Tragedy or Farce

Among many quotable moments from the writings of Karl Marx, one in particular came to mind recently as I was thinking about the upcoming Labour leadership election. In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte Marx remarks that history has a habit of repeating itself “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”

Whilst searching for a quote in a book called ‘The Far Left in British Politics’ Marx’s words occurred to me. It was this Introductory passage that struck me as a pretty neat summary of what was happening in 2019. Change some of the names and history does appear to have repeated itself.

“When Labour entered the 1983 election under the leadership of Michael Foot most leftists believed that it was a better organisation with a better programme than ever before. Moreover, the Thatcher government had created mass unemployment, mass poverty, a housing shortage, a war, urban riots, a large reduction in manufacturing industry and much else besides: the misery factor could not have been higher. But the Tories remained in power and Labour registered its worst result in 50 years.” (John Callaghan, 1987, The Far Left In British Politics: xii-xiii)

The manifesto was lampooned, by Labour MP Gerald Kaufman as “the longest suicide note in history”. Fast forward to 2020 and Labour right wingers such as Chris Bryant could not wait to declare the election result the "worst night for Labour since 1935". As in 1983 the party has been plunged into a bitter, albeit at this stage a polite, civil war. There is clearly more at stake than just ‘who’ leads but questions of ‘how’ they lead and what exactly they will be leading are to the fore.

Let’s go back to 1983 to see if there are any clues as to what will happen next. By the time the dust had settled on the election Michael Foot had resigned and Labour’s right were determined to ditch a manifesto they never fully supported in the first place. The left believed that the manifesto was fine and were determined to defend its central socialist values. The right were determined to shift the party in the direction of the electorate in order, so they believed, to make it more electable.

The man to take the party forward to electoral success was the centre-left candidate Neil Kinnock who defeated the left’s Eric Heffer and right-wingers Roy Hattersley, and Peter Shore in the leadership election taking 71% of the votes (though remember there was no one member one vote at the time), to become the leader tasked with making Labour electable. Writing some time later, one of the architects of New Labour Peter Mandelson described Kinnock as a warrior battling his own side.

“In 1983, the newly elected leader Neil Kinnock, a Tribunite left-winger himself, grasped the gravity of the situation. He was utterly uncompromising in his determination to confront the hard left. He tirelessly spelled out how the party had to reconnect with its voting base and did not hesitate to identify the policies that needed changing..” (The Independent, 16/12/19)

So successful was Kinnock in his relentless campaign for respectability that he led Labour to two successive Labour defeats: 1987 and 1992. In 1987 Kinnock secured 10 million votes (equivalent to Jeremy Corbyn in 2019] and in 1992, an election he was widely expected to win Kinnock secured 13.5 million votes (roughly equivalent to Jeremy Corbyn’s 2017 total).

As far as I am aware neither Michael Foot nor Neil Kinnock had to contend with a high profile figure from a previous Labour government declaring that they were working every day for their downfall. But, Mandelson’s verdict is interesting more for what he omits to say than what he does:

“He may have lost two general elections but, unlike our experience under Jeremy Corbyn, he took the party forwards, building a broad-based electoral coalition and gathering more votes at each stage of the journey, and he did so precisely because the public witnessed his commitment to defeating a hard left whose instincts and priorities were at odds with their own.”

Mandelson salivates over Kinnock’s decision to ditch most of the 1983 manifesto and to expel the Militant Tendency deliberately misrepresenting them at Labour Party conference. In right-wing Labour history Militant are simply a bogeyman summoned to insult Momentum, an organisation set up to support Jeremy Corbyn which could not be further from Militant. 

Unlike Momentum the Militant Tendency were a Trotskyist entryist group who, coincidentally, had mass support in Liverpool and also managed to elect two of their members – Terry Fields and Dave Nellist – to parliament in the 1983 election which saw even a stalwart of the left in Tony Benn put to the electoral sword. They also were the controlling group on Liverpool City Council and refused to bow before Conservative cuts setting an illegal budget and bringing themselves into direct conflict with the government. The Labour Party, of course, refused to support them.

