Solidarity with the uprising in Kazakhstan (Statement issued 12 January 2022)

Around 200 activists from over 40 countries have signed have signed a worldwide statement of solidarity with the uprising in Kazakhstan – published below.

The statement was coordinated by Paul Murphy, an eco-socialist member (TD) of the parliament in the Republic of Ireland state and includes members of parliament in Ireland, Denmark and Switzerland, city councillors in Greece and Sweden, a member of the European Parliament from the Spanish State, and dozens of trade union, socialist, and human rights activists from around the globe. ecosocialist.scot is delighted to sign the statement and among the other signatories from Scotland are Frances Curran, former Scottish Socialist Party Member of the Scottish Parliament and activist in Socialists for Independence, members of the Republican Socialist Platform and ScotE3 organisations, and other trade union, community, independence and socialist activists.

The statement rejects the idea that the uprising in Kazakhstan is a result of foreign intervention but is about the rights and demands of working people sick of a tyrannical dictatorship. It calls for the overthrow of this dictatorship and the rights of working people to control democratically the vast natural resources and wealth of Kazakhstan. The statement also rejects the intervention of foreign troops from the Russian state and condemns the hypocrisy of the EU and USA.

Further reports and initiatives will follow and be publicised on ecosocialist.scot.

Solidarity with the uprising in Kazakhstan

We, socialists, trade unionists, human rights activists, anti-war activists and organisations have watched the uprising in Kazakhstan since 2 January with a sense of deep solidarity for the working people. The striking oil workers, miners and protesters have faced incredible repression. The full force of the police and army have been unleashed against them, instructed to ‘shoot to kill without warning’. Over 160 protesters have been killed so far and more than 8,000 have been arrested.

We reject the propaganda of the dictatorship that this uprising is a product of “Islamic radicals” or the intervention of US imperialism. There is no evidence of that whatsoever. It is the usual resort of an unpopular regime – to blame ‘outside’ agitators.

Instead, the trigger of the protests was the rise in fuel prices. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back, in a country where immense oil wealth exists side by side with terrible poverty and exploitation. It is also the result of the crushing weight of a brutal dictatorship on people’s backs. This regime has liquidated all opposition parties, imprisoned and tortured trade union and human rights activists, and was responsible for a massacre of striking oil workers in Zhanaozen ten years ago.

The position of all the major capitalist powers is clear. Putin stands full square behind the regime. The Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) has sent 3,000 troops to Kazakhstan to intimidate protesters. Chinese President Xi Jinping also announced his support for the Kazakhstan government and claimed the unrest was the deliberate result of “outside forces.”

The US administration has called for “restraint by both the authorities and protestors”. The EU has similarly called on protesters to “avoid any incitement to violence” and called on authorities “to respect the fundamental right to peaceful protest and proportionality in the use of force when defending its legitimate security interests”!

Unsurprisingly, they all prioritise ‘stability’ for their oil companies who are benefiting from the exploitation of the natural resources and Kazakh workers.

In response to the class solidarity of the capitalist regimes, we respond with working class solidarity and commit to raise the following demands in our trade unions, parliaments and organisations:

Solidarity with those rising up against the dictatorship in Kazakhstan

End the repression of the protests

Release all the detained protesters and political prisoners

No to Russian and CSTO intervention – withdraw the troops now

No to the hypocrisy of the EU and US who equate the revolt of the masses with the brutal violence of the regime

Down with the dictatorship

Support the call from oil workers for nationalisation of the oil wealth and major industries under workers’ control

Support the building of an independent trade union movement and socialist movement in Kazakhstan

Albania

Redi Muci

Aotearoa / New Zealand

International Socialist Organisation

Joe Carolan, Unite Union, Senior Organiser

Argentina

Christian Castillo, por la Dirección Nacional del Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS)

Nicolás del Caño, Diputado Nacional por la Provincia de Buenos Aires por el Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores – Unidad, dirigente del Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS)

Myriam Bregman, Diputada Nacional por la Ciudad de Buenos Aires por el Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores – Unidad, PTS, Abogada del CEPRODH – Centro de Profesionales por los Derechos Humanos

Alejandro Vilca, Diputado Nacional por la Provincia de Jujuy por el Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores – Unidad, dirigente del Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS)

Raúl Godoy, ex Diputado provincial de Neuquén por el Frente de Izquierda. Dirigente del PTS, ex Secretario General de SOECN (Sindicato de Obreros Ceramistas), obrero de la fábrica ex–Zanon recuperada por sus trabajadores

Eduardo Ayala, trabajador de Madygraf (ex Gráfica Donneley recuperada por sus trabajadores), PTS

Claudio Dellecarbonara, dirigente por la minoría de Asociación Gremial de Trabajadores del Subte y Premetro (AGTSYP) y referente de línea B de Subterráneos Buenos Aires. Diputado Provincial (Buenos Aires) electo por el Frente de Izquierda y de los Trabajadores Unidad, PTS

Australia

Caitlin Doyle-Markwick, Solidarity (IST), Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance

Miroslav Sandev, Solidarity / Teacher’s Federation

Luke Alexander, NTEU

Dani Cotton, National Tertiary Education Union, Branch Committee, University of Sydney

Susan Price

Mick Armstrong, Socialist Alternative, National Executive

Austria

Christian Zeller, Netzwerk Ökosozialismus, Global Ecosocialist Network, Professor of Economic Geography, University of Salzburg

Manfred Ecker, Gewerkschaft der Privatangestellten GPA, Member

David Heuser, Linkswende

Heidi Specht, Arbeiter*innenstandpunkt

Karin Wilfingseder, GPA (Trade Union), Shop Steward

Belgium

Daniel Tanuro, Gauche anticapitaliste, Ecosocialist author

Jean Vogel, Marcel Liebman Insitute, President

Eric Toussaint, Fourth International, international activist & historian

Freddy Mathieu, FGTB, Ancien Secrétaire Régional

SAP – Antikapitalisten / Gauche anticapitaliste

Britain / England and Wales

Simon Hannah, Lambeth UNISON, Joint Branch Secretary

Fiona Lali, Marxist Student Federation (MSF)

Anne Alexander, Middle East Solidarity magazine, Co-editor

Labour Representation Committee (LRC)

Neil Faulkner, , Archaeologist, historian and writer

Kazakh Solidarity Campaign

John McInally, Public & Commercial Services Union, Former Vice-President

Socialist Appeal

Workers Power

Ukraine Solidarity Campaign

Alex Callinicos, Emeritus Professor of European Studies, King’s College London

Andy Richards, UNISON, Brighton and Hove Branch Chair

Donny Gluckstein, SWP, Educational Institute of Scotland, EIS Council

Gareth Jenkins, SWP

Jon Woods, Portsmouth City UNISON, Chair

Gilbert Achcar, UCU, Professor

Michael Tucker

Ian Parker, Unite

Andrew Kilmister, Oxford Brookes University UCU (Universities and Colleges Union), Branch Secretary

Rowan Fortune, Anti*Capitalist Resistance, EC Member

Penny Foskett, SWP. NEU

Campbell McGregor, Scottish Socialist Party / UNISON

Tony Foley, NEU, England

ACR, Anti*Capitalist Resistance, England and Wales

Costa Rica

Paola Zeledón, editora de La Izquierda Diario Costa Rica.

Fernanda Quirós, dirigente de Pan y Rosas Costa Rica

Esteban Fernández, dirigente de OSR, profesor de filosofía UCR.

Cuba

Frank García Hernández, Comunistas Cuba blog, member of the Editorial Board

Cyprus

Athina Kariati, NEDA – New Internationalist Left

New Internationalist Left, NEDA

Denmark

Søren Sondergaard, Red-Green Alliance, Memmber of Danish Parliament, spokesperson on European Affairs

Dominican Republic

Movimiento Socialista de Trabajadoras y Trabajadores, MST

France

Christian Mahieux, International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggles

Malewski Jan, Inprecor (révue), rédacteur

Penelope Duggan, International Viewpoint, Editor

Michael Löwy

Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste / New Anticapitalist Party

Germany

Yaak Pabst, , Redaktion marx21-Magazin

Michael Findeisen, Fellow

Joachim Ladwig, Verdi

Daniel Behruzi, ver.di TU Darmstadt (Trade Union), Shop Stewards Speaker

Alexander Keim, LiK/ die Linke/Verdi

Internationale Sozialistische Organisation (ISO)

Dr. Winfried Wolf, Lunapark21 – Zeitschrift zur Kritik der globalen Ökonomie, responsable in the editorial board of LP21-Magazine

Aron Amm, Lernen im Kampf

Martin Suchanek, Gruppe ArbeiterInnenmacht, Germany section of League for the Fifth International, Editor of journal “Revolutionärer Marxismus”

Wilhelm Schulz, Gruppe ArbeiterInnenmacht, German Section of the League for the Fifth International

Jaqueline K. Singh, REVOLUTION – international communist youth organisation Germany

Matthias Fritz, former TU converer (VK-Leiter) IG Metall Mahle

Yunus Özgür, Delivery Worker, Berlin

Charlotte Ruge, Hebamme, München

Tabea Winter, Studentin, Freie Universität, Berlin

Thies Gleiss, Die Linke, Member of National Party Executive

Greece

Panos Garganas, Sosialistiko Ergatiko Komma (SEK), Editor Workers Solidarity weekly

Editorial Team of Elaliberta.gr, www.elaliberta.gr, Athens

Serafeim Rizos, Chania city/Union of Teachers-Chania, councilor Chania/member of board of Teachers Union Chania

Thanasis Diavolakis, Peiraus city/Teachers Federation of private schools, councilor Peiraus city/member of board of OIELE

Katerina Thoidou, Nikaia-Renti city, councillor

Maria Styllou, Sosialismos apo ta kato Review, Editor

Thanasis Kampagiannis, Athens Bar Association Board, Elected councillor (personal capacity)

ANTARSYA, Front of the anticapitalist Left

Xekinima – Internationalist Socialist Organization

NAR, New Left Current

Manthos Tavoularis, Docker, trade unionist

Tassos Anastassiadis, member of General Council of POESY (Federation of Greek journalists)

TPT (Fourth International Programmatic Tendency, Greek Section of 4th International)

Petros Constantinou, Athens city/KEERFA-Movement United Against Racism and Fascist Threat, councillor Athens city/coordinator of KEERFA

Aphrodite Fragkou, Marousi city, councillor

Dimitris Zotos, Lawyers Association of Athens, Civil action Golden Dawn trial

India

Rohini Hensman, Internationalism from Below, Writer, researcher and activist

International

International Marxist Tendency International

Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (www.thecommunists.net)

Iran

Morad Shirin, Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign, International Organiser

Maziar Razi, Iranian Revolutionary Marxists’ Tendency, Spokesperson

Ireland

Bríd Smith, People Before Profit, TD (Member of Parliament)

Paul Murphy, People Before Profit, TD (Member of Parliament)

Gino Kenny, People Before Profit, TD (Member of Parliament)

Richard Boyd Barrett, People Before Profit, TD (Member of Parliament)

Gerry Carroll, People Before Profit, MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly)

Mick Barry, Solidarity and Socialist Party, TD (Member of Parliament)

People Before Profit

Socialist Democracy

Goretti Horgan, People Before Profit

Jess Spear, RISE, National Organiser

John Molyneux, People Before Profit, Unite The Union., Editor, Irish Marxist Review.

