You can judge a multinational corporation by how it deals with its critics. And the contrast between how Asda and Tesco coped when the internationally recognised aristocrat activist Hector Christie turned up at their stores in North Devon complaining about probable carcinogenic ingredients in Monsanto made Round Up weed killer.

The Devon farmer and scion of the aristocratic Christies has made headlines around the world in his time – famously being thrown out of the Labour Party conference after heckling Tony Blair in protest at the Iraq war, and also fooling riot police amid the carnage in Genoa in Italy during the G8 protests by dressing as a priest.

But now he is pioneering the “micro protest” where just one or two activists can walk into a supermarket, stage an eye-catching ceremony of “rounding up the Round Up” into a trolly, and then taking the loot to the manager and asking them to sign a declaration that they believe the product is safe for customers.

Biocide is suicide

Christie arrived with a few fellow protesters at Asda at lunchtime on Wednesday, took a trolly and marched to the weedkiller shelf. He filled his trolly with Round Up and then started to cover the trolly in yellow and black tape bearing the warning, “No entry – glyphosate causes cancer“.

Within minutes a team of ASDA staff had swarmed in, and began intimating that the campaigners were committing criminal damage, threatened to call the police and misrepresented the Data Protection Act to try and stop filming taking place.

A staff member was heard to say: “You can’t be filming in the store. If you are not buying this you need to pop it back now – you need to do it now. You are damaging property that belongs to Asda. “

A second Asda employee said: “We will have to let the police know you have been filming – it’s data protection.” A third added: “You are going to get into loads of trouble for that.”

Hector’s accomplice, who was wearing a tee-shirt with the slogan ‘biocide is suicide’, told the staff that he was concerned that Round Up contains a carcinogenic ingredient.

Threats and spectacle

“What you are selling is carcinogenic,” he complained. “I’m not selling anything,” the Asda representative said. The response: “It’s in your store!”

Hector and his micro protest then set off for nearby Tesco, where again he filled his trolly with Round Up, decorated it with tape, and then heading for the customer service desk asking to see the manager.

But this time, the response was completely different. The manager was away, they were told, and the duty manager was summoned. She took a while and the protesters were left to their own devices, somewhat dumbstruck. “We might as well put it back on the shelf and head home”, said one of the activists.

When the manager did arrive, she listened attentively and then asked for advice on how to deal with slugs in the garden without using salt – which may be harmful to the health of her dog. A third protester – a professional permaculture gardener – advised and then everyone drifted home. “Dried seaweed, gravel, egg shells, beer traps, wood chip”. Without the threats and spectacle that had taken place in Asda.

The Tesco protest made for quite a genteel – and serial – protest. Hector is hoping to inspire protests across the country to do the same protest at supermarkets stocking Round Up, with a day of action planned for 30 May 2018. 

A spokesperson for Asda said: “We respect everyone’s right to their view and the right to protest peacefully. We also expect people to respect our customers, colleagues and property.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

You can judge a multinational corporation by how it deals with its critics. And the contrast between how Asda and Tesco coped when the internationally recognised aristocrat activist Hector Christie turned up at their stores in North Devon complaining about probable carcinogenic ingredients in Monsanto made Round Up weed killer.

The Devon farmer and scion of the aristocratic Christies has made headlines around the world in his time – famously being thrown out of the Labour Party conference after heckling Tony Blair in protest at the Iraq war, and also fooling riot police amid the carnage in Genoa in Italy during the G8 protests by dressing as a priest.

But now he is pioneering the “micro protest” where just one or two activists can walk into a supermarket, stage an eye-catching ceremony of “rounding up the Round Up” into a trolly, and then taking the loot to the manager and asking them to sign a declaration that they believe the product is safe for customers.

Biocide is suicide

Christie arrived with a few fellow protesters at Asda at lunchtime on Wednesday, took a trolly and marched to the weedkiller shelf. He filled his trolly with Round Up and then started to cover the trolly in yellow and black tape bearing the warning, “No entry – glyphosate causes cancer“.

Within minutes a team of ASDA staff had swarmed in, and began intimating that the campaigners were committing criminal damage, threatened to call the police and misrepresented the Data Protection Act to try and stop filming taking place.

A staff member was heard to say: “You can’t be filming in the store. If you are not buying this you need to pop it back now – you need to do it now. You are damaging property that belongs to Asda. “

A second Asda employee said: “We will have to let the police know you have been filming – it’s data protection.” A third added: “You are going to get into loads of trouble for that.”

