Assemblies taking off

The People’s Assembly Network (PAN) event held in London at the weekend took place against a dramatic background of mass actions against existing authorities from Wisconsin, USA, to Tahrir Square in Cairo.

In Cairo two demonstrators were killed by the military police and many more injured, while in Madison, Wisconsin, trade unionists and their supporters met in a people’s assembly. On a smaller scale, protesters camped out overnight in Trafalgar Square demanding the right to peaceful protest.

As a powerful greeting to the London meeting from the Wisconsin Wave People’s Assembly said clearly: “Like all of you, we understand the just cause and moral imperative of defending our democratic traditions, our people, and our principles against a coordinated attack by corporate elites and the politicians they own. And, like all of you, we know that we have to do much more than fight back. We also have to advance a genuine people’s movement that values every human being and insists on essential public services and human rights.”

This year, the message noted, opened with the toppling of dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, which inspired the mass resistance in Wisconsin to the attacks on public sector workers and their union rights.

PAN co-convenor Mark Barrett, said that assemblies were “not unions, not parties or pressure groups but an inclusive organisational strategy - the means to build permanent, democratic, city-wide and rural structures in various communities around the world, which can have a multiplicity of functions. They can unite for a common alternative around the world – permanent institutions of the ‘common’.”

A researcher on social movements said it was important to see assemblies not only as “reacting” to the existing authorities but as a way to the assertion of a new form of power.

Others, including members of the Project for a Participatory Society UK, saw Assemblies as platforms for encouraging social participation and as a way of developing alternatives to the capitalist system of production.

A World to Win member said that the role of assemblies was to express the self-determination of people, to be a voice for the voiceless and to develop mass forms of leadership. “They are not a left thing or a right thing, but a democratic thing in the light of mass popular dissatisfaction with state structures and the absence of a democratic voice.”

London activist, Navid, said that assemblies could be structures for combining the ideologies of the left and forums for debating ideas about social transformation.
Tony Dines from Worthing Solidarity Network and Transition Town Worthing suggested that assemblies could draw in all people who are victims of the crisis of capitalism, including workers and small businessmen. They could be parallel organisations to local government up to a national level which aimed to replace the existing state institutions. The aim should be common ownership, not state ownership, he stressed.

The meeting was encouraged by a message from the Glasgow People’s Assembly which has already held three meetings at the Free Hetherington building which has been occupied by students since the beginning of 2011. A People’s Assembly/Convention is scheduled to be held in Lambeth, south London on May 21.

PAN participants will reconvene on Saturday May 7 at the Passing Clouds music and arts centre in east London. Meanwhile the website working group will contribute articles, blogs, news, photos and comments to the website and a new group was formed to develop connections internationally.

With the Coalition government in increasing disarray and the Parliamentary system offering no way forward, PAN’s boost for the campaign of building people’s assemblies is timely.

Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary

Beyond peak oil

Obscene profits announced this week by two oil giants underline two important messages. One, governments can neither regulate nor influence the activities of the global corporations. And two, if we leave our energy future to companies operating within the capitalist profit-driven framework, we might as well abandon hope now.

Royal Dutch Shell announced a 71% increase in profits, up £6.6bn for the third quarter of this year and BP posted a rise of 148%. Shell’s chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, called the results "satisfactory" (no, really?) because Shell is "robust across a wide range of oil prices".

In other words, Shell pumped crude oil and sold it at inflated market prices – up to $150 dollars a barrel at one point. Then, as a refiner and retailer it passed these same inflated prices on to the consumer. They give a whole new meaning to the term “double-entry bookkeeping”!

On hearing the news Alistair Darling, henceforth to be known as the Jelly Chancellor, whined: "I want to see that reduction passed on to the pumps as quickly as possible, because people are entitled to see the benefit of the falling [oil] price reflected in what they actually pay when they fill up the car." He had no suggestions as to how this is to be achieved.

Trade unions and some Labour MPs renewed their call for a windfall tax on the oil companies – which Brown/Darling has already rejected and in any case entirely misses the point. The real question is, why are the oil companies allowed to keep their grip on world energy supplies? Why, when peak oil is around the corner, are we told there is no alternative to the drive to extract the last ounce of profit from the last drop of oil?

