38 Degrees
Encyclopedia
38 Degrees is a UK non-profit, progressive
Progressivism
Progressivism is an umbrella term for a political ideology advocating or favoring social, political, and economic reform or changes. Progressivism is often viewed by some conservatives, constitutionalists, and libertarians to be in opposition to conservative or reactionary ideologies.The...

, political activism organisation that campaigns on a diverse range of issues, such as protecting the environment
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....

 and tackling climate change
Climate change
Climate change is a significant and lasting change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns over periods ranging from decades to millions of years. It may be a change in average weather conditions or the distribution of events around that average...

, democratic media ownership, child poverty
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...

 and political reform. The organisation claims to "campaign for fairness, defend rights, promote peace
Peace
Peace is a state of harmony characterized by the lack of violent conflict. Commonly understood as the absence of hostility, peace also suggests the existence of healthy or newly healed interpersonal or international relationships, prosperity in matters of social or economic welfare, the...

, preserve the planet and deepen democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...

 in the UK".

38 Degrees takes its name from the critical angle at which the incidence of a human-triggered avalanche
Avalanche
An avalanche is a sudden rapid flow of snow down a slope, occurring when either natural triggers or human activity causes a critical escalating transition from the slow equilibrium evolution of the snow pack. Typically occurring in mountainous terrain, an avalanche can mix air and water with the...

 is greatest.

History

38 Degrees says it was inspired by groups like MoveOn in the United States, GetUp! in Australia and Avaaz
Avaaz.org
Avaaz.org is a global civic organization launched in January 2007 that promotes activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict...

 globally. These organisations all use the internet to mobilise people and connect them and their governments. 38 Degrees believed an organisation based on a similar model was needed in the UK.

The organisation launched on 26 May 2009. Founders include Gordon Roddick, co-founder of The Body Shop
The Body Shop
The Body Shop International plc, known as The Body Shop, has 2,400 stores in 61 countries, and is the second largest cosmetic franchise in the world, following O Boticario, a Brazilian company...

, and Henry Tinsley, ex-chairman of Green & Black's
Green & Black's
Green & Black's is a UK-based chocolate company, owned by Kraft Foods. The company produces a range of chocolate bars, ice cream, biscuits and hot chocolate with its principal manufacturing sites in Poland and Italy...

 chocolate. The project was developed by Ben Brandzel, formerly of MoveOn, Avaaz, GetUp! and the Barack Obama presidential campaign
Barack Obama presidential campaign, 2008
Barack Obama, then junior United States Senator from Illinois, announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States in Springfield, Illinois, on February 10, 2007. On August 27, 2008, he was declared nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2008 presidential election...

 in the United States. Other board members include Gemma Mortensen of Crisis Action, Paul Hilder of Oxfam
Oxfam
Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working in 98 countries worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives...

, and Benedict Southworth of the World Development Movement
World Development Movement
The World Development Movement is a membership organisation in the United Kingdom which campaigns on issues of global justice and development in the Global South....

.

The Executive Director is David Babbs, who signs off some emails and appears in the media. Babbs was formerly Head of Activism at Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth
Friends of the Earth International is an international network of environmental organizations in 76 countries.FOEI is assisted by a small secretariat which provides support for the network and its agreed major campaigns...

 where he was responsible for the Big Ask Campaign
Big Ask Campaign
The Big Ask is a campaign by Friends of the Earth calling for a new climate change law in the United Kingdom and 15 other EU member states. The United Kingdom Government announced the introduction of the Climate Change Bill in the Queen's Speech on November 15, 2006. This was as a result of...

. Babbs also previously worked at People & Planet
People & Planet
People & Planet is a network of student campaign groups in the UK. It claims to be "the largest student campaigning organization in the country campaigning to alleviate world poverty, defend human rights and protect the environment."-Organization:...

. Other staff who sometimes sign off emails are Johnny Chatterton and Hannah Lownsbrough.

Previously known as Progressive Majority, 38 Degrees is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee.

Methodology

38 Degrees describes itself as a people-powered and multi-issue movement. It aims to empower UK citizens by providing easy ways for them to take action on the issues they care about e.g. climate change, human rights and poverty. Campaigning techniques include both online methods, such as online petitions, and offline methods, such as calling an MP or visiting a surgery.