Hector’s accomplice, who was wearing a tee-shirt with the slogan ‘biocide is suicide’, told the staff that he was concerned that Round Up contains a carcinogenic ingredient.

Threats and spectacle

“What you are selling is carcinogenic,” he complained. “I’m not selling anything,” the Asda representative said. The response: “It’s in your store!”

Hector and his micro protest then set off for nearby Tesco, where again he filled his trolly with Round Up, decorated it with tape, and then heading for the customer service desk asking to see the manager.

But this time, the response was completely different. The manager was away, they were told, and the duty manager was summoned. She took a while and the protesters were left to their own devices, somewhat dumbstruck. “We might as well put it back on the shelf and head home”, said one of the activists.

When the manager did arrive, she listened attentively and then asked for advice on how to deal with slugs in the garden without using salt – which may be harmful to the health of her dog. A third protester – a professional permaculture gardener – advised and then everyone drifted home. “Dried seaweed, gravel, egg shells, beer traps, wood chip”. Without the threats and spectacle that had taken place in Asda.

The Tesco protest made for quite a genteel – and serial – protest. Hector is hoping to inspire protests across the country to do the same protest at supermarkets stocking Round Up, with a day of action planned for 30 May 2018. 

A spokesperson for Asda said: “We respect everyone’s right to their view and the right to protest peacefully. We also expect people to respect our customers, colleagues and property.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

You can judge a multinational corporation by how it deals with its critics. And the contrast between how Asda and Tesco coped when the internationally recognised aristocrat activist Hector Christie turned up at their stores in North Devon complaining about probable carcinogenic ingredients in Monsanto made Round Up weed killer.

The Devon farmer and scion of the aristocratic Christies has made headlines around the world in his time – famously being thrown out of the Labour Party conference after heckling Tony Blair in protest at the Iraq war, and also fooling riot police amid the carnage in Genoa in Italy during the G8 protests by dressing as a priest.

But now he is pioneering the “micro protest” where just one or two activists can walk into a supermarket, stage an eye-catching ceremony of “rounding up the Round Up” into a trolly, and then taking the loot to the manager and asking them to sign a declaration that they believe the product is safe for customers.

Biocide is suicide

Christie arrived with a few fellow protesters at Asda at lunchtime on Wednesday, took a trolly and marched to the weedkiller shelf. He filled his trolly with Round Up and then started to cover the trolly in yellow and black tape bearing the warning, “No entry – glyphosate causes cancer“.

Within minutes a team of ASDA staff had swarmed in, and began intimating that the campaigners were committing criminal damage, threatened to call the police and misrepresented the Data Protection Act to try and stop filming taking place.

A staff member was heard to say: “You can’t be filming in the store. If you are not buying this you need to pop it back now – you need to do it now. You are damaging property that belongs to Asda. “

A second Asda employee said: “We will have to let the police know you have been filming – it’s data protection.” A third added: “You are going to get into loads of trouble for that.”

Hector’s accomplice, who was wearing a tee-shirt with the slogan ‘biocide is suicide’, told the staff that he was concerned that Round Up contains a carcinogenic ingredient.

Threats and spectacle

“What you are selling is carcinogenic,” he complained. “I’m not selling anything,” the Asda representative said. The response: “It’s in your store!”

Hector and his micro protest then set off for nearby Tesco, where again he filled his trolly with Round Up, decorated it with tape, and then heading for the customer service desk asking to see the manager.

But this time, the response was completely different. The manager was away, they were told, and the duty manager was summoned. She took a while and the protesters were left to their own devices, somewhat dumbstruck. “We might as well put it back on the shelf and head home”, said one of the activists.

When the manager did arrive, she listened attentively and then asked for advice on how to deal with slugs in the garden without using salt – which may be harmful to the health of her dog. A third protester – a professional permaculture gardener – advised and then everyone drifted home. “Dried seaweed, gravel, egg shells, beer traps, wood chip”. Without the threats and spectacle that had taken place in Asda.

The Tesco protest made for quite a genteel – and serial – protest. Hector is hoping to inspire protests across the country to do the same protest at supermarkets stocking Round Up, with a day of action planned for 30 May 2018. 

