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Former NUM Yorkshire Area Executive member's Climate Camp Report

billshutt | 18.08.2008 19:20 | Climate Camp 2008 | Climate Chaos | Workers' Movements | Sheffield

Dave Douglass former NUM Yorkshire Area Executive member writes this report of his visit to the so called Climate Camp.
Yorkshire NUM website

In August, me an Arthur Scargill enter another big field to fight the corner for the miners and coal our industry and cause. Last time it was that field at Orgreave, this time it’s the Climate Camp at Kingsnorth Power Station and instead of thousands of cops there’s thousands of eco-warriors who now believe coal is killing the planet and want to stop all new coal stations.

If truth were known, they want to close down all coal stations per sae. This time there is only Arthur, and me, we have no squads of pickets, no marching bands and no flying banners. It is in many respects as daunting a prospect, but it shows the quality of this man, our differences aside, he came into the teeth of opposition with an unpopular and untrendy message, among people who are hardly receptive to his old school brand of Marxist-Leninist socialism but prepared to debate till the cows come home why the NUM and clean coal technology are allies in the struggle for a socialist ecology and a just world.

Arthur is now 70 and I am 60, I think we present a figure of two rather battered and scarred alley cats come for a peace conference with the league of dogs. This is a sad and confusing conjuncture of forces. I have never in my life experienced a situation where the miners and what we do is the unpopular foe except among the ruling class and Tories.

Outside of the Young Conservatives, I have never known young people regard mining and pit heads as their enemy. What is worse is that these are my traditional constituency on the Anarchist left, they have the aura of the hippies, they aspire to the freedoms and love of life, which our 60s/70s generation did. I come across the Newcastle and Scottish camp, and know many of the activists from the Toon scene and demonstrations. Previously we have always held each other in a silent mutual respect, now there is a mutual distance, coolness, a sort of mutual Et tu Brutus. However, I see here also the mortified conviction of my own anti-nuclear youth. The conviction that myself and the world were on the brink of extinction. The certainty that if we delay we are all doomed to a wretched and painful end. Now it is climate change, and the gathering speed with which the earth is crashing toward climatical obliteration ironically for all carbon based creatures and vegetation on the earth as we know it. A change, which will cleanse us all from the surface of the globe for eternity.

The camp like some latter day Woodstock; they are a commonwealth, locked in debate and dedication, little communities with kids romping through the fields, longhaired, dreadlocked, singing and dancing. It is deeply wounding to be the enemy.

This is an anti-Durham gala, everywhere are Workshops on mining, on resistance around the world to mining of all descriptions, pictures of headgear and open cast, industry and miners, and the campaigns against them. It is like a Durham miner’s gala on bad acid. Instead of everywhere a celebration of the miners, our work, our communities, are protests for its end. I am shocked that many left groups are now Groupies to the eco movement and have abandoned all attempts at class analysis.

Arthur’s worst critic in the field is the local secretary of The Socialist Party, who tells him the NUM and miners’ struggle was yesterday’s cause, this was where the struggle was now, that Eon and the big generators to facilitate their profits are using us. I argue the opposite that every attack on coal feeds the nuclear agenda, sets the agenda for government policy. I remind them too that they are enthusiastic supporters of EON when it comes to ramming wind turbines down the throats of protesting locals resolved not to have them.

Around the tent, are dotted Trade Union members of the SWP are they now ready to bury him having once been full of his praise? For a month, the Weekly Worker has carried uncritical adverts for the camp while the Morning Star warned me I was underestimating the forthcoming climate holocaust and declined my article criticising the camp.

I have the honour to have wrote the official NUM bulletin The Miners and The Climate Camp, which Ken Capstick the Miner’s editor has managed to reduce from 8 sides to four with a bit of clever editing. I’ve humped 2000 of them in a huge bag from Doncaster and have spent the morning spreading them round the field, where they are received with less than enthusiasm. About 150 protesters turn up to the tent, where Arthur and I are speaking from 1500 in the field. Their bottom line argument is we shouldn’t be generating so much power anyway, it should be cut by 50% and we need to get use to not having electricity.

