Video clips of CCC 1m Climate Jobs Caravan London Rally

Video clips of CCC 1m Climate Jobs Caravan London Rally now posted at http://gptublog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/climate-jobs-caravan-final-rallies.html

Climate Jobs Caravan Final Rallies

Start: May 12 2012 12:00 pm

End: May 24 2012 5:00 pm

Where: 

 All across the UK - See below!

                                                          Climate Jobs Caravan Final Rallies

London and Manchester

Friday 25^th May,

The Climate Jobs Caravan, currently touring the UK, is catching the imagination of people around the country.....offering a positive solution to the economic and climate crises we face.

For more details of the Climate Jobs Caravan tour:  www.climatechangejobs.org/caravan or follow on twitter: @climate_caravan

For a report on the Climate Jobs Caravan up to now see here.

Can't make it to these events ? - email or write to your MP and ask them to sign EDM 65 which supports the Caravan.

LONDON - Friday 25th

7pm Friends Meeting House, St. Martin's Lane, (off Trafalgar Square)
A chance to catch the excitement the Climate Jobs Caravan has been generating across the country as it has visited over 25 towns and cities with its message that investment in climate jobs can help solve both the economic and environmental crises. 

Speakers include:

Tony Kearns (Sen. Dep. Gen Sec of CWU),

Jean Lambert MEP, (Green Party),

Murad Qureshi (Chair, GLA Environmental Committee),

Professor Barbara Harris-White (Million Climate Jobs Report),

Suzanne Jeffery (Chair, Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union group),

Saci Lloyd (author),

Graham Thompson, (Greenpeace)

Graham Petersen (UCU),
George Barda (Occupy, London)

 

 And join us at lunchtime:
 

The nationwide tour comes to an end with a demand that Chris Grayling, the Minister for Work and Pensions, gets serious about job creation. Join us and the Caravan for a colourful lunchtime event.  

One Million Jobs, Now Minister!

12.30pm, Dept of Work & Pensions, Tothill St, SW1H 9NA

 

 

 

MANCHESTER- Friday 25 May

Meet the Caravan and find out more about Climate Jobs:

10.30 - 3.30 - Piccadilly Gardens, Queen Victoria Statue
4.00 - 5.30 - Cavendish St, corner of Oxford Road
6.30 - 7.00 - Albert Square

Join the Caravan cycle tour around the town and the universities:
6.00 from Cavendish Street, corner of Oxford Road

Public Meeting at 7pm in Friends Meeting House, Mount St, speakers include Richard Lease, leader of Manchester Council & Martin Empson (CaCC TU group)
Further information from judy.paskell@gmail.com

 For a report on the Climate Jobs Caravan up to now see here.

All about the Million  Climate Jobs Caravan ............

Helping solve the climate & economic crises

On Saturday 12 May, the Climate Jobs Caravan tour of Britain started, with two caravans setting off simultaneously from London and Edinburgh. Organised by the Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group and based on the Million Climate Jobs report, produced with the assistance of the CWU, PCS, TSSA & UCU trade unions, the Caravan will highlight how creating climate jobs can help us tackle the twin crises of the economy and climate change. There is an inspiring 10 minutevideo that sets out what we can achieve.

The routes are summarised below and there is an action packed schedule of events.

Sign the One Million Climate Jobs petition here.

Route 112 May – Edinburgh 13 May – Newcastle 14 May – Derby 15 May – Leeds 16 May – Stoke-on-Trent 18 May – Sheffield 19 May – Liverpool 20 May – Huddersfield 21 May – Bolton 22 May – Wigan 23 May – Blackpool 24 May – Lancaster 25 May – Manchester

Route 212 May – London 13 May – Coventry 14 May – Cardiff 15 May – Birmingham 16 May – Cambridge 17 May – Norwich 18 May – Oxford 21 May – Southampton 22 May – Portsmouth 23 May – Brighton 24 May – Redhill 25 May – London

What Happened in Bradford?