A spokesperson for Asda said: “We respect everyone’s right to their view and the right to protest peacefully. We also expect people to respect our customers, colleagues and property.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

You can judge a multinational corporation by how it deals with its critics. And the contrast between how Asda and Tesco coped when the internationally recognised aristocrat activist Hector Christie turned up at their stores in North Devon complaining about probable carcinogenic ingredients in Monsanto made Round Up weed killer.

The Devon farmer and scion of the aristocratic Christies has made headlines around the world in his time – famously being thrown out of the Labour Party conference after heckling Tony Blair in protest at the Iraq war, and also fooling riot police amid the carnage in Genoa in Italy during the G8 protests by dressing as a priest.

But now he is pioneering the “micro protest” where just one or two activists can walk into a supermarket, stage an eye-catching ceremony of “rounding up the Round Up” into a trolly, and then taking the loot to the manager and asking them to sign a declaration that they believe the product is safe for customers.

Biocide is suicide

Christie arrived with a few fellow protesters at Asda at lunchtime on Wednesday, took a trolly and marched to the weedkiller shelf. He filled his trolly with Round Up and then started to cover the trolly in yellow and black tape bearing the warning, “No entry – glyphosate causes cancer“.

Within minutes a team of ASDA staff had swarmed in, and began intimating that the campaigners were committing criminal damage, threatened to call the police and misrepresented the Data Protection Act to try and stop filming taking place.

A staff member was heard to say: “You can’t be filming in the store. If you are not buying this you need to pop it back now – you need to do it now. You are damaging property that belongs to Asda. “

A second Asda employee said: “We will have to let the police know you have been filming – it’s data protection.” A third added: “You are going to get into loads of trouble for that.”

Hector’s accomplice, who was wearing a tee-shirt with the slogan ‘biocide is suicide’, told the staff that he was concerned that Round Up contains a carcinogenic ingredient.

Threats and spectacle

“What you are selling is carcinogenic,” he complained. “I’m not selling anything,” the Asda representative said. The response: “It’s in your store!”

Hector and his micro protest then set off for nearby Tesco, where again he filled his trolly with Round Up, decorated it with tape, and then heading for the customer service desk asking to see the manager.

But this time, the response was completely different. The manager was away, they were told, and the duty manager was summoned. She took a while and the protesters were left to their own devices, somewhat dumbstruck. “We might as well put it back on the shelf and head home”, said one of the activists.

When the manager did arrive, she listened attentively and then asked for advice on how to deal with slugs in the garden without using salt – which may be harmful to the health of her dog. A third protester – a professional permaculture gardener – advised and then everyone drifted home. “Dried seaweed, gravel, egg shells, beer traps, wood chip”. Without the threats and spectacle that had taken place in Asda.

The Tesco protest made for quite a genteel – and serial – protest. Hector is hoping to inspire protests across the country to do the same protest at supermarkets stocking Round Up, with a day of action planned for 30 May 2018. 

A spokesperson for Asda said: “We respect everyone’s right to their view and the right to protest peacefully. We also expect people to respect our customers, colleagues and property.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

You can judge a multinational corporation by how it deals with its critics. And the contrast between how Asda and Tesco coped when the internationally recognised aristocrat activist Hector Christie turned up at their stores in North Devon complaining about probable carcinogenic ingredients in Monsanto made Round Up weed killer.

The Devon farmer and scion of the aristocratic Christies has made headlines around the world in his time – famously being thrown out of the Labour Party conference after heckling Tony Blair in protest at the Iraq war, and also fooling riot police amid the carnage in Genoa in Italy during the G8 protests by dressing as a priest.

But now he is pioneering the “micro protest” where just one or two activists can walk into a supermarket, stage an eye-catching ceremony of “rounding up the Round Up” into a trolly, and then taking the loot to the manager and asking them to sign a declaration that they believe the product is safe for customers.

Biocide is suicide

Christie arrived with a few fellow protesters at Asda at lunchtime on Wednesday, took a trolly and marched to the weedkiller shelf. He filled his trolly with Round Up and then started to cover the trolly in yellow and black tape bearing the warning, “No entry – glyphosate causes cancer“.

Within minutes a team of ASDA staff had swarmed in, and began intimating that the campaigners were committing criminal damage, threatened to call the police and misrepresented the Data Protection Act to try and stop filming taking place.

A staff member was heard to say: “You can’t be filming in the store. If you are not buying this you need to pop it back now – you need to do it now. You are damaging property that belongs to Asda. “

A second Asda employee said: “We will have to let the police know you have been filming – it’s data protection.” A third added: “You are going to get into loads of trouble for that.”

