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It is now recognised that we
are facing a global extinction
event on a geological scale
equal to the extinctions
that wiped out the majority of species at the end of the Age of Dinosaurs. Nature has been in the deepest crisis since long before our dawning consciousness of climate change; and even without the issue of climate change, our socialist politics are urgently in need of modernisation to embrace this cataclysmic crisis.
If we achieve socialism we will inherit a world which is vastly poorer in the resources that should be central to the quality of life in a classless society: the seas and seashores teeming with life, the vast array of forest and pasture types and all the other specialised ecosystems which provide for our imaginations and curiosity, let alone our new foods, medicines, fuels and productive materials.
The issue is not whether this cultural impoverishment will take place, but to what extent it will do so. It would be as difficult to fight for socialism in a future world where the planet would be a biological desert, as it is for women if they knew that socialism would never overthrow patriarchy. Countryside and class There is a harsh geographical and social division in the politics of nature in Britain. The overwhelmingly dominated by the middle and owning classes, with working people confined to service roles and without an independent political voice. The working class is largely confined to urban areas, and this constantly reinforces our alienation from nature and the countryside.
Thus the politics of the protection of nature and the countryside is often seen as a middle class concern. and identified as the special pleading of privileged groups - which it often is. Conversely, the dominant politics of working class areas and disadvantaged regions see nature and natural landscape as a series of impediments.
Only occasionally has this reactionary political rigidity been broken open. The anti-roads movement of the nineties did that, and the movement against the destruction of the countryside by agribusiness in the eighties and nineties began to do so too, producing a string of leaders
most prominently the writer Marion Shoard - who moved towards an anti-capitalist project for the defence of nature.
The theory of permanent revolution gives us a tool for intervening in the recreation of this movement for the defence of nature, with its central insight that there is no gradualist succession of stages that will bring about anti-capitalist change. The middle class forces always stall in their defence of nature, for their local campaigns in defence of their privileged contact with nature always come into conflict with the defence of their core economic privileges. They will oppose a road, airport or agribusiness development near their home, but they will not oppose the consumerism and commodity production that engenders those developments. Local campaigns These local campaigns do shed some light on the larger questions of how best to intervene in the defence of nature. Central to the success of our campaign of 1995 against the privatisation of the huge Brighton-owned farmland estate was our relationship with the wider community and with the ruling Labour Party, in which we intervened vigorously. The network of local wildlife groups was far too weak to have won that struggle alone. Furthermore, the large voluntary sector countryside organisations acted as a drag on the campaign and had themselves to be lobbied to minimise the damage their defeatism could cause. It was our broader community resonance that pushed leadership to back down.
In the twelve years since that victory a series of local partnership bodies have been set up - Open Spaces, Access and Wildlife Forums, the Downland Initiative
all of which have proved marginal in forwarding an agenda for a public reclamation of those landscapes. The powerful deference which most participants display towards farmer representatives, even when those farmers past activities have been deeply antisocial, has stalled much progress.
Indeed, this deep cultural tendency to defer to and propitiate farmers and landowners has had far wider national consequences. The successes of the movement against farming's destruction of historic landscapes and wildlife resulted in the widespread adoption of direct agroenvironmental subsidies to those landowners and managers, which served to re-legitimate them in public consciousness just when their standing was lower than at any point for over a century. The anti-agribusiness movement threw them a lifeline at the very point when we needed to let them flounder.
Similar patterns have developed around the campaign for a new National Park of the South Downs, which was pressed heroically over decades by a small group of middle class activists until it achieved success with Environment Minister Michael Meacher's proposal to create a new Park shortly after the New Labour victory.
This issue attracted some activity from the network of Brighton's wildlife groups, which we sought to focus on a campaign for an inclusive clingfilm Park boundary around the urban area, which would maximise peoples contact with the new Park and protect the necklace of rich, urban fringe, downland sites. The Countryside Agency's proposed
against working class areas, whose 'fish and chip downland' was excluded whilst the wealthy "cream tea downland', often of very poor landscape quality, was included. We found ourselves fighting not just the Agency, but the South Downs Campaign itself, which flatly refused even to visit the contested areas, whilst campaigning for the inclusion of prosperous countryside in Hampshire and on the Surrey border which was many miles from the South Downs.
The betrayal by the wider National Park campaign meant that we failed to gain the inclusion of the two core landscapes we had been fighting for, (the extraordinarily rich sites around Brighton racecourse - of 'Brighton Rock' fame - and the iconic Newhaven white chalk cliffs), but our vigour did bring us significant successes elsewhere on the urban fringe.
