9 hours ago
There can be no just transition without public ownership
As it was with Jim Ratcliffe's Ineos and his Chinese partners at Grangemouth, this is another case of local workforces and communities facing devastation at the hands of a multinational capitalist profiteer.
These factories, a feature of the area since 1895, were bought by Canadian multinational New Flyer Industries in 2019. It has since devoured at least £90 million in Scottish Government subsidies – public funding to fatten their profits.
There's no excuse for closure; this is not an ailing corner shop, but a global bus-building empire. It is wiping out 400 jobs directly, and at least 1400 in total, by shunting all production to Scarborough.
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The reliance of governments at both Westminster and Holyrood on inward investment by foreign capital is blown to smithereens as a strategy for prosperity with this one outrageous example.
Why should the fate of our communities be dictated by faceless figures in company boardrooms thousands of miles away, as they maraud the planet in search of cheaper labour, lower overheads and centralised production to squeeze more profit out of fewer workers? But the significance of this devastating blow goes way beyond the horrendous attack on jobs, apprenticeships, and working-class families' livelihoods.
The nature of work done, and far greater potential work these factories could do in building electric buses, casts a spotlight on how governments should tackle the climate catastrophe in a fashion that protects both jobs and the air we breathe.
All mainstream capitalist parties have co-opted, demeaned, and bastardised the phrase originally coined by the trade union movement when they prattle on about a 'just transition'.
Workers see neither justice nor any signs of a real transition to clean, green production. They are instead victims of multinationals which pollute the planet for profit and simultaneously wield the axe on jobs when it suits the one and only criterion they care about: maximisation of private profits.
(Image: PA)
Last week, I joined a team of Scottish Socialist Party members in Falkirk town centre, loudly campaigning for nationalisation of the two factories, to save all jobs and build fleets of green buses for a publicly owned People's Transport Service, free at the point of use for all to travel on.
Queues of people came to sign our petition, making that demand on the Scottish and UK governments. The majority either had friends or relatives working at Alexander Dennis, or used to work there themselves.
The large crowds, in the roasting sunshine, readily grasped our proposal of nationalisation – and government funding of councils to take ownership of all bus services – as a straightforward solution to the slaughter of jobs and the pollution caused by overuse of cars.
As someone who has lived all his life in rainy climates, I have little patience with those who complain about sunny days! But we must face up to the existential threat that lies behind extreme weather conditions: the galloping climate catastrophe.
Here's the rub. Transport is the single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Scotland, contributing over one-third of the total, helping to overheat the planet.
The queues of cars clogging up Falkirk's one-way system were a reminder of the link between polluted air exacerbating health conditions including asthma, heart diseases and cancers, and the social pollutants of poverty, unemployment, and despair among sections of working-class communities lacking secure futures.
Any government that is serious about tackling these twin catastrophes has a ready-made solution, as advocated by the SSP for more than 25 years: a vastly expanded, integrated, reliable, publicly-owned transport service, free at the point of use for all citizens, powered by clean energy.
(Image: PA)
The introduction of free public transport networks in more than 100 cities, regions and nations has successfully reduced car usage and put money in the pockets of working-class people. Why not Scotland? And for every £1 invested in such a pioneering plan, £1.70 would return to the local economy.
Nearly one-third of Scottish households have no access to a car (46% in Glasgow and Dundee), and the cost of travel on buses and trains is prohibitive to low- and even middle-income families, creating deeper poverty and damaging social isolation. Research by consultancy Transition Economics demonstrates that 60,000 green jobs in public transport could be created with proper planning and a serious industrial strategy to operate buses, trains, subways and ferries, but also build the rolling stock and fleets of buses required.
Studies show that 2900 skilled jobs could be created just to carry out a transition to electric buses alone.
But what do we have instead? A multinational announcing imminent obliteration of 400 bus manufacturing jobs and three to four times that number in the supply chains – and bus services run for profit by private operators who cut routes and bus frequencies whilst ripping off passengers with ever-increasing fares.
We believe public funding should be transformed into public ownership. Don't subsidise, nationalise!
Without democratic public ownership of bus operators, train companies and the capitalist outfits that build buses and railway rolling stock, there is not a snowball's chance in a hellishly overheated planet of a genuinely just transition.
Last week, Labour's Ed Miliband spouted rhetoric about 'a green industrial revolution', mere weeks after he told Grangemouth workers there was nothing Labour could or would do to save their jobs, despite their union advocating alternative plans of green production.
The climate catastrophe is real; last year was the hottest year on record, and scientists insist there needs to be an immediate halt to fossil fuel production to avert irreversible, life-threatening damage to the planet.
But there's no need to choose between skilled jobs and clean air; between poverty and pollution. On the contrary, tackling pollution and greenhouse gas emissions requires the creation of new skilled jobs.
However, governments will remain incapable of implementing such an urgently required transition unless they own both the means of producing energy and of providing public transport. You can't plan what you don't control, and you can't control what you don't own.
Democratic public ownership of Alexander Dennis, all bus and train companies, all forms of energy, the construction industry and banking are the foundations required to tackle the devastation of jobs and desecration of the planet.
A Socialist Green New Deal would not only create at least 350,000 skilled, secure, unionised jobs in Scotland, but help reverse the climate catastrophe created by capitalist profiteering. Now wouldn't that be a real and just transition to a re-industrialised, sustainable economy – a socialist Scotland built for people, not profit?