Hector’s accomplice, who was wearing a tee-shirt with the slogan ‘biocide is suicide’, told the staff that he was concerned that Round Up contains a carcinogenic ingredient.

Threats and spectacle

“What you are selling is carcinogenic,” he complained. “I’m not selling anything,” the Asda representative said. The response: “It’s in your store!”

Hector and his micro protest then set off for nearby Tesco, where again he filled his trolly with Round Up, decorated it with tape, and then heading for the customer service desk asking to see the manager.

But this time, the response was completely different. The manager was away, they were told, and the duty manager was summoned. She took a while and the protesters were left to their own devices, somewhat dumbstruck. “We might as well put it back on the shelf and head home”, said one of the activists.

When the manager did arrive, she listened attentively and then asked for advice on how to deal with slugs in the garden without using salt – which may be harmful to the health of her dog. A third protester – a professional permaculture gardener – advised and then everyone drifted home. “Dried seaweed, gravel, egg shells, beer traps, wood chip”. Without the threats and spectacle that had taken place in Asda.

The Tesco protest made for quite a genteel – and serial – protest. Hector is hoping to inspire protests across the country to do the same protest at supermarkets stocking Round Up, with a day of action planned for 30 May 2018. 

A spokesperson for Asda said: “We respect everyone’s right to their view and the right to protest peacefully. We also expect people to respect our customers, colleagues and property.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

You can judge a multinational corporation by how it deals with its critics. And the contrast between how Asda and Tesco coped when the internationally recognised aristocrat activist Hector Christie turned up at their stores in North Devon complaining about probable carcinogenic ingredients in Monsanto made Round Up weed killer.

The Devon farmer and scion of the aristocratic Christies has made headlines around the world in his time – famously being thrown out of the Labour Party conference after heckling Tony Blair in protest at the Iraq war, and also fooling riot police amid the carnage in Genoa in Italy during the G8 protests by dressing as a priest.

But now he is pioneering the “micro protest” where just one or two activists can walk into a supermarket, stage an eye-catching ceremony of “rounding up the Round Up” into a trolly, and then taking the loot to the manager and asking them to sign a declaration that they believe the product is safe for customers.

Biocide is suicide

Christie arrived with a few fellow protesters at Asda at lunchtime on Wednesday, took a trolly and marched to the weedkiller shelf. He filled his trolly with Round Up and then started to cover the trolly in yellow and black tape bearing the warning, “No entry – glyphosate causes cancer“.

Within minutes a team of ASDA staff had swarmed in, and began intimating that the campaigners were committing criminal damage, threatened to call the police and misrepresented the Data Protection Act to try and stop filming taking place.

A staff member was heard to say: “You can’t be filming in the store. If you are not buying this you need to pop it back now – you need to do it now. You are damaging property that belongs to Asda. “

A second Asda employee said: “We will have to let the police know you have been filming – it’s data protection.” A third added: “You are going to get into loads of trouble for that.”

Hector’s accomplice, who was wearing a tee-shirt with the slogan ‘biocide is suicide’, told the staff that he was concerned that Round Up contains a carcinogenic ingredient.

Threats and spectacle

“What you are selling is carcinogenic,” he complained. “I’m not selling anything,” the Asda representative said. The response: “It’s in your store!”

Hector and his micro protest then set off for nearby Tesco, where again he filled his trolly with Round Up, decorated it with tape, and then heading for the customer service desk asking to see the manager.

But this time, the response was completely different. The manager was away, they were told, and the duty manager was summoned. She took a while and the protesters were left to their own devices, somewhat dumbstruck. “We might as well put it back on the shelf and head home”, said one of the activists.

When the manager did arrive, she listened attentively and then asked for advice on how to deal with slugs in the garden without using salt – which may be harmful to the health of her dog. A third protester – a professional permaculture gardener – advised and then everyone drifted home. “Dried seaweed, gravel, egg shells, beer traps, wood chip”. Without the threats and spectacle that had taken place in Asda.

The Tesco protest made for quite a genteel – and serial – protest. Hector is hoping to inspire protests across the country to do the same protest at supermarkets stocking Round Up, with a day of action planned for 30 May 2018. 

A spokesperson for Asda said: “We respect everyone’s right to their view and the right to protest peacefully. We also expect people to respect our customers, colleagues and property.”

This Author

Brendan Montague is editor of The Ecologist.

