Climate change march – more vegans than you can shake a stick at

Climate change, demonstrations, Ecosocialism

Climate change march – more vegans than you can shake a stick at

December 6, 2008

2–3 minutes

Today’s march organised by the Campaign Against Climate Change in London was quite a festival of ideas and some of them were nearly sensible. We don’t get Supreme Master TV in this house but its devotees were handing out glossy leaflets with a peculiar admixture of science about global warming, advice from Supreme Master Ching Hai on why we all need to go vegetarian and a list of the “vegetarian and vegan elite of the world”. It’s a random bunch which includes John Cleese, Pamela Anderson, Charles Darwin, Leonardo Da Vinci and Shania Twain. What I don’t understand is how an organisation promoting this blend manages to get a TV station and most left groups are doing well to get a regular publication that doesn’t sell that many copies.

By my reckoning there were about 2000 people in Parliament Square when the march arrived. It was a much less miserable event than last year’s freezing sodden trudge because we were a lot luckier with the weather. Now I know that the rationale for marching in December is so that the London march happens at the same time as the 70 or so other marches across the world but there are other months in the year when the odds of getting cold and wet are lower. This would probably make for a larger demonstration.

There were not that many union banners present. The largest organised contingents seemed to be either groups of musicians and various lifestyle cohorts. I’m open to correction but one of the groups of musicians seemed to repeatedly play a version of Devo’s politically incorrect Mongoloid. The lifestyle organisations were all pushing the anti-meat message and there was a big emphasis on the virtues of veganism and its part in reducing methane filled cow farts. It’s fair to say that the climate change movement is ideologically pretty heterogeneous. The left was there in the usual sort of numbers that one would expect but the SWP’s profile was lower than it has ever been at a national demonstration due to the clash with the one day Marxism event. The Green Party had a good profile and the new issue of Respect’s paper was on sale.

Who knows what was said by the speakers? I heard “constituents, direct action and Heathrow” and assumed it was the ever reliable John McDonnell. The amplifiers didn’t really fill the square.

As demonstrations go this one was modestly successful. Its age profile was fairly young. It was lively and dynamic. However judged against the scale of the preventable damage that climate change will cause and the short time span in which meaningful action can be taken then this mobilisation barely scratched the surface of mass consciousness.

Click here to for details about the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Conference and here to download the document on ecosocialism which is part of the discussion on revolutionary regroupment.

Thanks to Richard for the photos.

16 responses to “Climate change march – more vegans than you can shake a stick at”

Derek Wall

December 6, 2008 at 6:44 pm

I missed this because I was speaking on Cuba and the environment at the Latin America conference, although I did make the biofuels demo in the morning, thanks for the report Liam.

Shame the Latin america conference (which was very well attended clashed) and the SWP events as well clashed.

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Andy Newman

December 6, 2008 at 10:08 pm

Without wishing to endorse the more evangelical end of political vegetarianism, they do have a point; and I say this as someone who would happily live entirely on meat, preferable taken from an animal that is still twitching.

reducing meat consumption is in fact one of the most palusible and easily attainable ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions – I saw some credible figures that suggested cutting back to two meat meals a week has a similar effect to giving up your car.

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Liam

December 6, 2008 at 11:24 pm

Well we could make concessions to petit bourgeois lifestyle politics but I’ve got a better idea that is more ecosocialist and despite some potential PR problems could prove more popular.

We rear animals in our garden, slaughter and butcher them ourselves. The manure could be put to good use replenishing soil nutrients. This would cut out a lot of road transport while pigs and goats would happily eat table scraps. It might have a positive impact on knife crime too as youngsters get to put their skills to a useful trade instead of slicing each other up.I used to work with a former soldier who found it hard to pay his mortgage after his divorce. He bred rabbits for the pot in his flat.

It’s a plan.

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harpymarx

December 7, 2008 at 3:46 pm

Liam: “Well we could make concessions to petit bourgeois lifestyle politics….”

You calling vegetarianism ‘petit bourgeois lifestyle politics’. Nothing wrong with vegetarianism, as I can testify being one for 27 years. Petit bourgeois indeed!!

