Unravelling the threads that link us to the slave-owning past

The Guardian
Sun, 2 April 2023 

Photograph: Christopher Jones/Alamy

My career in textiles from the 1970s to the 1990s took me many times to the mills of West Yorkshire and Lancashire. Being fascinated with old buildings, I marvelled at the architectural glories of the likes of Salts Mill, the Black Dyke Mills, Lister Mill in Bradford and many smaller, though equally impressive edifices. Never once did it cross my mind that these dark satanic mills were not only products of Yorkshire and Lancashire entrepreneurs, but built on the back of a vast network of slaves and slave-owning people who amassed the wealth of Great Britain in the industrial revolution.

Is it too patronising to congratulate the Guardian for the recognition of its involvement in this, with the founders of the paper being patrons and owners of companies involved? 

David Olusoga’s wonderful research and work on this (Slavery and the Guardian: the ties that bind us, 28 March) should make us all think about how we have enjoyed the fruits of these industries. MULTIMEDIA PRESENTATION

As a white, middle-class, elderly woman, I take my hat off to them and hope that we can all begin to see ourselves in a new light and set about realising where the privileges have come from that built the successful towns and cities in our country, and which shaped the lives of people of my background.

Sue Neave
Cleethorpes, North East Lincolnshire

• David Olusoga lifts the veil on the relations between slavery and the growth of Britain’s cotton industry. His article, revealing as it is of blind spots in official and folk histories, still misses a vital part of the narrative – how Britain came to command the global cotton industry through the deliberate destruction of the textile industry of India, the hitherto dominant producer of finished cottons.

Mechanisation of cotton production in British factories depended on securing a mass Indian market through the dispossession and starvation of the Bengali handloom weavers, a process that was then duplicated (as documented by Edward Thompson in The Making of the English Working Class) in the metropolis.

Empire was a system in which slavery was central, as was the transformation of the colonies into sources for the extraction of raw materials to feed the industries of the coloniser.

Chris Sinha
Cringleford, Norfolk

• A thousand thanks – what a tremendous emotional shakeup the articles in your Cotton Capital series gave me. Above all, the list of names of those slaves whom your journalists and investigators successfully identified. Behind each name is a tragic story that is impossible to understand from our position of comfort and security that we enjoy today. I would especially like to thank David Olusoga for his remarkable article.

We can never atone enough for the wrongs that our English ancestors did, and I am so grateful that you have decided to at least acknowledge the wrongs and make every effort to provide opportunities for others to find some sort of justice.

David Hesketh
Castanet Tolosan, France

• Here is my suggestion for a concrete, meaningful way that the Guardian can begin to pay reparations for its past ties to slavery: set up a fund to pay for schoolchildren in Ghana to visit Cape Coast Castle, one of the main slave-trading forts, for free. When I visited it a few years ago to give a lecture on the history of the slave trade, I was shocked to learn that Ghanaian children are charged to enter the castle, making this important historical site off-limits to many of them. This history is their history; they must learn about this past, and the Guardian can help them to do it.

Michelle Faubert
University of Manitoba, Canada

Eighty-year-old study of British slave trade is back in ...

The Guardian

https://www.theguardian.com › books › mar › capitali...

Mar 2, 2022 — Capitalism and Slavery, by the future first prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago Eric Williams, argues that the abolition of slavery was ...

UK

Grand National to allow protests despite Animal Rebellion threat to block race course


Will Bolton
Sun, 2 April 2023 

Aintree Animal Rebellion - PAUL ELLIS/AFP via Getty Images

Protesters will be allowed at the Grand National despite a plot by Animal Rebellion activists to glue themselves together and block the race course.

Merseyside Police said that it “respected the right to peaceful protest”, but warned any criminal actions threatening the event would be dealt with “robustly”.

Members of Animal Rebellion, an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion, plan to form a human barricade across the course at Aintree, Merseyside, after sneaking into the event with ladders and bolt cutters, according to reports.

The group has vowed the uncovering of the plan by the Mail on Sunday will not prevent them going ahead with the action at the Grand National, and causing further disruption throughout the summer.

Merseyside Police has been given a dossier of evidence obtained by an undercover reporter at the newspaper posing as a member of the group.

The Countryside Alliance warned the activists’ “increasingly irrational and confrontational” tactics could put spectators at risk.

Mo Metcalf-Fisher, a spokesman for the group said: “While small in numbers, Animal Rebellion’s pattern of increasingly irrational and confrontational behaviour must serve as a red flag to Merseyside Police, who should exercise a zero tolerance approach towards any behaviour which threatens the welfare of attendees, riders and horses.”

The Jockey Club, which owns Aintree racecourse, declined to comment on the security arrangements it had in place.

Merseyside Police did not confirm whether it was aware of the activists' plans before the Mail on Sunday investigation.

A spokesman for the force said: “Merseyside Police has a robust policing plan in place for Aintree, as it does for any major public event, to ensure the safety and wellbeing of everyone involved.

“We have been working with our partners, including The Jockey Club, for a number of months in the build-up to this year’s festival to ensure that any necessary plans and processes are in place to deal with any incidents that may arise and to prevent any significant or ongoing disruption to racegoers and local residents and businesses.

