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Title: Environmentalism: Class and Community Struggle Author: Sean Mallory Date: 2005 Language: en Topics: environmentalism, class, community, anarchist analysis, Red & Black Revolution, Ireland Source: Retrieved on 9th August 2021 from http://struggle.ws/wsm/rbr/rbr10/envir.html Notes: This article is from Red & Black Revolution (no 10, Autumn 2005)
The economic boom in Ireland and the construction boom that has come
alongside it has led to a growth in the importance of environmental
campaigns. There has frequently been a large gap between the
environmentalists involved in such campaigns and the left â including
anarchists. Sean, one of the âCarrickmindersâ and now a member of the
WSM gives his view on what can be learnt from the recent struggles.
Capitalism in Ireland is certainly booming. The country in profit based
terms has seen unprecedented growth. This growth is illustrated on the
great barometer of Capitalism- GDP (Gross domestic product) which has
increased each year since 1991.
With this capitalist driven development of the economy, an improved
infrastructure was desperately needed. As the economy developed the
state decided to upgrade the infrastructure of the country as well as
facilitating construction of buildings. This meant several changes to
Ireland. Roads and new housing had to be built. This could have been a
chance to improve the country instead it is leading to environmental
problems. Poor and often corrupt planning (as proven in the Flood/Mahon
tribunals) has lead many communities to take on the state.
Environmental issues are becoming crucial issues for those seeking to
change society in Ireland. We are a generation, which is witnessing the
result of this abuse of the environment by the Irish State and
Corporations. On a local scale we see the effects of this planning
directly. Alongside the construction boom we have also witnessed a
growth in waste. This has lead to a crisis of how we should deal with it
(Irish Times 03/06/2005). Local communities are continually trying to
stop incinerators and super dumps. The State has found its usual
solution to these problems â the poor will bear the brunt.
Despite these problems and social tensions, capitalism in Ireland is
pushing relentlessly forward. The infrastructure being created is
showing this drive. The National Development Plan 2000â2006 (which
âinvolves an investment of over EUR 52 billion of Public, Private and EU
fundsâ is the stateâs plan to push its development of the country
forward. The plan âinvolves significant investment in health services,
social housing, education, roads, public transport, rural development,
industry, water and waste services, childcare and local development.â As
part of the NDP Ireland is to get a greatly expanded road network. This
is not necessarily a bad thing but from the outset there were reasons to
be worried.
It seems sensible to most that the government would first finish the
National Spatial Plan â which is âaiming to achieve a balanced,
sustainable form of development for the future of the Stateâ â to
understand where the roads were going to be built. Included with the NSP
is the requirement that âLocal Authorities will designate landâ for
housing â and one would expect that the new roads would serve the areas
designated for housing.
Not that our enlightened ones were thinking along these lines, they
designed the NDP and then two years later got the report on what the
roads were being built for. This may seem like being âtypical Irishâ,
but it wasnât. It was typical capitalism. The politicians knew for whom
the roads were being built to serve, they knew where their friends
businesses and lands were and that their friends in the engineering
firms and construction companies were building the roads. Most
importantly they didnât care where the public was. Then, when as usual
the plan ran over budget, the Minister for Transport at the time turned
to his cronies in the private sector to fill the two billion euro
deficit through Public â Private Partnership schemes.. They say
motorways such as the M3 (see below) are built to alleviate congestion
that they are so desperately needed that life as we know it canât
continue without them but yet they place it in the hands of private
corporations to make a profit. This just highlighted again the publicâs
role in the NDP 2000â2006 â there wasnât one. That we will be fitted in
around their agenda is illustrated by the way we are being crammed into
housing estates around the roads rather than vice versa. The
environment, in short, is fast becoming one of the battlegrounds where
communities are coming into conflict with capitalism.
The last few years have seen several campaigns in Ireland revolving
around the environment. Three campaigns, where to one degree or another,
activists and communities overtly tried to take on the State, stand out.
(In this I mean in all three cases the government placed political
capital on defeating the campaign). These were the Dublin Bin Tax, the
Carrickmines/m50 and the Glen of the Downs. These three are different
from most others because the overt nature of their demands led to a
face-off against the state. At the Glen of the Downs and Carrickmines
the issue revolved around transport and sensible (or perhaps unsensible)
planning whilst the bin tax was an issue that revolved around waste
management and taxation.
Analysis of these three campaigns is very useful for our inevitable
further involvement in environmental struggles. They took place in a
similar political climate, where to one degree or another the economy
was in a capitalistic sense âprosperingâ and Ireland had a right wing
coalition government. The campaigns however were fought very differently
and it is from this activists can learn.
The bin tax saw a prominent libertarian involvement in the campaign in
some Dublin communities as well as being involved in the central
campaign. The class analysis in the Bin Tax (which was by no means only
argued by libertarians) gave the campaign a very different edge.