But, Mandelson also conveniently forgets that between 1983 and 1987 was the epoch changing miners strike. Kinnock’s support for the miners was at best lacklustre and the personal animosity the Labour leadership felt for Arthur Scargill meant that they failed to see the significance of this battle.  If he were capable of irony that would explain Mandelson’s claim that it was Kinnock’s union roots that were behind his leadership.

“Throughout, Kinnock had an indispensable force to draw on: the trade unions which had founded the party and desperately wanted to see it elected again for the sake of the working people whose interests they sought to advance.”

It takes a particular kind of mendacity to make such a claim when the Labour leadership contributed to the biggest working class defeat since 1926.

If Kinnock had the support of the unions, it was not the millions of members, many of whom joined the miners on picket lines, but a bureaucracy that refused to call secondary action, and these in the days before such things were illegal. Kinnock and his advisers were determined to make the Labour Party “electable”, and if that meant abandoning striking miners then so be it. Everything was focussed on a strategy of winning over a hostile press who they believed held the balance of power. As James Thomas in his book ‘Popular Newspapers, the Labour Party and British Politics’ notes following the 1983 election the Labour establishment were intent on keeping the press onside.

“Such a strategy may have reduced some of the worst excesses of the tabloids, but it made no difference to their fundamental hostility…Labour’s strategy also allowed the press to supplement their ‘You can’t trust Kinnock’ theme as they portrayed the Labour leader as a man protected by his minders due to his own incompetence, afraid and unable to answer questions from the public.” (Thomas, 2005)

Cosying up to the press only led to the infamous front pages of The Sun, the most hostile of the anti-Labour papers. The day of the election in April 1992, an election which polling indicated Labour were about to win, The Sun’s front page featured a picture of Kinnock inside a lightbulb with most of the page taken up with the headline ‘If Kinnock wins today will the last person to leave Britain please turn out the lights’. The following day the paper followed this up with their infamous headline ‘It’s The Sun Wot Won It’. Alistair Campbell, then a journalist in Fleet Street says:

“While I never fully subscribed to the theory that the Tory press won the election they played a part. They ensured that Kinnock was rarely seen as he is, but through a prism of hostility which made him defensive, his colleagues concerned, and his opponents cheerful.” (Thomas, 2005)

Unlike somebody genuinely on the left, think Jeremy Corbyn, Tony Benn or Arthur Scargill, Kinnock had feted the press and had what he thought were good relations with them. Indeed, in the leadership election of 1988 the press were on his side against Tony Benn (by then back in the Commons following his Chesterfield by-election victory). Kinnock and his wife Glenys, counted journalists as, if not quite friends, close associates. They were shocked, therefore, when those ‘friends’ turned on them.

The parallels today are relatively clear. For Neil Kinnock think Keir Starmer. Kinnock came to power espousing his ‘sensible’ but still socialist credentials. Keir Starmer has pitched himself as a continuity candidate. He gave a wide ranging interview with the centrist house paper The Guardian before the leadership process opened. But, in appealing for “unity” he talked of Labour as a broad church and appealed to both Momentum (which has backed Rebecca Long-Bailey) and “people who might self-identify as Blairites.” 

Of course, any party should be united. But, what the centrists ignore is that when the left were in the ascendancy they, especially those in the PLP believed not in unity but in undermining the party leadership using every trick they could. Starmer, as Shadow Brexit Secretary, was instrumental in shifting the party’s pro-Brexit policy to a remain position. 

Only the delusional do not see that when 54 of the 60 seats were in leave areas that this policy was instrumental in the election loss. Tom Peck, of The Independent, a paper that more than any other did its best to undermine Jeremy Corbyn and was unequivocally supportive of the so-called ‘people’s vote’ campaign, writes, following Jess Phillips, that Labour “needs to understand how it came to be in the unimaginably woeful state it is in. It needs to work out how it managed to become repellent to northern working-class voters and the lives they lead. (It could start by rewatching the mad Palestinian flag-waving sessions from its own conference).” 

