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Socialist Outlook : SO/12 - Summer 2007
Climate ChangeNUT Conference Debates Climate Change
NUT member and conference delegate Roy Wilkes looks at the way climate change is dividing the left. Climate change was one of the hottest topics discussed at the NUT’s annual conference in Harrogate this year. The intensity of the debate reflects the growing importance of this issue within the trade union movement; it also gives an indication of how the arguments around climate change are evolving. And it is by no means a straightforward right versus left issue. Sections of the left see climate change as at best a distraction and at worst a fabrication, a ruse by the ruling class to justify its imposition of austerity. One veteran STA leader, who cites Piers Corbyn’s solar pulse theory to justify his climate scepticism, typifies those who falsely counterpose the more traditional concerns of the left to the struggle against climate change: ‘Does everybody agree with the Global Warming theorists? I don’t think I do – but it doesn’t stop me being on the left. Imperialism remains the biggest threat to humankind and therefore developing the union’s international policies remains more important than global warming issues.’ There is a danger that these sections of the left, in failing to recognize the depth of the environmental crisis, will miss an important opportunity to offer a socialist alternative to the growing movement of young people who are radicalizing around the issue of climate change. Executive member Robert Wilkins, of the ineptly named Campaign for a Democratic and Fighting Union (CDFU), spoke against an amendment which would have affiliated the union to the Campaign against Climate Change. He did so on the spurious grounds that the amendment, which also called for a reduction in the ‘reliance on all forms of carbon-emitting transport, especially aviation,’ was anti-working class in that it did not explicitly reject market mechanisms as the means of achieving those reductions. This progressive amendment was therefore defeated by an unholy alliance of the right and the soft left on the basis of an ultra-left rejection of a united front campaign against climate change! On a more positive note, conference rejected a weakening amendment which sought to remove a recognition that, ‘governments across the world have shown little real concern to achieve a reduction in global warming’ and that existing world trade principles are, ‘based on the doctrines of neo-liberalism.’ Conference went on to pass the main motion unamended, [1] which, although not as strong as it could have been, nevertheless places responsibility for the environmental crisis firmly in the hands of the world’s governments, and which also demands a number of progressive measures, including increased subsidies for public transport and a massive programme of house insulation. NUT members have a special responsibility on this issue, both as trades unionists and as teachers. As trades unionists we need to build on this year’s conference success and join the emerging global mass movement against the environmental degradations of capitalism. And as teachers we need to do everything in our power to facilitate the self-organisation of young people in their own just and militant struggle for a future. But the experience of raising climate change at NUT conference highlights the desperate need for environmental activists within the trade unions to organise together. We need to develop strategies to counter the arguments of the climate skeptics, navigate a route through the bureaucratic and constitutional minefields of the unions, develop a working class response to the machinations of ‘green capitalism’, and most importantly to bring organized labour into the forefront of the mass struggle against climate change.
NOTES [1] Conference passed Motion 25. See http://www.teachers.org.uk/resources/pdf/2511NUT-FINAL-Agen07NEW.pdf for motions and amendments. |
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Roy Wilkes