Ailbhe Smyth, Le Cheile: Diversity Not Division, Member

Eddie Conlon, Teachers Union of , Member/Former National Hon Secretary,

Emilio Maira, People Before Profit

Memet Uludağ, Unite the Union, Union Rep

Shaun Harkin, People Before Profit, People Before Profit Cllr Derry City and Strabane District Council

Mark Price

Italy

Giacomo Turci, La Voce delle Lotte, editor

Scilla Di Pietro, Il Pane e le Rose feminist current, spokesperson

Mary Rizzo, Le Voci della Libertà, Activist / Translator

Japan

Tsutomu Teramoto, Japan Revolutionary Communist League (JRCL)

JRCL (Japan Revolutionary Communist League)

México

Jose Manuel Aguilar Mora, Universidad Autónoma de la Ciudad de México & Member of La Liga De Unidad Socialista (LUS), Professor-Researcher, Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores

Edgard Sánchez, Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores

Nigeria

Salako Kayode, Revolutionary socialist movement, Spokesperson

Dimeji Macaulay, Revolutionary Socialist Movement, National Organiser

Poland

Andrzej Żebrowski, Pracownicza Demokracja (Workers Democracy)

Agnieszka Kaleta

Michał Wysocki, Pracownicza Demokracja (Workers’ Democracy), worker

Filip Ilkowski Associate Professor, Polish Teachers Union at the University of Warsaw, Member of the Presidium of the Council for Higher Education and Science of the Polish Teachers Union

Russia

Daria, IST Russia,

Semyon, Trotskyist

Socialist Tendency (IST)

Denis Zagladkin, Socialist Tendency

Switzerland

Hannah, Bewegung für den Sozialismus

Scotland

Paul Inglis, Radical Independence Campaign, Glasgow City Branch Unison, Clydeside IWW, Partick Living Rent, Member

Connor Beaton, Republican Socialist Platform, Secretary

Allan Armstrong, Republican Socialist Platform, Educational Institute of Scotland (life member)

Frances Curran, Former member of parliament and member of Socialist for Independence

Pete Cannell, Scot.E3 (Employment, Energy and Environment), Secretary

Bob Goupillot, Radical Independence Campaign Edinburgh, (Personal Capacity)

Ecosocialist.scot (organisation), ecosocialist.scot

South Africa

Mametlwe Sebei, President, General Industries Workers Union of South Africa

South Korea

Workers’ Solidarity

Spanish State

Anticapitalistas

David Karvala, Social movement activist and member of Marx21.net, Catalunya

Carlos de Pablo Torrecilla, UGT de Catalunya , Secretari de Política Institucional, Catalunya

Gerardo Pisarello, Unidas Podemos-En Comú Podem, member of the Spanish Congress, and First Secretary of the Bureau of the Congress

Miguel Urbán Crespo, Anticapitalistas, Member of the European Parliament

Marx21.net

Santiago Lupe, portavoz de la Corriente Revolucionaria de Trabajadores y Trabajadoras – CRT, historiador

Lucía Nistal, doctora en Teoría Literaria Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM), impulsora de Referéndum UAM y portavoz de CRT

Juan Carrique, abogado laboralista, miembro de la Asociación Libre de Abogadas y Abogados, afiliado a CGT

Josefina L. Martínez, periodista, historiadora, escritora, editora revista Contrapunto

Asier Ubico, presidente del Comité de Empresa de Telepizza por CGT – Zaragoza

Juan Carlos Arias Sanz, delegado por UGT de la Consejería de Políticas Sociales y Familia de la Comunidad de Madrid

Cynthia Lub, doctora en Historia, escritora, editora de Esquerra Diari.cat y afiliada a CGT Lleure

Maria Dantas, ERC, social movement activist in Catalunya, Member of the Congress of Deputies

Switzerland

Manuel Sepulveda, Mouvement pour le Socialisme, Militant actif

Stéfanie Prezioso, Ensemble à Gauche, Member of Parliament

Jean BATOU, Ensemble à Gauche, Member of parliament (Geneva)

Philipp Schmid, Movement for Socialism, teacher and union activist

Christian Zeller, Network Ecosocialism and Global Ecosocialist Network, Professor of Economic Geography

Sweden

Jonas Brännberg, Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna – International Socialist Alternative, Member of Luleå City council

Syria

Jackal, Revolutionary Left Movement

Taiwan

黃梓豪, International Socialist Forward

Turkey

Sosyalist Demokrasi için Yeniyol, Turkish section of IV. International

Ecehan Balta, Sosyalist Alternatif

Nihat Boyraz, Sosyalist Alternatif

Sosyalist Alternatif

USA

Andrew Berman, Veterans for Peace, Peace and Solidarity Activist

Brandon Madsen, Democratic Socialists of America / AFGE 2157

Reform & Revolution, Caucus of Democratic Socialists of America

Dan La Botz, New Politics, Co-Editor

Tyron Moore, Washington Federation of State Employees, Organizer

Phil Gasper, New Politics, Co-editor

Richard Burton, Montgomery County Education Association (ID purposes only), UniServ Director/Organizer

Tempest Collective

Reed, Boston Revolutionary Socialists, Coordinating Committee Member

David McNally, Editor in Chief, Spectre Journal, Professor of History, University of Houston

Steve Leigh, Seattle Revolutionary Socialists (*for identification purposes only)

Joel Geier

Sherry Wolf, Tempest Collective, author, Sexuality and Socialism

Socialist Resurgence

Charles Post, Tempest Collective, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), member of editorial board of Spectre: A Marxist Journal

Zachary Levenson, Editor, Spectre, Assistant Professor of Sociology, UNC Greensboro

Ashley Smith, Tempest Collective, Democratic Socialists of America*, National Writers Union* (*for identification purposes only)

Venezuela

Angel Árias, dirigente de la LTS, trabajador estatal

Suhey Ochoa, Pan y Rosas, trabajadora de Apps

Zimbabwe

Tafadzwa A Choto, ISO – Zimbabwe, Member

The Island and the River

COP26 brought all the world and its political issues to the Clyde for a few weeks in November. Catching a quiet moment away from the demos and kettles, Paul Inglis [of ecosocialist.scot] spoke to Paul Figueroa, a prominent member of the Puerto Rican Independence Party visiting Scotland during the conference. Ranging across the history of the island and its politics, particularly the issues of climate change and imperialism, this interview presents the cause of Puerto Rican independence to a Scottish audience.

Puerto Rico is not usually an island that occurs to the Scottish political imagination. Our international awareness, at least within the independence movement, is mostly centred on places like Catalunya and Wales, with an occasional (but rather reserved) glance at the Basques now and then. We draw lesson and inspiration, if at all, from a fairly small pool of contemporary national movements, and barely look beyond Europe in the process. Apart from fairly predictable Euro-centrism, this narrowness of outlook speaks to the fact that our most ready analogues are afforded by countries in similar social and economic situations.

Not just the enthusiasts of the left but most indymarchers would point out that Scotland has little in common with the historical experience of colonised nations like Egypt or Angola, never mind ongoing anticolonial struggles like those in Puerto Rico or the Mapuche lands. Scotland is simply not a colonised country (though of course one could speak of a form of internal colonialism practiced by both Scots and English against the Gaels) and only in the wildest dreams/tweets of certain sectors of the indy movement do the problems imposed on us by Westminster bear even slight resemblance to anything visited upon the Kurds by the Turkish government.

As such, it is either by an unconscious or a tactful choice that we generally keep our eyes on European matters. This certainly avoids falling into ridiculous and insulting direct comparisons between ourselves and peoples who are currently experiencing brutal, life-or-death struggles for freedom, but I also believe it can accidentally result in a different, and distinctly limiting, kind of euro-centrism, one that assumes offhand that little of the previous or current history of national liberation in Africa, Asia and Latin America can teach us anything.

So keen are we to not seem appropriative or offensive that we can risk ignoring great and helpful lessons. Just think about the challenges that the national question sets before Scottish socialists on a daily basis: What sort of classes (or fractions of classes) take part in the national movement? Where do the goals of the working class and the nationalist bourgeoisie/middle class diverge? How does imperialism constrict and hinder self-determination? How does the socialist movement orientate itself amidst all this? We should realise that these exact questions have troubled national movements past and present all over the globe, and that the ways in which they attempted to give answers yield a vast storehouse of reference material for us to consult. As long as we do not pretend that we can simple harvest direct or ready-made lessons, there is a lot that we can gain by looking beyond Europe, and we should not be afraid to do so.

It was for this reason that I was excited to sit down and speak to Paul Figueroa, a member of the Puerto Rican Independence Party (PIP), amid all the rush and activity of COP26. Paul, who stood as the PIP’s candidate for council in San Juan during the 2020 elections, had come here during the conference on the invitation of Scotland’s Radical Independence Campaign to speak at a meeting of the COP26 protest coalition’s “Peoples’ Summit”, and to make international links and connections. Naturally then, it was the perfect opportunity to find out what the fight for Puerto Rican freedom can teach us here in Scotland.

My first question dealt with the topic that was on everyone’s lips during those November weeks: Climate change. I asked Paul a question with two parts: What does climate change, and what would climate justice mean for Puerto Rico? Climate change is a bleak prospect in general, obviously, but for an island nation it is especially pressing. Paul said that “if austerity and privatisation don’t kill off the Puerto Rican people, climate change will,” pointing to the fact that for every one centimetre rise of the sea, the island loses a yard of coast. Not only this, but there is the impending threat of consistent drought and the danger that an increase in landslides means for a mostly mountainous country like Puerto Rico.

The problem with getting climate justice, Paul explained, is that the kinds of steps Puerto Rico must take to help tackle climate change are essentially blocked off by the economic interests of the United States of America. In the last year, the entirety of the island’s energy grid was privatised, falling into the hands of an American company, Luma Energy, which has stated that it has no interest in pursuing green energy. Indeed, American interests have even pushed the Puerto Rican government to enact what Paul termed a “tax on the sun”- that is, a tax on anyone going off the fossil fuel-based grid to use solar power. As a Caribbean country, the green alternative for Puerto Rico is naturally solar energy, but Luma is standing in the way of this in favour of fossil fuels. Just as the grid is controlled by an American company, so too is the supply of coal and gas, most of which comes from the firm Applied Energy Systems. This leaves Puerto Rico dependent on the USA for energy when a safer, cleaner alternative is right at hand. And the fruits of this toxic, dirty dependency are dearly bought. Paul was stark on this point: “For island nations, climate change is a matter of life and death.” To underline this, he gave the example of the town of Peñuelas, where the coal ash from the power plants is dumped. It has the highest rate of cancer and birth defects in Puerto Rico.

All of this for the profit margins of the Yankee coal industry, and the stuffed pockets of West Virginian members of congress. And they too, like Luma Energy, lobby the Puerto Rican government to keep their vested interests secure. In contrast to this, climate justice would mean an opportunity for Puerto Rico, and Puerto Ricans, to make their own climate policy, not lobbyists from Wall Street or Washington. This is a freedom that has long been denied the Puerto Rican people, held down as they are by the United States’ political and economic imperatives. Considering a situation like that, Paul was not enthusiastic about COP26’s significance for the island. Discussing Puerto Rico’s lack of representation on international bodies like the United Nations, CARICOM (Caribbean Community), CELAC (Community of Caribbean and Latin American States) and the OAS (Organisation of American States), Paul argued that the island therefore lacks a seat at the table for global discussions and decisions which will be crucial for its future. Frustrated by “the posturing of the larger countries and leaders like Biden and Johnson”, Paul felt that “they need to decide if they lead, follow or get out of the way” and let the countries with the most at stake have the deciding say.

Unavoidably, this talk of freedom to make choices, and the obstacles to that freedom, led into a discussion of the colonial relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico. How did this state of affairs, where the USA, and American businesses, can do what they like with Puerto Rico, come to be? In order to get an idea of why, I next asked for some historical background. Of course, the history of any land is a rich and varied ocean, and the story of Puerto Rico is no exception. Therefore, Paul aimed at giving me a quick gloss, one that covered the key points.

