Meeting held on Tuesday 2 February 2016
6 people were present and 5 gave their apologies
We discussed recent meetings that had been held regarding the Paris climate summit which had been generally negative about the achievements of the summit. At the same time changes in government policy further undermined alternative energy development. Despite this, however, solar energy technology had advanced rapidly. While lower oil prices undermined any price advantage for alternative energy, it also reduced the investment value of fossil fuels, making tar sands and other expensive extraction techniques uneconomic.
Opposition to Trident renewal was, like alternative energy, a matter which had wide (if not majority) public support and yet such policies are widely opposed in parliament. There is evidence that most labour voters support Corbyn’s opposition to Trident renewal, yet his position on this is portrayed as “leftist extremism”. The Labour Party’s lack of a radical commitment on such issues was explained in terms of the need to gain power in parliament, particularly in the light of the two-party voting system. We discussed the need for Labour/Green collaboration
and wondered about the role of What’s Left in working towards such collaboration locally.
In the light of a little scepticism about parliament as an instrument of democracy, we gave some thought to progressive political alternatives to parliamentary power. At a local level, there seemed to be two aspects to this. The first involves supporting each other to live according to our political values (such as the value of the environment). Hope Transition is an example of this. The other involves campaigning. Campaigns to support local transport might be an example of this. This led to a wider discussion of what kind of local activity might be “political”: organising local allotments? running a knitting circle? Picking up litter? … One feature of political activity seemed to be its struggle to challenge entrenched power structures (such as local land ownership).
While we would like to support political activity in the community, the value of the What’s Left group was principally as a space of political conversation to explore ideas without the pressure of making decisions.