It was not a handful of Palestine flags that were repellent to the leave supporting working class voters but rather the more incessant background of EU flags reminding them that the Party did not trust them to make decisions. And, is Labour actually in a woeful state? It attracted 10 million voters, it pushed the anti-austerity agenda forcing the Tories to follow them and it has a membership of over 500,000, numbers Blair could only dream of achieving.

Starmer is the favourite in the leadership race. According to Guardian columnist Zoe Williams Keir Starmer is best placed to be leader because: “He is a highly recognisable figure to Labour activists, going back to the 1980’s: anti-militant but also anti-triangulation, socialist but not purist, the antithesis of the career politician..” (21/01/2020)

Well, I have been active in the Labour movement since 1983, and was particularly active during the 80’s. I can honestly say that until Starmer emerged as Shadow Brexit Secretary he was completely unknown to me. Of course, perhaps, I was not as active as Zoe Williams, who was 16 at the end of the 80’s, who has possibly followed his career (he was Director of Public Prosecutions during the Blair years) with interest. As for being the antithesis of the career politician, as a barrister he is, in my view, far too close to the average career politician for comfort.

I am not about to make a prediction about who will win the leadership. I learned my lesson after predicting a hung parliament in December. But, I will say this. Very often professional (dare I say career) politicians say whatever is necessary to achieve their goal. Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair both presented themselves as of the left when it suited them. Both, as it turned out, were very quick to distance themselves from the left when that suited them. Does Keir Starmer, or Rebecca Long-Bailey for that matter, fit this profile?

After 1983, the appeal was to the so-called “radical centre”. This turned out to be a code for pulling the party rightwards in the hope that Labour supporters who had deserted the cause would come back. Rather than engage in argument and discussion with them, it was taken for granted that their views were fixed and therefore it would be necessary for the party to change to attract them. Of course, this failed. The problem was that it was not particular policies that lost the election (either in 1983, 1987, 1992 or 2019) but rather the fact that Labour was the one proposing them.

According to the revisionist history favoured by the right, what got in the way in the 80’s were what were termed the ‘hard left’ who were determined to not only take on the Tories but to develop policies that were decidedly socialist in their orientation. The answer to that conundrum was to expel members who were out of step with the “modernisers”. It started with Militant, but came to include many who were simply too Marxist for the leaderships liking. For many of us, the miners strike was a watershed in which the Labour Party simply seemed like an irrelevance. For others, it was the Iraq War. For the new generation, it may be the climate emergency, or austerity or the Iran War (should it develop).

Labour is currently a mass members party in which the members are treated as a stage army to support the careerist politicians who are embedded in Westminster, and the Welsh Senedd. There are few left in Holyrood. Many people on the left will stay in the party regardless of who wins. Those on the left will live on the hope of promises of more democracy which any leader will find hard to deliver. For many more, the leadership election could herald the end of the Corbyn project that so many people joined to support. The election of Keir Starmer as leader (or possibly Lisa Nandy emerging as the media darling now that Jess has come face to face with her own unpopularity) would mark a decisive break with Corbynism. 

Rebecca Long-Bailey, should she win, does not strike me as Corbyn Mark 2. She does not have the history of activism or principled opposition to a variety of causes. Rather she too feels like a career politician who has successfully ridden the wave of Corbynism to emerge as his successor. She has my support primarily because she is the only candidate who seems likely to be influenced by the left and the least likely to rush to distance herself from a manifesto she was instrumental in creating.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire, a treatise on the French counter-revolution of 1851, Marx remarks that: “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.” Nowhere is this more true than the selective reading of the 1980’s by the right of the Labour Party who have concocted a tale of the party burdened by left-wing infiltrators with no intention of winning. Tom Peck in his thoroughly depressing piece of propaganda masked as journalism makes this observation:

“Jeremy Corbyn’s opinions and those who share them are of no value whatsoever to the Labour Party. They are the fast lane to oblivion. This is as true in 1983, as it was in 2019… The best hope for this next short era – the party’s next self-inflicted spell in the wilderness – is that it finds a kind of Kinnock of the hour.”

