Tag: politics

Labour Dumps the Climate

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

The hypocrisy and negligence of the political class in Britain is second to none. Amongst all the travesties, from the inhumanity towards Palestinians in Gaza to the one-in-three children living in relative poverty here at home, the disassociation of politicians from the lives of the vast majority is total. The denial of Climate Chaos is just one element, but a crucial one. This is the unedited version of my weekly Comment in the daily Plymouth Herald newspaper, wholly inadequate in the face of the absurdity and corruption of Parliamentary politics today.

So, not only the Tories but  now the Labour Party have dropped their pledges towards emissions reductions. Labour have taken away the pledge of £28 billion a year promised to protect us from global warming. 

Workers want the the investment in new infrastructure, Labour’s green industrial policy promising new jobs at a time when vacancies are falling and companies going bust, better public transport as travel costs escalate, cleaner city air to combat extreme pollution levels, and cheaper electricity, or at least affordable! 

Now it looks like the remaining funds identified will be eaten-up by the continued commitment to the absurdly expensive and wasteful nuclear power programme at the expense of all else.

Germany, meanwhile, alongside states across Europe and even the USA, is increasing investment, the country’s investment bank identifying green (non-nuclear) investment to a total of 15% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product. 

Britain needs the same level of infrastructure rebuild, if not more.

After the hottest year ever, with extreme weather shocking and destroying communities across the world, 2023 officially crossed the safe limit for global temperature increase. Yet there is no part of our political establishment prepared to take the threat of the deepening climate crisis seriously. 

Our economy, our food supply, our personal safety, indeed our freedom is at risk from the global Climate Catastrophe. We are facing disaster.

Why would politicians not act? It would appear that their prime purpose is to trumpet denial in front of the deniers. The political chase for the far-right and populist vote has become very dangerous. Tories are chasing the far-right “Reform” vote, Labour is chasing the Tory vote. The Greens have shifted rightwards to prove their commitment to a Capitalist future.

None are representative. Years of research prove that the vast majority of workers are concerned about climate change. Why wouldn’t we be? We have children and grandchildren, we enjoy the Great Outdoors, and we really value the world’s wildlife. There is huge concern for the growing level of extinction of everything from polar bears to bees, and we are more alert than ever to the threat from toxic pollution, chemicals and plastics.

Our collective problem is our own perceived lack of agency. We are continually instructed and moralised to that we should change our lifestyles, as if this is all our fault. But, whilst most of us recycle, we simply haven’t the resources to make the scale of change needed.

So when people in power instruct us to move away from car use whilst at the same time cutting back on public transport, we rightly feel put-upon and abused. 

When low-emissions zones are proposed to limit the high levels of debilitating city pollution but we are fined rather than facilitated, it is in the context of human rights that we shout-out and challenge the imposition.

When we are shouted at from a moral high-ground to buy an electric car when half our income goes out in rent and the other half in food and utilities, our personal debt racked-up by avaricious bankers and fossil fuel corporations, our blood rightly boils! 

But this is not climate denial! It is our outrage at the intentional demolition of society.

Working class families expect and demand a health service free at the point of need, an education service as-of-right for each of our children, a safe community to live in. Only the very rich care nothing for social infrastructure funded through the common purse, because they alone, the top fifteen percent. The rich are self-sufficient, protected in their accumulated wealth – they don’t need society and are contemptuous of it.

But it can also feel we are being talked down to and patronised by a middle class who at least have some agency and lifestyle choices. 

For the rest of us, our very survival requires the industries and System reliant on fossil fuels to be changed, completely, at societal level. 

The end of reliance on fossil fuels is a collective economic necessity. All the wealth, resource and technology is available now with which to save humanity and the environment, it is only the investment that is not.

We need government that organises and manages the basic needs of life. Our human drive for existence drives our demand for the infrastructure to prevent climate chaos and adapt to ensure safety from periods of extreme weather – floods, fires, droughts – as a basic human right.

The political class, overwhelmingly members of the top 5% of the wealthy, is cut-off from the lives of the vast majority of us, the working class. In this pre-election period they are second-guessing what we think, misinformed by absurdly superficial feedback from tiny chat-groups and social network 

The last thing we need is moralistic lectures from above. Essentially, we need agency.

Eleven million homes require insulation and refit away from gas and oil – that means mass funding of jobs and resources to bring our housing into the twenty-first century. We know that private landlords will not dip into their private profits in order to do this, so legislation and tax-cash is vital to force the change. We deserve warmer drier homes, but Labour has now reneged on that promise.