“We respect the right to peaceful protest and expression of views, but public order or criminal offences will not be tolerated and will be dealt with robustly.”

A post on Animal Rebellion’s website branded this year’s race “The Last Grand National” and said it needed donations from supporters to “make this action happen”.

The Guardian view on carbon offsetting: an overhaul is overdue

Editorial
Sun, 2 April 2023 


The emerging carbon offsets market is chaotic and dysfunctional. Problems need to be addressed openly, and resolved as quickly as possible. A joint investigation by the Guardian, the German weekly Die Zeit and SourceMaterial revealed in January that the vast majority of rainforest offset credits from the leading certifier – which are sold to companies that then use them to make claims about their overall emissions – do not offer the environmental benefits that they claim. Since then, scrutiny has only increased, with more questions being asked of the western businesses behind projects such as Kariba, a huge offset-promoted forest in Zimbabwe.

Recognising the urgent need to rebuild flagging confidence, if the carbon-trading system is not to collapse as it did once before, the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market last week announced that new rules for offset issuers will be announced in May. A separate process overseen by a different body is reviewing the claims that businesses make, based on their offset purchases. While all this might sound remote from the concerns of most people, the stakes could hardly be higher. Many environmentalists would prefer governments to oversee a transfer of resources from rich countries to the forested nations that need incentives to conserve precious carbon sinks. The reality is that due to the way our global economic system is organised, we all depend on market mechanisms.

As the body that certifies most offsets, including for household-name companies such as Disney and Shell, the Washington-based non-profit Verra is in a particularly awkward position. Last month it announced that its current rainforest programme would be phased out and replaced by July 2025. But it has also defended its current methodologies, describing them as the “best in class” for now. It is not clear whether organisations that use Verra credits will stick with them.

The danger of carbon offsets, frequently raised by campaigners, is that their primary function is greenwashing. Fossil fuel companies are among their biggest buyers; Verra has close ties to the industry. Allowing companies to declare themselves, or products including airline tickets, to be “carbon neutral”, is not just misleading – when the offsets have been shown to be flawed – but harmful. As well as giving businesses a licence to carry on polluting, it fuels the widespread fantasy that western lifestyles do not need to change, and that consumption can continue unabated.

There is also evidence that some credit schemes are not only failing to promote the role of Indigenous people as stewards of important habitats, but doing the opposite. Community leaders have complained of “carbon pirates” turning up in remote places with lucrative offers which turn out not to be what they seem.

Some carbon offset schemes have been shown to work, as a means of financing conservation. If the $2bn (£1.6bn) industry can learn from recent events, by increasing transparency and integrity, there is a chance that good practice can be built on, while poor practice is stamped out. If the voluntary carbon market fails, then alternative mechanisms must be found to honour the implicit promise of the Paris climate agreement, that the world’s forests will be worth more alive than dead. That we can’t trade or offset our way out of the climate crisis remains the most important message. Our planet’s resources are finite.

Campaigners in fight with energy giants over 100-mile pylon route through Highlands

Herald Scotland Online
Sun, 2 April 2023 

Energy firm SSEN has put forward plans for a network of pylons to run for about 100 miles through the Highlands. (Image: PA)

Campaigners including a clan chief have vowed to fight power giants seeking to construct a “critical” new line of pylons through the Scottish Highlands.

Energy firm SSEN has put forward plans for a network of pylons to run for about 100 miles between Spittal, in Caithness, in the far north of Scotland, to Beauly, near Inverness.

The plans are seen as critical in moving renewable energy generated in the Highlands to more populated areas of central Scotland and England.


But a new campaign group has been formed in a bid to urge the power firm to reconsider parts of the route – with campaigners vowing to seek a public inquiry if the line as currently planned is “bulldozed through regardless of local feeling”.

Members of the Strathpeffer and Contin Better Cable Route Group want a third party to be brought in to work with both SSEN and local residents to plot a less disruptive route for the line.

As it stands, they fear pylons which are “Glasgow tower block size” could be “marching along the skyline, carving a swathe through the wood”.

READ MORE: 'Super pylon' plan emerges to run through Scots countryside

Group spokesman Dan Bailey said: “We’re talking as big as they get in terms of overhead pylons, through a landscape that has no built environment over a couple of storeys.”

HeraldScotland: Undated handout photo of Lower Strathconon.


Mr Bailey, from the Highland village of Strathpeffer, said the plans were for pylons between 50m and 60 in height to be placed every few hundred metres along the route – adding that the only consultation with residents had been about where in a 1km-wide strip of land these should be sited.

He said: “The line they have chosen as their preferred route, it is potentially the most damaging line they could have chosen on all sorts of measures, environmental, habitat loss, rare species, the fact that it carves through a really valuable local resource of recreational woodland that is used by walkers and mountain bikers in their thousands.

“It just damages the landscape setting of Strathpeffer, which is a historic Victorian spa village and a heritage centre. It is like nothing we will ever have seen.”

HeraldScotland: Undated handout photo of Ben Wyvis.


The Strathpeffer conservation area, the ancient Knockfarrel hill fort, Castle Leod and its woodlands, and the Loch Kinellan crannog, which is a scheduled monument, could all be impacted, campaigners say.