Protests against the Sterlite copper plant have been continuing for two decades after the plant was set up in 1998 – as this summary shows – and in the last few days police shooting has resulted in more than 13 deaths.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered demanding the plant be shut down in March 2018, campaigning against the contamination of local water sources, leading to shops shutting in solidarity, and diaspora protests outside the offices of Vedanta in London.

The violence by the police erupted on the 100th day of the protests. The Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu has defended the police firing, tweeting “[w]hen someone hits you, you naturally tend to defend yourselves”.

Environmental pollution

The district of Thoothukudi is reeling from the tragedy, combined with the consequences of the environmental pollution from the plant. The state government on Wednesday ordered the suspension of all internet services in Thoothukudi and two adjoining districts for five days. Yesterday morning, the provincial Pollution Control Board finally ordered the closure of the plant, by cutting off its supply of electricity.

The following timeline of events details the number of judicial fora and agencies involved in the proceedings involving the Sterlite plant, before the ill-fated protests of the past week.

Public Participation

Public participation and peaceful protests have become a key tenet of modern Indian environmentalism. Primarily, the currently applicable Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification of 2006 demands projects requiring environmental clearance to necessarily undergo public consultation before the clearance is granted, and the objections of local affected persons are taken into account while granting the clearance.

A core issue in the Sterlite dispute has been whether public consultation was necessary for Sterlite to expand its plant in 2014, which was after the enactment of the EIA Notification.

While the then liberal (UPA) government clarified in 2014 that they would have to undergo public consultation, the new more right leaning (NDA) government that came to power ten days later interpreted the law differently, and decided that Sterlite did not have to undergo public consultation (this interpretation was later held to be illegal by the National Green Tribunal in 2016).

Secondly, the enactment of the Right to Information Act, 2005 has granted citizens the right to access information from public authorities who are required to maintain those records to be made available to the public in a time-bound manner, introducing a necessary layer of documentary accountability on environmental agencies.

Thirdly, in 2010, India established the National Green Tribunal (NGT) as a forum to decide on environmental disputes with expert judges, and accessible rules of procedure and evidence. It was a welcome step, permitting citizens with limited means to access environmental justice.

However, there has been recent scaling down of the tribunal’s strength and powers due to lack of appointment of judges, and as of writing this piece, the Central, Western and Eastern Benches of the tribunal have posted on the website that they are unable to hear cases as scheduled.

These laws and structures when allowed to function to their full potential do have the power to overturn an undemocratic colonial legacy that in using arms against citizens.

Protests and Repercussions

While it is a given that the State exercises control and maintains compliance with its laws through the use of an extensive penal code and its enforcement arm: the police force, most of India’s rules of criminal procedure, police practices and penal provisions still stem from its past colonial imperial government which had a direct stake in controlling the local citizenry in the interest of safeguarding their colonial rule.

This is especially relevant given the past colonial government’s financial and administrative interest over natural resources like water, minerals, forests and land which belonged the community. Today, the interests of the Indian government are neoliberal and so the protection afforded to these interests by police excesses are globalised.

In the “first comprehensive worldwide assessment of violent repression of grassroots environmental protests” in 2016, researchers at Wesleyan University found that “violence against peaceful environmental protesters occurred most frequently when communities that included marginalized groups protested natural resource extraction in their community.”

Take the instance of the police action during the Dakota Access pipeline protest in the United States of America, where dozens were injured after the police used water cannons on the protestors, largely made up of Native Americans.

The use of criminal provisions and enforcement agencies in curbing public participation is a legacy of our colonial laws, a legacy which has raised its head repeatedly in independent India, from the Chipko movement in the 1970s, to police firing killing 13 ‘adivasi’ or tribal citizens protesting against land acquisition for a Tata Steel project in Kalinganagar in 2006 and other similar instances.

There are multiple instances where the police are used to quell protesting citizens, sometimes with fatal consequences, and environmental protests feature often among instances of casualty. An example of the Indian police’s colonial legacy is seen in the enthusiastic deployment of wooden-sticks for maintenance of order through ‘lathi-charge’, the history of which has been detailed here.

Democratisation of dissent

The recent Sterlite protests in the Tamil Nadu province bring to light not only an issue of police excess. They also contextualise the violent repercussions within a network of beneficiaries of that violence, the foremost being corporations who benefit from the quelling of public protests against their capital interests.