Arthur gets one of the Greens scientific officers to admit she was talking about taking out all nuclear and coal capacity, which would leave Britain virtually without power generation of any sort.

They are non-plussed by the fact that we both accept practical renewables, that we see solar energy as the long-term future for the planet. That many other clean sources, as long as they are not equally environmentally damaging (like land wind turbines) should be deployed along with mass insulation projects and energy saving programmes. But that coal should be the base supply agent and buy the world a breathing space so long as we developed carbon capture systems to burn it cleanly.

There is sympathy for the miners generally accepted as the most exploited people in Britain over the last century, but there has to be losers if we are to save the Planet, and we have been chosen to be it. Few people believe that CO2 capture works, and anyway will not be ready ‘in time’ to stop the climate going into free fall.

At the same time as facing the Climate Camp and linked to it across the left and green movement, more and more people are coming over to the Government programme for nuclear power, and an end to coal mining and coal burning in Britain. I have argued far and wide that clean coal is the alternative to a civil nuclear programme. I am stunned to be told the NUM’s new policy supports both coal and nuclear although I still claim this to be untrue. It needs urgent clarification, because this is a central plank in our defence.

I am asked to give a Workshop on the relevance and importance of the great 84/5 coal strike, nine people come. The relevance clearly isn’t too well established.
‘The Earth’ becomes an abstraction, humanity is some sort of foreign and alien invader and the storm troops, this time not of the TUC but of tidal waves, poverty and death, are the miners.

Of course, Arthur’s arguments are not totally mine, he talks of ‘dirty foreign coal’ and unfair competition, slave labour and child labour, these are not my arguments. Import controls are not a progressive answer, in my view, but I am for a level playing field of subsidies and a ‘fair trade’ standard of terms, conditions and union rights, which would be, for the millions of coal miners abroad as much as for us. We agree though that clean coal technology is an achievable science now, and it is vital that it is applied wholesale across coal generation.

The cops are arseholes as usual I am stopped and searched two sometimes three times a day, against my consent and often with force. Indeed, I am almost arrested, which would have been proved interesting in court. They could hardly argue they had reasonable grounds for suspecting I was going to sabotage the Power Station when I had gone down two thirds of the country with half a tonne of literature in its defence.

They attack the camp on numerous occasions and lay into protesters with truncheons; day after day, they line people against the fence from the very youngest toddlers to very old people, and search and harass them. Arthur makes a very strong Statement to the media at the gate, in defence of the right to protest and welcomes the protesters invitation to him and to debate this vital issue.

It was a privilege to stand with Arthur again, in the teeth of opposition again, though we could have done with thousands more supporters so short sighted ‘greens’ are not allowed to dominate this crucial debate.

I am trying to put together a Labour Movement Conference on Climate, Class and Clean Coal in Newcastle for the end of the year, and very much hope the NUM sponsor it and supply key speakers.

billshutt
- e-mail: billshutt@ntlworld.com

Additions

Labour Movement Conference; Class, Climate Change and Clean Coal

10.09.2008 10:39

Sat 1st Nov
Bridge Hotel, Newcastle
Confirmed speakers: Arthur Scargill, Ian Lavery, Davie Hopper, Davie Guy, David Douglass, environmentalists including Climate Campers
RMT, UNITE, NUM, IWW (Tyne and Wear Branch).

Aquaintance of David Douglass


Comments

Hide the following 16 comments

Dave tells it as he sees it

18.08.2008 22:29

I read this message from Dave about the Climate camp and cannot believe the degree of arrogance by those who think a 'climate Holocaust' is on its way. Shall we start by mentioning the bullshitter who posted this message, whose stupid name does them no favours.

Lets look at the climate camp and its importance for a moment? Those ultra greenies climate campers are having no impact on peoples lives and consciousness, all they represent is a politicised minority of a minority. They have no relationship with any social bases and groups in the rest of society, except perhaps the well meaning liberal greenies who do nothing significant politically.