He started at the beginning of Puerto Rico’s time as a colony, with the Spanish invasion of Borinquen, as the island is known in the indigenous Taino language, in 1493. From there stemmed three hundred years of indigenous and enslaved African rebellions, centuries of continuing struggle against imperial Spanish rule. One of the most important uprisings of this Spanish colonial period was el Grito de Lares (the Cry of Lares) in 1868. This was an insurrection, beginning in the town of Lares, which aimed at independence and a Puerto Rican republic- The first such national rebellion in the island’s history. And while it may have been defeated, Lares was the birth of the Puerto Rican national consciousness, identity and flag. Thirty years later, the Spanish-American War saw Puerto Rico, as well as Cuba and the Philippines, wrenched from the grip of Spain by a new colonial overlord, the United States of America,

Any hopes that Puerto Ricans might have had for a better future without Spanish control were quickly dashed, as the American takeover precipitated a dramatic, costly change in the island’s fortunes. Immediately following their victory, the United States devalued the currency by 40%, stopped Puerto Rico from controlling its own trade with other countries, and began breaking up the networks of small farmers that underpinned Puerto Rico’s economy in favour of large scale, industrial sugar farming run by a handful of absentee American businesses. The result was a strengthening of the sort of export-crop monoculture that has thus far played such a limiting, exploitative and destructive role in the history and ecology of the Caribbean. While the United States profited from its new colony, Puerto Rico came to be known during the Twentieth Century as “the Poorhouse of the Caribbean.”

Not just economic damage, but cultural oppression came with the Americans. Most blatantly, there was the attempt to make the Spanish language illegal, to anglicise the country. In a particularly crass move, the island’s name was even officially changed to the more Anglo-sounding “Porto Rico” from 1899 to 1932. Students of Russian history might here be reminded of the old empire’s attempts at forcibly “Russifying” its national minorities, or perhaps the long campaign against Gaelic by first the Scottish and then the British state has sprung to your mind. The Americans also attempted to clamp down on Puerto Rican holidays and foist their experiment with booze prohibition onto the island too.

These simultaneous cultural and economic troubles, and their joint link to the effects of American imperialism, meant that the independence movement and the workers’ movement became easily and naturally connected. Paul gave the example of how, from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, there were more than two hundred workers’ strikes, and almost all of them were led by the nationalist party. In 1950, the nationalists would take the fight for independence even further, renouncing pacifism and launching a war for independence that, like el Grito de Lares almost a century prior, was defeated. The years following this setback marked the most intense period of persecution for independence supporters, with the Americans bringing in a gag law which made the Puerto Rican national anthem illegal and banned meetings or discussion of both independence and socialism. This, coupled with the “Carpeteo”, the constant FBI and police spying on independence supporters, spurred the emergence of clandestine militant groups on the lines of the Guevarist guerrilla strategy popular across Latin America in that era.

These days did not yield a favourable environment for the PIP. Unlike the nationalist party and the guerrilla groups, the PIP does not uphold armed struggle as a strategy or tactic. But with the repressive Carpeteo making open organising for independence and socialism difficult, the PIP quickly went from being the main opposition party to a minority party, holding just two percent of the vote right up to the present day. As for the armed conflict, it would continue into the early 2000’s, with the 2005 assassination of guerrilla leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios by the FBI marking something of a turning point for the independence movement- People who wouldn’t necessarily have agreed with Ojeda Rios’ methods or politics were incensed by his murder, and took to the streets protesting against U.S. intervention in Puerto Rican politics.

Paul saw this as one of the chief causes of a renewed inerest in Puerto Rican independence since the millennium. Another lies in the concurrent dispute taking place over the island of Vieques, one which had a similar galvanising consequence for the movement. Vieques is an island of the Puerto Rican archipelago which the U.S. military used as a testing ground for above-ground and underwater bombs from 1941 onwards. After an American bomb accidentally killed David Sanes, a Vieques citizen, the PIP launched a campaign against bomb testing which saw activists sailing from the main island to Vieques on fishing boats to camp out on the beaches and occupy U.S. military property. Even with arrests and repression, the sustained militancy of the campaign led to a success, with the U.S. military withdrawing from Vieques in 2003. In a speech celebrating this victory, the president of the PIP, Rubén Berríos Martínez, said: “Yesterday Lares, today Vieques, tomorrow Puerto Rico!”

This recent history brought us up neatly to the matter of my next question, which turned on contemporary events and their significance for the Puerto Rican independence movement. Paul emphasised the importance of the Puerto Rican economic crisis, which has been ongoing since 2006. To prop up the economy, the island’s government has taken on a great deal of debt since the crisis- fifty billion dollars from 2006 to 2016, which dwarfs the twenty billion dollars of debt accumulated between 1952 and 2006. By 2016, the former governor Alejandro García Padilla had declared the debt unpayable, calling on the U.S. government to address the debt crisis.

At the level of normal peoples’ lives, the figures Paul had for me were grim ones- From the beginning of the crisis in 2006, around a quarter of Puerto Rico’s population has migrated away to the United States. There is a poverty rate of sixty percent, and the island is one of the top five countries of the world for income inequality. In a typical austerity response by the government, huge swathes of Puerto Rican society have been privatised- Healthcare, the highways, public transport, energy and sections of the education system. In particular, the marketisation of education can be seen in how university tuition fees have more than quadrupled since 2006.

The youth of Puerto Rico, the first-time voters of today, Paul continued, “are people who have never had a memory of Puerto Rico in prosperity, of Puerto Rico not in a time of crisis. They see no opportunity or future in their own country.” A result of this is that the fear people have traditionally had that independence and socialism would cause massive poverty has tended to fall away. After all, Paul pointed out, Puerto Rican people “are living those conditions right now under a U.S. flag.”

This growing discontent manifested in 2019 with the “Ricky Renuncia” protests against governor Ricardo Rosselló over the government’s response to Hurricane Maria and his overall apathy to the problems of the people. From that movement, Paul traces a new openness to Puerto Rican independence and new youth participation in the electoral process, this from a youth that tends to be overwhelmingly pro-independence. An illustration of this is the PIP’s recent electoral fortunes, with an increase from two percent of the vote in 2016 to almost fifteen percent in 2020 during a five-way race. Paul was understandably very, very hopeful about these new developments among the youth.

Of course, the problems of austerity have continued to make life tough, especially because they are imposed from outside with little Puerto Rican say in the matter. There is the continuing issue of the Control Board, an unelected body of seven people chosen by the U.S. president and salaried with Puerto Rican tax money who are in charge of overseeing Puerto Rican finances and repayment of the debt. The board have proven voracious, bringing in a forty year long hike on sales tax and a forty year tax on electricity to make up for the period when energy was nationalised. PROMESA, the law that inaugurated the board, states that the Control Board will exist until Puerto Rico has had five consecutive years of balanced budget. However, the Board recently marked its fifth anniversary without a single year of balanced budget. Paul pointed out that like any austerity program, the point is not to save the economy but simply to perpetuate the problem, to asset strip and transfer whatever wealth isn’t nailed down into rich pockets. In contrast to this, the PIP’s position is that the Board should be abolished, PROMESA repealed, and Puerto Rico’s debt should be forgiven. As ever, an essential part of any meaningful self determination is economic sovereignty.

Bringing things to a close, I asked Paul what importance the solidarity of other independence movements, like ours in Scotland, has for the Puerto Rican struggle. “No country exists in a vacuum,” Paul began. Discussing world politics today, he was struck by the way in which independence movements are on the rise across a variety of nations, like Scotland, Wales and Catalunya. He was also very impressed by Barbados’ recent steps towards becoming a republic. He explained that local actions and developments like the ones already mentioned have repercussions on a global scale, so that what might seem on first glance to be isolated fights for self determination end up taking on a significance that leaps borders and crosses oceans to inspire and teach others. It is well to remember, even if we never learn of them, that we in Scotland have sympathisers and admirers all across the world, and our struggles, and, I hope, our victories, will cheer and excite the passions of a great multitude of fellow fighters.

Secondly, solidarity matters to Paul because part of the essential groundwork for Puerto Rican independence is establishing relationships with other countries and movements. After all, Paul argued, “independence is not to separate us from the United States but to unite us with the rest of the world.” And this unity is to be a different kind of unity from the one-sided, opportunistic unity Puerto Rico has thus far experienced with the United States. The PIP looks for relationships of reciprocity, solidarity, camaraderie and respect with other countries- International co-operation, not exploitation. That wish, to be an active and progressive player in the wider world, not just one part in a stifling union with an imperialist power, is something I’m sure Scottish readers with readily sympathise with. It is a fine sentiment, and Paul summed it up wonderfully by once more quoting Rubén: “One day we’ll be able to hug our brethren from across the world and say to them: Comrades, we have arrived late to freedom, but because of that we love it even more.” May the day arrive swiftly!

If you want to keep up with Paul Figueroa and the PIP, you can follow them on social media:

Paul’s Twitter: @paul_delpip
Paul’s Facebook Page: @paulfigueroapip
The PIP’s Twitter accounts: @PIPTwitteando @PIPSanJuan
The PIP’s websites: independencia.net and juandalmau.com

Reproduced from Bella Caledonia: https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2021/12/24/the-island-and-the-river/

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Beyond Glasgow – what happened at COP26 and where we go next

It is a month since Alok Sharma as president, fighting back some tears, brought down the gavel on the 26^th Conference of the Parties – the United Nations climate summit in Glasgow. The initial flurry of reactions and comments has subsided. Here in Scotland we have already seen some early signs of the impact – with the beginnings of a victory against the development of a new offshore oil field at Cambo. On Saturday, 4 December, activists in Glasgow held a first gathering to take stock and plan future steps.

So this is intended as a contribution to that process of weighing up what happened, both inside the official talks, and outside in the struggle for climate justice. We need to do this as fully and accurately as we can, to provide a guide for what we do next.

This is perhaps most urgent in Scotland, where the huge protests on the streets of Glasgow on the 5 and 6 November have had a major impact on the political and ideological landscape, and could have a lot more in the years to come if we are able to learn the most useful lessons, and build on them. But it is also important for the climate movement in England and the rest of the UK, which faces a possible moment of refoundation.

And it is not without significance at a global level, where, as a representative of one Indigenous organisation who made it to Glasgow argued, it is time to be thinking about a new kind and scale of international coordination.

Three outcomes

We can divide the main conclusions from COP26 into three. The most important has to do with the success of those mobilisations outside the official talks, and we’ll come back to that.

The second was also immediately obvious to many, and relates to the spectacular failure of the official summit, when measured against its own stated objectives. World leaders definitively did not “embrace their responsibilities” to “act now”, as the UK presidency had asked them to six months earlier, when Alok Sharma stood in front of the huge, commercial Whitelee wind farm, 15 kilometres south of the COP26 venue on the Clyde, and called on them to “pick the planet”.

They did not bring to Glasgow the commitments that would keep global warming at less than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century. Those were not tears of joy on Alok Sharma’s face as he had to close the summit summit with a watered-down target on “phasing down” coal power. The concluding statement by the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, used diplomatic language but left little room for doubt: “unfortunately the collective political will was not enough to overcome some deep contradictions. …We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe. …We did not achieve these (ie. the main) goals at this conference.”

The third kind of conclusion is less obvious. It got little mention in the mainstream media coverage, and for the most part lies buried in the detail of the deliberately opaque discussions on wrapping up the rulebook for the Paris Agreement and related “technical” aspects. Here we find the moves made by governments and the private sector, including fossil fuel companies and big banks, to put in place the procedures and organisational infrastructure to secure the still evolving, and still contradictory, ruling class response to the climate emergency.

