The various post-Covid recovery plans often talk of rebuilding better- using the need to rebuild as an opportunity for adopting better ideas, including the use of renewable energy. However, most top-down national government programmes focus on fast impact options for hard hit sectors, not usually involving much change in approach. That may be inevitable: it may often be easier, faster and cheaper to patch, fix and mend than to start something new. Some environmentalists of course think that we need more and that most industries and sectors are in need of radical change: the whole thing is broken! But although the impact of Covid has been bad, in reality, only a few industries and sector are seriously damaged and a firefighting approach is likely to be adopted- dealing with each independently.
Grass-roots bottom-up initiatives may also do the same. They emerge in response to specific problems, and, understandably, usually focus on saving jobs by going back to where they were before in terms of production focus. But in some cases, a more radical approach is adopted, a modern replay of the much-celebrated product diversification campaign mounted by Lucas workers in the late 1970s, which featured renewable energy technologies amongst the proposals for alternative products.
Revived interest in the Lucas plan predated the Covid crisis. There was a very successful trade union and labour movement orientated conference in Birmingham back in 2016. That led to a lot of grass roots outreach initiatives, aided subsequently by a new widely shown film. Links were also built with the climate change movement- who had been campaigning for green jobs. But with jobs security collapsing across many sectors after Covid, there has been growing pressure to turn rhetoric into reality. While the TUC and the official Trade unions have fought welcome campaigns to protect workers’ jobs & conditions, and have backed renewables and green policies generally, like Labour, they have also tended to be easily drawn into supporting arguably less than brilliant ideas like nuclear power. So far that has not been the case at the grass roots, which has in general gone for green solutions, but there is lot to do to spread that approach more widely and, in particular, across industry.
What can be done?
The broad overall plan is obvious: establish new green technology manufacturing activities to replace dying industries. For example, EVs and biogas/ hydrogen powered vehicles instead of fossil fuelled cars, van and trucks; wind turbines and PV cells instead of fossil and nuclear technology. But the details are important- the skill base will limit what can be done. It’s also not just about manufacturing. We need new patterns of more sustainable consumption. In fact a new society. It’s a huge project. The Lucas plan may have indicated what might be done in one sector, but we now need to actually do it, and also do it across the board.
There is a substantial literature to guide our thinking about alternative options for production, a refection the prolific output of one of the key Lucas activists, Mike Cooley, whose work on socially useful production has been an inspiration to so many over the years. It is still very relevant. Indeed, his concept of ecologically sound technology, socially useful work and human-centered production systems could not be more topical in our Covid constrained climate change challenged world. Sadly though he is no longer with us - he died in September, at 86. But his influence, and the vision he created, lives on, both in terms of campaigns for green job in the post Covid situation and in terms of the fight to resist deskilling impacts of automation, something I have looked at in my chapter on ‘Technology and the Future of Work’, in Uzzel, D., Stevis, D., and Räthzel, N. (eds) ‘Handbook on Environmental Labour Studies’, forthcoming, from Palgrave.
Cooley was awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1981 for ‘designing and promoting the theory and practice of human-centred, socially useful production’. In his acceptance speech he said, ‘Science and technology is not given. It was made by people like us. If it's not doing for us what we want, we have a right and a responsibility to change it.’ And in pursuing that change he was clear sighted pioneer – pointing to a more sustainable and humane future.
Cooley, and the Lucas workers Combine committee, may have been in the vanguard in the 1970s in relation to progressive views on technology, but the UK trade union and Labour movement was not far behind. The 1985 Labour party conference passed an anti-nuclear motion, which was strongly confirmed in 1986 after Chernobyl, with several key unions backing a pro-renewables anti-nuclear line at the TUCs annual Conference. But things changed. Some key unions are now very pro-nuclear, the GMB in particular, claiming that renewables are not a viable alternative. We have lost some ground.
However, with Covid, we are now faced with a new situation- the need to revamp the global economy quickly. It’s not clear if nuclear is much use for that, whereas renewables may be. And beyond just technology, it’s not clear if we should just try to restart the old economy unchanged. We maybe ought to take a look at the idea of socially useful production that emerged from the Lucas campaign and also Cooley’s inspirational work on human centred technology.
In addition to the legacy of work on socially useful production, its good to see that Mike’s son Graham is CEO of ITM Power, the Sheffield-based green hydrogen ‘Power to Gas’ system pioneer, pushing ahead with this challenge to the technological status quo. So the radical green energy legacy also continues- with RenewableUK recent pushing green hydrogen hard. It even features in the Labour’s new green recovery plan, which, although somewhat muted compared to the radical manifesto that emerged under Jeremy Corbyn, also has some ideas about industrial restructuring, with the emphasis on green job creation.
So one way or another there is plenty to get on with in the UK and globally …In fact, with a range of crises hitting us, maybe too much, as my next post may indicate. But we have no choice but to try… and at least Trump has (nearly) gone, so it ought to be a bit easier!
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