Jim Aitken writing for Culture Matters reviews the Concert in commemoration of the 100th Anniversary of Scottish revolutionary marxist John Maclean attended by 2,000 people in Glasgow held on 19 January 2024 to launch the Celtic Connections festival of celtic and world music.  See also the review on Bella Caledonia by Alistair Davidson.

Celtic Connections put on a wonderful concert recently, in memory of Scotland’s great Marxist revolutionary, John Maclean (1879 -1923). Glasgow’s magnificent concert hall had the 2,000 strong audience deeply engaged with poetry readings and songs all commemorating a figure who entered Scottish folklore and legendary status after his untimely death, at the hands of a British state that had reduced him to appalling poverty and ill health.

Maclean’s parents were Highland clearance folk and came south to Glasgow to find work. Maclean became a primary school teacher in the city and was imprisoned several times for his anti-war activity in opposing the First World War which he said was –‘a bayonet… with a worker at both ends.’. He was given a brutal stint in Peterhead jail of five years hard labour and maintained his food was poisoned while he was there.

Large crowds turned out to meet him when he returned to Glasgow after his release. He founded the Scottish Workers’ Republican Party, Scotland’s first pro-independence party. Maclean also supported Irish independence and would speak at meetings in Glasgow in support of Irish and Scottish independence.

After his death his memory entered Scottish literature with Hugh MacDiarmid and Hamish Henderson, Edwin Morgan and others all writing poems and songs in his honour. In 1973 a pamphlet called Homage to John Maclean came out to commemorate him 50 years after his death. This pamphlet was published by the John Maclean Society which formed in 1968.

The centenary concert featured songs and poems from this pamphlet including Matt McGinn’s Dominee, Dominee, which is the Scots word for teacher. MacDiarmid had several poems in the pamphlet and at the concert his poem John Maclean was beautifully read by Scotland’s former Makar, Jackie Kay.

The evening was put together by Siobhan Miller and Henry Bell. While Siobhan is a singer who is well known in Scotland, Henry Bell is the author of possibly the finest biography written of Maclean which came out in 2018 called John Maclean: Hero of Red Clydeside, published by Pluto. Both should be congratulated for putting together such a fantastic evening with terrific performers.

Everyone who performed on the night was superb. Karen Casey, an Irish singer, caught the mood when she said she felt she could say whatever she wanted to say to such an eager audience. Karine Polwart, Karen and Siobhan came together to sing Mrs Barbour’s Army, written by Alistair Hulett, and recalling the struggle of Glasgow’s women in refusing to pay increased rents as their husbands fought in WW1. Mary Barbour was a formidable woman and a comrade of Maclean’s. A sculpture to her and her women comrades stands proudly outside Govan tube station.

Billy Bragg was well received but the best cheer of the night was for Dick Gaughan who has been singing and campaigning for socialism over decades in Scotland and beyond. He has performed at previous Celtic Connection events and the crowd seemed to give him such deserved applause precisely because he has been such a champion for socialism and internationalism over so many years. He told the crowd with pride that he was a Scottish Republican which went down well with them. He sang The Red Flag with Billy Bragg to its original tune of The White Cockade by Robert Burns. Eddi Reader sang Burns’ A Man’s a Man for a’ That in her very distinctive way of singing Burns’ songs. She has become by far the best singer of Burns’ songs in recent times.

What was rather moving was to see and hear Maclean’s granddaughter, Frances Wilson, who came on stage to read out one of her grandfather’s letters to her mother. That was a really special moment and she was clearly delighted to receive such applause and to realise that so many people still held her grandfather in such high esteem.

Maclean’s speech from the dock was also read out in which he says ‘I am not here, then, as the accused; I am here as the accuser of capitalism dripping with blood from head to foot.’ Such words are as relevant today as they were then.

Speaking to people after the concert, it was clear that many lamented the fact that such radical, internationalist politics is sorely lacking today. And after folk left the hall, they could have bought a copy of Now’s the Day, Now’s the Hour: Poems for John Maclean, published in late 2023 by Tapsalteerie. This book contains many of the poems and songs from the 1973 pamphlet along with new material from another generation of Scottish writers. The book is edited by Henry Bell and Joey Simons and was first launched in The Griffin bar near where Maclean would speak his anti-war, socialist and internationalist message.

The concert was very much a Scottish night but also an internationalist one. At the end of the concert both The Internationale and Henderson’s The Freedom-Come-All-Ye were sung by all the performers and by many in the audience.

John Maclean has been dead for one hundred years but his spirit clearly lives on in poetry and in song. If only his politics could live on too!

Originally published by Culture Matters: https://www.culturematters.org.uk/index.php/arts/music/item/4446-the-john-maclean-centenary-concert

About Culture Matters

(from the Culture Matters website)

We (Culture Matters) are a group of writers, artists and activists [from England and beyond] who think that culture matters.

Culture matters. The arts (films, plays, paintings, music etc.) and culture generally (sport, religion, the media, eating and drinking etc.) can be wholesome and liberating. They please the senses, stimulate the mind, arouse emotions, and feed the soul. But class-based divisions in society, founded on unequal property ownership, constrain and prevent our enjoyment of cultural activities, which are essential to enjoy life and be fully human.

Culture matters. Cultural activities and experiences can promote awareness, arouse indignation, inspire creativity and imagination, create a sense of equality, community and social justice. They can help us in the ‘mental fight’ to build Blake’s new Jerusalem, a more democratic, equal, socialist society – not only in England but across the globe.

So the Culture Matters website aims to publish relevant creative material (poems, images, music etc,) and critical material (reviews, articles, interviews etc.) We also run Bread and Roses Arts Awards, publish books and pamphlets, and work with the labour movement through workshops and campaigns on culture issues.

Donations

We rely on donations to keep going, so if you have enjoyed visiting the Culture Matters website, you can support our mission by using the button below.

 

On 24 January 2024 at Townhead Village Hall, Glasgow, Henry Bell, author of the biography “John Maclean – Hero of Red Clydeside”, gave the Jim McVicar Memorial Lecture for the Scottish Socialist Party.  Bell examines some of the life, times and core principles that the revolutionary marxist John Maclean represented. He asks if these still relate to the world today – a century after Maclean’s tragic and untimely death.

Independence Live recorded the lecture and will be making it available on YouTube below

Find author Henry Bell’s website https://henryjimbell.com/

John Maclean – Hero of Red Clydeside is available from Pluto Press: https://plutobooks.com https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745338385/john-maclean/

Find more info and publications etc from Scottish Socialist Party: https://scottishsocialistparty.org/

The Jim McVicar Memorial Lecture is an annual event organised by the Scottish Socialist Party to commemorate the life of Jim McVicar, founder member of the Scottish Socialist Party and its Treasurer at the time of his untimely death in 2020 (Obituary by Scottish Fourth Internationalists here: https://socialistresistance.org/jim-mcvicar-1958-2020/21311)

The latest issue of Rising Clyde, the Scottish climate justice show hosted by Iain Bruce is now available on YouTube thanks to Independence Live.

The Show asks what really happened at the recent UN climate talks in Dubai and what we should do about it, including a look at what role the Scottish government is playing in the process, with two activist experts who were there: Scott Kirby in Edinburgh, from the UK Youth Climate Coalition and in London, Dorothy Guerrero of Global Justice Now.

Rising Clyde examines the key issues and the big challenges facing the struggle for climate justice in Scotland. After the surprisingly big and hugely diverse protests in Glasgow during COP26, how can the breadth of that movement be held together, how can we build on its energy?

Alan Thornett writes on Ecosocialist Discussion blog about COP28 and debates the key issues raised.

Despite being held in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – the sixth biggest oil producer in the world, and presided over by a top oil executive with the biggest fossil fuel lobby ever seen at a COP conference, COP28 was a surprisingly productive event.

It met at a time of dramatic acceleration in global warming, of course. 2023 was not only the hottest year since records began, but it did so by an unprecedented margin. The global average figure for 2023 was 14.98°C, a massive 0.17°C above the previous record. For the first time, every day in that year was 1°C above the pre-industrial level. Almost half were over 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level, and two were more than 2°C above it.

It was against this background that COP28 agreed—after a heated debate and an overrun of the conference—that the conference agreed unanimously to call for “a transition away from fossil fuels in energy systems in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science”.

UN Secretary General António Guterres told the Guardian on December 13 that. “Whether you like it or not fossil fuel phase-out is (now) inevitable”. “Let’s hope it hasn’t come too late.” I agree with him on both points. Fossil fuel is now an obsolescent energy source in which investment will become increasingly problematic and which must be replaced by renewables with the utmost urgency.

He is absolutely right. It is an important strategic breakthrough that could eventually spell the end—or at least the beginning of the end—of fossil fuels and the fossil industry. He is also right to question whether it has come too late to save the planet from catastrophe, which only time will tell, unfortunately. We are, however, better placed to defend the planet with this agreement in place than without it.

It is of comparable importance, in my view, to the two key decisions agreed in Paris in 2015. The first was that global warming is anthropogenic, i.e., a product of human activity. The second was the recognition that achieving net-zero emissions by 2050 could only be achieved by holding the global average temperature increase over preindustrial levels to below 1.5°C.

A last-minute decision to remove all references to oil and gas sabotaged a similar proposal to phase out fossil fuels at COP26 in Glasgow in 2022. Remarkably, fossil fuels had never been mentioned as such before at a COP conference, presumably to avoid frightening the horses.

Johan Rockström, a hugely respected Earth systems scientist, a member of the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and the leader of the team that developed the concept of planetary boundaries, welcomed the decision.

He told the Guardian that the agreement is a “pivotal landmark” in the climate struggle. It does, he says, deliver on making it clear to all financial institutions, businesses, and societies that we are now finally—eight years behind the Paris schedule—at the true ‘beginning of the end’ of the fossil fuel-driven world economy.”

Greenpeace said that while there are still some important loopholes to address, this package is “a powerful milestone.” While much more campaigning will be needed over the next year to make this happen as soon as possible, “its game on from here!”

Other key decisions

The first item on the agenda in Dubai was the “loss and damage fund,” which was agreed upon in principle at COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh. It was declared operational on the first day of COP28, with an initial $700 million to fill the fund. This is a drop in the ocean, however, compared to the $580 billion in damage that vulnerable countries will face by 2030.

A stocktake of the “Nationally Determined Contributions” was also conducted as a part of the “ratcheting up process” adopted in Paris in 2015, after which it was reported that there had been a collective effort to meet the $100 billion target set in Paris and that new pledges would be sought to make up the shortfall. There were also policy discussions on a wide range of important issues, including the following:

• Renewable energy. The conference agreed to triple renewable energy globally, double its energy efficiency by 2030, and accelerate emissions reductions from road transport. It was also agreed to cut methaneby at least 30 percent by 2030.
• The internal combustion engine. It was agreed that the internal combustion enginewould be phased out by 2030. Electric vehicles powered by renewable energy, it said, are the future, and we can’t achieve global decarbonisation of transport without them.
• Low-carbon cities. There was a report from the LocalClimate Action Summitregarding energy consumption in cities. It was noted that cities are responsible for more than three-quarters of global energy consumption and more than half of global greenhouse gas emissions. Navigating this within a low-carbon and resilient framework can foster a more equitable and just future. Cities need to start building much more eco-friendly infrastructure at a much faster pace.
• Public transport. It was agreed that global public transport capacity should be doubledby 2030.
• Food and agriculture. The World Resources Institutereported that there were six major food and agriculture breakthroughs made in Dubai. Food and land, they say, drive one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time, food systems around the world are vulnerable to droughts, flooding, extreme heat, and other impacts of climate change. The issue is particularly critical in many developing countries—for example, in Brazil, where food and land use drive 70% of emissionswhile over half the population remains food insecure.
• Deforestation. The Brazilian delegation successfully proposed a new global fundto pay countries to keep their tropical forests intact. The proposal called for the creation of a massive global scheme to help preserve rainforests in scores of countries, called the “Tropical Forests Forever” fund. The concept would pay residents and landowners who help preserve forested areas like the Amazon. Finance would initially be raised from sovereign wealth funds as well as from other investors, such as the oil industry.
• The biodiversity crisis. There was strong support for the landmark agreement for nature recovery that was signed last year at the UN COP51 conference on biodiversity, which included protecting 30% of nature by 2030.

