Yes, I’m panicking. Late sixties, heart and lung disease, a health service that is rationing admissions of the over ‘60’s and a Government that doesn’t care. Prime Minister Johnson appeared with groomed lackeys last night to tell us to stay at home and self-isolate. In reality, the infrastructure of our health and social care will not cope with the demand.

The Coronavirus epidemic is not a fake-news scare story. The current global death rates are some thirty-times higher than for influenza, and that’s scary. Panic buying is already intense, alongside vicious attacks on Black people across Britain perpetrated by racists using the risk of contamination as an excuse to blame and persecute non-Whites. The attacks on Chinese people wearing masks in public in the UK are as alarming as they are absurd.

Doctors in the thick of it declare this to be “the most frightening virus ever” – more contagious than Ebola or SARS and a higher death rate than flu. From Italy we hear that the marching orders are: “Save scarce resources for those patients who have the greatest chance of survival.”That means prioritizing younger, otherwise healthy patients over older patients or those with pre-existing conditions.”

As someone ticking most boxes of pre-existing conditions this raises existential issues. Are some people’s lives worth saving more than others? It’s a political as well as moral issue. As socialist author, Michael Rosen debated on BBC Radio 4, if we take a position other than “every life is equally precious”, where does society end up? I could say I’d rather a older left-wing socialist climate activist with heart trouble was saved than a macho-racist fascist, but what if the governors of the medical services felt the opposite?

Hmmm…Right to Life, and all that.

The right-wing responses to predictions that 80% of us will eventually catch Covid-19 include, as examples: people dismissing life as a lottery, championing the false “scientific Darwinism” of survival of the fittest; proselytising about the fake science of “behaviouralism” (that is, observe what you want and write it up as scientific fact); disregarding the threat as a Liberal conspiracy; organising outright eugenics by leaving the disabled to die or actively welcoming the Malthusian “clear-out” of the old and vulnerable clogging up our health and social care system.

The range and depth of emotions stimulated by the epidemic could easily outstrip the distress experienced by the illness itself.

For activists there are many factors to be considered. Not least, the incredible vulnerability of human society, the social fabric easily fragmented, the scale of production dramatically reduced by supply-side disruptions. The threat of social collapse caused by combined and extreme weather events, not to mention actual climate shift, is visibly exemplified by this current health crisis.

A second focus for us is industrial farming and specifically animal management. Intensive animal farming, the horror of their treatment a subject for a separate blog of outrage and pain, and the growth of exotic wildlife meat markets are the sources of continuous spread of life-threatening disease.

For the humanist, the way humans treat animals reflects upon the concurrent inhuman behaviours of humans one to another. For the scientist, the poor management of animal life is the root cause of much of societies ills. For the climate activist, the industrialised production of meat produces, proportionally, the highest levels of global heating gases of any industry other than the military.

Together this appears to amount to a searing indictment of humanity. Of course, its not quite as simple as that. When living above subsistence (and often even when on the verge of starvation), humans love and care for the animals around them. More than any other human condition, hunger and the need to survive tends to erode compassion. Any decent human society would place human need above all else.

A compassionate society would end industrial animal farming I’m sure. More vitally, for society to survive at all it is fairly universally accepted that consumption of meat has to fall markedly, not least of cows and bulls (the term “Beef” redacts all reference to the living being) to reduce global heating gases. Animal husbandry is certainly a core part of the transition required to prevent runaway climate change.

And the pandemic threat raises a third discussion for the environmentalist -the core debate about what we mean by “A Just Transition”. This is a lively and earnest set of current arguments about the transformation of society to Carbon-Zero. Whilst open political preference is apparently frowned upon, the demand for protection of democracy through the transition is shared by the majority.

We want everyone to be engaged with and participative in decisions to decry the internal combustion engine and carbon fuels. We certainly don’t want a totalitarian dictatorship to decree carbon-zero whatever the pain and injustice incurred. Do we? In the same way we want our old and vulnerable protected as much as anyone else from disease and premature death, not sacrificed by a Government keen to protect business profits above comfort in our old age.

Current images from China, South Korea and Italy raise important questions. The appearance of quarantine as a form of social control is inescapable. I have repeatedly imagined what would happen if people in Plymouth were threatened with imprisonment if we appeared on the streets. How well would a curfew be accepted? I’d like to predict an uprising, but today’s global school strikes were cancelled by Greta Thunberg herself!

Locally there appears to be a tacit acceptance of “staying in your home” – a self-imposed curfew, for a period of 14 days should you begin a fever. Even football fans will accept a close-down of the games on the basis of stopping the spread. Quite fundamental changes to human interactions and behaviours are being readily discussed and accepted in the cause of preventing a pandemic.

So why not the the same level of acquiescence to social change in the existential face of human extinction? Most importantly it is governments, informed by scientists, who are demanding collective engagement with the viral threat. Yet the same governments, informed by a far wider and diverse set of scientific analysis, refuse to act with anywhere near the same level of determination towards the existent global heating.

Or is this a false observation from the very beginning? Is it, in fact, the case that most governments are doing as little as possible to protect the people whilst offering every support to ensure production and profits are maintained – “business as usual”? It is reported that ten times as many people click to watch the virus-deniers and paranoid conspiracy online posts as click the government advice adverts. Is this proof of virus-denial being as widespread as climate-denial?

One conclusion has to be this. To win hearts and minds to the level of change needed to keep global heating to below two-degrees centigrade (let alone 1.5), we have to prove the reality of the threat at a very personal and material level. Not by waiting until people “catch-it” – fires, floods, food shortages – but by speaking the science clearly, repeatedly and with a passion.

And that translates into how environmentalists and socialists should be relating to Covid-19. We have to learn about the science of the virus, read the conclusions of reports on effective approaches in other countries, and find ways “speak the truth to power” to challenge popular mythology, complacency and most of all Government lies and spin. The Coronavirus requires a system change away from profit and towards human need just as much as does any solution to global heating.

Everyone gets depressed from time to time. Some people very rarely, some much of the time. And then there’s the difference in the depths experienced. Some tendencies are suggested to be genetic, some bio-chemical, some stirred by material conditions. I have been a therapist and in therapy, a social worker and a parent, a teacher and a student, a lover and a hater. I have no qualifications to make heady statements about the causes or effects of depression. I simply experience it like any other human being.

There is much being written about our children becoming more prone to depression, not least because of the knowledge of climate change. I’m certainly in no position to quantify the causes of what appears to be an epidemic as large as the predicted impact of the Coronavirus. For example, at least 1 in 4 young women are suffering identifiable and seriously impacting depression in Britain at any one time, and male suicide is increasing amongst our young. Identification of depression is being recorded in ever larger proportions of younger and younger children.

This cannot be blamed upon we, the disparaged “doom-mongers” of the Climate Movement, although some do. We have had the discussion and tested the theory that doing something, taking action, joining with others to shout-out against Ecocide and Extinction is the best antidote to climate depression.

This is not so much a question of having Hope but Purpose. Hope is as ephemeral as Joy or Happiness. These are each emotional exceptions, momentary sensations that come-and-go and cannot be relied upon. People report moments of pleasure even from inside a prison cell and when hope isn’t present.

Purpose, by contrast, offers some consistency, stability and solidity. Emotions can rise and fall by the hour, day or week, but having a goal, committing to a cause, offers a sense of purpose that can balance the highs and lows.

This is not to say that people prone to depression are vulnerable to being coerced into being recruited into extremist sects or cults. True, the deepest depressions are wholly disabling and require help and support and a safe space well away from the demands of society in crisis. And we all have our vulnerabilities, our Achilles Heel.

But for most of us, depression does not blind us to rational thought even if it may colour perception. We can still perceive the inadequacies of an argument, the lies inside a fraud, the gaps in a theory. When someone says that half of all life on Earth faces extinction, or predicts that global heating is accelerating at such an unprecedented rate that we face societal collapse, the vast majority of human beings, young and old, require a sufficiency of evidence.

So I reject accusations that climate activists are scaremongering, hoodwinking, exploiting, oppressing or grooming the striking school students and young adults. The scientific evidence, best triangulated and double-checked well away from Wikipedia, is as close to absolute as is possible in a universe of no absolutes.

But it may be true that those advocating Hope are indeed hoodwinking us, and therein lies a challenge. Their individualist remedies – turning down the central heating and wearing more layers instead, recycling plastic, using public transport instead of having a car – may make us feel like we’re doing something for the Planet but may just as well make us feel all the more powerless and depressed, as well as less comfortable.

That’s not to say we shouldn’t all do our bit, but even Extinction Rebellion notes that, with an average (always a deeply flawed statistical tool) annual emission of around 7.5 tonnes per person (UK), were we to live a hair-shirt existence in an unheated yurt and picking berries we could not reduce our average below 4.5 tonnes. Why? Because we cannot escape being one of 60+ million people living on the island of Britain. Such is the law of averages.

It is the construct of Society, the sum-total of inter-relations and interactions of human beings, that is the source of the global heating gases that are rapidly increasing global temperatures at a speed and intensity not seen in the past 2 million years (at least). And so a society so damaging has to be reorganised if we are to prevent extinction. The System in which we live cannot and will not continue as it is, in the very near short term.

That is a harrowing and unnerving fact. Whether six years old or sixty, the prospect of the future needing to be like nothing you have experienced, or are familiar with, or are used to is daunting if not depressing. Unless, of course, the current system continues to offer you so little, such discomfort, so little Hope that the prospect of something else and indeed something better than this is truly inspiring.

I’m not suggesting that the Environment and Climate Movement is offering any Pie-in-the-Sky promises. The situation is dire and we shouldn’t be blamed for saying so. It is still the case that the majority of young people are either wholly uniformed or misinformed about the Climate Emergency. Extreme weather conditions are not the source of the depressed emotional climate.

Much of the depression of our current youth is documented as being about current social pressures – body shape, bullying, gangs, academic testing and competition – indeed all the alienation ensured by neoliberal capitalist society, little to do with any predictions of potential climate collapse.

What we can offer is the possibility of another world, a more inclusive, sharing, less pressurised existence. Becoming Carbon-Zero is indeed a daunting challenge but for all but the wealthiest 10% its far better than the alternative of continuing to live as we do now, let alone face the chaos and barbarism of societal collapse. And by recognising just how big a challenge we face we are not offering any level of false Hope, just death-defying Purpose.

Wednesday 4th March 2020

There are a couple of important slogans, nay mantras, that are permeating out from Extinction Rebellion into the entire environment movement. The first, “No More Business As Usual!” and the second, “Beyond Politics”. The ideological base that unites both, I am told, is the impressive and impassioned demand to develop a new system of human society based upon a circular system of thinking corresponding to the natural ecosystems, humans becoming fully integrated back into Nature.

Whilst it takes a great deal of reflection to begin to materially conceive of what such a social and economic system would feel and look like, I very much concur. As someone who uses the Marxist methodology of historical materialism to try to understand the world of humans, this aligns with my own world view. More or less.

We should be collaborative, meeting all human needs without oppression or exploitation. The current global human society is based upon social class, privilege and the lottery of birth that endows some with greater entitlements to life than others. A socialist society, by contrast, is one based upon need not private profit, “from each according to their abilities, to each according to their need”.

Karl Marx, no Guru or Saint, obsessively studied the emergence of Capitalist class society in comparison to previous Feudal through to “Primitive Communist” societies and identified one crucial notion. Capitalism, as differentiated from all previous human societies, ruptured, tore apart, the interaction between humanity and the rest of Nature.

To précis to the point of near-destruction, capitalist techniques of production, ripping people from rural subsistence and into town and city squalor, separating people from contact with raw materials and from any ownership of the final product of their toil, created a “Metabolic Rift” between humanity and Nature. The Earth’s metabolism of which we had for so long been a part, has been torn apart.

We experience the result of the metabolic rift as Alienation, feeling alien from nature’s systems, feeling divorced from and in competition with other human beings, and feeling estranged from ourselves. The domination of property relationships render us in conflict with all, unable to feel secure as a unique identity other than through material symbols of wealth and power, ownership and control, domination and status. Our validity is determined not by simply being but by socially ascribed status.

It is interesting that some in the environment movement react against these feelings simply by saying they don’t care how they’re seen – Prime Minister Johnson may refer to them as “long-haired crusties” (coming from him I wear such a label as a badge of honour) – they will be as they wish, live as they please, and care not a jot as to what others think.

Such a condition is likely to increase alienation and isolation, being, somewhat ironically, a permutation of precisely the individualism they are trying to challenge and end. Individuality and individualism are at opposite ends of the identity continuum, and the self-determination offered by individuality can only be achieved through a system based upon cooperation, mutual trust and universal provision for all.

I come back to the main theme here. The “Beyond Politics” mantra has been skewed, perhaps purposefully by some, to mean no-one in the Movement should use political constructs or “be political’. The “No More Business As Usual” mantra then amplifies the deconstruction of politics by damning all previously existing World Views as being redundant in the face of the sixth mass extinction and climate catastrophe.

And in doing so, it rejects discussion or consideration of social class. Old formulations of how society is constructed should be disregarded. This is a recipe for failure, abject failure, a loss of focus, and a Great Lie to be permitted as to the root cause of the climate emergency. It is not ideas that have created Ecocide and threaten societal collapse, but actions.

Capitalism is an exploitative form of human society that has not been around long, is not the only way humans can live together, and needs to be replaced. Capitalism relies upon social control through stratification for subjugation – Class – and exploitation of all in the human and natural world for the accumulation of wealth and power in the hands of a tiny minority.

