watermelon
Conference Newsletter of Green Left Autumn 2023
CAPITALISM KILLS, TIME TO TRANSFORM POLITICS!
Karl Marx argued
that capitalism kills. Recently, it has become clear that Marx correctly concluded
that capitalism creates a ‘metabolic rift’ between humans and the natural
world: on which our survival depends. Like
Cerberus capitalism kills in three main ways,
‘Austerity’ The first of capitalism’s
Cerberus-heads is ‘austerity’ – or an
inflation-charged ‘Cost of Living’ Crisis. It is a deliberate accumulation of
wealth from the 99% to the already grossly-rich 1%. This can be by cuts in welfare and social
benefits, and a regressive taxation policy – or by letting prices rip whilst
preventing workers from maintaining real wages.
A report from University College
London, compared trends in mortality before 2010, with the years after. It
concluded that, the austerity that the Tories and LibDems had deliberately
chosen to impose had resulted in 120,000+ deaths. One of the
authors, Professor Lawrence King of the Applied Health Research Unit at
Cambridge University, said: “– it is bad economics, but good class
politics. […] a public health disaster..” The Journal
of Epidemiology and Community Health in 2022, estimated that, by 2019,
more than 330,000 excess deaths in the UK were linked to austerity. These
reports are supported by projections by the Office of National Statistics (ONS)
that, such policies would result in over 1 million ‘excess’ deaths by 2058:
The Climate and Ecological Crises A new way to condemn millions to death is by pursuit of profit., The second head of capitalism’s Cerberus is‘Climate and Ecological Crises.’
July 2023 has seen numerous broken
climate records and ‘extreme weather’ events. A joint statement released
by the European Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the World
Meteorological Organisation (WMO) confirmed that the first three weeks of July
have been the hottest three-week period ever recorded and predicted that the
month will be the hottest ever. Among the catastrophic consequences are
wildfires in Canada, large portions of Southern Europe, the USA and other
regions have experienced floods and heat health-alerts.
There has been a simultaneous
marine heatwave: The surface temperatures of the North Atlantic
Ocean became 5C hotter than normal. The extent of Antarctic sea ice shrank to
about 1m.sq.mls below average his threatens coral systems and the plankton with
mass die-off, and thus, threatens
the world’s entire food chain The lack of Antarctic sea ice also may cause flooding of coastal areas This
has been caused by capitalism –with its largely-unregulated burning of coal,
oil and natural gas. Although climate scientists such as Kevin Anderson
warn that continuing could result in a 3-4°C temperature rise by the end of the
century, the fossil fuel companies – aided by governments – are planning to
increase production.
The fossil fuel companies
themselves think that’s where their greed is taking us. The investment campaign
group Share Action reported that oil giants Shell and BP were assessing their
‘resilience’ against climate models in which temperatures hot up by between 3°C
and 5°C! ‘Resilience’ means they expect
to cope with such temperature increases.
War Not Peace War is Capitalism’s third and
final Cerberus-head. Capitalist states have inflicted death around the world
but, US imperialism: is the most powerful and bellicose.
Transform Politics! We are at a turning point in history – and must jettison the ‘old ways’ that pushing us to the brink of uncontrollable Climate Breakdown Most lifeforms on Earth – can no longer be subordinated to the selfish and destructive demands of a small minority. Currently the main ‘opposition’ party is reneging on green ‘pledges. Such ‘actions’ are catastrophic from the standpoint of the Climate and Ecological Crises, and don’t make sense as an electoral strategy. What’s needed is to demand MUCH more – not offer less and less. we need to ‘Unite to Survive!’ – and that will require us to really transform politics.
Allan Todd is a member of Left Unity’s National Council and of ACR’s
Council, and an ecosocialist/environmental and anti-fascist activist. He is the
author of Revolutions 1789-1917 and Trotsky: The
Passionate Revolutionary – and the forthcoming Che Guevara:
The Romantic Revolutionary
 |
? ? |
In Congress and on the fringes at the TUC
The Case for a National Climate Service
Tahir Latif: Secretary, Greener Jobs Alliance
At 2023 Trade Union Congress in Liverpool, I was very
pleased to chair a fringe meeting co-hosted by Campaign Against Climate Change
Trade Union group (CACCTU), Greener Jobs Alliance (GJA) and Public and
Commercial Service union (PCS). The title was The Case for a National Climate
Service: reorganising the state for the climate emergency, people and public
ownership.
A National Climate Service (NCS) has been a centre piece
of demands for a radical transformation of our society in the face of the
climate crisis since 2008, when it was proposed in the first edition of One
Million Climate Jobs. While high profile sectors such as energy,
transport and construction tend to be where the Just Transition discussion is
largely focused, an NCS is seen as an essential coordinating body to make the
transition happen, planning the funding, resourcing and training (and
re-training) necessary for a rapid switch to a decarbonised economy, while also
protecting the employment, and rights, of workers in all sectors.
What this implies is that the roles of civil servants
(PCS) and local authority workers (UNISON) are every bit as critical to that
transformation as UNITE, GMB, RMT and others in the more industrial
sectors. Hence it was encouraging to see the NCS concept being
picked up by other unions, such as ASLEF and RMT in the carried Composite
motion 04 on an integrated public transport system.