There is currently an effort to characterise the current state of affairs as solely being the doing of the government in power, but the twenty-five year history of the Sterlite plant painfully illustrates that no major political party in the region has clean hands when it comes to complicity. 

When protesters seeking environmental justice are killed, this relationship of trust is breached and realigned in favour of private instead of public interest. The fact that citizens must resort to protesting on the streets in order to seek environmental justice, in numbers that the government deems poses a threat to its police forces, is indicative of the decay of our judicial and legislative safeguards against environmental pollution.

Unfortunately, the withdrawal and limited success of the judiciary and the failure of participatory processes written into Indian law has left matters of democracy in the hands of the police administration, the only intermediary of the State directly interacting with the public on the ground. 

The police in Thoothukudi reacted in the only way they know how to. Until the Indian police can be democratised, other public institutions must come forward to mediate public will.

These Authors

Mrinalini Shinde is a researcher in comparative environmental law at the University of Cologne, Germany, and has previously practiced as an Advocate before the National Green Tribunal in India. Ameya Bokil is a Research Associate at the Centre for Social Justice in Ahmedabad, India.

The Church of Scotland has voted against divestment from oil and gas companies. More than half of its commissioners voted for continued engagement with oil and gas companies after a two hour debate at its General Assembly. 

The official church report stated: “It is deeply uncomfortable for the church, as a caring organisation concerned about climate justice, to continue to invest in something which causes the very harm it seeks to alleviate.” 

An official motion proposed that, following an assessment, divestment should begin in two years but the Reverend Jenny Adams proposed a grassroots motion to begin divesting immediately. These two motions combined received 47 percent of votes.

“Change is not coming fast enough”

Reverend Adams said: “The evidence suggests that oil and gas companies have little intention of changing fast enough to get close to making the Paris climate change agreement.

“There is a need for climate emissions to peak by 2020 and if we just keep talking, too much time passes and change is not coming fast enough.”

However, she added: “To hear the church overwhelmingly back the need to tackle climate change, wherever they stood on the argument for divestment, was positive.”

Ric Lander, from Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “To those suffering from the abuses of oil companies around the world it’s a blow that the Church of Scotland didn’t start divesting from oil companies today.

“However, during a debate infused with depth, urgency and sincerity there was bountiful support for radical action on climate change and a speedy and just transition to a 100 percent renewable economy.

“The Church must now consider how it can most effectively use its time and money to offer a response befitting of the strength of feeling in the Assembly.”

Disappointing outcome

James Buchanan of Operation Noah, a charity which campaigns for UK churches to divest from fossil fuels, said: “While we are disappointed with the outcome of the vote at Church of Scotland General Assembly, we are encouraged by the level of support for divestment from oil and gas companies and the consensus on the need for climate justice.

“Churches, along with other investors, should divest from fossil fuels to accelerate the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy and ensure that the vision of the Paris Agreement becomes a reality. The time to act is now.”

On 19 April the moderator of the Church of Scotland, the Right Rev Dr Derek Browning, joined other faith leaders in Scotland to call for the Scottish Government to make its forthcoming Climate Change Bill more ambitious.

This Author

Catherine Harte is a contributing editor to The Ecologist. This story is based on a news release from Friends of the Earth Scotland. 

I was given 10 minutes to provide a recipe for the way forward for Britain at a recent Sheffield Festival of Debate event at Freeman College. I boil it down to a list of just three ingredients: security, diversity, democracy.

First, security. The lack of security is a driving force for misery, a feeder of mental illness, and the foundation of a lot of the consumption that’s damaging the planet and feeding inequitable distribution of resources.

Most of us are potentially only one medical incident, one redundancy, one relationship breakdown, away from disaster, from precariously relying on the sofas of relatives and friends, or a life on the streets. Many face an old age of desperate scraping and scrimping.

Basic income

With a wholly inadequate state pension, and even for those who have a private pension no trust in financial markets to deliver, many think that a bigger, fancier house is an insurance for their old age, whether they need or even really desire all that extra space or not. 

With a steep ladder of inequality – causing untold damage no matter which rung you are on, as The Spirit Level set out so well – in many workplaces, if you’re not on the way to advancement, you’re at great risk of being on the way out. 

That means you have to be seen a go-ahead, promotable type, chatting at the coffee machine about your long weekend in Dubai, and clad in this season’s must-have fashion.

