Tag: Colin Hines

Brexit and Trade Moving from Globalisation to Self-reliance

January 9, 2023

 

Colin Hines has drawn attention to a report by Victor Anderson and Rupert Read entitled ‘Brexit and Trade Moving from Globalisation to Self-reliance’, published and launched in 2017 by Green MEP Molly Scott Cato.

Although it regrets our leaving the EU and wishes we wouldn’t, the report is written as an alternative approach assuming we are outside the EU. Its Executive Summary states: “This report puts on to the political agenda an option for Brexit which goes with the grain of widespread worries about globalisation, and argues for greater local, regional, and national self-sufficiency, reducing international trade and boosting import substitution”.

Hines continues: “As I am aware it is the first time a report from a politician isn’t clamouring to retain membership of the open border Single Market”

It details the need for an environmentally sustainable future involving constraints to trade and the rebuilding of local economies. Indeed the report actually calls for ‘Progressive Protectionism’ rather than a race to the bottom relationship with the EU. Some of the points made on page 14:

  • Reducing dependence on international trade implies reducing both imports and exports.
  • It is therefore very different from the traditional protectionism of seeking to limit imports whilst expanding exports.
  • It should therefore meet with less hostility from other countries, as it has a very different aim from simply improving the UK’s balance of payments.
  • It could be described as ‘progressive protectionism’, or ‘green protectionism’.

For detailed proposals on how this could and should be done, see http://progressiveprotectionism.com/wordpress/’

He adds, “Also ground-breaking in Green Party literature of late is its discussion of the arguments for and against managed migration. Its sensitive handling of this contentious issue for many in the Greens does mark an important step forward and hopefully will help to start an internal debate about whether or not the party should reconsider its open borders approach”.

Hines feels that we won’t leave the EU – and central to that happening will be a realisation across Europe that to see off the extreme right they must manage internal migration and protect domestic jobs. At that point the reasons for supporting Brexit for most are no longer valid.

He ends: “This report makes a crucial input to the debate, one that will rage for the next two years”.

 

 

 

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Are the environmentalist, climate change, and alternative economy movements on the way to creating mass support?

November 18, 2020

 

From 24th July 2019, this site has been exploring the theory and practice of localisation – protecting and rebuilding local economies in this country and worldwide. Persuasive voices, ‘looking to the local’, have included Leigh Sparkes, David Fleming/Shaun Chamberlin, Jude Brimble, Colin Hines and Helena Norberg-Hodge.

Recently Mark Tully (below) read an article on the subject, condensed from one on Steve Schofield’s website. 

Mark’s response

Steven Schofield’s proposals for a ‘going local’ environmentally friendly economy are excellent.

  • However I am not sure he has an answer to the basic problem of building enough support for such drastic changes.
  • How do we get over the belief which is so widespread among the public that the way we do economics now is the only way there is? 

There are such powerful bodies, political and business, who have a vested interest the present system and the resources to promote it.

If Steven could show that green, environmentalist, climate change, and alternative economy movements are coming in from the fringe and are on the way to creating mass support this would strengthen his argument.

The post-war Labour government did indeed achieve a profound transformation of the economy – as he relates – but then they did have the mass support of the labour movement.

I do think a lot of people believe that in some way or other this pandemic is a warning which demonstrates the danger of continuing with our present economy, and presents an opportunity we should take to change our ways.

In view of this might Steven expand on what he means by “taking control of the crisis?”

I don’t see any sign that politicians anywhere are intent on anything beyond getting back to business as usual as soon as possible. That is certainly true in India – a country that is in urgent need of doing things differently.

When it comes to public ownership the pandemic has demonstrated the value of public health services. But how are we to deal with the problems that discredited the idea of nationalization?

*The importance of local cannot be overstated. However practising local self-sufficiency could create an over-restricted market which protects inefficiency and creates scarcities which affect prices.

These are just some thoughts which came to my mind and are not criticisms of Steven’s proposal.

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Ed:

I fear that green, environmentalist, climate change, and alternative economy movements are not ‘on the way to creating mass support’ but can see some movement in local government:

Since 2015 I have written about the widely reported approach of Preston Council – one mainstream media account may be read here.

The Future Generations Commissioner, Sophie Howe, says that Wales should introduce 20-minute towns and cities to improve health, boost the economy and support communities in lockdown (see, on another page, the example of Caerphilly).