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Roy

December 7, 2008 at 6:15 pm

It isn’t vegetarianism that’s petty bourgeois Harpy, it’s the attempt to substitute moralistic and utopian exhortations on individual lifestyle choices for political mass action.

Behind me on the march were a contingent of students who spent most of the time shouting at car drivers demanding that they abandon their cars and buy oyster cards. It isn’t car drivers or meat eaters who are the enemy – it’s a ruling class that imposes upon us an automobile-centred transport system and a profit driven food industry.

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jim jay

December 8, 2008 at 12:02 am

Now I’m not into this numbers thing so don’t want to get obsessive about that sort of stuff but even the police said there were 5,000 there… which is two and half times your estimate… now we know the cops cant count – but it usually goes the other way doesn’t it?

🙂

The organisers said 10,000 – the usual system would make that around 7,500 there. More than enough to storm the stage when Nick Clegg came on and tear him limb from limb – but did we? No… pah!

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a very public sociologist

December 8, 2008 at 11:44 am

What was the left spotting like? Anyone there at all?

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Red on Green

December 8, 2008 at 6:14 pm

So is that you in one of these pics, Derek?

http://crapwalthamforest.blogspot.com/2008/12/campaign-against-climate-change.html

Didn’t spot a single Green Party cyclist. And the hard left completely absent. But CACC does have support from anarchists.

Three cheers for Plane Stupid. At least they are DOING something, rather than theorising.

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steve

December 8, 2008 at 7:57 pm

the national abortion campaign had its annual general meeting as well at the same time. Should have had the demo another day?

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David Ellis

December 8, 2008 at 8:00 pm

Definitely three cheers for PS.

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jim jay

December 9, 2008 at 9:27 pm

Re: Left Spotting

No SWP at all – which was weird. Respect were there, lots of Green Party of course, a few socialist party people, no cpgb, no awl, no pr – who were all replaced by militant vegans…

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Liam

December 10, 2008 at 12:42 am

Not quite right Jim. PR were there.

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martin ohr

December 10, 2008 at 9:59 am

awl were there too, although it was on the same day as the abortion rights agm, and a huge student demo in dublin -not forgetting mini-marxism, so our comrades were spread pretty thin. It was also a freezing cold day in pre-xmas winter where there we f-all cheap train and coach tickets available for those travelling.

For me the choice was either pay just less than £200 return train fare -with the cheapest available tickets and family railcard, drive, or do something else entirely. It’s hardly suprising that imost people did the same as me.

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David Ellis

December 10, 2008 at 9:39 pm

Valleys of Death

When the economy was booming, the New Labour government was quite happy to import young Polish workers in their hundreds of thousands and leave the ghettoised poor created by the Tories in the 1980s to their fate. They refused to invest in the necessary education and training to make these people employable because they didn’t want to burden business and the rich with taxes. Now, Work and Pensions Secretary, James Purnell, he of the permanent smirk, wants to drive these people off benefits and into work even if they are certified sick or have tiny children. Purnell does not explain, however, why, if these people were not wanted during the boom, they should suddenly be wanted during a recession when there are thousands of able workers being thrown on the scrap heap to join them.

One strongly suspects this is a mere cost cutting exercise and that you are unlikely to see a second generation unemployed Valley’s boy sitting next to you in the office any time soon. Nor are you likely to encounter one politely enquiring if you want fries with your Big Mac or hazelnut syrup in your grand latte this side of 2050. We might however see a dramatic rise in crime rates, especially gang related, or even pockets of genuine starvation. A serious government would surely provide the work first before forcing people to look for it and, having provided it, would make sure that the ghettoised poor, sick and child rearing were in a position to take it on. Why not establish a series of manufactories spread throughout the Valleys and other deprived areas offering part-time employment to ensure maximum participation on the minimum wage with the government making up the difference to full-time money? These could the stores with useful products at affordable prices the profits from which could cover the government’s expenses. It makes no sense shipping manufactured plastic and other goods all the way from China and India when they could be made here.