READ MORE: Highland road 'unsuitable for learners' named among world's most dangerous

Mr Bailey said residents of both Strathpeffer and the nearby village of Contin “feel like we are going to be collateral damage in the national drive to net zero”.

He claimed SSEN has drawn up its preferred route using desk-based computer modelling “with no on-the-ground assessments for habitat loss, rare species, the impact on landscape quality in a tourist area”.

He continued: “This will absolutely destroy the thing that brings people to the area.

“We are on the edge of the Highlands, we are a scenic, accessible location, we have got campsites, we have got hotels, mountain bike businesses, walking guides, wildlife watching, all of these things feed into the local economy and all of these things are under threat if you plough the line through the wrong part of our area.”

A different route could “substantially mitigate” the impact of the new power line, which SSEN is consulting on until April 14.

But with a lengthy public inquiry having to be held before approval was granted for the similar Beauly to Denny power line, Mr Bailey said: “We will do everything we can to try to trigger a public inquiry if the preferred route is just bulldozed through regardless of local feeling.”

He added: “Scottish ministers have a role to play in this, and the system they preside over is in danger of steamrollering local people.”

John Mackenzie, the Earl of Cromartie and the current chief of Clan Mackenzie, is among those voicing concerns.

He said that locals had been “told at short notice with limited time to assert our democratic rights, that 60m high pylons would be marching across our scenery, cutting across homes and villages as if this area was some industrial wasteland”.

He added: “This is not a wasteland, this is an area of natural beauty where people come to live because it is a good place to bring children up, to work and to appreciate just how wonderful it is.

“In Europe, power lines running across areas of outstanding scenery would be undergrounded, so why not here?”

Helen Smith of Rowan Tree Consulting, which specialises in tourism and heritage projects in the Highlands, said: “The huge threat to heritage in the Strathpeffer area is repeated right along the route from Caithness to Beauly.

“Every moor, strath and glen the pylons will cross has special sites, some dating back 6,000 years, and even if these sites do not end up with huge pylons on top of them, their surrounding landscape will be drastically affected.”

SSEN said that “in order to support the continued growth in onshore and offshore renewables across the north of Scotland, supporting the country’s drive towards net zero, further investment in network infrastructure is needed to connect this renewable power and transport it from source to areas of demand across the country”.

The company’s website added that “following extensive system studies, Spittal to Beauly has been identified as a critical corridor in establishing this required reinforcement”.

A spokesperson for SSEN Transmission said the project was “part of a GB wide programme of works that are required to meet UK and Scottish Government 2030 renewable targets”.

They added: “Whilst delivering this critical national infrastructure by 2030 requires an acceleration of the project development and delivery phases, we remain fully committed to work closely with the local community and wider stakeholders to help inform our design and it is important to note that the project remains in the early stages of development and no specific overhead line route alignments have been identified.

“We are currently seeking feedback on potential route options within approximately 1 kilometre wide areas and preferred substation locations, with this feedback helping inform more detailed overhead line route options and our proposed substation site selections, which we will further consult on later this year.”

UK

Clean energy start-up Xlinks wins Abu Dhabi backing for £18bn project

Sky News
Mon, 3 April 2023


An Abu Dhabi-listed energy company is in advanced talks to provide financial backing to Xlinks, a British-based startup hoping to build the world's longest undersea cable to help meet future UK energy needs.

Sky News has learnt that Taqa, which has operations spanning oil and gas, water and carbon capture and storage, is negotiating the purchase of a significant stake in the prospective £18bn project.

Sources said that an agreement could be struck within weeks as part of development capital fundraising which Xlinks is close to finalising.

In total, the British company is expected to raise more than £30m of new funding in its latest round.

Octopus Energy, the group which has become one of Britain's biggest residential gas and electricity suppliers, is also thought to be participating.

Xlinks wants to construct a 3,800km cable between Morocco and the UK that could transmit enough electricity to power more than seven million British homes.

It would involve a large-scale onshore wind, solar and battery electricity generation site in the north African country supplying power exclusively to the UK energy grid.

The project, which is expected to cost £18bn to fund, received a significant boost last week when it was named by the government as a project of interest in its energy blueprint, Powering Up Britain.

'Vital national interest'

"The UK's energy security is a vital national interest: so too, however, is the urgent need to stick to the government's 2035 net zero electricity system target and avoid short-term thinking that may derail the transition to clean, abundant sources of energy," Simon Morrish, Xlinks chief executive, said last week.

"We welcome the government's determination to work with Xlinks to implement our renewable energy venture.

"This first of its kind Xlinks Morocco-UK Power Project will meet up to 8% of the UK's electricity demand with renewable energy, reducing consumer bills and adding to security of supply in the process."

'Frustratingly slow' talks with Whitehall

The government's support comes five months after Sir Dave Lewis, the former Tesco chief executive, complained of "frustratingly slow" talks with Whitehall about providing support to the project.

Xlinks' ambitious proposals to transport energy from the Sahara to Devon via a subsea cable represents a mammoth engineering assignment.

The development funding will fuel the technical aspects of Xlinks' work, with the ambition of the link running at full capacity by the end of the decade.

The company has assembled an impressive board which also includes Sir Ian Davis, the former Rolls Royce Holdings chairman, as a non-executive director.

It will need to advance plans to secure the billions of pounds of financing required to construct vast facilities in Morocco as well as UK factories that would manufacture the necessary subsea cable.