Instead, as if by magic, 3k people arrive out of god knows where, drawn together by a green holocaust protest. Now, perhaps you consider me being too dismissive but it is vitally important that groups of people in the different regions of Britain are brought on board e.g. from the former coalfield areas. Otherwise your ultra green sailing ship will never be part of a fleet which is needed, and the climate camp remains an inverted iceberg with 9 tenths visible ABOVE the water line rather than below.

In short, Dave and Arthur represented thousands of other people as they tried to get you to at least think about coal, and the ultra greenies in their sealed right on shell were all there was.

Neither Ultra left nor ultra green.


Not a fair assessment

18.08.2008 23:18

This is not a very fair or helpful assessment. A few clarifications might help and raise this to the level where a useful discussion can take place.

Firstly the reason that there were only 150 people at Arthur's workshop might have something to do with the fact that the camp was under heavy physical attack at the time. Most people there were actively defending the camp from riot police entering from two points. It wasn't entirely clear that the camp wouldn't be physically smashed and prevented from happening. I stumbled across Arthur's talk by accident and was amazed it was happening. Hardly any workshops were taking place at that time and those that was had hardly anyone at them. I'm absolutely positive the talk would have been packed if not for those circumstances.

Similarly the low attendance at the miner strike workshop might have something to do with Dave Douglas changing the time of the workshop from that in the program meaning that the only way you could attend was if you had been told personally. I was certainly pissed off when I realised it had already happened.

In fact I was pleasantly surprised that the workshops I went to on class and capitalism were very well attended. In fact for us anti-capitalists at the camp Arthur and Dave's visit was a really useful moment in introducing a class perspective. That climate change doesn't affect us all the same, that there are different interests, that we are not all in this together. The problem was that despite Dave’s rhetoric neither he nor Arthur had a class perspective on this. When they spoke it was as if the miners and the bosses of coal companies had the same interests.

The debate at Arthur’s talk was very poor. Both sides reduced the argument to the viability of clean coal technology. Dave seemed convinced that clean coal technology would be perfected in 5 years and so there was no climate change crisis. If this were so then an agreement with those at the camp would also be no problem. The demand would be no new coal until clean coal is proven and compulsory.

But of course this is nowhere near getting to the root of the problem. It isn’t a technical problem but a social one. Those most at risk from the effects of climate change are the poorest and least powerful. They are the ones most in need of the kind of fundamental transformations that are needed to prevent climate change and that means that climate change and social justice are absolutely tied up with each other. Including the fact that miners and other workers aren’t left to bear the cost of the transformations needed. It should also be remembered that anti-mining struggles across the globe are being led by mining communities. The demand “Leave it in the ground” is accompanied by demands that communities are paid not to mine the coal or allow oil to be pumped.

No one I came across at the climate camp saw the miners as the enemy and a surprisingly large number of them saw capitalism as the enemy. If Dave could put aside his conviction that the climate camp is the enemy we could start the serious and difficult job of developing a politics that doesn’t push differences under the table either by blind faith in speculative science or all in it together catastrophism and start to address the multiple crisis affecting the world. The food crisis, credit crunch, energy crisis, climate crisis, peak oil, all have the same cause – capitalism and in particular neo-liberalism.

In the anti-capitalist camp


Always on the same side

18.08.2008 23:19

What a quality article to find on Indymedia, it speaks with a voice of sincerity that's all too rare in these days of impact media. I'd shake that man's hand any time he offered it.

I don't agree with him, though. Carbon Capture sounds like an afterthought with all the corners cut, and preaching the lesser of too evils with nuclear power leaves us no wiser as to a way out of this mess. The grandchildren of miners now toil mentally and psychologically in the service economy, and the political activists of the working class need to find a way of delivering them from their own, modern version of the 'company store con'.

Giving them the collective pride that the miners used to embody, and by the sounds of it still do, must be the aim of any working class movement. The climate camp is an important tool for the moral middle classes to show that they can be a major part of the solution, as well as the problem. A similar unifying event needs to be built for the working class left to come together to talk about what THEY have in common (if only to see all those cocky climate camp coppers shit their fucking britches for a change). I would like to see that event powered by renewable energies, not coal, but that would hardly be the most important matter on the agenda!