In addition to his `job-seeking reforms’ Purnell is proposing some draconian Housing Benefit changes that seem designed to drive the ghettoised poor out of their homes and to de-populate the Valleys. Where will these liberated job-seekers go . . . Poland? That, I would suggest, is unlikely.

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Ben Courtice

December 11, 2008 at 8:40 pm

In Melbourne’s climate movement (where I am) the Supreme Master meditation society are active here too. It’s good that they have embraced the climate change movement; however I do think that there is a danger they could (in some of their approach, at least) just see it as another way to advance their vegetarian campaign. There is a difference between ending the methane-producing farming of ruminant animals (who belch it out, they don’t fart much of it) and ending all consumption of meat, but this idea doesn’t sit well with some militant vegetarians. I think it’s important to stick to the climate message. We want to win support from the many who eat meat. Telling them they have to give up all meat isn’t going to make it easier, especially when they twig that actually it’s only beef and lamb that are big methane contributors!

It’s also simplistic to single out just meat production. All capitalist industrial farming has a terrible ecological footprint measured any way. We need to revolutionise our agricultural system with techniques like organics, permaculture, biochar, urban farming etc not simply cut out meat production.

However, it is true that an enormous reduction in the numbers of ruminants (cattle, sheep, camels, goats etc) would have a huge effect on emissions. We can’t deny that.

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Stuart King

December 11, 2008 at 9:26 pm

Bit late to this thread, but what struck me about the march was how completely out of touch the left were with this movement. Something unfortunately reflected in Liam’s introductory post. I know he is trying to add a touch of humour but it almost summed up the left’s attitude to the climate change movement.

It is a sort of sniffy dismissal of the movement as it is, rather than an attempt to try and relate to it. It wasn’t small, it was a largish demonstration – 8,000-10,000. Walking down it, it was predominately student and local groups of activists, plus the Green Party there in force.

Where was the socialist left? Wasn’t this a demonstration where socialists should have taken on the Green Party – shown they were as committed to fighting climate change as the Greens were? That they had important things to say on the issue from a Marxist perspective? Yet they were hardly to be seen.

The SWP had decided their priority was to “build the party” through a mini Marxism somewhere else. As a result there was less than a dozen or so paper sellers. What sort of signal does this send to climate change activists? What if the same effort that got 400 or 500 to Friends House had been put into bringing similar sized socialist contingent on the march – with clear things to say? Wouldn’t this have had an impact on the march?

The contrast between the climate change activists and the left was also telling – it was chalk and cheese. The march with its samba bands, colourful contingents, home-made banners, slogans and painted placards, contrasted with the tired, and truth to tell boring, presence of the left. There were the 20 Socialist Party members behind a faded red banner, “the leader” with megaphone pounding out the slogan/chants. Further back there were the dozen Revolution youth, with dirty red flags that had seen too many outings without a wash, and with the ubiquitous megaphone chanter. Further back still was the AWL with hardly enough members to carry their various fronts’ banners – No Sweat this time.

It was depressingly familiar, especially talking to two young SP’ers who dismissed the march as small, middle class and vegetarian to boot. They even sneered at the direct actionist Stansted airport protesters. They seemed non-plussed when I said any revolutionary worth anything would be cheering such actions on or be directly involved in them. That the way to change a movement was to be part of it, actively engaged – only that gives you a hearing, a right to criticise and offer alternative answers.

Horror of horror, Roy, some protesters shouted at cars, slowed them down and told the drivers to get oysters cards. Given this was supposedly “no car day” in central London, the drivers of these, mostly large Mercedes and BMWs, were lucky they weren’t dragged out and duffed over.

You wouldn’t think that, as the Guardian reported this week, an influential science conference had concluded we were heading for at least 4 degrees of global warming – desert conditions in southern Europe, dramatically declining cereal production, rising seas and millions of refugees. Never mind we can sit back and laugh at the “petit bourgeois vegetarianism” of the climate change activists.

It would be laughable if it wasn’t so tragic.

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