Not all hitherto existing societies have lived like this, offering us a sense that things can be different and better. We should not reject such historical interpretations as redundant. And then, the political formulations that stem from a class interpretation of society cannot be disregarded either.

There are those who wish to prosper, or who have already prospered, under Capitalism. They do not want the system replaced even if they do want the harsher edges reformed to ensure survival of their children. And there are those, like me, who look wider at global humanity and its history and conclude that Capitalism has to be ended and replaced if we and our children’s children are to survive.

Again, crudely put, these are the polls of the political continuum within the environment movement today – the Left and Right wings. Without intending the pun, recent polls have shown both at home and abroad that roughly 20% of citizens care less about climate change (for various ideological reasons or none), 60% are concerned but feel too busy or powerless to do much about it, and consistently, 20% are fully engaged with the impending catastrophe and wish to act to stop it. This, too, reflects the ancient ideological and political spectrum.

So we cannot be “beyond politics” as interpreted by the autonomistic “Beyond Left and Right” ideologues. Ironically, being “beyond politics” is a deeply ideological and political stance. In the here and now, Class society exists and is in control, and Left-wing and Right-wing ideologies exist as a material consequence, and are in constant conflict for influence and power. Consequently, the Movement cannot “accept everyone and every part of everyone”, as directed.

The Far Right (the deep blues) continue to utilise the Climate Emergency as an excuse for white supremacy (“keep out the Global South”), eugenics (climate Change will require the speedy evolution of a new super-human “master race”), Malthusianism (“there are far too many human beings and therefore we should allow billions to die from climate war, drowning, famine and plague with all its religious resonance”) and these ideologues exert their power and control through racism and ultra-nationalism. This is all very apparent and happening right now as a portent of far worse to come.

Meanwhile the “reformist” middle (the rainbow greens, yellows and purples) want “someone to do something” but not so “extreme” as to overthrow the existing entitlements they enjoy. They worry they may have something to loose through total system change despite risking losing everything through climate catastrophe.

The active Left (the Reds) argue for System Change not Climate Change, and are by nature, anti-capitalist. We have a proud history of challenging the exploitation of Nature as well as People. And we know that a classless society based on peace and social justice will offer a much better quality of life for even the wealthier of the Rainbow middle.

We have a clear analysis of how the climate catastrophe came about through the system of Capitalism, not innate human greed or carelessness, and therefore that it can be stopped, in time, and replaced with a social and economic system quite able to correspond with natural ecosystems as well as meet the needs of all humanity (yes, all 12 billion of us – the predicted zenith of population growth).

My own experience is that, currently, the Rainbow People are allowing the Blues to hold sway whilst constantly challenging the Reds to “stop being overtly political”. I refuse, not simply because I demand respect for my chosen identity, but because that way leads to a totalitarian state that will ensure the destruction of all.

And the immediate problem formed of the misinterpretation of “Beyond Politics” is the focus upon denying the Left our voice or even the display our ideas (books, papers, stalls, placards, banners, slogans), whilst the Right, never openly admitting their political alignment and associations, are pandered to and allowed domination in the name of unity. History proves, over and over again, that the Blues, given their space, will devour not only the Reds but the Rainbow and all.

And so I insist upon displaying my political allegiance, my associations, in order firstly to avoid being later accused of hoodwinking or manipulating by subterfuge, and secondly to demand that others do the same. Only in that way we can all be assured that we know the intentions of one another and can build the level of trust and unity essential to preventing global societal collapse.

Tony Staunton

Plymouth

Of course, despite everything, the Media is overloaded with Christmas. There are articles on just about anything and everything that could possible fill column inches with banal and superficial nonsense cheerleading nothing other than consumerism and the “family spend”. So it could be refreshing to consider articles suggesting “lean” and “sustainable” “GREEN” festivities.

This morning’s radio nonsense was a case in point. The BBC’s “You and Yours” dedicated three-quarters of an hour to pursuing a carbon-zero Christmas. It could have been essential listening. But the Great Lie being carefully put across was apparent from the very first sentence: “We use more plastic during the Christmas period than any other time of the year and waste enough wrapping paper to stretch from Earth to the Moon.”

Whilst the statistics are probably accurate, the “we” offers the continuation of the propaganda that blames us all equally for global heating and obscures if not denies the lack of choice most of us have. Anyone who finds it essential to budget carefully to the point of penny-pinching on the Christmas presents has long known one thing. Common commodities on sale through the year are suddenly “gift-wrapped” and over-priced in the lead-up to Year End. A branded bath oil and its brother, shampoo, are produced in smaller than usual rubberised tubes, then nestled in huge moulded plastic display boxes, the printed outers then covered in thick see-through plastic lids complete with plastic bows and nylon ribbons. The packaging uses-up dozens of times the natural resources of the cleaning products themselves and will remain as pollutants for hundreds of times the time.

We could buy twice the grams of the same stuff for a fifth of the price were it not that we are emotionally coerced and guilt-tripped into giving proper gifts to be unwrapped from under the tree. Oh and yes, the usual packaging is removed from the shelves through the twelve weeks of Christmas.

It is the packaging companies, worldwide, who produce this garbage to end-up in land-fill for generations or as toxic fumes and micro-particulates from an incinerator chimney. Its all just a money-making racket.

We are not all equally responsible. The potential for a boycott of all packaging by all 50 million UK consumers, let alone the billions of us worldwide is far more difficult to organise and sustain than simply outlawing the production of such profligate waste. If we can ban CFCs we should be able to ban the non-degradable plastics. It just requires political will.

Of course, this argument can be extended to all manner of pollutants. It is quite possible to ban all extraction of carbon-based fuels. Leave the oil and gas and coal in the ground. Such action is far more urgent than anything to do with plastics or tree-planting or re-wilding. It the absence of carbon emissions that will lead to a carbon-zero economy and have any chance of preventing societal breakdown and our own extinction.

The question begged is what will it take to make the laws required to curb the waste producers? The answer, after very little contemplation, has to be nothing less than a revolution. The capitalist system of competition and short-term profit simply won’t allow the producers to change their ways. To do so would be for them to go to the wall because someone else will be there waiting in the wings to take-over to make a fast buck.

The general ideas raised by this Christmas banter are unworthy of greater exploration. It may well allow individuals to feel better about themselves (and even save money in these austere times) to recycle last years Christmas cards and offer second-hand gifts wrapped in yesterday’s newspapers. But it won’t go anywhere near to having any impact at all on the still-accelerating levels of global heating and Ecocide.

Which is why the entire discussion is a distraction from the very urgent real challenges facing us. In fact, all this waste-less use-less individualism is just one more element of the climate denial propaganda constantly churned out on behalf of the producers. They advertise relentlessly to sell their must-have stuff and at the same time demand we feel guilty about having it. It’s a win-win strategy for the profiteers.

It’s not an either-or, but the amount of time spent individually on cutting-down on plastic waste and fuel-use needs to be balanced by the amount of time spent on challenging this polluting, wasteful and anti-human system that is responsible for the global destruction now upon us all. It may just be that buying a bath set, ready-wrapped and whisked out of the Pound Shop saves enough time to join the Non-Violent Direct Action outside Barclays Bank or BP! We really do need to get focussed upon exactly what actions are needed to save the World.

Just as we have seen scientific evidence of a number of climate Tipping Points having been reached across the world, so we need to recognise the climate catastrophes already happening. Armageddon is not a date in a diary. Societal collapse is not predictable according to any calendar either.

Climate science is detailing the historic degradation of the environment and modelling potential futures with growing accuracy. Ice melt, methane release, slowdown in ocean currents, record temperatures, mega-hurricanes, all signs and symptoms of climate collapse.

Through a similar process we can map the fragmentation of human society. Models of possible futures tend to be created by including as many known variables as possible and seeing how they inter-relate to produce a new dynamic.

So the understanding of human history becomes vital to our recognition of our potential futures. And there’s the first challenge. History is subject to interpretation to an extent that scientific fact is not. There is a “People’s History” and a “Victor’s History” written of any one event or era.

For example, established history suggests that the First World War was “won” by the British Allies and Germany “defeated”, whilst the people’s history would argue that mutiny and revolution prevented the national ruling classes from continuing their genocidal barbarism (only to reignite the carnage by 1939).

Through the same ideological tensions the history of climate change is explained away by Establishment historians as the ebbs and flows of natural forces, redacting, censoring or denying the early scientific observations of the human-made climatic impact of carbon emissions offered from the 1880’s onwards.

Nevertheless, we have sufficient independent record of how society works to be able to predict a lot about how society collapses. The desertification of ancient Mesopotamia was caused, in large part, through water wars that restricted and diverted access to supplies. The Anasazi, ancestors of the Pueblo Indians in today’s USA, over-used their natural resources and became all but extinct through drought and famine by the 1300’s.

A recent model developed by a team at Ruskin University suggested that global human society will collapse in less than three decades due to catastrophic food shortages. Another, by the John Hopkins Centre, modelled that society as we know it would collapse within 13 days of any catastrophic event: a pandemic, Yellowstone exploding, or an exchange of nuclear weapons. These are the predictions of catastrophe most advertised by the more sympathetic climate commentators.

But it would seem that many of the indicators of social collapse are already appearing. Its more a slow burn than a sudden event. What, in fact, are we observing?

Primarily a definite polarisation between peoples within most nations: the rich getting richer, poor getting poorer; the growth of far-right ideology and activity set against mass movements challenging poverty and exploitation; accelerating growth in fundamentalist and absolutist quasi-religions in all their guises; the fast decline in effectiveness of antibiotics; descent of previously coherent communities into obsessive conspiracy theories damning everything from life-saving immunisation to taxation for social infrastructure.

And mass strikes, protests and anti-Establishment manifestations across the world – Colombia, Chilé, Spain, Iraq, France, Hong Kong…

This is the stuff of the breakdown of social cohesion. Human history would suggest, from whichever perspective, that any shortage of resource or threat to stability quickly results in conflict. As the socialist, Karl Marx observed, “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle”. And war between nation states is often the answer by the existing ruling class to any movement for their overthrow from within.

As we hurtle, condemned by our current rulers, into runaway climate collapse, the precursors of global social collapse appear ever more apparent. And yet, superficially, life goes on. Exactly what the Tipping Points look like for social turmoil may be hidden or obscure, but history does give us clues. Current global tensions suggest we are closer than would at first appear.

So what is to be done? Struggle, of course. Whilst it may seem impossible for the change needed to save society – leaving all existing fossil fuels in the ground and ending subsidies for carbon industries and transferring all production to zero-carbon technologies within the next ten years – our human history is full of examples of such dramatic change. Not without cost, of course.

The only alternative to struggle is the current and accelerating descent into barbarism. In a world economy based upon greed, corruption, competition, gangsterism and exploitation, the fragmentation of societies will only encourage the survival-of-the-fittest mentality that will see armed gangs controlling neighbourhoods and mass immiserisation a lá Mad Max. Those of us who understand that the future is not written and that we can make it better have to get active: throw ourselves at the task of survival with a gusto and that Extinction Rebellion-style of humility and sacrifice. After all, the alternative is far too ghastly to contemplate.

It may be only coincidence that, on the day President Trump arrived in London for the NATO Summit, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, warned of the “point of no return” for the Climate. He insisted that the political efforts of world leaders to stop catastrophic climate change have been “utterly inadequate”. He stated, “The point of no return is no longer over the horizon. It is in sight and hurtling towards us”.

Tomorrow, political delegates from over 200 countries will meet in Madrid to refine and enact the Paris Agreement of 2015. Too little and much too late. Meanwhile, those same leadership groups will meet within the remit of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to agree higher military spending and threaten more warfare from South America to the Arctic Circle, Kashmir to the South China Seas, not to mention the maintenance of their continuing decimation of Afghanistan and Libya.

It should not be a secondary consideration for climate activists to challenge and oppose NATO and it’s imperialist wars. Even if the human tragedy and horror could be put to one side, the impact of war on global heating is phenomenal:

• the climate change impact of huge military bases around the world is considerable locally, regionally and globally. For example, it is estimated that US military consumes 395,000 gallons of oil daily alone. The entire world military establishment is wholly dependent upon and predatory for carbon-based fuels.

• The US military emits more global warming gases than the total emissions from 200 countries across the globe. Securing and deploying oil across the globe to the fuel-greedy hummers, jets and drones has become a growing preoccupation of NATO military strategists.

• The military is not just a prolific user of oil, it is one of the central pillars of the global fossil-fuel economy. Today whether it is in the Middle East, the Gulf, or the Pacific, modern-day military deployment is about controlling oil-rich regions and defending the key shipping supply routes that carry half the world’s oil and sustain our consumer economy.

• the environmental damage caused by war is not limited to climate change and CO2 emissions. It has been estimated that 20% of all environmental degradation and ecocide around the world is due to military and other related activities.

• Global military expenditure now exceeds $200,000,000,000,000 a year (that’s two-hundred trillion US dollars). When the UK government allocates $49 billion (£36b) to the Ministry of Defence but only £1.5 billion to the Department of Energy & Climate Change, it is clear where its priorities lie. Just think what could be done with that cash for renewables and a Just Transition to a carbon-zero economy.

We should be able to say No to War on environmental grounds alone. Perhaps the reticence of activists to join with the XR Peace Movement or other anti-war groups is a tendency towards seeing Climate as a single-issue. Or, conversely, that the mantra that “climate overwhelms all other issues” obscures the fact that all other issues are entwined within the world’s climate.