'One of the most sophisticated British energy projects ever conceived'

Manufacturing sites in Hunterston, Scotland - where a nuclear power plant is being decommissioned - on Teesside and at Port Talbot in Wales have been secured and are under development.

The cable manufacturing operations will be overseen by XLCC, which will have separate funding arrangements from Xlinks.

Xlinks intends to raise a combination of debt and equity to fund one of the most sophisticated British energy projects ever conceived.

The company was founded by Mr Morrish, a former winner of the accountancy firm EY's entrepreneur of the year award.

Xlinks believes its £18bn blueprint will be attractive to investors for a number of reasons, not least because of the scale of the clean energy it would deliver that would make a significant contribution to Britain's transition to net zero emissions.

'Low geopolitical risk'

Sir Dave has previously said that a crucial factor would be Xlinks' low geopolitical risk because of Britain's centuries-old trading relationship with Morocco and the north African country's ambitions of growing the energy sector as a share of its exports.

The company also says it will be able to deliver energy at £48-per-megawatt hour, below the government's own forecasts and therefore generating long-term savings for consumers.

It is also significantly cheaper at that level than the nuclear energy due to be generated by a new fleet of power stations being built in the UK in the coming decades.

Xlinks has not been seeking direct government funding, but is in talks with officials about settling on a predictable price that a Contract for Difference mechanism would provide.

Octopus Energy struck a financial and strategic partnership with Xlinks last year.

An Xlinks spokesman said the company did not comment on "market rumour or speculation".

In rural America, big solar projects often get a frosty welcome

Ulysse BELLIER
Sun, 2 April 2023 


From her century-old home, Susan Burns has watched the sun set over her cousin's field every day for 75 years. Now her cousin has agreed to have solar panels installed on the field, and an unhappy Burns finds herself in a fight.

Huge solar farms are being planned in this corner of Missouri, and as in other rural areas of the United States, residents sometimes are yanking the welcome mat.

Foreseeing vast expanses of solar farms replacing cropland, Burns began raising the issue with other community members at the Baptist church across the road.


She fears much may be at stake: "(I) lose my view. I lose my health. I lose my safety."

A group has formed around Fulton to fight the solar installations, as has happened in rural areas across the country. And this emerging grassroots movement is slowing the transition to low-carbon electricity in the world's largest economy.

- Land registry -

"I want to live and take care of my farmland. And the idea that my cousin, who lives across the road, would be turning his farmland into an industrial area was very disturbing to me," Burns told AFP from her country home.

With a dozen other volunteers, Burns organized a public meeting to sound an alarm. As people walked in, a petition awaited their signatures, and activists invited the curious to study a land registry map with three areas highlighted showing proposed solar farms.

"If we unite, we can stop this," said Joe Burns, Susan Burns's son, before a crowd of about 100 in Fulton, the county seat.

- Threat to identity -

The US electricity grid generates 60 percent of its power from fossil fuels. The administration of President Joe Biden is trying to turn the tide toward renewable energy.

But grassroots protests against solar projects "will significantly delay America's commitment toward getting to net zero," said Jungwoo Chun, a lecturer on climate and sustainability at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Like other academics interviewed by AFP, Chun insisted that it would be an oversimplification to see the opposition as a simple matter of the NIMBY -- or "not in my backyard" -- dynamic.

"Farmers have a particular identity," said Doug Bessette, an assistant professor at Michigan State University and co-author of several studies on the matter.

"It's hard work, it's dirt under your fingernails. And now if that land is... just basically laying fallow with solar panels on it for 20 years, that's a disruption to identity."

Differing visions have pitted farmer against farmer, and even divided families.

In the southern part of Callaway County, two neighbors nearly came to blows, said one, whose house may end up surrounded by solar panels.

- Do the math -

Leaning on his tractor, cattle farmer Mike Webb pointed to one of his parcels.

"That piece of ground just across the road here," he said, "I may make 250 to 300 bucks an acre on a good year.

"And then when someone comes around and asks me, 'Hey, we're willing to give you $1,000 an acre (per year) for solar panels, and give you a 2 percent increase per year for a 40-year contract,' it gets your interest," Webb said.

So he signed on.

"It should be my right to do what I want to do with my place," he said.

At a crossroads, with grain silos looming in the distance, a sign calls for a fight against solar projects.

"It drives me crazy," Webb blurted out as he walked past, denouncing the resistance of a "minority" of the population.

Here in northern Callaway County, word is that the first shovels for one of the three solar farms could come as early as this summer, although that is not confirmed by the Ranger Power renewable energy company.

The developer of the 250-megawatt project (enough to power nearly 43,000 homes) told AFP that its $300 million investment would, among other things, allow local homeowners "to sustain existing family farms."

"It's free money," said Webb, who is thinking about his retirement and about the day when some of his four children will take over the farm.

"Whether they like it or not, it's going to be an income for them. And you know, that's what matters to them."

ube/vgr/tjj/bbk/dw

Tallest solar-sided building in North America under construction in Halifax

Halifax will be home to North America's tallest solar wall

Nathan Coleman
Mon, April 3, 2023 

Tallest solar-sided building in North America under construction in Halifax

Halifax will soon be home to the tallest wall of solar panels in North America. The renewable energy source is now being installed as part of a retrofit on the side of the Loyola residence building at St. Mary's University in Halifax.

