For a United Ecosocialist States of Europe!

Written by Allan Todd

 A tragic opportunity

The Covid-19 pandemic has already been a real tragedy for tens of thousands of UK individuals and their families. And, as information slowly emerges, it is clearly very much a neoliberal tragedy.

Since 2010, successive Tory governments - & the Tory-LibDem coalition - have deliberately underfunded our NHS, both as part of their austerity, and as steps to weaken it for further stealth privatisation. And, even though ‘Exercise Cygnus’ in 2016 showed just how unprepared our NHS was for a huge pandemic - which was seen as a much greater threat to UK citizens than terrorism - May and Johnson both ignored requests to increase the number of Intensive Care Unit beds and to replenish stocks of in-date Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).

More recently, Johnson and his government have repeatedly lied about having sufficient - and safe - stocks of PPE for frontline health and social care workers; and have failed to introduce, as constantly urged to do so by the World Health Organisation, a ‘Test, Trace and Isolate’ strategy. All these deliberate failures to act in the right ways, at the right times, have resulted in the UK having the highest number of deaths in Europe, and the second highest in the world.

Thus it will now be much harder for the supporters of, and the apologists for, the neoliberal system to argue that the UK was, pre-Covid-19, an exemplar of social care and economic equality. Consequently, in some ways, this tragic crisis is also an opportunity for change, as it will be much easier to make the case that the pre-Covid system essentially best-served the interests of the 1% alone.

However, a word of warning: it is not just an opportunity for radical progressives to push for fundamental changes to this failing and grossly-unequal system - it will also be an opportunity, in the immediate aftermath, for those on the other side of the barricades to push forward with their agenda.

And this is an opportunity they are already planning to take advantage of: hence recent comments, from various right-wing quarters, about the need to impose pay freezes on public sector employees; to “set aside” the National Minimum Wage and “restrictive” legislation regarding employee and environmental protections; and the need for more austerity to re-coup the costs of this pandemic.

For those who doubt that the ‘other side’ will act in this way post-lockdown, try reading Naomi Klein’s 2014 book about what she calls ‘Disaster Capitalism’:

Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 2014

Internationalism

The rapid spread across the world of this Coronavirus has underlined once more, in a very deadly way, just how such crises have important global causes, dimensions and impacts - in a similar but more graphic way than the 2008 banking crisis did. 

In the same way, this pandemic has also shown the importance of global solutions - and, for those who have not forgotten the ever-worsening twin crises of global warming and biodiversity loss, it is even more clear now how, ultimately, such crises will only be fully solved on a global, international, basis. As Brexit looms, a useful starting platform would be that of Europe. 

George Orwell, in the journal Partisan Review, July-August 1947

George Orwell recognised that fascism and Nazi Germany would not truly be defeated by military means alone - he also argued that there needed to be fundamental economic and social reforms to end the inequalities and injustices of pre-war Europe. As History confirms, in 1945, the majority of voters in the UK and elsewhere saw the end of the war as an opportunity to transform their societies into various types of welfare capitalism - a state of affairs that lasted till the end of the 1970s, when neoliberalism began to roll back those gains.

The idea of a Socialist United States of Europe was first raised, as early as September 1914, by Leon Trotsky, in his The War and the International, at the start of WW1. That call was made in the belief that, after the end of the war, it would be necessary to make a clean break with the old order’s ‘business as usual’ that had led to the horrors of war; and to move the whole of Europe on to a new and better future.

If we are to turn this pandemic into a positive, then it is vital that the current crisis is seen as an opportunity, in some ways comparable to those presented by the two world wars of the last century. 

Even more than the 2008 banking crisis, Covid-19 is sapping the foundations of the rotten neoliberal ‘order’ - not just financially, but also politically, with many now seeing the glimpse of a better way of doing things. And that creating another, better, world IS possible - if the political will is there. Some shapes of this better world which have emerged in the lockdown - such as cleaner air, more free time, working from home, etc. - point the way to the changes we need to make.