All unions hold a distinctive piece of the decarbonisation
‘puzzle’ and it was clear from this meeting that the crucial task of fitting
those pieces together cannot be left to the private sector. That is why a
National Climate Service is so central to the future organisation of society.
As UNISON’s excellent motion (Composite 05) states ‘Climate justice cannot be
separated from social justice. It is the most marginalised communities
whose health suffers most from climate change, pollution and loss of nature.’
However, it was acknowledged that the mainstream political
parties are a long way from this position. One would expect nothing
less from the Conservatives, to whom another public body would be anathema, but
it’s not unreasonable to hope for more from Labour, who are likely to form the
next government. Just what Labour’s promised ‘Green Prosperity Fund’
will look like and what it will do remains an open
question. Certainly, no mention has ever been made of a NCS or
similar body, leading to the suspicion that some woolly public/private mix is
on the cards.
At Congress itself, there was greater unity around climate
issues, with a notable absence of the ‘ring-fencing’ tendencies that some
unions had espoused in previous years, and what controversy there was displaced
onto the differing nuances on the Ukraine-Russia conflict.
Still, while such unity is refreshing, it is within
strictly limited bounds. Members of the big industrial unions who attended our
fringe bemoaned the continued support for fossil fuel industries and the lack
of vision about how to decarbonise. One attendee identified the misconception,
deliberate or otherwise, of some leaderships warning of a ‘cliff edge’ for
their members, the attendee rightly asking ‘what part of the word “transition”
do they not understand?’ One of our guest speakers astutely noted that older
workers who may not wish to retrain are susceptible to such arguments, and that
we need to utilise their experience in productive ways as well as guaranteeing
good pensions for them upon retirement.
In all, there are two distinct, if not contradictory,
strands in the union movement: a very welcome growth in the normalisation of
climate policies that only a few years ago seemed ‘pie-in-the-sky’, on the
other a retrenchment based on a (false, in my opinion) belief that conserving
the status quo is protecting the jobs of their members. In other
words, a typical year at the TUC!
GMB, The GMB is
a general trade union in the United
Kingdom . Its
members work in nearly all industrial sectors,
RMT, The National
Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (commonly known as
the RMT) a British trade union covering the transport sector
ASLEF The Associated
Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen (ASLEF) is a
British trade union representing drivers of
trains
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THE GREEN
PARTY AS THE NATURAL HOME FOR TRADE UNIONS?
Erwin Schaefer
The historical
events of organised workers groups are well established. One of the first
recorded strikes in modern times took place in Philadelphia in 1786. Unions
arising in Britain with the Industrial Revolution aimed to protect workers from
exploitation by the capitalist system, resisting erosion of the few rights
workers had, pushing for improvements in working conditions and change of the
underlying system. this s pre-dates official political parties. Trade unionism
would come to be associated with the emergence of a party which was not
dominated by advocates of the capitalist system.
From today’s
perspective an essential question would be – how does a healthy environment and
an associated systemic ecological understanding of industrial and general work
processes support or disrupt meaningful and fulfilling working conditions?
One could start
with Aldo Leopold, an American forester who was a huge influence on a nascent
ecology movement during the early 20th century. Rachel Carson and
her ‘Silent Spring’ is of course an iconic contribution to the growing
ecological awareness of the post-war period. Garrett Hardin’s ‘Tragedy of the
Commons’ requires acknowledgement that ecological concerns were not the preserve
of people with socialist or at least social leanings.
The later part
of the 20th century offered the possibility to continue with the
predominant corporate economic model by evaluating controversial technical
‘fixes’ to clean up the polluting mess left behind by industrial processes in
the air, the soil and in the water. It is probably a good thing that the
large-scale global untested projects are still on the level of science fiction.
Do we want ‘sunlight dimming devices’ or ‘chemical cloud makers’ simply to
protect the prevailing capitalist system with its inherently un-green
processes?
It has become
increasingly obvious that fossil fuel and associated industrial processes bear
huge responsibility for the human contribution to the emerging climate
catastrophe by increasing atmospheric CO2 levels and threatening biodiversity and oceanic
acidification.
Political
attempts to tackle the problem can be traced back to the 1970s –also the period
of the birth of most parliamentary green parties worldwide -, the Montreal
Protocol of 1987 was a rare relative success story in dealing with the ozone
layer destruction by ratifying a worldwide ban on CFCs. The IPCC (International
Panel on Climate Change) was first organised 35 years ago, the Earth Summit of
1992 in Rio de Janeiro and the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 are all perhaps
indications of the pathetic pace that political action has adopted so far. The
Paris Agreement from 2015 has little to
show yet. The climate situation is becoming critical, yet political diplomatic
steps are painfully slow.
What have
progressive groups done to find a solution? Regrettably, and quite
inaccurately, during a crucial period they had been lumbered with accusations
for the outdated and massively polluting industrial endeavours of the defunct
Soviet bloc.