"It's not something we were aiming for, to be the biggest and the best, it just happened," said Facilities Management Senior Director Dennis Gillis in an interview with The Weather Network.

Engineers at St. Mary’s started looking at the integrity of the concrete façade of the 30-year-old building two years ago and determined it needed to be replaced. The school was hoping to integrate sustainable elements when they discovered that solar panel siding was an option.

Gillis said the concept is fairly prominent in Europe and slowly coming around in Canada.

Tallest solar wall - St Marys University - Nate Coleman
SMU electrical engineering students get a firsthand look at the innovative retrofit. (Nathan Coleman)

"It'll definitely provide power to the university and it'll lower our carbon footprint which is also very important too," Gillis added.

He explained that the panels will generate about 100,000 kilowatt hours per year with a carbon reduction in the range of 15 to 20 cars a year off the road.

Electrical engineering students at the university have also been monitoring the project firsthand as the construction progresses.

You can watch the installation process and check out the panels in the video above.

Thumbnail image: A rendering of what the panels will look like once construction is complete. (St. Mary's University)

Solar panels could be a lifesaver for public housing tenants grappling with Australia’s soaring energy costs

Benita Kolovos
Sun, 2 April 2023 


Natalie Rabey doesn’t know how much time she has left. But she knows what she wants to do with it.

“While I’m still breathing I’d like to get some action on solar panels for people in public housing because it’s just terrible at the moment,” she says.

The 73-year-old public housing resident has spent more than a decade advocating for improved living conditions for public tenants in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs. She says with the cost of living soaring, she has never seen so many people doing it so tough.

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“A lot of people around here are getting help from the Salvos and neighbourhood houses with food, especially pensioners. How are they supposed to pay their power bills, medication, groceries when it’s all going up by so much?” Rabey says.

Related: ‘I was in tears’: collapsed ceiling in family home a sign of dire state of NSW public housing

“I know some people are just not turning their heaters on in winter, while the ones who have air conditioners, they don’t use them at all in the summer because they can’t afford to. Others are just switching everything off.”

For Rabey, this is not an option. She has permanent scarring on her lungs following a viral infection that put her in hospital for nine weeks. As a result, she needs to use an oxygen machine, and run two air purifiers and a compressor 24 hours a day.

“I don’t know what it’s going cost me as we head into winter because I have to keep the heating on throughout the night, because otherwise in the morning it’s freezing and I start coughing up,” Rabey says.

She is backing a push by the Victorian Public Tenants’ Association (VPTA), to install solar panels on every public housing property in the state.

In its state budget submission, the VPTA, the peak body representing existing public housing renters and those on the waitlist, estimates 23,500 existing public housing properties are suitable for installation of rooftop solar panels.

It could save each household up to $535.49 each year in lower energy bills.

The VPTA chief executive, Katelyn Butterss, said the proposal would tackle cost-of-living pressures for low-income households, help Victoria reach its emissions reductions targets, and create more than 1,000 jobs.

“Homeowners, people who live in community housing and those in private rentals have had an opportunity to access subsidised solar panel installations, while the tenants of Victoria’s biggest landlord – the director of housing – are the only people left behind,” she said. “It’s time they also reaped the benefits.”

The VPTA’s submission also calls for a program that would see vacant property owners lease their homes to the government for temporary inclusion in the public housing stock for up to 15 years.

The government would pay participants market rent plus 1%. To encourage owners to join the program, the government could increase the vacant residential land tax or apply it to more parts of the state, the submission states.

Butterss said the idea followed the release of 2021 Census figures last year, which showed there were 1m unoccupied properties across Australia – or 10% of all housing stock – on census night.

Related: Rural housing crisis: short-stay accommodation demand in NSW towns is dire news for long-term locals | Elias Greig

“That’s really hard to reconcile when in Victoria, there are more than 100,000 individual Victorians waiting for access to safe, secure, affordable housing,” she said.

She described the proposal as a “stopgap” until the government’s $5.3bn “Big Housing Build” to construct more than 12,000 new homes eventuates. However, she warned it was likely these new properties would make only a small dent on the “very swollen waitlist”.

Rabey is keen to stress that most people in public housing don’t want to be there.

“Sometimes stuff happens to people in their lives that they can’t control,” she says. “I only ended up here because my brother’s business went down. That’s life. So we should try to make it a bit easier when we can.”

“I don’t know how long I have left but I want to see this one through.”

‘They know what’s at stake’: inside the longest-running industrial action at an Australian university

Caitlin Cassidy
Sun, 2 April 2023 

Photograph: AAP

The usually bustling University of Sydney campus is a ghost town on Friday morning, aside from a groundskeeper on his lawnmower and the occasional police car.

One hundred metres down the road, though, dozens of union members are belting out Red Flag and The Internationale to the toots of trucks and a chemistry lecturer’s french horn.

Related: Australian universities advised to avoid being ‘roped into’ multi-employer bargaining, leaked strategy reveals

Friday was the eighth day of strikes since an epic 21-month enterprise bargaining process began.