Traditionally, an issue such as waste management may have been raised by
environmental groups in a manner not questioning the taxation issue in
itself.
Waste management is a crucial issue and would have to be part of the
focus of any campaign. It is not a great rallying point as it inevitably
ends up in an academic arguments between specialists. The class analysis
of questioning taxation rather than solely the issue of disposal was far
more inclusive. The campaign had many genuinely local groups across
Dublin and seriously challenged the state by fighting implementation of
the tax through mass non-payment and blockades of waste depots. The
campaign ultimately seems to have lost momentum but crucially it could
have won. In an interesting comparison to the Bin tax, another
environmental campaign, reached its critical point simultaneously this
was Carrickmines/M50
This was a campaign that proposed rerouting the final leg of the M50
ring road around Dublin. The opposition was based on the discovery of
the ruins of a medieval castle, which would be destroyed by the
motorway. The campaign revolved around an occupation of the medieval
castle site and later around several legal challenges. It challenged the
right of the state to build a road on the ruins of a medieval castle.
Little attention was paid to the impact of the road on the people and
local community where clear class discrimination in the soundproofing of
the motorways was obvious. Huge banks of earth protected rich areas
whereas only thin cinderblock walls protected working class areas from
the noise.
The castle occupation fell in numbers as it failed to attract widespread
interest. This allowed infighting and personality politics to destroy
the campaign. The campaign also over-concentrated on the legal
challenges whilst failing to engage people. Although we often talked
about leafleting the local area â this was never done. The
over-concentration on the legal case meant a further alienation of those
who were not of a legal mind or willing to be litigants. The dangers of
such an approach is obvious and activists learned the hard way when they
won a legal challenge and the government subsequently changed the law to
suit their ends.
The Glen of the Downs was a campaign which opposed the widening of the
N11 motorway in Wicklow. This widening was having a detrimental impact
on a nature reserve. Activists occupied the site in 1997 and began what
became a three-year battle. The campaign again fought the authorities
through court action. Their focus was largely based on an ecological
analysis and in many ways it was influenced by âdeep ecologyâ. The
campaign at times engaged the population but mainly as a media driven
spectacle. The campaign, after three years, was isolated enough for the
state to move and forcibly remove protestors.
Both Carrickmines and the Glen of the Downs reached varying degrees of
success but ultimately failed. The Carrickmines campaign almost
collapsed internally due to effect the personality politics could have
on a small group of people. The campaign relied on the support of
history and archaeological enthusiasts and gave the local community
little material interest in the campaign.
The Glen of the Downs was far more successful but when the major cull of
trees happened the campaign had failed to interest enough people to the
point of direct action. The activists courageously did face down the
forces of the state to the point that 13 people went to prison â some
only being released after two months and a hunger strike. However,
largely alienated from society at large, similarly to Carrickmines they
lost. The N11 is completed (problematically as activists predicted). The
M50 at Carrickmines is about to be opened shortly.
These campaign also raised issues which are very much expert based. The
Carrickmines campaign in particular was debated in very technical
language between academics and engineers, thereby isolating itself from
a majority of the population. This obviously alienated people as they
felt they could not aid in any practical way.
Though the Dublin Bin Tax campaign has effectively collapsed it was a
very different campaign, with some local communities having direct
participation. This was because the issues were presented to people in
the context that they had a direct material interest in the campaign
winning. The argument was simple and presented in common language; you
didnât need to be an expert in commerce to participate.
Libertarian activists can no longer approach the issue of the
environment as something we lament as an unfortunate victim of
capitalism. The destruction of the environment is intrinsically linked
to the development of capitalism and the oppression of the poor. This
destruction is also having huge ramifications on local communities.
Environmental campaigns, which present the issue of the environment as
something removed from communities, can no longer suffice. A strategy
such as that applied during the Bin Tax is necessary. We must question
the social consequences of environmental destruction. The approach of
many campaigns, regardless of intention, where single issues, such as
archaeology, are put forward as primary are too similar to the
governmentâs agenda. They sideline local people in favour of individuals
personal interests.
The Bin Tax illustrated the power of a social analysis on environmental
struggles. It gave more people an interest in the issue. This is not to
say that issues such as waste management or nature should be sidelined.
These issues are complementary to a social analysis but the most
important issue is the impact on the lives of ordinary people, as issue
too often sidelined by campaigns.
The success of this strategy is now being seen at the Corrib Gas
Campaign. In Mayo, Shell is trying to build a potentially highly
dangerous pipeline. The local campaign with the support of activists
from elsewhere has concentrated on the issue of safety and then brought
other issues into the struggle such as water pollution, death of
wildlife and visible beauty. This campaign, which has seen five local
people imprisoned, has by no means won but it has currently forced Shell
to withdraw for several months. The campaign as a local lead campaign
has raised local safety issues unlike the campaigns which concentrate on
archaeology history or nature.