Carbon taxes

There was a remarkable intervention by IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva (no less) on carbon pricing and carbon taxes. In what was the first time the subject had been discussed at a COP conference, she made a two-part proposal on behalf of the IMF:

• First, the abolition of all subsidies for fossil fuel production
• Second, put an explicit charge (or tax) on CO₂emissions at the point of production. This, she said, would raise the trillions of dollars that are needed to tackle the climate crisis.

She claimed that because right-wing climate denial politicians and parties all over the world have targeted them, governments have delayed implementing such taxes. However, she said, “When you put a price on carbon, decarbonisation accelerates.” The IMF, World Bank, OECD, and World Trade Organisation, she said, have set up a taskforce to examine carbon pricing policies and their application around the world.

As someone who has been arguing for exactly this many years, I found this intervention staggering. It appears that a large section of the ruling elites have adopted one of the key elements of an exit policy from fossil energy. The IMF is not only a capitalist institution but one that was founded precisely in order to oversee the international market on behalf of global capitalism.

COP conferences have traditionally resisted discussing this kind of specific emissions reduction demand in favour of general principles. It is important that they are now discussing both.

The harsh reality

This positive outcome in Dubai reinforces what has long been clear: i.e., that at this stage of the climate crisis, with global temperatures rising at an ever faster rate and time running out, the only way to avoid catastrophic damage to the planet is by making the COP process work.

Any other proposition is leftist posturing. The science is irrefutable. The global temperature is rising at an ever-increasing rate. Dangerous tipping points are starting to trigger. Time is running out. The 1.5°C limit hangs by a thread, climate chaos could be irreversible within a decade, and in the end, nothing can be built on a dead planet.

At this stage, moreover, only governmental action—and action taken by governments prepared to go on a war footing—can make the changes necessary to stop climate change in the limited time we have left, and only the UN COP process has a chance of achieving it.

Not that it will be easy, of course. The implementation of COP policies has been a battle from the outset. Member states are quick to exploit any loopholes on offer, including, for example, carbon capture and storage and the notion of transitional fuels, both of which provide the opportunity to hang on to fossil fuels for a bit longer.

Others simply ignore their previous commitments—flagrantly, if necessary—if they cut across their domestic political interests. A prime current example is the UK Tory government, which has dumped a raft of previous ecological commitments in order to exploit a backlash from car drivers against measures to improve air quality in London, which it thinks it can use against Labour in the general election later this year.

These include delaying the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035; delaying the ban on the sale of fossil-fuel heating boilers from 2035 to 2040; deprioritizing the transition to electric vehicles; issuing over a hundred new licences for oil and gas exploration; and a completely new oil field in the North Sea.

Such governments, however, have to be faced down if there is to be a solution, and that can best be done within the COP process.

The role of the left

Most of the left denounce the UN COP process at every opportunity, in the most vitriolic terms they can find, with no regard to factual or historical accuracy, while having no viable alternative to offer itself. This is a big problem, in my view.

George Monbiot, for example, whom I greatly respect and who should know better in my view, declared in the Guardian of December 9 that the whole COP process had broken down, had “achieved absolutely nothing since it started in 1992, and are now they are talking us into oblivion.” “Let’s face it,” he goes on: “climate summits are broken. The delegates talk and talk, while Earth systems slide towards deadly tipping points”. In other words, it is a roadblock to doing anything positive about climate change, and the sooner it gets out of the way, the better.

The Swedish writer and climate campaigner Andreas Malm, author of How to Blow Up a Pipeline, told the Guardian on April 21, 2023, that “climate diplomacy is hopeless” and that he does not have “a shred of hope that the elites are prepared to take the urgent action needed to avert catastrophic climate change.”.

The COP conferences, he tells us, “have degenerated into kind of an annual theatre for pretending that we’re doing something about global warming while, in fact, we’re just letting fuel be poured on the fire. “If we let the dominant classes take care of this problem,” he said, “they’re going to drive at top speed into absolute inferno. Nothing suggests that they have any capacity to do anything else of their own accord because they are totally enmeshed with the process of capital accumulation.”.

They reflect Gretta Thunberg’s Glasgow “blah, blah, blah, blah” speech when, in fact, crucial debates were taking place into which she should have been intervening.

George Monbiot says that he had considered proposing changes to the decision-making procedure at COP summits but had decided against it. Andreas Malm proposes that the climate movement should have some kind of military wing, which would get us nowhere when it comes to building the kind of broad global mass movement that is going to be necessary.

The revolutionary left

The revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism, which they imply is imminent, is the solution that the revolutionary left advocates, whether explicitly or implicitly. The fact that the far-right is growing dangerously across Europe, and Trump stands a very good chance of winning the US Presidency in November (for example), does nothing to deter them in this.

This kind of maximalism, however, has many consequences beyond wishful thinking. It implies that anything short of a global revolution is a reformist diversion and that victories are not victories but defeats if a reformist institution like the UN COP process is involved.

It implies that the collapse of the COP process, which is entirely possible as the crisis sharpens, would be good for the future of the plant, when in reality it would let global warming rip and leave us facing a catastrophe situation without a global project by which to confront it and with the right-wing waiting in the wings.

It also leads many on the radical left to oppose the placing of environmental demands on the COP process because, they say, it is a capitalist institution. This is not only wrong and ultra-left, but strange, since the left demands such institutions in other arenas of struggle all the time. We put demands on the employers, who are capitalists, and on governments that are also capitalist institutions. The fire service is a capitalist institution designed first and foremost to protect private property, but we would not refuse its help if our house was burning down.

A transitional approach

The task we face today is not whether global capitalism can be overthrown by revolutionary means in the next few years, but whether it can be forced to take the measures necessary to save the planet from global warming today as a part of a longer-term struggle to eventually replace capitalism with an ecosocialist society. If we are unable to build a movement capable of forcing change under capitalism, how are we going to build a movement capable of its revolutionary overthrow?

It is not true—as many on the left insist—that capitalism cannot be forced to make structural changes that are contrary to the logic of its existence. In fact, it made concessions when it agreed under pressure to support a maximum global temperature increase of 1.5°C in Paris and when it agreed under similar pressure to transition away from fossil fuels in Dubai.

We need a transitional approach, built around a set of transitional demands, that, as well as addressing the immediate needs of the struggle today, also has a strategic logic towards a post-capitalist solution. Reforms are not necessarily reformist. The road to revolutionary change is forged in the struggle for reform. In fact, the struggle for reform is often the only real road to revolutionary change. Depending on the dynamics of struggle they generate, in fact, both the 1.5°C limit and the temperature increase and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 are transitional demands.

The ruling elites, in any case, are deeply divided on the future of the planet. While its more enlightened wing recognises the approaching climate catastrophe and supports the COP process as the only way to save the planet—and within the capitalist order, of course—its dystopian, anti-woke, climate-denying wing, such as Trump, Bolsonaro, and Orbán, are prepared to gamble on the future of the planet against their climate denial, fight it out on the streets, and impose an authoritarian regime if they get the chance.

These people are deeply hostile to the progressive agenda required to save the planet, i.e., humanitarianism, collectivism, environmentalism, and the defence of nature and the natural environment, that are involved in saving the planet on a sustainable basis.

The role of the left and progressive forces in the climate struggle must be to exploit this division on behalf of the future of the planet.

The role of the UN

I am not a natural defender of the UN—the “thieves kitchen,” as Lenin called its predecessor, the League of Nations—or even of its environmental work.

It is important, however, to recognise the positive role that the UN has played in global warming over the last 35 years, decades before the socialist left showed any interest. In fact, it is difficult to play a useful role in the climate struggle today without an evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of that contribution and what it represents as a focus for international campaigning and mobilisation.

The idea that the UN could have resolved the climate crisis many years ago if only it had been prepared to snap its fingers hard enough—which is implicit in the left critique—is nonsense. As is the notion that it has “achieved absolutely nothing since it was launched in 1992″ or that its conferences are “a kind of annual theatre for pretending that we’re doing something about global warming.” Such caricatures contribute nothing to the struggle.

The UN’s engagement with the ecological crisis began in 1972 with the establishment of the United Nations Environment Programme.

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a scientific body comprising 2,500 scientists from 130 countries, was launched in 1989. It’s mandated to “prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change, the social and economic impact of climate change, and potential response strategies and elements for inclusion in a possible future international convention on climate.”

It coincided with James Hansen’s historic address to the US Senate on global warming and climate change.

The Framework Convention on Climate Change was launched in 1993 at the Earth Summit in Rio. Its mandate was to establish an international agreement in order to “stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere and prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate systems.” What it did in practice was establish the COP process.

The Convention, in particular, was a frontal challenge to the petrochemical industry and what it produced, which had dominated planet Earth for almost a century and had shaped it in its image. Abolishing fossil fuels and replacing them with renewable energy was always going to mean uniting every country in the world in a monumental confrontation.

The fossil fuel industry responded with extreme hostility to all this and went on over the next 30 years to spend billions of dollars on the next opposing COP process, including the mobilisation of an army of climate deniers around the world to discredit the science, and they were initially very successful.

Legally binding votes

The most contentious issue in the COP process faced from the outset was the issue of legally binding (or non-legally binding) votes at conferences. While the Framework Convention did not provide for binding votes, it had the authority to require them on carbon reduction pledges by way of a protocol to the Convention. Such a protocol, called the Kyoto Protocol, was agreed upon at COP3 in Kyoto in 1997. It was, however, highly contentious and difficult to implement.

This came to a head at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009, when 25 countries, including some of the world’s biggest polluters—the USA, China, Canada, and Australia—refused to accept a legally binding vote over a proposal to restrict the global temperature increase to no more than 2°C above the preindustrial level. They all walked out, and the conference broke up in disarray.

The split effectively paralysed the COP process until COP15 in Paris in 2015, where legally binding votes on carbon reduction pledges were replaced by a consensus system, i.e., by unanimous, non-binding votes. Member states failing to meet their pledges would have to face the political and reputational consequences involved at the next COP, and under conditions where the crisis itself would inevitably be even worse.

This was correct, in my view. This has certainly been more effective, both in holding the whole thing together and in implementing decisions. Although getting 198 diverse and complete countries to act together to save the planet is always a formidable task, it is better than endless splits with no dialogue and no progress.

Meanwhile, the COP process, we should recognise, has been instrumental in defeating the climate deniers and winning the overwhelming majority of the scientific community over on the science of climate change—without which we get nowhere. Additionally, the COP process, without which the fight against climate change would be ineffective, has significantly contributed to a seismic shift in the public’s awareness of the climate crisis in recent years.