Public transport is not public at all, but run by private companies for their profit. We need massive public investment for an affordable and integrated transport system that gets us where we need to be when we need to be there. We need electrification of our bus and rail systems, Tory and now Labour unprepared to help.

And essentially, we urgently need complete refit of our electricity transmission system so that the renewable energy can get from where it’s made, off-and-onshore, to where it’s needed. 

That’s what Labour promised to do, against the Tory nonsense that the “private sector” will pay for it despite the negative return on any investment. 

Only a mass movement for mass investment, threatening the Vote, will force the political change needed. Only the wealthy can deny the need, even tho’ they, too, will face the social collapse as the climate system fragments. And trade unions have the collective power in workplaces to demand adaptation at an industrial level. It’s time to act!

Support for Palestine Will Be Maintained

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment column in the daily Plymouth Herald, published on 6th February 2024, ranting again about the genocide in Gaza. This 100+ days of rabid slaughter and wanton destruction exposes the true face of western imperialism, and the level of institutional hegemony sustained by the military-industrial complex, apparently unassailable. So confident are our masters that we can put into print almost anything, we can protest in our millions, yet they do as they please, and they bomb with pleasure. The Movement must grow.

Almost absent from news media has been the prolonged and immense amount of protest for Palestine. The numbers are enormous.

Last Saturday more than 200,000 marched from the BBC to Downing Street in London, demanding coverage of the call for a ceasefire in Gaza and the end of financial and military support to Israel  from the British Government.

The numbers in London were fewer than the November march of 800,000 largely because of the simultaneous numbers of local protests in most towns and cites, including Plymouth.

This time, a large array of of trade union banners were brandished and trade union General Secretaries spoke at the rally. Their call was for a workplace day of action on Wednesday 7th February, with students and workers showing their solidarity with stoppages, lunchtime walkouts and open air meetings. There will be such a lunchtime protest at Plymouth University.

The horror of the last 100+ days of the War on Gaza is observable through social media and on the Al Jazeera news channel, so transparently opposite to all coverage on BBC, ITV and Ch4 News as to question the ideological bent of editors on all media.

Much of the mortal statistics cannot be denied simply because of the video imagery. To see the entire North of Gaza flattened by aerial and ground bombardment makes any challenge to the numbers said to be dead and injured quite incredible. High Tech weaponry and high explosives against defenceless and homeless civilians.

67,000 Palestinians injured and 35,000 killed including at least 30,000 civilians: 15,000 children and 7,000 women, 700 healthcare professionals killed. Two million people displaced, more than two-hundred thousand homes collapsed, three hundred schools destroyed, twenty six hospitals bombed. Cultural centres, universities and mosques completely destroyed in an effort to eradicate any trace of the heritage and culture of Palestine completely.

Perhaps of the most immediate concern, the denial of food, clean water, sanitation and medicines is now resulting in hundreds of thousand of the entrapped two million human beings suffering all the deadly illnesses that sit alongside disease, malnutrition and starvation. 

All this is visible daily online. 

Quite openly, Israeli government ministers state their aim of permanently occupying the entire area and ending Gaza as a Palestinian homeland.

It should be of little wonder that the International Court of Justice has opened an inquiry into the charge of “genocide” against the Israeli State military and government. Probably of more surprise is the United States demanding Israel stop the killing and displacement in Palestine’s West Bank, albeit at the same time as supplying more military aid to the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).

The hypocrisy and duplicity of the United States and United Kingdom, continually blocking any negotiated permanent ceasefire should be investigated as part of the crime of genocide. 

It is impossible for anyone to suggest this is a two-sided war. The scenes of suffering in Gaza are indescribable. The withdrawal of US/UK/German aid the the UN relief agency UNWRA on the challenged basis that a handful out of their hundreds of thousands of local staff may or may not have worked with Hamas is now so questionable and unconscionable that many countries are increasing their funding for UNWRA, including Span, Portugal, Ireland and Scotland.

Why is this so poorly reported? And why is our political class supporting and funding this horror so enthusiastically? The answer is a toxic mix of political opportunism, support for the power of western imperialism to impose economic and military control across the rest of the world, and protection of the profits of the oil corporations and arms manufacturers over-and-above any humanitarian considerations.