More and more people are asking this question. Many are attracted to the growing Transition Town movement which aims to find local answers to energy problems. The fact that Transition Towns are self-motivating and self-organising is their strength. But their “ideology” of handing over politics to others leaves them stranded with unrealisable utopian dreams.

This anti-political approach is challenged in a new pamphlet by Paul Chatterton and Alice Cutler, from the Trapeze Collective, entitled The Rocky Road to a Real Transition. The authors insist:

“Being against climate change does not have to be a political position. But the analysis of how we got into this mess and the best way to move on, does bring us back to politics. It involves taking on power and those who hold wealth and influence....Responding to climate change could mean new niche markets for capitalism, greater social inequality, closing borders and strengthening state power. An agreement ‘not to rock the boat’ will not help Transition Town’s long-term viability, as it would mean not really changing anything.”

The question of state power, and who controls the corporations, cannot be evaded if the energy crisis is to be averted. As the Charter launched at A World to Win’s Stand Up For Your Rights festival states: “The existing system of government fails to represent the interests of the vast majority of people and is democratic in name only. Instead, the state’s primary purpose is to promote business interests at the expense of ordinary working people.”

We would encourage Transition Town members to support the Charter, and join the debate about climate change in its wider socio-economic context. That has to include the project of building alternative democratic forms of government that can remove the power of the corporations to determine our energy fate.

Penny Cole
Environment editor

Putting an end to 'business as usual'

On the day the government launches its renewable energy strategy, it might consider the fact that while three-quarters of British people are worried about climate change, more than half have no confidence in political leaders to tackle the crisis. According to a recent Mori poll, two-thirds want more government action, but just as many are cynical about the real purpose of so-called “green taxes”.

An expert panel set up by the government itself, the Renewables Advisory Board, to advise on achieving the target of 15% renewable energy by 2020 says the most crucial component is political leadership. RAB states that “a rapid development of a transformed energy framework with radically new economic, political and social drivers is necessary”.

But New Labour’s strategy has none of that sense of urgency. It relies on the market to deliver targets and sticks to profit-driven, business-as-usual “solutions”. And there is no sign that the government is looking at a reduction in fossil fuel use – indeed it plans to allow new coal-fired power stations. And Gordon Brown spent last week in a futile bid to get the Saudis to pump more oil and to invest in his mad nuclear power expansion project, which new planning laws will facilitate.

So people are absolutely right to have no confidence in governments to lead us into this new energy era. The big question is, what kind of leadership is going to do it? Across the country thousands of people are setting up Transition Towns, in an attempt to make the switch to a post-oil era by unleashing local activism and talents.

Transition Towns (TT) have an up-front, anti-political approach. For example at the launch of the Transition Town meeting in Lewes, a member of the audience urged TT Lewes to join the campaign against construction of a rubbish incinerator but it was made clear that this was inappropriate as not everyone might be against it. The same is true in Ireland, where TT stood aside from the community campaign to stop Shell building a new pipeline at Rossport. Transition Towns want to focus on the things people already agree about.

The difficulty with this approach is that it promotes the idea that there can be a managed, painless transition to a post-oil era. This is the kind of environmental consensus the government itself promotes because it does not disturb business interests whilst focusing people’s energies on individual and local activity.

But we cannot any longer take the risks of ignoring the crisis-driven, life-and-death nature of the global energy crisis. As the authors of The Rocky Road to Transition Towns (by TT members and supporters) argue: “Communities must face up to issues such as nuclear expansion, market-based solutions to climate change such as carbon trading and offsetting, agro fuels and food scarcity, developments such as airport expansion and resource extraction. These things all occur through active government policies, which try to maintain the economic and political, ‘business as usual’ scenarios. Unfortunately, left unchallenged they could also wipe out the best efforts at local sustainability, like a tsunami in front of a sand castle.”

The authors of are right to open up this debate. Transition Towns represent a positive recognition that citizens cannot – and should not - rely on governments to deal with the energy crisis. Yet a localised, individual and generally non-political, approach leaves unchallenged the corporations’ control of energy production and fails to question the ruinous capitalist approach to the economy in general. As difficult as it might be, we have to make a transition beyond the rule of the corporations and market “solutions” that actually intensify the problem. That means struggling for a new consensus rather than simply rehashing the government’s message.

Penny Cole
Environment editor