This is the advice from the smug, self-satisfied liberal elite that were more than partly responsible for the defeat in 2019. Essentially, lets rerun 1983 but in a version that we have created in which ditching socialism was the only way to save a socialist party. But, at least the right have a memory, if a somewhat sketchy one. The left seem to be able to ignore both the memories and the lessons of our own past and in so doing we are destined to repeat over and again the mistakes of the past. Whether as tragedy or farce only time will tell.

Vive la Francais

On the 5^th December 2019 over one million workers in France began a General Strike. You could have been forgiven for failing to notice as the entire British media were obsessed with what time, if at all, Jeremy Corbyn listened to the Queen’s Christmas message, following his interview with Kay Burley.

Never mind though, because the British press were bound to catch up on the 6^th December. To be fair it was on the front pages of the Guardian and Telegraph, but not in the prominent position you might expect.

By 18^th December the “left leaning” Guardian was reporting ‘impartially’ that the strike had “damaged businesses, frustrated commuters and cast a shadow over holiday plans.” It is probably worth reminding ourselves that the Guardian was an enthusiastic supporter of President Macron.

In November 2017 shortly after his unexpected electoral victory the Guardian printed a eulogistic article by Adam Plowright in which he said:

“Macron is the most vivid example yet of a modern-day political disruptor. Not only did he create a victorious party from scratch in record time, he also won with a progressive centrist manifesto at a time of surging rightwing nationalism.”

The question for “centrist” loving journalists was whether Britain could find their own Macron. 

The nationwide strikes in France were called in response to Macron’s proposal to increase the pension age from 62 to 64, and to reduce the benefits received. The BBC gave a ‘helpful’ guide to the action on the day the strikes began. It makes interesting reading.

The piece starts factually enough:

“unions representing millions of staff in both the public and private sectors are unhappy about a plan to overhaul the country's pension system, which they say will force people to work longer or face reduced payouts when they retire.

One opinion poll put public support for the latest strike action at 69%, with backing strongest among 18-34 year-olds.”

But the BBC then goes on to justify why the ‘reforms’ are necessary. It states that,  “France currently has a complex system” of pensions which Macron wants to unify. But the reason is never given as saving money though the fact that “the country's pension deficit could be as high as €17.2bn ($19bn; £14.5bn) by 2025,” is cited.

The BBC then explain: “Mr Macron, aware of France's ageing population, has said his universal pension plan would be fairer than the current system.” Interestingly no voice from the unions is given to balance this view. Rather, we are told that the age of retirement in France, “remains one of the lowest among the OECD group of rich nations”.

The BBC, and especially its senior journalists, spend a great deal of effort in telling us that they are impartial. But is language ever impartial? This paragraph starts by explaining that “Mr Macron has not suggested immediately increasing the age of retirement” but despite his reasonable proposals “unions fear it will mean having to work longer for a lower pension.”

Note, that we have been led into this by being told that pensions are too expensive and that French workers have one of the lowest retirement ages. Furthermore, the proposals (here called a ‘suggestion’) are not to take immediate effect, nevertheless unions “fear” the effects. It is difficult not to read into this that the unions are culpable of producing a fear without much in the way of evidence.

I have stated previously that the BBC’s bias is unconscious, although in some instances (Laura Kuenssberg and Alex Forsyth’s General Election utterances come to mind) it is hard to see as anything but deliberate. But, their reaction to being called out on their bias reveals either a delusional inability to accept criticism, or a genuine horror that anybody could believe that they are anything but model professionals.

