Many thousands on climate march, but class-struggle voices needed

Something like 20,000 people took part in the demonstration against dangerous climate change in London on Saturday 7 March. It was a vibrant action, with huge numbers of young people.

There were many good things about the march, and big mobilisation around these issue is positive. However, the overall political tone was bland, and the labour movement and radical left were not a substantial force on the protest to change that, either in terms of numbers or politically. This is despite one of the driving forces behind the protest being the Campaign Against Climate Change, in which leftists are prominent.

A number of trade union leaders spoke at the rally, and there must have been many trade union members on the march, but there were few union banners or visible union contingents.

There was surprisingly little left presence too. The SWP had quite a few stalls at the start, but were not so visible once the numbers grew. They were also saying very little to develop the political debate around these issues. The SWP placards and the “petition” they were using both said “Ban fracking”, hardly a controversial position in the climate movement.

The most prominent “class” demand on the march was for “A million climate jobs” – a demand Workers’ Liberty supports, but who is going to win it? And how do we ensure this fight does not see us lining up with “renewable capital”, no ally in the struggle against climate change and for social transformation?

We need demands like public ownership at least of sectors like energy and transport, making the rich pay to deal with climate change, and workers’ control and workers’ plans to make it happen. We need struggles informed by the vision of a different society, in which collective ownership means exploitation of human beings and of nature can be ended. As a starting point, we need to fight to radically strengthen links between the labour and climate movements, transforming both in the course of doing so.

Being “anti-capitalist” is important, but not enough. Among the people, mainly young, active in the climate movement, the left need to be arguing for working-class agency and an orientation to workers’ organisations and struggles. We need to make these ideas a pole of attraction in the movement.

Workers’ Liberty was heavily involved in the ecological ferment of 2006-10, including in the Camps for Climate Action and through the Workers’ Climate Action campaign, which developed links with workers in environmentally damaging industries and also helped spark the Vestas wind turbine workers' occupation on the Isle of Wight in 2009. Now we are working to get more involved in the climate movement again.

On the 7 March demonstration, we sold dozens of copies of our new pamphlet For workers’ climate action – climate change, capitalism and working-class struggle and leafleted for an AWL event around these themes on 14 March (see below). We met many people open to discussing anti-capitalist and class-struggle approaches to ecology and climate politics.

After the decline it suffered following the 2009 Copenhagen summit, climate struggle is clearly on the rise again. In the run up to the Paris climate change summit in December, revolutionary socialists should throw ourselves in, and be willing to learn from others more involved than we are at present. But we should also be confident that we have important ideas to offer, ideas crucial for the future of the movement and the planet.