Greens are now
inspiring a progressive outlook towards an ecological understanding, as well as
becoming advocates for people’s essential protection and the quality of their
working lives. The old processes of industrial production and other work areas
are no longer sustainable and trade unions have become aware of the situation,
the threats and the opportunities the situation offers.
This year there
have been two trade union organised conferences – Bold Solutions in
London and We Make Tomorrow in Manchester, both with active
participation by London Green Party Trade Union Liaison Officers and other
Green Party delegates, to try and make sense of the threats on the horizon and
to find solutions that offer viable quality jobs. It was clear, judging by the
comments and reports coming from union delegates that ‘green jobs’ are firmly
and irrevocably on their agenda.
Campaign groups
such as Green Jobs Alliance (GJA) and others on the ecosocialist
spectrum have come to show alternative to traditional political trade union
affiliations; the Green Party has a structure of liaison with unions and the
overall societal disasters of austerity, inequality and erosion of human and
workers’ rights have not gone unnoticed by trade unions. Neither has the
migrant scandal, where the fact of migrant workers supplementing and supporting
rather than replacing existing job positions is now becoming accepted within
unions
As a committed
Europhile, I have been pleasantly surprised that some unions (GMB springs to
mind) are making links between the way the current UK government and EU
authorities are supporting and funding one of their primary concerns of work
place re-training and apprenticeship schemes for future green technology jobs.
Also the EU goes about funding research for sustainable industrial processes
and how much commitment they show towards supporting their respective work
force in not only protecting jobs but offering enhanced quality, well-paid and
well-trained work. The UK comes bottom in this contest.
Erwin Schaefer,
London Green Party Trade Union Liaison Officer (job-share)
 |
Campaign
against Climate Change, Trade Union Group, Nov 2021 98pp A5 booklet Download
a free copy to read online.
Climate Jobs: Building a workforce for the climate emergency pdf
(6MB) One Million Climate Jobs (2014) Click here for
information about the third edition of One Million Climate Jobs including
free download. |
DEGROWTH:
A REMARKABLE RENAISSANCE Alan Thornett
There has been
an upsurge of interest in degrowth –a
long-discussed strategic alternative to climate chaos and not just from the
radical left. It is experiencing a renaissance at the moment, driven by the
relentless rise in global temperatures and the resulting climate chaos.
It was the theme of a three-day conference in May entitled ‘Beyond Growth 2023’ which filled the
main hall of the European Parliament with mostly young and enthusiastic people.
It was organised by 20 left-leaning MEPs and it was opened by the president of the European
Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. According to the Economist report the young
audience ‘whooped and cheered’ when it was proposed that some form of de-growth will be necessary to
avoid societal collapse.”
In July, Bill
McKibben – the veteran environmental campaigner, founder of 350.org, and
prolific author – had a major article in the New
Yorker strongly advocating degrowth from an historical perspective. Numerous
books supporting degrowth – to varying degrees and stand points – have been
also published recently from the left: The
Case for Degrowth by Giorgos Kallis et al; Less is More how degrowth will save the world by Jason Hickel; Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism
by Kohei Saito; and The Future is
Degrowth by Matthias Schmelzer.
A recent book
opposing degrowth is Climate Change as
Class War, by Matt Huber – from in my view is ultra-left
and voluntaristic position. He has reviewed himself in the current
edition of Jacobin.
Growth is the driving force of the
environmental crisis. Over the past 60 years the global economy has grown at an
average rate of 3 per cent a year, which is completely unsustainable. John
Bellamy Foster has pointed out that a 3% p.a. growth rate of would grow the
world economy by a factor of 250 over the course of this century and the next. Over the same period the global human
population has risen from 3.6 billion in 1970 to 8 billion in 2022.
Such growth
rates are incompatible with the natural limits of the planet and will
ultimately defeat any attempts to resolve the environmental crisis that fail to
deal with it.
An early
attempt to analyse this issue was undertaken in 1970 by Donella Meadows and a
team of radical young scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. It was published in 1972 as the Limits to Growth Report
The Meadows Report, as it became known
reached the monumental conclusion that: “if the present growth in world
population, industrialisation, pollution, food production, and resource
depletion continues unchanged”, the limits to growth on the planet will be
reached sometime around the middle of the 21st century. The most probable
result “will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population
and industrial capacity.”
It sold 12
million copies world-wide, was translated into 37 languages. and remains the
top-selling environmental title ever published. It also became the driving
force behind the emergence of the ecology and green movement in the 1970s, and
the degrowth movement itself.
It was
remarkably accurate as McKibben notes and its conclusion puts us exactly
where we are today, facing increasing frequent climate related societal
breakdowns that may soon become generalised.
McKibben also
notes that Ursula von der Leyen directly referenced the Meadows Report at her opening speech in Brussels: “Our
predecessors”, she had said, “chose to stick to the old shores and not lose
sight of them. They did not change their growth paradigm but relied on oil. And
the following generations have paid the price.”
The
Report, however, was ignored by the socialist left, with a few exceptions.
Tony Benn’s Alternative Economic Strategy
of the 1980s, for example, made ever-faster economic growth its key demand. No
wonder the trade unions and the Labour Party remain dominated by growth
productivism today because they have never been challenged by the left.
