Vesta occupation – the red and green threads must come together.

In July, workers facing redundancy at the closure threatened Vestas wind turbine factory in Newport on the Isle of Wight took direct action to defend their jobs against what was nothing more than a proposed act of industrial vandalism. A group of plant workers with the backing of hundreds of their colleagues occupied a section of their plant in protest at Vestas closure plans. Despite being sacked by the company and facing all sorts of intimidation, with the resolute backing of the RMT trade union and big sections of the left and environmentalist movements in England, the occupation lasted 18 days, achieved massive publicity for the occupiers’ case, and posed a simple straightforward question which New Labour apologists for the unrestricted workings of the commercial market have so far been unable to answer.

Why, when the dangers of climate change are so widely recognised, and the UK government is ostensibly committed to significant carbon emission reductions, are we prepared to allow private companies to close down renewable turbine manufacturing capacity in the name of seeking better profits for their shareholders elsewhere?

It is estimated that 7000 massive new wind turbines will be necessary in the coming period to help meet existing targets on carbon emission. If Vestas is allowed to close the plant (the campaign against closure is ongoing, despite the end of the occupation) then the UK will have zero wind turbine manufacturing capacity at the present time and face importing manufactured turbines from as far abroad as China, at huge cash and carbon footprint cost. Yet the New Labour government response to the workers’ argument that their jobs, skills and capacity were clearly needed was to get a minister to write to the UK broadsheets to make the claim that such an argument was irrelevant because the Vestas plant made turbines of the wrong size! As if it is beyond the wit of man to retool a plant to make bigger turbines!

At the time of the biggest recession since the nineteen thirties and when global warming is a real and present danger, it would surely be common sense to take plants like Vestas into public ownership - on the basis of minimum compensation to rich shareholders - and together with other initiatives begin to develop a strategic plan to switch to renewable energy generation across the UK. Changes could then be made at a pace and within a timescale that would make a positive contribution to the planet wide fight against global warming, and sustain and create many thousands of highly skilled engineering and support jobs in the green sector.

Instead, what we see time and time again from government is windy rhetoric and targets, but a submissive and, ultimately, stupid willingness to leave the saving of the environment to the vagaries of commercialism and the ‘free market’. New Labour were quick to take up Barack Obama’s cry of green jobs as one way out of the recession – but when the first concrete test arrived they were unwilling to lift a finger to save the green jobs they already had.

Scotland has already had its own sharp lessons of how the limits of capitalism, with its antagonistic interests and legally enshrined duty to maximise profits for shareholders, holds back our ability to tackle carbon reduction. Vestas have already closed a smaller wind turbine production facility in Argyll & Bute. Renewable development plans have been held back over protests about the proposed Beauly to Denny transmission line which would see huge pylons disfigure much of the striking Highland landscape. An undersea power cable would have been more environmentally friendly – but the private shareholder interests of the energy companies baulked at the cost.

The semi-mothballed oil rig fabrication and refit plant at Nigg in Ross-shire is a huge facility whose potential remains unrealised. Socialists in the Highlands have been campaigning for the plant to be reopened under public ownership to build renewable turbines since the turn of the century. Both Highland Council and Cromarty Firth Port Authority have plans – albeit on a more standard commercial basis – to reopen the facility as a multi-use facility with an emphasis on renewables and create a thousand local jobs.

And what is holding that whole process up?

The answer – surprise, surprise - is private ownership of a strategically important strip of land and a lack of powers for either Highland Council or the Scottish Government to quickly and cheaply carry out a compulsory purchase on strategic grounds. Socialists, environmentalists and nationalists have all been campaigning to get Highland Council to carry out a compulsory purchase using the existing powers it has.

The common theme here is the coming together of the traditional concerns of the left – jobs and workers rights, public ownership, reversal of de-industrialisation - with the major concerns of the green movement – sustainability, clean energy generation and carbon reduction on a meaningful scale. There are other commonalities as well, at least between a majority of socialists and the majority of the green movement – a respect for human rights and civil liberties, anti-militarism and the equalities agenda. In Scotland, since Patrick Harvie became the effective leader of the Greens, they have had considerable success in ditching the woolly scarf and lentils image and in embracing concerns beyond a traditional environmentalist agenda precisely around these issues.

Whilst many greens still look towards ‘commercialisation’ as the most rapid way to bring renewable technologies on stream, a growing number are realising that global warming cannot be tackled properly without public ownership of the energy companies and a strategic plan. 

The Democratic Green Socialist believes it is past time to begin concretely exploring the commonalities and convergences between the red and the green movements. Many greens and socialists will have already marched together in opposition to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Israel’s continuing attacks against the Palestinian people and their rights to self determination. In some areas they will have come together on other issues. Perhaps locally socialists and greens should look to formalise working together, at least on certain campaigns.

On the electoral front, there is a general election next year, with over 600 seats at a UK level and 50 in Scotland where lefts and progressives could stand. Given the cost of first past the post election campaigns there are surely enough seats for the various left parties and the greens to stand in without standing against one another. In other words we should seek, if possible, a single left/green candidacy as an alternative to the establishment pro-capitalist parties in any given seat.

This would require a coming together of Greens and the existing socialist parties separately in Scotland and in other parts of the UK, and an agreement being reached, at least informally, on who would stand where – but surely such a thing is not beyond the bounds of either reasonableness or possibility.