John Medhurst
johnme@pcs.org.uk
“When the day comes that there is a serious
strike of workmen against the poisoning of
the air with smoke or the waters with filth,
I shall think that art is getting on indeed”
 The Social Democratic Federation
 Sheffield Socialist Society
 “Towards Democracy”
 “Our Parish and Our Duke” - argued that rent should
go to a common fund for roads, the environment, care
of old people and higher wages. Sold 20,000 copies.
 Influenced the “New Unionism” and the Independent
Labour Party
 Poor working conditions - 14 hour days, use of white
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phosphorous
Annie Besant wrote “White Slavery in London”
Management demanded workers repudiate article.
When refused, some sacked. 1,400 working girls and
women went on strike
Led to better conditions e.g. separate eating areas
Eventually led to British Govt banning White
Phosphorous in matches
 Women’s Trade Union League organised female
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garment workers
1909 – walkout of 400 workers at Triangle Shirtwaist
factory demanding better conditions
9th floor – 240 workers crammed in.
March 1911 – breakout of fire on 9th floor.
Fire-escapes did not reach ground. Doors opened
inwards
146 dead- mostly teenage immigrant girls
 WTUL agitated for new working environment laws and
better inspection
 NY State Legislature created Factory Investigating
Committee .
 Led to a "golden era in remedial legislation" in NY State.
 Many trade unionists and progressives active in fight for
improved worker safety in garment trades became leading
figures in 1930s New Deal – introduced labour and
environmental protections.
 First Trade Union to have specific environmental
policies
 1925 - called for “Conservational Action” against
lumber companies
“Nothing but mute stumps over hundreds of acres.
Where is it going to end?” - The Industrial Pioneer
“If it hadn’t been for the IWW, the
forests of Montana and Northern Idaho
wouldn’t be there now”
Joseph Davis, U.S Forestry Service, 1917
“With their combination of revolutionary fervour,
love for wild nature, and scorn for capitalist
“development”, Joe Hill and others in the “rebel band
of labor” can truly be regarded as forerunners of the
Earth First! Movement in the 1980s.”
Franklin Rosemont – The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary
Working Class Counterculture.
 Judi Bari - environmentalist, feminist and union
activist. Organiser of Earth First! campaigns in
80s/90s against logging of redwoods in California.
 Organized links of Earth First! and IWW to bring
timber workers and environmentalists together.
 1990 - severely injured by FBI pipe bomb in her car
whilst organising the “Redwood Summer” campaign to
save redwood forests and build alliance with loggers.
 3 month long campaign by Earth First!
 Non-violent blockade of ports and logging,
demonstrations, sit-ins, and debates with logging workers
and families
 5,000 people participated
“The goal was, and is, to turn the timber industry to
sustained-yield harvesting under community and worker
control and ownership”
Jeff Ditz, Libertarian Labor Review, 1991
“She helped transform Earth First! from a narrow
minded conservationist movement into an allied social
force that aimed to transform social relations
themselves, and the new and inventive way she went
about it was undoubtedly the reason she was subjected
to an attempted bomb assassination in 1990”.
Dan Jakopovich – Green Unionism in Theory and
Practice, 2007
 Only IWW tried to organise immigrant farm workers
 1963 – Chavez created the UFW
 UFW agitated for Filipino/Mexican farm workers in
California – used “Community Service Organisation”
 Campaigns and strikes led to support of RFK, and
passage of 1st collective bargaining law for farm
workers
 In 1980s focused campaigns on environment – fasted
for 36 days to protest use of pesticides
 Encouraged grass roots democracy and debate
 Anti-Vietnam War activities
 Encouraged female membership and equal pay
 1973 – 1st female organiser of a construction workers
union in the world
 Immigrant members provided bi-lingual resources
 Supported student and gay activists.
“In the course of this great boom the developers were
not concerned with what was destroyed; Georgian
terraces, Victorian spires and domes, parkland, jewels
of art deco all fell to the wrecker’s ball. Scab labour
would be used in nocturnal operations to pull down
heritage listed buildings. This was capitalism in the
raw.”
Green Bans and the BLF: the labour movement and urban ecology
“Perhaps the most radical
example of working class
environmentalism ever seen in
the world”.
John Tully, ex BLF activist
Green Bans saved –
 The Rocks – Sydney’s oldest precinct, parklands & terraced
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houses with controlled rents
Kelly’s Bush – Last remaining natural bush land in Sydney
Harbour
Centennial Park Botanical Gardens – Sydney’s “lungs”.