An exit strategy from fossil fuels

Any campaign against climate change, if it is to be successful, must have a viable existing strategy for fossil fuels based on a socially just transition to renewables, whether it is the UN or the left. While the exit strategy being pursued by the COP process until now has been net-zero emissions by 2050, it does not propose by what mechanism this should be achieved.

I have long argued that the most effective way to cut carbon emissions quickly and in a way compatible with social justice is by making fossil fuels far more expensive than renewables by means of carbon taxes, as argued (remarkably) by the IMF in Dubai. When properly managed and carried out as a part of the significant transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor, this can both provide a socially just transition for the most vulnerable members of society and shield it from right-wing forces like the far right in Britain or the yellow vests in France.

The best way of doing this, in my view, is through a fee-and-dividend project along the lines proposed by climate scientist James Hanson in his 2012 book Storms of My Grandchildren. He set out the main points as follows:

• Fossil-fuel companies would be charged an easily implemented carbon fee imposed at the well head, mine shaft, or point of entry.
• 100% of the revenue collected would be distributed monthly to the population on a per capita basis as dividends, with up to two-half shares for children per family.
• Dividends would be sent directly via electronic transfers to bank accounts or debit cards.
• The carbon fee would be a single, uniform amount in the form of dollars per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted from the fuel.
• The carbon fee would then gradually and predictably be ramped up so as to achieve the necessary carbon reductions.
• At the same time, current subsidies to the fossil fuel industry would be eliminated.

When applied to the USA, he argued that 60% of the population would receive net economic benefits, i.e., the dividends they received back would exceed the increased prices paid. As the IMF speaker concluded in Dubai, as mentioned above, “when you put a price on carbon, decarbonisation accelerates.”.

The best exposition of Hansen’s proposal can be found in The Case for a Carbon Tax by Shi-Ling-Hsu, published by Island Press in 2011.

Cutting emissions from the demand side in this way is the only socially just way of doing it since it can be carried out within the framework of an overall taxation system that is heavily progressive and brings about a major transfer of wealth from the rich to the poor. Other alternatives, often advanced by the left, such as production cuts by government decision or the rationing of energy, not only do not work but can generate popular backlashes along the lines of the yellow vests, and rationing would create a black market.

It might be expected that the left would support such taxes since it supports taxing the rich, but this is not the case. Most on the radical left oppose carbon taxes, I presume, because they do not involve the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

Mass movements

It is unlikely that the climate struggle will be resolved without big confrontations and mass movements, for which ecosocialists have a responsibility to make preparations.

The best scenario, of course, is that a mass movement is built out of the existing global justice movement and includes everyone who is prepared to fight to save the planet on a progressive basis.

There is another scenario, however, which is that a mass movement or movements arise spontaneously following ecological or societal breakdown as a result of the failure of humanity to stop runaway global warming, resulting in catastrophic impacts on the planet, and with ultra-right and fascist forces waiting in the wings.

While any movement capable of saving the planet will initially be (hopefully) progressive rather than ecosocialist in character, it will be crucial that there are ecosocialists inside it able to fight not just for a sustainable energy transition but one based on social and economic justice and in an anti-capitalist direction.

It is the need to address these eventualities that makes the strategic discussions we have today around the climate and ecological struggle so important. The challenge for ecosocialists in such a situation is not just to be on the right side but to be able to make a contribution to the line of march and the principals involved.

Alan Thornett January 24th 2024

Originally published on Ecosocialist Discussion Blog: https://www.ecosocialistdiscussion.com/2024/01/25/cop28-trashing-the-un-is-easy-but-where-is-the-alternative/

Every day was over a degree above the pre-industrial level, writes the Climate & Capitalism blog.

The European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) says 2023 was the first year on with all days over 1°C warmer than the pre-industrial period.

Unprecedented global temperatures from June onwards led 2023 to become the warmest year on record – overtaking by a large margin 2016, the previous warmest year. The 2023 Global Climate Highlights report presents a general summary of 2023’s most relevant climate extremes and the main drivers behind them.

C3S Director Carlo Buontempo comments:

“The extremes we have observed over the last few months provide a dramatic testimony of how far we now are from the climate in which our civilization developed. This has profound consequences for the Paris Agreement and all human endeavor’s. If we want to successfully manage our climate risk portfolio, we need to urgently decarbonize our economy whilst using climate data and knowledge to prepare for the future.”

Global surface air temperature highlights

• 2023 is confirmed as the warmest calendar year in global temperature data records going back to 1850.
• 2023 had a global average temperature of 14.98°C, 0.17°C higher than the previous highest annual value in 2016.
• 2023 was 0.60°C warmer than the 1991-2020 average and 1.48°C warmer than the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level.
• It is likely that a 12-month period ending in January or February 2024 will exceed 1.5°C above the pre-industrial level.
• 2023 marks the first time on record that every day within a year has exceeded 1°C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial level. Close to 50% of days were more than 1.5°C warmer then the 1850-1900 level, and two days in November were, for the first time, more than 2°C warmer.
• Annual average air temperatures were the warmest on record, or close to the warmest, over sizeable parts of all ocean basins and all continents except Australia.
• Each month from June to December in 2023 was warmer than the corresponding month in any previous year.
• July and August 2023 were the warmest two months on record. Boreal summer (June-August) was also the warmest season on record.
• September 2023 was the month with a temperature deviation above the 1991–2020 average larger than any month in the ERA5 dataset.
• December 2023 was the warmest December on record globally, with an average temperature of 13.51°C, 0.85°C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.78°C above the 1850-1900 level for the month. You can access information specific for December 2023 in our monthly bulletin.

Ocean surface temperature highlights

• Global average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) remained persistently and unusually high, reaching record levels for the time of year from April through December.
• 2023 saw a transition to El Niño. In spring 2023, La Niña came to an end and El Niño conditions began to develop, with the WMO declaring the onset of El Niño in early July.
• High SSTs in most ocean basins, and in particular in the North Atlantic, played an important role in the record-breaking global SSTs.
• The unprecedented SSTs were associated with marine heatwaves around the globe, including in parts of the Mediterranean, Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, Indian Ocean and North Pacific, and much of the North Atlantic.

European temperature highlights

• 2023 was the second-warmest year for Europe, at 1.02°C above the 1991-2020 average, 0.17°C cooler than 2020, the warmest year on record.
• Temperatures in Europe were above average for 11 months during 2023 and September was the warmest September on record.
• European winter (December 2022 – February 2023) was the second-warmest winter on record.
• The average temperature for the European summer (June-August) was 19.63°C; at 0.83°C above average, it was the fifth-warmest on record.
• European autumn (September-November) had an average temperature of 10.96°C, which is 1.43°C above average. This made autumn the second-warmest on record, just 0.03°C cooler than autumn 2020.

Other remarkable highlights

• 2023 was remarkable for Antarctic sea ice: it reached record low extents for the corresponding time of the year in 8 months. Both the daily and monthly extents reached all-time minima in February 2023.
• Arctic sea ice extent at its annual peak in March ranked amongst the four lowest for the time of the year in the satellite record. The annual minimum in September was the sixth-lowest.
• The atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane continued to increase and reached record levels in 2023, reaching 419 ppm and 1902 ppb respectively. Carbon dioxide concentrations in 2023 were 2.4 ppm higher than in 2022 and methane concentrations increased by 11 ppb.
• A large number of extreme events were recorded across the globe, including heatwaves, floods, droughts and wildfires. Estimated global wildfire carbon emissions in 2023 increased by 30% with respect to 2022 driven largely by persistent wildfires in Canada, greenhouse gas concentrations, El Niño and other natural variations.

First published by Climate & Capitalism: https://climateandcapitalism.com/2024/01/09/2023-was-hottest-year-on-record-close-to-1-5c/

Macron and his government have taken a spectacular step towards adopting a discriminatory, racist and xenophobic policy towards non-EU foreigners, with the support of the far right, writes Léon Crémieux.

The law that has just, in December 2023, been passed in France by a joint vote of the Macronist alliance, the right-wing LR party and the far-right RN is the most regressive in France since the one passed almost 40 years ago, in 1986 (Pasqua law) and it contains even more reactionary aspects. It is totally in line with the premises of the far right, which designates foreigners and immigration as a danger, a threat to the country, stirring up the fantasy of “a flood of migrants”, of the economic and social imbalance created by migrants, and confusing immigration with insecurity, delinquency and the threat of terrorism. These themes are widely developed in Europe, but particularly in France by Marine Le Pen’s RN and Marion Maréchal and Éric Zemmour’s small Reconquête party.

Over the last twenty years or so, the traditional right has also made them widely popular, gradually picking up on the ideological propaganda of Jean Marie Le Pen and the Front National on these issues. In the early 2000s, Nicolas Sarkozy in particular tried to divide French society by introducing a debate on “national identity”, even incorporating this concept into the title of the Ministry of the Interior, designated as the “Ministry of the Interior and National Identity”, following the idea of one of his advisers, Patrick Buisson, who came from the “revolutionary nationalist” far right of the 1970s.

Macron and his government have therefore also taken these muddy paths, initially thinking they were making a parliamentary manoeuvre to destabilize the Republican party. The manoeuvre turned into a boomerang against the presidential camp.

At the start of his second term, in the summer of 2022, Macron and his interior minister, Gérald Darmanin, announced the presentation of a new law on entry and residence conditions, centred on the right of asylum, just three years after the one he had pushed through in 2019. Explicitly equating delinquency with asylum seekers, the announced aim was to fight to “prevent non-European migratory flows”, “speed up procedures for asylum seekers” and “deportation procedures”, all classic reactionary themes.

Above all, at a time when people’s main concerns were inflation, the crisis in the healthcare system and threats to pensions, the main aim was to try to polarize public debate on this issue by brandishing the “unbearable threat of migration” and, once again, to blame migrants for the social situation of the working classes. Darmanin’s stated aim was to “make life impossible for migrants”. His arrogant profile was even that of a “Mr Plus”, boasting that he was tougher on migrants than the far right, speaking with a touch of sexism about Marine Le Pen’s “softness” and Georgia Meloni’s “inability to deal with migration problems”. This bill was fought from the outset by the social movement and the left, with the Unis contre l’immigration jetable (United Against Disposable Immigration) (UCIJ) collective bringing together 800 collectives and associations (including hundreds working on a day-to-day basis for the reception of and solidarity with undocumented migrants and asylum seekers), with the support of the Greens, LFI and the radical left, including the NPA.

Since the June 2022 elections in which Macron emerged without a parliamentary majority or an alliance with other parties, he and his government have had to negotiate bill by bill with the other parties, mainly the party of the traditional Gaullist right, the Republicans (LR). As a result, they voted for two-thirds of the legislation introduced by the government between June 2022 and June 2023 on a piecemeal basis. Darmanin had therefore opened the door to dialogue with the LR on his legislation. The rise of the anti-retirement reform protests in the spring of 2023 forced the government to shelve the debate on this bill. The LR, for their part, saw the debate on this bill as an opportunity to regain a place in the political debate. The result of the June 2022 legislative elections – 62 out of 577 MPs, a loss of 51 seats – has reduced the Republicans to the position of Macron’s auxiliaries, behind the Rassemblement National and France Insoumise, and they are finding it hard to exist as an independent force, squeezed between Macron and the Rassemblement National.