I am, on the whole, still of the opinion that rather than being propagandists they are simply reinforcing the taken-for-granted assumptions of their class. This is why it is so laughable when Huw Edwards claims: “These critics imagine a world in which thousands of BBC journalists – of all backgrounds, nationalities, outlooks – work to a specific political agenda dictated by a few powerful individuals..” Perhaps some people imagine that to be the case, but most critics of the media see an organisational culture that has a set of assumptions that are widely shared.

As academic Fulker Hanusch has shown: “When asked about cultural influences in general, all journalists acknowledged that their particular cultural values shaped what they did in their job. In fact, it was extremely difficult, if not impossible, for them to separate their values from their work.” 

There is a widely read academic journal article by Mark Douze (2005) in which he asks the question “What is journalism?” and locates the answer in occupational ideology which he describes as “a system of beliefs characteristic of a particular group, including – but not limited to – the general process of the production of meanings and ideas (within that group).” Journalists are socialised into a way of thinking, although as many are ambitious to climb the career ladder they readily accept the dominant viewpoint. This leads to a situation whereby organisational culture becomes a “process over time, through which the sum of ideas and views – notably on social and political issues – of a particular group is shaped, but also as a process by which other ideas and views are excluded or marginalized.”

BBC journalists discuss the crisis of capitalism 

In plain terms this means that no puppet-master is required to tell journalists what to think, they would not last long in a news organisation if they believed anything else. Of course, there are always exceptions to this rule and depending on what and where they are reporting a certain degree of latitude can be allowed. On fundamental issues, however, such as strikes or socialism, the vast majority of journalists will agree with the dominant view. Hence, why you will never see a mainstream journalist explaining that the strikers really had no option but to take action against unreasonable employers.

To get a left wing perspective on the French strikes, or any issue for that matter, it is necessary to look elsewhere. For example on 27^th December Counterfire reported: “The excuse for the attack is that as the population gets older there won’t be enough money coming into the state-run pension fund. The real solution is to ask for higher contributions from employers, who have been showered with tax cuts for decades.” 

An alternative media does exist

 Meanwhile the Morning Star’s report of 8^th December gave some much needed context: “In corporate capital’s unceasing attack on workers, reform became the code word for a series of changes that supposedly needed to be made in order to guarantee the survival of workers’ benefits which the neoliberal states were continually eroding, the money from which was then ending up in the pockets of corporate board members.”

To a journalist on the BBC or Sky News, or The Guardian or Telegraph such views seem extreme and conspiratorial. The reality that the social system in which we live is capitalist is hardly disputed (though rarely explicitly stated), although the efficacy of this system versus any alternative is dismissed as fanciful. During our recent General Election so obsessed were our media with trivia, much of it designed to shame Jeremy Corbyn, that the idea that an election might be a good time to discuss the type of society we want to live in, never even warranted a mention. Strikes, as it happens, are very good opportunities to have those discussions. Picket lines are working class universities where ideas are debated and perfected. 

Strikes tend to be presented as a battle between government/employers and “the unions”. Invariably mainstream media present the employer side of the argument as reasonable and the union side as motivated by fear or greed. The stereotype of a striker is either an anarchistic radical hell bent on trouble or a dupe simply following orders. But, strikers should rightly be seen as heroic, prepared to make a personal sacrifice for their principles.

French website The Local interviewed some of the strikers in December. Forty two year old father of two Kamal told them: “"Every day we go on strike, we are putting ourselves in a precarious financial situation. But too bad, I'm making a sacrifice. We haven't experienced any insults while we've been striking. Everyone's involved, it's not just a strike for us.” Whilst RATP worker Okan said: "It’s really difficult. There will surely be less Christmas gifts under the tree this year. We’ll consume less.” Teacher Veronique said “It’s really hard, we’re losing a days' worth of salary every time we strike,” whilst her colleague Brigitte said: "Our pupils are very sympathetic, and it seems like their parents are too. At least with this strike the media has started telling the truth about the realities of being a teacher in France. Which is really hard.”