Hundreds of staff gathered to block off nine main entrances to the campus on Friday to reject management’s latest enterprise agreement proposal, representing the longest industrial action at any university in Australia.

The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) say management has refused to implement satisfactory controls on staff workloads, and are calling for job-security for casual and professional staff, a reduction of education-focused roles and a parity target for Indigenous employment.

Under the current agreement, management has agreed to preserve the 40-40-20 model, ensuring academic loads are split evenly between research and teaching, with 20% of time allocated to administrative work.

But it’s pushing to create 650 education-focused positions with a 70% teaching workload, while new academic roles will be increased by 10% to 330 positions.

The education positions were rejected this week with “dismay and incredulity” by emeritus professor Derrick Armstrong, who was responsible for introducing the roles and says they’ve become a way to reduce costs for the university while detaching the value of research from education.

At the picket at the Ross Street entrance, music blares all day, and students join staff armed with banners, flags and instruments. If the stakes weren’t so high, it might almost feel like a party.

Alma Torlakovic, member of the NTEU branch committee, is running the Ross Street picket. “We’re teaching a new generation of students how to fight,” she says.

“We’ve just had two unprecedented meetings in a row … it’s boosted people’s energy and spirit.

“Most staff would agree … people with any kind of job security have the best wages and conditions [nationally]. That’s what’s inspiring people to come out and lose pay – they know what’s at stake.”

A record 700 members attended the NTEU’s latest meeting to vote broadly in favour of a further eight and nine days of industrial action.

It came after management’s latest offer, which outlined a 17.1% pay increase over three years and a $2000 sign-on bonus.

A spokesperson for the University of Sydney says the pay increases are the best in the sector and it’s “disappointing” the union voted to continue with industrial action.

“Throughout the protracted negotiation process, we have never once modified our position due to industrial action, but only in response to good-faith negotiation at the bargaining table,” they say.

“The unions put forward more than 100 claims in this negotiation, more than any other university in Australia has had during similar negotiations.”

For classes going ahead in person, “roaming” strikers use interference tactics to “Zoom picket” tutorials and disrupt lessons. Where classes are running, normal attendance policies apply, while cancelled classes don’t rack up absences.

Yasmine Johnson is one of about 200 students at the university who’ve come out in support of academics.

“The things staff are facing, actually affects students too … they’ve [management] been trying for years to make classes bigger, meaning that tutors don’t have time to really mark students’ work,” she says.

“Student definitely understand. Lots of them stay at home for the strike days [and] students have been going around to classes before the strike and getting them to vote in support.”

Members of the NTEU at the University of Sydney on Friday, the eighth day of strikes since the 21-month enterprise bargaining process began. Photograph: AAP

Senior coordinator at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Dr Jason Todd is at the Carillon Avenue picket, dressed in the union’s purple. He’s running a clinical trial on prostate cancer and says his department is struggling to retain staff.

“Workloads are getting out of control … it’s hard to hire people when you can get much better offers in the private sector,” he says. “People are burnt out.”

Related: Australian university sector makes record $5.3bn surplus while cutting costs for Covid

Nick Riemer, NTEU branch president at the university, tours the picket lines on his pushbike.

He says some university cohorts, including the business school and law faculty, which were not previously active in industrial matters, have been radicalised during this campaign.

“We can’t go on striking forever, but we have to until we meet our minimum objectives … and we haven’t got that yet.”

This story was amended on 3 April, 2023 to correct that the University of Sydney’s pay increase offer is over three, not four, years.

Super tax breaks costing $45bn a year are ‘inheritance schemes’ for Australia’s rich, new report says


Peter Hannam Economics correspondent

Guardian Australia
Sun, 2 April 2023 

Photograph: Flashpop/Getty Images

The Albanese government could save the budget billions of dollars by winding back generous superannuation benefits that effectively produce “taxpayer-funded inheritance schemes” for the wealthy, a new Grattan Institute report argues.

The “super savings” report says such tax breaks now cost $45bn a year, or 2% of GDP, and will soon exceed the age pension costs. Two-thirds of the breaks go to the top 20% of income earners who typically are already saving enough for retirement.

“Much of the boost to super balances from tax breaks is never spent,” it said. “By 2060, one-third of all withdrawals from super will be via bequests – up from one-fifth today.”

Brendan Coates, one of the report’s authors, said the projected huge federal budget deficits and mounting demands for more spending on the NDIS, defence and other programs gave urgency to reining-in “unfair and unsustainable” super benefits.

“Our super tax breaks have been too generous for a long time,” Coates said.

The biggest changes were introduced by then treasurer Peter Costello in 2006 and “both sides of politics have been gradually chipping away at the tax breaks ever since,” he said.

Related: Coalition’s super changes will affect three times as many people as Labor’s plan, modelling shows

The 10 recommended changes include raising the so-called division 293 tax on super contributions from high earners from 30% to 35%, and cutting the annual income threshold at which this tax applies from $250,000 to $220,000. The budget would reap $1.1bn a year from the change.

To make the scheme more equitable, the low-income superannuation tax offset should be extended to those earning as much as $45,000 a year, up from $37,000 now. That change could cost $530m annually.

The Albanese government drew the ire of some investor groups and media pundits in February when it announced earnings on super balances above $3m would be taxed at a rate of 30%, up from the current 15%, starting in July 2025. Shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, criticised the move as an “attack on middle Australia”, while the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, has promised to repeal it if the Coalition wins office.