Moreover, many Macronist leaders are transfers from LR and Nicolas Sarkozy has on several occasions called on the party he led for a long time to form an alliance with Macron. As a result, in spring 2023 LR attempted a political operation by themselves introducing two laws attacking immigration and foreigners living in France. Considering that this was the only ground on which they could make a voice different from Macron’s, their bills seamlessly took up the main elements of the Rassemblement National’s programme, notably adopting “national preference”, discriminating against social rights for non-EU foreigners with reduced entitlements to social benefits, going back on “droit du sol” for children born in France, introducing new obstacles to adopting French nationality, with stronger repression and faster deportations of undocumented foreigners. Over the past year, the LR party has developed an obsessive campaign against the flood of migrants, the invasion of migrants and the exorbitant cost of immigration, making itself much more vocal than the far right on this issue.

GROWING IDEOLOGICAL PRESSURE FROM THE FAR RIGHT

Although France has long been a country of immigration with open legislation, since the 1970s it has significantly tightened entry and residence rights. Still marked by the acquisition of nationality through “droit du sol”, the country practices the great divide between a welcoming attitude and increasingly closed practices. This is as true for immigration as it is for the reception of refugees. France, with 7.7% of its population made up of foreigners, is below the European average (8.4%), compared with 8.7% in Italy and Sweden, and 11-13% in Spain, Germany and Belgium. This is a far cry from the “over-generous policy” the government and its new friends constantly decry.

As far as refugees are concerned, the war led, in particular in 2014 and 2015, to an exodus of refugees from Syria. The reality is that most of the 6.8 million exiles remained in Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. Only 17%, just over 1 million, applied for asylum in the European Union, with France registering 2.2% of these 17%… around 25,000! In the case of Afghans, the effort was slightly greater, with France accounting for 8% of Afghan refugees in Europe. Similarly, while there are around 4.6 million Ukrainian refugees in the EU and 120,000 in France, and no one has protested against the arrival of a population that is “lucky” not to be of Muslim origin, here again the figure is not at all commensurate with France’s economic (17%) and demographic (15%) weight in Europe. Macron’s pretentious and self-satisfied talk about “France’s share in welcoming refugees” is irrelevant. Especially since France has one of the lowest protection rates in Europe when it comes to asylum applications. Around 70% of asylum applications are refused protection status (refugee or subsidiary protection), leaving asylum seekers in irregular and precarious situations and at risk of being deported.

European and French leaders are living in schizophrenic denial about international migration. Migration is a natural and inescapable phenomenon in the past and present history of humanity, a phenomenon in which Europeans themselves have participated and continue to participate, and which today affects Africa and the Middle East much more than Europe. But reactionaries are trying to turn it into a question of a war of civilizations, of barbarian invasion, of demographic submersion. Unfortunately, it is true that wars and climate change will accentuate migratory phenomena, once again without the European Union being the first destination. The EU’s denial is obviously that it is one of the main culprits of climate change, directly through environmental pollution and indirectly through European industrial and commercial capitalist groups, that it maintains neo-colonial relations with the countries of the South, causing some of its citizens to leave their homes, that its foreign policy is also responsible for open conflicts and wars, with all their human catastrophes, but that it wants to hinder natural migratory flows, putting hundreds of thousands of men and women at extreme risk, and leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings on the migration routes.

The other denial is that France and the EU as a whole are themselves organizing international immigration, which is largely legal, organized by the European states because it is part and parcel of the European economic and social system. In 2022, for every 350,000 undocumented migrants entering the European Union, 3.5 million did so legally. And beyond the purely ideological reactionary demagoguery, three reactions in France following the vote on the law were characteristic: that of 3,500 doctors, including emergency doctors, that of the presidents of the major universities and the heads of the grandes écoles, and that of the President of the MEDEF. The doctors protested against the threat of abolition of the Aide Médicale de l’Etat (AME) and publicly undertook to continue to provide free care to undocumented migrants if the AME were abolished, out of respect for the “Hippocratic Oath” to treat anyone who is ill and out of concern for public health.

The presidents of the universities and the heads of the grandes écoles are protesting against the “return guarantee” system, which already exists in other European countries (a sum that foreign students will have to deposit in their bank account before arriving in France), and against the limitation of social assistance that foreign students will have to endure from now on, on the pretext of the fantasy of “false students taking advantage of the social systems”. There are currently around 400,000 foreign students in France, or 13% of the total. They are a pillar of the university system, particularly in the grandes écoles, and contribute to its vitality and, of course, to the internationalization of university education for students, including 70,000 PhD students….far from the xenophobic fantasies of bogus students that are the obsession of Ciotti, President of the LR party, and Darmanin.

The latest reaction came from Patrick Martin, President of the MEDEF, who said that “unless we reinvent our economic model”, 3.9 million more foreign workers will be needed in France in the coming years, and at least the same number in the rest of the European Union. Because, unlike the spokespersons of the LR and RN parties, employers are aware of a reality that has long been proclaimed by OECD economists: far from being a financial burden for host countries, foreign and migrant populations in all OECD countries present a “net balance sheet” surplus in the budgets of host countries. In a chorus of nonsense over the last few months, a member of the French Nationalist Party picked up on an article in the right-wing daily Le Figaro, which claimed that immigration “costs more than it brings in” and quoted a figure of 53.9 billion. Other figures were quoted, but always with the common thread of the idea that foreigners come to take advantage of the social system, living off social benefits and unemployment insurance. The reality of the exhaustive studies carried out by the OECD in 2021, covering the period 2006/2018, is that in the 25 countries studied, the net budgetary contribution is always between -1% and +1% of GDP, with an average surplus of 10 billion euros per year for France during this period. Beyond these accounts, the obvious reality is that foreigners obviously participate in the economic life of the country where they are, often in Europe with less well-paid work and more difficult working conditions. These difficulties stem both from the difficulties that some people have in regularizing their situation and from the climate of discrimination that makes access to employment more difficult, not only for foreigners but also for the descendants of 2nd or even 3rd generation foreigners. Maintaining this climate of racism is obviously a weapon used by employers. But employers in sectors which, by definition, cannot relocate their activities, such as transport, logistics, the hotel industry, construction and care, very often call on foreign workers or workers with an immigrant background.

And the reality in Europe is that the natural demographic curve is now on a downward trend everywhere, excluding net migration, and France is no exception to this trend. So, behind the rhetoric of the more or less extreme right-wingers, which serves to divide the working classes and keep them away from the people who are really responsible for the policies of social breakdown, there is obviously the inescapable reality that not only is immigration not a cost, but that to try to hinder it would be to create a social and economic imbalance over the coming decades. The hypocrisy of the dominant classes is that they most often support the discourse of the extreme right, and cultivate it in their written and broadcast media, fantasizing about the “suction power” that the slightest regularization of undocumented migrants would represent, while at the same time thinking about the present and the future by integrating the reality of a continuing influx of migrants. A utilitarian, hypocritical policy that deprives millions of men and women of social rights and decent living conditions, that maintains discrimination and police violence in working-class neighbourhoods where many children of immigrant origin live, but that nevertheless maintains the immigration nets that are essential to economic and social equilibrium.

This policy is even more serious when it comes to migrants and undocumented migrants trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean or continental borders. The right, the far right and their media relays talk about flooding, when the figures tell a different story: according to government figures, there are between 4 and 5 million undocumented migrants in Europe, or less than 1% of the total population. Half of them live in Germany and the UK, around 700,000 in France and between 5 and 700,000 in Italy. But the fantasy of submersion and xenophobic and racist propaganda justify inhuman treatment for those who want to come to Europe. Tens of billions are spent on securing and controlling borders, turning back arrivals and negotiating with African and Middle Eastern countries to block border crossings. These amounts are to be compared with the small sums granted for reception, housing and aid to migrant populations. Refugees from Ukraine were the only population to be granted “temporary protection status” by the Council of the European Union. In France in particular, they were the only ones to benefit from proper reception conditions: immediate residence permit, access to the labour market and housing, medical assistance and access for children to education, the right to open a bank account. These rights should obviously apply to all asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan or elsewhere.

DARMANIN AND MACRON CAUGHT IN A TRAP

So, with regard to the continuation of the debates on this law in the spring of 2023, the Republicans, in their anti-immigration bills presented in May 2023, also wanted a change to the Constitution so that France could derogate from European law regarding obligations towards asylum seekers, and oppose any regularization of undocumented migrants in so-called “short-staffed” occupations (the hotel industry in particular), which is what Darmanin proposed in his bill. They also wanted to abolish state medical aid (AME), which gives undocumented migrants access to healthcare covered by the social security system in hospitals (380,000 people benefited from this in 2023). Darmanin and the government were opposed to this abolition.

LR, still benefiting from a majority in the Senate, thought it could bring strong pressure to bear to force Darmanin and Macron onto its turf. Darmanin, for his part, hoped that by adopting some of the measures proposed by the LR, he would get at least some of their MPs to vote in favour of his plan, further weakening the LR in the Assembly. This sordid political game on the backs of foreigners also served Darmanin’s purpose in trying to find his place in the race to succeed Macron as president in 2027.

Darmanin’s bill was therefore put on hold until the start of the new academic year in 2023. Here again, after 6 months of mass protests over pensions, after the revolts in working-class neighbourhoods over the summer in the face of violence and the murder of young people by the police, the government wanted to stigmatize the population of immigrant origin and stifle the social concerns that are predominant among the population: purchasing power, health, the environment…. These concerns are clearly evident in social mobilizations, and even in recent opinion polls (IPSOS institute, September 23, for example, where immigration only appears in ninth place as a concern for those polled). The hyperbolization of migration issues in the media arsenal of the extreme right and reactionary leaders has maintained a nauseating climate aimed at mixing immigration, insecurity and Islamism and making this amalgam the main political issue, with the predominant help of the network of media and written press that are in the hands of the main French capitalists, first and foremost the media galaxy in the hands of Bolloré… This issue did indeed occupy the field of public debate from September to December, but not with the outcome that Macron and his government wanted.

Hoping to manoeuvre as it did on a number of other issues, the government’s timing was simple. The debate began with a vote in the Senate in early November, where the Republicans amended Darmanin’s draft with all their measures borrowed from the far right. Then, at the beginning of December, the Assembly’s Law Committee, where the balance of power gave the government a relative majority, cleaned up the bill, bringing it back to its original version, a reactionary version that did not include many of the Senate’s additions (e.g. the abolition of the AME, the 5-year period of legal residence to obtain social benefits, regularization in “short-staffed” occupations). Then, logically, the game of abstentions should have enabled Borne and Darmanin to pass the law, article after article, counting on the contribution of votes from the Republicans and abstentions from the Socialist Party, depending on the articles of the law.

And that’s when things started to go wrong. The ecologists, opposed to the bill along with all the NUPES groups, tabled a motion to reject the bill, thereby blocking its consideration by the Assembly. On 11 December, against all expectations, this motion was adopted by a majority vote of the NUPES, but also of 2/3 of the LR and RN MPs: 270 votes in favour of rejection and 265 against. The trap then closed on Darmanin and his government. There could no longer be an article-by-article vote in the Assembly on the government’s version. Macron had the choice between withdrawing his text altogether or making a new attempt at compromise by jointly drafting a new text between MPs and senators (in a joint committee (commission mixte paritaire – CMP)), followed by a block vote in each of the two chambers on the same text. After suffering a resounding defeat and being outvoted in the Assembly for the first time, Macron refused to acknowledge his failure by withdrawing the law. He preferred to put the bill in the hands of the Republicans, since it was only possible to write a joint text in this 14-member CMP (7 deputies and 7 senators) through an agreement between the 5 Macronists and the 5 right-wing Republicans and centrists. In reality, the new draft was negotiated directly between the Prime Minister, Elisabeth Borne, and the Republican leadership.