The question of social justice is always paramount for trade unionists, focussed as we are upon challenging oppression and exploitation, at home and abroad. There are undoubtedly those who seek to condemn the entire Palestinian people as deserving of this fate, but the vast majority recognise the suffering of fellow human beings as a cause for care and compassion.

Justice for the Palestinian people will require more than compassion. We need to challenge the corporations here who fund the Israeli military either by investments or the selling of Israeli goods. To end the mass killing we have to challenge the Israeli State as a settler-colonialist endeavour based upon forcing Palestinians out of their homelands. And we have to expose the political creed of Zionism as a wholly abhorrent racist ideology wholly separate from Judaism and the human rights of Jewish people. It s not antisemitic to challenge Zionism.

The protests will not end until there is a permanent ceasefire, and that means challenging support for Israel in workplaces and colleges. We need to increase the mass pressure for a ceasefire. We’ll be marching again locally every Saturday, and nationally on the 17th. The campaign will not end without justice for the Palestinian people – Freedom for Palestine!

The Climate Crisis Demands a Unified Response

Tony StauntonLeave a comment

My weekly Comment in the daily Plymouth Herald, published on 2nd January 2024, making very basic and obvious points about the refreshed politic of climate denial being ramped-up by the mainstream parties. As the General Election looms closer, the backtracking and pooh-poohing of demands for action to save people and planet are going to overwhelm the mainstream media, despite all evidence to the contrary. We have to speak out and Act Now!

Last weekend’s welcomed rest and relaxation was certainly disrupted. Fierce downpours onto already sodden land ensured more local flooding. The transport disruption and electricity outages had one common cause – our increasingly extreme weather conditions.

There’s more to come. According to the World Metereological Association, 2023 saw a “deafening cacophony of broken records” across all climate measurements, the record heat set to escalate due to the “super El Niño” this year. Entire regions are already experiencing environmental and social catastrophe.

Last  year was the hottest year on record, and 2024 will be hotter still. Extreme heat, driven not only by the unprecedented levels of greenhouse gas emissions but also the development of the peak in the eleven year cycle of ocean warming, will ensure more intense heatwaves, wildfires and heavy rains which will threaten food production and transport dislocation.

The response to this, locally and globally, is abysmal. Here, and across much of the world, governments and politicians are pulling back from previous commitments and any future promises towards climate action.

In general they consider that any State spending on emissions reduction is a vote loser, the majority of the electorate (not the same grouping as the majority of the population) do not want to see tax money spent on social infrastructure such as home insulation, subsidies for renewable energy production and carbon-zero heating. 

This is untrue, of course. Most of us are worried about climate change, made anxious not so much the big threats of species extinction and global climate collapse which we feel powerless to affect, but the local day-to-day and observable impacts that cause us higher costs and growing discomfort. 

We also share a common nagging tension at the back of our heads about the potential major challenges facing our children. 

But the reaction against climate action is gaining hold. 2024 is election year, not just here in the UK but in the huge economies of the United States and India as well as countries across Europe. 

In every country where political tension is increasing due to the continuing cost-of-living crisis, investment in social infrastructure is being disparaged and condemned in favour of tax cuts – mainly for the wealthy. 

A narrative is being stoked – squeeze the power and costs of the State and free us all to live by our own wits and resources. It is an extreme individualist argument, borne of the far-Right of the political spectrum which always espouses survival of the fittest – despising and damning the poor and those in need of levels of help they cannot manage alone. 

The organised far-Right in every land is growing in capacity and influence. And the traditionally mainstream parties are kowtowing to this contrived “populist” vote, scapegoating minorities and ridiculing warnings of potential catastrophe. 

The “culture wars” are being ramped-up to publicly condemn any show of concern for others, for social welfare, or for the climate, as “woke”, spineless and unrealistic. 

There appears to be no mainstream party now demanding the scale of action required to reorder society to ensure resilience to the deepening climate crisis. The challenge to the Climate Movement, failing to be heard let alone to win timely government acton at the scale required, is immense. 

Nevertheless, our strategy has to be broadcast. Nothing less than a National Climate Service, overseeing all government agencies and ensuring the focus of all policy and spending towards climate action, will ensure protection of the tens of millions of working class people here. We require help to mitigate environmentally destructive routines and adapt to life inside unpredictable environmental conditions. 

This cannot be achieved by a local and piecemeal approach alone. We have to campaign for societal reorganisation and investment. And this year, that campaign is distinctly ideological, openly challenging the forces of corporate power and far-Right class privilege.