The public’s response to that move – which is expected to affect about 80,000 people initially – was “actually heartening” and should encourage the government to go further, Coates said. “Polling of that change shows it has been wildly popular despite intense media commentary.”

Related: Young Australians are struggling, but improving their lives doesn’t come at the expense of older generations | Alison Pennington

The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, is busy preparing his second budget –– to be released on 9 May. At the end of last year, the underlying cash deficit for the 2022-23 year was expected to be almost $37bn with the annual shortfall rising to about $50bn in 2024-25 and 2025-26.

Treasury officials are understood to have listened respectfully to the proposals but for now are sticking to the tax changes already planned for the $3m-plus super accounts.

Other changes proposed by the Grattan report include reducing the pre-tax contributions cap to $20,000 a year, from $27,500.

The move would save the budget $1.6bn a year by trimming voluntary contributions typically made by older people with already-high balances. Men also typically benefit much more than women.

Provisions that allow co-contributions and carry-forward provisions, intended to encourage catch-up payments, instead “facilitate tax minimisation and should be abolished” it said. Savings to the budget would be about $1.1bn a year.

The report said all super earnings in retirement should be taxed at 15%, as they are before people retire. Such a change would save the budget $5.3bn annually.

Coates said warnings that changing super conditions would alter people’s retirement plans were exaggerated.

“We change tax rates on personal income all the time,” he said, adding that the proposed changes would bring superannuation back in line with its original purpose. “This isn’t about blowing up the system.”

Mikhail Bakunin

Report of the Committee on the Question of Inheritance

FIRST INTERNATIONAL WORKINGMENS ASSOC. 1877

The Committee proposes the following resolutions:

Whereas the right of inheritance is one of the principal causes of the economic, social, and political inequality which governs,the world; Whereas, so long as there is no equality, there can be neither freedom nor justice but only oppression and exploitation—slavery and the labor of the people; Therefore, the Congress recognizes the need to abolish fully and completely the right of inheritance.

Citizens,

This question, which will be discussed at the Basle Congress, is divided into two parts, the first being the principle, and the second being the practical application of the principle.

The question of the principle itself should be considered from two standpoints: expedience and justice.

From the standpoint of the emancipation of labor, is it expedient, is it necessary, to abolish the right of inheritance? In our opinion, to ask this question is to answer it. What can the emancipation of labor mean, if not its' deliverance from the yoke of property and capital? And how can property and capital be prevented from dominating labor and exploiting it so long as they are divorced from labor, monopolized by the members of a class who need not work in order to live because of their exclusive enjoyment of the fruits of that monopoly, who will continue to exist and to keep labor down by levying on it land's rent and capital's interest, who are made strong by this state of affairs, and who thus secure for themselves all the profits of industrial and commercial enterprises as is the case now everywhere, leaving to the workers, who are themselves crushed by the mutual competition into which they are forced, only what is absolutely necessary to keep them from starving to death?

No political or juridical law, however severe, will be able to prevent this domination and exploitation, no law can prevail against the force of circumstances, no law can prevent a given situation from producing all of its natural results: From this it clearly follows that, so long as property and capital remain on one side and labor remains on the other, the former constituting the bourgeois class and the latter the proletariat, the workers will be the slaves and the members of the bourgeoisie will be the masters.

But what separates property and capital from labor? What distinguishes the classes economically and politically from one another, what destroys equality and perpetuates inequality, the privilege of the few and the slavery of the many? It is the right of inheritance.

Need we demonstrate how the right of inheritance gives rise to every economic, political, and social privilege? Plainly, it alone maintains class differences. Through the right of inheritance, both natural and passing differences among individuals, of fortune or prosperity, differences that should not outlive the individuals themselves, are eternalized, one may say petrified. Becoming traditional differences, they create privileges of birth, they establish classes, they become a permanent source of the exploitation of millions of workers by mere thousands of the well-born.

So long as the right of inheritance is in effect, there can be no economic, social, and political equality in the world; and so long as inequality exists, there will be oppression and exploitation. In principle, then, from the standpoint of the all-round emancipation of labor and laborers, we must desire the abolition of the right of inheritance.

It is understood that we do not intend to abolish physiological heredity, that is, the natural transmission of physical and intellectual abilities, or to be more precise, that of muscular and neural abilities from parents to their children. This transmission is often unfortunate, for it causes the physical and moral maladies of past generations to be passed on to present generations. But the disastrous effects of this transmission may be fought only by applications of science to individual and collective social hygiene, and by a rational and egalitarian organization of society.

What we want to abolish, what we must abolish, is the right of inheritance, which was established by jurisprudence and which constitutes the very basis of the juridical family and the State.

It is also understood that we do not intend to abolish sentimental inheritance. By this we mean the passing on, to children or friends, of objects of slight value which belonged to their friends or deceased parents, and which, because of their long use, have personal meaning. Substantial inheritance is what guarantees to heirs, either in full or in part, the possibility of living without working, by levying upon collective labor either land's rent or capital's interest.

We intend that both capital and land—in a word all the raw materials of labor—should cease being transferable through the right of inheritance, becoming forever the collective property of all productive associations.