The text, which was ultimately voted through by the Assembly and Senate, is therefore a very close copy of the positions of the LR, inspired by the Rassemblement National. The latter, without having taken part in the slightest negotiation, and even displaying their hostility right up to the end to a draft they found too moderate, finally seized the opportunity to show their support by voting for a text largely inspired by their positions, creating a general outcry. This is the first time in 40 years that traditional forces have voted for the same text as the far right on immigration. In addition, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has formally committed to a parliamentary vote to revise the Aide Médicale de l’Etat. While Macron and Darmanin had hoped that this law would provide a political “coup” by fracturing the Republicans and isolating the RN on its own favourite terrain, the outcome was the opposite: the RN appears to be the political winner of a law that takes up its xenophobic obsessions and adopts national preference, discrimination for social benefits and tougher conditions for naturalization. Thanks to their control of the Senate, the LR parties have emerged stronger, while the Macronists have emerged weakened and divided: only 131 out of 171 MPs voted in favour of the law, 20 voted against and 17 abstained, the “Young with Macron” group has disavowed the law and the Minister of Health has resigned from his post.

THE URGENT NEED FOR A LEFT-WING RESPONSE

The weakened position that Macron had after his second election had already been shattered by the huge mobilization in defence of pensions, and then by the revolts in working-class neighbourhoods at the start of the summer. The government now appears to be a mere hostage of the right and the far right.

On the left and in the NUPES, unfortunately, this shift towards the far right is having trouble creating the necessary jolt. The government, backed by a relentless, multi-faceted press campaign, has done everything in its power over the past year to discredit the NUPES, which emerged as the leading opposition force in the elections, and first and foremost France insoumise, ostracized and demonized by Macron and Borne as having “left the republican arc” (following, in particular, its stance during the uprisings in working-class neighbourhoods and on the murders committed by police officers) while the tricolour carpet was rolled out beneath the feet of the RN. Maximum pressure was therefore exerted to push for the break-up of this alliance, which was never able to go beyond the status of a parliamentary intergroup. The components of the NUPES, for various reasons, have themselves always refused to build a national popular political force, structured in the towns and neighbourhoods. Despite the convergent positions of its components in support of the mobilization for pensions, no political momentum was created on that occasion. For several months now, it has been the electoral question of the 2024 European elections that has seen the centrifugal tendencies bring the NUPES to a standstill and lead to its de facto break-up, with the parties allied to the FI refusing to present a united list, in particular because they did not want to adopt the radical programme of the NUPES on the European Union.

Despite the broad convergence of the trade union and community movement against police violence and, more recently, to demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza in the face of the massacre perpetrated by the Israeli army, the left-wing opposition to Macron today appears incapable of building a real united political and social balance of power. Nevertheless, following the December vote tens of thousands of activists were up in arms at the sight of the far right dictating government policy. In April 2022, half the votes for Macron against Le Pen came from left-wing voters wanting to block Le Pen‘s Rassemblement national.

Around the calls of the UCIJ coalition thousands of people took to the streets in several towns. But the challenge at the start of this year will be to build a united popular force and mobilization to match the social demands and the threat of the far right.

31 December 2023

Originally published by Fourth International: https://fourth.international/en/europe/570

Photo Credit:  Copyright Photothèque Rouge / Martin Noda / Hans Lucas

In this article, writer dave kellaway examines the scandal involving the UK’s Post Office falsely prosecuting hundreds of subpostmasters and mistresses due to issues with an accounting system.

Thanks to the excellent ITV drama Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office, most people have now heard about how the Post Office falsely prosecuted 736 subpostmasters and mistresses between 1999 and 2015. As we wrote in an ACR article in February 2022, the Post Office first refused to acknowledge any problem and then actively covered up the fact that Fujitsu accounting software (Horizon) used in all its offices was faulty.

Post office operators were accused of fraud, often amounting to thousands of pounds. They were all told that ‘it was only them’ so it could not be a fault of the system. People sometimes paid up, thinking that it must be their mistake. They lost their likelihoods, were often declared bankrupt, and were pressurised into pleading guilty to avoid imprisonment. Many suffered from the abuse of local people, thinking they had been fiddling the pensioners out of their money. A criminal record meant that moving on to a different career was very difficult. Some were imprisoned. Many lost their homes, suffered severe mental stress, and at least four committed suicide. It is rightly claimed that this is one of the worst miscarriages of justice on record.

“It is rightly claimed that this is one of the worst miscarriages of justice on record.”

Today we learn through a Guardian exclusive that even before the full rollout of the system, there had been a pilot scheme in 300 branches in the North East, and there had been a number of complaints. Two managers were prosecuted during the pilot. Just as with a full rollout, there may be dozens of victims who have not come forward. Since the TV drama, fifty more victims have emerged. If you think it must have been your incompetence and/or if you feared the consequences and shame of public prosecution, then there was strong pressure to pay up and try to move on.

The TV drama brilliantly captures the courageous campaign by the victims and the extraordinary resilience and leadership of Mr. Bates and others. They fought for over 20 years to rescind the convictions and get compensation, both for the money the Post Office took fraudulently from the victims and for their general economic and mental distress. The Post Office has continuously tried to deny there was any systemic failure and tried to tranquillise the campaign by setting up a mediation procedure that failed to overturn the convictions and by delaying any pay outs. It has deliberately prolonged the agony of the victims. A public enquiry was finally set up in 2022 but has still not been reported. Without the media impact of the TV drama, it is probable that the victims would still be stranded in a bureaucratic and legal quagmire.

So it looks like there is now political momentum in this affair, and the government might be looking to remove the Post Office from the compensation process entirely and rule all the prosecutions as null and void. A petition calling for the removal of the CBE honour from the Post Office CEO, Paula Vennells, has gathered over one million signatures in a very short time. She left the Post Office with a £400,000 bonus. The TV show focuses on her and her immediate colleagues as the villains of the piece. There is a powerful scene where it cuts between her delivering a sermon as a Church of England minister and the effects of the scandal on victims.

The political class would not have finally come to this point without the self-organisation of the victims themselves, some lawyers, and the TV drama. There was the exception of Tory MP James Arbuthnot, who supported the campaign through official channels. Ironically, he had actually fiddled with his parliamentary expenses, claiming for the heating of his swimming pool, among other offences revealed during the 2009 expenses scandal.

“The political class would not have finally come to this point without the self-organisation of the victims themselves, some lawyers, and the TV drama.”

What does the whole affair tell us about how our society works?

Public services under Thatcher adopted a corporate, capitalist model for its operations, both in terms of how staff were managed and how the service was delivered. Labour has basically endorsed this approach.

Such an approach was an integral part of the privatisation of services like gas, electricity, water, telecoms, British Rail, and more recently, the Probation Service. At the same time, this model was systematically applied to those sectors that remained under formally common ownership, such as the Post Office, education, or the NHS. Local or national democratic accountably was severely weakened or removed, so local education authorities now have little control over the school system, and privatised academy networks run many secondary schools. High student fees that each student must pay back over time support universities’ operations largely as commercial entities. Health services have gone through several models of an internal market with a crude, artificial provider-client relationship imposed. Private capital, particularly US health corporations, has been allowed to take over certain functions and sectors. Private businesses, including hedge funds, are now running social care more and more.

A corporate model, aping the way big private companies operate, means cutting jobs, attacking trade unions, and reducing the range and quality of services. Salaries for managers, based on targets more related to cutting costs than maintaining quality, have become similar to the hugely unequal distribution in the private sector. Corporate secrecy and lack of accountability, which have always been the norm in the private sector, now became established even in the public sector, which remained under common ownership, like the Post Office. It is no surprise that Post Office managers reacted the way they did to problems with the Horizon network system. They were more concerned about damage to the Post Office ‘brand’ than supporting their own operatives, as though delivering the post was like selling cars or baked beans.

Partnerships between digital corporations like Fujitsu reinforce this corporate model, and the systems they impose are not always fit for purpose in a public service environment. The public service managers were not able to critically evaluate the corporate digital projects.

As a senior manager in the secondary education sector, I saw with my own eyes how schools spent huge amounts of their budgets on adopting private company digital systems, particularly for school networks, attendance, and assessment. This was partly in response to Ofsted and Government requirements for data on exam results, absenteeism, and pupil computer skills. SERCO and other companies made a lot of their initial growth out of this market. However, the big education authorities, particularly the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), had their own internal computer operations that could have developed to provide school systems. But this was the time when private was good, seen as always more efficient, and public was bad, seen as old-fashioned and inefficient. Of course, these big digital corporations are well organised in promoting and selling their products to public sector managers. Taking on large-scale digital reorganisations further amplified their sense of becoming like their corporate counterparts. On occasion, there were some direct inducements between these corporations and public service managers. Certainly, you had the revolving door process where public service managers were recruited by corporations to sell their products to former colleagues. In all this, there was a lot of uncritical acceptance of how wonderful such systems were. Obviously, there was also a knowledge or competence gap where the public service manager was not up to speed about the way these systems worked.

Self-organisation and mass campaigning by victims of miscarriages of justice are vital for any victory against big public or private organisations. The main political parties did not take up the issue.

The TV drama shows visually how Mr. Bates started with half a dozen victims meeting in a village hall and, over the years, built up to five hundred coming together. The federation of subpostmasters and mistresses did not lead the campaign or help very much at all. Apart from the one Tory MP, the main parties did not respond. In fact, Ed Davey was a minister in the coalition government who was responsible for the area and is today under pressure for why he did nothing. His excuse is that the Post Office lied to him. But why did he never listen to the victims? It is a good example of what many commentators (and Starmer in a recent speech) refer to as a lack of trust in the political system or the way politicians do not really relate to people’s real needs or struggles.

The British legal system is not very slow, and there is always pressure to come to a deal in order to get some sort of result.

This Government has severely cut back on legal aid; the family of Sarah Perry, the headteacher who committed suicide after a bullying Ofsted inspection, was denied it. Even people who had some savings, such as some of the post office operatives, could not sustain the huge legal fees required to fight the institutions or the corporations, both of whom have very deep pockets. It is also incredibly slow; cases can take years to progress, as we saw with this case. Bates and his team did take up a class action case for five hundred victims using a top firm. They won, and it was the first decisive victory that put the Post Office on the back foot, but the deal was always that the case was taken up on a no-win no-fee basis, so the damages won were massively eaten into by the legal teams’ costs. The TV drama shows this very well, as during the victory report back, the victims discover that this may mean only about twenty thousand each, which is far below the average they were owed and deserve. Even this victory was not total since it was based on a final plea bargain, as the lawyers correctly argued that the Post Office, with their bottomless funds, could keep dragging the case through the courts for years. At least this legal case established that the Post Office was in the wrong and the victims were not crooks.

The mass media, particularly the print media, rarely take up or campaign in such cases.