Red Green Interview 1 - Sean Thompson - The Green Party, Socialism & Green Left

From  http://www.theecosocialist.com/

Martin O'Beirne: Via people contacting this blog, and with conversations through the social network profiles I have created over time, I have had an interesting vantage regards the feelings people have toward the ecosocialist movement. People identifying themselves under the umbrella term of ‘ecosocialists’ represent a very mixed bag. There are those with a well considered sense of their political standing, describing themselves in manifold ways: non-market socialists, Marxist-autonomists, anarcho-syndicalists, deep ecologists! etc. Others have more mainstream social-democratic type leanings,  are environmental activists or are those waking up to economic and environmental crises for the first time and are yet to develop a sense of political identity.

ST The thing that often strikes me, particularly in the UK is how many ecosocialists are politically unaffiliated but looking for an organisation to be a part of. I can relate to this, it took me a long time to join a party; generally disillusioned by politics and politicians whatever colour flag they wave.

Eventually I decided to join the Greens, in the absence of a significant number of people making like Zapatistas! and in the context of the unfolding ecological and economic crisis, joining the greens seemed like the best fit. There are elements of the party I struggle with; alas a complex democratic structure will never be perfect for each individual, and party politics is not the only battleground as I see it. I was particularly happy that the party officially recognised occupy and of course there is the Green Left, the omission of which would probably have had me looking elsewhere.

MB So my first question is this: If the greens are a social democratic party occupying the political space left by labour’s turn to neoliberalism and war, why should young people/any people think that the Greens are worthy of their affiliation i.e. why would the greens not be contaminated by the same forces that led Labour to occupy an indistinct position that Galloway recently described as one arse with three cheeks (Labour, Conservative, Lib Dems)?

ST As Green parties in Europe and elsewhere have grown, developed a bureaucracy and full time leadership of professional (or would be professional) politicians,  their ‘natural’ trajectory seems to have been to gradually make more and more accommodation to the political establishment until they have been largely absorbed into it, like the German and Irish Greens. However, over the past four or five years, the Green Party in Britain has tended to move to the left.

This is, I think, the result of a number of factors. First, the development of New Labour  created a huge vacuum on the left, into which the Green Party has been sucked - almost by default. Second, despite the narrow reformism and environmentalist niche politics that (traditionally) the bulk of Green Party members have felt comfortable with, the objective reality of British involvement in seemingly endless imperialist adventures, the greatest world financial crisis in history and the ever growing threat of climate change, have combined to lead to increasing numbers of Greens to develop a more generalised critique of capitalism. Third, while this tendency to move to the left has been effectively counteracted within other Green parties by the lure of elected office, in Britain the electoral system serves to marginalise us - and thus to some degree offsets the pressure to conform and accommodate. Fourth, the collapse of Labour Party membership and the increasing irrelevance of the far left sects over the last few years has resulted in a steady (if modest) stream of homeless socialists of various hues and traditions into the party.

MB Based on specific policy examples can we describe GPEW as an explicitly socialist party?

ST I don’t think so. It is de facto a social democratic party - but I mean a proper social democratic party rather than the post social democratic neoliberal parties like Labour in Britain and the SDP in Germany. By social democratic, I mean that it is implicitly (and to a modestly increasing degree, explicitly) anti-capitalist, but that it has no real analysis of the nature of capitalism and the state, and consequently no overall strategy for how to get from where we are to where we want to be.  As a result, the politics of the party tends to be a jumble of crankish nostrums, modest reformism and a few elements of various strands of socialist theory.

However, that is no reason for socialists not to be members of the Green Party; I was for a good few years a member of the Labour Party, which claimed to be socialist and until 1994 had an explicitly socialist constitution, though it was clearly a pro-capitalist party. So I feel perfectly comfortable being a member of a party way to the left of Labour, whose leader has repeatedly proclaimed it to be anti-capitalist and whose policies, though muddled and contradictory, are in many respects socialist.