Whilst the French strikes are ostensibly about pension reform they are also about the political decisions taken by the Macron government. Most workers do not want to strike, they do not want to lose money, they do not want to put themselves into debt. But, what alternative is there? If governments and employers were reasonable, as the media try to convince us, then strikes would not be necessary. But, strikes are the expression of a conflict at the very heart of capitalism.

As The Marxist website points out: “Day and night, we are fed a torrential rain of lies and slanders. The proposed pension cuts are presented in the bosses’ media as the epitome of “fairness” and “social progress”, while the strike is painted as the work of a godless and lawless “privileged” layer of the people.” At the heart of this battle over ideas lies a conflict over resources. Bosses want workers to work long hours for low pay with few benefits, workers want shorter hours, more pay and benefits such as sick pay, holidays, meal breaks and pensions. When times are good the class with the purse strings is willing to concede to at least some of the workers demands. As The Marxist puts it: “The organic crisis of capitalism is pushing the French ruling class to attack all of the gains made by the workers through struggle.” And, it is not just France where the crisis is occurring or the concessions given to organised workers are being eroded. It is currently only in France, however, that millions of workers are actively fighting back.

1848 saw a wave of revolutions across Europe

We should not get too carried away, it would probably be a mistake to assume that the general strike in France is a prelude to some kind of workers revolution. Whilst it is certainly the case that the strikes will develop into a more generalised analysis for many of those involved, it is also the case that many strikers simply want to protect their pensions not bring down capitalism. As Lenin famously remarked in ‘What Is To Be Done?’: “The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness..” 

According to Lenin what was necessary to push workers further than mere economic reformism was a revolutionary party. The question of political representation is an important and pertinent one. But it is probably worth saying that in an era where trade union membership is in decline almost everywhere, trade union consciousness can be very radical indeed. Indeed, in an era where governments have made it more difficult to strike to see any strike taking place is a sign of resistance. To see a mass strike feels revolutionary.

For those of us watching from this side of the channel, still reeling from the election defeat, these French strikers offer us hope. Remember these strikes have occurred only a short time after the Socialist Party finished fifth in the Presidential election, in a period where the neo-fascist Front Nationale continues to rise and where the centrist Macron was heralded as a new type of politician. The liberal establishment can salivate over Macron for his neo-liberal ‘sensible’ policies, but the reality is that it is the same people who are expected to pay for years of economic mismanagement. And, in France, they have said enough is enough.

Will these strikes develop into a more coherent anti-capitalist movement? Well, in all honesty, it is unlikely that we are in 1848 territory. If there is a spectre haunting Europe currently it is the ever present one of capitalist crisis, exacerbated by the self-harming tendency of a social system that is systematically destroying the planet. That said, this wave of strikes and demonstrations give all of us who oppose austerity, and want to save our planet, hope. Hope that ordinary people can be the answer not part of the problem. Hope that even in opposition the labour movement (as opposed to just the Labour Party or its European counterparts) can stop a right wing government in its tracks. Hope that the size of your majority is not an indicator of the depth of your understanding or your support. Hope that the workers united can win.  

Greta Is Right

It would appear that there are some people out there who really don’t like Greta Thunberg. Her main crimes, in their view, are that she is young, female, Swedish and extremely smart. She is also right about the lamentable lack of governmental action to tackle the climate emergency.