As many are increasingly arguing, the Climate Emergency will, ultimately, only be tackled on a global basis - which is why ecosocialists are committed to internationalism. Thus, as an important first step, Trotsky and George Orwell’s slogans need to be transformed into a call for a United Ecosocialist States of Europe.

The Extreme Centre

The urgent need for such a political entity from Tariq Ali’s book, The Extreme Centre:

Tariq Ali, The Extreme Centre, 2015

As well as warning about the various threats to democracy, and to the living standards of the 99%, posed by the rise of neoliberalism, this book deals with the political dangers posed by what Tariq Ali calls the pro-neoliberal ‘Extreme Centre’.

Prior to 2015, the political situation in the UK was dominated by main parties that, to different degrees, were united in offering to serve neoliberal interests - a situation described by Tariq Ali as one of: 

“an extreme centre, a trilateral monolith, made up of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition plus Labour.” (p.17).

For almost 5 years, from 2015-20, that “trilateral monolith” was broken up by the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party, and the Labour Party’s consequent moves away from Blairite ‘New’ Labour, pro-neoliberal, positions.

But, with Jeremy Corbyn no longer Leader, and with Keir Starmer now in his place, it looks possible that much of the Corbyn Project will now be rolled back if, as some fear, Keir Starmer tries to move the Labour Party back to some kind of an opportunistic ‘Centre’ position.

If such a development were to take place, this would be a political and human tragedy because events since 1979 have shown, with increasingly-severe impacts on the 99%, that a return to any tri-partite ‘Extreme Centre’ consensus on maintaining neoliberalism will result in ever-more suffering.

The neoliberal elites, protected and enabled by the ‘Extreme Centre’, are still both immensely wealthy and powerful - and forces of radical opposition are still small and often disunited. But, even if the Labour Party starts to drift back to that ‘Extreme Centre’, those who form the core of this radical opposition - in the Labour Party, in the Green Party, and elsewhere - are the only hope of stopping and reversing capitalism’s destructive activities.

Ever since the 1970s, and the first Earth Day, history has shown time and time again that, ultimately, market-based ecological ‘solutions’ haven’t and won’t stop the crisis.  In fact, to use a phrase of Walter Benjamin’s, neoliberalism is driving the world “into the abyss”.

Hence the urgent need to move, as quickly as possible, to an ecosocialist future - as Michael Löwy said in Ecosocialism: A Radical Alternative to Capitalist Catastrophe (2015):

“Ecosocialism is a political current based on an essential insight: that preserving the ecological equilibrium of the planet and therefore an environment favourable to living species, including ours, is incompatible with the expansive and destructive logic of the capitalist system.” (p.vii).

Parties of the ‘Extreme Centre’ will never stop that destructive ‘logic’.

  

No Going Back!

Even if, under Keir Starmer, Labour do win the next election by adopting a more ‘centre’ position, that won’t save us from the Climate Emergency - or solve the other pressing problems.

Thus it’s imperative to make a clear political break from all those who belong to that ‘Extreme Centre’. For those who are still unconvinced about the need to make rapid moves towards ecosocialism, it’s useful to remember what James Hansen said in his book, Storms of My Grandchildren (2011):

“Planet Earth,…the world in which civilization developed, the world with climate patterns that we know and stable shore-lines, is in imminent peril. The urgency of the situation crystalized only in the past few years. We now have clear evidence of the crisis, … The startling conclusion is that continued exploitation of all fossil fuels on Earth threatens not just the other millions of species on the planet but also the survival of humanity itself - and the timetable is shorter than we thought.” (p.ix)

Hence the importance of Extinction Rebellion’s argument that, post-lockdown, there can be ‘No Going Back’ to the failed and rotten system we’ve put up with for the past 40 years. A system so broken that it’s:

• pushed millions into dependency on foodbanks - including many who are in employment, such as the nurses this government now wants to ‘reward’ for their Covid-19 sacrifices with another pay freeze

• forced thousands into rough-sleeping, via the Bedroom Tax and insufficient affordable properties for rent

• created, for the first time in over 100 years, a society in which life expectancy has stalled - and, for women in poorer areas, has actually declined

• consistently refused to take the steps necessary for protecting UK citizens from the growing threats from global warming

Yet this awful health tragedy has shown - far more clearly than the financial crisis of 2008 - the gross inequalities existing in the UK. It has also shown how many of these problems can be tackled: for example, at present, rough-sleeping has been almost eliminated, overnight.

When we eventually come out of this pandemic, bruised and battered, what we must not do is attempt to ‘re-adjust’ ourselves to the so-called ‘normality’ of neoliberalism. In preparation for the tasks ahead, we should be watching Ken Loach’s excellent documentary, The Spirit of 45, which shows how the WW2 generations voted overwhelmingly for a better world in May 1945 - and made great steps towards achieving that better world, which lasted through the 1950s & 1960s, only to fall back after the oil crisis of 1973; and then, under Thatcher’s neoliberalism, suffer a fatal blow.

In particular, it’s vital to grasp that the human tragedies, social disruptions and financial costs of this pandemic are just a taste of the chaos and human suffering to come, as the impacts of the worsening Climate Emergency increase in severity.

At this month’s virtual Hay Festival, Mark Lynas will be talking about his new book, Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency:

Mark Lynas, Our Final Warning, 2020

His book (which is an even-more frightening update of his 2007 book) sets out, in stages of 1C degree, all the various scenarios for global warming impacts - from a 1C increase in average global temperatures above pre-industrial levels (where we are now already); to those which would accompany a rise of 6C (which some climate scientists and the IPCC are now warning is on the cards by the end of this century, if there are no immediate and drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions).

With the impacts of unchecked global warming going to be so much worse than those of this current pandemic, a ‘middle/liberal/centre’ position - whether pro-neoliberal, or half-way between neoliberalism and ecosocialism - is no longer tenable.

A Red-Green United Front

“Another world IS Possible!”  But, to get that other world, we need to recognise that the old order’s ‘business as usual’ has led us to the brink of an abyss - if not ended, it will push us and the planet over the edge. Instead, we need to be pushing for a completely new content for social life - giving real dignity to health & social care workers, and to all other workers - and for serious measures to cut carbon emissions.

In the present circumstances, this is going to need an active realignment of radical forces which are prepared to work together for common goals. 

On paper, in the UK, political groups such as RedGreen Labour, the Green Left, Left Unity and Socialist Resistance - and organisations such as Another Europe, War on Want, Global Justice Now and DiEM25 - have much more in common than what divides them.

Only such an active Red-Green Coalition of Radicals - which breaks with ‘business as usual’ and unites with like-minded people - can save us. Fortunately, there is a real basis for meaningful co-operation and joint campaigning between these groups. Consequently, history won’t forgive us if we continue to sit in our separate ‘camps’ and let this opportunity pass by. 

It’s not a question - certainly not at this stage - of merging to form a new party. It is completely understandable that many of those in the Labour Party - though disappointed by the outcome of the recent leadership elections - are deciding to remain members, in order to resist the dropping of the Corbynite policy programme.

The same holds true for those in the Green Party (especially those in Green Left) who, despite concerns over last December’s pact with the LibDems, remain to resist any shift away from the party’s commendable radical commitments to social and economic justice - something the right of the party has never been comfortable with.

Though, of course, as I’ve found out, those who do abandon old political loyalties and do decide to leave Labour or the Greens, will find a very warm welcome in Left Unity!

In the present circumstances, the important thing is to avoid the bitterness and narrow sectarian party political divisions and separations which are sometimes a feature on the left of the political spectrum!  There’s far too much at stake to hold back because of political loyalties which are too narrow to take us forward. It makes no political sense to operate separately anymore - if it ever did. Zoom gives us a wonderful chance to start joint discussions and planning, so that we can ‘hit the ground running’ once the lock-down ends.