Campaigns

Campaigns include:
  • Proposed sale of state-owned forests. In October 2010, Caroline Spelman – Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs – announced plans to sell off publicly owned forest and woodland in England. 38 Degrees launched a petition against the selling off of forests, raising concerns about loss of public access and impact on conservation. 38 Degrees members paid for an opinion poll which showed that 84% of the public were opposed to the government plans, and funded national newspaper adverts condemning the proposal. The 38 Degrees petition passed 500,000 signatures on 11 February 2011. 38 Degrees' campaign against forest privatisation has been praised by environmentalist Jonathon Porritt
    Jonathon Porritt
    Jonathon Espie Porritt, CBE, is an English environmentalist and writer. Porritt appears frequently in the media, writing in magazines, newspapers and books, and appearing on radio and television regularly.-Early life and family background:...

     who contrasted their clear stance and responsiveness to member concerns with the "betrayal" of other green groups.

  • Tax avoidance. On 5 January 2011, 38 Degrees ran a series of member-funded adverts in national newspapers, challenging George Osborne
    George Osborne
    George Gideon Oliver Osborne, MP is a British Conservative politician. He is the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, a role to which he was appointed in May 2010, and has been the Member of Parliament for Tatton since 2001.Osborne is part of the old Anglo-Irish aristocracy, known in...

     for his record on tackling tax dodging, highlighting an alleged £120 billion lost in unpaid tax annually and Osborne's own involvement in a tax dodge. The adverts were timed to coincide with a rise in VAT from 17.5% to 20%. They were printed in the Independent and the Guardian, while the Daily Telegraph, Metro and the Daily Mail refused to run them.
  • "Stand up for the NHS". 38 Degrees members campaigned against the closure of NHS Direct
    NHS Direct
    NHS Direct is the health advice and information service provided by the National Health Service for residents and visitors in England, with advice offered 24 hours a day, every day of the year through telephone contact on the national 0845 46 47 number, web based symptom checkers at and via...

     – closure plans which were subsequently scaled back although ministers denied this was because of public pressure. 38 Degrees members also organised a series of public meetings around England in January 2011 to highlight concerns with NHS
    National Health Service
    The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...

     reforms proposed by Andrew Lansley
    Andrew Lansley
    Andrew David Lansley, CBE, MP is the UK Secretary of State for Health, who has been the Conservative Member of Parliament for South Cambridgeshire since the 1997 general election, and was Shadow Secretary of State for Health from June 2004 until becoming Secretary of State for Health in May 2010...

    .

  • Issues surrounding the Copenhagen Climate Summit
    2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference
    The 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, commonly known as the Copenhagen Summit, was held at the Bella Center in Copenhagen, Denmark, between 7 December and 18 December. The conference included the 15th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate...

    . In December 2009, 38 Degrees staged a Climate Question Time where members quizzed Ed Miliband
    Ed Miliband
    Edward Samuel Miliband is a British Labour Party politician, currently the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition...

     – then Secretary of State for Environment and Climate Change – live on a mass-conference call
    Conference call
    A conference call is a telephone call in which the calling party wishes to have more than one called party listen in to the audio portion of the call. The conference calls may be designed to allow the called party to participate during the call, or the call may be set up so that the called party...

    .

  • The BBC
    BBC
    The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

     and the licence fee. 38 Degrees launched a campaign called "Stand up for the BBC", after James Murdoch
    James Murdoch (media executive)
    James Rupert Jacob Murdoch is the younger son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch and currently serves as chairman and chief executive of News Corporation, Europe, and Asia, overseeing assets such as News International , SKY Italia , Sky Deutschland, and STAR TV .He sits on the News...

     gave a speech to the Edinburgh Festival in 2009 calling for the BBC to be broken up. 38 Degrees members voted 80% in favour of the campaign. Recently the government announced it was putting on hold plans to "top slice" the licence fee after 38 Degrees pressure.

  • Bankers' bonuses. In November 2009, 38 Degrees worked with the think tank Compass
    Compass (think tank)
    Compass is a left wing pressure group, aligned with the UK Labour Party describing itself as 'An umbrella grouping of the progressive left whose sum is greater than its parts'...

     on a successful campaign for the UK government to impose a tax on bankers' bonuses.