Once the victims are winning, of course they jump on the winning side and pile into those responsible and the Government, as we see with the screaming headlines in the right wing papers like the Express or the Mail this week. Only one small-circulation magazine, Computer Weekly, responded to the scandal. A postmaster rang up for technical advice, and I think I fortunately found Rebecca Thomson, a 26-year-old, who was not a techie. She helped Bates get more victims to come forward through her article. So it would have been really easy for the mainstream media to pick this up and carry the campaign forward. Obviously, the mainstream media is owned predominantly by right wing tycoons who are very pro-business and generally loath to rock the smooth running of the capitalist system. They focus on celebrity scandals, not on miscarriages of justice that affect hundreds of people. Their considerable investigative resources were spent at the time tapping the phones of people like Huge Grant.

Will Fujitsu ever pay up for its faulty system?

Voices are finally being raised in parliament about the responsibility of this multinational for the faulty system. So far, it has not paid a penny. As today’s Daily Mirror (9 January) reports:

“The Government has continued to work with Fujitsu in the wake of the scandal and has awarded it public sector contracts worth £3billion in the last 10 years. In November, the Post Office extended one contract with the firm – worth an estimated £36million – through to March 2025.”

Of course, these private sector companies make sure their contracts are as watertight as possible to avoid having to pay out any money down the road. We have seen this with the Private Finance Initiative contracts made with hospitals or schools. Their lawyers are usually better than those in the public sector. However, public and political pressure could force them to pay out to avoid reputational damage to their brand. Consumers could boycott their products, for example.

Even the left, the trade unions, or other progressive forces were slow to take up the issue.

We have a lot less resources to take up all abuses of power and miscarriages of justice, but we were also slow to make a big deal of this case. Perhaps there was a perception that these people were not really part of the working class; they were not organised in a proper trade union and did not use the language we are used to on the left. Certainly they were small business people, and we should emphasise the word small. The incomes of many of them were less than those of many people organised in unions that we go out and support. There is a lesson here about the need for the left to have a strategic orientation towards those middle layers of society that we need to win over to a fairer future society. Some may employ one or two people, often family members, but they are not the drivers of exploitation, either of working people or in terms of destroying nature. We need to have policies that relate to their needs for a secure, reasonable income and a better community. Indeed, as the TV drama showed, these people often play a crucial community role, looking after local people with their pensions, helping them sort out bills, and so on. Total digitalisation is not empowering for people who do not own a smart phone.

To a degree, a lot of the points made above were explicit or often implicit in the ITV drama. As always, Toby Jones and Julie Hesmondhalgh gave terrific performances, and the whole cast shone. It looked like they were all committed to the wider impact of the drama, as the actors and actresses have since confirmed. The modest but firm leadership of Bates in particular is an example to all activists about how to listen to people and build a campaign.

“As always, Toby Jones and Julie Hesmondhalgh gave terrific performances, and the whole cast shone.”

As we write these lines, it looks like victory is finally in sight. Will the Post Office, as an institution, pay any penalty? Will individual managers who conspired to prevent the victims from getting together by saying  ‘it was only them’ ever be sanctioned? Will the CEO keep her CBE? The petition has reached over a million now. Can she be pursued today for her actions? We will see how far the political class will go to get full justice.

Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office is currently available for streaming on ITVX, and there is also a Panorama programme available on IPlayer.

09 Jan 2024

This article was originally published on Anti*Capitalist Resistance: https://anticapitalistresistance.org/post-office-how-corporate-business-stole-peoples-lives/

On Christmas eve as bombs dropped on Palestine, Turkey began a fresh assault on Rojava, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, destroying critical infrastructure, like power plants and grain storage, and killing civilians. Like Palestine, the ongoing struggle in Rojava is a decades (if not centuries) long fight for collective liberation and self-determination. The ongoing revolution has established a region-wide system of grassroots democracy led by women’s liberation. Such liberatory realities will always be a threat to established power structures and the most recent escalation is no coincidence. Turkey’s president Tayip Erdogan has already made two full ground invasions of Rojava, annexing the Afrin region in 2018, and Serekaniye in 2019. Now, he undertakes another aggression knowing that attention is elsewhere. As the events of the past few months have made visible the necessity and reality of anti-imperial struggle for so many, a group of women from Scotland who visited Rojava in 2023 reflect on the lessons from what they witnessed there for anyone interested in anti-colonial movements. 

Why did we go?

We travelled to Rojava in spring 2023, where we met with women’s groups under the umbrella of the confederal women’s organisation, Kongra Star. We are all organisers or activists at home, with diverse backgrounds both culturally and in struggle: such as migrant justice, feminism, anti-capitalism and campaigns against the arms trade. In different ways, we could all see ourselves reflected in the struggle and the achievements of the Rojava revolution. We all have questions, now more than ever, about how we can change the world we live in for the better, and we felt we could learn a lot from the political process there.

The Kurdistan Freedom Movement has a tradition of grassroots organising and challenging oppressive power structures instead of recreating them. The revolution has followed this philosophy, not basing the organisation of society on nationalist or ethnic lines. Kurds, Arabs, Syriacs, Ezidis and all the people of the region self-organise and develop their own strengths, coming together in structures that treats diversity as strength. Together they have created the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria and are transforming their society at all levels. The philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan, with its proposals for Democratic Confederalism (the organisation of society through democratic self-organisation not state institutions) and women’s liberation, is the beating heart of a revolution which has been going on for over a decade. Kurdish women had been organising for many years when opportunity for revolution arose in 2012, at which point the people of Rojava, because of this committed long-term work of organising and education, were prepared to build up a society based on women’s freedom and gender liberation, pluralism, ecology, grassroots democracy and self-governance.

What was our experience there?

It was one thing to read about it all and another to see it – and in just under two weeks, there was a lot to see. We clambered in and out of cars several times a day, bouncing on dusty uneven roads to one meeting after another. We filed in and out of offices, halls, yards and canvas tents, to sit on plastic chairs, colourful sofas, or cushions on the floor. We met with dozens of organisers, most of them women, who explained their stories to us with a dignity and a sense of self that was awe-inspiring. They patiently answered our questions as we hungrily tried to imprint everything on our memories. In between meetings, we were hosted in family homes, fed more than we could eat, and made friends despite language and cultural barriers.

On our first day, we visited a Jineoloji Academy, Washokani refugee camp and Jinwar village. We learnt about the work and research of Jineoloji in the first meeting: it is a science of life, society, and the creation of a new world based on women’s and ecological liberation. The aim of their analysis of oppression is to solve social problems, rather than merely theorise about them. In our discussion, we compared the Western rhetoric of “rights” to the concept of “freedom” in Rojava. In our organising in Scotland, we often come across tendencies to rely on governance structure to grant rights and solutions – e.g. by lobbying for laws or asking for grants. Freedom, as the women from the Jineoloji Academy explained to us, consists in autonomy and self-empowerment. It needs to be built from the ground up and cannot be granted from above. This encouragement of the flourishing of autonomy through collective action showed us how Rojava is a microcosm of all the world’s social problems and provides inspiration for women’s struggles in Scotland as well.

When we visited the Washokani refugee camp, we spoke to the women’s group there. The inhabitants of the camp were displaced by Turkey’s 2019 invasion of Serekanye, and their aim is to return to their homes. In the meantime, despite the difficulties of living in a camp with a shortage of basic necessities and no support from international NGOs, they are also autonomously organised as women. The camp is run through collective decision-making with a system of communes and assemblies, and their group makes sure women’s voices are heard. We saw that Heyva Sor, the Kurdish Red Crescent, had a strong presence on site, as the only group providing medical support. As we were leaving the camp, we passed a group of children flying kites made from plastic bags and playing ball – we had no choice but to join in, moved by their commitment to joy and life during a time of displacement and war.

The women-led aspect of the revolution goes beyond autonomous women’s organising and encompasses the liberation of children and families as well. At Jinwar Women’s Village, which started 6 years ago as one of the only women’s villages in the world, we learnt about how they also organise a regular children’s assembly. Its purpose is to extend democracy to the youth by encouraging them to self-organise, solve their problems, and share skills, ideas and culture. The village also embraces herbal medicine and deepens the connection to the land through growing their own food; a testament to the administration’s aims of caring for the environment and sustainability. After the discussion, we shared a delicious meal made with local nutritious ingredients, and it was easy to agree with the following message, voiced earlier in the day by one of the village’s inhabitants: “Women are the heart and driving force of democracy – when we come together and feel together, no one can defeat us”.

We had all these experiences in just one day and met with many more dedicated revolutionaries over the course of the delegation; women organising to end gendered violence through transformative justice, women’s workers’ co-operatives working on economical sustainability, neighbourhood assemblies, councils and offices in different regions, groups supporting disabled people, and women’s self-defence forces like HPC-Jin (Women’s Neighourhood Defence Forces) and YPJ (Women’s Defence Units).

Messages to Scotland and learnings for us

It was clear how much we were learning and what we were getting out of the experience. We had to ask ourselves what they felt they were getting out of giving us so much time from their busy lives. Usually, the answer came in the form of a smile and asking us to build our own revolution at home. We shuffled awkwardly, asking if there were key messages, they wanted us to bring out to the world, while we work on that one.

Spreading the word about the revolution, and the Turkish state’s attempts to destroy it is a start. Rojava is a living example of how we can organise ourselves and society differently. It is direct democracy, with women involved at every level of organising, a new society with communal living at the centre. It is messy, imperfect, and still not complete – but it shows it is possible. At a time when it is hard to find any light, we must hold onto and know that a better world is possible.

The women of North and East Syria are not asking for anyone’s help and are more than capable of changing their own world. Still, we were reminded many times of the UK’s responsibility in the arms trade that leads to the bombs dropping on Rojava, and the complicity of global powers in the Turkish state’s attacks on infrastructure. The neighbourhood communes and assemblies there lamented the shortages of water and resources, which are problems with material roots in the UK. For example, BAE systems – who have multiple sites in Scotland – are helping Turkey develop their own aircraft.

In addition to drone strikes and shelling of infrastructure, Turkey also targets political organisers, particularly women. We have already looked on, horrified, as Yusra Darwish, a friend who welcomed us with tea and discussed neighbourhood organising with us, was killed in a Turkish drone strike in June. Now we are watching as power stations, water supplies, hospitals and even the region’s only oxygen factory, are targeted in an effort to break the will and the ability to survive of the people of the region. The fabric of everything that made such an impression on us, that has become an inspiration for radicals all over the world, is under attack.

Call to Action

States that destroy infrastructure, kill civilians and deny people the right self-determination are a threat to democracy and liberation everywhere. And if we believe in a fairer, just world for everyone, then we need to stand up and fight against it. We can start by breaking the silence. Share your knowledge of these attacks with your friends, discuss it with your family, and post about it online. Follow news sites like the ones detailed below.

You can also donate to Heyva Sor a Kurd (Kurdish Red Crescent) who are on the ground in North-East Syria providing vital humanitarian and medical assistance (details at end).

Lastly, join, support, or set up a local solidarity group, such as the Kurdistan Solidarity Network or Scottish Solidarity with Kurdistan.

Stay up to date on events in the region: 

ANF News (https://anfenglishmobile.com/ ) or Medya News (https://medyanews.net/ ). As well as groups such as the Rojava Information Centre (Twitter: @RojavaIC ) or Riseup 4 Rojava (https://riseup4rojava.org/ ).