Our slow and difficult crawl to gain some implantation in working class areas on issues of landscape and wildlife has begun at last to bear some small fruit, with a prominent activist elected to a leading community body and with me receiving a respectable vote in a ward election where I have an environmental record. Demands on biodiversity I suggest three demands to provide a programmatic focus on these issues of biodiversity and landscape. 1 For major landscape restoration measures to roll back the isolation of vulnerable and fragmented ecosystems so that they can deal adequately with global warming. Roads, built-up areas, and agribusiness presently obviate the possibility of the dynamic shifts wildlife assemblages need to make within the landscape. This is at its worst in eastern and central England. 2 Opposition to the takeover of the farmed countryside by the rich for use as private leisure landscapes, and the consequent removal of farmed land from sustainable food production. Huge areas, particularly in southern England, as in Surrey and the High Weald, have been lost to farming, whilst alternative farming initiatives are starved of land.
Opposition to government attacks on the post-war planning system, which seek to facilitate the needs of capital and the state and eliminate democratic participation. These changes presage a round of new attacks on nature, such as the Severn Barrage, the new cycle of nuclear power stations, and airport expansion. Past victories, such as the rejection of the Dibden Bay terminal adjacent to the New Forest, will not be repeatable.
Socialists have only small resources, but we should be clear that the defence of nature is not a 'good' that just follows naturally in the wake of our core successes elsewhere, but a central task in its own right, just as awareness of the need to fight racism and sexism should be present in all our fields of work.
page 27 of the scan
Without nature
socialism Will be impouerished Dave Bangs
page 28 of the scan
24
The witch hunt against Ken Livingstone in support of the rightwing bigot Boris Johnson continues apace, and will no doubt intensify between now and the London elections in May particularly since it has now achieved its first big hit with the resignation of Livingstone's top aide Lee Jasper.
This campaign, and the possibility that Boris Johnson could even win, has generated a debate inside Respect Renewal on how to relate to this contest. This concerns whether the left should give support to Livingstone; and if so, whether it should advocate a first preference or a second preference vote for him. It also involves what attitude to take to candidates to the left of Livingstone.
Respect Renewal has rightly decided not to stand for the Mayoral position itself—though it will stand on the list for the assembly and for one constituency seat-City and East. Although this was a unanimous view on the National Council, there are different motivations behind it. It is clearly correct not to stand for Mayor this time, from the point of view that Respect Renewal does not have the resources to do so. From a political point of view, however, it is perfectly legitimate for left candidates to stand against Ken Livingstone this time as it was in the previous election. There is a need to present a left alternative to New Labour, and the London Mayoral contest is an important arena for that.
This is controversial, however, inside Respect Renewal. Some on its NC argue that the threat from Boris Johnson is so great that the left should be fully behind the Livingstone campaign and should call for a first preference vote for him. Others, however, including myself and Socialist Resistance, hold the view that to give him a first preference vote would indicate political support for his candidacy which he does not deserve. The second vote, however, under the alternative vote system should be cast for him against Johnson.
Standing a left candidate does not imply an anti-Livingstone campaign. Respect's campaign in 2004 was never conceived as such. It was organised as a positive campaign around what Respect stood for in order to provide the left alternative in the election and called for a second vote for Livingstone.
It is true that only a minority of Respect's first preference voters ended up casting their second vote for Livingstone. But many of Respect's votes were votes which would not have gone to Livingstone anyway first or second preference. This reflects the wide-based left critique of Livingstone which exists and which is the natural constituency for a left candidacy. This is certainly the case in the unions.
This side of Livingstone has led some to mistakenly argue that, whilst he is not imperfect, he remains a left social democrat with a broadly progressive administration. It is true that he is not simply a New Labour politician. No New Labour politician would have done such the cheap oil deal with Chávez. But this kind of definition does not get us very far. There is a long tradition of radicalism over far away places combining with conservatism at home. And there is an equally long tradition of being radical where you have no powers and conservative where you have the power to do something. Livingstone fits clearly into this category. The unfortunate fact is that his administration, far from being generally progressive, is indistinguishable from New Labour on a range of absolutely crucial issues, and it is principally these on which he must be judged.
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wet in role 30g the most progressive forces in capitalism in a framework where business has been depoliticised! This has led Livingstone to a notoriously close relationship with the property developers who are covering London with skyscraper office blocks.