Leigh Sparks, Chair of Scotland’s Towns Partnership, is Professor of Retail Studies at the University of Stirling, where he and various colleagues research and teach aspects of retailing and retail supply chains and. He says we need an enhanced local focus, reducing dependency on long, complex, supply chains and sets out several measures which would promote this change here.

 

 

 

 

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Local economic sufficiency: a radical approach for a world facing challenges posed by climate change and a global epidemic

September 25, 2020

Read the whole paper on The Less Net website: http://www.lessnet.co.uk/sufficiency1.html

The author, Dr Steven Schofield (The Less Network: local economic sufficiency and security) is a freelance researcher who has written on arms conversion and international security for various peace organisations including BASIC (link now inactive), CND, CAAT and for trade unions. His main interest is workers’ control of industry and the transition to a post-capitalist economy owned by working people. Extracts, emphasis added:

The combined effects of resource depletion and climate change are leading to civilization collapse. For too long the warning signs have been ignored because globalised capitalism continues to be driven by the delusions of resource abundance, environmental stability and exponential growth.

The over-riding concern of our political and corporate elites is to maintain the pattern of post-war growth through exploiting non-renewable energy supplies and raw materials. As these become depleted, they also become increasingly inaccessible. Whatever efficiency gains are made from energy-saving technologies and from the use of renewable energy, will be outweighed by the continued pressure to support the globalised network of production and distribution and the energy-intensive requirements for extracting non-renewable resources.

Until very recently, suggesting radical alternatives to the globalised capitalist economy would probably have been dismissed as either heretical, or futile, or both.

According to the orthodox mantra, we have entered a period of unprecedented prosperity through the internationalisation of trade and production; and even if we wanted to consider alternatives, the power and the influence wielded by transnational corporations and their network of political support are such that no realistic prospect existed of developing an alternative economic system.

But the image of capitalist dynamism is crumbling, to expose a system of inherent crisis and collapse. More and more people are willing to challenge that orthodoxy and demand real, urgent and radical economic change.

Local economic sufficiency provides a radical approach, where the necessities of life, including food and water supply, energy, housing and transportation are produced and maintained at the level of local communities.

The objective will be to dramatically reduce the energy and material throughput of the economy in a way that eliminates carbon emissions, resolves other environmental stresses like air and land pollution, while at the same time, enhancing the prospects for skilled employment.

A body of work exists on localisation, with various proposals for the promotion of local alternatives. This includes:

Alternatives must be provided to the existing networks through which the globalised economy operates and which are the root causes of resource depletion and global warming 

The first stage of the process will be to identify those technologies that fit into a local sufficiency framework and can achieve its objectives in a rapid timescale. At one level, there is a range of innovative technologies that can be, and to some extent, already is being applied to address these issues, notably renewable energy, and energy efficiency equipment.

Using the example of energy, a radical decentralisation of production could be carried out, based on a range of micro-systems including solar power, and community-based schemes like combined heat and power and community-owned wind farms.

In both cases, these incentives have led to the development of major new industries that employ tens of thousands of skilled workers in the design, production, installation and maintenance of equipment. By way of contrast, the UK has a truly appalling record, focusing its main government research support and subsidies on non-renewables, particularly nuclear power.

The challenge of local sufficiency is much greater since it involves both adapting and developing a range of technologies across different sectors of the economy concurrently and, by historical standards, rapidly, to provide alternatives to the existing networks through which the globalised economy operates and which are the root causes of resource depletion and global warming.

Local Technology Networks

Technologies are, normally, only acceptable when they are not disruptive to existing networks or where innovations can be subsumed within them. Local sufficiency requires major disruption across leading sectors. The state’s role will be to signal that a fundamental transition is taking place by creating an investment pool and devolving economic development powers so that local communities can implement their own programmes for local sufficiency.

In the first phase of transition, central government would prioritise the use of indigenous, renewable resources and minimise those from external, non-renewable resources, including imported oil, gas, coal and uranium.

In the UK’s case, there would be funding made available for research and development and other incentives for investment so that the country had a base line of electricity-generation of at least 50% from renewables by 2025. Necessarily, some will be large-scale systems including offshore wind and wave power, to maintain sufficient capacity, alongside incentives for smaller-scale and local projects.