William Morris – the outstanding
environmentalist in the 19th century – had also gone unheeded when
he raged against useless and unnecessary production. In his lecture ‘How We Live and How We Might Live’,
delivered in December 1884 in Hammersmith – he raised the issue of how to live
dignified and fulfilling lives without the need for mass produced commodities
and consumerism, and what kind of future society could best provide such an
approach.
What degrowth offers is a planned reduction
of economic activity, within a different economic paradigm, and first and
foremost in the rich countries of the Global North. Giorgos Kallis puts it this
way in The Case for Degrowth (page
viii): “The goal of degrowth is to purposefully slow things down in order to
minimise harm to human beings and earth systems”.
Jason Hickel in Less in More (page 29) –– tells us that degrowth is: “a planned
reduction of excess energy and resource use in order to bring the economy back
into balance with the living world in a safe and equitable way”.
The adoption of such an approach will need a
mass movement involving everyone who is prepared to fight to save the planet on
a progressive basis, including environmental movements, indigenous movements,
peasant movements, farmers movement as well as trade unions and progressive
political parties.
It must demand that
the big polluters pay for the damage they have done. This means heavily taxing
fossil fuels in order to both cut emissions and to ensure that the polluters
fund the transition to renewables as a part of an exit strategy from fossil
fuel that redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor and is capable of
commanding popular support.
Such an
approach must be the cornerstone of ecosocialism and an ecosocialist strategy
designed to save the planet from ecological destruction and create a
post-capitalist, ecologically sustainable, society for the future.
Alan Thornett author of Facing the
Apocalypse Resistance Books
2019 ISBN-10 : 0902869914 website
https://www.ecosocialistdiscussion.com/
’THE ANTI-DEMOCRATIC ANTI-BOYCOTT BILL
- AN OVERVIEW’ Annie
Neligan with Greens for Palestine.
Democracy is slippery
at the best of times but is now slithering away at gathering speed. Recently,
Israelis have been protesting the authoritarian moves of an extremist
government, many of them at last realising that you can’t run both a democracy
and an occupation. Here in the UK, the government are demonstrating that you
can’t run a democracy while supporting as ‘one of our closest friends and
allies’ a government that is based on apartheid and an illegal and punitive
occupation.
How are they doing this? Look no further
than the ‘Economic Decisions
of Public Bodies (Overseas Matters) Bill, more sensibly known as the
Anti-Boycott Bill, that is on its way through parliament. This bill will
take away our rights as council electors, local authority and university
pensioners, students, local councillors, to choose where we save and where we
spend our money. There is a ‘gagging clause’ which forbids local councillors or
university decision makers from even stating that they would support BDS
activism were it legally permissible.
The government plans to
make illegal any boycott by a public body that conflicts with their foreign
policy. Since 2005 Palestinian civil organisations, distressed by international
governments’ indifference and the resort to violence by desperate activists,
have called for international support in a programme of boycott, divestment and
sanctions. Since 2014 the Green
Party of England and Wales has explicitly supported the BDS movement.
There has been a
steadily growing response. Procurement and investment decisions by UK local authorities
and universities have pressured huge companies such as Veolia and G4S to
withdraw from operations in or impacting the West Bank. In the last couple of
years, three Scottish council pensions funds, Lothian, Falkirk and Tayside,
have divested from an Israeli bank operating in the illegal settlements. They
present the decisions as fiduciary rather than humanitarian but are clearly
responding to community pressure. Unison has supported the choices all the way.
Local authorities are
particularly well placed to exert pressure: as well as £4.4 billion, invested
in complicit organisations. They are
likely to have contracts with companies heavily involved in the Israeli project,
such as Hewlitt Packard with
surveillance, JCB with demolitions. Barclays and HSBC have investments in arms
industries.
Elsewhere in Europe,
councils have been bolder. In 2021/3 Norway’s largest pension fund withdrew
investment from 16 companies with links to Israeli settlements, citing
humanitarian concerns; Oslo and other city and county councils banned the use
of settler goods and services; Barcelona cut off links with Israel in response
to popular demand.
But the mobilisation against the BDS movement has been
relentless. Israel has set up a unit specifically to combat the BDS movement
internationally: its greatest success has been to brand support for Palestinian
rights as anti-Semitic. Let’s be clear: the demands of the BDS movement are
directed at the Israeli state, a political entity, and the myriad of global
companies that support it, not in any way at Jews. Meanwhile the UK government
has been unswerving in its support for the colonial settler Israeli regime,
licensing the export of weapons used in assaults on Gaza, engaged in joint arms
manufacturing concerns such as Elbit, proudly promoting companies complicit in
the destruction of Palestinian lives, homes and livelihoods.
This bill proposes to
ban any choices that conflict with foreign policy, so those pressing for
sanctions on Saudi Arabia for its war crimes in Yemen, China for its repression
of the Uigur people, are rightly concerned. But this bill is directed above all
at ensuring Israel can continue its
activities with impunity. It has a clause specifically protecting
Israel, the Occupied Territories and the occupied Golan Heights from ever being
the target of a boycott campaign, short of another change in
the law. It links the bill with combating
antisemitism, dangerously linking attitudes to Israel with attitudes to Jews,
dangerous to the real fight against anti-Semitism.
