The two weeks of COP26 should have been two weeks of mobilisation for huge demonstrations against the inevitable carve-up by the imperialist powers, an outpouring of anger at the ‘blah, blah, blah’ of bourgeois politicians as they participated in an elaborate but pointless process which would leave humanity still facing climate disaster. Yet, aside from two protests and the events in Glasgow itself, this did not happen. Across the country, to be sure, there were plenty of marches on the so-called ‘Global Day of Action’ of 6 November – but demonstrations of anger or outrage were not part of it. Instead, they were led by pillars of respectability: faith leaders, a plethora of NGO representatives, trade union officials, Labour and Green Party MPs and councillors. A fictional ‘broad coalition’ to build equally fictional ‘broad support’ for a day of family fun and music with carefully vetted political speakers.
Outside the 6 November demonstration organised in Glasgow, local marches were pitiful in size and in political content. Even the Coalition march in Glasgow was half the size of the Fridays for Future march organised the previous day which was led by young people including Greta Thunberg and which was estimated at 100,000. Across the country, 5-6,000 joined the march in London, perhaps 1,500 in Manchester, no more than 1,000 each in Birmingham, Liverpool or Nottingham, and scarcely half that number in either Brighton or Newcastle. There was no ‘broad support’, and participation by young people was particularly poor given their leadership of the protests in 2019 during the period of the school strikes.
Politically, anti-imperialist speakers were excluded from the platforms, with pride of place given to the respectable. In Liverpool, the SWP in alliance with the Labour Party had excluded RCG and FRFI supporters from the local Coalition. SWP and Labour Party speakers dominated the platform even if they disguised their political identities as ‘representatives’ of marginalised or other groups. RCG/ FRFI supporters were excluded from platforms not just in Liverpool but in Birmingham, London, and Newcastle and were forced to set up alternative ‘open mic’ platforms to ensure an anti-imperialist message was put forward. On each of the protests, we organised loud and lively contingents with banners and flags to act as a pole of attraction for those interested in serious politics. In London, our ‘open mic’ in Trafalgar Square was organised so that supporters would speak whenever there was a Labour or Green Party MP or trade union official speaking on the main platform. Objections were dealt with firmly and politically: we will not be silenced by Labour Party supporters or its goons in the SWP.
Politically, the Coalition presented a jumble of opportunist political positions. Because it needed to genuflect in an internationalist direction, the Coalition had to sideline the normal British left focus on a green new deal or equivalent. Its appeals at first sight seem reasonable, but when it spoke of the need for ‘climate justice’, there was no explanation as to what force would impose such climate justice given that all previous COP summits had shown that there was none. One element of such ‘justice’, however, was the Coalition’s call to cancel the debts of the ‘Global South’. Of course this must be supported – but in the context of a movement in Britain, it would require an all-out assault on the banks and the City of London. What force would lead the process? What politics would it need? It was as if the mere willing of such an end would be sufficient to achieve it, rather than serious political struggle.
It was the same with the Coalition’s demand that there be a ‘a fair share of effort from all countries’ in tackling climate change, that the rich countries would have to provide ‘grant-based climate finance’. Given that they have yet to cough up the $100bn a year they promised mostly as loans in 2009 at Copenhagen, how would this be achieved? And then the Coalition’s call for reparations for loss and damage to date, with the extractive and agribusiness monopoly lobbyists ensuring that nothing at COP26 got out of hand. What other than a revolutionary confrontation will put a stop to these monopolies’ plundering and looting of the underdeveloped countries?
Everywhere in the Coalition’s programme there is obfuscation where there needs to be clarity. It talks of ‘worker-led justice transition’ which means ‘rewiring our system in a way that addresses injustices, poverty and inequalities.’ What does this mean? Apparently, a technical change from fossil fuel usage to renewable energy ‘to create unionised green jobs and services’. But this is just a naked appeal to the trade unions in the developed capitalist countries, and however it might be qualified by a statement that the ‘new infrastructures can’t only be built in the Global North with resource extraction and human rights abuse in the Global South’, these are the preconditions for such green jobs in the developed capitalist countries.
‘Worker-led justice transition’ must involve a transition led by the working class and oppressed in the underdeveloped countries whose interests have been represented not by the shamefaced and vapid declarations of the COP26 Coalition but by the 2010 Cochabamba Declaration when it said: ‘The corporations and governments of the so called “developed” countries…have led us to discuss climate change as a problem limited to the rise in temperature, without questioning the cause, which is the capitalist system….Humanity confronts a great dilemma: to continue on the path of capitalism, depredation and death, or to choose the path of harmony with nature and respect for life.’ Without anti-imperialism, the movement against climate change will be a sham.
Robert Clough
Our meeting at the People’s Summit
On 8 November the Revolutionary Communist Group spoke alongside Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! Glasgow, Papua Militant International and Earth Strike North of the River at the COP26 Coalition’s People’s Summit in Glasgow. Our meeting, ‘Building a militant anti-racist, anti-imperialist movement against climate change’ ensured anti-imperialist politics were injected into the Summit. Discussion centred on the ways we can build a street-based movement that will challenge the British state, its multinationals and banks, as the only way of confronting the climate crisis, and how we need to learn from the example of socialist Cuba
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 285, December 2021/January 2022