But the objective would be to signal a fundamental restructuring towards local sufficiency where all future electricity generation is through renewable sources, backed up by energy efficiency and energy saving technologies that substantially reduce overall demand.  A similar process would be carried out in other sectors, including:

  • local food production,
  • housing
  • and public transport

This would ensure that progress is made to significantly reduce the energy and material throughput of the local economy, over a ten-to-fifteen year period.

Given the radical scale of the transformation, a key element will be the capacity of local communities to create the framework for local sufficiency and to act as a catalyst for local economic development. To overcome the problems of uncertainty around the application of new technologies, communities could set up Local Technology Networks around a hub of accessible centres that provide technical and funding support, coupled to training and job experience. These Networks would be mutually supportive, cross-fertilising ideas across different sectors as the local sufficiency economy developed and matured. See Hilary Wainwright, Arguments for a New Left – Answering the Free Market Right (Blackwell, 1993), for a review of the Technology Network set up by the Greater London Council in the 1980s.

A full range of innovation, adaptation, and maintenance would be required for local sufficiency, given the diverse elements, from basic agricultural techniques for organic farming, through to advanced sensors in energy efficiency equipment.

Under a local sufficiency framework, the mix, in any case, would be determined by specific local conditions. Indeed, during the transition phase, there must be opportunities for experimentation, including schemes for local currencies and investment banks to support new programmes. Inevitably, as part of that experimentation, some initiatives will fail, but a pool of knowledge and expertise will grow as to the most appropriate and effective applications.

This raises issues about forms of ownership for local sufficiency that can support long-term investment

Certainly there is a case for local government to own natural local monopolies like water supply and public transport.  It could also be in a position to own a substantial stock of land, and to allocate it for various essential activities, including the growing of local food and the building of social housing. Here, it could enter into a range of contracts for service provision with locally-owned companies, including co-operatives, for community housing, transport and energy schemes.

These companies would, in turn, become strong local multipliers of income and investment that will provide further resources to develop the local economy.

In the medium term, some difficult issues will have to be addressed about the relationship between the local and the globalised economy. For example, when local food production and distribution has reached a stage of maturity, it must be within the powers of the local state to close down globally-dependent sites like supermarkets if it is judged that their material and energy throughput and negative environmental impact contributed to resource depletion and global warming in ways that jeopardised the resilience of the local system that was now providing a viable alternative.

Local Economic Democracy

One possible method for achieving a fair assessment of the balance between the local and the globally-dependent elements of the economy is through a democratically accountable body. A Local Economic Forum could be set up, where elected representatives assess how the local economy was functioning, based on the criteria of local sufficiency and environmental recovery. It would be its responsibility to produce an annual report, assessing the state of the local economy against agreed objectives, and to produce forecasts and recommendations, including where necessary, on the closure of sites that were damaging the prospects for local sufficiency.

Further stages in the democratisation of economic decision-making could include a Regional Economic Forum, where again, assessments of the various local programmes are made against regional objectives such as an integrated public transport network based on rail and bus travel. In this case, when the network is sufficiently robust, the forum could recommend the closure of regional airports.

These sorts of policies would release substantial areas of land that could be brought into public ownership. Land released by the closure of supermarkets could be passed on to community land trusts as community-supported agricultural schemes, or more remote sites like regional airports could become market gardens.

Local communities and locally-owned companies could work together to design new housing estates with no underground sewerage, where all waste was composted and recycled, water supplies treated through organic processes on site and all the materials for build, energy efficiency and maintenance provided locally. New forms of public transport could also be developed such as a hybrid, road/rail bus that can use an expanded rail network and continue journeys to remoter areas by road.

These are practical examples of the sorts of technologies that have already been applied or developed to the prototype stage, many others exist, and there would be no insuperable barriers to their application if a local sufficiency framework were adopted.

 

 

 

 

 

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Address coronavirus AND climate change: provide our own – from ventilators to coat-hangers

March 15, 2020

In a deskilled import dependent Britain, a search reveals that at present Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Breas Medical is the UK’s only manufacturer of medical ventilators. 

Since the 70s there has been a process of outsourcing the manufacturing of goods we use and a procurement of our food from lower-wage countries, ignoring our own unemployed and failing to educate their children.

Retribution has been gathering pace

The transport of goods and food criss-crossing the world has vastly increased the emissions of greenhouse gases and – in Britain – a demoralised 10% are seeking solace in prescribed or illegal drugs, tobacco and alcohol, mind-numbing or pornographic TV – and a few perhaps subconsciously exacting revenge through crime and violence.