It was not an accident that the largest single delegation at COP26, bigger than any single government, was constituted by lobbyists from the fossil fuel industry. There were at least 503 of them and there have been no reports of tears on their faces.

The second biggest delegation was the Brazilian one. It had 480 members, including many lobbyists from the agribusiness, mining and forestry sectors, all with a special interest in resolving the rules around carbon markets, for example. Their moves made significant progress in Glasgow. But they did not have it all their own way.

They were thwarted, or maybe just delayed, on several key questions by the pressure of civil society on the inside of COP26 – for example the inclusion of forests as tradable carbon credits under Article 6, or the use of nature based solutions as offsets (see below).

It is at the intersection between these three levels that the future of the climate movement, and indeed of humanity, will be decided. So let us look more closely at the last two, before returning to the movement itself.

The Glasgow Get-out

The final “agreement”, officially called the Glasgow Climate Pact, but dubbed by some in the climate movement as the Glasgow Get-out, is a laboriously constructed work of smoke and mirrors. In some ways, it is ambitious. It is certainly longer and more wide-ranging than such “cover decisions” (the technical term for these interim negotiated texts) usually are. In line with the latest scientific reports from the IPCC, it focuses much more sharply than the 2015 Paris Agreement itself on 1.5 degrees maximum warming as the key goal. It stresses the need for “accelerated action in this critical decade”. It even has a few seemingly specific promises, like developed countries doubling by 2025 their financial contributions to the Adaptation Fund, to help countries in the global south adjust to the climate change that is already on the way [[This was seen as a gain for developing countries made during the talks. No such provision had been on the formal agenda, and when it first appeared in the draft texts the language had been much vaguer. The final text takes 2019 as the baseline, meaning that developed countries are urged to come up with an additional US$40 billion a year for adaptation by 2025. However, this is still well short of what is needed. The UN Environment Programme estimates the current annual need at US$70 billion, and suggests this is likely to quadruple by 2030. It also remains unclear that developing countries accept this is not part of the US$100 billion a year that they promised back in 2009 and have still failed to deliver.]]

Some of this sharper language is the result of hard-fought battles by poorer countries and civil society delegates, over the position of commas and this or that adjective. But more than anything it reflects the understanding by most imperialist governments that, at the very least, they have to be seen to be taking the climate crisis seriously. They know that the level of concern among their citizens has increased very significantly in just the last few years, even the last few months, as floods and fires have ravaged Europe and North America as well as India, China or Bolivia. People expect their governments to act. And these governments in turn fear that public concern will deepen. When their discourse of vandalism or even terrorism leveled at direct action groups largely falls flat; when very large numbers of people actually sympathise with people gluing themselves to motorways, or Indigenous communities occupying oil wells and blocking mines, the authorities know the situation is serious.

The gaping hole in the Glasgow Climate Pact is the almost total absence of detail. There is virtually nothing specified about who will do exactly what by when, and how anyone will be able to verify it, much less enforce it. In the English language, a pact usually means an agreement to do something. In that sense, this is not a pact at all – more of a political statement about a series of things the parties agree (more or less) that they would like to see happen.

The two main, overlapping, texts of the Glasgow Climate Pact have 71 and 97 points respectively. [[In characteristically confusing fashion, there are three versions of the main cover decision text, one for each of the three meetings that officially took place in parallel under the the umbrella of COP – firstly the COP26 itself, that is the 26^th Conference of the Parties of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; secondly the CMP16, the 16^th Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, which is largely irrelevant and whose texts say very little: and the CMA3, or the 3^rd Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement, which actually has most detail in relation to the implementation of the Paris Agreement.]] Almost all of them begin with words like recognizes, expresses, notes, stresses, emphasizes, urges, invites, calls upon. Only one point in the COP.26 version of the Pact begins with resolves, while the longer, CMA.3 text has 6 points that begin with decides and 3 with resolves. These very few “decisions” all refer to organisational questions of arranging future meetings and work processes and mechanisms. None of them refer directly to the substantive issues of emissions cuts or climate finance.

From Binding to Voluntary to Proclamation

This illustrates one of the two overarching developments in the UN climate negotiations that we need to note if we are to make sense of what happened in Glasgow. This is how the process has moved away from any kind of binding commitments, of the sort contained in the Kyoto Protocol that came into force in 2005. During and after COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, the U.S. and the EU systematically assaulted this approach. This meant that the Paris Agreement in 2015, while achieving advances in some respects, contained only voluntary commitments to cutting greenhouse gas emissions. These were the core of the famous NDCs, or nationally determined contributions. The whole point of COP26 – the reason it was hailed as a make or break moment – was that this was the time, five years on from the Paris Agreement, by which the 193 signatories were meant to have come up with their enhanced NDCs, their plans to make the bigger cuts and provide the greater finance, that would allow global warming to be kept below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferably below 1.5 degrees. But it was entirely up to each party to announce whatever it wanted, whenever it wanted. There was never going to be, and never could be, given the nature of the Paris Agreement, a deal negotiated in Glasgow to ensure this outcome.

The scale of the shortfall left by these voluntary contributions on the core issue of emissions cuts, or mitigation as it is called in the language of the UNFCCC, is tucked away in paragraphs 22 and 25 of the CMA.3 version of the final text. The first recognises, what the IPCC Report on 1.5 Degrees had brought to the fore of the climate change agenda in 2018, that “limiting global warming to 1.5 °C requires rapid, deep and sustained reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions, including reducing global carbon dioxide emissions by 45 per cent by 2030 relative to the 2010 level and to net zero around midcentury, as well as deep reductions in other greenhouse gases”. Now the climate justice movement centred around the COP26 Coalition has questioned, at length and in depth, the scale, timing and distribution of these IPCC targets, including especially the new and very unscientific mantra of net zero by 2050. And not of course because they are too ambitious.

However, even against these inadequate targets, paragraph 25 “Notes with serious concern the findings of the synthesis report on nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement, according to which the aggregate greenhouse gas emission level, taking into account implementation of all submitted nationally determined contributions, is estimated to be 13.7 per cent above the 2010 level in 2030”. The failure of COP26 to achieve its main objective could hardly be clearer. If you add up all the new, more ambitious plans (enhanced NDCs) submitted by 151 parties up to day 3 of the COP (2 November, 2021), they project not a cut of 45% in CO2 emissions by 2030, but an increase of 13.7%.

This is not a small discrepancy that we can make up later. It is a colossal move in the wrong direction.

Carbon Action Tracker, a well-respected research body, calculated that these pledges would, at best, keep warming to 2.4 degrees Celsius by 2100. More probably, given the recurring failure to meet even inadequate promises, we would end up with 2.7 degrees. Others regard even this as over optimistic.

The fact that the Glasgow Pact does call on countries to submit new, more ambitious NDCs by COP27, in Egypt next year, and on a yearly basis after that, was held up as evidence of greater ambition. It is certainly an improvement on the 5-year cycle agreed in Paris. But the fact this call was made at all only highlights the spectacular failure to meet the targets needed by COP26.

The UK presidency knew well in advance the dimension of this failure. Its strategy was to seek to bury it in a welter of rhetoric about keeping 1.5 alive. That is the function of the more ambitious language in the final text. The same concern, to be seen to be taking action, characterised the flurry of announcements made during the World Leaders Summit, which took up the Monday and Tuesday of the first week of the COP.

First there was the pledge by 130 countries to “halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030”. Then it was 109 countries promising to cut 30% of methane emissions by 2030, 190 countries announcing commitments to phase out coal power, and 30 countries and financial institutions to stop financing fossil fuel development overseas. Beyond the headlines, it was never perfectly clear who had agreed to do quite what.

And some of the announcements began to unravel as soon as they were made. For example, critics immediately pointed out that most of the deforestation pledge was the same as the 2014 New York Declaration on Forests, which had produced no results at all. The environment minister of Indonesia, which had been touted as one of the key signatories, took to twitter to call the pledge “clearly inappropriate and unfair”. Bolivia, one of very few countries taking a firm climate justice stance inside the COP26, was also listed as a signatory; but when we interviewed the Bolivian president, Luis Arce, on the day of the announcement, he told us his country had not signed and was still evaluating the pledge.

As Alex Rafalowizc from Colombia told one of the daily Movement Assemblies in Glasgow that week, the COP process has moved from binding agreements through voluntary targets to the rhetoric of grandiose but unverifiable announcements.

Forget Equity

This shift in the shape of the UN climate talks – to abandon binding agreements – goes hand in hand with another – the shift away from the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities. (CBDR) This principle of CBDR was enshrined in the UNFCCC by the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. It means that those countries who historically have been most responsible for putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the industrialised countries of the global north, the Annexe 1 countries, in the terminology of the Convention, should take the major responsibility to address the climate change that has resulted. It became an important part of the movement to demand climate justice.

During the discussions on a new treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, at Copenhagen and the COPs that followed, the U.S. and its allies attacked the principle of CBDR on the grounds that all countries needed to do their bit, just as it sought to overturn the practice of binding agreements. In part this opposition was due to the predictable reluctance of imperialist countries to pay for the harm they have done. But it also had to do with the growing obsession in Washington, under Obama and since, with the threat posed to U.S. hegemony by China.

The Paris Agreement retained some of the language about CBDR. But the practice had already moved on. And without any mechanism to enforce commitments, any differentiation between the amount done by rich countries and poor countries would also be entirely voluntary.

This accentuated move away from equity was a hallmark of the Glasgow COP, in every area and at every step, even if developing country delegations did manage to get a few references to CBDR re-inserted into the Glasgow Climate Pact. It is inscribed in the dominant narrative of “net zero by 2050”, which the UK presidency tried so hard to impose. Many global south delegates described this as carbon colonialism. That is because it completely contradicts any idea that there is a finite carbon budget, an amount of carbon dioxide and equivalent gases that the human race can still afford to emit while keeping warming to 1.5 degrees, and that the rich countries have already spent all of their share of that budget. What is left, about 600Gt of CO2 equivalent, should therefore be reserved, as far as possible, for countries of the south so that they can combat extreme poverty.

Net zero is centred on the notion that rich countries and major corporations can continue to emit greenhouse gases, either because they will pay someone else not to (offsets), or because they will use some untried or non-existent technology to remove those gases from the atmosphere in the future. So in addition to these two bogus premises (that offsets can lead to real cuts in emissions, and that we will eventually be able to count on negative emissions technology), the net zero narrative depends on jettisoning any pretence of justice for those in the global south who are the main victims of climate change. It calls on all countries to pursue this common goal of net zero by the middle of the century, while glossing over the fact that the route envisaged to get there is conceived entirely with the financial and technological capacities of rich countries in mind.

It was this sleight of hand that allowed the UK presidency, and the mainstream, northern media to blame India, and indirectly China, for that last minute watering down of the wording on “phasing down” instead of “phasing out” unabated coal power. Of course, India, like China, does want to get off the hook of its own dependence on coal. But the point it was making was that it is not fair – and it is not in line with the CBDR principles of the UNFCCC – to expect developing countries with high levels of poverty to implement the same scale of mitigation at the same speed as rich countries. In fact earlier in the week, India had proposed language suggesting that all fossil fuels should be phased down, not just coal. But the the U.S. and Europe were having none of that.