Many of Ms Thunberg’s detractors are themselves in a state of denial about the dire consequences facing planet Earth if we do not take immediate action. As blogger Enrique Dans points out:

“Greta knows that all those promises by politicians and businessmen to decarbonize by 2050 are nonsense, and that in reality, what we do in 2050, when she will be 46 years old, will make no difference, because by then you will be lucky to be alive.” (Blog, 7/12/19)

The science behind the climate emergency is incontrovertible and the time for talking about what might happen has now passed. Sarah Gray, editor of American website ATTN, details a number of ways that our lives will be changed as the emergency develops. These include food shortages, water shortages, extreme weather, power disruptions, and the loss of natural habitat. (ATTN.com, 01/08/15)

These are not predictions based on worst case scenarios, they are based on scientific modelling of available data. For example, the Natural Resources Defence Council reports that 42% of bee colonies in the USA alone had collapsed in just one year. Whilst the loss of bees may not immediately strike you as devastating their effect on the food chain is immense. (Alexandra Zessu, 31/12/15)

Around one-third of everything you eat relies on bee pollination.  Climate change means that when bees come out of hibernation the flowers they rely on have already bloomed and died. That is bad news for the bees, but disastrous for us. The loss of bees could mean the loss of apples, cucumbers, broccoli, pumpkins, carrots, avocados, almonds, amongst other crops.

It would be nice to think that the scientific warnings were now being heeded. But, we were warned previously. As Extinction Rebellion point out in 1992, the Union of Concerned Scientists including the majority of living science Nobel laureates, penned the “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity”calling on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and warning that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.” (Extinction Rebellion website)

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) average surface temperatures on Earth rose 1.71 degrees Fahrenheit (0.95 degrees Celsius) between 1880 and 2016, and that change is accelerating with most of the warming occurring in the past 35 years. 

In 2017, 159 nations ratified the Paris Agreement to try to halt the warming at 2.7 degrees F (1.5 degrees C) above Earth's average temperature before the Industrial Age. Given industry's and transportation's reliance on fossil fuels, many studies say that agreement will be difficult to keep to. For example, a 2017 study in the journal Geophysical Research Letters suggests that Earth's climate will be 1.5 degrees higher as early as 2026. (Space website)

Greta Thunberg is right. Setting targets to be met in the future is a recipe to do nothing in the here and now. It is a way for the present cadre of politicians across the globe to offset the responsibility to future generations. It is the equivalent of taking out a massive loan and leaving it to your children to pay it off. 

In her speech to the United Nations in September she told the assembled leaders:

“You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words,”

She continued:

“The eyes of all future generations are upon you. And if you choose to fail us I say we will never forgive you. We will not let you get away with this. Right here, right now is where we draw the line.”

You can view the entire speech here, and if you haven’t already done so I propose that you do so.
https://youtu.be/KAJsdgTPJpU

Millions of young people across the globe have rallied to her call. But, young people, as Greta Thunberg knows very well, do not have the power to implement the policies needed to save the planet. That power lays with a political elite whom she rightly condemns as “immature”.

Turning down an award for her contribution to the environmental debate in October the young activist said “Politicians and the people in power” need to listen to the “current, best available science.” A task they seem reluctant to do despite offering reassuring words of action at various summits. Summits incidentally that most of them use private jets to attend.

It is not that politicians, or their advisers, do not understand the science. In most cases it is not that they disagree with it either, though some do. The problem is that they cannot agree with its implications. In order to bring about the changes necessary to save the planet it requires a massive shift in our current economic system that would, essentially, require the replacement of capitalism with a system more geared toward sustainability and environmental need. And, that is not something that most politicians, representing a class that benefits most from environmental degradation, will accept. Hence, their scepticism about the arguments.

Unfortunately, it is not just politicians who do not like the implications of change. Many ordinary people do not want to change either. Many regard the climate emergency as important but not to the extent that they no longer want holidays abroad, or to eat less meat. Sure, most people will use long lasting light bulbs and recycle, but they still want to have a car. In many cases, to be fair, that car is not a luxury but essential to get them to work. 

A symbol of an irrational organisation of social life in which rather than build homes close to where people work, we build on green belt sites and expect people to travel miles to their work. According to the Office for National Statistics the average person in England and Wales travels nine miles to work. In the USA the figure is even higher with the average American travelling 16 miles to get to work. According to a 2018 survey on average, European workers spend 1 hour and 24 minutes a day commuting, travelling 18 miles in total. 