History tends to give only fleeting opportunities for fundamental change - if they are missed, the usual outcome is increased reaction. The past 40 years - in particular, the last decade - have shown only too clearly what kind of reaction can be expected if we let this opportunity slip from our grasp.

Ideally, what’s needed is an ecosocialist and internationalist Red-Green Coalition of Radicals - like the Zimmerwald Movement which developed in 1915-16 before the crisis of WW1 ended. Referring again to Michael Löwy (2015):  

“The central premise of ecosocialism, already suggested by the term itself, is that nonecological socialism is a dead end and a nonsocialist ecology cannot confront the present ecological crisis.” (p.xi)

Allan Todd is a member of Left Unity, an environmental and anti-fascist activist, and author of Revolutions 1789-1917

Interview - Jonathan Bartley, Green Party Co-Leadership Candidate

Green Left supporter Jonathan Bartley talks to Mike Shaughnessy about his candidature for the Green Party leadership on a joint ticket with Caroline Lucas:

Tell me a bit about your background and how you came into politics?

I am a descendant of the Quaker prison reformer Elizabeth Fry (I think she is my great times four, Grandmother) which may explain my passion for restorative justice. 

My Dad was a Normandy veteran, a medic, who was also there at the founding of the NHS and spent his whole life working in it.  He believed in treating the whole person and hated the more pressured environment where patients became numbers on a spreadsheet. He ended up at St Thomas’ Hospital, but always had regrets about the takeover of the small community hospital where to used to work, by the big teaching hospital.

One of my great loves is music.  I have spent the last 20 years travelling the country, gigging in working men’s clubs, community centres, pubs and bars.  I still play with one of the guys I was at school with. We must have played around 1000 gigs together now.   We have a small record deal, and we are just recording our ninth album.  But, as well as giving me a creative outlet, travelling to so many different places, and meeting so many different people, has given me a great overview of what life is like outside the London bubble.

I studied the London School of Economics and after that wanted to get some political experience so I went to work in the House of Commons on a cross-party basis in the mid 1990s.  What struck me most about that place though, was the narrow agenda.  It seemed everyone thought in pretty much the same way about everything. 

It frustrated me. I have always believed in getting stuck in and believe in radical change.  After the House of Commons I worked for several campaign groups.  I publicly advocated alternatives to the invasion of  Iraq in 2002. I went to visit Palestinians on the West Bank, and worked with peacemakers taken hostage in Iraq (sadly one of them - Tom Fox - was killed).  I was dragged off the steps of St Pauls by police during the Occupy evictions.  I set up the Accord Coalition with teaching unions and the British Humanist Association, to end the discrimination in Faith Schools.  As part of this I have also ended up doing a lot of TV and Radio, over the last 20 years.  I first went up against Jeremy Paxman in 1997. I even did Thought for the Day on Radio 4 for a while, although I lost that gig after I publicly called for Humanists and Atheists to be included. The BBC didn’t like that, but for me it was an important point of principle.

I guess the most pivotal moment for me came in 2010, when I challenged David Cameron in the street about his plans for disabled children. This propelled the issue onto the general election agenda, and it was discussed in the leader’s election debates as a result.  But it got me thinking.  Why don’t issues like this ever normally get discussed?

The answer of course, is the electoral system.  It is the concerns of a few hundred thousand “swing” voters that make it onto the political agenda, because of our First Past the Post System. Not the ones that really matter. Change the system, and you change lives.

So I became drawn into electoral reform, realising quite how our system itself excludes and discriminates, and keeps important issues like climate change off the agenda.  I wrote and spoke a lot about this,  I was then approached to become vice-chair of the “Yes” campaign in the national AV referendum in 2011.  After that I became vice-chair of the Electoral Reform Society.