The only reason that socialists should be active in this or that political formation is because they believe that it has the potential to play a part in building the mass movement of working people this is the only agency capable of rebuilding society.  I think that can be said of the Green Party.

MB Some green party members have argued that the Green Left is not relevant, after all the Green Party is ‘left’. How would you respond to that?

ST The Green Party is certainly a party of the left and is - fuzzily - anti-capitalist, but its politics are syncretic and impressionistic, having largely developed out of a narrow and essentially middle class environmentalism, mixed with elements of pacifism, feminism and (increasingly explicit) radical egalitarianism.  It is, in some ways, the heir of the politics of the ‘fruit juice drinkers and sandal wearers’ of the ILP that so irritated Orwell.  As a result, to a large degree the Party’s politics are built on sentiment rather than rigorous analysis. This is compounded by the fact the the Party has a very weak tradition of organised internal debate and political education.

It seems to me, therefore, that the role of Green Left within the Party should be, as Lenin put it, ‘to patiently explain’ the nature of capitalism and the interrelationship between it and the looming environmental and resource crises. Our role should be to make connections and point out conclusions to be drawn. In particular, we should be endeavouring to ensure the maximum amount of political discussion and debate at every level of the Party at all times.

In his essay Towards a Revolutionary Party, Duncan Hallas, wrote:

‘Such a party cannot possibly be created except on a thoroughly democratic basis; unless, in its internal life, vigorous controversy is the rule and various tendencies and shades of opinion are represented, a socialist party cannot rise above the level of a sect. Internal democracy is not an optional extra. It is fundamental to the relationship between party members and those amongst whom they work.’

I think that his view of the necessity for internal democracy and organised political debate is as relevant for the Green Party today as it was for the International Socialists 40 years ago - and Green Left’s central role should be to act as vigorous advocates of both ever more debate and ever more democracy in the Party.

MB You know Joel Kovel. What is it about his work that you have found particularly inspirational and informative?

What most impresses me about Joel is his intellectual courage and rigour. For example, his book Overcoming Zionism is a fearless and damning analysis of Zionism and what he calls the ‘state sponsored racism’ of Israel. He knew that to publish it would be to expose himself to organised abuse and would endanger his academic career, but he still spoke out - and lost his professorship as a result.

His book The Enemy of Nature remains one of the most important expositions of ecosocialist theory yet written. In it, he brings his original background as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst to play in making a creative contribution to a Marxist understanding of the concept of human nature and the dialectical relationship between humanity, social production and ‘nature’. He writes:

‘There is an inescapable tension between humanity and nature. From one side, a fully embodied creature, obeying all the laws of the universe; from the other, a stubborn, proud and willful creature who distinguishes the self from nature and even chooses to protest the natural. We can say it is a facet of human nature to quarrel with nature and even to reject the purely natural given…

Both social production and consumption are are direct extensions of human nature, in that each transforms nature through an engagement with the imagination and the ensemble of human powers. Production - and the human capacity for labour - is, as Marx insisted, a matter of looking ahead: every object that gets made exists in the imagination before it does so in reality’

In a speech to Occupy Wall Street a few months ago, he said:

‘An association of free people will take care of nature because they see themselves as part of nature. They will struggle for a new world based on a new kind of production that gives nature intrinsic value. They will develop the tools for overcoming and healing the cancer of accumulation and the ecological crisis it generates. Such a society will be in harmony with nature and not nature’s enemy. I would call it “ecosocialism,” and I hope you will join in its building. ‘

Stirring stuff.

MB You have recently written a chapter for a book, soon to be released. Can you tell us a bit about that book and your contribution?

ST The book is titled Capitalism, Crisis and Alternatives. It is a collection of essays attempting to present a comparative analysis of the world crisis in different regions and to contribute to the debate about alternatives to neoliberal policies, with particular reference to the the multiple dimensions of the crisis.

