Millions of young people, in the UK and around the world, will take part in the 29 November global climate strike. In many workplaces workers will take actions, whether a lunchtime photo-shoot or delegations of workers joining city-wide climate protests. In the UK, particularly important this time are the UCU strikes, which coincide. We must build on the 29th for wider climate activism.
Youth climate strikers should deepen our collective and democratic organisation on town-, city-, and region-wide bases. Youth strikers must work with workplace activists to build a clear programme of environmental demands and mass workplace participation.
Workplace activists and environmentalists must build on any successes of the 29 to make union support for future climate strikes real. We should aim for mass workplace actions and protests in future climate strikes, and mass delegations of workers to city-wide protests.
These strikes can also act as a springboard to build struggles around workplace environmental demands, including on campuses, and to link these up. We should contextualise these struggles within a wider set of society-wide environmental demands, a “Socialist Green New Deal”.
This climate strike, of course, falls within the build up to a historic general election. Labour’s manifesto, and especially the policy passed at Labour’s conference this year, make big steps towards the environmental policy needed. This should be used, on the one hand, as a way of raising discussion of the society-wide changes needed at work, on campus, and among young people; and simultaneously galvanising the same people to campaign for a Labour victory.