  • Recall law. A campaign calling for the right of voters to force a by-election
    By-election
    A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....

     if they lose trust in their Member of Parliament
    Member of Parliament
    A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

    .

  • House repossessions. A campaign launched with the Big Issue to freeze repossessions during the recession
    Recession
    In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...

    . Every year in the UK, 75,000 homes face repossession.

  • 10:10. 38 Degrees teamed up with 10:10
    10:10
    Drono Acharya composed the film's songs and Ritam Sen, Sandip Chakrabarty, Padmanabha Dasgupta, Rana Basu Thakur and Rangeet wrote the lyrics.-External links:* IMDB Title* * *...

     to urge MPs to vote to reduce the carbon emissions of Parliament
    Parliament of the United Kingdom
    The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...

     by 10% in 2010. Over 48 hours, 10,000 members contacted their MPs. The vote was lost but the government pledged extra money for green initiatives.

  • Donald Trump
    Donald Trump
    Donald John Trump, Sr. is an American business magnate, television personality and author. He is the chairman and president of The Trump Organization and the founder of Trump Entertainment Resorts. Trump's extravagant lifestyle, outspoken manner and role on the NBC reality show The Apprentice have...

     in Aberdeenshire. 38 Degrees has been working with Tripping up Trump, a campaigning group in Aberdeenshire, to oppose Donald Trump's proposals to use compulsory purchase powers to force people off their land to make way for his luxury golf course complex.

Results

38 Degrees is credited with:
  • Helping persuade UK P. M. David Cameron to back-track on a major National Health Service
    National Health Service
    The National Health Service is the shared name of three of the four publicly funded healthcare systems in the United Kingdom. They provide a comprehensive range of health services, the vast majority of which are free at the point of use to residents of the United Kingdom...

     reform plan (according to Sky News' political commentator Jon Craig).

  • Playing a key role in persuading the UK government to drop plans to privatise England's forests in February 2011.

  • Being nominated for an Observer
    The Observer
    The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

     ethical award as campaigning group of the year in May 2011.

  • Being listed in Wired
    Wired (magazine)
    Wired is a full-color monthly American magazine and on-line periodical, published since January 1993, that reports on how new and developing technology affects culture, the economy, and politics...

    magazine's May 2011 Wired 100, described as a "powerful political force".

Controversies

  • 38 Degrees director David Babbs was the subject of a controversial interview by Sky News
    Sky News
    Sky News is a 24-hour British and international satellite television news broadcaster with an emphasis on UK and international news stories.The service places emphasis on rolling news, including the latest breaking news. Sky News also hosts localised versions of the channel in Australia and in New...

     anchorwoman Kay Burley
    Kay Burley
    Kay Burley is an English television newsreader, presenter and journalist. She currently anchors the Afternoon Live programme on the Sky News station.-Early life:...

     who was accused of aggressively interrupting Babbs and telling him to leave a protest about electoral reform and instead "go home and watch it on Sky News". The term "sack Kay Burley" subsequently trended on Twitter and hundreds of complaints were made to Ofcom
    Ofcom
    Ofcom is the government-approved regulatory authority for the broadcasting and telecommunications industries in the United Kingdom. Ofcom was initially established by the Office of Communications Act 2002. It received its full authority from the Communications Act 2003...

    .

  • Some activists have accused it of producing misleading campaign literature, raising concerns through its Facebook page.

  • 38 Degrees has been criticised by a Conservative MP, Dominic Raab, for allowing members to send "clone emails" to MPs via its website. Raab stated he would lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner's Office about 38 Degrees using his parliamentary email address, but no complaint was ever upheld and it remains possible to email Raab via the 38 Degrees website.

  • Despite its claim to be politically neutral, 38 Degrees has been criticised as taking a left wing stance on the issues it campaigns about. Although its own website states that it is "not connected with any political parties", some argue that the campaigns it promotes are predominantly left wing in nature.. Some conservative blogs have described it as an Astroturf
    Astroturfing
    Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a "grassroots" movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some...

    group.

  • 38 Degrees has been criticised by some disability campaigners for what they claim is 38 Degrees ignoring substantial support amongst its own members for running a campaign on the impact of welfare reforms on disabled people.
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