There is the wider picture, the effect on
Palestinian hopes for some sort of democracy for themselves. As the assaults by settlers and army, the
military annexations and curfews, the murder of young activists and anyone who
happens to be nearby, relentlessly increase, let’s take action in their
support.
Caroline
Lucas tweeted in response to the bill: Staggering new
anti-boycott Bill proposed by Gove – in effect banning public bodies from
boycotting those who abuse human rights or the planet. Yet another utterly
anti-democratic clampdown we’ve come to expect from the government. This Bill
should be nowhere near the statute book.
What can we do, as Green party
members, to keep it off the statue book? We can Follow the campaign against the
bill at https://righttoboycott.org.uk/
Contact Green Party elected representatives everywhere from
your local council to the House of Lords urging them to oppose the Anti-Boycott
Bill energetically.
Lobby our councillors to get involved in council-wide
opposition to the bill.
Look up how our MP voted on the bill which passed its
second reading in July this year at https://www.theyworkforyou.com/debates/?id=2023-07-03b.586.0&s=economic+decisions+of+public+bodies+votes#g661.0
If they were one of the 69 who voted against, congratulate
and encourage them. If they voted for lobby them to read the wise words of
their colleague Blunt at https://www.blunt4reigate.com/news/anti-boycott-bill-contradicts-conservative-and-british-values. If they abstained or were
absent (most Labour MPs) urge them to oppose the third reading.
Find out what complicit companies your local authority
deals with on the PSC data base at https://lgpsdivest.org/lgps-investments/. Lobby your local council to
take action to withdraw from such association on humanitarian grounds.
Vote for the motion at Green Party conference, October
2023, to commit the Green Party to action in opposing the bill.
For copies of a Greens for Palestine short briefing against
the Bill and/or a copy of a longer explanatory document and why the Green Party
is committed to supporting the BDS movement, email your request to annieneligan@cooptel.net.
INTERNATIONAL RAIL FREIGHT AND THE
BENEFIT TO OUR SOCIETY AND ITS PEOPLE.
Beccy Sawbridge Equalities
Officer for Unite Community-Kent and Dover Town Councillor for the Green Party
As an active delegate to South East Kent Trades Council, I consider
myself blessed to share knowledge on the subject of transport with a wide
number of Trade Union delegates including others from Unite who are very active
on local and national issues.
The RMT offices where we meet each month in Dover is on Snargate
Street which carries the bulk of lorries along the M20 route to and from the
Eastern Docks and is subject to the infamous ‘Dover TAP’ and ‘Operation Brock’
that regularly causes huge tailbacks and in recent decades have become a
regular blight on our town.
A very green solution to the issue is of course more road to rail
transportation of goods and begs a number of questions as to why a better
transport system is not used for our area despite the mumblings of every
stakeholder on the subject.
Our South East Kent Trade Union Council is committed to contributing
to the development of nternational rail freight to improve our society and
encourage a transport model which brings environmental, economic and social
justice to everyone. To this end our research and work as active trade
unionists in recent years has concluded that:
There
needs to be a change to facilitate a Green future with a modal shift...
It is also the conclusion of a recent
European Environmental Agency report, so we must ask...
•
Why is the only direct rail route to the
continent not fully exploited?
•
Why is the UK Strategic Freight network not fully
connected to the European Rail Freight network?
•
Why is it that all regions of the UK* including
the Northen region cannot benefit from the viable direct rail route to the continent?
*Fast and efficient Rail Freight from the
North of England & Scotland to the European Union will significantly
enhance the competitiveness and access to market of the UK industry, thus
levelling up the benefits of the combined transport to the Northen UK regions.
*
In recent years there have been numerous grand ideas and promises to
connect the UK rail freight market to the European market, to allow efficient
access to the EU market for the North, and tackle congestion for the South.
So,
what is the problem and why has the road use got progressively worse between
Dover and London?
The answer is that The Channel Tunnel Rail Freight Route linking the
Channel tunnel to London North (Wembley), is not able to accommodate
continental gauge trains and lower decks wagons must be used. The costly and
inefficient wagons reduce by a ¼ the numbers of containers carried on each
train.
Governments and independent studies conclude that developing the
loading gauge to the W12 standard is the solution to see strong growth of
traffic… A solution that will see Continental trains reaching the North of
London and up to the Northern regions of the UK.
This means that our government is unable to seize the opportunity to
enhance an already built route meaning the formidable ‘Trade Belt’ linking our
Northen regions to the rest of the continent is broken. It means that the only
direct rail route to the continent is sacrificed due to a lack of investment
between Folkestone and London North (Wembley).
A ‘modal shift’ would mean, less energy consumption, less
environmental impact, less dangerous particles, less death by pollutions and
accidents, less congestion on motorways, less ‘driver shortages’ impact and
less external cost to our Society.