The other side of this shift away from equity was clear in the attitude displayed by rich countries in Glasgow to climate finance. After shuffling numbers and dates backwards and forwards, they still ended up with still no commitment on when they would come up with the US$100 billion a year they had promised back in 2009 to provide by 2020 to help developing countries transition to clean energy and green technologies – a figure that had been pulled out of a hat at Copenhagen to placate governments in the South incensed by the assault on CBDR, and which had been woefully adequate even then. Another UN report recently suggested the amount needed would be more like US$6 trillion. The important thing to understand here is that such significant sums of climate finance are an absolute prerequisite for a just transition at a global level. Without such support, most countries in the South would have no way of moving towards zero carbon by investing in renewable energy, recycling, clean public transport, electric vehicles and so on.

Even worse, rich countries steadfastly resisted the attempts by developing countries to agree a common definition of climate finance. That may sound bureaucratic, but governments in the South wanted to make it clear that to qualify as climate finance it should be new money, given in the form of grants or other kinds of concessional finance (eg. loans at below market level interest rates). By rejecting a common definition, rich countries signaled their intention to continue fudging their already paltry commitments, by re-labelling existing development aid as climate finance and including commercial loans that will only increase the debt burden of the south and the profits of northern banks.

Led by the U.S. and the EU, they also refused to apply a 5% levy on the buying and selling of carbon credits between governments, which developing countries wanted as a reliable source of finance for the Adaptation Fund.

Perhaps most tellingly, the U.S. flatly refused to countenance a separate stream of funding to pay for Loss and Damage, which has been one of the most pressing demands of many southern countries for the last several COPs. This means money to pay for the damage already caused by climate change, including extreme weather events like hurricanes and floods. The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, told leaders on the second day of the COP that countries like his may be forced to seek redress in the international courts, if no loss and damage funding were agreed. The country’s second island of Barbuda was rendered uninhabitable by Hurricane Irma in 2017. The U.S., however, terrified of admitting liability for such costs, would only accept a minimal move of funding the operations of the Santiago Network, set up at COP25 but not activated, to advise and give technical support to nations facing such losses. As another southern delegate wryly commented, what we don’t need is more consultants flying around the world to tell us what loss and damage is.

Article 6 – the architecture of climate capital

These apparently obscure details all feed into that third kind of conclusion we mentioned above. Somewhere just below the radar of the mainstream media, COP26 made significant advances towards putting in place the structures and procedures by which a significant section of international capital is seeking to put the climate crisis at the centre of its business model for the decades to come. The centrepiece of this project is Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Article 6 deals with three kinds of what is called, euphemistically and misleadingly, “voluntary cooperation” between countries aimed at allowing “higher ambition in their mitigation and adaptation actions”. Essentially, this means offsets and carbon markets. In other words, Article 6 establishes the mechanisms by which high-emitting countries (mainly in the global north) can massage their promises to cut emissions (their NDCs), by continuing with some of those emissions (or even most of them), if they pay someone else (mainly countries in the global south) not to emit (or to absorb) an equivalent amount. Paragraph 6.2 refers to such “cooperation”, or trade in carbon credits, bilaterally between parties or countries. Paragraph 6.4 refers to such carbon trades on a wider basis between public and private entities, in other words to carbon markets as such. Paragraph 6.8 refers to “non-market” approaches to such exchanges, mainly involving the aid programmes of rich countries.

These mechanisms are absolutely central to how imperialist countries have approached the climate crisis and the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. They are what makes it possible for them to “commit to” the goals of “net zero by 2050” and the like, because they make it possible, in theory, for capitalism to look like it is taking bold steps to confront the crisis, while in fact only making comparatively modest changes to how it operates in the foreseeable future. That is, they seem to offer the possibility of pushing off into the future the existential contradiction that confronts capitalism, between its inherent obligation to grow and the environmental imperative that we consume less.

In the mean time, they also hold out the offer of a major new area of accumulation to a sector of global capital, especially finance capital. This is what David Harvey would call accumulation by dispossession – in this case the dispossession is of vast swathes of “nature” in the global south, bought up (or seized) from local, sometimes Indigenous communities, by northern governments and companies to offset their failure to cut emissions at home.

Not surprisingly, discussion of the precise rules that would govern how this vital piece of the jigsaw operates have been complicated and fractious. The battles have been shrouded by impenetrable jargon, but mostly they had to do with accountancy – with who would be able to include what, and when, as part of these carbon trades, and consequently who would benefit most. Successive COPs following Paris failed to reach an agreement. Civil society groups argued that no agreement would be better than a bad one, and almost any agreement on these terms would be a bad one. At Madrid they staged a last-minute protest that helped to block a deal. The problem was kicked down the road to Glasgow.

In Glasgow, there was an agreement on the rules for Article 6. The logjam seems to have been broken by a clever accounting suggestion from Japan. This is undoubtedly a significant victory for those banking on the future of offsets and carbon markets. Alongside the agreements reached on the timeframes for reporting emission cuts and standards of transparency, it means the rule book governing the Paris Agreement is now, in general terms, complete. However, not all the details are resolved. The example of forests illustrates how battles will continue to be fought over this market-driven agenda for the climate crisis.

Contrary to what some climate activists assume, forests have not so far been part of the UNFCCC’s carbon trading regime. In the Paris Agreement they come under Article 5, not Article 6. So there have indeed been programmes like REDD+, which provide for what are called “results-based payments” to countries that reduce their emissions from deforestation and conserve forests as carbon sinks. But such forest protection has not been able to generate carbon credits that could be traded on carbon markets, and which could therefore be bought by other governments or companies to offset their continued emissions and therefore help those countries meet their NDCs. Of course, many forest communities and others in the global south thought this was clearly the direction of travel, and feared the aim of many northern delegations was to turn the world’s forests into one more thing that could be bought and sold so that they could avoid making the emissions cuts that are needed.

In the run-up to Glasgow, a concerted campaign in this direction was mounted by the ill-named Coalition for Rainforest Nations (CfRN), supposedly represented at COP26 by Papua New Guinea. The CfRN claims to include 50 rainforest nations. However, the give-away is in the preposition. Because this is not an alliance of countries, but a “not-for-profit”, set up “for rainforest” nations by two graduates of Columbia Business School, from the U.S. and Italy, one of whom was brought up in Papua New Guinea. Its offices are in Manhattan, its board and staff are almost all investment bankers, and since 2005 it has been the main proponent of putting a price on the world’s rainforests, in theory as a way of compensating countries for conserving them. Since then it has led the promotion of RED, REDD and REDD+, each of which took a step closer to making forests one of the most important offsets on sale in the world’s carbon markets.

The CfRN, supported by several northern country delegations, pushed hard for COP26 to include emissions reductions from REDD+ to be included as carbon credits under Paragraph 6.2. This would cover both past REDD+ reductions, from 2015 to 2021, and a fast track for such reductions in the future from 2021, thus for the first time allowing the governments of high-emitting countries to buy up such “forest credits” as a way of achieving their NDCs. They also supported draft wording for Para 6.4 that would define carbon “removals” as relating specifically to the agriculture, forestry and land-use sector, thus putting forests directly into the carbon markets for the first time. Environmental campaigners from Brazil and elsewhere argued strongly that these moves would be disastrous for forest communities in Amazonia and elsewhere, and for the forests themselves, because they would unleash an even more intense wave of land grabs and commercial pressure on their territories, as rich countries and big corporations scrambled to buy up the rights to keep on polluting.

In the end, these campaigners won a small victory. REDD+ reductions were not mentioned in relation to 6.2, and the reference to forestry in 6.4 was replaced by a more generic definition of removals. However, these may be temporary stays of execution. Forests are not excluded under either mechanism, and there will surely be new attempts to include them explicitly when some of the further definitions come up for discussion.

Some initial conclusions for the movement

These three kinds of outcome from COP26 point to three kinds of conclusion that may help to orient our future action.

It is increasingly unlikely – one could say it is increasingly close to excluded – that the 197 parties to the UNFCCC will not take the action needed in the current decade – either neither in terms of emissions cuts or nor in terms of climate finance for the global south – to ensure that global warming will remain below 1.5 degrees Celsius. At least not unless there is a dramatic shift in the political balance of power that forces their hand.
There will continue to be mass pressure, from public opinion and from protests on the streets and in communities, to demand that those governments do take such action.

This is not because most of these people trust their governments to do what is needed. Most of the 100 or 150 thousand on the streets of Glasgow certainly don’t. The same goes for many of the millions more who watched with sympathy. Almost certainly, most of those protesters already think “system change” is needed, although they may not be clear what that might involve.

But for the moment, they still see putting pressure on governments as the best available option. The more those governments don’t take such action, and the more the impact of extreme weather events is felt in major population centres, the more the movement may radicalise.

There is already widespread sympathy for others taking direct action. That sympathy may increase. In some specific circumstances, the mass movement itself may resort more to direct action to block mines, power plants or whatever.

But overall, and unless there is a dramatic shift in the political balance of power, the mass movement will not take upon itself the task of shutting down the fossil fuel industry, as some are suggesting it should.

While governments in the global north will continue to claim they are working to keep 1.5 alive, the most coherent sectors of the capitalist class, especially in the financial sector, will be working hard and fast to put in place the mechanisms that can turn the climate and biodiversity crises into a new, core domain for capital accumulation. Of course, much of the ruling class in the global south is already well integrated into this project. Governments and civil society organisations that are not will continue to fight their corner within the framework of the UN climate talks. They don’t have much choice. There may be increasingly sharp contradictions between some of them and the way the governments of the global north are driving the process forward at their expense. But there will also be many occasions where these representatives of the global south, both governments and sometimes movements, buy into the short term benefits apparently on offer from global capital and its market mechanisms for addressing the climate crisis. One example of this is how even some radical sections of the Indigenous movement in Brazil have been tempted to sign up to aspects of the commodification of forests, as a way of getting much-needed cash to their communities.

It is understandable that point one above will lead to, indeed has already produced, calls to radicalise the movement. In part those calls are right. But it would be a bad mistake to misinterpret this. The temptation to “disengage from the COP” altogether and “set our own agenda” risks driving a wedge between some of the more radical sections of the climate justice movement, still a relatively small minority, and those much bigger forces that were both on the streets in Glasgow and were represented, in a mediated form, by some of the governments of the global south and many of the civil society groups that operate and fight within the UNFCCC process. Many Latin American Indigenous organisations, to take that prominent example again, were very active both on the streets of Glasgow, and inside the Blue Zone.

When 1000 delegates walked out of the Blue Zone on the final Friday, it was the biggest such revolt in the history of the COPs, at least since the Alba countries banged the table and rejected Obama’s stitch-up in Copenhagen. 750 civil society delegates packed out one of the main halls for an impromptu People’s Plenary, which ended with them singing “power to the people”. Then they were joined by several hundred more who couldn’t get in, to march through the Scottish Events Campus venue singing “the people are going to rise like the water… I hear the voice of my great grand daughter, calling climate justice now”, and finally to exit the blue zone and link up with the movements protesting outside the gates. It was a powerful and moving illustration of the kind of links that are possible, and necessary.

What we need to find, in Scotland as in other parts of the UK and around the world, are the particular organisational forms that can bring these different component parts together – into a more lasting, consistent and potent force – not to drive them apart.

Climate Justice, Social Justice and Independence in Scotland

Here in Scotland, the aftermath of COP26 presents us with a special opportunity. This can be illustrated with one short story, told backwards.

At the time of writing, the private equity-backed oil exploration company, Siccar Point Energy, has just announced it is “pausing” its project to develop the Cambo oil field, located 1,000 metres below the North Sea to the west of the Shetland Islands. Although not a big field, and economically a marginal one, for campaigners and the UK government alike, Cambo had become symbolic of the confrontation between an official strategy of maximum fossil fuel extraction on the road to a low carbon future, and the demand to leave it in the ground, now. For the campaigners, Siccar’s announcement feels like a big victory.

