This week a new movement against the cost-of-living crisis announced itself. Bringing motorways to a standstill, the movement deploys direct action and disruption. Perhaps surprisingly the response of much of the left to the petrol price protesters has been tepid at best, hostile at worst. Adam Johannes argues that this antipathy is mistaken.
Birth of a new movement.
The explosive fuel blockades witnessed on Monday are a sign of things to come, as more and more people see their living standards driven down by rising prices and stagnating wages.
We should support those willing to fight back, but for some on the left and in the climate movement, there can be an uneasiness about protests which erupt over fuel prices. This can be explained by two main reasons.
Firstly, cars and petrol are dreadful for the environment – fuelling climate change that threatens the earth and spreading air pollution that chokes our cities; and secondly, that historically and internationally, fuel protesters have sometimes leaned right politically and been drawn from outside of the ranks of the organised working class.
Personally, I do not own a car and cannot drive, and grew up in a family with parents who could not drive, but as as socialist it seems clear that the demographic of car drivers does include many trade unionists, even some environmentalists, and many working class people.
In the absence of a decent public transport system, free-at-the-point-of-use, people are forced to use their cars to do the school run or travel to work. The boom in self employment as a result of job cuts has also meant more workers having to use their car to earn a living.
Rising petrol prices, then, are yet another misery for working class people along with all the other rising living costs piling onto workers.
Media interviews with Welsh protesters confirm this picture. One couple interviewed from Cwmbran were forced to quit their jobs in Bristol because they could no longer afford the commute to work.
A middle-aged welder from Maesteg spoke of fuel costing him £300 a week before he had even got to work and earned anything, suggesting that it might get to the point where he would have a better income if he left his tools in the shed and went on universal credit.
A delivery driver in his twenties spoke of having to move back in with his parents due to financial pressures. Asked why he was joining the protests, he said simply, “I have no choice”.
The environmental question
On Monday morning I was interviewed by a journalist about media reports that fuel protesters were intending to blockade both Severn Bridges later that morning, under police pressure the protests would turn into a go-slow convoy of lorries, cars, vans and tractors.
She asked if from an environmental perspective I could defend them. I said yes.
Transport is responsible for around a quarter of Britain’s emissions and also air pollution. We need to get people out of private cars onto buses, bikes, trams and trains.
But the logical way to do this is not through private companies making huge profits, raising prices and squeezing the living standards of working-class people, while taking in billions.
The way to do it is to tax the rich and private companies to fund a massive government expansion of free public transport run for people not profit.
New Zealand halved public transport fares to help citizens struggling with the cost of petrol. Some countries such as Estonia and Luxembourg have switched to free public transport, while countries like Holland more proactively and effectively facilitate cycling.
Taking energy, fuel and transport out of private ownership and the free market, and into public ownership, would be an important way of both stopping rising prices and moving towards a democratically planned economy that can cut emissions.
While economic crises may lead to working class people consuming less, the billionaire class consumes more. There is no evidence that austerity measures and reducing workers’ income leads to favourable changes to the planet.
Yes, an economic crisis may force a layer of society to use less heating, use the car less, buy second-hand things rather than new things and not fly to Europe on holiday. These things might, in the short term, lower individual carbon footprints, but it won’t achieve substantial long-term changes.
Infact if squeezing working class living standards lowered emissions then a decade of austerity, and forty years of neoliberalism, should have made Britain the lowest carbon economy in Europe.
But even if squeezing working class living standards did radically reduce carbon emissions, this would not be the best way to do it. For example, soaring household energy bills may force people to use less energy, but a massive government programme to insulate every home in Britain would cut energy use, end fuel poverty and create hundreds of thousands of climate jobs, all without involving poor families trying to survive in cold homes in winter.
Fuelling the fire last time
In 2000, during seven days that shook Blair’s Britain, militant fuel protests almost brought the country to a standstill. Petrol stations ran out of petrol and panic buying caused chaos.
There was a serious possibility that protesters could paralyse public services and industry as schools began to close and fuel for public transport ran low and shortages hit supermarkets. The example of Britain would spread like wildfire across the English Channel, sparking similar protests in many other European countries.
One of the first sparks would come when the late Brynle Williams, a Welsh farmer, would chair a small protest meeting in St Asaph before taking a convoy of hauliers and farmers to blockade Britain’s largest oil refinery, with hundreds joining, sparking a wave of blockades at other sites around Britain. Three years later he was elected to the Welsh Assembly – for the Conservative Party.