My contribution is a chapter entitled A Green Industrial Revolution. Starting from the position advocated in the Million Green Jobs pamphlet I argue that if we are to use the process of de-carbonising Britain to create more aggregate demand and hundreds of thousands of socially useful jobs, it will be necessary for us to rebuild our industrial base - to strategically re-industrialise in fact. However, we need to explicitly develop clear aims and objectives (that are completely different to those of the British ruling class) and new democratic forms of common ownership, control and planning. I suggest what some of those aims and objectives might be and use the electrical generation and distribution, transport and construction sectors as exemplars, as they would provide the base for all further re-industrialisation.

MB I think the Green Left, the anti-capitalist – ecosocialist group within the GPEW has enormous potential to grow and attract many of those unaffiliated ecosocialists I mentioned in my intro. Do you think this to be the case and would you have any suggestions for how it could move forward.

ST I agree, but perhaps not in the way that many comrades in Green Left or on the left in the Green Party would first think of. I don’t believe that we should aim to be primarily a recruiting sergeant for the Green Party within the wider labour movement, nor that we should just focus our efforts on drafting motions for conference which will notionally move Green Party policies to the left - and we certainly shouldn’t see ourselves as the beginning of yet another sect. I think that we should be building what Hal Draper, author of The Twin Souls of Socialism, described as a political centre.

What Draper meant by a political centre was not a sect that claims for itself exclusive rights on the Full and Correct Programme and which calls on working people to climb up to its level, nor an internal faction that is concerned almost exclusively with getting the correct line passed at conference and getting the right people elected to party office. He saw it primarily as a non or informal membership propaganda/educational centre as distinct from a membership group enclosed in organisational walls. He gave the loose grouping round Monthly Review at the time as an example - a contemporary British example might be Compass.

I see the key tasks of such a centre (or tendency) as being: to mutually develop a body of ideas and analysis and to publish a body of political literature expressing and promoting them; to form cadres of party workers and militants around this political core; to establish its ‘kind of socialism’ as a presence in left politics, with its own physiognomy and name.

For us, that ‘kind of socialism’ is ecosocialism,  and the task of Green Left is to develop and explain ecosocialist ideas, not only to members of the Green Party, but to all activists we work with in the wider movement. In my view, that means that first priority of Green Left should be building its capacity to be a forum for the development of ecosocialist ideas and as a broadcaster of those ideas in a range of media, starting with the regular publication of the Watermelon. Second, Green Left must be much more outward looking and seek to provide a forum for all those interested in ecosocialist ideas. Our membership requirements are pretty loose at the moment; all that is required is membership of the Green Party and a small subscription to cover running costs. I believe that we should open up Green Left to all socialists regardless of what party they are or are not members of. We should aim to be, if you like, a red/green equivalent of Compass.

EVENTS IN MAY: Defend the NHS, Pensions Strike, Remember the Nakba, Climate Jobs Caravan

Red Pepper invites you to:

Defend the NHS! Strategies of resistance

Wednesday 9 th  May 2012 7-9.15pm

Somers Town Community Centre

London NW1 1EE (Kings Cross tube)

Red Pepper brings together NHS experts, health professionals and activists

to discuss the impacts of the bill and plans to resist it:

• Professor Colin Leys outlining the bones of the Bill and its implications for people

• Jonathon Tomlinson (GP) on current plans for resistance from GPs / health professionals

• Wendy Savage (Keep our NHS Public) on current plans for resistance from Keep Our NHS Public

• Dr. Jacky Davis TBC

The Coalition government has forced through the Health and Social Care Bill which seeks to further open up the healthcare market via welcoming ‘any willing provider’. This decision opens the door to the creation of an unequal two tier system based on ability to pay. The leading private companies stand to gain lucrative new contracts, subsidised by the tax payer, to squeeze private profit through damaging ‘cost efficiencies’ while poor people across the UK lose their access to important healthcare services.

Red Pepper is bringing together NHS expert and health professionals with campaigners and activists to hear about the plans already underway from those in the health sector to defend the NHS. We will discuss how activists and campaigners can support these efforts and block the implementation of the Bill and defend the principle of a comprehensive, universal free service for all, that values people over private profit.