Unions don't work, structurally and ideologically, in the 21st Century. Their top-down structure leaves them prone to manipulation by relatively small blocs and groups that succeed in their own agenda while milking the membership. With my own eyes, I've seen deals done behind the members' backs that made me feel dirty just being there. A union of 200,000 that demands loyalty to the leadership can NEVER represent its individual members. In the 21st Century it can only offer staff discount deals and a chance to be on the right side of the pay deal when one group of distant strangers is sacrificed for another . The ends can never justify the means, whatever the time saved and whatever is best in the long run. An true affiliation of affiliates must be the model. The NUM is not that model. Working Class Unionism doesn't work at the moment. We MUST find a way to make it work in the future.

The climate campers are overwhelmingly middle-class in attitude and outlook. Autonomy (and to a certain extent, poverrty) is a game to be played for a week, with no real cause or effect on what is one of the most priveliged lifestyles on the planet. Most can't see the hypocrisy most others see in their message of 'making collective sacrifices' when it was them and their parents that sacrificed the collective 30 years ago.

Both groups are far from a genuine threat to the directors of power in their current states. But they are genuine bases of resistance to capitalism, and genuine opportunities to build change - on the idealism of the climate camp as a way forward, and the NUM as a symbol of reawakened working class unity that links to the most glorious of pasts.

The climate camp and the NUM (and what they represent in a wider way) have to be on the same side for us to even pretend our dreams could one day become real. They must act as a moderating check against each other, an ongoing conversation played out face-to-face. They must share a mutual respect for each other's strengths, they must share a mutual disgust at the methods the elite employ to hold on to power, and they must spur each other into taking action to bring this dark period of our history to an end before it truly begins.

New School Anarchist


N.U.M.bnuts

19.08.2008 00:01

Dave Douglass has distorted the meeting held with him and Arthur 'Stalinist' Scargill at the Climate Camp (CC). For starters, even though many people have engaged in comradely debate with comrade Dave 'is-he-an-anarchist-or-is-he-a-marxist' Douglass over the campaign to prevent the building of NEW power stations, he has consistently written in the most derogatory and misleading terms the basis of the debate.

Douglass has attempted to monopolise the "proletarian" position over coal and its supposed future but has found little support from any of the current anarchist federations, anarcho-syndicalists or even his "other" union the Industrial workers of the world (IWW). It seems on the one hand Douglass is suggesting that the big coal debate is solely on class lines i.e. the middle class wiberals from the CC and the true voice of the working class. Reality suggests something different. For instance the meeting that was held at the CC had participants from the local medway Trades Council, trade unionists and non-aligned people. Scargill was challenged coherently from the floor and in true stalinist form attempted to revised what people were saying, twisted what was said - especially around factual and objective answers. For Douglass to suggest "...that every attack on coal feeds the nuclear agenda, sets the agenda for government policy.". Well government policy is to build 6+ Coal-Fired Power Stations (as well as Nuclear) so where do you think by calling on these Coal-fired power stations not to be built are part of government policy. And Dave, how many workshops at the CC were promoting Nuclear Power?? It turns out that the only people that were promoting Nuclear is the wanker Monbiot and the NUM!!

You go on in your report to state that "their bottom line argument is we shouldn’t be generating so much power anyway, it should be cut by 50% and we need to get use to not having electricity.". Wrong again, that was one person, it was not a collective statement from the 1,500 people at the camp, or representative of the views of the people at the meeting. It goes on to say that "Arthur gets one of the Greens scientific officers to admit she was talking about taking out all nuclear and coal capacity, which would leave Britain virtually without power generation of any sort.", the point is that there is NO ENERGY GAP. It is clearly stated that:

• The amount electricity generating capacity reduction by 2027 from closing old coal and nuclear power stations: 35%
• The amount of energy Gordon Brown has said we will generate from renewable sources by 2020: 40%

So where is the energy gap?