Is the tide turning? Make life-saving equipment instead of armaments?

Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, urges the country to pull together like it did during the Second World War, and says firms “cannot make too many” ventilators – which the Government will commit to purchasing. Government is pleading with industrial. giants like Rolls Royce to turn from arms manufacturing for a while and start to learn how to make life-saving equipment

He also said that “our generation has never been tested like this” and the Prime Minister has asked manufacturers to transform their current production lines to help produce ventilators as part of a “national effort” to tackle the virus.

And as European countries fear shortages and requisition domestic production, China is both able and willing to lend a helping hand, donating medical supplies, including 40 ventilators, to Italy. Stop Press: thanks to NATOWATCH mailing, we see this item: “China has also agreed to supply medical equipment Italy desperately needs to boost its treatment capacity. That includes contracts for 10,000 pulmonary ventilators, 2 million face masks, and 20,000 protective suits”.

Due to a WordPress malfunction images can no longer be embedded in the appropriate locations. Here are (left to right) Matt Hancock, Somini Sengupta and Colin Hines

Somini Sengupta in the New York Times refers to ‘the big unknown’; she asks “Will the effort to revive the global economy after the pandemic accelerate the emissions of planet-warming gases, rather than avert climate change? That depends on whether the world’s big economies, like China and the United States, use this moment to enact green growth policies or continue to prop up fossil fuel industries”.

Hines advocates taking the “first step on the green bridge from tackling coronaGND groupvirus to tackling climate chaos”

As Hines points out: “the huge cost of propping up care and health systems and supporting a generalised weakening of the economy will need massive increase in government borrowing and doubtless the need to resort to coronavirus QE (quantitative easing)”. He advocates such investment in green energy to meet climate change targets.

For years the GND group, of which he is convenor has advocated a nationwide training and works programme to make all the UK’s 30 million homes and workplaces energy-efficient. Such a massive green programme would generate jobs in every constituency, and business and investment opportunities countrywide.

A huge education and training effort would be needed to develop the skills enabling the self-provisioning of food and goods, from ventilators to coat-hangers. And that would pay enormous dividends in environmental health and social harmony.

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COMMENTs by email

DS:

Sadly this crisis may be the opportunity needed to galvanize government to switch to more benign, labour intensive and environmentally sustainable policies. Colin Hines, Andrew Simms, Caroline Lucas and most of the other names here ( including myself), have been forcefully advocating these policies for years. Let’s hope that somehow government will be forced to listen.

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Maggie Vicuna commented on Address coronavirus AND climate change: provide our own – from ventilators to coat-hangers

In a deskilled import dependent Britain, a search reveals that at present Stratford-Upon-Avon’s Breas Medical is the UK’s only …

QE would be best distributed to recipients of benefits, people on zero-hours contracts and others in low pay, as it would generate spending and have a direct impact on the economy. The banks and financial institutions don’t have a good record of using it well.

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Re-localising: a global manifesto: Colin Hines

July 24, 2019

In a 2002 letter to the Guardian, Colin Hines (right) commented on the huge social and environmental costs of ‘economic globalisation’.

He described it as a system ‘peddled by flat earthers’ which is increasing insecurity in the wealthier countries and rampant inequality in the Third World and Eastern Europe. It’s based on the preposterous idea that everyone can win from forcing every country to contort its economy to provide the cheapest exports. Parasitical speculators gamble on the futures markets – usually  profiting from a ‘boom and bust’ in commodities. The latest example was reported in the Financial Times in May this year (2019): ‘a massive oversupply in the coffee market . . .This has surpassed an economic crisis. People are moving away [from the farms]. They are absolutely heartbroken”.

Hines presents an alternative to this damaging globalisation process – ‘Localisation’

Under this system, the emphasis shifts to an internationally supportive end goal of protecting and rebuilding local economies world-wide,    encouraging the flow of technology, managerial skills and limited funds in order to help to nurture local economies, not wreck them.

In his widely cited book, Localisation, a global manifesto, he wrote about concrete localist policies from all round the world, that can make such a necessary transformation occur, adding: “The jolts to the increasingly discredited globalisation system are coming thick and fast”.

Now, seventeen years later, as concern about climate change grows, many are far more aware of the profoundly damaging social and environmental consequences of economic globalisation.

 

 

 

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