The climate issue suggests that we need to expand renewable energy and energy saving as fast as possible, so as to cut carbon emissions. However, given how things are going internationally, the defence sector may be expanded instead- it is being presented increasingly as being urgent for national survival. For some that is very worrying- especially given that more money (£15bn in the UK) is also being allocated for nuclear weapons development. What sort of survival might that lead to, if the worst come to the worst and deterrence doesn’t work?
While not necessarily wanting to dispense with defence or the military, not everyone is in agreement with the rush to build more weapons. Though there may be exceptions, given a choice, most people in industry would no doubt prefer to work on something that adds value to life rather than destroys it. So it is interesting to see that the UK Trades Union Congress this year decided to back a ‘Wages not Weapons’ motion. There is also strong pressure from greens to resists what some see as an environmentally disastrous rise in military expenditure- a ‘war on the climate.’
Resistance to war is hardly a new thing, neither is the positive idea of converting ‘swords into ploughshares’. For example, ‘defence conversion’, aka ‘peace conversion’, emerged as a political movement in the 1970s in the USA, and a workers alternative plan and socially useful production movement also emerged then in the UK. That was about more than just opposing defence work. It was about creating better jobs on better technologies.
A key focus in the UK was the Lucas Aerospace workers campaign, although there were several other workers plan initiatives elsewhere in the UK, including in the energy and automobile sectors, with a range of alternative products being proposed. However, the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards’ Committee’s Alternative Corporate Plan is the most widely known. Launched in 1976, it proposed a wide range of products designed primarily by the workforce at the Lucas Aerospace plants across the UK, including wind turbines, hybrid cars, energy efficient housing, as well as much needed medical equipment- as opposed to the weapons systems that were one of the company’s main products. Although blocked by the company (with some key activists being sacked), the plan attracted widespread national and international recognition as a positive alternative to unemployment & recession; it also identified how technology could be used to answer society’s unmet needs.
It may not have succeed, but some remaining members of the Lucas Aerospace Combine have put together a website to detail the Combine’s history and key information related to the Lucas Plan campaign ‘to inform and assist other trade unionists, activists and organisations who may wish to draw upon the Plan and our experience campaigning for it’. And the Lucas legacy continues to inspire positive initiatives, with, for example, there being a campaign for new Lucas plan-type strategies, and an initiative to help workers to transition to new low carbon jobs. For a full history of the idea see the various books from Spokesman Press.
It may be worth looking back at why, and also where, the initial UK workers plans emerged. Lucas Aerospace had the special advantage in terms of being able to diversify given that it was a high-tech company which produced a wide range of electro-mechanical systems for aircraft. As such it did a lot of prototyping work and short-run batch production, so it was very flexible technologically, not locked into long-run mass production. So the workers plan was able to explore a range of new ideas, or develop new versions of some Aerospace technology. For example, some large modern aircraft have small in-built slipstream fed wind-turbines to generate emergency power.
By contrast most of the other workers plans emerged in companies that were based on less flexible production of large engineered items- such as huge bespoke power station turbo-generator units (as at Parsons and Clarke Chapman in Newcastle) and submarines (as at Vickers in Barrow). Unsurprisingly then, the workers plans from the big power engineering companies focused on switching over to still quite large Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants, while Vickers looked at large scale wave energy systems, drawing on their submarine experience. Some workers plans emerged in the car industry, but there the focus was on finding a clean replacement for fossil fuel powered car- to continue with mass production. The Chrysler workers plan looked at electric vehicles.
None of these companies now exist, at least in the same form, but most of the product ideas that they came up with have been take up by others. Indeed, the modern ‘green energy’ world is almost defined by them- solar cells, wind turbines, electric vehicles, heat pumps, fuel cells and CHP plants. Would that have happened anyway, although later? Were the workers plans just ‘super suggestion schemes’ which the companies foolishly decided to ignore? You could say they were premature, but the more likely reason for them not being taken up at that time was that the plans presented a major challenge to the companies ‘right to manage’, and to be able to choose ‘what to make’. The workforce in companies like Lucas could increasingly see what could be done with the skills they had and what was needed by the communities they lived in. And they were telling management to get on with it. That would never do!
Are we at the same point again now? With an urgent need for a global technology transition away from fossil fuels, while at the same time pressure to expand weapons production- potentially at the expense of more socially beneficial technologies? Few would say no to having defence, indeed some would say we need more, but it is arguably a matter of balance- and people.
There is actually a shortage of people with the right skills to produce green energy and allied systems. Can we speed up the phasing out of the old fossil-based energy technologies- releasing more people to work on the new green options? And should we really be trying to expand high-cost skill-intense nuclear power? Even if the Labour government says it is needed to support its military twin, the bomb, and its delivery technology - or is the other way around?
Lots of big controversial issues. It is true that there are some very bad people out there, so we can’t ignore that threat, or the need to be able to challenge tyranny, but there are also other threats, notable climate change and given our limited skill base and money we may not be able to do everything. For example many greens no doubt feel that we are not doing enough on climate and energy– and some countries are even going in the opposite direction. Something may have to give. Most defence technologies are very costly and obviously destructive in use as well as climate damaging even when not used. So some say there is a direct conflict between net zero and defence. Others may disagree- saying both can be done, and it can help growth and jobs! But it seems likely to need a bit more than minor adjustments. Though how ready are we to consider more radical options, like non-military defence, enhanced arms control and disarmament measures? Isn’t that fantasy land? Maybe. But arguably so is ploughing ahead without trying to change, especially in an ecologically-fragile nuclear-armed world.
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