It goes on "There is sympathy for the miners generally accepted as the most exploited people in Britain over the last century, but there has to be losers if we are to save the Planet, and we have been chosen to be it." how about the millions of the worlds working class and poor who are suffering from the effects of environmental destruction caused by mining? Is it so bad to be against mining (n.b. not against miners!) when it causes a massive amount of harm to people and planet? What about the bangladeshi working class, or phillipino working class threatened with their lives due to the change of the climate? Or is it solely about the historical struggles of the miners in the UK? What happened to internationalism or has Scargill put an import tax on solidarity?!

So whats to debate? We have an opportunity to become a force for change against capitalism and its management of the economy. Climate change is a new paradigm for modern capitalism for which it will introduce a new wave of eco-totalitarian measures over the next years, as conflicts and tensions explode into one-week wars, and the geo-political map is continually being re-drawn - it is vital that any attempts to impose "solutions" through state, capital and its puppets (trade unions, "the left") are confronted.

The stakes have been raised...

for anarchy and everyday communism

anarchist


Living with the Enemy (1999 - Dave Douglass)

19.08.2008 00:43

'Geordie anarchist miner Dave Douglass lives for a week with Lord Rowallan and tries to educate and enlighten him - unsuccessfully, of course, but a fascinating and very funny film'

 http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?title=1657894359

deja vue?!


Just a suggestion

19.08.2008 11:19

The debate might be more constructive if people stop throwing labels and insults around instead of arguments.
Stalinist liberal middle class old style unreconstructed.

This issue is important and the debate needs to be conducted rationally, respectfully and without nonsense.

CH


Ego

19.08.2008 11:23

That's ok Davie, no need to thank Climate Campers for taking lots of copies of your book "All Power to the Imagination" to the Camp, distributing them and bringing them back.
The debate will be very useful if it respects the anonymity of participants. It is being organised by Workers Uniting (Amicus Section) who funded you to go and who unfortunately also currently support Nuclear.
I propose that we work together:
- Against nuclear power and nuclear weapons.
- Against new coal fired power stations that do not utilise Carbon Capture and Storage.
- For a just and rapid transition to an economy with jobs for all, full union freedoms and 100% renewable energy.
- Against all energy usage by the State.
YOU have said that WE have a "poverty of politics"!

Climate Camper


who's the enemy!?

19.08.2008 13:29

Dave (I hope you'll be reading this) - Thanks for coming to the climate camp. However, you paint your time there and our diverse views strangely.

It is not the miners who are the enemy, but coal mining and other things which are dooming our children's future. Haven't you heard so many climate campers talking about Just Transition? In the US Earth First!ers and lumber trade unionists worked together to fight against old growth forest destruction - as they say, 'No Jobs on a Dead Planet'. Just Transition is about working with people in industries that are dooming us, to reskill to do other work as those industries are closed, and life-sustaining ones grow. People often quote the huge number of people employed by the German renewables industry, which has had government support unlike here. Compare that to 30 people employed by an open-cast mine. Hopefully we can celebrate the strength of mining communities, the history of highs and lows, together, but look forward to a brighter future for those communities and everyone else too.

Yes there is a danger that being anti-new coal at the moment feeds the nuclear agenda, but I hope most people realise that coal is the current target because of timescales of construction and decision-making, then we must move on to oppose nukes. Unfortunately we gave a platform to people into a strong state and nuclear power, and people who we ask to do things for us, rather than doing them and stopping things ourselves. Hopefully that will be a matter of much debate, and the same mistake won't be made again. As to opposition to wind-farms - I think that's because it's mostly vocal middle-class areas that are having to face up to the realities and responsibilities of stopping climate chaos; they forget that it is the poorer areas that already have the polluting heavy industry and power generation that keeps their lifestyles cushty.

And because I want coal & nukes to be closed NOW, does not mean that that will happen - obviously there has to be a transition to sustainable energy production and energy efficiency measures.