Places are limited, please RSVP to melissa@redpepper.org.uk

Pensions Dispute:
10 May strike

Next Thursday will see Unite, PCS and UCU take action to defend pensions up and down the country.

Get down to the picket lines to show support.

There will be a march and rally in London:

March: St Thomas’s Hospital, SE1 from 12 noon
Rally: Methodist Central Hall, SW1 from 1pm

Saturday 12 May

REMEMBER THE NAKBA

END ISRAEL’S ETHNIC  CLEANSING NOW!

 SUPPORT PALESTINIAN PRISONERS

Saturday  12^th May 1–3pm opposite Downing St, London

Help us to build a new mass anti-Apartheid movement
for Palestine

Join us: www.palestinecampaign.org •  www.bminitiative.net •  www.foa.org.uk  •www.palestinianforum.co.uk •  www.stopwar.org.uk

Organised by: Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Friends of Al-Aqsa, British Muslim Initiative, Palestinian Forum for Britain, Stop the War Coalition.

Supported by: Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine (APJP), CAABU, CND, CWU, FBU, Green Party, GUPS UK, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers, ICAHD UK, Lawyers for Palestinian Human Rights, Liberal Democrat Friends of Palestine, London BDS, PCS, Viva Palestina, War on Want, Zaytoun.

climate caravan meeting  

LONDON - Friday 25 May

Public Meeting, 7pm Friends Meeting House, St. Martin's Lane, off Trafalgar Square. Speakers include Tony Kearns (Sen. Dep. Gen Sec of CWU), Jean Lambert, (Green Party), Murad Qureshi (Chair, GLA environmental committee), Professor Barbara Harris-White (Million Climate Jobs Report), Suzanne Jeffrey (Chair, CaCC TU group), Sachi Lloyd (author), Graham Petersen (UCU), Greenpeace.

 Further climate caravan meetings throughout UK detailed at http://www.climate-change-jobs.org/node/20

"Capitalism: Crisis and Alternatives": Book Launch and Video clips

Hear some of the authors of the new title from Resistance Books:

Özlem Onaran, Sean Thompson and Susan Pashkoff

Four years on from the start of the crisis, there is no recovery in sight. The Cameron-Clegg government may claim that Britain is on the mend, but for the 99% of us the prospect for years to come is falling real incomes and insecurity. Meanwhile the eurozone crisis rumbles on, with no strategy except deep austerity for countries like Italy and Spain, let alone Greece and Portugal.

This new book analyses the crisis in different regions and is a contribution to the debates about alternatives. In addition to a general analysis of the crisis including how it affects women, contributions cover Britain, the European Union, there are also contributions on the eco-socialist alternatives to capitalism.

CAPITALISM – CRISIS AND ALTERNATIVES?280 pages, £9 (inc p&p)

Available  from Resistance Books, PO Box 62732, London, SW2 9GQ

Contents:

WHERE IS THE CRISIS GOING? Michel Husson

THE CRISIS IN BRITAIN, Andy Kilmister

AUSTERITY AND THE LIES THAT IMPOVERISH, Susan Pashkoff

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, Sean Thompson

MARXISM AND THE CRISIS, John Rees

A FISCAL CRISIS OR A CRISIS OF DISTRIBUTION? Özlem Onaran

THE DEBT IN THE NORTH: SOME ALTERNATIVE PATHS, Eric Toussaint

WOMEN’S CRISES, Sandra Ezquerra

EASTERN EUROPE FACED WITH THE CRISIS OF THE SYSTEM, Catherine Samary

CHINA’S RISE AMIDST THE CRISIS, Jean Sanuk

LATIN AMERICA’S CRISIS, Claudio Katz

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM: THE DEBT CRISIS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION, Eric Toussaint


  Introduction Ozlem Onaran Sean Thompson Susan Pashkoff Questions and discussion: part1 Questions and discussion: part2

Salma Yacoob supports Will Duckworth