You are a Green Left supporter, how would you describe your politics generally?

Politics has always been for me, very personal.  

Having a disabled son profoundly changed me. It opened my eyes to a whole world of discrimination and inequality, but the experience (which is ongoing) has also given me cause for hope.  

Perhaps the best way to explain it is to tell a story. We had a two year battle to get my son into his local school. We eventually won. On his first sports day his class lined up to run the 100 metres, my son in his powered wheelchair.  The starting gun was fired, and off they all went.  

But my son’s wheelchair could only go half as fast as the other children could run. As the penultimate child crossed the line, the attention turned to Samuel who was about halfway down the  track.  I wondered what would happen. An uncomfortable silence descended. But then suddenly someone started chanting his name. Then another, and then another, until the whole school was cheering him across the finishing line.

We all tell our kids that it is the taking part that matters.  But secretly we all love it when our kids win!  But at that moment, in that school, everyone knew that it really was the taking part that mattered.  Just for a moment, the values of endless testing, competition and league tables that dominate our education system were challenged, and people were able to see something more important and better.  That’s what happens when you really include difference, and those who may face more barriers or be more vulnerable, than others.

That sums up my politics I think. Whether it be the future of the planet, or the future of my local estate, when you put the powerless at the heart of things, change happens. And that excites me. It’s radical.  And it’s uncomfortable for many people.  The implications are also huge for the richest and most powerful.

That’s why I also took the opportunity to challenge Iain Duncan Smith at the last General Election about the suicides of benefit claimants, during the live TV Welfare debates,  No one else was going to do it.  But for me it was a national scandal that thousands were dying within a few weeks of being certified “fit for work”, and the cases of dozens of claimants who had committed suicide were being investigated by the DWP, even though they wouldn’t admit it.

Of course IDS denied it.  But he was put on the spot  It put the issue on the agenda, and subsequent investigations showed that he had been covering it up.

If you and Caroline Lucas are successful in becoming joint leaders of the Green Party, it will be the first time the party has had joint leaders. How will this arrangement work out practically?

We both believe job sharing makes the leadership stronger. Two heads are better than one! It brings more experience. We both value good communication and that will help us coordinate, plan and, if necessary, work out any differences.

We’ll talk to one another, work out what’s best for the party and try to ensure we play to our individual strengths. For example with my background in electoral reform so it makes sense to draw on that, as well as his experiences as the parent of a disabled child.

Some observers say that a party with joint leadership will have a split identity, whereas a single leader gives a more easily recognised identity. How do you respond to this?

It’s about a different kind of politics - recognising leadership encompasses lots of different qualities and embodying the idea that to open it up to more people means finding more creative ways to do it.  

It’s also a radical new model that is about modern politics. No other party has ever been brave or bold enough to elect a job sharing team into the leadership role and we think the Green Party will recognise that we need to walk the talk, and lead by example when it comes to doing things differently.

We have to open up our political system to many more people.  It’s no wonder it is so out of touch.  Job sharing is just one way of doing it, but it’s an important one.  And I hope that we can blaze a new trail in this respect.

It has been reported that you and Caroline are in favour the Green Party being part of a Progressive Alliance with other political parties that are willing to advocate electoral reform. How do you see this working out?

As Co-Leaders we want to fully explore the idea of a one general election only progressive alliance in 2020 in England & Wales, with other political parties of the Left. The purpose of such an alliance would be to secure a deal on proportional representation and allow the Green Party’s growing support to translate into a fair number of seats in Westminster and on councils up and down the country.

On everything from the living wage to tackling air pollution, the Green Party has a history of leading where others follow. The era of two party politics is over but the voting system hasn’t caught up and as co-leaders we want to do what the Greens do best – set the agenda. We recognise that our party works differently to others and that decisions are ultimately made locally. We want to find a way to enable the national and local parties to fully consider how best to achieve the political objectives of social and environmental sustainability.