But, the resistance to change is also entirely understandable. We live in a socio-economic system that relies on the production and consumption of commodities. We, particularly those of us fortunate enough to live in the richer nations, have been conditioned to be consumers regardless of whether we actually produce anything. Our entire system is based on the circulation of money which is a proxy for labour power. Instead of being paid in food or TV’s or clothes we are paid in cash which we can then exchange for food, housing, clothing etc.

In an article on Canadian TV’s website Christy Somos notes the four things that Greta Thunberg says we should do to ward off the climate disaster. These are:

            
             Don’t fly.

          Go vegetarian or vegan.

          Join an activist group.

          Vote.

The last of these is interesting. Somos says:

“As Thunberg addresses the nation’s leaders, it’s important to remember who put them in charge in the first place. Thunberg urges everyone to use their right to vote and to pick a candidate that is going to put climate change front and centre in their platforms, and to continually press those in power to adapt their policies and adopt new legislature to save the planet.”

At the last American Presidential election the people’s of one of the World’s largest democracies elected a climate change denier. According to the New York Times since taking office Trump has proposed nearly 100 environmental rollbacks, including weakening protections for endangered species, relaxing rules that limit emissions from coal plants and blocking the phaseout of older incandescent light bulbs.

In November Trump began the process by which America will leave the Paris Cimate Change Accord by 2020 making the United States the only country in the world that will not participate in the pact.

Meanwhile, in the UK we have just elected a Government that scored only 5.5 out of 45 on the Friends of the Earth environmental score. The Labour Party scored 33 the highest of the 4 parties scored, even higher than the Greens. Whilst giving the Tories credit for one or two of their policies this was the verdict of Friends of the Earth on our incoming government:

“Overall, their manifesto comprehensively fails to address the climate and nature emergencies, which are hurting communities right now and will deliver catastrophe in the future.”

Our Prime Minister has a mixed record when it comes to the Climate Emergency writing columns for The Telegraph in which he claims to care passionately for the environment at the same time as supporting the building of more roads and of a fourth Terminal at Heathrow. Moreover, during his stint as Foreign Secretary he cut 60% of climate attaches across the World. He also received a £25,000 donation from the climate change denial campaign group Global Warming Policy Campaign during his leadership campaign.

Faced with a clear choice between a party with an impressive Green Industrial Revolution and one whose leader took money from climate change deniers and whose manifesto barely mentioned the environment, the voters of the UK chose the latter. Despite this polls before the election suggested that two-thirds of electors thought the climate emergency was the most important issue.

The fact that the media spent so much time and effort undermining the Labour Party with spurious claims about anti Semitism and personal attacks on Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit position meant that the climate emergency never got a look in. The electorate, with a fairly low attention span apparently, was easily sidetracked to vote for a PM and a party that will fail to deliver on its, already meagre, environmental promises. This may yet turn out to be one of the Tory supporting media’s greatest betrayals.

For those of us on the British left currently gripped by a mass depression following our failure to get our most socialist leader in decades elected, the tendency to withdraw into ourselves is very tempting. Faced with a developing internal civil war triggered by the leadership ballot, and with the prospect of a real war with Iran looming, we may too easily fall into politics as usual mode.

That would be a mistake. Greta Thunberg is right. We cannot rely on politicians and businesses to save the planet. Those of us with years of activism to our names need to make common cause with this new young generation. Not to tell them how to do it (they have managed to build a global movement without too much in the way of adult support), but rather because it is in all our interests to push the climate emergency front and centre stage.

It is also important that we create the conditions in which young activists realise that the climate emergency was not caused, as many of them think, by ‘the older generation’, but rather by the global social system – capitalism – that many of us have spent a lifetime opposing. A new way of organising society means that perhaps for the first time ever some form of socialism is not just a utopian dream but the only viable alternative if we are to survive as a species.