Theatre Royal
Many others
 NSW Branch destroyed by alliance of property
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developers, corrupt union officials, and criminals
BLF President funded by employers – with their
money he flew in scabs to break NSW Branch, hired
armed thugs to intimidate activists
Prominent resident supporter Juanita Nielson
vanished – presumed murdered
NSW Branch office burgled and records stolen
Jack Mundey reluctantly concedes defeat
“The NSW BLF perished, but its exploits have
become the stuff of legend and an inspiration to all
who wish to rebuild the worker’s movement as a
thoroughly democratic, class-conscious movement,
committed to social and environmental action as
an integral part of building a better world”
John Tully, BLF
“Petra Kelly saw the Green Bans which the unions were
then imposing on untoward developments in Sydney.
She took back to Germany this idea of Green bans, or
the terminology. As best as we can track it down, this
is where the word “green” as applied to the emerging
Greens in Europe came from”
Australian Green Party Senator Bob Brown
“An Alternative Corporate Plan for
socially useful and environmentally
desirable production”
 Lucas Aerospace management sought to cut jobs.
 LA shop stewards meet - a mix of aerospace designers,
shop floor engineers and “unskilled” labour
 Alternative Corporate Plan drawn up by a combine of
all LA workers
 Ideas for alternative production based on social
usefulness – new kidney machines, portable life
support systems, improved wheelchairs, battery driven
cars, solar panels, wind generators, many more.
 LA management refused to negotiate the plan
 Suggestions of public ownership of LA
 Only govt supporter – Industry Secretary Tony Benn
 Wilson removed Benn from post after pressure from
CBI and media because of support for LA workers and
public ownership.
 LA Alternative Corporate Plan not acted on, but an
inspiration for today’s Green New Deal and the “Just
Transition” agenda.
“If the climate were a bank, the US
would already have saved it”
Hugo Chavez, Copenhagen Summit
 2000 - Bolivia’s water supply privatised
 Cochabamba Water run for profit by Bechtel
 “Law 2029” – gave Bechtel control of all water
resources in Cochabamba.
 Bechtel raised prices by 35%, charged for
installation of meters, and for licenses to collect
rainwater.
 “If people don’t pay their water bills, their water will
be turned off” – G. Thorpe, Bechtel Executive
 Massive campaign of resistance led by Trade Unions –
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especially the Union of Coca Farmers (UCF).
UCF leader Evo Morales led 600km march from
Cochabamba to La Paz.
Occupation of central la Paz.
Eventually privatisation reversed and water renationalised.
Morales and others create “Movement Toward
Socialism” party
2005 – Morales elected President of Bolivia
 MTS government nationalised major utlities
 Provided subsidised food for poor
 Pressured food producers to sell to local markets first
 After failure of Copenhagen Climate Change
conference, Morales called for counter-conference at
Cochabamba to focus climate change resistance
"The world is suffering from a fever due to climate
change, and the disease is the capitalist development
model." - Evo Morales, 2007
 In response to NAFTA
 Based on grass roots participatory, anarchist,
indigenous resistance
 Occupied land of absentee landlords & created
autonomous communities
 Used internet to create global network, linking to
anti-capitalist groups like Reclaim the Streets
 1991 - Reclaim the Streets formed in UK by Earth
First! activists.
“A campaigning Collective with a shared ideal of
community ownership of public spaces. A
resistance movement to the dominance of
corporate forces in globalization, and to the car as
the dominant mode of transport”
 World’s largest Wind Turbine producer
 July 2009 – announced closure of Isle of Wight factory
and loss of over 500 jobs
 Offices occupied by some of workforce and campaign
by unions (RMT, PCS) to nationalise
 Labour Govt supports “Green jobs” but refuses to
nationalise
 August 2009 – Vestas opens plant in China with 5,000
jobs
“Vestas symbolises how we can’t rely on the motor
forces of the capitalist market. Here were green
products but low profits; hence, in a capitalist market,
the result is closure and “rationalisation”. How can the
passions and reflections stimulated by the Vestas
campaign be turned into the strategy we need for an
effective and socially just green transition?”
Hilary Wainwright, Red Pepper, 2009
 Founded 2001 in response to US rejection of Kyoto
Protocols
 2008 – major Trade Union conference on climate
change
 The “Just Transition” agenda
 The Green New Deal
 “One Million Climate Jobs Now!” pamphlet
“Ecologists with a socialist perspective and socialists with
an ecological perspective must form a coalition to tackle the
wide-ranging problems relating to human survival. And
then my dream, and that of millions of others, might come
true: a socialist world with a human face, an ecological
heart and an egalitarian body”.
Jack Mundey, Secretary NSW BLF