President Trump has insisted that climate change is a “hoax” and at the same time is demanding increased military expenditure by all NATO allies. His withdrawal of the USA from the international climate agreements and the treaties against the proliferation of nuclear weapons denotes a clear agenda of conflict over sustainability, the accumulation of private wealth and power rather than collective human survival.

Perhaps, at least emotionally, it is easier to focus the practical needs for tree-planting, recycling, investment in renewables and even the comparative abstractions of a Green New Deal than it is to challenge the Military.

But war is no side-issue. In fact, the system of imperialism is at the core of the very processes that are destroying the Planet. Imperialism is the most concentrated manifestation of the competition that is the motor of Capitalism. The battle for resources, both natural and human, results routinely in warfare. But this is not because of Human Nature or any human DNA that condemns us to a fate of self-inflicted extinction.

Huge periods of human history, entire eras encompassing small clans through to huge civilisations have managed in conditions forged by purposefully minimalising conflict and maximising mutually beneficial trade and inter-mingling. There is nothing either biological or God-given about fighting, competing or enslaving – the system that we find ourselves born into tends to determine our behaviours. The current system of Capitalism is only one human system amongst many possibilities.

Of course, the struggle for survival and then for identity can lead us into conflict with others. We should retain the right to self-defence against predatory threats from others if only to prevent the descent into barbarism. But it is only the false construction of nation states and notions of racial hierarchies that combine to create the industrialised warfare we see today.

As an example, NATO is neither defensive nor just. It is an undemocratic alliance of the most powerful private corporate interests aimed at carving-up and accumulating the world’s natural resources and controlling its’ peoples.

This returns us to the fundamental issue. Climate degradation is fast-accelerating the scramble for declining resources. The catastrophes currently overwhelming entire countries in the Global South are just the precursor of social upheavals soon to hit the rest of us. The devastation from war could quite easily overwhelm us well in advance of the catastrophe of ecocide.

We have to challenge the drive to war and force the change from military to civilian expenditure. The money is clearly there to fund a carbon-zero economy by 2025, yet the System won’t allow it. That is the real issue. So today we need to say Not War, No to NATO, because that’s what the powerful are discussing. And everyday we have to enact the practical conclusions from the recognition that we need system change to minimise catastrophic climate change.

“Hypocrites are welcome in Extinction Rebellion”, says XR’s founder, Roger Hallam. For the record, I like this statement. I am in favour of listening to others, of being polite and empathetic, and practicing humility. We are all full of contradictions. And I’m clear that compassion has a vital role to play in the process of revolution.

It may be primarily a religious statement to “forgive us our sins”, yet in the material world of challenge and struggle any notion that we can live either a benign or a perfect life is ludicrous. Consequently, too harsh a judgement on each other is nothing other than destructive.

Being a hypocrite may be summed up as saying one thing whilst doing the opposite, or vice versa. Such a judgement upon another’s behaviour starts from a presumption that we are in charge of our own circumstances. In fact, as individuals we do not create our own environment and have only limited choices, some of which we’re ignorant of, absent of information and knowledge that may open the doors of choice.

There is, nevertheless, a place for judgement. Everything we do affects those around us. Even hermits have an impact upon the environment, not least by their abstention from helping humanity to tend rather than destroy Nature. It is also the case that our ideas have an impact – they inform and determine all our actions. Our thoughts affect others.

So I’m hesitant about the Extinction Rebellion’s mantra of being non-judgemental, only because the “Rule” appears much misunderstood, a bit like the associated Rule of being “beyond politics”. Both are quite liberally used to shut down debate, hopefully quite the opposite of the original intention. We are trying to save humanity and all life on earth from extinction at the hands of human-made climate catastrophe.

How do we agree about what to do? Judgements about each other’s opinions are important, because every belief corresponds to actions, and every action moves towards anti-human or pro-human results.

Being non-judgmental must surely mean preventing pre-judgement – assumptions made with insufficient evidence – and at the same time acknowledging the universal vulnerabilities of being human. Before damning someone else have you taken sufficient time to look at yourself? And in any case, is damnation essential…for what outcome?

I damn Fascism on the basis of evidence of the Holocaust, damn racism on the basis of it’s vicious denial of fact, damn sexism and homophobia for reason of their denial of equality and human rights, and disablism for the lack of collective provision for a common humanity. These judgements are in my mind essential for human survival.

We must therefore argue with each other about the small “p” political direction of travel, not only to clarify our own ideas but to test possible actions before carrying out possibly negative or destructive activities. XR’s dismissal of Party Politics as having not worked for sustainable development and the protection of the environment – surely a factual statement – doesn’t then require us to be beyond having political opinions or debate.

In this period of General Election in the United Kingdom, political debate and argument with all its pedantic word-play and double-speak hypocrisy, is vital. My observation so far is of a distinct paucity in the ability and readiness to debate without malice. Sides have been taken despite or without attention to facts or alternative ways of seeing. The cry of “hypocrite’ has become over-used as a tool of self-protection and condemnation of “the other”. This has all the resonance of a society scared, defensive and descending towards individual survival mode. Cowering from the threats of predation, hardship and climate catastrophe, we are repelling all borders and dismissing all those outside our chosen mini-clan.

We appear to have dismissed Reason as well as reasonable behaviour. What is needed now more than ever is robust, fulsome and informed debate about what is to be done, and yet we are being denied the atmosphere in which this can happen. It appears we have been set one-against-the-other by a set of contrived hostilities that divides us all and allows the current state of affairs to continue unchallenged.

If we’re all hypocrites then Truth is of no value and debate is without purpose. Choose your bunker and slam shut the door. The alternative? To recognise that we would like to live in a world where we do not have to be hypocrites, where we can live meaningfully without destroying the environment, in a harmony with each other which offers self-determination through social discourse and negotiation.

In which case, we’re not hypocrites at all. By acting to negate the negation we are being true to ourselves: living in an oppressive society but at all times challenging that oppression; needing to work to survive but challenging all exploitation of people and natural resources; having to shop for food but boycotting key pollutants; surviving in a carbon-based economy but seeking-out alternative futures. That’s Life.

Ultimately it is in the nature of the Capitalist System to compete, exploit, oppress and go to war. Challenging someone’s pro-Capitalist views is not to condemn the individual but to object to being led into a cul-de-sac. Any reliance on Capitalism as a system able to prevent the coming Climate Catastrophe is bound to fail – to rely on the carbon industries to end carbon-use in time to save the environment is beyond belief. We must practice political thought and use informed judgement to argue with each other. Only through debate can we agree the way forward. To prevent argument is indeed the greatest hypocrisy.

Last weekend we saw a large fascist rally in Poland and a military coup in Bolivia. There is a deep and growing polarisation in societies across the world and here. Deepening poverty and incredible wealth at each ends of the economic spectrum are mirrored by the same ideological extremes. On the far-right the growth of identity politics, the falsehoods of social media bubbles, altogether increasing bigotry, prejudice, discrimination and abuse. Underneath this is a global push to undermine the flimsy and quite superficial administrations of liberal democracies towards totalitarian autocratic control by super-rich oligarchs.

This sounds like conspiracy theory. Indeed, there can be a thin line between “plans” and “conspiracies”. In the main, conspiracy theories are concocted by right-wing libertarians antipathetic to State administration or control of any kind and paranoid about any and all restrictions on their chosen beliefs and feelings. At the same time we all experience phases or moments of paranoia, not least because life includes adversity.

A general problem is the tendency to interpret and describe the world from one’s own and singular experience. In truth it is all but impossible to extrapolate any general theory of the World from our personal perceptions. Especially in a hugely stratified class society, the separation of experience by the matrix of access to resources, education, communication, media and world views makes us all prisoners of our social circumstance.

There is another reason for closed mindedness. As Karl Marx observed, human beings are inherently conservative. Once our necessities are more-or-less met we tend to hold-on to our comforts and resist any change that may threaten our equilibrium. Not only do we defend our hovels and stale bread against the threat of homelessness and starvation, we put-up with limited liberties rather than risk violence and incarceration.

The human motivations towards social inclusion and self-determination are in constant tension. Submitting ourself to the greater good can conflict with personal desires to do exactly what we want. The entwined dynamic of the requirement for survival and identity – both essential needs – underwrite all human behaviours. But the human mind allows for people to believe whatever we like and therein lies the tension. The self-determination of one person, whether in a state of delusion or prescience, may require the subjugation or death of another.

Ultimately, an inclusive human society cannot manage an “anything goes” approach. The tolerance of the wide and broad spectrum of human behaviours can only be sustained by agreed boundaries to what is acceptable. In essence, denial of voice (identity) or life (survival) denote these boundaries. We tend to feel upset by and regale against calls for genocide, and express discomfort at any governance that requires the incarceration or death of others. Such political boundaries are very fluid and impermanent and mostly dependent upon our own perception of personal safety and survival.

Society can switch from tolerance to repression overnight, either when a majority feels threatened from without or from within. Survival tends to trump identity. Humanity has lived under ghastly repression for long periods. In totalitarian societies minorities continually give-up the dominance of their survival-mechanism, determining that their identity – freedom of thought and action – is more important than their own survival. People choose to die for their beliefs.

We have learnt that there has to be general agreement about social boundaries in order for any society to remain stable. Totalitarian governance is inherently unstable and requires extensive and expensive forces of mass repression of dissonance, disagreement and potential revolt. The trick of any ruling class – by its nature a minority of the population – is to maintain their rule over the masses without too much resistance.

Class society has developed quite exquisite nuances of structures that can be perceived as libertarian whilst markedly confining behaviours and identities. Successive ruling classes have made experiences of poverty, exploitation and inequality “natural” and “normal”. Indeed, such propaganda has normalised racism and sexism, such as the “scientific Darwinism” that apparently explains white supremacy, or the false psychology that makes women more sensitive and therefore vulnerable than men, and so requiring male protection and dominance.

The tension between day-to-day experiences and the dominant social propaganda gives rise to a sense of Anomie, an element of alienation, where we are told we are comfortable “enough” yet feel constantly out-of-sorts, lacking something vital, but can’t say what it is. In the heartbeat of history there are periods when scales fall from eyes, when the false propaganda becomes see-through, when the Emperor has no clothes.

We are in such a period. The Status Quo of super-rich amidst mass poverty has become apparent, not least because of new technologies that allow most of us to see the entire human world and develop deeper world views. Those who wish can look outside their close-horizoned protective bubble. We have access to far more information and to so much more social contact with other cultures and peoples than ever before. We also have refreshed knowledge of Nature, the natural environment, and the impact of the exploitation of natural resources on climate and ecosystems.

As a result, the ruling classes, wholly dependent on exploitation of both Nature and Humanity, have to become more repressive in their determination to hold on to their wealth and power. This can explain the re-emergence of far-right governments and fascist parties. It also explains the “imperialist” interference of more powerful nations into the structures and governance of less powerful countries. These are not conspiracies, they are planned interventions by a few small grouping of humans against the mass of others.

They mobilise those who still cling on to their propaganda of “deserving rich” and “undeserving poor”, and wage a war of ideas against those of us who crave liberty, inclusivity and the freedom of self-determination. And when those ideas aren’t enough, they provoke street violence and stage military coups to smash dissent, such as Last weekend’s fascist rallies in Poland or the military coup in Bolivia.

The dynamics and tensions of class society also explains the strength and power of the climate deniers. Capitalism depends upon carbon industries, indeed the system is intrinsically dependent of fossil fuels. Should the demand for carbon-zero production become dominant the current ruling classes will be fundamentally threatened and undermined. They have already spent tens of billions denying human-made global heating.

In direct consequence, the struggle for carbon-zero – to protect Nature and prevent mass extinction of life and even Humanity itself – is nothing short of a class struggle. The international environmental movement itself is in tension between internal forces of groupings allied to the survival of Capitalism (and, in essence, notions of Nation, class privilege, male and White supremacy) and those of us committed to System Change for survival, human progress and ecological protection.

Looking back at centuries of warfare across Europe and, indeed, the World, the question is bigger, can there be a commonality between all people? Can we unite? We have experienced five or six thousand years of class society. Layers of social strata measured by individual access to the essential ingredients for sustaining life: food, warmth, shelter, safety, companionship (if not Love). Ever since the production of a surplus we have been separated by social class, private ownership and the associated power to control the masses.

The lottery of birth based upon DNA kinship and early years survival rates, geography, ecology and climate meld together to determine our life chances and longevity. Spreading over us all, like a quilt cover on a cold morning, has been the handed-down culture of our Clan. Recognising the matrix of birthrights and birth rites requires acknowledgment, from whichever ethnicity or creed we are part of, that we are born into societies where some people have more than others. More access to the means to survive and prosper, to learn and grow.

Protestant Christians may insist this state of affairs to be their God’s Will and that we should accept our place in the scheme of things, but Marxists would condemn all inequality and the injustices that flow from Birth privileges: exploitation, oppression, enslavement and incarceration. Oh, and for good measure, inherited wealth. All humans should be born equal. Importantly, social class relations are human-made and can therefore be dismantled by humanity.

In my naivety I have never fully understood how people put-up with the class relations that I’ve lived through, let alone the far worse injustices of peasant, agrarian or newly-industrialising societies. The common feature of all permutations of class society has been the absolute violence of the ruling elite in putting-down and administering pain against all and any who challenge their power and privilege. If ideas are generated that may challenge the status quo they will use Church and State to damn the dissidents. Ideas matter.

