s role within it” (p.129).
The lack of a positive future vision continued during the People’s Vote campaign. There were divisions about whether to promote a strong Remain and pro-EU message, favoured by the majority of grassroots activists, or to focus primarily on getting a referendum on the final Brexit deal, favoured by the People’s Vote organisers. The result was that “there was no coherent strategy among activists about how the case for remaining in the EU would be made as part of any such future referendum campaign” (p.135).
They do, though, acknowledge that there were no easy answers: “the anti-Brexit movement faced a very difficult task in terms of formulating resonant messages”. Brexit got over the line in 2016 in large part because of a reaction of the “left behind” against the status quo which the EU seemed to epitomise. Striking a balance between “criticising the status quo just enough to acknowledge that there is a problem requiring a solution while at the same time bolstering support for the existing arrangements” proved too difficult (p.150).
Fascinating insight but unanswered questions
The book provides a fascinating insight into the anti-Brexit activism and the difficulties encountered in those tumultuous years and is a counter to books that focus mostly on high politics. It is well grounded theoretically with readable empirical chapters that clearly depict the varied activism and shows how energy, enthusiasm and prominence do not easily translate into success.
Nevertheless I felt some key questions were unanswered. It was unclear ultimately whether the authors think the failure was due to campaign deficiencies or the huge political hurdles the campaign faced. They also give little sense of what alternative campaigning approaches might have been more successful and the potential pitfalls of more direct forms of action. It felt, at times, semi-detached from the reality of the activism taking place, and too easy to depict activists as being happy in their comfort zone and traditional campaign methods.
I was also unconvinced about the lack of elite allies. They do not consider the significance of the big increase in MPs who supported a second referendum (from about 30 MPs in 2017 to 280 in 2019), nor its adoption in Labour’s manifesto in 2019. The study seemed too detached from the ebb and flow of the high politics of Brexit and its impact on campaign strategy and methods. Finally, though it was above all about 2016-19, I would have liked more on the implications for post-Brexit pro-EU activism and indeed progressive activism more broadly. These and other questions will be considered in a follow-up article.
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