One Nation Labour and the New Environmentalism

By Ruth Davis

The idea of ‘One Nation Labour’ poses a specific and important challenge not just to the Party itself, but to wider civil society. That is – what can we do together, to build an economy and a society that will contribute to the common good of all our citizens?

It is a question that is directly relevant to any movement that seeks to influence the public life of the nation. And so it is a question for the environment movement.

In answering it, many of us are beginning to realise that there are lessons to be learnt from the last few years; but are also discovering the huge potential for good, exciting new work– work that should put our relationship with place, and the protection of our shared future, at the heart of a refreshed Labour project.

Firstly, lessons. Like nearly every civil society movement in today’s Britain, environmentalists need to acknowledge that there have been times recently when we have been forgetful, or even neglectful, of our place in the politics of the common good.

We have too often taken a managerial and technocratic approach to problems, rather than a systemic and political one. In our zeal to embrace national targets for the protection of natural heritage, for example, we have too often forgotten that the very desire to cherish nature arises from a sense of local place and identity. And in attempting to accommodate the big beast of the market, we have allowed or participated in the commodification of the natural world, in a way that tramples on or ignores its intrinsic emotional and spiritual value.

Perhaps most seriously of all, we have frequently approached the problem of climate change in ways that have engendered a sense of guilt and powerlessness amongst the very working people we need to build the energy systems of the future – systems that are essential if we are to face down this grave threat to our collective well-being.

But this is changing. The environment movement today is beginning to find common cause with communities that are crying out for good, decently paid, secure jobs – jobs that will come from active support for our burgeoning clean technology sector. We are working with fuel poverty groups to challenge the vested interests of energy companies, who have consistently manipulated the market to extract every penny of profit from bill payers, rather than investing in warmer homes.
And around the coasts of the country, we are building alliances with local fishing communities to reject the industrialised methods and insane policies that have seen livelihoods decimated, fish stocks collapse, and our seas and their wildlife needlessly damaged.

A refreshed Labour Party and a re-invigorated environment movement, fighting alongside communities to resist entrenched vested interests, is not a distant dream – it is already happening in towns, villages and cities up and down the United Kingdom. The interesting question is what we should do next? A personal view is that the environment movement has a part to play in insisting on the kinds of wages, housing and public services that will allow people to restore and sustain their communities. Because it is those communities that will in turn be empowered to protect the places they love, and to invest in a safe future for their children. But this is part of a wider debate that should be happening whenever a Labour Party member or supporter is in a room with a green campaigner. I, for one, can’t wait.

Ruth Davis is senior policy adviser of Greenpeace UK she writes in a personal capacity