Civil war, not just inter-clan war, is the common experience of class society. Civil war usually goes hand-in-hand with nation-on-nation warfare. Crucially, war requires those waging it to conscript many others to their Cause. On the Eve of the 100th commemoration day of the Armistice that ended the First World War, the example of millions of people born with little or nothing, placed on two sides of an imaginary contour to stab, dismember, explode or maim their peers across the way, offers a singular imagery for exploring class society.

That war was waged between a few families (mostly interrelated) of the super-rich. There was a “band of warring brothers” impatient with each other’s counter claims on their birthright inheritance of land, wealth, power and peoples, ready to unleash material hell on tens of millions of fellow humans. In one sense it was down to who owns land where oil could be sucked up from below. In another, it was the pure avarice of people born and raised to believe they had a God given right to do whatever they wished with anything and anyone in the material world.

At the bottom end of the stratified society of each arbitrarily drawn “Nation State” of Europe and Russia, those born into slums, devoid of proper nutrition, sanitation, fresh water, warmth, opportunity or longevity, were told by their “betters” to go to war. And they did. Yes, the Rich sent their sons too, such was the power of the propaganda. But the rich, the very wealthy and even the tiny strata of aspiring middle classes had reason to go to war, at least in the hope of picking up the spoils of victory – Wealth and Power.

The poor and the working of the working classes had nothing to gain. Just more misery.

Contemporary political discourse insists that the working class gained materially from the plundering, pillaging, raping and genocide of Britain’s military against people’s of the East, the South, Asia and Arabia. But such analysis only compares like-with-like, not what could have been. Had there been no war, had instead the Great Unrest of 1912-14 – where workers joined together and rose like lions against the tyranny of Capitalist exploitation and poverty – won through, a very different world would have been created, based upon equality, peaceful and just trade and common wealth.

When standing in silence to commemorate the war dead, today’s Establishment will be sure to hide the fact, the Truth, that the First World War ended because of working class revolution. The rich and powerful families of Europe, self-proclaimed as divine Monarchy, did not complete their battles. Neither side won nor lost, hence the second world imperialist war was rekindled in 1939. Revolution, spreading from Russia to Germany and even Britain from 1917 saw army conscripts rebel against not only their captains and generals but the ideology of the war. Revolution stopped the War.

The scales fell from the eyes of those rotting in blooded mudbath trenches, threatened with either death for mutiny or death from battle, led by plum-tongued autocrats exuding class privilege and absolutist power. There was no justice, no benefit, no reason for the working man to shoot other working men of another Nation State, itself a contrived set of arbitrary boundaries determined by the power and avarice of it’s self-serving rulers.

In 1917, we, workers of the World, joined together and rose up against our common international enemy. Capital. That tiny class of avaricious humans set upon accumulating ever-increasing private wealth and power from the eternal immiserisation of the masses.

We fought the revolution for Peace, Bread and Land. Ideas of freedom, fraternity and sorority, emancipation, equality and self-determination. Class war spread and continued throughout the 1920’s. Fourteen imperialist armies were needed to invade Russia, assisted by Western Capitalist-funded White Army counter-revolutionary armies from within to break, smash, slaughter and defeat the Russian Revolution. The revolutionary ideas as well as social organisation across the world were ruthlessly crushed by the 1930’s.

Private-not-public health services ensured that millions would die from pestilence and influenza through the ‘20’s – more than ever died in the First World War. And speculative greed of the Rich on the scale of the 2008 banking crisis ensured the Crash of ‘29 and the destitution of the many as a prelude to renewed conscription in ‘39.

Despite the ghastly poverty of the 20’s and 30’s – lending a lie to the notion of western workers benefiting from the bosses plunder of resources from the Global South – workers were once again prepared to go to War for their Bosses. The lessons of the First World War appeared ignored or forgotten. Well, not quite.

The class-based Battle of Ideas was once again vital to war preparations. On our side, workers crossed national barriers to join in the fight against fascism across Southern Europe, seeking to protect democracy and any semblance of workers rights. Bosses, scared of workers power, were happy to allow totalitarian thugs to take control of their State machine in order to protect and even enhance Capitalist exploitation.

By the mid-thirties the arguments were well advanced inside the Ruling Class – the majority of the British Royal family sided with their cousins in Germany in supporting the power of the Nazis – Hitler’s fascist Party – in waging war to quell the power of the working class.

Many German workers were bribed and fooled by hopes of the end of Austerity and a new and peaceful millennia. The groups of German workers who fought against fascism were divided and crushed. The British working class weren’t about to give-up what little democracy they had fought and died for in order to return to totalitarian barbarism. They knew their bosses wanted to plunder, using the sacrifice of the workers to win new territories, natural resources and oil, but at the same time knew that a defeat at the hands of the Nazis would mean even worse servitude.

We had no choice but to sign-up once again. This time not for the absurd notions of patriotism, xenophobia and nationalism that had broken working class resistance in 1914. No, this time we died in our millions for ideas of Freedom and Social Justice. We also recognised the lies and propaganda of pretend-democrats. By 1944 the mutinies against the genocidal orders of the ruling class generals had begun again across the armies of both sides. In Britain, the Etonian senior Tory MP, Quintin Hogg, warned in 1943, ‘If you don’t give the people social reform, they will give you social revolution.’

For a while the ruling class acceded to offering limited reforms – a limited National Health Service, affordable democratically owned and managed council housing, nationalised utilities offering water so cheap it could not be charged for, and towards full-employment. By the 1970’s the international Boss Class had reunited, more or less, to complain amongst themselves that their profit rates were declining whilst the common wealth of the people was improving. This signalled creeping socialism, not competitive Capitalism. Something had to be done. They clawed the reforms back, finding a myriad of ways to extract the cash from the Tax Purse back into their private pockets. Legislation for privatisation and Austerity was imposed by their brothers in the State machinery to demand total freedom for competition and accumulation – a Free Market.

The far-right economics of Neoliberalism was perpetrated not through outright warfare but slight-of-hand propaganda, identified as Glasdnost in Eastern Europe and Russia, and the equivalent “opening-up” of “equal opportunities, a reduction of formal oppression, in the West. The price of such Freedom would be “Perestroika”, restructuring the State and the economy to dismantle the social safeguards and infrastructure that regulated and restricted exploitation and private accumulation of wealth.

So here we are in UK 2019: the return of rickets, schools scrabbling for books; millions in homes unfit for human habitation and overcharged by exploitative private landlords; a re-privatising NHS unable to manage the demands of a working class made sick by poverty and unsafe working practices; the exclusion, persecution and scapegoating of people of non-white skins and minority cultures; the rehabilitation of commonplace domestic abuse. Exploitation and poverty on levels not seen since the 1930’s.

So why aren’t we all joined together in common revolt against the very obvious, and historically informed, injustice and inequalities of 2019? Well, the Ruling Class are trying to use nationalism, xenophobia, sexism, racism and religion to once again bind us to their side and their ideology of privilege, power-and-control. The current rage at their Austerity exploitation is as an open revolt in many countries, and seething and bubbling inside the working classes across Britain. Should we appear to be getting seriously organised against the Ruling Class, as we were in 1912-13, 1917-19, 1926, 1936-8, 1943-46, 1973-4 , 1982-4, 1997-2001, 2011-13, they will revert to their absolute power-tool of open warfare both home and abroad.

There is no understanding of today’s world without an understanding of the history that made it. As Karl Marx observed, the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle. We cannot talk or dream of a better tomorrow without learning the lessons of what came before. And it is impossible to look at our society without recognising that the benefit and indeed survival of one class is entirely determined by the detriment and sacrifice of the other.

The interests of the Capitalist Class, the owners of natural resources and all production, are diametrically opposed to the interests of those who toil in their offices and factories to turn those natural resources into the products they design in order to extract the maximum in profits. They wage a class war against us daily, sometimes cleverly but often through sheer brute force.

There is a continuous battle of beliefs and ideology. The class struggle includes the battle of ideas. Working class consciousness has to become clear and collective once again. We have to finally understand that we must unite as a Class, bury our false divisions in order to fight for our children and grandchildren, take over the means of production for need not profit, sustainability not climate collapse, and wage Revolution.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/xlyy91r9arr46sn/wwi.devon.bbc.mp4/file

(Strikes in the First World War in Devon)

Part of the onslaught of post-World War Two western capitalism has been the privatisation of the individual. By the 1980’s, consumerism, managerialism, post-modernism in academia and neoliberalism in politics and economics provided a three-dimensional onslaught against notions of collectivism and community. In the United Kingdom, the Great Miners Strike of 1984-5 provides a useful historical fulcrum as the point of the turn of society away from commonality and shared welfare. Prime Minister Thatcher’s declaration summed-up the ideological assault: “there is no such thing as society”.

The People of the UK were the subject of a test-tube experiment for a specific model of neoliberalism. Whilst in Germany, the Berlin Wall was to fall and the consequent reunification required continued State investment in health and welfare, and in France the expectation of State-funded infrastructure stayed strong, In the UK the demolition of the Welfare Principle was the order of the day and the far-Right dogma of “small State” fast-tracked privatisation.

Privatisation not only of all utilities, transport, housing, social care for the elderly and drip-by-drip marketisation of the National Health Service, but privatisation also of the People. The State may still help “hard-working people” but would give no succour to the “underserving poor” or self-abusing sick, now to be vilified by a fearful population. You are now alone, your welfare and destiny completely down to you.

You may have had the luck to buy a house but in your old age would have to sell it again to fund your care. You may have worked all your life but would be stuck in your house, isolated and alone through your final years unless you had paid heaviy towards a private pension – the State Pension would become the lowest (by far) in Europe.

Little wonder that mental ill-health increased and society became defensive, wary of others and deeply competitive for scarce resources. Of course, we sought the natural experience of joining because humans are gregarious by nature. The clan of the football match would unite for 2 hours and then disperse. The music festival would allow for a manic celebration of being together “en-masse” but as a testy and wicked exception to the rule of privacy and reserve. The rapidly expanding gap between rich and poor would ensure a deeply polarised social life with no chance of shared community.

Today we are certainly not “all in this together”. One significant outcome of this has been the fragmentation of ways of seeing. History, politics and philosophy heavily censored inside the school curriculum and segregated to ensure no holistic understanding. Consequently, people have become more self-reliant upon how they interpret the world around them. This apparent freeing-up of thinking belies the reality of deepening confusion and anomie, or in Marxist terms, Alienation. We are less in touch with or coherent about our relationship to the natural world, the people around us, and our inner selves.

A meeting last night highlighted this for me. The guest speaker offered a method for understanding why the climate emergency is happening, from a perspective of historical materialism: to understand the human world today we have to understand the history of how we got here. The audience of 25 had, almost to a person, a seperate and individual interpretation of human history. Each had a different idea of both the cause and the solution.

One person felt passionately that only when each individual reattuned to Nature in the heart could we solve the climate crisis. Another blamed the Abrahamic religious books that had falsely interpreted human being’s relationship with Nature fo the past 5,000 years. Someone else was certain that the crisis would end-up with totalitarian autocracy controlling all humanity, and yet another suggested that people with Autistic Spectrum Conditions were most likely to be right-wing individualists ready to undermine any collective response to the Climate Emergency. (I must add that these description are each a shallow summary of the more complex statements they offered, each too long to give full credit to here).

My observation was that we were mostly wallowing around struggling to make some sense of our current society. Our privatisation, the individualist doctrine of the Age, had led us to fester in our own living spaces behind closed doors, making-up patterns of thinking devoid of much debate or scrutiny. Indeed, the meeting was stultified in terms of open and confident debate and shared discourse. We’ve lost the confidence to argue as well as to listen openly and be ready to think again. This is not a criticism of the people in the room but an example of how detached from one-another the prevailing ideology of individualism has made us.

I was reminded of the Practice Nurse who I had chatted with in my doctor’s surgery. I was in for an innoculation, it being the chest infection time of year. She prepared the needle whilst arguing against all forms of immunisation, not only on the basis that the ingredient lubricant, aluminium, would cause me to have Alzheimers in later life, but that vaccines were part of a corporate conspiracy to control the population.

This was not the first debate we had enjoyed over the years, knowing each other of old as politically vocal. She had long-ago declared herself a Flat-Earth protagonist and we had oft-debated whether the moon landings were real, humans beings controlled by a lizard-race, or whether the NHS was of benefit or a curse upon the working class.

Me, a Marxist, she a right-wing libertarian, would find little to agree upon. As the needle pierced my skin, she injected the fluid of the “Night-Watchmen State” she despised, but felt no pang of hypocrisy in earning her pay from the taxes she deplored. We all have to earn a living. Because the human mind is so complex it is quite possible to think anything you like. There is always a battle of ideas in any human society.

By the end of last night’s meeting my head was in a spin about how we can ever unite such dislocated minds back together sufficiently to act in unity to prevent our own extinction. Thatcher’s anti-social Post-Modernism, originally Althussar’s concocted thesis against Marxism, has done it’s job. We only have individual narrative from which to live. The collective experience is irrelevant. And in their wise revolt against the oppression of closed Party ideologies and dogma, individuals have shredded any shared method for interpreting the world around them.

In the climate debates I remain amazed at how many people feel earthly salvation an impossibility to the point of resignation to the End of Humankind, the Will of the Universe or their chosen God, and their private descent into small worlds of close horizons and numbing palliatives. The privatisation of the individual under neoliberal Capitalism has demanded we despise ourselves.