So what can we do? I suggested three practical steps, first a universal basic income – the certainty of food on the table and a roof over your head, not subject to the vagaries of insecure employment, benefit sanctions or the work capability assessment. 

We also have to greatly reduce the steepness of the ladder of inequality – the Green Party policy of a 10:1 ratio from the best:worst paid would be a good step to that. And we have to stop treating housing primarily as a financial asset and go back to policies that ensure a secure, genuinely affordable, comfortable home for all – in short, building council housing.

Food that won’t cost the Earth

Second, diversity. We’re in a land – a life – of monoculture. Exams force students into total conformity with the dictator of the marking scheme. A teacher once told me he couldn’t afford to teach his potential A* students a single thing that wouldn’t get them a mark, because if they wrote it in an exam, they’d lose the mark those words might have garnered.

Six mass builders cover swathes of the land with little “tickytacky boxes that all look just the same”, which people buy because there’s no alternative and you have to get on the housing ladder. Theresa May’s hostile environment for migrants is chasing out – and discouraging from coming – many who do or could contribute hugely to our society.

A handful of supermarkets dominate our food supply, that most basic of life’s essentials. Four crops supply more than half of the calories we eat, grown largely from seed supplied by a couple of giant multinational companies that also supply the pesticides and fertilisers used in their production.  

To change that, we need to transform our farming and food distribution. As the authors of Miraculous Abundance have demonstrated in France, you can grow a huge amount of diverse, healthy food on 1,000 square metres, creating jobs and business opportunities.

The food won’t be as cheap in cash terms as the supermarket sugar and fat-packed processed pap (it will require a real living wage for workers) – but it won’t cost us the Earth. It will come to people direct from the farmer, or through small local businesses – able to compete (and win) against the giants once the true cost of the supermarket model is borne by those profiting from it, rather than the rest of us.

Give democracy a chance

We need an education for life, not schools forced to become exam factories, and genuine opportunities for lifelong learning.

And building the kinds of homes that people and communities need – council homes, on brownfield sites and zero-carbon, combined with a regional development policy that rebalances the economy of our nation so many empty homes can be brought back into use. We need diversity of opportunity, not jobs focused on London and the biggest regional cities.

And to recognise that it is in the interests of justice, as well as human rights, that we say, “refugees and migrants are welcome here!”

Finally, what we need is democracy. At another Festival of Debate event last week I heard a cry of despair I’m hearing all too often these days: “democracy gave us Trump and Brexit”. Oh no it didn’t.

It was a lack of democracy. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the US, people voted Brexit through a rightful impulse to “take back control” after finding that the two-party system created by our 19th-century first-past-the-post electoral system didn’t give them a way to control their communities and their lives. 

What are generally agreed to be the most effective, balanced, and environmentally friendly wealthy nations in the world, the Scandinavians, also have excellent democracies, in which votes match seats and decision making is far better than in our see-saw, media soundbite-driven culture. Before we give up on democracy, we should try it.

Chains of centralisation

And that democracy needs to be local, genuinely visible and under our control. You’ll often hear people raging about their local council and how it’s failing to meet their needs (and as in Sheffield, they often have good cause). 

But while in England that’s also blighted by the failed electoral system, it is also hobbled in chains of centralisation.

Only around a tenth of government spending is by local government, increasingly going on statutory responsibilities that Westminster mandates.

The democracy, as the Green Party has long demanded, has to start with the local, with power and resources referred upward only when necessary.

This Author

Natalie Bennett is a member of Sheffield Green Party and former Green Party leader.

A lot can be said regarding the Labour party’s unexpected performance during the 2017 general election. Notably, the manifesto – For the Many, Not the Few – took a lot of the plaudits.

For this environmental analysis, the manifesto is a useful reference point. However, the primary focus here is on the greener components of Labour’s present complexion.

A few questions can help to unravel this: What exactly did the manifesto say about the environment? What messages have Labour broadcast since? And what is Labour saying now with relation to environmental policy?

Community energy

In the manifesto, there are encouraging signs. For example, over the two-pages devoted to environmental and animal welfare issues the party is keen to woo green voters.

“A Labour government will prioritise a sustainable, long-term future for our farming, fishing and food industries, fund robust flood resilience, invest in rural and coastal communities, and guarantee the protection and advancement of environmental quality standards,” it states.

There is no doubt that in a period where climate change and global warming are devastating the biosphere, and where deregulated neoliberal governance has prevailed, commitments like these are going to be necessary if Britain is to be considered an eco-friendly state.