A crucial issue to raise is why environmental campaigns which focus on
individual interests are like this. They are often criticised from the
sidelines because they do not incorporate class politics. However, if
archaeologists initiate the campaign it will inevitably be based around
an archaeological analysis. We should not disregard their campaign but
rather work in tandem with them where possible.
This said, it is also important that in certain cases we must realise
our differences, for example, I think itâs impossible for class struggle
libertarian communists to work with primitivists on issues like road or
development because our points of view are so far apart. Our working
together will only heighten tension and weaken campaigns.
Activists in Ireland still lack involvement in what are seen as more
directly environmental issues, such as road projects. There is certainly
a trend within anarchism influenced by âdeep ecologyâ that opposes all
roads and development. We do not oppose all road development but we
should certainly take issue with many of the current proposals where
profit is all and community is nothing. Instead we should support
sustainable development such as the plans suggested for the M1, M2 and
M3 to be replaced by a single motorway with link roads to the major
towns. These also incorporated reopening a disused railway that runs
almost exactly down the route of these motorways.
The case of the M3 illustrates classically how our analysis could
succeed. The M3 is a motorway to nowhere, serving little purpose and
will partially destroy one of Irelandâs and indeed north-western
Europeâs most important prehistoric sites â Tara. The motorway is
supposedly being built to alleviate traffic for commuters to Dublin from
the major towns on the route â Dunshaughlin, Clonee, Kells. The support
for the motorway in some of the local towns is naturally quite high.
People in the area have been told continuously that this road will solve
all the congestion problems. The motorway will however only feed the
commuters to a huge traffic jam where this motorway will meet the ring
motorway around Dublin, the M50.
At the moment the campaign is being fought over the historically and
archaeologically rich valley of Tara- Skryne. That the campaign against
the current route has focused on the archaeological significance of the
sites to be destroyed in many ways shows equal disregard for the people
of Kells, Dunshaughlin and Clonee (the towns most effected by the
traffic congestion). Itâs only when the campaign spokespeople are
accused of holding up progress that they challenge the need and
practicality of the motorway.
This approach along with an over-concentration on legal cases alienates
the most crucial people whose support is needed to win these cases â the
local communities.
The arguments being made by the campaign are largely academic and risk
alienating those without the time and money to buy and read archaeology
texts. The government are prepared to change the law, as illustrated at
Carrickmines, should they lose any legal challenges.
There is a danger that once the campaign reaches that stage it will have
alienated a majority of the local support needed to mount a serious
challenge to the motorway. This campaign may well lose in a similar
fashion to the way Carrickmines and the Glen of the Downs lost where a
relatively small group of activists try to face down the State and the
courts through direct action.
However if the campaign were to follow the example of the Mayo pipeline
campaign and concentrate on local people rather than the special
interest of a minority (which, although I hate to admit it, archaeology
is) the campaign could succeed.
Many people of Dunshaughlin and Clonee are now turning to the only
people who are claiming to have their interests at heart â the National
Roads Authority (N.R.A.) and the government. They have not been told the
reality of the motorway, which is that it is really only a faster way to
get people to a super traffic-jam.
Undoubtedly there are going to be more environmental struggles in
Ireland in the next few years. The approach to the Bin Tax was very
positive in many respects. People are perhaps in a strong position to
fight issues like the attempt to implement a water tax in Dublin. We
have seen mistakes but more importantly we have also seen a working
example of how people taking real direct action can really threaten the
power of the State.
They have been parts of a working model of how communities can take on
the power of the state. Crucially these are past examples of how we can
engage the issues around environmentalism. Activists must, however,
broaden our horizons and tackle issues like the National Development
Plan, whilst working with special interest campaigns where possible.
This article is not an attempt to be a pejorative statement from a class
struggle point of view; there is a lot to be learnt on our part from
these campaigns. Primarily the heritage based activists who took on the
authorities at Carrickmines and the ecologists at the Glen of the Downs
were doing something we failed at â taking on the issue of the
environment. The campaign at Carrickmines, which I was directly involved
in, felt resentment at the time due to the lack of participation and
even interest from organised political left-wing groups.
Individuals at the Glen of the Downs felt a similar resentment at the
fact that left-wing political parties used them at the time when the
campaign became high profile. Without help from other groups they
concentrated on what they knew best â at Carrickmines it was
archaeology. In this they were undoubtedly right â they fought the
campaign on their ground. The point I am making is that archaeologists
will do what they do best, as will ecologists. If class struggle
activists feel we have a better approach and analysis then we must act
on it.
The issues of the environment should not be dismissed, but the
preservation of trees or heritage is unlikely to be the main priority of
people who spend up to four hours getting to and from work. But both
sets of issues are crucial to us and should not be mutually exclusive
with sustainable development.