I reject such hopelessness as both unnecessary and uninformed. As I said on the night, all 24 of us in the room were keen enough to seek understanding of the world around us, so why should we, for one moment, think that the rest of humanity isn’t. All human beings think, question, wonder and seek answers. We talked as mass revolts continue across the world: Chile, Catalonia, Porto Prince, the Lebanon, Iraq, Hong Kong. And seven million people had taken action to protest the inaction of the climate emergency throughout the last month. We can unite and fight with common cause.

We have to reconnect. We have to rebuild community and commonality. There is more that unites than divides despite our tendency to make-up an infinite variety of interpretations of the reality we experience. In the end we live in one world, divided by a ruling ideology that demands we see human nature as competitive, avaricious, violent and individualistic. But that’s just how those who choose to live like that have raised us to think. We are not all Earth-killers, those who are just want us to think we are. As Karl Marx wrote, the ruling ideas of any society are the ideas of the ruling class. It stands to reason.

The General Election campaign begins across the United Kingdom today. It is already the most acrimonious, divisive and vicious public contest since the Second World War. Little wonder. The divisions are not simply, not even, party political. The divide between rich and poor is so vast so as to be almost unfathomable. The levels of racism have been whipped into mindless frenzy. The deniers of any climate emergency taunt and threaten we who have concerns. And the tribalism of support or disdain for the European Union suggests a level of political illiteracy difficult to comprehend.

But Britain wants to be calm again, say political commentators. Dr Thereza Kapelos, a lecturer in political philosophy at Birmingham University, explains the tensions by the observation that we are more allowed to express our emotions these days. Yet the emotionality is dismissed as irrelevant to the scientific objectivity of political debate. Voters are tended to be treated as if they are children having tantrums. Politicians, including the last Prime Minister, are able to make outrageous slurs, slanders, accusations and threats whilst dismissing anger amongst the working classes as mere “hysteria” or “mob mentality”.

In truth, our grievances, the worries, the concerns and the anxieties are there and need to be acknowledged. There is a depth of division, falsely symbolised by the Brexit “crisis” but more fundamentally detailed by the social and economic divisions – in other words, social class, privilege and poverty. It is palpable on the street, in neighbourhoods and clubs, shopping centres and charitable food banks. This is an uptight society showing every sign of potential explosion.

But Britain wants to be calm again, say political commentators. This may sound benign if not charming, but can hide a very real threat. What could be meant by “calm” other than a return to the status quo? A re-acceptance of the old doctrines of “know thy place”, “keep your head down”, “do as you’re told”, “be thankful for small mercies”, and “count your blessings”. Oh, and “Keep Calm and Carry On”, that absurd First World War slogan reinvented at the start of the Tory Government era from 2010 to now.

Why should anyone be calm after 10 years of Austerity policies and zero wage increases despite above zero inflation throughout that time? How can we count our lucky stars when the national health is in crisis, systemically, emotionally and physically? Why should we allow the very fragile and superficial amount of political suffrage ever afforded us to be taken away and replaced by an unaccountable oligarchy of born-rich elites? And then what are we to do about our fears for the future, for our children and grandchildren, in the face of climate chaos and societal collapse?

In any case, what does it mean to be “allowed” to express our emotions these days? There is no natural state of human consciousness that remains calm in all circumstances. Anger is an essential emotion for survival and when suppressed is self-destructive at best, homicidal at worst. Love is essential for survival too, for the wellbeing needed for procreation and child-rearing. And all emotional stops in-between are life-affirming expressions of what it is to be human.

To have emotionality in any way denigrated or or denied is an abuse. Of course it is generally better to manage our emotions well enough for them to be productive, but there is nothing superior about actions based on cold-hearted “objectivity” rather than subjective empathy and compassion. Indeed, many observe Capitalist society as a dictatorship of the psychopaths, the sociopaths who cannot and will not care for those around them.

The sheer level of bile projected through every medium at the moment is producing a level of emotional discord comparable to the mass anxieties of a period approaching the declaration of war. Whether war between nations is on the horizon or not is debatable. But at home there is already a war of attrition between individuals, family members, neighbours, workmates and strangers.

The rising hatred is doing a job for those in power: the masses, the lower classes, the mob, are fighting each other, not them. In fact, we are eating each other alive. It is difficult to see how, exactly, the commentators propose to “put the Nation back together”. In reality, the best interests of the two opposing classes, Capitalist and Worker, are diametrically opposed.

We are, and have been for centuries, finally divided between those who produce the wealth and those who own it. Redistribution of wealth requires one side to give-up something – and the working class has been “giving” more of its meagre share up to the powerful elite 1% ever more generously over the past 4 decades. The very real and essential need to redistribute back downwards is the real but hidden cause of the emotional distress and tension of the day.

The power of Capitalist class and their political classmates, able to control the media discourse, sack workers at will, determine the spending power of the currency and threaten the wrath of God against dissenters, is altogether awesome. It rules with such force that we feel powerless in its shadow, and, in desperation either give-in to hopelessness or seek to exert what little semblance of power we have over those nearest to us.

Many mimic the ruthlessness displayed by theirs rulers in the vain hope of some control over their own destinies. Others join in the song-and-dance of the elites in just as hopeless a gamble of having some crumbs of power and wealth drip down onto them. But there has been little social mobility across the entire history of capitalism, and absolutely none in Britain through the past 40 years. Hoping for a government of national salvation is the cruellest of all electoral illusions.

However gut-wrenching it may feel, we have to organise to join together, to share our common class interests rather than focus on our differences, and to redistribute our common frustrations, fears and failings out of our homes and on to those who are truly responsible. Collective mass action to demand redistribution of wealth and power is the only solution to this emotional climate. It is quite possible. After all, we are the many and they are the few. At the start of 35 days of infuriating electioneering we must remember that.

An independent journalist published an in-depth piece of focussed research as a radio programme on the BBC yesterday. On the surface it was about the building of a greater democracy into the school curriculum. Secondary school students from a variety (read “diversity” of class and ethnicity) of city schools were offered a chance to decide what key lessons they want as 14 and 15-year olds.

There was a bias and undercurrent to the journalistic thesis, finally admitted to but only with a sense of defeat. The journalist was conducting her research on the basis that this generation faced greater educational pressure, competition and more uncertainty about their future than possibly before the Second World War for UK citizens, or perhaps “ever before”.

It’s hard to compare generations when social standards, scientific understanding and global communication is all so different today. But there is no doubt that, whether it is because we are more aware, or more able to report, or less resilient than previous generations (suggested, but highly doubtful), our children are exhibiting far greater emotional disturbance, discord, alienation and ill-health than was ever previously recorded.

The journalist clearly had a predilection for a specific outcome, the prediction that Climate Change would be the children’s top priority. It is, after all, in the News. A menu of syllabus topics was offered up to a vote after informed discussion and debate. Young people were interviewed about their hopes and fears and interests and habits. They were forthright in the main, thoughtful and able to express themselves (at least, that is, those who got through the edit and onto the published programme).

The result shocked the journalist. Rather than any votes for a programme of teaching on the climate emergency and what to expect in the coming years, the school students voted overwhelmingly for classes on Life Skills. Life Skills: budgeting, getting a job, domestic maintenance, finding housing, cooking, and relationship stuff like mindfulness and issues of intimacy. They appeared wholly self-interested.

These weren’t a new brand of 1968 student rebels, all chomping at the bit to tear-down the Old and build a New World. They simply felt heavily ill-prepared to manage the very basic day-to-day tasks of life, never mind any macro-Big-Picture politics of the coming catastrophe – we’ll simply all be in that together when the time comes. Right now, we need to know how to live day-to-day and prosper while we still can.

There was something grossly conservative and pro-Capitalist about the voices. Where they were was “how it is”; “it is what it is” as the current over-used throw-away remark says. The implicit acceptance was not only that the way society works now is to be taken for granted, but that it is silly to hope for more or anything different. Just try and work the best you can to sustain what you have and derive what comfort may be sought in your individual space. Get a job, get on in it, find a partner – palatable if not perfect – and bunker-down inside your own comfy living space.

It is hard not to conclude that this programme was just another State-sponsored propaganda exercise by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The numbers of school students involved in the 3 days of school strikes this year have been historic by any comparison. The protests by Extinction Rebellion have involved young and old alike, but largely the younger, and gained blanket publicity for the issues and concerns. Surely the programme misrepresented the real minds of the young?

The human mind is so complex, best understood as a three-dimensional tension of opposites. Conflicting thoughts and emotions all vying to gain hegemony and determine the next thought, the next action and the general consciousness of the whole being. We all carry contradictory ideas with us all of the time. We may know one thing for sure but feel quite the opposite way about it, hoping its not true.

Why, for example, would you want to immerse yourself in the science of global heating and acknowledge the coming social convulsions when your entire body yearns for identity, value, love and the experience of every sensation produced by fun and laughter? At the same time, why would the fear of catastrophe be a motivator towards action and revolt rather than be simply disabling? We just want to get a life!

In the macro, the collective space, the System has long sought to pacify the general population and have us obsess about the sensuous, focus on the immediate and enjoy instant gratification. We are fed a myriad of opiates to suppress and obscure perceptions of inequality and injustice – our own and others’. Above all we are required to be not just individuals but individualistic, the centre of our own unique universe rather than a star in the vast collective firmament.

Little wonder that a large proportion, perhaps the majority, of young people today are urgently seeking individual solutions to the huge challenges humanity faces. And therein lies the dynamic contradiction. The pacification has bred a sense of unpreparedness rather than passivity. The young still want to be prepared as the active agent of their own destiny. They still desire self-determination, however complacent and compliant the education and legal systems seek to mould them.

In the micro we have to question why the modern day school curriculum alongside the nuclear family has left young people feeling so ill-equipped for Life and living, at least in the advanced industrial capitalist western world. And we must accept the feelings of young people who crave the independence of action and tools to “achieve” inside the Capitalist world, on the System’s terms. Accept their ambitions even tho’ we know that most will suffer a sense of failure to achieve the Capitalist Dream.

It is the very core human drive for self-determination that continuously offers hope for a better System, for rejection of the way things are, and for the creation of a sustainable world. The emotional challenge of the fight against alienation and low self-esteem certainly defeats some and renders many to make self-effacing compromises, but it does empower more than a few to outright revolt. And when the scale of revolt reaches a certain critical mass and offers a vision of a better future, the rest will follow, not least through a sense of pure self-interest.

The top headlines across today’s media cite the extraordinarily fierce fires across California alongside the damnation by a Public Inquiry of the London Fire Brigade for suggested failures in the ghastly Grenfell Tower fire in 2017 that killed 72 people. In both stories, there are fire-fighters risking their own lives to save other human beings. In both stories there is the cash-strapped emergency service reliant on inadequate resources and caught-out by the unforeseen ferocity of fast-moving flame. And in both stories there are the poor, inadequately protected, uncared for and left with nothing but tragedy.

It is as if this is a morality tale of our Age. The images of survivors, of ashen pallor, wide-eyed and numbed by the horror, slowly stumbling over words to explain their experiences and mourn their dead relatives, demand empathy and compassion. The blackened skeletons of their homes, the bones of chimneys or steel girders pointing skywards as if reaching in agony upwards from the charred earth, symbolise death and destruction.

Any possible sense of pathos is neutered by the irony of Halloween. Today’s “Celebration of the Dead” (or is it a commercial con for the sugar and toy industries?), will see children Trick or Treating around the safer neighbourhoods after tonight’s dusk. The costumed ghouls and masked devils will put to waste some millions of pumpkins to enjoy an evening of scares and thrills and all the tingles of safely contrived horror.

I much prefer the Celtic festival of Samhain which comes from the Old Irish for ‘Summer’s end’, livestock in from the higher pastures and a sufficient number slaughtered for the winter. A warming vegetarian meal (for preservation’s sake) sat around a roaring hearth. But perhaps this more modern, Christian-based Halloween is a useful rehearsal for times to come. Specifically, the climate catastrophe.

There will be more environmental fires, less ability to fight or prevent them, and far less public funding available to rehouse and re-establish the lives of the displaced. And far more death and suffering. Such a future doesn’t look like its going to be a walk in the park or a symbolic stroll with friends and family. Because, just as with California’s forests or England’s plastic-clad Tower Blocks, there has been little or no preperation for the coming conflagration.

On the surface, the Grenfell fire and the California fires appear to have nothing in common – one caused by Corporate failure and cost-cutting, and the other by global heating creating tinder conditions in the environment. The links become more obvious the more we look. Firstly, it is the poor of the world who are most vulnerable. They will continue to be the most affected and the soonest affected by environmental degradation. Secondly, the global economy based-upon the entwined dance of private accumulation and Debt (with a capital “D”) will ensure cuts to social infrastructure and the inevitability of social collapse as extreme weather events and their impact on human habitats become ever more frequent.

Thirdly, and not so apparent is the current Ecocide: the degradation of arable soil; emptying of ancient aquifer suppliers of water for agriculture; the mass extinction of pollinating insects; the destruction of the C02-capturing forests; the acidification of the seas. Halloween images of walking skeletons portray a very scary prediction.

Halloween came early for Extinction Rebellion, the mass March of the Dead on Saturday 12th October parading skeletons and coffins naming the recently extinct and predicting the end of humanity. It was a more powerful sight than any procession of giggling and growling trick-or-treaters tonight. We will see more street theatre depicting death and destruction in the coming months and years, alongside more mass tragedies as today epitomised by the California fires.

