Janis Bailey, Ross Gwyther, Dale Jacobsen and Greg Mallory

CONFERENCE REPORT

Red, Green and In-between: Labour and the Environment in Historical Context

'If the climate was a bank, the governments would have saved it by now.' Thus did one of the keynote speakers remind the audience in a humorous way of the urgency of the issue. Held in Brisbane on 6 February 2010, this conference brought together activists and academics (noting that the two categories are not mutually exclusive) and, most importantly, musicians and singers. Attracting 100 people, the conference was organised by the Brisbane Labour History Association, with The Centre for Work, Organisation and Well-being and the Department of Employment Relations, Griffith University. Sponsorship and assistance also came from the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, the Queensland Council of Unions, the Queensland Conservation Council and the Woodford Folk Festival. Designed as a dialogue, this was about red-green alliance building post-Copenhagen, and also about producing a special thematic edition of Labour History. The combination of activist and academic papers was a stimulating mix.

The music contributed by Margaret Walters, and by Bob and Margaret Fagan, was a highlight of the day. Several music interludes were interspersed amongst the keynotes and papers. The singers had done an amazing job of generating and presenting material that reflected on and responded to the themes of the day. Thus we had: Weevils in the Flour, Bring out the Banners, Red Kembla, Eveleigh Railway Workshops, and a tribute to four-legged workers: Blossom the Mining Horse. A goose-bumpy moment was the singing of City of Green about the birth of the Green movement (words by Denis Kevans and music by Kate Fagan) sung by Margaret Fagan accompanied on guitar by Bob, with Jack Mundey, the movement's founder, sitting there on the stage. A truly magical moment early in the day.

Bob and Margaret Fagan

Photo courtesy Red Reunion

Keynote speakers were Jack Mundey, long-time union and environmental activist, who reminded us that capitalism and last century's Stalinist socialism failed the environment; Tony Maher, national president of the mining division of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Workers Union; and Ian Lowe, long-time environmental activist and president of the Australian Conservation Foundation (and an emeritus professor at Griffith University). All agreed that alliances between unions and environmental groups are difficult but worth striving for, and that the issue is international.

Jack Mundey speaking during the opening panel session
Photo courtesy Red Reunion

In the first of several parallel sessions, Green activists Drew Hutton and Libby Connors urged a shift from lobbying to mobilisation, arguing that environmental issues could not be left until after the capitalist system had been replaced: the issue was more urgent. However, such an alliance was much easier to talk about than to bring about, given the different understandings of tradition, mobilisation and outcomes which made the joining together of traditional leftism and radical environmentalism highly problematic. In the same session Jeanne Rea analysed EarthWorker, a collective formed in 1997 by a group of Victorian environmental and union activists in which she was involved. The group brokered significant plans across several areas, including alternative energy production. These worked at bringing employers and companies on board. But EarthWorker was destroyed (as an organisation, not an idea) just a few years later when an invitation to mediate in a conflict between native forest activists and forestry workers in the Otway ranges resulted in disaster. Jeannie reflected on the learnings of this episode and provided food for thought on the sustainability of red/green initiatives that are currently in train. Howard Guille argued for the 'decommodification of both nature and labour' and criticised environmentalists who place too much faith in market solutions. Howard argued regulation was the key, and he echoed the keynote speakers in stressing that international solutions are essential. He also argued that a new framework of 'collaboration' between state and capital is needed. Papers were also presented by activists Noel Bird, who spoke about mediated solutions, and union organiser Kate Lee.

A feature of the afternoon was a panel of five young trade unionists and environmental activists who gave their perspectives on ways of building unity between workers and environmental campaigners around the climate change struggle. Kate Flanders described the successful work the Public Sector Union has done in Queensland in building activity amongst their members, through a program called 'Climate Heroes'. Tristan Douglas then described how the ACTU is embedding similar programs in other unions in conjunction with the Australian Conservation Foundation. NTEU organiser Maggie May related her experiences in union-community coalitions, and in helping to achieve sustainability clauses in a number of university staff enterprise agreements. John Mackenzie, from Friends of the Earth, described their current campaign to highlight the negative impacts of the coal industry in Queensland, and Holly Kemp related the efforts that students have been making around Australia to network together around climate issues, in particular the series of 'Climate Summits', which have brought community groups together with a number of trade unions to build lasting relationships. Finally, Bob Fagan took off his guitar-playing hat, and summed up the discussion. The gathered audience also gave a warm round of applause to Joan Shears, who was attending the conference, and has been awarded an Order of Australia for her work in the peace and environment movements. The message from this panel discussion was that young activists are committed to climate change, with many of them building bridges between and among unions, environmental NGOs and other groups and that the longevity and sustainability of initiatives is key to their success. Climate change, with its global implications, more than any other issue provides an impetus for long-lived 'red/green' solutions.

Academic papers were given on several environmental campaigns, including the history of the Georges River in Sydney, the campaign to create the Lesueur National Park in Western Australia in the early 1990s, and the on-going struggle to keep Mangere Mountain in Auckland as a 'living museum' of Maori heritage. These papers challenged the notion of conservation as a middle-class, mainly white and urban social movement, and demonstrated that environmental issues and action are also the province of more marginalised groups in society and those who do not necessarily identify as 'green activists'. The Georges River was used by working class communities for whom it was their green space, not some distant wilderness; the Lesueur campaign saw an unlikely co-operation between pastoral landholders, other rural residents and the union movement as well as environmental organisations; and Mangere Mountain is the story of ventures between local Maori and interested pakeha institutions, with ongoing tensions not least because the site is meant to be economically self-sustaining.

Other academic papers included a challenging and thought-provoking presentation that argued for a need for a clearer understanding, empirical and theoretical, of the relationship between human and non-human labour, with an emphasis on the difficulties of abattoir workers given the extreme circumstances under which they work. Another academic paper explored the red-green nexus by examining the extent to which the politics of Green parties are informed by leftist traditions in social democracy and labourism, and by comparing key aspects of the social composition and attitudes of the voter bases of the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party.

Conference participants demonstrated a real appreciation of the 'dialogue' and 'inclusion' that all agree is so necessary, and indicated that action is happening in many quarters, with some activities such as those on climate change developing momentum as different groups network and join forces. A number of papers, as Bob Fagan pointed out in his summing up, provided a welcome challenge to the 'red-green' binary in the Conference's title: it is not either/or, as the planet's challenges are ultimately about social justice. With many calling for a follow-up conference, so successful and energising had the day been, participants continued to search for solutions over a beer at the nearby Ship Inn, in time-honoured labour history fashion.

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