Siccar’s decision came 8 days after Shell pulled out of its 30 percent stake in the project, saying “the economic case… is not strong enough at this time”.

Just over two weeks earlier, on 16 November, Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, for the first time expressed open opposition to the new oil field, saying it should not get the green light and was incompatible with targets for “net zero”. Previously she had only called for a reassessment of the project by the UK government, which has the power to approve oil exploration licenses.

Ten days before that, Glasgow hosted the biggest climate demonstration ever seen in the UK, and one of the biggest protests of any kind ever held in Scotland.

When Shell announced its decision to pull out, Friends of the Earth Scotland quite rightly commented that “People power has made the climate-wrecking Cambo development so toxic that even oil giant Shell doesn’t want to be associated with it any more.” That was true. But there was a step in between as well. Two steps in fact: government, and the national question.

The fact that so many people demonstrated in Glasgow, and that “Stop Cambo” was one of their most visible demands, no doubt had an impact on Shell. The oil giant can do without this or that new oil field the size of Cambo (170 million barrels over 25 years, about the same as Saudi Arabia produces in three and a half weeks). And it is concerned about its image, especially that it is now publicly committed to becoming “net zero” by mid century. But those demonstrations were probably not the decisive factor in its decision. The threat of climate campaigners waging legal warfare and dragging the project through endless appeals and court delays probably weighed heavier.

However, that huge protest in Glasgow surely did weigh large in Nicola Sturgeon’s shift to opposing Cambo. And Nicola Sturgeon’s change of heart probably had an even greater bearing on Shell’s economic calculations. The Scottish government may not have the power to say yes or no to new oil fields, but it could make the practicalities of access and operations a lot more difficult. And even Shell can probably see that well before the end of the 25-year life span of the oil field and its economic viability, there is a realistic possibility of Scotland becoming an independent country, with a government that may now want to get rid of all such oil fields.

This is one concrete example of how the national question is sharpening the climate question in Scotland, and vice versa.

The combination between the insulting exclusion of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP government by the Johnson-Sharma UK unionist presidency of COP26, and the historic scale of the mobilisation on Scottish streets, has increased the pressure on an ambiguous SNP government, and already brought some modest results, like that over Cambo. The Scottish government budget, revealed last week, also makes some partial steps in a positive direction, with addressing the climate crisis made one of its three top priorities. This of course has coincided with the incorporation into government of the Scottish Green Party – significantly to the left of the Greens in England, Germany, or probably anywhere else in the EU. The Scottish government took another very small but symbolic step in the first week of COP26, when it became the first administration in the global north to make a concrete offer, of just £1 million, later increased to £2 million, to a fund for loss and damage in the Global South – an initiative which was promptly trashed by the Biden administration.

In the other direction, the climate question is itself beginning to bisect, and polarise, the national struggle. It may be little more than a footnote, of some interest in Scotland but not much elsewhere, but this has become clear in the attitude of the former First Minister, Alex Salmond. Salmond broke with Sturgeon and formed last year Alba, a supposedly more radical nationalist party, backed by a strange amalgam of anti-trans “feminists” and misogynist leftists. After Sturgeon came out against Cambo, he promptly attacked her for selling out Scotland’s right to its own oil and putting jobs at risk.

In other words, the issues of climate justice and climate action now traverse the national struggle in Scotland, just as the issue of closing down North Sea oil and the need for a just transition led by workers in the sector cuts across and polarises the trade union movement in Scotland.

These are potentially explosive combinations. Climate struggles are already stoking national demands, and they could add a whole new dimension to the struggle for independence. At the same time, any advance towards an independent Scotland is necessarily going to pose the issues of climate justice much more sharply. The SNP government has taken some modest, positive steps, just as it has in various areas of social policy. But its overall “social liberal” orientation and its attachment to market-led policies means it is still wedded to the vision of net zero (by 2045) and illusions about carbon capture and storage, about Scotland as a powerhouse and exporter of renewable energy and so on. Dismantling the net zero narrative and its attendant false solutions therefore takes on a particular importance here in Scotland, both for the climate movement and for the radical wing of the pro-independence movement.

The big challenge in the coming months – and it is a challenge that needs to be embraced swiftly, or the moment will have passed – is to find the organisational forms and the political initiatives that can capture, consolidate and develop the energy, the diversity and the political radicalisation that burst onto the streets of Glasgow in November. This will need some sort of specific initiative here in Scotland, but an initiative that is articulated with similar, appropriate moves in other parts of the UK and internationally.

Iain Bruce, 11 December 2021

Iain Bruce is a member of ecosocialist.scot living in Glasgow.

Ukrainian history holds lessons for Scottish socialists

Paul Inglis of ecosocialist.scot writes on Marko Bocjun’s recent book The Workers’ Movement and the National Question in Ukraine, 1897-1918

The Historical Materialism book series has been the source of a number of useful works for my political thinking over the years. Previous volumes I’ve encountered, like Alan Sennett’s book on Revolutionary Marxism in the Spanish revolution and Ralf Hoffrogge’s book on Richard Müller and the German workers’ councils, have served as both examples of erudite scholarship and as powerful influences on the way I think about socialist politics, strategy and tactics. One of the latest entries in the series, Marko Bojcun’s The Workers’ Movement and the National Question in Ukraine, 1897-1918, looks set to hold a similar place in my estimation going forward.

This book presents a fascinating account of a lesser-known movement for leftists today, telling the fraught story of the Ukrainian working class movement, its political parties and organisations, and how they faced up to the national question amid the revolutionary tumult of the year 1917. Reading the book, it is like hearing about something of a lost world – tendencies and movements shrouded by the success of the Bolsheviks in the conflicts that followed the collapse of the Russian Empire. Furthermore, it is simply solid, detailed writing on the national question, and like any good writing on the national question, it has a relevance that leaps beyond its own subject matter and which sheds light on other national struggles and movements, past and present.

As someone who has hitched my political commitments as a socialist to the opportunities and risks presented by the cause of Scottish independence, I am always interested to learn more about national movements from all over the world: how they organised, how they fought, what kind of compromises they made, and especially where they failed. In short, lessons of history! I think it is a shame that for a lot of the left and the national movement more broadly here in Scotland, there is a tendency to act like the only comparable situations for us are Catalunya, the Basque Country and Quebec, presumably because these are contemporary movements in Western nations.

As long as we don’t pretend there are any directly, exactly comparable situations, we can take valuable lessons from national movements both here and across the Global South, and from across history – specifically lessons pertaining to questions of approach and attitude. How does the working class get involved with national movements? How do we bring the class on board? What attitude should we take towards the moderate or liberal political parties and groups? How do we manage to get socialists from the larger nation, in our case England, to consider our national movement seriously and enlist their support? These are questions that face us today as they faced the Ukrainian socialists.

Bojcun’s book contains much on the specific historical difficulties of Ukrainian socialism and nationalism and the lessons gathered therein, but I wanted to focus this short article on some of the questions and thoughts about Marxism that I had running through my mind as I read the work, particularly the discussions in the third chapter on Social Democracy and the National Question.

It is very useful that this book not only gives a historical narrative of Ukrainian socialism, but also addresses theoretical concerns, problematising classical Marxist thinking on the national question – Marx, Engels, Kautsky, Lenin and Luxemburg – and subjecting them to analysis and criticism in the light of contemporary nationalist movements in Eastern Europe. I was excited to see this as I have in recent years, especially as I have become more interested in the national question, come to believe that there is an unfortunate weakness in the Marxist “canon” where the national question is concerned, one that plagues it to this day. Where thinkers like Marx or Engels can be thrilling and enlightening on a wealth of matters, they can be flippant, arbitrary and cruel when speaking about the fate of “smaller” nations.

Take, for example, the remarks from Marx’s early work, quoted by the author, on how Scots, Gaels and Basques are “historically unprepared for nationhood”, national leftovers that “will become and will remain until their final extermination or denationalisation fanatical partisans of counterrevolution, since their entire existence is in general a protest against the great historical revolution”. The thoughts of Engels on the South Slavs, which I first encountered in Mark Leier’s excellent biography of Mikhail Bakunin, are a similarly crass diatribe.

In this conception, the smaller nations of the world were simply written off as barriers to the centralising tendency of capitalism towards more unified, larger states and, apparently, a more effective and efficient development of the productive forces conducive to building socialism.

What use is any of this to socialists in these smaller nations? Leaving aside the more complex tapestry of uneven economic development that resulted from the spread of global, imperialist capitalism and which calls into question the effective base for socialism that such great power “assimilation” has given us, the brutal reality of how stateless people have been forcibly integrated into larger nations through repression should give us all pause when we read of “denationalisation” and the like. No culture disappears from the scene of history cleanly, and no language simply dies out gently.

Now, to their credit, Marx and Engels of course came to a more sophisticated position on small nations in their later years, particularly regarding Irish freedom, but the “great power assimilationist” tendency in Marxism still runs through the thought of Kautsky, Lenin and Luxemburg, as the author shows. I quite enjoyed the exploration of the ambiguities of Lenin’s writing on the right of nations to self determination, and the criticisms of the Ukrainian socialist Lev Yurkevych on this matter – how Lenin sort-of wants to have his cake and eat it by both supporting the right to national self determination but also discouraging it, lauding the advantages of big states and bourgeois development. Another area of Yurkevych’s criticism looked at Lenin’s assertion that the achievement of democratic multinational states would see strivings for complete freedom of secession weaken.

This, considered in light of the modern day, feels like wishful thinking. The national question is alive and well in multinational democracies like the United Kingdom and Spain, and even if it is countered that this fact is only because of democratic deficits in these big states, it should be kept in mind that the centralising tendency of states like the United Kingdom and Spain has precluded the kind of genuine national autonomy that would render secession irrelevant. One need only think of the “fruits” yielded by Spanish democracy to the Basques in the 1980s, and how they can be measured in murdered, tortured and unlawfully detained independence activists.

What I feel all of this criticism poses, and what I would hope all of you bear in mind as you read this work, and other works like it, is: how do we overcome this weakness in Marxist theory, and how do we do better in the future? How do we conceive a radical alternative to the current state of affairs that genuinely grants self-determination and security to national cultures, no matter how small? This is especially pertinent for us Scots, because we absolutely must make sure that, whatever Scotland emerges from the next period, the Gaelic language and culture is preserved and supported, and that the Gaels have whatever autonomy they feel is appropriate. To do otherwise would be to continue the historical record of the British state.

Watch a recording of the full event with Marko Bojcun below

Paul Inglis is a member of the RSP and Socialist Resistance, based in Glasgow. This article is adapted from Paul’s spoken contribution at a joint RSP/SR meeting in September 2021 to discuss Bojcun’s book.

Ukraine, Marxism and the National Question: A Conversation With Marko Bojcun – YouTube

Reproduced from the blog of the Republican Socialist Platform https://republicansocialists.scot/2021/11/ukrainian-history-holds-lessons-for-scottish-socialists/

Dundee celebrates life of Mary Brooksbank

On Saturday 18 December, Dundee sees events to commemorate the birthday of Mary Brooksbank.

Among speakers taking part are Dundee community activist Siobhan Tolland, Labour MSP Mercedes Villalba, Scottish Green MSP Maggie Chapman and Republican Socialist activist Mary McGregor. There will be a social event afterwards featuring the brilliant Madderam Band.

Mary Brooksbank is the best known Dundee woman trade union and socialist activist of the twentieth century and the event takes place on what would have been her 124th Birthday.

