24th April 2024:
The trade union wing of the Campaign Against Climate Change held a one day conference connecting the trade union movement with the climate movement on Sat 13th April in London, which I attended. One of the workshops I went to that day was one regarding the Our Power report, published by Friends of the Earth Scotland and Platform.
The report took place over 3 years and interviewed thousands of north sea workers about the idea of a ‘just transition’ away from oil and gas. The report was summarised into ten ‘demands’ that the workers wanted from a just transition away from fossil fuels.
It sounded like an amazing report, with lots to take onboard if you’re involved in the climate movement, and although I’ve not yet read it, I plan to, and when I have, I will write another blog about it. This blog in the meantime is going to be on the workshop I attended, which had speakers from Platform and Friends of the Earth Scotland, as well as the individual who originally undertook the research.
There was an undercurrent throughout the workshop which was implicitly anti-environmentalist, and which greatly disturbed me. In fact, the workshop seemed to validate far right views and narratives about the environmental movement, narratives that the oil and gas workers must have absorbed from crass media outlets like The Daily Mail or The Sun, and to present them as facts. Instead of challenging them, the workshop panel validated them.
The basic view put forward in the workshop was that the environmental movement had done wrong and harm to the oil and gas workers for many years, indeed that it had oppressed them, and ignored them, and silenced them, and now the oil and gas workers were speaking out about it, angry about their oppression and the suffering they have endured by the environmental movement, and telling the environmental movement, no, demanding that the environmental movement incorporate their demands, or else.
The speaker from Platform opened the workshop by telling all those present that the report corrected wrong that had been done by the environmental movement, and began the process of undoing the harm that had been caused. This speaker also spoke about how one oil and gas worker had said he would like to give the environmentalists ‘a good thrashing’, as though to indicate how strongly the workers felt about the environmentalists and the ‘oppression’ they had meted out to them.
I mean, first off, what is all this ‘harm and oppression’ that the climate movement is supposed to have meted out to the oil and gas workers? The workshop panel presented far right views of how the climate movement sought to steal the jobs of the workers and leave them starving in the street as though these views were real, and not fictional narratives invented by the far right, and that these workers were probably absorbing from crass media outlets like The Daily Mail.
These narratives are totally fictional. No environmental or climate NGO has ever called for a transition away from fossil fuels that does not provide alternative jobs for workers. The panel didn’t present a single example of where the environmental movement has ‘oppressed’ or ‘harmed’ the oil and gas workers, or where it had called for them all to be sacked in order to save the planet. Not one example, because, of course, there are no examples. None. Zero. These are just made up narratives that the junk media and far right groups parrot out in order to provoke anti-environmentalist sentiment which they can ultilise for their own cause.
I was somewhat flabbergasted to see, at a trade union conference about climate change, these views being presented as accurate reflections of reality, when they are complete fictions.
And is it really appropriate for staff from Platform to talk about oil and gas workers threatening to beat up environmentalists at a conference about climate change, without challenging that at all? I mean, no challenge to the toxic view that environmentalists are a threat to oil and gas workers, and no challenge at all to the extremist view that environmentalists should be beaten up. None whatsoever. Instead, these kind of anecdotes are presented as appropriate, as though they are indicative of how hard done by the workers have been by the environmental movement, and as a result how angry they are, instead of the truth, which is that these kinds of attitudes among some oil and gas workers reflect how ignorant, bigoted and aggressive they are. These attitudes are toxic, and in no way reflect anything at all remotely resembling a coherent and valid narrative about the environmental movement, but rather paint a bleak picture of how ugly the culture of some of these workers is, and how mindless they are when they parrot out these views and these levels of hate.
At one point someone from the audience, a London Underground train driver who was also a member of the socialist group Workers Liberty and had been involved in the now defunct sub-group Worker’s Climate Action, talked about how at the Kingsnorth Climate Camp in 2008 the climate movement had also ignored their pleas for us to go to Kingsnorth and engage the workers. I made a point of finding ths guy after the workshop. I told him I had been at Kingsnorth, and remembered the discussions about the workers. I asked him why he didn’t talk about the fact that nobody wanted to go and engage the workers because there was a core subsection of the working class who were abusive and threatening. Oh yeh, he said, you’re right, I can remember lots of them shouting at us and swearing at us all throughout the camp. Yeh, no shit, I said, so don’t you think that is relevant to address the point of why we did not, as a movement, go to Kingsnorth to speak to the workers? He didn’t reply, and instead started speaking to someone else, and I didn’t wait around for him to finish as I felt my inquiry was very definitely not welcome.
The author of the research on which the report is based also had some equally ugly remarks to give. He spoke about how, when the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior came to Aberdeen the oil capital of Europe) he was invited on board, and as he walked across the gangplank some oil and gas workers shouted to him calling him a ‘traitor’ for going on board. He cited these views, like the previous speaker, as though this showed just how angry the workers were at the environmental movement because of the wrongs it had done to them.
What total nonsense! This is just another example of an ignorant worker spouting out hate and bigotry, totally unfounded hate and bigotry, for no other reason than they are a hateful and bigoted individual. And we’re supposed to think that this is some kind of meaningful critique of the environmental movement?
I mean, let’s be clear first off that these workers are working for an industry that they know is destroying the climate of the entire planet, and the futures of not only their children, but everyone else’s children. We are not talking of people who have a highly developed ethics and sense of concern about others. We are talking about people who are the economic equivalent of mercenaries or stormtroopers, willing to do anything for a bit of cash. When people sell their souls like this, they can become hateful and bigoted, and mindless, because that is what happens when you sell your soul and do things that are harmful to the entire planet and the future of all living things.