All the regions of the UK, including the North will benefit from
developing a fast and reliable transport system, levelling up and transforming
our economy, creating good jobs and increasing revenues to our society. It is
of course a ‘No Brainer’ that would actively contribute to a viable and healthy
supply chain safeguarding our imports/exports trade and would be key to trying
to keep price under control within our society which is spiralling into the
realm of a cruel and uncontrolled cost of living crisis.
The
research on developing the corridor can easily be seen as really good value for
money but continues to be mothballed by our governments.
Currently a little bit less than 60% of total of UK-EU trade is on the
short straits, meaning around £264bn of trade and millions of trucks. It must
also be understood that 88% of this massive trade is in the hands of foreign
companies. And of course, neither them, nor their drivers are paying tax in the
UK. These lorries are using our saturated roads and adding pollution to our
roads, yet a ‘modal shift’ would address the issue and bring British jobs to
the rail industry, the terminals in the UK, the warehouses and the last mile
delivery transport...All paying tax in the UK.
These environmental imperatives are a reality that will transform the
transport market and be a game changer for many lives with quick and
responsible action by our government. It is why, having lived in Dover for most
of my life and being a committed eco socialist, I and many others are
determined to see real progress happen on this issue rather than wait for
someone to seize this very lucrative political nettle.
•
Let’s
all trade unionist, organizations and political parties join together to make
it happen... Because we want to, because we can....
•
Let’s
make the change happen...We will hand-over a Green and Sustainable future to
the next generation... because we want to, because we can...
•
Let’s build a
Green and Social environment that will benefit a progressive Society….Because
we want to, because we can.
ON NEW MUNICIPALISM
Written by Dr Paul Overend
Across
the world there has been a growing interest in the possibilities of New
Municipalism in the 21st century, with a growing network of progressive ‘Fearless Cities’
(founded in Barcelona En Comú in 2017).
This
interest in New Municipalism emerges from reflections on how the city can
evolve from being a place of protest and resistance against neoliberal
capitalism, as was seen in the ‘Occupy’
movement that followed the 2007-8 economic crash, to
develop greater self organization and resilience to market vulnerabilities.
(See David Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution
(2012); Steve Rushton
(Ed), Rebel Cities: Radical Municipalism
(2018).) Informed and influenced by the work of a range of political and social
theorists from Peter Kropotkin (Mutual Aid, 1902) to Murray Bookchin (Libertarian Municipalism,
1991), New Municipalism explores feminising politics, participatory democracy
and participatory budgeting, while incorporating other progressive concerns, such as employment practices and
environmentalism.
In
the UK there has been a desire to shift power from an overly-centralised state.
In 1997, the UK government signed the, European Charter of Local Self Government
(adopted by the Council of Europe in 1985, and in force from 1988) and the Local
Government Act 2000 gave powers to local authorities to promote
economic, social and environmental well-being within their boundaries, while
extending the possibility of locally elected mayors. In Scotland, Green MSP
Andy Wightman's 2014 report ‘Renewing Local Democracy’
explored revitalising local government in Scotland. And in 2022, a Labour
Commission on the UK Future, chaired by Gordon Brown, produced a report ‘A New Britain: Renewing our Democracy and
Rebuilding our Economy’ which commends
further devolution in the UK (among other reforms, such as the House of Lords)
incorporating a democratic principal of subsidiarity. If adopted by the next
government, this will offer further opportunities for local politics.
Municipal
socialism is not new in the UK: It was variously seen in the Sheffield City
Council led by David Blunkett in the 1980s, and the Greater London Council
(GLC). (The treasurer of the GLC at one time was John McDonnell, later the
Labour shadow chancellor of Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour). New Municipalism
differs, in seeking greater democratic participation, for example, but with a
wider range of community ownership explored, though not excluding in-house
Council ownership.
A
good example of what can be achieved can be seen from the so called ‘Preston
Model’ of
Community Wealth Building. (See Matthew Brown and Rhian E. Jones, Paint Your Town Red’ (2021) and https://www.preston.gov.uk/communitywealthbuilding)
Preston council draws on work on Community Wealth Building by The Centre for Local Economic Strategies
(CLES). Community Wealth Building involves
ideas of local and progressive procurement policies, including fair employment,
support of co-operatives and social enterprises, and insourcing (with council
ownership), for example, initially led by existing local Anchor Institutions’ procurement
policies. The success in reinvesting into the local economy and improving
employment opportunities and pay, and bringing about social benefits, shows
what can be done by refiguring the local economy, rather than being dependent on
inward investment, by economically ‘extractive’ companies.
Wales and Scotland have incorporated some ideas of community wealth building in
national politics. And Jamie Driscoll, for example, seeks to incorporate such a
model for his mayoral candidacy manifesto.
The
renewal of local government and increasing subsidiarity give cause for hope for
a Green Left municipalist movement renewing politics and local economics from
the grass roots. It is likely that the current Parliamentary Labour Party will
still seek to retain centralised party control (so Jamie Driscoll has been
blocked from being the Labour mayoral candidate, for example). The Green Party has been more
successful in local politics, with the election of councillors more likely than
the election of MPs, given the given current FPTP electoral system. But New
Municipalism works by building consensual politics across the political
parties, and with local institutions and social enterprises, and the local
public and community interest groups. The Green Party might be well placed to
leaverage political opinion in municipal councils and communities, working with
other seeking to advance a green left approach.