Another prominent protest leader and Welsh farmer, David Handley, similarly would declare himself a Tory supporter. In 2004, ‘the prince of darkness’ himself, Tory leader, Michael Howard would urge motorists to take action against Labour and join fuel protests.
While another 2000 fuel protest leader and farmer, Andrew Spence, would go on stand in 2007 for election in Blair’s constituency of Sedgefield – for the British National Party, securing their best ever result.
But this wasn’t the whole story. Whilst there were wealthy farmers, business owners and big hauliers involved, most protesters were small business people, small farmers, small family companies, self-employed lorry drivers, and even former workers and trade unionists who had lost their jobs in sectors such as coal and steel.
Socialist groups would visit picket lines and blockades and sometimes get a good reception from protesters, many of whom were disillusioned Labour voters, but largely their calls for workers, pensioners and students to follow the example of the fuel protesters didn’t come off, and the movement did not go the left’s way.
Was this inevitable? At the time opinion polls suggested a majority of the public supported the fuel protests but left-wing interventions in the movement were not helped by Britain’s supposed left-of-centre party, Labour, being in power and attacking living standards.
The trade union bureaucracy played an unhelpful role as well. As the protests dominated the headlines, instead of building bridges between the protesters and the organised working class by placing demands on the government, John Monks, leader of the TUC called for the entire trade union movement to rally around New Labour in unity against the fuel protesters.
He would absurdly comparing the fuel protests to the 1973 U.S. backed coup in Chile calling them “an unconstitutional and unlawful attempt to bully the government into submission… a challenge to democracy and a crude attempt to hold the country to ransom…Let me remind you of the other occasion that trucks and lorries were used by the self-employed and the far right to attack democracy. That was in Chile in 1973-and it started the chain of events that brought down the Allende government.”
Other trade union leaders would similarly rally behind the state and the status quo. Bill Morris, leader of the TGWU (that would later merge with Amicus to become Unite) would call for police mass arrests, court injunctions and emergency measures to be used to smash the protests. The trade union movement would be foolish to condemn the fuel protesters of today. We are in a new period and it appears that this new movement is far more fluid than the one in 2000.
The Gilet Jaunes
In late 2018, one of Europe’s most inspiring, militant and confrontational anti-austerity movements of recent times would erupt in France against a hike in fuel tax that would push working class and self-employed people into hardship. It demanded the fall of the ‘President of the Rich’, Emmanuel Macron.
The Gilets Jaunes, France’s Yellow Vest movement, would suffer twenty-four lost eyes, five lost hands, three hundred and fifteen injuries including fractured jaws and skulls, and at least two deaths, as they faced down Macron repression. Protesters were drawn from the working class, lower middle class, self-employed and unemployed, at the high point of the movement, the Yellow Vests protests would converge with the student, environmental and trade union movement, including the joint strike in February 2019 with France’s CGT union (Confédération générale du travail).
While the initial spark for the months of militant daily occupations and roadblocks at roundabouts, weekly town centre marches and clashes with police, was rising fuel prices, demands would mushroom to include better public services, higher wages, pensions, healthcare, democratic media free of control from the rich, corporations and government, international solidarity with uprisings around the world against the economic crisis, and participatory democracy.
As leftist intellectual, Pamela Anderson, would write at the start of the movement,
“I despise violence … but what is the violence of all these people and burned luxurious cars, compared to the structural violence of the French – and global – elites?”
“Yellow Vests” are a mass popular movement against the current establishment. It is a revolt that has been simmering in France for years. A revolt by ordinary people against the current political system which – as in many other western countries – colludes with the elite and despises its own citizens”
“What about the climate change? Some people might think that Yellow Vests are fighting against good policies that aim to reduce carbon emissions. But let’s not forget that it is the world’s richest 10% who are responsible for nearly 50% of total lifestyle consumption emissions.”
Inspired, a new protest movement of undocumented immigrants in France would also emerge using similar tactics of militant direct action: The Gilets Noirs (black vests movement). Sometimes people from the two different movements attend and support each other’s protests. The undocumented migrants of the black vests target symbols of the French republic and French identity including sit-ins and occupations of iconic buildings.