“We are all going to have to come together or we will end up slaughtering each other”, says Roger Hallam, an XR Founder, with the vision of the need to go “beyond politics” to act now against the threat of mass starvation. Certainly, the psycho-political understanding of the dynamics of climate change begins with the fact that global heating is a universal threat, not restricted to some nations or regions. It is the Truth that some regions will starve, many drown, and some burn.

Images of the dying on the TV and internet will render Halloween masks distasteful if not outlawed. Suffering will be widespread, the latest predictions being that at least 750million will be forced to migrate by sea-level rise alone by the year 2100. The displaced shanty cities with the flimsiest housing will be most vulnerable to early destruction. The forest fires and tinder-dry drought-ridden city suburbs will continue to burn. Indeed, the sea will set itself alight with the methane released from its clathrates. But the real experience of hellfire will be those watching it happen and knowing we could have done more to prevent it.

So now we know. There is to be a UK General Election in December. It may be a forlorn hope to expect that either War or the Climate Emergency will be of any priority on the highly toxic and grossly manipulated newsfeeds and combative broadcasts. This will be known historically and somewhat hysterically as the Brexit Election. Any larger global issues, including the prospective catastrophe of either climate collapse or nuclear war, will be airbrushed from the debate. Perhaps they’re deemed too emotive to be discussed, despite the anger, nay rage apparent for and against UK membership of the European Union.

Nevertheless, It has been to the credit of the socialist Left in Scotland that no discussion of Austerity or Brexit has recently taken place without at least a mention of Trident Replacement. Even the SNP are vocal about the issue. After all, they have nuclear weapons at Faslane, some 30 miles from Glasgow, and that NATO base is a huge bargaining chip with the UK Government in London.

Maintaining the campaign against Trident nuclear weapons has not been at anywhere near the same level in the Labour Party or other Left groups in the rest of Britain. There can be little doubt that the Corbyn compromise, leaving the pro-nuclear policies of Blair’s Labour Party in place, has taken focus away from Britain’s nuclear weapons.

Four years ago the polls showed that more than 70% of the population were against the replacement of Trident, the nuclear weapons system based in the UK but owned and controlled by the United States of America.

Back then, Trident was part-and-parcel of anti-war campaigning and common reference was made in any anti-Austerity speech, the cost of Trident replacement having shot up to over £205,000,000,000. Just the preparations, the research and development at the weapons establishments at Aldermaston and Burghfield, have been eating-up at least £2billion a year since 2014. The sheer cost, let alone the implications of new nuclear weapons, excited furious opposition.

No doubt Brexit has had an impact against retaining the focus. And the dramatic and welcomed cacophony from the climate protests of school strikes and Extinction Rebellion has all but drowned out the Anti-nuclear campaigns. Indeed many inside the environment movement still consider nuclear power to be an essential ingredient in the drive to carbon-zero in time to stop catastrophe. This is despite Chernobyl and Fukushima, the 10-year-plus build-time of new reactors, their absurdly high cost compared with renewables, huge carbon emissions in construction, thousand-year-plus environmentally toxic and carcinogenic waste, and direct relationship with nuclear weapons. The arguments against nuclear power are vital and worthy of their own blog entry separate to this, and should be discussed everywhere in the climate movement.

The even deeper political problem is that wars across the world are increasing and President Trump has done a great deal to increase the risk of the use of nuclear weaponry. Whilst we are all aware and appalled that Trump has pulled-out of the Paris Climate Agreement and opened up more drilling for oil, there has been far less focus upon his nuclear decisions.

It is not just that the USA broke the nuclear arms agreement with Iran, ramping up the threat of further and most deadly warfare across the Region. Trump has also pulled out of the bilateral INF Treaty with Russia and in so doing unleashed a new nuclear arms race. The New START Treaty talks aimed at reducing the current 13,000+ nuclear warheads in the world (more than enough to destroy all life on earth five times over) were due to begin in 2022 but are likely to be dead before then, by Trump’s intention.

We have seen a bonfire of nuclear treaties and a revitalised commitment to use nuclear weapons alongside new and very deadly tensions between rival nuclear-armed states. This is not just an aberration caused by Trump’s wreckless premiership, but the USA’s long-standing imperialist drive to protect its position as the world’s number one power. Obama had already shifted focus from terrorism to the “revisionist powers” of Russia and China, building new nuclear silos in North East Asia as a direct challenge to China from Guam, Okinawa and Japan.

The stated strategic plan remains for a network of “theatre nuclear weapons”, coldly described as “low-yield” being “only” the explosive size of those used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Modern nuclear warheads are generally ten-times that power. US-owned intermediate range nuclear missiles are being stationed across Europe, potentially including UK mainland where we will need to build the same scale of opposition symbolised by the Greenham Common protests that forced the withdrawal of US Cruise Missiles in the 1980’s.

Trump’s recently announced “Space Force” echo Reagan’s Star Wars boasts of the 1980’s but is now harrowingly possible, the technology having developed to make the militarisation of space possible. The addition of the temperamental but tantalising use of Artificial Intelligence is fast-tracking development of nuclear-armed drones with algorithms allowed to determine threat and discharge bombs automatically without needing authorisation from a human.

The risks from military New Technology require that arms control is strengthened, unlikely without widespread public exposure and opposition. The brutal “tactical-use” of a nuclear weapon is once again being considered as a winning gambit. No longer the Mutually Assured Destruction of Cold War defence, the military hawks believe that detonating a couple of nuclear bombs over a few hundred thousand people could once again scare the world into surrender and fast-track regime change.

The one consideration that has held them off so far, and still does, is public upset – the threat of anti-nuclear protest destabilising and even threatening regime change at home. Current levels of civil unrest across the world certainly warns military strategists of the threat from the “Enemy Within”. For their side it is best not publicise any plans for use of nuclear weapons before they’re executed; for our side, and indeed our survival, it is vital that we keep the opposition to nuclear weapons (and their infrastructure including nuclear power) very much alive and active.

NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, bringing together 29 countries under the domination of the Unites States, has a nuclear first-strike policy. Please read that twice. If and when deemed strategically essential, NATO would sanction the launch of nuclear warheads before any could be used against a NATO country. The old lie of nuclear weapons being a deterrent that ensures they’ll never be used was always a myth, and the “first strike” policy demolishes such nonsense once and for all.

Yet President Trump’s visit to England to join the NATO international Conference in London in December 2019 has very little publicity around protest action compared with his previous visits. Previous NATO Summits have seen huge and violent protests when sited in mainland Europe but are unlikely to be replicated in London. A Counter-Conference has been organised by Stop the War Coalition on Saturday 30th November together with a protest on Tuesday 3rd December when Trump arrives. These should be precisely the type of events for anti-war and environmental protesters to join together, en masse.

The open threat of nuclear war is once again overt and restated. Tensions are mounting in previously nuclear-free South America, where Brazil’s Bolsonaro has two nuclear power stations (first procured by Lula in a deal with France), off-line but producing the agents required for weapons, and the continent’s first nuclear-powered submarine is on order, a precursor to talks with Trump about the possible siting of US nuclear weapons. The threat to Venezuela, and by implication, non-compliant States across the region, is obvious.

The escalating conflicts in the Middle East include the continued use of depleted uranium, having the secondary value of spreading radioactive isotopes into the environment and thus obscuring the difference between the pollution from conventional mega-weapons such as Daisy Cutters and the radioactive residue from “low-yield” nuclear weapons, if and when used. Going nuclear is becoming an option in a world where one definition of the Anthropocene is the global coverage of human-made radioactive isotopes as a geological layer produced since the Second World War. “What difference does it make if a few nukes are exploded?”, is a question voiced by right-wing nationalists.

It is to the South China Seas that most observers look to predict the likeliest escalation in the next few years. In the Autumn of 2019 the UK carried out military exercises as part of the “Five Powers” in East Asia, identifying disputes in the South China Sea, concern about North Korea, and tensions with China, seen as the greatest threat to the USA in the long run. The US is requiring the upgrading of Japan, Australia, USA and India (The Quad) because NATO was never extended here after the independence struggles of the region.

The UK has been building links between NATO and the Quad. From December’s NATO Summit we are likely to see increased budgets and commitments to military control of the area of the South China Sea. Britain remains a Pacific power, and the “close relationship between Trump and Johnson can only assure Britain’s direct involvement in any nuclear tension – after all, we have Trident nuclear-armed submarines in the area and they are only of use as first-strike weapons.

The USA tested a nuclear-carrying new intermediate-range missile in mid-August 2019 weeks after breaking from the INF Treaty dating back to the Cold War era. The new rockets are designed for regional warfare, separate from the inter-continental ballistic missiles still very much in place. The USA is no longer an unrivalled power in the world, and the rivalries are re-arming into a super-charged arms race. Hence Trump boasted that the budget commitment to spend two and a half trillion dollars re-equipping the US military is a statement to rivals that they’ll take on all opposition, everywhere.

Officially, China has reaffirmed commitments to “no first use” whilst pushing forward with new weaponry. North Korea has also signed-up to no first use, as has India, despite its’ stand off with nuclear-armed Pakistan over Kashmir. Pakistan has not signed. Then we have the current tension in the immediate area of nuclear-armed Israel and the tensions with Iran which has restarted nuclear research and development.

The European Union is not to be outdone. Brussels has clearly indicated that they are driving for the military integration of all European States, using the EU Constitution as its rationale to use the EU to its full potential as a world power. The Lisbon Treaty includes the European Defence Treaty and a capability and armaments policy for EU militarisation, with PEScO (The Permanent Structured Cooperation in which 25 of the 28 national armed forces pursue structural integration) seeking funding, currently at €25billions, to be increased by 20 times the existing cash. The EU is on a trajectory towards having its own nuclear weapons independent of the USA. The EU’s Galileo satellite tracking system has been developed as a military answer to the USA being able to switch off its GPS in the event of hostilities.

Whilst Denmark and Ireland are seeking to opt-out of EU militarisation, France and UK have the bilateral “Tuetates” Nuclear Co-operation Treaty of 2010 to work together on nuclear weapons, the USA being in the background, with Aldermaston and Burghfield linking with their co-sites in France. This is likely to continue whatever the outcome of Brexit, Britain looking both ways at once and strategically placed as on the front-line wherever the geography of war may require placement of naval power with nuclear armaments.

Britain is also a central party to Trump’s Space Force. The construction of three space ports, at Sutherland and Prestwick airports in Scotland and one at Cornwall alongside the Newquay airport, places these military guarded sites close to existing nuclear weapons sites. Satellites will be launched with small weapons able to interfere with the satellite systems of other countries. The militarisation of space is accelerating, with India testing anti-satellite weapons whilst Trump has spoken about putting nuclear weapons in space. Israel, USA and UK have consistently abstained or voted against the U.N. Prevention of Arms Race in Outer Space (PAROS) motion.

In the history of humanity no two nuclear armed nations have ever gone to war against each other and yet we are closer now to that event than ever before. Members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which organises the Doomsday Clock, announced in January 2019 that “the dangers of the world are being normalised, including climate change and nuclear war”. On the scale of a 24-hour clock of risk, the world is at two minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to so-called Armageddon since 1953 when hydrogen bombs were being tested by the US and Soviet Union as the Cold War began to simmer.

It is not difficult to surmise that rival Capitalist nations will drive towards nuclear warfare well before climate catastrophe engulfs the world. Indeed, the competition for food, water, land and resources caused by sea level rise, glacial melt, endless drought and soil deterioration will inevitably be a major catalyst of wars both minor and major.

Global heating is not a single issue amongst many, the threat of climate collapse encompasses all other campaigns from Austerity and anti-racism to Democracy and Peace. But so does the nuclear issue.

Some of us have made great headway this year in building the XR Peace contingent across all Extinction Rebellion protests. We have also linked the climate and anti-war campaigns to those against racism and border controls. Socialists joined with XR Peace protesters in direct action against the Arms Fair in September. The campaign group, Stand Up to Racism has exposed the racist blaming of Muslims for the succession of wars started by the West and still causing tens of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees.

Environmental activists and socialists should use the General Election, not only to challenge Austerity and the gross inequality that has forced more than 14 million people into poverty in the UK, but push for action to prevent Climate Catastrophe and Nuclear war. We have to demand specific consideration by prospective MPs of the just transition of jobs away from building the new generation of drones, new nuclear submarines and nuclear weapons infrastructure including nuclear power plants and the dumping of nuclear waste on land and at sea.

This is far from easy. In the South West we have joined and helped campaigns against Hinkley C nuclear power station, and lead and won campaigns against permanent nuclear dumping in Plymouth. The planned military Space Port alongside Newquay Airport in Cornwall from where armed military satellites will be launched will offer the next target for action, linking climate and nuclear issues once again. To win we have to ensure mass consciousness of the real and present dangers, and demand policies against environmental catastrophe, against war and against nuclear. Time is short.

Global Heating, the recently revised term for what is happening to the Earth’s climate, is accelerating at an unpredicted rate. Not only had the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) failed to include acceleration in it’s 2018 forecast of a 1.5degree rise in global temperatures, but the best scientific modelling has proved to be decades out in its predictions of fires and floods.

This week alone we have seen three super-hurricanes form and develop at the same time, historically unheard of. Dorian caused storm surges, floods, widespread death and devastation across the Bahamas. At the very same time, uncontrollable fires blaze across all corners of the globe, not just the Amazon but the Arctic, Africa and Australia. 

Anyone watching must experience at least a passing surge of anxiety. Anyone directly involved will be experiencing trauma, with lasting effects. There is no peace from the recurring memory of a firefighter friend dying fighting a fire, a neighbour drowned in a building collapsing under water, a relative trapped in their car.

