The only force in society capable of opposing the fossil fuel industry is the working class, not groups like Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, Earth First! or Reclaim the Power. None of the climate groups in the UK seem to have taken this salient fact on board. Perhaps it is an inconvenient truth? Whatever the case, it is absolutely essential for the benefit of the planet, society, and for strong grassroots movements that class consciousness and a fighting fit working class struggle is reignited.
The Strike Waves - A Gathering
We are in the midst of a wave of strike activity across the UK that hasn't been seen since the 1980s. I went to three anarchist bookfairs in 2023 - London, Swansea, Bristol - and there was not a single workshop on the strike waves, and only one workshop mentioning class at all (at the Bristol bookfair). I have been to Extinction Rebellion gatherings, such as the recent south west gathering in Bath that saw up to 2,000 people attend. Again, not a single talk, workshop or speech or mention of the strike wave.
It is clear to me that the radical environmental scene in the UK has betrayed the working class, and seek solutions to the issues that concern them that do not involve any dialogue with the working class and which continue to exploit and oppress the working class, or at the very least to completely ignore their concerns as if they do not matter. I was once told by someone in Extinction Rebellion that 'we do not care about the emancipation of the working class'. Such attitudes are typical, not just in XR, but across the board of environmental activism, though they are rarely spoken out loud.
I find myself pretty angry about this, and as a result one of the things I would like to do to address the absence of any activity on the strikes within the radical scene is to organise a gathering to discuss this issue. I noticed at the recent Bristol Bookfair that some anarchists in Brighton had organised a call out for a weekend gathering In Brighton in March 2024, yet on the list of concerns to address there was yet again no mention of class or the strike waves.
I would like to organise a gathering in 2024 in order to talk about the strike wave and the class struggle. I would like to hear what other radicals are doing, what their experience and perspective of it is, how the strike waves can be supported, whether there are signs of militancy, and why there is so little activity on the issue within the UK radical scene. Most of all, I just want to create a space where these issues can be discussed outside of traditional socialist/Marxism spaces or mainstream unions. If only a small section of the working class were to adopt a radical position this would be a significant development, and that may be more likely to happen if the radical movement were more vocal or organising in support.
So my aim is to try and get some kind of gathering together, probably in Bristol during 2024/25. If anyone out there is interested in this then get in touch.
Raising Class Consciousness
All too often the working class get Marxist dogma forced down their throats and we're all told that this is how we liberate outselves. Personally, I find Marxism and its derivatives a false solution, one that has not arisen from the working class themselves, but which has been imposed upon them. Furthermore, it is obvious to me that many Marxists have an agenda and are not in it to 'liberate' the working class or for the greater good of the working class, as they claim, but simply to recruit more drones for their ideological crusade, no matter if that crusade is in the interests of the working class or not.
Rather then applying a tired and long discredited formula of radicalising the working class with political ideology like Marxism, I would much rather see more genuine attempts at working class emancipation that seek instead to raise the level of class consciousness. The second wave of feminism in the 70s and 80s saw a lot of consciousness raising groups and writings that were not politically driven but rather aimed to highlight common forms of oppression and to create spaces where women could discuss these, come to a greater awareness of them, and to heal and grow and learn what they can do in their own lives to overcome it. I would like to see much more of this happening within the working class struggle, and I think it will help to create a space free from the domination of Marxism where sections of the working class can come to a realisation of their own oppression, what it has done to them, and to envision possibe futures and collective ways out of our current predicament that are not 'a priori' forced into the mould of e.g. Marxist socialism or anarcho-syndicalism due to ideological prejudices.
The class stuggle has brought to society the 5 day 40hr week, holidays, the welfare system, the NHS, the vote, and many other benefits. Feminists are rightly proud of the achievements of the sufragettes and others but there is no sense of pride among the working class of what the class struggle has achieved and that everybody alive today benefits from. Worse, over the last 30 years any sense of class consciousness or solidarity has been eroded, so that now the very notion of a class struggle is shrugged away as though it no longer exists. This has to change.
So another place to start, along with consciousness raising groups, is to generate much more pride amongst ourselves about the achievements we have made when we have organised together. I mean, to take an obvious example, you often see female climate protestors dressing as suffragettes in order to highlight the common cause with past struggles. Yet you never see any such common cause made with the working class struggles of the past. It is as though we have all forgotten the fighting spirit of our own ancestors and buried their struggles and their accomplishments. If there is any 'greatness' to be found in Great Britain, however, it is the accomplishments of its social movements, and foremost among these has been the class struggle.
I don't know how to get this started, other than to post my ideas here and hope they are taken up or that they take shape somehow. But one idea is to begin with a website which has material developed that will reignite class consciousness. I'm talking about well made videos that highlight class consciousness, examples of class oppression in everyday life, the stories/interviews of working class people and their struggle, the importance of organising without unions using strike committees, and so on. This is not aimed at being ideological, in the sense of promoting a political ideology, and in fact it is important that there is no element of that at all. Instead it is done solely to raise the level of class consciousness, to generate consciousness raising groups, and to generate a greater awareness and sense of connection with past working class emancipatory struggles. I think it is important to leave the development of ways of fighing back, of a new politics, and of organising societal solutions to emerge out of a mass class movement, rather than impose them upon them beforehand and then seek to convert people to it. I think this is critical.