“DON’T COMPROMISE YOUR SELF. YOU ARE
ALL THAT YOU’VE GOT.”
ALAN WHEATLEY
outlines why he prefers UBI to ‘Universal Credit’ (sic)
Despite my perseverance as a disabled jobseeker
before claiming Employment Support Allowance (ESA) in 2009, for which I had to
go through Tribunal, my sum total of waged employment between November 1977 and
March 2009 was 19 months, the last 11 months of which were so part-time that I
submitted weekly records of work shifts and earnings. Despite that, Jobseekers
Allowance (JSA) wrongly claimed for several months that I was earning above the
JSA earnings threshold.
In all that time, a propaganda war led to the
tightening of thumb-screws on claimants of working age state benefits, driving
down bargaining power.
I am far more free to ‘do my own thing’ as a
State Pensioner than I ever could as a claimant of ever-more conditional and
means-tested ‘working age’ benefits from the Department for Work &
Pensions. Thus I am all the more dedicated to highlighting the under-reported
perils of means-tested and highly conditional ‘working age’ benefits systems
while economist Professor Guy Standing furthers research and development of
Universal Basic Income (UBI) systems with Welsh government, etc.
Thus in my new life episode on the most basic of
State Pensions, I am less “an over-stayer on Jobseekers Allowance,” decades
long volunteer, serially unsuccessful job applicant and 2009-to-2012 multiply
retested claimant of Employment Support Allowance for a lifelong condition,
more a campaigning content provider for articles based largely on my experience
and insight.
My ‘triple locked’ basic State Pension is far
more generous than JSA ever was, and I believe the more we promote the idea of
UBI and the perils of Universal Credit [sic], the more supportive would be the
basic UBI level.
Though Social
Science modules occupied most of my 1994-to-1997 period as a full time mature
undergraduate, perhaps the most illuminating module was a 1994 module ‘Law
& The Music Market’ that dealt a lot with bargaining power in contract law,
and ‘consideration’ as a legal term in that. ‘Consideration’ and bargaining
power are vital. As an example, the Unemployed Benefits recipient status of
bands such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood accounted for minuscule bargaining
power at the time that they were plucked from the dole queue into exploitative
contracts that were later revoked via courts of law.
While a
succession of neoliberal governments has since tweaked the conditionality and
means-testing of the benefits system to maximise the exploitation of a ‘reserve
army of labour’ into the furthering of the ‘gig economy’, around 2014 a
Haringey Green Party member whose savings fell within the Jobseekers Allowance
savings limits for eligibility eschewed Department for Work & Pensions
help/hindrance and got a new post probably quicker than it takes for many new
‘Universal Credit’ (UC) claimants’ first UC payment to arrive.
In the time
that it takes for a first UC payment to arrive, UC claimants are nonetheless
sanctions fodder within a commitment in which they have ever decreasing
bargaining power.
Against that backdrop, I point out that the
highly conditional terms of UC quash self-determination, whereas the
flexibility of an unconditional UBI goes a long way to putting the claimant ‘in
the driving seat’. Thus UBI would favour the prospects for jobseekers applying
management consultant Dorothy Leeds’ ‘Secrets of Successful Interviews:
Tactics, Tips & Strategies for Getting the Job You Really Want’ advice such
as, “Only work with people you really trust,” and “Become a questioning
expert.”
Now that a Secretary of State for Work &
Pensions implements changes by Statutory Instrument that bypasses democratic
scrutiny, a claimant requires financial reserves to make the most out of books
such as the now out-of-print Dorothy Leeds book and the “each mind is
different” perspective of ‘Do Who You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You
Through the Secrets of Personality Type’ by Paul D Tieger, Barbara Barron and
Kelly Tieger (Little Bear Books).
I close with transcript of a letter of mine
recently sent to Morning Star on September 1:
My personal support for the principle of
Universal Basic Income is derived from decades of long-term dependency as a
person with an invisible disability, upon rigidly conditional and means-tested
state benefits. The thumbscrews of Unemployment Benefit morphed into worse
thumbscrews under Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) and on into those of sanctions-led
‘Universal Credit’ [sic] - the Fagship (no, not ‘flagship’) of a neoliberal
state benefit system.
As examples,
for decades now, claimants of means-tested ‘working age’ benefits have been
obliged to: seek permission from the Jobcentre before going on holiday; remain
in contact with a Jobcentre near their place of stay; commit to maintaining
jobsearch activity while away; and have any holiday ‘freebies’ at hosts’
expense deducted from benefits income for the vacation period.
And when
Unemployment Benefit morphed into JSA, anyone leaving an academic Credit
Accumulation & Transfer-based modular degree course was obliged to renounce
the possibility of ever returning to university in order to complete their
degree course before they would ever see a penny of JSA and related Housing
Benefit.
Now, of course, the progressive tightening of
bargaining-power-stripping thumbscrews is deified in Universal Credit
legislation with its treatment of highly skilled people in one field as
sanctions-driven receptacles for whatever rubbishy jobs government wants to
fill.