This is an exciting and unique point in history and the prospect of power being distributed equally to every voter would change everything.

It has also been reported that you want to create a team of Green Party full-time campaigners. Is this just for electoral purposes, or would these campaigners get involved in social movements?

It’s good to know people are talking about our plans! We’ve not actually said anything as specific as this, but we would definitely like to see the Party’s non election campaigns profile grow. That absolutely means having a role in wider social movements, though it’s highly unlikely the Party will have the resources to fund a team of issue based campaigners any time soon. Our members are our strength and many of them are involved in local and national campaigns so we’d like to work with activists, local parties, the national campaigns coordinators and others to maximise  the impact we have in wider social movements and change.

There’s been a lot of talk about how the Green Party should position itself, on the political spectrum in the Corbyn Labour era, apart from the Progressive Alliance, how do you see this?

We are a party of the Left. But let’s be clear in our message, and if that message is delivered well it can resonate right across the political spectrum.  

I have seen this happen in Lambeth.  I just ran a by-election campaign in a ward we had never worked in before. It was Labour’s safest seat in Lambeth.  But in six weeks, we moved the Green vote from 10% to 41%.  Labour’s vote went down from 70% to 42%.  We missed out by just 36 votes in taking the seat.  Why was there such as huge swing?  It was because we were defending libraries and the demolition of council housing.  Our big swing came from the estates, who deserted Labour having recognised that we were now the natural party to represent them.

But in another part of Lambeth, I ran the campaign in the 2014 council elections which got us our first ever councillor in Streatham.  This was originally a Tory Ward, that had gone Lib Dem.  Again, this was a ward we hadn’t worked in before.  But we went from 8% and fourth place, to winning.  We did this by showing people how hard we would work for them, on the bread and butter issues of making the area accessible, saving sheltered housing, but also getting more trees put in, fixing potholes and pavements, and introducing 20mph speed limits.

   

We don’t have to compromise or change what we stand for.  We just need to be clear in the messages that we present and be aware of the voters that we are appealing to. And I think that with Corbyn as leader, our policies can be even more radical and creative.

When for example we were running the London Election campaign in 2016, we proposed a flat fare policy (huge credit to Sian Berry for this!) across the capital.  

This appealed to working class Tories in the “outer London doughnut” where Tory support is strongest.  So while we were rightly fighting Labour in the inner city areas over estate demolition, and putting power back into the hands of local people, we were also sending an important message to the Tory heartlands that we wanted a more equal London, that we didn’t like that they were having to pay more just to get to work in the centre because they couldn’t afford to live closer in. It was bold.  It was radical.  We didn’t compromise.  But it was a policy with  widespread appeal.  

What is your vision for the future of the Green Party?

In the Green Party it is about our collective vision together as a party, not one person’s vision being imposed.  We really need to build on the good work that has been done by so many people who have worked so hard for many years..  

But I accept that people also want to know what a potential leader’s particular vision is.  I personally believe that this is a crucial time not just for the Green Party but for British politics. The UK is in a crisis unparalleled since the Second World War. The EU referendum has uncovered anger and division that runs far deeper than many of us thought.  Labour and the Tories are locked in self-destruction. Far-right extremism has given us cause to fear for the safety of our communities. Brexit hangs like a Sword of Damacles over our heads while, the triple crises of economic instability, grinding inequality and runaway climate change continue unabated.

We have the fight of our lives on our hands.  Future generations will judge us by what we do now. I want us to seize the moment.  There is an opportunity for seizmic change, and I want the Green Party to play a leading role in bringing that about.  We must communicate a clear and distinctive vision of what we are about, which shows how our economic, social and environmental needs are bound together. A party that knows the way we measure wellbeing must be broader and richer than what we produce and consume.  A party that recognises the realities of everyday life as well as the challenges that face us in the future.  A party that thinks differently, whether it be through job-sharing in the workplace, the way we do politics, or the biggest questions facing the planet.