A couple of bizarre vignettes from the Vestas protest today. Right is a photo of Liberal Ryde South councillor Adrian Whittaker 'cooking for the masses' outside the threatened plant. Rather a nice vegetable stew I am told. Considering the rest of his family, I fancy disownment can't be far away......
Not much later we witnessed one of the Council leadership's spin doctors chauffuering the Deputy Leader of the Council past the protest in a rather smart Jaguar car. No doubt a 'fact' finding visit that we will hear more about........
As for the protest itself it remains good-spirited and determined, and I have again spoken to a number of my constituents up there. Last night's rumoured injunction was actually a summons for one, issued to the occupiers tonight, and to be heard in the IW County Court next Wednesday 29 July.
Sadly I am not getting anywhere at the moment with my conversations with government seeking to rescue the plant, but nothing ventures, nothing gained. Something singularly absent from the leadership of the shameful IW Council. Adrian and I remain the only two councillors to visit, though both the Labour and Liberal parliamentary candidates have spent time up there over the last 3 days and the MP has been into see management and spoke to workers and protesters yesterday.
If you can get there at 6pm tomorrow we could have an even larger demonstration of support on what is a protest growing by the day.
2 comments:
Couldn't the deputy leader of the council do a cycle-past instead of a drive-past? And couldn't the workers occupying the building have some locally-sourced food handed in to them instead of Sainsbury's vans rolling up...
Well done on your attempts to get something positive out of it all, Geoff.
I agree with you that those things would point up some of the ironies of the situation, at the same time as showing solidarity with the Vestas workers, and I certainly agree (ie, with a bit more confidence) with your second point.
It still troubles me that so many myths are being swallowed here, because that leads to the practical steps that can be taken being forgotten and delayed.
Vestas wasn't a "green" company; it's a company that has ridden on the back of a green movement. I don't think there's any dispute that they have treated their workforce appallingly - whereas earlier there were some saying we needed to "save" the company. It didn't take long for everyone to see through that; and I'm sure that the vast majority of those working at the plant understood immediately that the company didn't need saving: but their jobs did.
Perhaps in these circumstances the logical base on which you fight doesn't matter, so long as you do fight. I don't know. But I believe it does have to be said - and as I haven't held any significant political office for some years, I may as well say it - that Vestas doesn't matter enough to government to take into public ownership; that the product they make is of marginal importance to meeting energy need - although it may be less marginal in terms of meeting artificial government targets; and that the workers themselves are unlikely to raise the capital they would need to start manufacturing the blades themselves, since the investment required would be huge.
IF they could find that capital, the picture could be transformed. But where is it going to come from?
The green issues being largely irrelevant to the reality, what government needs to do is recognize the almost unique circumstances here and to grasp the fact that we have a skilled workforce on an island where there is very little manufacturing employment. They should not just accept that these workers will be benefit recipients, but send ministers and civil servants down here to talk with the MP, IW Council, trade unions, and most importantly the workers themselves, about what can be done in practical terms - to re-train, to fine-tune skills, to apply them to other projects, to create employment. None of that would be easy in good economic times; in the middle of a recession, solutions will be hard to find: but they must be sought. Vestas should not be allowed to just slink away and leave let another hole where our manufacturing industry used to be.
At the same time, this mobility of capital can only be fought on an international basis: because over my lifetime I have seen this again and again, as companies move from one country to another exploiting low wages, tax concessions, low property and supply prices, anything to maximize their profit and showing no concern at all for the workers who have made them their money. One of the questions people should be asking of government therefore is, what are you going to do about the ability of companies to just wreck people's lives by relocating? And what can working people themselves do to take action across national boundaries?
You can make symbolic points about the source of sarnies, and good luck to you. But they're really not that relevant.
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