Filed under ‘economy’, Cath Wilcox’ ‘One day,
there will be no need for money at all’ (Letters, September 1) ignores all
those conditionality thumbscrews and ends with the dismissive and – I would
argue – misleading statement: “A one-size-fits all universal basic income is
snake oil.”
Professor Guy Standing, an author of books upon
precarity and socio-economic polarisation, acknowledges that Universal Basic
Income should be no ‘one size fits all’ solution, and that there should be
additional, equity-enhancing government interventions. We need to open
up debate, not shut it down.
Footnote 1:
Quotation attributed to Janis Joplin
Vaccines – The new division
between Haves and Have Nots by Joseph
Healy
Lord Bethell, former health minister
in Johnson’s government has recently admitted that the pandemic was ignored by
the government when it appeared in 2020. The same might be said of the response
now when experts are predicting a major Covid wave by early October. The only exception to that has been in the
field of vaccines and that has been very limited.
The government’s policy on vaccines
after Freedom Day in July 2021 was described as “Vaccines Only” rather than the
more effective “Vaccines Plus” which Independent Sage and others called for.
This was a policy which would rely entirely on vaccination to ward off
hospitalisation and death from Covid, while ignoring all other forms of
mitigation, such as ventilation and mask wearing. It was already criticised at
the time as being too dependent on the virus not mutating and also being based
on the health policy around flu, a virus which was seasonal and had an annual
vaccination, rather than on a clinically based assessment of a very different
pathogen with a much higher impact. It is well known that vaccinations wane and
studies have shown that the Covid vaccine wanes considerably within six months,
leaving the person much more open to both breakthrough infections and illness.
This has proved to be even more important with the studies which show that
there is a 10% risk of developing Long Covid, a condition for which there is no
cure, after each infection.
Last autumn the government decided to offer the autumn booster shot, a bivalent vaccine, to all those over 50, as well as those with compromised immune systems. However, unlike earlier offers there were important exceptions, such as the carers and partners of elderly or clinically extremely vulnerable people who were not offered the shot. Now the JCVI, which advises the government on vaccines, has decided to offer the booster only to those over 65, clinically extremely vulnerable, those who live them and frontline health and social care staff. The large cohort of people over 50 and those under that age, including children, will be left unprotected. For many of these younger people under 50 it will have been over a year since they were vaccinated, and the vaccine will have waned. This will leave much of the population unprotected going into winter and with a new variant on the loose. Schools are super spreader factories and studies have shown that having a child in the house is a major vector of infection and especially with multigenerational households (particularly prevalent among BAME groups), yet no vaccines are offered to children and Long Covid rates defined by workplaces are highest among teachers and teaching assistants.
The UK and Sweden (which is the
eugenicist poster boy of the anti vaxxer movement and the Daily Telegraph) are
outliers in Europe in only offering the booster to over 65s. Ireland is
offering it to all over 50s and France and the US are offering it to all
citizens. The impact of only offering it to over 65s and the extremely
clinically vulnerable (and this category excludes many groups such as those
with suffering from asthma) means that the vast majority of the population are
facing into an autumn and winter season with continuing waves of the virus
essentially unprotected as previous vaccination will have waned. This was never
the deal when the policy of “living with the virus” was first announced.
Furthermore, having abolished the ONS
Covid Survey, which was a world class monitoring system for the virus and also
not using the relatively cheap monitoring of wastewater (only used in Scotland)
we are, as many scientists have said, flying blind. This is not the time to
limit vaccinations or to withdraw them altogether for some. There has been talk
of selling Covid vaccines privately, but the costs of doses are high, Pfizer’s
current vaccine costs 100 dollars per shot. The vaccines should not become another
part of Big Pharma’s ripping off of the vulnerable when huge amounts of state
funding went towards developing these vaccines. They should be available to all
and if sold by pharmacies, just as the flu vaccine is, should not cost more
than the flu jab.
We are entering into a new period of
the virus, with the new sub variant Pirola quickly spreading. Many have not
even taken the booster which has been offered and we must do all we can to
encourage take up, especially among the most vulnerable. Vaccination remains an
essential tool in the far from finished war against Covid.
https://anticapitalistresistance.org/vaccines-the-new-division-between-haves-and-have-nots/
Weary old pillock drags laden shopping
trolley Up suburban hillock. Trolley contains two pairs of pears, Four pears, to be exact, recently
purchased, packed And cellophane wrapped in a nice
little tray, Which will be thrown away today; After being shipped by muti-national
fruit traffickers, To Dollis Hill from far South Africa. But the shopping trolley is not the
only place Where there are pears. they are all
around The plodding pillock’s feet, each step
must be Carefully and precisely placed, As pavement pears are lying there on
the ground, Rotting and rotten, half-eaten and
brown. The tree that they fell from seems
forgotten by its owners, Or maybe they have never known About the fruit that it has grown. So, the pavement pears are
unharvested, and to humans, waste; Whilst rats, birds wasps, and flies Are wise enough to eat and taste. On a world that starts to fry Transporting pears thousands of miles
seems unwise, While those homegrown, just decompose. |
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