Solidarity networks:

https://kurdistansolidarity.net

Scottish Solidarity with Kurdistan | Facebook  Look on Facebook: “ScottishSolidaritywithKurdistan”

DONATE TO HEYVA SOR HERE

Bank account
Heyva Sor a Kurdistanê e. V.
Kreissparkasse Köln
IBAN: DE49 3705 0299 0004 0104 81
BIC/SWIFT: COKSDE33XXX
Reference: Rojava

PayPal: paypal.me/heyvasorakurdistane
Contact and further information: www.heyvasor.com
E-Mail: heyvasor@web.de
Phone: +49 (0) 2241 975 25 83
Instagram: heyvasor
Twitter: @Heyva__Sor
Facebook: Heyva Sor a Kurdistanê e.V.

Originally published 7 January 2024 on Bella Caledonia: https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2024/01/07/womens-delegation-from-scotland-to-rojava/

Main Picture: Arin Mirkan square in liberated Kobane, pivotal in the fight against ISIS. Photo Credit: Jennifer Clapham

Sean Thompson writes on Red Green Labour:

Over the past few years, much has been made (particularly by fossil fuel industry lobbyists) of the potential for the development of a ‘hydrogen economy’. The great attraction of hydrogen to the proponents of the status quo, whether Tory or Labour, is that it feeds into their fantasies about ‘green growth’ – a lower carbon version of business as usual. Hydrogen, it is claimed, could replace fossil fuels as an energy source, not only for energy intensive heavy industries like steel and glass production but also for powering cars, public transport, aviation and home heating. However, as the estimable Ben Goldacre said of other sensational claims “I think you’ll find it’s more complicated than that.”

Hydrogen comes in three colours:

• Grey: Hydrogen produced from a natural gas feedstock.
• Blue: Hydrogen produced from a natural gas feedstock with capture of the by-product CO2.
• Green: Hydrogen produced by splitting water molecules through electrolysis using renewable energy sources

According to the International Energy Agency,  95 million tonnes (Mt) of  hydrogen is produced worldwide and 99% is ‘grey’. In 2022, hydrogen production generated more than 900 Mt of CO2 emissions – more than the entire global aviation industry footprint of almost 800 Mt. At the same time, less than 0.1 per cent of the world’s hydrogen production (less than 0.08 Mt) was green hydrogen.

In the run-up to COP28, its president, Al Jaber, Minister of Industry and Advanced Technology of the United Arab Emirates and head of theAbu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC), repeatedly urged agreement by governments to almost double current global hydrogen production from 95 Mt to 180 Mt per year by 2030. Reaching that goal with green hydrogen would require a 2,068-fold production increase in seven years. This is, to say the least, a highly unlikely scenario, so the reality would be a massive boom in grey hydrogen and good news for ADNOC and the rest of the fossil fuel industry.

The idea that green hydrogen can replace the energy currently provided by fossil fuels for most transport and for domestic heating/cooling is fanciful in the extreme.  Even more fanciful is the suggestion currently being promoted by aviation industry lobbyists that hydrogen might be used to power zero carbon flying, either by using it to manufacture yet to be discovered ‘alternative’ aviation fuels or via hydrogen fuel cells for electrically powered aircraft.

• A kilogram of hydrogen – the unit of measurement most often used – has an energy value of about 33.3 kWh.So a tonne of hydrogen delivers about 33 MWh and a million tonnes about 33 terawatt hours (TWh). To provide a sense of scale, the UK uses about 300 TWh of electricity a year.
• Many estimates of the eventual demand for hydrogen are of at least 500 Mt. A world that requires 500 Mt of hydrogen will need to produce 22,000 TWh of green electricity a year just for this purpose. 22,000 TWh is roughly equivalent to 15% of total world primary energy demand, and today’s global production from all wind and solar farms is a little more than 10% of this figure.
• A huge global increase in green energy generation capacity will thus be needed to produce 500Mt of hydrogen.  As an example of the scale of of increase needed, for every gigawatt of capacity, a well-sited North Sea wind farm will provide about 4,400 GWh a year, or 4.4 TWh. At a future efficiency level of about 75%, this will produce around 100,000 tonnes of hydrogen. Therefore most of the UK’s current North Sea wind output from 13 GW of wind would be needed to make just one million tonnes of H2.
• The amount of electrolysis capacity required to make 500 million tonnes of hydrogen a year depends on how many hours a year that the electrolysers work and how efficient they are. If we assume an average of about 60% of the time, at a prospective 75% efficiency level, then the world will need around 4,500 gigawatts of electrolysis capacity – about five hundred times what is currently in place.

While the creation of such a vast new industry is clearly possible over a period of time, particularly if such an huge initiative isn’t left to the hidden hand of the market or the not so hidden hands of the fossil fuel industry, it is clearly not possible in the time left to us to avoid global catastrophe.  Nonetheless, the use of hydrogen and the development of green hydrogen production capacity will be essential if we are to move to a  zero carbon economy – but because the supply of truly clean hydrogen is going to be limited – certainly for the next two or three decades – it should be prioritised for uses where there are no alternatives.

In an analysis for Bloomberg in 2020,  Michael Liebreich pointed out that hydrogen has serious limitations in many applications:

 “as an energy storage medium, it has only a 50% round-trip efficiency – far worse than batteries. As a source of work, fuel cells, turbines and engines are only 60% efficient – far worse than electric motors – and far more complex. As a source of heat, hydrogen costs four times as much as natural gas. As a way of transporting energy, hydrogen pipelines cost three times as much as power lines, and ships and trucks are even worse.”…“What this means is that hydrogen’s role in the final energy mix of a future net-zero emissions world will be to do things that cannot be done more simply, cheaply and efficiently by the direct use of clean electricity and batteries”

The [UK] Government’s own Climate Change Committee (CCC) analysis in their 6th Carbon Budget Report, showed that hydrogen production is not the best use of renewable energy if it can be used in other ways, thus we should only use hydrogen where it is near-impossible to reduce demand or use electricity directly.  As a leading analyst at CCC has put it: “In our view, you should be looking to  electrify wherever you can.  Where that’s prohibitively expensive , or where that’s not feasible, that’s the role that you’re looking for hydrogen.”

The EU Energy Cities network has actually put together a hierarchy of uses for hydrogen(see graphic) which seems a good starting point.  A is use by energy intensive heavy industrial processes needing high temperature heat like steel, chemicals or glass, B is grid-level storage – storing otherwise ‘waste’ energy produced by off shore wind during periods of low electricity demand, C, D and E for powering heavy transport – shipping, trains and buses/HGVs respectively. Way down at F and G are hydrogen fuel cells for cars and home heating. Speculative technologies like synthetic aviation fuel don’t even figure on the list.

It’s important that an incoming Labour [UK] government doesn’t commit to high cost options involving blue – or even grey – hydrogen, which would suit the gas industry, but which would do little or nothing to reduce CO2 emissions. And it’s equally important that governments realise that, whilst green hydrogen is vital, it will not be available in infinite quantities and isn’t going to be a panacea for all the delivery challenges and investments that need to be made across buildings, transport and industry.

Despite this, both Tory and Labour politicians, along with a rag bag of lobbyists for various techno-fix solutions, from nuclear to carbon capture and sequestration and the wilder regions of geo-engineering, try to avoid the reality that there are no silver bullets that will somehow exempt capitalism from the laws of physics.

For example, in 2020, the Tory [UK] government  launched its ‘Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution’, which included a commitment to investing up to £500m in new hydrogen technologies. It claimed that the energy produced could be used “to carry on living our lives, running our cars, buses, trucks and trains, ships and planes, and heating our homes while keeping bills low.” It announced that as part of a trial of hydrogen heating, two ‘hydrogen villages’ of around 1,000-2,000 homes, in Whitby, near Ellesmere Port and Redcar, Teeside, where the homes would be converted to hydrogen for heating instead of natural gas. In July this year, the plans for the Whitby pilot were abandoned in the face of local opposition and in December the proposed Redcar pilot was also scrapped. This leaves National Grid’s £32m pilot project in Fife, where about 300 homes in Methil and neighbouring Buckhaven in Levenmouth were due to be converted from natural gas to hydrogen next year, as only remaining attempt in the UK by energy industry to show that hydrogen is a viable (and cost effective) alternative to natural gas for domestic heating. Unsurprisingly, the project is much delayed and the are doubts whether it will actually get going. Ofgem has warned that “delay in the commencement of this project would materially impact the evidence base for an energy system transition to hydrogen as a means of decarbonising heat and industry”.

Capitalism, dependent as it is on the constant and infinite expansion of the production of commodities, is being forced by the inescapable reality of climate change to move from denial to a (partial) recognition of the terrible price that humanity and the planet as a whole is beginning to have to pay.  However, its enthusiasm for the mirage of ‘green growth’ is making it grab more and more desperately at technological straws – some of which, like green hydrogen, have the potential to actually play a valuable, if limited, role in combatting global heating.

Originally published on Red Green Labour:  https://redgreenlabour.org/2024/01/01/the-hydrogen-economy-yet-another-mirage/

At the recent International Committee of the Fourth International, held at the IIRE in Amsterdam, two delegates from Ukraine and Russia attended. The interview below is with Vasylyna, a member of Sotsialnyi Rukh/Соціальний Рух, and Mia, an activist in the Russian Socialist Movement/Российское социалистическое движение, about the war and their organisations’ activities. 

How did you get involved in politics?

Vasylyna: My interest in political activism emerged during my studies in urban studies, where we often used Marxist theory to analyse different processes that affect our living spaces. Surrounded by lots of young progressive people from all over Europe at the university and united by similar struggles of being international students, we initiated a union for the students of our department, fighting for equal tuition fees for European and non-European students. I joined Sotsialnyi Rukh because theory alone is not enough, driven by an urge to be active on the ground. Facing devastating current challenges, Ukrainian society is extremely vulnerable but definitely more open to change. Obviously, things cannot go on in the same way as they did before. For instance, there is a lot more discussion on corruption, and journalists are uncovering examples at the highest levels of power, so it feels like things are starting to shift.

Mia: I became interested in politics during my school years. When I was 14 years old, the annexation of Crimea happened. This was a moment when I really started to dive into news reports and listen to political commentators. However, I was almost unaware of differences on the political spectrum. The opposition field in Russia is predominantly liberal, so for many, the words “liberalism” and “democracy” are often equated. Like many people my age, I was anti-Putin, anti-conservative, pro-free elections, civil rights, and anti-corruption. I suppose my time spent at the university was important in this sense. I started reading a lot more about history and politics, and I was able to engage in political debates from a much more critical perspective. Since 2021, I have engaged in politics outside of the Student Council and university settings. I served as an election observer for the parliamentary and municipal elections of 2021 and started to participate in the activities of RSM. Soon after this, I became a full member.

What is Sotsialnyi Rukh’s position on the Zelensky government?

Vasylyna: The government’s stance is clear about fighting for the sovereignty of Ukraine, and this gets a lot of support from people. But we as an organisation are extremely critical of the political direction of the government, accompanied by neoliberal reforms and massive cuts to public spending. In Sotsialnyy Rukh, we are finding ways to organise around these issues. People stand united to defend the country, but this does not mean that Zelensky has unanimous support.

Unfortunately, oligarchy and foreign capital have a significant influence on our current president. The current government was not capable of transitioning from an economy based on profit to a war economy that would work for providing defence capacity and solving humanitarian problems. Seeking allies amongst international partners, mostly among the richest states that have their own imperialist interests (like the USA), could cause harm to the support of Ukraine and bring out confusion in the countries of the Global South. We do not believe that our government is capable of fixing mistakes. That’s why there is a strong urge for mass grassroots pressure and political critique from a leftist perspective. The key priorities of the state should be based on the protection of people’s interests, fostering social cohesion, and promoting global solidarity against oppression.

