The Red and The Green

Well, waddya know? It seems my satiric ramblings about environmentalists turned out to the actual views of some on the extreme left. According to George Monbiot in The Guardian the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) believe that the environmental lobby is merely a tool of the middle and upper classes, trying to return society to some kind of pre-industrial rural idyll where the workers know their place. Coincidentally, this is precisely the perspective of the greens I attributed to a left wing academic in The Greening of Bush over on The Sleaze. Whilst intended satirically, I must admit a certain sympathy for this view point. There is no doubt that the environmental lobby - at least here in the UK - is dominated by earnest middle class types who seem to have little grasp of the impact many of their proposals would have on the less well off.

Nevertheless, despite this sympathy, I really wouldn't go as far as the RCP does, in denying that global warming exists, claiming that it is all a capitalist plot to deceive us. Personally, I'm of the belief that it is time the rest of us took control of the environmentalist lobby and started steering it toward some kind of proposals that were both effective environmentally and which didn't disadvantage the working classes. Perhaps it is time the workers took control of the RCP as well - I bet its leadership is solidly middle class. That was certainly the case with most of the far left organisations I encountered in my student days. I used to enjoy flaunting my authentic working class credentials at them: born in a council house, father a shop steward, state schooling, etc. That's why they're always so unrealistic in their aims - they represent the middle class view of what the working classes want. Come the revolution, we'll put 'em all up against the wall! (But only if it is tastefully decorated in pastel colours...)