It's a pity I didn't have time to come to your workshop on the miners' strike - I wanted to, as I'm sure I'd have learnt more about it than I did at the time. It's an important part of my political development.

It's a shame you felt like you were in the teeth of the opposition. I hope you at least got to drink tea or eat food with folk there - sometimes the most productive conversations are informal and not in meetings.

Neither Ultra left nor ultra green - you haven't a clue from what you write, about the people who were at the camp nor their lives when not in a field, their links to communities, etc blah. Your bile is misplaced and untrue.

And to Dave and 'Climate Camper' (who's aims I disagree strongly with) - as to the much talked about Carbon Capture and Storage - it's nonsense to base decisions and discuss something which is many many years off commercial development (maybe it'll work, maybe it won't). And in any case, it's just yet another technofix, which doesn't address the underlying issues - we consume too much, and do it very inefficiently. As 'In the anti-capitalist camp' says, "It isn’t a technical problem but a social one."


another climate camper


hey...

20.08.2008 12:22

'Neither Ultra left nor ultra green' this was a simple cut & paste from the Yorkshire NUM website. I made no comment on the article so criticising me for my name shows you for what you are! I just thought people might be interested.....

billshutt
mail e-mail: billshutt@ntlworld.com


working class camper

20.08.2008 22:30

What's all this shite about the Climate Camp being some sort of middle class wankfest. If you actually bothered to check us out rather than shouting from the other side of the fence you'd have learned that there are plenty of us who were involved in the nitty-gritty of putting on the camp that are solidly working class. It's a crap argument if the only way you feel you can win your argument is by avoiding the facts in favour of disenfranchising those of us from the working class who see this as a global issue. Not once in all the arguments from those who claim to be representing the miners was there an actual take on the actual issues the Climate Camp was seeking to confront.

I read the NUM rag - it was an opinionated rant, short on fact or rational argument; it misrepresented and needlessly polarised, and I was embarressed to see it on camp. It was a clear failure of marxist-left analysis which has helped bring the movement down. More power to the anarchos who have a stronger political analysis of climate change which considers the needs of the global working class rather than the NUM's short-sightedness.

The unions are for the most part toothless dinosaurs that have betrayed their membership. But that is always the problem with marxist organisation with their elite hierarchies and cults of personalities. Time to bring it back to the actual workers, eh?

unnecessary


unnecessary

20.08.2008 22:56

"What's all this shite about the Climate Camp being some sort of middle class wankfest. If you actually bothered to check us out rather than shouting from the other side of the fence you'd have learned that there are plenty of us who were involved in the nitty-gritty of putting on the camp that are solidly working class. It's a crap argument if the only way you feel you can win your argument is by avoiding the facts in favour of disenfranchising those of us from the working class who see this as a global issue. Not once in all the arguments from those who claim to be representing the miners was there an actual take on the actual issues the Climate Camp was seeking to confront.

I read the NUM rag - it was an opinionated rant, short on fact or rational argument; it misrepresented and needlessly polarised, and I was embarressed to see it on camp. It was a clear failure of marxist-left analysis which has helped bring the movement down. More power to the anarchos who have a stronger political analysis of climate change which considers the needs of the global working class rather than the NUM's short-sightedness.

The unions are for the most part toothless dinosaurs that have betrayed their membership. But that is always the problem with marxist organisation with their elite hierarchies and cults of personalities. Time to bring it back to the actual workers, eh?

unnecessary"

And that isn't an opinionated rant?

less blinkered


yep, it's opinionated

21.08.2008 09:45

but then I'm not trying to speak on behalf of an entire section of people. It is my opinion and my opinion alone as someone insulted by the patronising approach adopted by Douglass and Scargill when they think that they know best for the working classes, and feel that they can talk down to the Climate Camp without actually engaging in the points of fact which motivate the campers. A class to which I belong, btw.

When Douglass, Scargill and the dinosaurs of the Union movement in the UK stand up and recognize how climate change is going to devastate the working classes first and foremost, then I'll have some respect for them. Right now all they are little better than stooges for the bosses, whether they reallize it or not. It was the same at Heathrow - short-sighted power-grabbing careerists failing to honestly represent the workers movement by refusing to engage practically in the problems facing us through climate change.