Now consider what it is for a child or young person perceiving these events. With the rest of their lives spanning a length difficult to perceive when young, the image of global heating excites a fear and despondency equitable to the feelings of youth in the late nineteen thirties or during the broadcasts at the time of the Bay of Pigs. 

We face a catastrophe. Many in the know suggest we face extinction. School students have taken strike action and will, once again, in 26 countries and over 1,000 cities worldwide on 20th September. This time the school refuser and environmental activist, Greta Thunberg, has called on adults for support. We can’t leave the future to the kids.

We can stop the coming Climate Catastrophe, but, as detailed by Extinction Rebellion rather than the IPCC, we have to go to a global war footing and diminish all use of carbon-based fuels towards zero emissions by 2025. This requires such a radical transformation of production and consumption that only mass mobilisations of millions of humans worldwide can ensure politicians and corporate bosses are forced to comply. 

The question of the hour shouts out; have the People the emotional resilience to take part and sustain system change? Will the repeated images of horror caused by human-made “Acts of Nature” become too awful to watch or too numerous to evoke any emotional response? Like civilians in a war zone, will we be rendered powerless? Like soldiers on a battlefield, will we become dehumanised and heartless?

There is a great need to speak the Truth about climate change. An essential ideological battle to be won, here and now, against The Deniers. But in so doing, the individual trauma faced by each of us as we perceive the coming catastrophe has to be openly acknowledged and managed.

We have to talk about global heating. We must feel we can do something, such as offering solidarity to the flooded of the Abaco Islands and those driven by flames in New South Wales. We must link arms to challenge the unnatural anti-human, anti-environment, anti-science nonsense of Trump and Bolsonaro.

We must challenge the Great Denial in all its forms. And to do all this we must acknowledge the emotional impact of our times, manage our inner pain, and offer solace and support to each other in this unprecedented tense and anxious emotional climate.

6th September 2019

The Extinction Rebellion group is at its centre linked to a not-for-profit company called Compassionate Revolution, set up by activists who had been involved in the Occupy! Movement. XR now has groups in at least 28 countries. The organisation’s “civil resistance model” seeks to create the essential social tension required to create change. 

It is the focus upon entire System Change that marks the maturity of the XR movement when compared with many previous environmental campaigns which have based themselves on highly moralistic admonitions against the polluting behaviours of individuals. XR is building towards a critical mass of activism, recognising the need for the inclusion of many millions in each nation, not a few stunt heroes martyring themselves for the Cause.

There are many debates taking place inside the Movement, not least about the appearance of participants as White and middle class. Symbolism is to the fore and as such, the visual messages are vital. When the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom derides us as “crusties” it rings a bell with those who have to any extent bought into the System, tried hard to behave in a way that obeys the rules and receives the pay-off of a manageable income and reasonable life. 

The portrayal of XR activists as Middle Class is quite absurd from my experience. The elders include many State pensioners (living on the lowest pensions in the developed world), the middle-aged are generally out-of-work (perhaps with a private income, perhaps not) and the students are in-betweeners, probably subsided by parents to a bare extent but not assured of achieving a professional salary. 

True, most of XR are well-educated, but the definition of middle class doesn’t really include nurses, teachers or most caring professionals anymore – they’ve been “proletarianised, and given 6-months without a salary they’ll be on their uppers. Only the top 20% of society earn money that allows for savings and security. And only the top 10% earn over £50k a year. Ideas of a huge and burgeoning middle-class are illusory, and politically motivated. In reality, however we choose to fool ourselves, the actual Middle Class with a vested interest in the current System are a very, very small strata of society.

At the other end, the at least 14 million who live in significant poverty in the UK have a right to feel particularly detached from messages of crisis and coming catastrophe. When you’ve lived hand-to-mouth for years the horizon closes in, too painful to remember too far back in time, and certainly too hopeless to look to the future with any hope. 

Cries of “don’t use plastic”, “go Vegan”, or even “give-up your car – use public transport” are most likely to fall on deaf ears or produce immediate and deep resentment amongst those who have nothing, scrimp to manage a main meal each day, and dream of becoming a successful owner of one of those super-fast cars the subject of one-in-three TV advertisements. Using the privatised and cash-starved public transport these days is an experience of frustration and discomfort. Don’t preach to me!

Then there are the workers, a disparate layer of around 32 million people in Britain. Whilst the average annual wage is around £28,000, about two-thirds of workers earn less than that (such is the falsity of averages compared with means and medians), the figure being more representative of entire pre-tax household income. More than 5 million workers rely upon government welfare top-up payments in order to survive. We all recognise this as the tax-payer effectively giving hand-outs to the employers who pay the worst wages.

Around 6 million of the working poor can be described as “the precariat” with serial part-time, low-income, hire-and-fire vulnerable work. Employment tends to be repetitive, boring, tedious and impersonal, viciously overseen by the supervisory and managerial classes disproportionately paid and driven to force productivity through inhuman relationships based upon unaccountable power, bullying and threat. 

Most workplaces run on fear. Most workers live with a constant negative piquance of stress about the payment of the rent or mortgage, heating and fuel costs, kids clothes, and the weekly food shop. Few if any can afford to challenge the Boss, show political dissent from what they produce or the way society works. 

The bottom 50% of UK society share 8% of all the wealth produced in Britain each year. Women overwhelmingly bear the brunt of low wages, part-time precarious work, and the stresses of household management. People of Colour, anyone non-white or with a surname that may be considered on paper as “ethnic”, experience barriers to opportunities from a very young age and sense their treatment as “different” from their White friends. 

Black people (the political term for all non-White skinned) are disproportionally prevalent in the poorest quartile of the population irrespective of ability or belief in the “Capitalist Dream”. From unemployment to stop-and-search, the visibility of being Black in a racist society requires you to walk hood-up, head down and without a sound. The Police, representing the Power, the System, Babylon, are not on your side.

Austerity, a political tool to refund the finance sector after the gross-corruption of that industry caused a global crash in 2008 for which, world-wide, only a handful of people were ever punished, has deepened inequality exponentially. More Billionaires at one end, far more homeless at the other. And poverty has a job to do for the Government: it creates the fear that keeps people from protesting.

After the Universal Credit website has demanded you stay on-line for 35 hours a week to prove you’re looking for work or lose your entire £60 a week income; as you walk home after being on a final warning for having been minutes late for work in the last month; when you’ve just juggled cash to ensure the kids are fed and clothed and you’ve put-off replacing your own leaking shoes for another month; the idea of the End of the World could almost feel like a blessed release. 

Little wonder protesters were kicked and punched by commuters whose train to work had been held-up. Inequality has produced a social tension quite perceptible on the streets. There has been absolutely no social mobility in the UK for the past 35 years. To demand a no-Growth economy false on stones ground where those who have lived such Truth can either laugh or sneer at such irrelevance. Money goes to money, the rich protect themselves, they have complete power, we have none.

Climate protests have to focussed, understanding and compassionate. It is not in the power of the ordinary consumer – few of whom can ever afford luxuries rather than necessities – to change the world through their individual methods of consumption. The terrible Truth of the Climate Emergency is that the politicians have to own the crisis, and the producers – the Capitalists who own the means of production – have to change the basis of production. If both or either fail in the very near future, they will have to be removed. Citizens Assemblies can organise social infrastructure, workers can organise the methods of production. It will take a world revolution.

Environmental activists have to understand not only how society works but how it feels for the majority. The vision of system change requires links between all elements of drive for social progress – for civil rights, for decent wages, for affordable housing for all, for access and inclusion for all, for diversion and against discrimination, and so forth. We will only mobilise the millions we need if we begin from how they see and feel the world, not any high-minded impatient demands of our own.

I was talking with self-professed revolutionaries the other night. They were clear if not outspoken that revolution will not be fermented let alone succeed through any semblance of compassion. It will be civil war, indeed world war, based upon the class hatred that comes from outrage at the inequality and repression of the Ruling Class. Revolution requires the working class to be empowered and full-voiced.

I wanted to agree but with a cautionary caveat. Humanity shows so much compassion, day-to-day, across all societies that caring has a vital role to play. We are moved daily with care and concern for people less well-off than ourselves: the child receiving a drug for Cystic Fibrosis after years of State rationing; the migrants asphyxiated in the backs of lorries or drowned in the Med; those burnt to death in California or the Congo; the Kurdish children of Syria. Notions of “counting your blessings” are unhelpful here, being pacifiers rather than mobilisers. But putting yourself out for others does appear to be part of our nature. 

Indeed, most climate activists are fighting for the rights of future generations, not our own. On the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the first example of where workers took over a society (even if it was finally crushed by invading Capitalist armies), we should not think for one moment that system change is impossible. There are currently uprisings around the world, mostly against poverty and repression, the climate protests being relatively small and passive by comparison. 

A Compassionate Revolution is indeed possible. We have to stand with the poor and the oppressed, we have to understand the experiences of the majority of whom we are a part. We have to challenge and repress our own prejudices and high-minded morals that betray empathy and compassion. The revolutionary socialist journalist, Paul Foot, once wrote, “there can be no Revolution without Love”. I agree wholeheartedly.

Most of all, we have to build the collective power of the working class in the workplaces. Today’s images from the million-plus march in Chile against Austerity and State corruption shows the potential strength of workers. The concurrent images of State Police beating and brutalising unarmed civilians, mostly the young, highlights the tension in the phrase, “compassionate revolution”: exactly how does non-violent direct action respond when the ruling class shoot us, incarcerate and torture, “disappear” us and drive tanks over our camped-out bodies? We will need the compassion of the majority to come to our defence.

Saturday 26th October 2019

Did the October Rebellion ever happen? I walked the streets of the centre of London last Saturday to find little or no sign. By midday, the lawn at Parliament Square had new protesters and organisers testing the giant screen and sound system readying themselves for a different protest. The centre of Trafalgar Square was all but dead, the XR tents and banners all gone. Instead, passing by from the West came an endless procession of well-clad humanity, tight-packed and stern, waving blue banners emblazoned with rings of golden stars.

One million people were marching to Westminster, not to protest the inaction in the face of catastrophe, but the inaction of Parliament over Brexit. These were “Remainers” in the main, and my crowded train journey home found them overwhelmingly white, middle class and self-protectionist. The European Union, albeit flawed, was their hope for the future, whatever the science of global heating might predict.

I was attending a conference on the other side of Westminster Bridge about war and nuclear weapons, and used the lunch hour to observe the parade. The Conference debates rang in my ears; detailing the new AI assisted industry producing “useable” nuclear weapons offering low-yields of destruction of “theatres of war”. The current computer-aided militarisation of Space adding as great a threat to our future as the looming climate catastrophe. And, thoughtfully, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament resolving with great clarity the need to address the conjoined relationship between climate and war.

There is no doubt that climate breakdown will produce more wars, and such general conflagration will precede the global climate catastrophe. It is with us already. The endless wars for Oil have dominated the twentieth and twenty first centuries, decimating civilisations and destroying countless millions of lives – human, animal, insect and plant. This month’s invasion of Kurdish Syria by the Turkish State has an oil pipeline as a backcloth, and the Saudi genocide in Yemen displays the vulnerability as well as the power of Oil. The devastated proxy battleground of Syria symbolises the battle for resources in an era of environmental collapse. 

The President of the most powerful nation that the human world has ever seen is increasing expenditure on military hardware whilst denying discussion, let alone development, of adaptation to avoid climate breakdown. And the total energy and efforts of up to seven million protesters across the world shouting out “System Change not Climate Change” across October have appeared to have no resonance with those who hold the Power. What will it take?

Observing the Big Picture, it would appear that the centre cannot hold. There is such tension in the human world, huge protests in Sudan, Ecuador, Haiti, Iraq, Egypt and Puerto Rico, Hong Kong, Lebanon, Chile, Catalonia and even London, that the forces of power and privilege are being laid bare for all to see. The State repression, Police guns, grenades, beatings and prison-cell torture, all signals of a frightened and cornered ruling class determined to smash opposition before it starts.

On the other side, the searing inequality burning the flesh and consciousness of the poor of the World is producing the inevitable resistance and challenge, humans hurling themselves at the authors of such injustice. This is a time of passion, the cry for action, the sacrificial charge for change. The centre shall not hold. But the ruling class will use all means at their disposal to cling-on to their power and privilege. War will precede climate breakdown and hasten it.

Saturday’s million-march of the Remainers was motivated more by the conservative wish to stay the same, for defence of the Status Quo than it was a demand for progress. Of course, there are no absolutes, and the Left contingent marching for Europe, self-labelled “Another Europe is Possible” would condemn and decry me even suggesting they’re for more of the same. Yet even their adaptation of the banner of the Movement of Movements, “Another World is Possible”, exposes their reformist reserve against whole-System Change. 

In a world falling apart, the defence of a system that is knowingly raping the planet and denying access to those fleeing war and climate collapse, the idea of the EU as potentially progressive is pie-in-the-sky. I’m not blaming them for marching. I am questioning why the superficial issue of Brexit appears more important than the fundamental challenge of global heating. In or Out of the EU, we will have neoliberal governance in denial about the requirement for no-growth, zero-carbon economies.

Unlike Saturday’s “March to Remain” (oh, the irony), most uprisings, those riots and mass protests, the global spread of festivals of the Oppressed and Exploited, are demanding Another World. Peace and Social Justice. There is a growing and deepening divide apparent between the forces of progress and the forces of reaction. These are the signs of a global civil war in embryo. The revolutionaries are going to have to grow faster and larger than the forces of reaction and stasis if we are to have any hope of survival. The Centre must not hold. 