Mary Brooksbank was born in Aberdeen and came to Dundee as a child. She began working in the jute mills, for which Dundee is famous, at an early age and organised women workers into unions – leading strikes and agitating over pay and conditions. She was inspired by attending classes of Glasgow socialist John Maclean through the Scottish Labour College movement to join the Communist Party, but was expelled in 1933 for opposing Stalin. She supported Maclean’s aim of an Independent Scottish Workers Republic and continued to be politically active for decades.

But as well as being a political activist, Mary was also renowned as a musician and songwriter. She played violin, sang and wrote the famous “Jute Mill Song” and other songs – her work was recorded by Ewan MacColl. So it is fitting that the tribute to this inspirational woman’s life will include a musical performance by Madderam, finalists in the Up and Coming Artist category at the 2021 MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards earlier this month. (Do check out their album Ebb and Flow on Bandcamp.)

The event starts at 1.30pm at the Weaver Statue in Lochee High Street, Dundee with speeches and music, and moves on at 2.30pm to the Ancrum Arms Logie Street for the social and band. Participants are asked to follow full Covid guidelines and ensure that they are tested and vaccinated before they attend.

Further details:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1312705905866570

Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mary-brooksbank-commemoration-social-tickets-225538901927

This event is organised by Republican Socialists, which you can find out how to join here: https://join.republicansocialists.scot/ or contact them here: secretary@republicansocialists.scot

Victory over Cambo Shows the Way

by Iain Bruce

The announcement that private equity-backed Siccar Point Energy has “paused” its plans for the Cambo oilfield is great news for all of us in Scotland.

It gives hope to everyone concerned about the climate crisis and the future of the planet.

As Friends of the Earth Scotland said when Shell pulled out of the project a week earlier: “People power has made the climate-wrecking Cambo development so toxic that even oil giant Shell doesn’t want to be associated with it any more“.

This is a victory for the huge demos in Glasgow during the COP in November. They may not have swayed Shell on their own, but they obviously helped to change Nicola Sturgeon’s mind. Three days after the end of the UN climate summit, the First Minister finally came out against Cambo. Days later Shell withdrew from its 30 percent stake in the planned oilfield, 1000 metres below the surface in the North Sea west of Shetland.

COP26 may have been an abject failure, in terms of what the governments inside the Blue Zone decided. But over 100,000 people on the streets outside can have an impact. The suspension of Cambo shows that.

Now we have to build on that. We need to push not just for a halt to all new fossil fuel projects. We need a complete decommissioning of the North Sea oil and gas industry within this decade. And that needs to be led by the workers and the communities most affected, with serious investment in good, green, unionised jobs for all.

For that we certainly need to bend the ears of the SNP government, which remains wedded to the false narrative of “net zero”, in their case by 2045.

But above all we need independence, with socialist values.

As the banner at the head of the Independence Bloc on 6 November said, “It’s Scotland’s Oil, Leave It in the Soil”.

COP26 Coalition – Final Press Statement

“This agreement is an utter betrayal of the people. It is hollow words on the climate emergency from the richest countries, with an utter disregard of science and justice. The UK Government greenwash and PR have spun us off course.

The rich refused to do their fair share, with more empty words on climate finance and turning their back on the poorest who are facing a crisis of covid coupled with economic and climate apartheid – all caused by the actions of the richest.

It’s immoral for the rich to sit there talking about their future children and grandchildren, when the children of the South are suffering now.

This COP has failed to keep 1.5c alive, and set us on a pathway to 2.5c. All while claiming to act as they set the planet on fire.

At COP26, the richest got what they came here for, and the poorest leave with nothing.

The people are rising up across the globe to hold our governments and corporations to account – and make them act.”

14.11.12

Glasgow COP26: Independence bloc on the 6 Nov March for Climate Justice

The Independence bloc on Glasgow’s March for Climate Justice on Saturday 6 November will be marching for Climate Justice and for a Scottish Independence that takes effective action on climate, ends Scotland’s role in fossil fuels and a new Scotland in solidarity with the Global South.

The slogan of the bloc is

It’s Scotland’s Oil – Keep It In The Soil

and the immediate demand will be for the Cambo oil field off the coast of Shetland to be stopped.

The slogan combines the demand popularised by the Scottish National Party in the 1970s with the demands of the climate movement and the COP26 Coalition calling the march for no new extraction of fossil fuels and a phasing out of existing extractions with a just transition for workers.

The bloc has been convened by the Radical Independence Campaign and will assemble at the Lord Roberts Statue in Kelvingrove Park from 11.30am. Lord Roberts was a British imperialist military figure who was integral to the suppression of India, Afghanistan, South Africa and Ireland during the British Empire. Campaigners will also call for recognition of Britain and Scotland’s role in the imperialist domination of so many countries, a domination that has underdeveloped them economically. Financial reparations and the cancellation of debts are essential if these countries are to survive.

The bloc has been built by a Crowdfunder that can still be donated to.

Other Blocs on the march

The Independence bloc is one of around twenty on the demonstration. Full details of all the blocs and their assembly points are here:

You can find an overview of all the blocs and lead contacts here.

Facebook event page here: https://tinyurl.com/cud3j5be

List of blocs:

Indigenous bloc

Anti-Racist / Migrant Justice bloc (FB event – https://tinyurl.com/857k7bmd)

Youth bloc

Trade Unions bloc (FB event – https://tinyurl.com/jcbx5pup)

Communities bloc (FB event – https://tinyurl.com/jvj5hvk8)

Extinction Rebellion bloc (FB event – https://tinyurl.com/kf8mk8wv)

Faith and belief bloc

Independence bloc (FB event – https://tinyurl.com/4jp2u5dr)

Climate Justice bloc (FB event – https://tinyurl.com/487htbxs)

Health bloc

Farmers and Land Workers bloc (FB event – https://tinyurl.com/ddh78hc)

Biodiversity & Nature bloc

Housing bloc

Cycling Bloc & Sustainable Transport bloc (FB event – https://tinyurl.com/fbvxzjz4)

See here for site maps of Kelvingrove Park and Glasgow Green, and the full Action Plan here.

There will also be a Southside feeder march which will assemble at 12noon at Queen’s Park and join the main demo at George Square. Please see FB event: https://tinyurl.com/2au7djjz

Radical Independence Campaign on the march for Scottish Independence January 2020 (photo C Beaton)

Glasgow COP26: Join Fridays for the Future march Friday 5 November 11.00 Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow

Fridays for the Future have called a school strike for Glasgow on Friday 5 November to protest against climate change. There will be a march from Kelvingrove Park (Prince of Wales Bridge) to Glasgow City Centre starting at 11.00. Speakers include Greta Thunberg.

Details here: https://climatestrike.scot/strike/

@fff_scotland

#COP26 #UprootTheSystem #UprootTheCOP

Glasgow COP 26: INSIDE OUTSIDE – daily reports from the COP26 Coalition

INSIDE OUTSIDE brings you daily reports of developments at the Glasgow COP26. Brought to you by the COP26 Coalition and presented by Sabrina Fernandes and Iain Bruce, the programme will cover what is happening both inside the COP26 conference and outside in the streets and protests in Glasgow.

You can access the programme daily on You Tube at the COP26 Coalition channel: COP26 Coalition – YouTube

Glasgow COP26: Zero Carbon by 2050 is far too late!!

If dire warnings resolved the environmental crisis we would be heading for victory writes Alan Thornett.

Boris Johnson tells us that we are heading for a new dark ages, which indeed we probably are. The UN Secretary-General has called it a “code red for humanity”. A report from the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), just before the Glasgow COP concluded that changes to the Earth’s climate are now “widespread, rapid, and intensifying”.

Such warnings are important, of course, but the gap between such words and action is enormous. At the moment we are heading for a 2.7 degC increase by the end of the century – which would be catastrophic – and that is only if countries meet all of the pledges they made in Paris.

The problem in Glasgow is not just whether an agreement is reached, or even whether it will be implemented, it is that the target that has been set by the elites – ‘a 50 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 and then ‘net’ zero by 2050’ – was entirely inadequate before the conference opened.

The 1.5degC limit was a last-minute breakthrough at the Paris COP in 2015, and was agreed only as an aspiration and not a policy. Two years later (in October 2018) it was officially adopted in a Special Report on Global Warming published by the IPCC. The Report concluded that the 1.5degC limit was entirely possible within the laws of chemistry and physics but would require unprecedented effort in all aspects of society to implement. The IPCC also warned that we have just 12 years to do something about it, since a 1.5degC increase could be reached as soon as 2030.

After this the climate movement then adopted the slogan net zero by 2030 – which was adopted by the 2019 LP conference, for example, with the ‘net’ part hotly disputed. The resolution was supported by the UNITE union. Extinction Rebellion (XR) adopted it with a date of 2025.

Zero carbon by 2030, however, has been replaced in Glasgow by a demand for a ‘50 per cent carbon reduction by 2030 and net zero by 2050’. The British government has adopted this position and according to Ed Miliband Labour has also, with 2040 instead of 2050.

We should reject the notion that that zero carbon by 2030 can’t be done – from whoever it comes. It would, of course, need a dramatically new approach and degree of political will commensurate with an existential threat. And it would have to be led by governments, who alone have the resources to do it. It means putting their economies on a war footing – a point made strongly (and bizarrely) by the heir to the British throne.

During the Second World War the British economy was taken over by the government and completely turned over to war production within months.

The USA acted in the same way once it entered the war. The US War Museum puts it this way: “Meeting these (wartime) challenges would require massive government spending, conversion of existing industries to wartime production, construction of huge new factories, changes in consumption, and restrictions on many aspects of American life. Government, industry, and labour would need to cooperate. Contributions from all Americans, young and old, men and women, would be necessary to build up what President Roosevelt called the “Arsenal of Democracy.”

Leaving aside the jingoism, the scale of the ecological emergency also requires mobilisations of this kind which go way beyond anything that the free market can achieve – despite the profile it has been given in Glasgow.

It means forcing major structural changes at every level of society very quickly. It means a major transfer of wealth to the impoverished countries to facilitate their transition and lift them towards western levels of development. It also means major reductions in energy usage and wastage alongside renewable energy. It also means recognising that this decade – the 2020s – is crucial in all this. Once we go beyond this decade the problems escalate and the task becomes more difficult.

As Greta Thunberg insisted in the Guardian last month: “Science doesn’t lie. If we are to stay below the targets set in the 2015 Paris agreement – and thereby minimise the risks of setting off irreversible chain reactions beyond human control – we need immediate, drastic, annual emission reductions unlike anything the world has ever seen. And since we don’t have the technological solutions which alone will do anything close to that in the foreseeable future, it means we have to make fundamental changes to our society.”

Increasing public support

Last month a poll of 22,000 people, conducted by Demos, found that up to 94% public supported radical action to stop climate change including a carbon tax on industry, a levy on flying, a speed limit of 60mph on motorways, and a campaign to reduce meat eating by 10%. Last week another poll of 35,000 people, this time by GlobeScan, found that a big majority want their governments to take tough action against climate change.

Protest actions have also greatly increased. Not only those around the Greta Thunburg, the remarkable school strikes, and the Fridays for Futures movement, but around XR and Insulate Britain who have played a major role in the run-up to Glasgow.

Last week 49 members of Insulate Britain were arrested after the group blocked three major junctions in London as part of an ongoing campaign in defiance of injunctions banning them from protesting anywhere on England’s strategic road network. The group, is calling on the government to commit to insulate all British homes by 2030 as a key step to tackling the climate crisis. Along with XR in particular they have played a major role in mobilising public opinion in the run-up to Glasgow.