See you in the fields, mate.

unnecessary


Clarification

21.08.2008 11:13

Another climate camper; which of my "AIMS" (I meant them as proposals for consensus based action of the Climate Camp with the NUM & UNITE) do you "strongly disagree with"? To act against all new fossil fuelled power stations that do not utilise Carbon Capture and Storage is (in my opinion but not that of Arthur Scargill) to act against all real large scale fossil fuelled power stations.

Climate Camper


unnecessary

21.08.2008 18:05

Oh, it hadn't occurred to me that any such attempt had been made to speak on behalf of "an entire section of people;" or which "entire section of people" you believe is being alluded to. As a piece of writing it is highly personalized and subjective, and as an earlier poster rightly mentions, it is sincere. Just as the attempts of the NUM, Steel Workers, Railway Workers, Dockers, and every other "dinosaur" you condemn tried tooth and nail, sacrificing literally their own blood, sweat and tears, to preserve their way of life in the face of Thatcherism and Keynesian freemarket policy (drip down economy, etc) was sincere. More sincere, I suspect, than your claim to be a member of that "class."

You won't find me in the fields, not unless it's for a picnic or a bloody good hike - too busy working, you see? Oh, did you think JSA makes you working class? No, it makes you a Job Seeker.

But the article is correct - every generation has its end of the world theories, going back thousands of years, and mostly these theories tend to hinder rather than help the issues which give them rise, based more on mystical urgency than on reality - it's easy to make assumptions on behalf of these third world "working classes" whom you seem to think you represent, but guess what? They want what you've got. A fridge. Digital TV. Internet. A car. Central Heating or Air Conditioning. Health. Security. Not some gobshite in a field telling them it's time to go back to the Stone Age. But each to their own, hey? Happy camping!


less blinkered


Abolition of the Wage System

22.08.2008 14:13

"Less blinkered" claims that the struggles of the Miners, Steel Workers, Railway Workers, Dockers, and the working class generally, have in the past always had the soul aim of the preservation of the way of life that some workers in imperialist countries now enjoy. Many workers have in fact fought for far more progressive aims as well. There is also a proud tradition of unemployed workers in imperialist countries organising as part of our class. "Less blinkered" should read EP Thompson's History of the English Working Class and the graphical "100 years of the IWW". You will find that self education can remove your blinkers even further.

Climate Camper


climate camper

30.08.2008 19:01

"Less blinkered" claims that the struggles of the Miners, Steel Workers, Railway Workers, Dockers, and the working class generally, have in the past always had the soul aim of the preservation of the way of life that some workers in imperialist countries now enjoy. Many workers have in fact fought for far more progressive aims as well. There is also a proud tradition of unemployed workers in imperialist countries organising as part of our class. "Less blinkered" should read EP Thompson's History of the English Working Class and the graphical "100 years of the IWW". You will find that self education can remove your blinkers even further.

My understanding, through a combination of A level study, self education and suffrage, is that the first struggles of working class communities was to establish a way of life where they were not dying down pits, etc; education; health; security; political enfranchisement, etc. These may not, to some, seem like the political ideals towards which they see themselves striving, but in terms of, say, life expectancy, they had significant ramifications not just for our own way of doing things, but also globally. They set the standard. Change doesn't require the erasure of all which went before - it is adjustment which best serves human beings. You take what works (NHS, DSS, etc, all of which were fought for by exactly these people) and you see how you can improve on these. I don't disagree with dissociating yourself from the "system" as a means of affecting the "system" - i.e. opting out of work and receipt of benefits, etc - I've done this myself in the past. But you can't affect change alone, or by dissing those who have achieved goals alternative to your own. It's the old inclusive/exclusive argument again, but you must surely know this from your own experience, anyway. But thanks, I'll look up the book recommended, and hope we can all remove our blinkers together.

less blinkered


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