What campaigning work is the Revolutionary Socialist Movement doing?

Mia: Campaigning work is difficult for our comrades in Russia due to the repressive regime. We try to work within the law because we don’t want to endanger activists. Our main goals now are to shift the oppositional political conversation to the left and provide practical support for people. For instance, we have been doing work with independent trade unions in Russia. There is a union for delivery workers, which we have been helping to organise and support. When the activists and independent trade union leaders are imprisoned, we organise help—financially and via media campaigns.

We are actively working within the “University Platform” that unites professors and students to defend their rights and freedoms. We try to build communities and provide a space to discuss politics to overcome the atomisation of Russian society. Even inside repressive regimes, there are still struggles and problems that are fought on the ground. When possible, we align with grassroots initiatives to defend people’s rights against construction companies’ lobbying and resist the destruction of nature. We are also prioritising the feminist platform as well as anti- and decolonial work within our movement; this is particularly important to us given the invasion of Ukraine. What is often overlooked is that while our government wages a colonial war against Ukraine, indigenous people in Russia are dying out. Indigenous populations often live in poor outlying areas of Russia’s periphery, where people are mired in poverty and debt. Mobilisation occurs disproportionately in poor regions of the country, where people are pressured to join the army to pay off debts, often lack the ability to resist, and have fewer sources of information than the rest of the population.

What about the war?

Vasylyna: We support the Ukrainians’ right to resist the invasion and colonisation. Some Sotsialnyi Rukh members have joined the armed forces and are fighting the Russian army. There are not really other viable options in terms of separate fighting militias and units at the moment.

Some on the left say that the conflict is primarily a proxy conflict between imperialists; do you agree?

Vasylyna: We do not see this as a proxy war. It is, first and foremost, a people’s war for national liberation. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, people were self-organising, doing anything they could to resist the occupation, speaking to soldiers, and older women making homemade explosives. People from all walks of life—LGBT+ people and women, artists, workers, and academics—joined the army to fight for the Ukrainians’ right to self-determination.

“We do not see this as a proxy war. It is, first and foremost, a people’s war for national liberation.”

Mia: Some on the left have this false pacifism, and they put an ideological lens on the war that obscures rather than clarifies, but actually obscures the situation for real people on the ground. Of course, the Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves; they are the main victims in this conflict. This label of ‘proxy war’ doesn’t give any agency to the Ukrainians themselves. People calling for negotiations and a ceasefire need to be clear on what basis. The problem is, no one would dictate to Russia the price they would demand for peace. But some on the left want to dictate conditions to the Ukrainians and say they need to sacrifice their national sovereignty by accepting annexations. Why?

What is the strength of the far right in Ukraine?

Vasylyna: The far-right can still be a threat to some individuals and social movements, but in general, Ukrainian society stands against authoritarian and chauvinistic ideas, as those ideas are at the base of Russian imperialism. Moreover, the influence and visibility of far-right movements in Ukraine are less strong compared to Western societies, for instance, Germany. Currently, far-right activists are not represented in big politics, but we need to be prepared to resist far-right interests in the future. History shows that wars, unfortunately, shape the favourable base for spreading hateful ideologies. Nevertheless, Ukrainian society demonstrated that it’s empowered by its diversity and not by cultivating ethnic nationalism and national isolation.

“Ukrainian society demonstrated that it’s empowered by its diversity and not by cultivating ethnic nationalism and national isolation.”

Will Ukraine win the war?

Vasylyna: Of course! It is the only way to liberate the country. We have to end the Russian invasion as a priority. We definitely need more arms because this is an actual fight, and these things matter.

How can the international workers movement and left help?

Vasylyna: We have the European Network of Solidarity with Ukraine, which meets weekly. There have been international visits by delegates from different countries. There was a good campaign to cancel Ukraine’s debt and, recently, to free the Ukrainian human rights activist Maksym Butkevych, who was captured by Russian forces and tortured before being sentenced to 13 years in prison. Anything that people can do to help spread information about people like Butkevych and put pressure on Russia to release him would help. We would very much like the international left to offer Ukraine progressive solutions that would allow us to implement a just reconstruction and ensure sustainable development. The people of Ukraine want to live in peace and decent social conditions, and for this, it is necessary to eliminate the influence of the oligarchy, transfer all economic resources to public ownership, and write off the foreign debt.

Mia: We urge comrades around the world, but especially in the Western world, where politics is more open and you can have more public discussions: We don’t want the Russian regime to win; it will be a disaster in Ukraine and Russia. There has been a precedent for lifting sanctions from Russian oligarchs in Europe (for example, the head of “Alfa Bank,” Mikhail Fridman). We claim that sanctions against Russian capitalists should be maintained, and the money should be directed towards the Ukrainian resistance, Russian civil society organisations, and helping reconstruct Ukraine after the war. We also call for international solidarity with political prisoners. Among them are leftists, anarchists, anti-fascists, and trade union organisers. We welcome direct actions to help us raise money to help those needing political asylum and those already imprisoned. Prosecuted activists often escape, but they end up fleeing to places like Kazakhstan and other countries under Russian influence, where they are detained and then face deportation back to Russia. At the same time, the visa regime is very restrictive, and the procedures take a very long time. Land borders with EU countries are effectively closed, and the simplified procedure for obtaining visas has been canceled. There is a need to support those needing political asylum—those who refuse to be sent to war and escape. It is necessary to demand that the European Commission and the European Parliament adopt a unified approach to providing international protection for Russian citizens who are at risk of persecution.

What was your view of the International Committee meeting?

Vasylyna: It was very important to come and hear the arguments from different organisations. There are certainly some contributions that my organisation would disagree with. But also, I am interested in discussing within SR how to develop our policies and ideas based on some of what I heard.

Mia: There were some positives, but also some negatives. On the positive, everyone is open to hearing other positions and wants to know more about the positions of the RSM and what is going on in Russia. But my criticism is that we merely exchange political opinions; the left spends so much time arguing over concepts like whether something is imperialist or not. But where is the practical solidarity? We need to do more to share what we are doing on the ground. It cannot just be ideological positions.

Originally published by Anti*Capitalist Resistance https://anticapitalistresistance.org/interview-with-ukrainian-and-russian-socialists/

NOTE: The Fourth International is a worldwide organisation of revolutionary ecosocialists.  Defending the self-organization of the exploited and oppressed, towards the abolition of capitalism and the building of ecosocialism, the Fourth International brings together organizations convinced that this is not possible without a root and branch, revolutionary, transformation of society. Read more here: https://fourth.international/en/166

In this article, republished from the Anti*Capitalist Resistance website, Gilbert Achcar analyses the current situation in Israel’s war on Gaza, predicting that Israel plans to shift to a “low intensity” campaign while preparing for a possible future massive attack on Lebanon.   This article was written before Israel’s assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut on 3 January 2024.

Two weeks ago, we estimated, in light of the evidence available at the time, that Israel’s occupation forces would stop their intensive campaign of heavy bombardment at the beginning of this new year, and shift to a “low-intensity war” whose goal would be to tighten control over most of the territory of the Gaza Strip fallen under its sway, eradicate all remaining resistance within it and destroy the network of tunnels that remain under its soil (see “Whither Israel’s War on Gaza?”, 20/12/2023). On Monday, the first day of this new year, the official spokesman for the occupation army announced the withdrawal of five brigades from Gaza, composed mostly of reserve soldiers, in what was interpreted by observers as a first step towards the shift to a “low-intensity war” as promised by Israel’s rulers to their external supporters, the United States above all.

The truth is that, for both human and economic reasons, the Zionist state cannot carry on for long waging a war with the same intensity as the one it has fought since “Al-Aqsa Flood”. This is because Israel is a relatively small country, with a Jewish population of only a little more than seven million, of whom a million and a half are men of military service age (in addition to a million and a half women who have not been involved in the war yet). It cannot continue to mobilize approximately half a million reservists for a long period, as this constitutes a heavy human burden on its society and an even heavier burden on its economy.

Until the end of last year, that is, in less than three months, the war has cost approximately 20 billion dollars, according to what a former deputy governor of the Israeli Central Bank told the Washington Post, i.e. a cost approaching a quarter of a billion dollars per day, which is huge for the country’s economy. The Zionist government estimates that the entire war, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed last Saturday would last at least a year, will cost it about 50 billion dollars (that is, approximately one tenth of Israel’s GDP). What makes Netanyahu and his allies of the Zionist far right all the more determined to continue the war at a lower intensity throughout this new year is their bet on Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election next autumn. They believe that Trump would give them a green light to complete the “Second Nakba” by permanently seizing the Gaza Strip and annexing it. As they rely on American funding to mitigate the impact of the war on their economy, they must reduce its costs so that they can carry it on during the next several months as they intend.

At the same time, however, the Zionist government is planning a second intensive bombing campaign that would start once the intensity of its bombing of Gaza is reduced. During the very first days of Israel’s new offensive, Zionist “Defence” Minister, former Major General Yoav Galant, a member of the Likud Party and a rival of Netanyahu, was reported to want Israel to attack Hezbollah in Lebanon in conjunction with its onslaught on Hamas in Gaza. Gallant is known to be an advocate of the Dahiya doctrine, applied for the first-time during Israel’s onslaught on Lebanon in 2006. This military strategy consists in responding to anyone who threatens Israel’s security in such a sweeping and destructive way that it would constitute a powerful deterrent. As head of the Southern Command between 2005 and 2010, Gallant oversaw the application of that doctrine in the deadly three-week onslaught on Gaza that started at the end of 2008.

Last summer, the Zionist “Defence” Minister threatened to return Lebanon to the “stone age”. This was after he inspected the Shebaa Farms area on the Lebanese border and saw a tent set up by Hezbollah there. He said at the time: “I warn Hezbollah and Nasrallah not to make mistakes. You have made mistakes in the past and paid a very high price. If, God forbid, escalation or confrontation happens here, we will return Lebanon to the Stone Age.” He continued, repeating: “I warn Hezbollah and its leader: Do not make a mistake. We will not hesitate to use all our power and destroy every meter belonging to Hezbollah and Lebanon if we have to.” He then added, “When it comes to Israel’s security, we are all united.” These last words were in response to the assertion by Hezbollah’s leader that Israel has been weakened due to its political crisis.

Thus, the likelihood of a new massive aggression launched by the Zionist state against Lebanon has become very high indeed. The Israeli government is putting Hezbollah in a corner by demanding that it withdraw its military presence to north of the Litani River, some 10 km north of Lebanon’s border, as compliance would cause the party to lose face while refusal to comply would make it bear responsibility for causing a new devastating aggression against Lebanon, the areas where the party is deployed in particular. Hezbollah’s limited intervention in the wake of “Al-Aqsa Flood” has thus backfired, as the party missed the opportunity to force Israel to engage in an intensive war on two fronts whereas Israel is today threatening to launch an intensive bombardment of Lebanon, singling it out after completing its intensive bombardment of Gaza.

Translated from the Arabic original published in Al-Quds al-Arabi https://www.alquds.co.uk/?p=3282616 on 2 January 2024. This article was written before Israel’s assassination of a senior Hamas leader in Beirut.

Source >> Gilbert Achcar blog The Zionist destruction machine threatens Lebanon after Gaza | Gilbert Achcar / جلبير الأشقر (gilbert-achcar.net)