Wednesday 23rd October 2019

As the October Rebellion struggles through the second week of action, the usual Establishment lackeys cast their slurs. The latest sponsored polls of public opinion purposefully opened the flood gates for the bile from deniers and reactionaries to pour out, damning the protesters for our very existence. At the same time, Police used s14 yesterday to ban all Extinction Rebellion (XR) activities in London and use Stop-and-Search (a bludgeoning tool of unaccountable power usually focussed upon Black people) to further muddy the public’s ability to differentiate between protester and terrorist. 

It’s not as if we weren’t warned. The XR creed includes acceptance of law-breaking in order to ram home the point – we knew we’d face the wrath of the Establishment. Greta has repeated herself by tweeting today, “if standing up against Climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken.” We have fought the Law and the Law has fought back.

What is more disturbing, and quite unnerving for quite a few compatriots in XR, is the apparent public hatred of us. The trolling is vicious, only to be expected, and XR activists are more than able to discern the rant from the real opposition. But there are far fewer vocal supporters. The usual “lefty” celebrities have gained notoriety, from anti-War Jane Fonda to wildlife’s Chris Packham, but it is hard to see any groundswell of popular support. More vitally, there is little sign of defence of our tactics.

Is it that people don’t want to know, that the message of the 6th Great Extinction and coming Climate Catastrophe is too scary? Or is it actual disbelief? We have always suffered from the false news of the media ideologues, painting all things as the best of all possible worlds. Yet this has never prevented revolt nor indeed revolution when the conditions are met – polarised society, economic hardship of the masses, flagrant opulence of the Rulers. It would appear that there is sharp political opposition to the notion of climate change that is gaining ground despite our best efforts.

Humanity has been warned of the coming human-made climate crisis for a very long time. Svante Arrhenius calculated the cumulative effects of human-induced climate change back in 1896, getting very close to predicting what is happening right now, if expected to occur in “a few thousand years”. In 1898, Thomas Chamberlain summarised his research into the rising carbon emissions as returning the planet to a climate similar to the Middle Tertiary Age, with sea extension and climatic intensification.

In 1964 I was part of a classroom project on climate change in my primary school. Pollution may have been the focus, but global heating was on the curriculum. And 50 years ago today, in 1969, scientists formally warned President Johnson (no relation to Prime Minister Johnson) of the calamity predicted from increased C02 emissions by the year 2000: sea acidification, extreme weather, arctic melt, etc. Why, in the same year, Joni Mitchell even wrote songs about pollution and the extinction of the bees.

We have had 30 years of international political lobbying to stop greenhouse gas emissions. 20 years since the USA Vice President, Al Gore started spouting about the need for industry to clean itself up quick. The amazing growth in computer technology has offered 20 years of more and more accurate inspection of environmental conditions across all geographic areas, and the resultant modelling has produced extraordinary detailed predictions most of which have come to pass, just much earlier quicker and with greater severity than the micro-chips could imagine.

There is a hint of despair present. When humanity chooses so blatantly and aggressively to discount the facts, the warnings, the science and the vocal minority pointing at our own imminent extinction, what’s the point of fighting for survival? In my view, it is the enforced passivity and resulting sense of powerless of the majority that renders them hostile to the actions of the rebels. The fear, the anxiety, the emotional energy required to confront the facts and resolve to act all feel too great a challenge. And in such a condition of paralysis the human being has a tendency to resent those able and active around us.

The antidote to this is simple. We need a sufficient shout, a loud enough wailing, a critical mass of active protest calling-out in a single combined voice: Act Now! The October Rebellion must be seen as just a start, as a small-scale rehearsal for the Real Thing, indeed, as a polite whisper of concern before the cacophony of revolt to win-over the doubters and cast-aside the deniers. The Establishment should quake – they have been warned.

Thursday 17th October 2019

As the October Rebellion struggles through the second week of action, the usual Establishment lackeys cast their slurs. The latest sponsored polls of public opinion purposefully opened the flood gates for the bile from deniers and reactionaries to pour out, damning the protesters for our very existence. At the same time, Police used s14 yesterday to ban all Extinction Rebellion (XR) activities in London and use Stop-and-Search (a bludgeoning tool of unaccountable power usually focussed upon Black people) to further muddy the public’s ability to differentiate between protester and terrorist. 

It’s not as if we weren’t warned. The XR creed includes acceptance of law-breaking in order to ram home the point – we knew we’d face the wrath of the Establishment. Greta has repeated herself by tweeting today, “if standing up against Climate and ecological breakdown and for humanity is against the rules then the rules must be broken.” We have fought the Law and the Law has fought back.

What is more disturbing, and quite unnerving for quite a few compatriots in XR, is the apparent public hatred of us. The trolling is vicious, only to be expected, and XR activists are more than able to discern the rant from the real opposition. But there are far fewer vocal supporters. The usual “lefty” celebrities have gained notoriety, from anti-War Jane Fonda to wildlife’s Chris Packham, but it is hard to see any groundswell of popular support. More vitally, there is little sign of defence of our tactics.

Is it that people don’t want to know, that the message of the 6th Great Extinction and coming Climate Catastrophe is too scary? Or is it actual disbelief? We have always suffered from the false news of the media ideologues, painting all things as the best of all possible worlds. Yet this has never prevented revolt nor indeed revolution when the conditions are met – polarised society, economic hardship of the masses, flagrant opulence of the Rulers. It would appear that there is sharp political opposition to the notion of climate change that is gaining ground despite our best efforts.

Humanity has been warned of the coming human-made climate crisis for a very long time. Svante Arrhenius calculated the cumulative effects of human-induced climate change back in 1896, getting very close to predicting what is happening right now, if expected to occur in “a few thousand years”. In 1898, Thomas Chamberlain summarised his research into the rising carbon emissions as returning the planet to a climate similar to the Middle Tertiary Age, with sea extension and climatic intensification.

In 1964 I was part of a classroom project on climate change in my primary school. Pollution may have been the focus, but global heating was on the curriculum. And 50 years ago today, in 1969, scientists formally warned President Johnson (no relation to Prime Minister Johnson) of the calamity predicted from increased C02 emissions by the year 2000: sea acidification, extreme weather, arctic melt, etc. Why, in the same year, Joni Mitchell even wrote songs about pollution and the extinction of the bees.

We have had 30 years of international political lobbying to stop greenhouse gas emissions. 20 years since the USA Vice President, Al Gore started spouting about the need for industry to clean itself up quick. The amazing growth in computer technology has offered 20 years of more and more accurate inspection of environmental conditions across all geographic areas, and the resultant modelling has produced extraordinary detailed predictions most of which have come to pass, just much earlier quicker and with greater severity than the micro-chips could imagine.

There is a hint of despair present. When humanity chooses so blatantly and aggressively to discount the facts, the warnings, the science and the vocal minority pointing at our own imminent extinction, what’s the point of fighting for survival? In my view, it is the enforced passivity and resulting sense of powerless of the majority that renders them hostile to the actions of the rebels. The fear, the anxiety, the emotional energy required to confront the facts and resolve to act all feel too great a challenge. And in such a condition of paralysis the human being has a tendency to resent those able and active around us.

The antidote to this is simple. We need a sufficient shout, a loud enough wailing, a critical mass of active protest calling-out in a single combined voice: Act Now! The October Rebellion must be seen as just a start, as a small-scale rehearsal for the Real Thing, indeed, as a polite whisper of concern before the cacophony of revolt to win-over the doubters and cast-aside the deniers. The Establishment should quake – they have been warned.

Wednesday 16th October 2019

Extinction Rebellion suggested that 30,000 marched in central London yesterday. We had worked hard to build support for a coach from Plymouth to the protests, the one-day turn-around being a significant barrier to mass support. 6 hours there, 4 hours marching then 6 hours back again on a cold and rickety charabanc isn’t enticing. As XR says, if we are to stop global catastrophe then some sacrifice will be required! 

Yesterday was heartwarming amidst the constant rain. 

The Saturday protest was mid-way through the October Rebellion and largely London-based. Plymouth and Portsmouth activists made efforts to attend where others outside the Home Counties didn’t, with trade union activists seeking to build the embryonic links between environmentalists and trade unionists. 

A trade union rally in Trafalgar Square managed 3-400 people before marching together to join the XR march for the Dead. Remembering the recently extinct animals alongside the indigenous peoples devastated by invasions and capitalist incursions, street theatre offered symbolic coffins and skeletons alongside mourning marchers and red and green spirits of Nature, life and death. 

My purpose was, as part of the political recognition that real power lies in the workplace, to help encourage trade unions to embrace the climate action. Most of the roughly six million trade unionists in Britain are far from being convinced that there is a Climate Emergency, or that we face a catastrophe in short-time. Nor, indeed, that there is anything that could be done were this to be true. 

My imagination runs rampant each time I think what could be done if trade unionists gained the knowledge shared between most of the 20,000 environmentalists yesterday. We climate activists all tend to study the climate science and clench our gut to read the latest observations, such as this week’s methane fountains in arctic lakes spewing global heating gases 24 times as destructive as C02; the California fires now coming into the cities, shooting soot int the stratosphere, collapsing homes and leaving at least a millions without electricity; and the super-typhoon that has flooded large parts of Eastern Japan causing tens of deaths and hundreds of millions of pounds worth of destruction.

These are serious times according to all scientific predictions. In many areas of the global climate system, tipping points have been reached and passed, and there are many still to come. The very fact that, this year, meteorologists have had to add a grade to the measurement of hurricanes and typhoons in order to describe their strength is singular evidence of the developments in extreme weather. Once-in-a-hundred-years events are now appearing yearly. 

The feedbacks between different climate systems are accelerating warming exponentially. So a regular exclamation from various climate commentators is “this is happening far faster than we predicted. David Attenborough, a darling of the British Broadcasting Corporation, popular environmentalism and natural history programmes, offered such a fresh exclamation only this week. Strange, then, that the BBC chose not to report anything of yesterday’s protests. Instead they cheered the passing of Typhoon Hagibis so that a world championship rugby match could go ahead!

It is difficult for the general population to recognise and understand the undoubted crisis we are already immersed in whilst the major news distributors deny or distort the events. A call went out to swamp the BBC with complaints in order to ensure coverage. A BBC spokesperson is reported to have suggested that a sufficient number of complaints would force them to respond. They simply need the feedback.

The absence of honest discussion is certainly one explanation for the increasing hostility being voiced against Extinction Rebellion. From the mother screaming at our bicycle protest last Friday, shouting from behind the wheel of her car that we are frightening her child, to the cars and bikes revving and jolting forward as if to run into the marchers of Regent Street, their anger is as real as their denial. It is, I’m convinced, more a symptom of the deep and deepening polarisation and tensions in society than just response to climate change, but nevertheless a serious challenge.

On the interminable journey there and back again, as if acting-out these divisions, the environmentalists sat at the back of the Plymouth coach and the trade unionists sat at the front. We travelled separately together and on arrival the XR activists went to Marble Arch and the TU activists went to Trafalgar Square for separate events. The divide was explicit and total. And yet the subsequent two marches converged in Oxford Street, uniting in shared shouts of System Change not Climate Change. 

In November 1999 my sister and her family joined the mass protests of 40,000 in Seattle against Climate Change and the World Trade Organisation’s anti-environment policies. Anthea, 53 at the time, stood on the front line against hostile and armed Police using CS gas and rubber bullets, the protesters of every hue protecting each other.

The protests were historically unique marking the first attempts at the unification of Turtles and Teamsters, that is environmentalists and trade unionists in common cause. The policies of environmental destruction were also destroying jobs and livelihoods. The shared interest was obvious. Clearly, little progress was made and the relationships failed to last.

Twenty years later we find circumstances far worse and the social divisions re-cemented. Yesterday the largest industrial trade unions in the UK – Unite and the GMB – intentionally boycotted the protests and threatened to discipline any of their employees who attended. The “official” policy commitments to a Just Transition away from carbon jobs are yet to permeate through to honest acceptance of the Emergency and the need to Act Now.

And, just as negatively, any acknowledgement by the environmental movement that we could sure do with the help and support of 6 million organised trade unionists is shallow and secondary at best. I belong to the tendency which recognises that the fusion of environmental concern with the concerns of the organised working class is essential. 

Societal transformation to green jobs, carbon-neutral housing, low-emission integrated mass-transport systems free at the point of use, localised production and distribution, re-enfranchisement through citizens’ participative workplace democracy, will all make life better for the mass of the working class. The shitty carbon jobs, the filth of coal and oil, diesel carcinogens and plastic particulates can all be eradicated if production is re-organised. 

Global heating means nothing can stay the same and the coming catastrophes mean nothing will stay the same. We, the working majority with little or no resource to hand other than our bodies and minds, have got to unite to protect ourselves and survive. It is the collective power of the organised working class that is essential to beat the deniers. 

The non-violent direct action of mass strikes can shut down the polluting industries far more certainly than any mass protest. The democratic decisions of mass union meetings focussed on the necessary industrial re-boot have far more immediate clout than any Citizens Assembly however constituted (to be clear I’m not advocating an either-or approach). The unity of environmentalists and trade unionists can produce the critical mass required for fundamental system change.

Right now, both “sides” need to listen to the others’ feedback, and come together. 

Sunday 13th October 2019