By John Pickard, Brentwood Labour Party member
I went to my local branch of Extinction Rebellion last night, to see what they were like and what ideas they had. I won’t be going back.
The meeting was more or less a mixture of quite young people and quite old people (like me), but strangely, not many in between. The main thing I detected straight away was that it was overwhelmingly middle-class, and as I soon discovered, there wasn’t an ounce of working class consciousness among them. Perhaps I got off to a bad start, being ‘inducted’ along with about twenty new people, and being told by someone younger than most of my underpants that it wasn’t right to applaud if we agreed with a speaker. We had to hold our hands up and shake them about in silence. I bit my tongue.
We broke into small groups to discuss the three main principles of XR. Apparently this organisation is “autonomous” and “decentralised” but that didn’t stop someone up on high dictating what was supposed to be read out to new inductees. “We’re not allowed to wing it,” Miriam said, reading from her script. So much for “autonomous”. And “decentralised”.
In my small group, one guy pointed out that the big oil and energy companies have assets on their balance sheets that consist of oil, coal and gas still underground and not yet extracted. “If they are told they cannot extract these assets,” Carlos said, “their balance sheets will be cut in half, along with the assets of many pension funds. Are we ready to ask pensioners to have their pensions cut to save the planet?”
A comfortable home and a good income
I immediately bridled at this, thinking about my hard-earned teacher pension. “Surely, we cannot go to old people and tell them their living standards need to be chopped in half?”. “We-e-ell, maybe not”, Carlos replied, whereupon Dave piped up with, “We will all have to make cuts to save the planet. It’s as important as that.”
I looked at Dave with suspicion. Almost always, without exception, those people who tell us we all need to ‘make sacrifices’ are people who are comfortable, with a home and a good income, possibly a good pension in Dave’s case. That’s always a good starting point to appeal for sacrifices. “So what would you say”, I asked, “to a single mother who has to go to a food bank, who cannot see beyond the end of next week, never mind ten years time?” Stony silence.
Back in the plenary session, we discussed the three principles. Number One was “tell the truth”. Number Three was “we are not political”, and I forget what Two was, being so unmemorable. I pointed out to those present, “I think most scientists are already telling the truth. The problem for us is that governments don’t tell the truth, the big energy and oil companies don’t tell the truth and the newspapers and media don’t tell the truth.” At this point I noted that thirty-eight hands were raised and that made a hundred and ninety fingers wiggling at me. “So how can you say”, I asked, “That you don’t need to be a political movement?” The hands had stopped.
Political…just not party political
“We are political”, Miriam replied, “but not party political”. Clear as mud, I thought. Made muddier by comments from other people saying that XR was or was not a political movement. The organisers mentioned a “principle” (if that is the correct word) that only 3.5% of the population need to be motivated to make real change happen. This 3.5% figure was even on the literature handed out. I pointed out that this was around 2 million people in the UK, which would make it the biggest social movement in British history. “Wouldn’t this be a political movement? And what about the other 96.5%?” They looked at me like I was from another planet.
Back in the smaller groups, we started a discussion on other principles and ideas. One of those with which I fully agreed was that discussion should be polite, with no “blame culture” in meetings. At that point, Peter piped up, asking, “OK, who drove here to the meeting? Who came by car?”. Not wanting to be the victim of any “blame culture”, I didn’t pipe up. I just thought – have you ever tried to get a bus from where I live? “So what would you say, Peter,” I asked, “to some poor bloke whose only means of getting to work was his car? Just tell him to find another job?” Again, stony silence.
Back in the plenary again, and I’m now getting impatient. The whole “rebellion” seems to be about persuading everyone – including the politicians (who lie), the media (who lie) and the big companies (who lie) to be good, responsible people.
Civil disobedience has long been a tactic of workers’ movement
I have the greatest respect for climate activists in general. The threat of climate change – to be more precise, the certainty of climate change – is the biggest single threat facing humankind in the twenty-first century. It is going, without doubt, to cast a terrible pall over all political, social and economic issues in the coming decades.
Neither do I have a problem with civil disobedience per se, because the history of the labour movement is shot through with many different forms of necessary civil disobedience in the struggle to get democratic and social rights. It would probably be a lot more persuasive of public opinion, however, if the forms of civil disobedience chosen by Extinction Rebellion were those that impacted less on ordinary working class people and more on the rich and well-to-do. Blockade the Ritz Hotel, for example, or the large open spaces in front of Buckingham Palace. At this meeting, one XR supporter actually said that the aim of street blockades, like those in central London in April, was to “antagonise” people and therefore “make them think”. Not a good tactic, I thought.
But the main problem with XR is the policy – almost an echo of David Cameron – that ‘we’re all in this together’ that ‘we’re all to blame’ for the mess the planet is in. The Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg has made many speeches around the world and from time to time she has come close to stating the bald truth and pointing at where the real blame lies. At the World Climate conference in Katowice, Poland, last December, she said to the assembled dignitaries, “We are about to sacrifice our civilisation for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue to make enormous amounts of money…”
Speaking to this “very small number of people” at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, she repeated, “And someone is to blame. Some people – some companies and some decision-makers in particular – have known exactly what priceless values they are sacrificing to continue making unimaginable amounts of money.” Three days later, still at the same venue, she told the representatives of world capitalism, oil magnates, mining billionaires, bankers and corrupt governments, “We must change almost everything in our current societies.”
World Economic Forum at Davos
A conspiracy theorist might ask why Greta was allowed to speak not once but twice, at the World Economic Forum, a gathering of billionaires, industry moguls and ministers – the very people who are trashing the planet. Perhaps it is to give the impression that they give a toss. To make us believe that they are all secret eco-warriors, just waiting for the right opportunity to change their wicked ways.
Or on the other hand, perhaps the people at Davos are happy to have organisations like Extinction Rebellion because it is better than having Extinction Revolution. Better for us all to blame each other rather than blame the system or those in power who have caused the climate crisis. Better to make appeals to everyone’s good nature. The capitalist class world-wide – those who make all the big decisions based on greed, profit, personal power and privilege – are not going to be terrified by XR. They will always prefer petitions to pitchforks.
That is why I’m not going back to XR. They might be good people, and frightfully well-meaning, but unfortunately they are the worst kind of utopians and they seem to have no policy that connects climate change with the lives of ordinary people. Worse, there is a serious danger that they will mislead and mis-educate many good young people who they come across.
September 6, 2019
