How North Sea oil workers organised

The explosion on the Piper Alpha oil rig on 6 July 1988, in which 167 oil workers died, became the catalyst for a surge of rank-and-file workers’ organisation in the British sector of the North Sea oil field.

With the 25th anniversary of the Piper Alpha disaster approaching, People & Nature today publishes an interview with Neil Rothnie, a socialist activist who after Piper Alpha founded Blowout, a rank-and-file oil workers’ newspaper.

During a wave of strikes and occupations that followed the disaster, oil workers rejected conventional trade union methods and formed the Oil Industry Liason Committee (OILC), an organisation outside – and prepared to cross swords with – traditional trade union structures. Rothnie recalls these actions, and the impact they had both on workers’ lives and the way that the labour movement evolved.

Blowout is one of the best examples of a paper that gave voice to a workers’ movement from the grass roots up. For those interested in the history of labour movements in the energy sector, we have posted PDF versions of the first eight issues.

Readers who share my interest in how society will make the transition away from fossil fuels may wonder how labour movements among workers who 

We need Zizek’s ‘Thatcher of the left’ like a fish needs a bicycle

The philosopher Slavoj Zizek hopes fervently for a “Thatcher of the left”, and pays homage to strong leaders, in the New Statesman this week. I think the opposite: we need a movement to turn the world upside down without such leaders and their potential for authoritarianism and hierarchy.

Zizek, regarded as a leading “left” intellectual, explains his point with reference to Winston Churchill’s approach to military decisions: to boil down the experts’ analysis into “a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’”. Such a “gesture, which can never be fully grounded in reasons, is that of a Master”, Zizek writes. “The Master is needed especially in situations of deep crisis.” Thatcher “was such a Master, sticking to her decision which was at first perceived as crazy, gradually elevating her singular madness into an accepted norm.”

In passing, I’d argue that this is an idealised, one-sided portrayal of Thatcher. Yes, she was more ideological and dogmatic than other Tory leaders, but she didn’t fight all her battles at once – even if she talked about them. Yes, she laid waste to British industry and sought revenge on enemies “without” (Argentina) and “within” (the miners) – but for all her ranting about curbing the state, budget expenditure grew year after year and she postponed most privatisations.

Working class communities last week celebrated not only her passing, but also that they have outlasted her, whatever their scars.

But Zizek’s main point is not about Thatcher. It is that we need someone on the “left” who can “repeat Thatcher’s gesture in the opposite direction”. He

The price of Iraqi oil: union leader in court for organising strike

An oil workers’ union leader will appear before a court in Basra on Sunday charged with organising strikes, reports from activists in Iraq say.

UPDATE (Friday 3 May): This hearing has been adjourned repeatedly, in part due to campaigning pressure. It was put back to 2 May, 9 May and the latest we have heard is that it is on Sunday 19 May. Activists in London are planning to picket the embassy if there is a guilty verdict: please follow the story on their facebook page. 

Hassan Juma’a Awad, leader of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Unions, faces up to five years in prison, under a law banning strikes that was passed under Saddam Hussein and has not been repealed.

The charge arises from strikes and demonstrations in February by workers at the state-owned South Oil Company, the country’s largest “native” oil

Climate science deniers, sceptics and changing the world

Climate scientists are under attack by science deniers, who try to downplay the dangers of global warming. Often these deniers pose as “sceptics”, i.e. pretend they are questioning new findings in a constructive way.

How are the rest of us, non-scientists, to pick our way through these controversies? And for socialists who hope that the majority (“the 99%”) will change the world by taking matters into its own hands – as opposed to trusting “policymakers” and surrendering power to elites – what difference do the climate science controversies make to our efforts to overcome exploitation, poverty and hardship?

Heavy stuff, I know, but in my view it’s the best way to think about global warming. In a previous article I asserted that climate science deniers are “fundamentalist and dogmatic”. In the comments section, Robin Guenier questioned this and advanced a supposedly “sceptical” argument. This is my response

New paleoclimate study: pace of global warming beats anything since the Ice Age

A study of world temperature since the last Ice Age, published this month, shows we are in the midst of a dramatic U-turn: gradual cooling ended in the early 20th century and turned to relatively rapid warming.

The climate scientists who wrote the study say it provides further evidence that warming is caused mainly by carbon dioxide emissions since the industrial revolution, and not naturally.

The study, led by Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University and published in Science magazine, reconstructs temperature changes over the past 11,300 years. It is based on 73 sets of climate data, mostly built up from analysis of the fossils of pollen, plankton and other marine micro-organisms.

Previously, continuous temperature reconstructions only went back 2000

No Dash For Gas: We climbed those chimneys to kick-start protest and debate

EDF, the power company, was denounced last week for attacking the right to protest, after it launched a damages claim for £5 million against 21 activists. The claim followed a sit-in at its West Burton power station, organised by No Dash For Gas, that forced it to shut down for a week in October-November last year. The campaigners hope not only that people will pile pressure on EDF to drop the claim, but also that their action will help create a broad movement against the “dash for gas” specifically and fossil-fuel-driven energy policy generally. The context is that energy needs to be reclaimed as a common good, Ewa Jasiewicz, one of the activists who has been sued, says in this interview.

Gabriel Levy. For people wish to support the campaign demanding that EDF drop the civil case, there is a list of very do-able things, such as signing petitions and tweeting, on the No Dash for Gas web site. But what more might people do? How would you hope the campaign might elevate?

Ewa Jasiewicz. People can get involved in organising action. They can also take direct action at various facilities and target various companies that are part of the big six [EDF, British Gas, Eon, Npower, Scottish Power and Southern & Scottish Energy, who dominate the UK power market]. They can take the initiative in doing that, as other activists have done already and did do even before our occupation and shutdown at West Burton.

There is the 1st May action, which people should all go to. It will be really pivotal, a subversion of EDF’s event, which is designed to bring

Up to half of all food is wasted: agri-industry and supermarkets are culpable

Between 30% and 50% of all food produced – 1.2-2 billion tonnes/year – is wasted or lost, a report by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IME) says. It argues that the waste is caused mainly by marketing techniques in rich countries, along with poor practice and/or insufficient investment in harvesting, storage and transportation.

The report, published last week, highlights the vast amounts of farmland, energy, fertilisers and water swallowed up by the production of food that is thrown away or left to rot.

In my view the report points to an important conclusion: it is the way food is produced and sold for profit, in a process controlled by agri-industrial giants and supermarkets – rather than food consumption or human population growth as such – that pushes at the earth’s natural limits.

The IME says that in poor countries, “wastage tends to occur