Alongside this science is telling us that we have 10 years to hold the global temperature increase to a maximum of 1.5degC. After that a dangerous and irreversible feedback process could take un-challengeable control.

How all this will affect the outcome in Glasgow, however, remains to be seen over the next two weeks. Many world leaders, heading for summit, were already more concerned with how they can get away with pledging as little as possible and how many loopholes and excuses they can deploy to avoid serious action.

Johnson – a dangerous liability

Any gains that might come out of this conference will be in spite of Boris Johnson, who was deeply discredited on environmental issues well before he got there – even in capitalist terms.

He acts as if he is a lifelong environmentalist dedicated to the defence of the planet when most of the time he acts as a climate sceptic and runs a party that is stacked out with climate sceptics. Other than supporting electric cars – though in a totally under resourced way – his domestic record on environmental issues is appallingly

In the UK budget last week – you couldn’t make it up – he actually reduces the tax on domestic air travel– a more direct snub to COP26 it is hard to imagine. He is also supporting the development of a major new oil field in the North Sea off Shetland [Cambo] with an estimated capacity of more than 1,000-bn barrels. He continues to defend the opening of a new deep coal mine in Cumbria – which he claims is nothing to do with him. (Britain is currently producing 570m barrels of oil and gas a year and has a further 4.4bn barrels of oil and gas reserves to be extracted from its continental shelf.)

His huge road building programmes, alongside airport expansions, are still on his government’s agenda. He cut Britain’s foreign aid budget from 0.7% to 0.5% of GDP in advance of this COP26. His government has refused to prevent the water companies dumping millions of tonnes of raw sewage a year into UK rivers making them amongst the most polluted in Europe.

His biggest lie, however, is his oft repeated claim that Britain has reduced its carbon emissions by 44 per cent since 1990.

This is only true if you exclude the embedded emissions that Britain has exported to China and India and other developing countries as a result of massive de-industrialisation. The emissions from which now appear in the carbon budgets on those countries not the UK. Britain also excludes from its figure carbon emissions from to major emitters, aviation and shipping. These exclusions have a huge effect, amounting to around 50 per cent of Britain’s carbon budget.

(Johnson also arrived at the G20 in Rome banging his little Englander drum after flouting the agreement he signed with the EU in terms of the access of goods into the north of Ireland and French fishing rights around the Channel Islands, in order to boost his support amongst UK Brexiteers.)

Conclusion

Despite it self-evident weakness, and its inability to reach conclusions and take actions commensurate to the problem the COP conferences are important in raising global awareness of the problems and as a focal point of struggle for real and decisive action. The climate movement is right to take these conference seriously and to place demands on them that would begin to have positive results. Those who argue that we (the movement) should have nothing to do with the process should think again.

Stopping climate change and environmental destruction, however, will not be resolved by COP conferences but will require the broadest possible coalition of forces ever built – and the struggle around the COP conferences is important in building such a movement.

Such a movement must include vast range of activists from those defending the forests and the fresh water resources to those that are resisting the damming of rivers that destroy the existing ecosystems. It must include the indigenous peoples who have been the backbone of so many of these struggles along with the young school strikers, and those supporting them who have been so inspirational over the past two years. And it should include the activists of XR who have brought new energy into the movement over the same period of time.

It will also need to embrace the more radical Green Parties alongside the big NGOs such as Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF, the RSPB, which have grown and radicalised in recent years alongside the newer groupings that have come on the scene such as Avaaz and 38 Degrees. These organisations have radicalised, particularly in the run up to Paris, and have an impressive mobilising ability. Such a movement has to look wider, to embrace the trade union movement, and also the indigenous peoples around the world along with major social movements, such as La Via Campesina and the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST).

The involvement of the trade unions is also crucial, though it remains difficult in such a defensive period. Progress has been made, however, via initiatives such as the campaign for a Million Green Jobs in Britain, which has the support of most major trade unions and the TUC, and the ‘just transition’ campaign (i.e. a socially just transition from fossil fuel to green jobs) which has the support of the ITUC at the international level, and addresses the issue of job protection in the course of the changeover to renewable energy. This opens the door for a deeper involvement of the trade unions in the ecological struggle.

The real test, however, will be whether it can embrace a much wider movement as the crisis develops drawing in the many millions who have not been climate activists but are driven to resist by the impact of the crisis on their lives and their chances of survival.

Just Transition events at COP26 in Glasgow

The Just Transition Partnership was launched by the Scottish Trades Union Congress and Friends of the Earth Scotland in 2016 in a joint statement also signed by various trade unions and environment campaigns. It highlights the need for action by governments to secure a just transition for workers in the decarbonisation of employment. The Partnership is helping organise a series of events aimed at trade union and worker organisations at the Glasgow COP26. These are detailed in a JTP mailing from which we have extracted the following list of events below. You can contact the Just Transition Partnership here.

JUST TRANSITION HUB

9.30 – 19.30 Monday 8 November, Govan Parish Church, 796 Govan Road G51 2YL

Hosted by STUC, Friends of the Earth Scotland, War on Want, Platform, TUC & the Just Transition Partnership – this will be one of the most comprehensive events  yet on what just transition really means. It’s part of the People’s Summit. There will be loads of top speakers bringing great depth of experience from Scotland and around the world. Read about all the sessions here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/just-transition-hub-at-the-peoples-summit-tickets-189587420077

PEOPLE’S SUMMIT – OTHER RELEVANT EVENTS

Sunday 7 – Wednesday 10 November

Among the other enormous number of other events there are many which are about specific aspects of the just transition. A few are listed below but you can do your own search of the programme by checking the just transition box on the left. You might also do a search using topics like ‘climate jobs’ or ‘green new deal’.

See and search all events Events – COP26 Coalition

GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE 6 NOVEMBER:

TRADE UNION BLOC ON THE GLASGOW MARCH –

CLIMATE, JOBS JUSTICE

Assemble Kelvingrove Park: 11.30 pm March off: 12.45 pm Rally at Glasgow Green: 3 – 4 pm Saturday 6 November

The trade union and workers bloc of the march will be headed by an STUC banner: Climate:Jobs:Justice (you’ll have seen that headline before!). To see where is the assembly point for trade unions, go to Global Day of Action – STUC

OTHER EVENTS RELATING TO JUST TRANSITION

Events supported by Scottish Trade Union Congress: Public Events & Conferences – STUC

Trade Unions for Energy Democracy: TUED Events at COP26 – Google Docs

Just Transition events at COP26 mapped by WWF 1 – 6 November: Just Transition events at COP mapping – Google Shee

Monday 1 November

13.30      Glasgow Climate Dialogues: Elevating the Voice of the Global South (with section on just transition).

Wednesday 3 November

13.30     The imperative of a Just Transition for the workforce to save our climate International Trade Union Confederation

18.30     Just Transition: Transforming public transport to fight climate change

Thursday 4 November

12.30     Beyond Energy: A Just transition for all – WWF

17.00     Work and Unions Movement Assembly – COP26 Coalition

Friday 5 November

17.00     Climate Action – Strike Action- People’s Assembly COP26 Rally

LINK TO THE RECORDING OF THE JUST TRANSITION ONLINE CONFERENCE IN SEPTEMBER 2021 – Climate, Jobs, Justice: Making the Just Transition Happen (jtp.scot)

Scottish council strikes suspended as government and councils make new offer

The Scottish council strikes due to take place during COP26 have been suspended due to the Scottish government and Scottish councils’ umbrella body COSLA, making a new pay offer, reports Mike Picken for ecosocialist.scot.

The new offer came at the eleventh hour as council workers in Glasgow were preparing to strike from Monday 1 November, with members of the GMB union threatening to cease all refuse collection and severely disrupt schools in the City as it hosts the world leaders attending COP26.

The revised pay offer came after months of stalling by the employers and government saying there was no further money to afford a better offer than that rejected by the three unions representing the 120,000 council workers affected by the pay award. Negotiations have stalled for 18 months as essential workers continued to work throughout the pandemic without any pay increase.

According to unions and media reports, the new money came in the form of an additional last minute £30 million funding from the Scottish government and £18.5 million from within existing council budgets. The new offer amounts to a flat rate rise of £1,062 for those earning below £25,000 per year (the majority of workers), representing a 5.89% percent pay rise for those on the lowest pay. The pay award is backdated to April 2021 and runs for 12 months.

The unions have suspended the threatened strikes, including those in Glasgow due to start on Monday 1 November, and will now consult members about whether to accept the pay award over the next fortnight. Unions will also almost immediately begin negotiations over a new pay award from April 2022 at a time when the cost-of-living is spiralling upwards across Britain, particularly energy costs which are a higher burden in Scotland due to the colder climate. Official UK inflation is already over 4% and set to rise in coming months.

The offer falls well short of the joint demand by the unions for a £2,000/£10 per hour minimum pay award, but by winning a mandate for industrial action, despite the legal obstacles, and effective public campaigning the unions have shown how employers can be challenged on pay by the threat of strike action. The funding of the revised offer also indicates that despite trying to wash its hands of the dispute the Scottish government of the SNP, in alliance with the Scottish Green Party, is a key player in council finances and pressure needs to be kept up on them for decent public services at council level and a reversal of all cuts.

#RisingClyde – Action at COP26 in Glasgow

Two of the most vibrant and active components of the environmental movement in Scotland – Glasgow Calls Out Polluters and Climate Camp Scotland – have teamed up to launch #RisingClyde, a compendium of public actions happening in Glasgow during the COP26. Below ecosocialist.scot is publishing the first of their newsletters. We urge our readers to give support and solidarity.

Hello friends,

Climate Camp Scotland has teamed up with Glasgow Calls Out Polluters to bring you #RisingClyde – a roundup of public actions happening at the COP26 climate conference in and around Glasgow over the next two weeks. We will be providing:

>> Action call-outs on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
>> Regularly updated Glasgow actions calendar
>> Press office for radical actions, call us for help!
>> Tonnes of cool videos, comics, explainers, zines and fun on our socials.
>> ‘Town Crier’ to attend actions on request to announce useful info.

[There is a] Signal Group as an open, non-secure notice board for action call outs – [Contact GCOP or CCS for further info on how to join].

In solidarity,

GCOP and CCS Comms Team #RisingClyde

Public Actions at COP26

29th Oct

#DefundClimateChaos Climate Memorial 10am, Clydeside Amphitheatre, Glasgow [details]

31st Oct

The Era of Injustice is Over: Opening Event 2pm, Landing Hub – Entrances on McAlpine Street x Broomielaw & Carrick Street, Glasgow [details ]
Stop Climate Horror – march through Edinburgh before COP26 11am, Middle Meadow Walk, Edinburgh [details]

1st Nov

Raise the Banners for Climate Justice All day, Glasgow-wide [details]

3rd Nov

Divest Discobedience 3pm, Donald Dewar Statue, Glasgow [details]

4th Nov

Toxic Tour of Glasgow 10.30am, George Sq., Glasgow [eventbrite]
Green State Vision: West Papua’s Struggle for Climate Justice 12pm, 220 Broomielaw [details]
Day of Action against Militarism and the Climate Global [details]

5th Nov

Youth Climate Strike + rally 11am, Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow [details] [facebook event]

6th Nov

Global Day of Action for Climate Justice – Glasgow March 11am @ Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow [facebook event] [action network] [coach tickets from Edinburgh]
Global Day of Action for Climate Justice – digital rally 6pm, online [details]

7th Nov

Living Rent Tour Glasgow [details]

8th Nov

Toxic Tour of Glasgow 1pm, George Sq., Glasgow [eventbrite]
Introduction to Direct Action 6.30pm, CCA Glasgow [details]

11th Nov

Migrant Justice March 10am, Kenmure St, Glasgow