The General Secretary of the GMB trade union, Gary Smith, has said the Left needs to shake off its “bourgeois environmentalism”, distance itself from the “bourgeois environmental lobby” and make the case for fracking and the building of new nuclear power stations. In a major intervention, Smith has accused Labour of a “lack of honesty” and of “not facing reality” on the energy question. Brendan O’Neill has written about the explosive comments in the Spectator.
We are living through a severe energy crisis and yet still Labour is sniffy about fracking and down on nuclear power, [Smith] says. All because it is in thrall to bourgeois greens who just don’t like industry and modernity very much.
Yes, climate change is a problem, he says, but we need energy. “We import a huge amount of fracked gas” from America, he points out, so why don’t we just frack our own? We should get serious about developing nuclear power too, says Smith.
The GMB represents 460,000 working people, including the majority of workers at the UK’s nuclear-power stations. So it is logical – and good – that Smith would defend the nuclear industry. But his broader point is even more important.
“(The) question,” he says, “is where is the electricity going to come from? We cannot do it by renewables and we cannot rely on energy imports.” In short, we should get cracking – and fracking – on generating our own abundant sources of energy.
His killer comments concern the aloof, elitist tendencies of green activists. The renewables industry – “and many of those who espouse it in politics” – have “no interest in jobs for working-class communities”, he says. He continues: “(We) should stop pretending that we’re in alliance with them. The big winners from renewables have been the wealthy and big corporate interests. Invariably the only jobs that are created when wind farms get put up, particularly onshore wind, have been jobs in public relations and jobs for lawyers.”
This is really important stuff. Smith has laid down a gauntlet to the modern Left – are you on the side of working-class communities who benefit from well-paid jobs in the energy sector and from the domestic production of energy, or are you on the side of ‘bourgeois’ greens who are offended by any kind of human intervention in nature, whether that’s digging down for gas or unleashing the awesome power contained in uranium?
For far too long, Labour and left-wingers more broadly have been embracing the ideology of environmentalism. This has always struck me as utterly bizarre, because it seems pretty clear that green politics run entirely counter to the interests of working-class communities.
Worth reading in full.
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He appears to be a rare outlier, on the whole the upper echelons of the union movement appear to be the very same bourgeois champagne socialists that he’s talking about.
The sooner the membership realise this, that the top brass are not on their side, the sooner we can make some progress.
The political problem is that the always obvious solution (nuclear) will leave the world lettered with very visible monuments to folly (wind turbines and solar panels).
They should rust on place as a reminder of tyranny, like statues of Lenin and Stalin.
I have news for the lovely Union Leader: the Left, in the UK, is bourgeois environmentalism.
That rare thing, a human being who climbed the greasy union ladder whilst still retaining a conscience. Anyone who has any consideration for their members would be against this green clap trap. Making the poor poorer isn’t why unions were formed.
‘We import a huge amount of fracked gas from America’ yet greens don’t want us to frack our own. So they’re more than happy for Americans to have the ‘environmental disaster’ they claim happen on their doorsteps. Such nice, caring people aren’t they.
I agree with a trade union leader. I need to go and lie down.
Yes, it’s a very unsettling position to be in
Whileit is unusual to see an union leader being so ‘sensible’, it should not be an oxymoron. Surely, the point of an union leader’s position is to support and maintain his members’ jobs and protect their future needs. This fellow is doing just that and it should beggar belief that we think it is strange or uncommon – they should all be doing it.
Clement Attlee and Ernie Bevin must be turning in their graves.
Most union leaders are concerned with only one thing; increasing the size of their personal renumeration. They try to achieve this by vapid posturing and virtue signaling on irrelevant issues which they believe will bring in more members and their subs