Early on in the spontaneous movement some on the left in France and internationally wondered whether to take an abstentionist position, the movement was volatile and contested, with both far right and far left seeking to intervene, unclear ideologically with both reactionary and radical ideas on display. Ultimately in France, the Yellow Vests moved leftwards, but in other countries similar movements have moved to the hard right.
The left must take a lead and try to ensure the anger is channelled in a left-wing anti-capitalist direction.
The fuel protests of now
A few weeks ago, I was added to a group on Facebook against rising fuel prices. The group was mainly filled with comments angry about rising prices, and I paid little attention.
Last month, as tens of thousands of trade unionists from around Britain were gearing up to descend on London to protest the cost-of-living crisis and demand a pay rise, I was surprised to note that the wind had changed in this group. It had grown to over 50,000 members and had become flooded with discussions of disruption and direct action. Some said we should block roads and bring motorways to a standstill, others that maybe we needed to shut down petrol stations or block refineries, others that maybe we needed to all go to parliament to protest, but the overall mood was that the time for talking was over, and it was time for action.
Judging from the comments and debates, there was little evidence of any hard right agenda among protesters, though neither a radical left one. Pleasingly one of the main admin’s of the group announced that any comments that had even a whiff of racism would be removed. Comments were largely positive about the rail strike with suggestions that disruption might be maximised if fuel protesters coordinated motorway blockades on the same day as the strikes.
With no clear leadership or organisation it was unclear how action would emerge, but Monday 4th of July did emerge as a day of action, with people taking the lead to announce protests in many different parts of Britain that would hit national headlines.
On the evening of the day of action, browsing the Facebook group, it was clear that people were energised and excited, and taking about what had happened earlier in the day, these comments from a debate on police arrests give a flavour of discussion:
“Can’t believe the scrotes at Gwent Police nicked 12 people for this today. Disgusting abuse of power. Should be ashamed of themselves. They’re paid to support the public not the politicians. Imagine giving someone a potential criminal record for protesting.”
“same as the miners strike 84 85”
“paid up class traitors that’s why”
“well I wouldn’t be calling the police that’s for sure. This argument is done to death. They probably wouldn’t turn up anyway just give you a crime reference number”
“The Police follow orders, the people who make the orders are the ones that should be targetted.”
“whilst the police force are at this peaceful protest. Someone has been stabbed…Burgled the problem we have with the police force is they don’t focus on the priorities”
“These fuel prices are affecting family’s with young children who a struggling to feed and cloth them hope the people in these police vehicles can sleep at night”
“It’s a democratic dictatorship nowadays. Abuse of power”
“We need to keep doing this, it’s a protest !! We are the people, we stand for our rights”
“We should all be doing this shut the country down that is the only thing this government will listen too”
” it won’t shut the country down. A nationwide strike would however”
“If you are going tae organise, make sure you trust who you are talking to. The police will try and infiltrate any group that protests (but never rich folk, funny that). Use Telegram and Signal to communicate and keep plans fluid. And remember, no talking to cops.”
“I’m with the NWA on this one”
What next?
The fuel protests are bringing the important ingredient of disruption and direct action to the cost-of-living crisis movement, and this could be infectious. How can the left intervene?
The left must have an organised presence on fuel protests, perhaps with window posters with good slogans that link rising petrol costs with other issues such as a £15 minimum wage. Trade unionists could organise car convoys with trade union flags to show that the organised labour movement is an ally to people struggling with living costs.
We must build unity between fuel protesters and the environmental movement on the basis of demanding that public transport fares be slashed to help citizens with rising petrol costs as the first step towards free public transport, and resist arguments that the two movements are enemies.
We should also develop links between fuel protesters and other movements against the cost of living emergency – rising household energy prices, rising rents, benefit cuts, the housing crisis, and especially rising trade union militancy aiming to smash the pay freeze.
We must argue that the demands should extend to seizing the profits of the fuel companies, which should be nationalised, and argue that pay rises are a central way to make affordable the essentials including fuel, food, heating, and housing.
It feels like everyone is waiting for disruption like the French Revolution to begin. It feels like everyone wants something to happen, to do something, but waits for someone else to act first. With the national rail strike, fuel protests can be the beginning of a militant anti-poll tax style movement that can bring an already broken government down and end the cost-of-living crisis.
Cover image copyright voice.wales
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