Labour is only affiliated to one environmental group: the Socialist Environment and Resources Association (SERA), which was founded in 1973 and has worked alongside the party ever since.

Its core aim is to ensure that as many environmental policies as possible, from climate change to community energy, are adopted by the party.

Shared competence

Moreover, SERA has a grassroots dimension to their policy making, with active local branches raising the profile of environmental issues in their respective areas. This ensures a bottom-up dimension in the policy creation process.

Then there’s the Labour party’s national policy forum, which has been busy at work this year working on its Environment, Energy and Culture. Through the process of a national policy forum, Labour says it has already made plans for a “greener Britain”.

This method, as the paper for this years consultation indicates, is how the party commonly makes policy and are seeking contributions from its members and voters – the deadline is 24 June.

Explicitly, the policy forum document highlights three areas that the party have said will need urgently rethinking: 1. The Natural Environment, 2. Clean Energy, 3. Air Pollution.

Labour recognises that new environmental frameworks will be required given Britain’s impending departure from the European Union. Given that environmental policy is a shared competence between the EU and its member states, Britain has historically been obliged by environmental rules communally agreed within the European structures.

Renewable technologies

In its policy forum document and wider website material, Labour acknowledges that a new environmental framework must consider issues such as animal welfare, food standards, biodiversity, green spaces such as forests and parks, blue and green belts as well as ensuring the reduction of the plastic circular economy.

Additionally, it accepts that a new framework must be designed to replace funding structures, again previously supported by the EU, that guarantee whatever the state of the market British farming and fishing industries will receive subsidies that safeguard their functionality.

Moreover, animal welfare is an area where the party seems to be focusing a lot of energy. Sue Hayman, the shadow secretary for the Department for Food and Rural Affairs, helped launch Labour’s new 50 point draft policy document on the radical action on animal welfare which has been welcomed by the League against Cruel Sports, Compassion in World Farming and the WWF.

Labour already has a target in place to guarantee that 60 percent of the UK’s energy comes from zero-carbon or renewable sources by 2030.

Likewise, it has already pledged to support emerging renewable technologies and projects. In its policy forum it has asked questions from those wishing to contribute to the policy forum – namely, how can jobs be created and existing skills and workforces maintained in a future low-carbon economy?

Heat networks

This will be a significant area of policy given the transition that is ultimately required toward a growing renewable energy sector.

On the other hand, Labour has been cautious  in condemning current commitments that the government has in place with relation to the North Sea and Oil industry, which is substantially offloading fossil fuel emissions.

The money and increased job numbers that have resulted – and continue to do so – from this industry appear to place Labour in an unwelcome dilemma.

The policy forum has indicated that “a future energy system needs to be made to work for local communities and local economies by delivering energy security, keeping bills low and handing communities control over their supply”. 

This has certainly been the case in Bristol, where Mayor Mervin Rees and the City Council recently launched an array of investment opportunities in a variety of energy technologies including heat networks, marine energy and hydrogen source development.

Appallingly Kafkaesque

Regarding climate change commitments, the party’s manifesto recognises the Paris Climate Agreement as an essential document that the UK must adhere to.

On the other hand, Greenpeace says that the party has failed to recognise a decent plan to tackle the problems of diesel and fossil fuels, which are two concerning air pollution issues.

Similarly, the party seems conflicted on the issue of runway expansion in the South East. The manifesto says it will support expansion, whereas senior party figures have recently hinted that Labour is prepared to take an extremely hostile stance over any new runway plans at Heathrow.

Elsewhere – in tandem with SERA – Manchester Labour held the city’s first ever Green Summit. The party, under the guidance of Mayor Andy Burnham, has pledged to introduce initiatives to lower carbon emissions such as a £50m per year for three years investment in cycling infrastructure as well as a plan to move from a diesel to an emissions-free bus fleet.

Sheffield City Council – where Labour has a large majority – on the contrary, is not held in the same regard. George Monbiot has described the deal that the city council has with a local PFI contractor – an agreement to fell about 20,000 trees – as appallingly Kafkaesque.

Residents, many of whom have highlighted the environmental benefits of tree plantation and preservation, particularly in the case of air pollution where Sheffield has remained low, are not being listened to despite protests aplenty.

This Author

Oz Ozkaya is a freelance writer currently studying MSc European and Global Governance at the University of Bristol. His current research focuses on the correlation between neoliberal governance and climate change.