So there is first and foremost a critique of the workers in these industries that needs to be aired. An honest critique that challenges them on their reckless and mercenary behaviour and their lack of ethics and regard for others. And I’m talking about a critique that goes beyond the mindless ‘our families will be starving on the streets if we don’t work for these industries’. Workers mining for cobalt in the Congo might be able to justifiably say this, but not the workers in the north sea oil rigs who are very well trained specialists and earn high wages. We all know they are doing it for the money, and that they don’t have to do it, they could do something else, but this industry pays really well, and to hell with the ethics, the money is what matters, right?
Secondly there is also a need to challenge the mindless views that some of these workers spew out. I’m talking about threats to beat up environmentalists, I’m talking about views that charge the environmental movement as being anti-worker and trying to take away workers jobs, or views that deem those who go aboard the Rainbow Warrior as ‘traitors’. These views are just mindless drivel, and should never be legitimised as having credibility. Instead of presenting such views as ‘a failure of the climate movement to engage with the workers’, they should instead be presented as a failure of the workers themselves. After all, that is what it is. The workers have failed to inform themselves and to exercise intelligent and informed judgement, and have instead opted for right wing media driven lies. Yes, that is a failure of the workers, and not the environmental movement.
And a note on the Rainbow Warrior: the original Rainbow Warrior was sunk in harbour by the French secret service, killing two Greenpeace activists on board who went down with the ship after a secretly planted explosive device went off. And in case you think that is just conspiracy theory, these facts were admitted on national TV by the then French president. The Rainbow Warrior protected whales against toxic workers who slaughtered them without caring about whether they went extinct or not, it went about publicising the pollution of the seas by radioactive waste dumping by other toxic workers, and did a whole lot of amazing work defending the commons that is our biosphere from the behaviours of toxic workers who think it is okay to do anything at all for money, regardless of the cost to others.
So let’s be clear, the original Rainbow Warrior was a force for good, but the workers who work for these kinds of industries are not. It is they who are toxic, it is they who are the problem in the world, and it is just mindless socialist fantasy to present such workers as victims of capitalism, rather then as collaborators who actively participate in the plunder and exploitation of the earth without a thought for the consequences, and who share in the profits from said exploitation (something that Lenin himself wrote a paper on explaining that this was indicative of the later stages of capitalism in places like the UK). None of this could be happening without them, and yes, they do have a choice, at least those in the UK do. They have a choice.
I would like to have seen these kinds of issues addressed by the panel before they discuss the main points of their report, in order that a proper view can be taken of it and so that it can be situated in the proper context, but most importantly, for addressing the abject failure of this report (as presented in the workshop) to address these matters at all. It’s difficult to take it seriously as a result. I mean, the oil and gas workers make ‘demands’ about how a transition should happen. What are their demands? Oh, that they should be provided with full pay and alternative work a priori. No suprise that money is at the top of the agenda, and that they are effectively holding a gun to the head of the earth’s climate demanding the right to carry on unless they get provided with an alternative that is equally well paid.
And just who are these demands being made to anyway - are the oil and gas workers themselves fighting for a just transition and making these demands as part of their struggle? I mean that would be amazing, but nope, that is not the case at all. The oil and gas workers aren’t doing anything at all for a just transition away from fossil fuels. They are far too well paid by the oil and gas sector to bother with that. No, funnily enough, it is the environmental movement that is fighting for a just transtion, and not the workers, and get this: these workers have the cheek to present the environmental movement with a list of demands for a just transition that they don’t give a damn about and aren’t even fighting for?
And also, I thought the environmental movement was the enemy of the workers, but it turns out that no, the environmental movement is the friends of the workers, because it is the environmental movement that is fighting for a just transition, and not the workers, or the oil and gas industry, or anyone else for that matter. Strange then that the workers hold such deeply prejudicial views about that movement.
I mean, are the workers going to present their demands to the oil and gas industry and then fight for the cause? Erm, no, not at all. They are going to do nothing at all. So who is it that is going to protect their jobs? Because let’s be honest, whether they like it or not, their industry does not have a future, their bosses or the government do not give a damn about providing them with any alternative, and so unless they take action, they will find themselves laid off en mass and it won’t be the fault of the environmental movement, which has campaigned for decades for a just transition for workers, it will be the fault of the oil and gas industry and the workers themselves. And who will feel any sorrow for workers who were ready to destroy the earth’s climate for money and who did nothing at all to fight for a just transition away from fossil fuels, and instead carried on business as usual? Few people, I suspect, except for those in the environmental movement, because these are the people who have compassion, after all, and that is why they fight for a better world, often for no pay.
Despite all of the above concerns, I nonetheless welcome this report. I hope it is embraced by the oil and gas workers and that they start to fight for it. And I can tell you this, every single person in the environmental movement would be massively heartened and overjoyed to see oil and gas workers fighting for a just transition away from fossil fuels. It is what we have all always wanted to see, and what we all dream about, just as we would love to see workers fighting for an end to whaling, and to all the other toxic jobs they do.
Sadly, in the UK, I’m afraid Lenin was right: the workers themselves are active collaborators with fossil fuel capitalism, and not innocent victims, and for that reason, we are not likely to ever witness any fight from oil and gas workers, just business as usual, along with an avalanche of toxic anti-environmentalism because that's how they justify what they do: by attacking the very movement that exposes the harm they are doing. Sad to see that even in some climate change circles these toxic views are now being validated and presented as credible.