Equality, and hence the emancipation of labor and of the workers, can be obtained only at this price.

Few are the workers who do not realize that the abolition of the right of inheritance will in the future be the ultimate condition of equality. But some fear that if it is abolished now, before a new social organization has guaranteed the lot of all children regardless of the conditions under which they are born, then their children will find themselves in financial difficulties after their death.

"What!" they say. “From the sweat of my brow and through great privation, I have amassed two or three or four hundred francs, and my children will be denied them!" Yes, these will be denied them, but in return they will be cared for by society, without prejudice to the natural rights of the mother and father, and they will receive an upbringing and an education which you could not guarantee them even with thirty or forty thousand francs. For it is clear that as soon as the right of inheritance is abolished, society will have to take responsibility for all costs of the physical, moral, and intellectual development of all children of both sexes born in its midst. It will become their supreme guardian.

We shall stop here, because at this point the question joins that of all-round education, on which another committee should report to you.* But there is another point we should clarify.

Many persons hold that if the right of inheritance is abolished, then the greatest stimulus that impels them to work will be destroyed. Those who so believe still consider labor a necessary evil or, to speak theologically, the result of Jehovah's curse, which he angrily hurled at the unhappy human race and in which, by a singular caprice, he included the whole of creation.

Rather than enter into this solemn theological discussion, we shall base ourselves on the simple study of human nature, answering those who disparage labor, by saying that for every person who possesses human capabilities, labor, far from being an evil or a painful necessity, is a need.

To be convinced of this, you may conduct a simple experiment on yourself: force yourself to be absolutely inactive for only a few days, or to do sterile, unproductive, and stupid work, and see whether at the end you do not feel most unhappy and degraded! Man's very nature compels him to work, just as it compels him to eat, drink, think, and speak.

If labor is hated today, this is because it is excessive, brutalizing, and forced, because it is the death of leisure, because it deprives one of the possibility of enjoying life fully, and because nearly everyone is compelled to apply his productive energy to that type of labor which least fits his natural inclinations. Labor is hated, finally, because in this society, which is founded on theology and jurisprudence, the possibility of living without working is considered an honor and a privilege, and the need to work for a living is regarded as a sign of degradation, a punishment and a disgrace.

When the labor of body and mind, manual and intellectual together, is considered the greatest honor, the sign of virility and humanity, then society will be saved. But that day will never arrive so long as inequality reigns, so long as the right of inheritance has not been abolished.

[Examining the principle of the abolition of inheritance from the second standpoint, we ask:] Will this abolition be just? But if it is in everyone's interest, in the interest of humanity, how could it be unjust? We must distinguish historical, political, and juridical justice from rational or simply human justice. The first has ruled the world until now, making it a repository of bloody oppressions and injustices. The second will emancipate us. Therefore let us examine the right of inheritance from the standpoint of human justice.

A man, we are told, has acquired through his labor several tens or hundreds of thousands of francs, a million, and he will not have the right to leave them as an inheritance to his children! Is this not an attack on natural right, is this not unjust plunder?

First, it has been proven a thousand times that an isolated worker cannot produce very much more than what he consumes. We challenge any real worker, any worker who does not enjoy a single privilege, to amass tens or hundreds of thousands of francs, or millions! That would be quite impossible. Therefore, if some individuals in present-day society do acquire such great sums, it is not by their labor that they do so but by their privilege, that is, by a juridically legalized injustice. And since a person inevitably takes from the labor of others whatever he does not gain from his own, we have the right to say that all such profits are thefts of collective labor, committed by a few privileged individuals with the sanction of the State and under its protection.

Let us proceed.

The thief who is protected by law dies. With or without a testament, he leaves his land or his capital to his children or to his parents. This, we are told, is a necessary result of his individual freedom and his right; his desires must be respected. But a dead man is dead for good. Outside of the altogether moral and sentimental existence created either by the pious memories of his children, parents, or friends (if he deserved such memories) or by public recognition (if he rendered some real service to the public), he no longer exists at all: He therefore can have neither freedom nor right nor personal will. Ghosts should not rule and oppress this world, which belongs only to the living.

So that he may continue to will and to act after his death, a juridical fiction or political lie is necessary, and as he is henceforth incapable of acting by himself, some power—the State—must take responsibility for acting in his name and for him. The State must execute the'will of a man who can have no will because he no longer exists.

And what is the influence of the State, if it ts not everyone's influence organized to everyone's disadvantage and to the advantage of the privileged classes. Before all else, it is the production and the collective strength of the workers. So do the masses of workers have to guarantee the principal source of their poverty, the transfer of inheritances, to the privileged classes? Must they forge with their own hands the chains that shackle them?

For the right of inheritance, which is exclusively political and juridical and hence contrary to human right, to collapse by itself, the proletariat need only declare that it no longer wishes to support the State, which sanctions its slavery. The abolition of the right of inheritance is enough to abolish the juridical family and the State.

Moreover, all social progress has proceeded from successive abolitions of rights of inheritance. First, the right of divine inheritance was abolished, the traditional privileges or punishments which were long considered the result of either diving benediction or divine malediction.

Then the right of political inheritance was abolished, resulting in the recognition of the sovereignty of the people and the equality of citizens before the law. At present, in order to emancipate the worker, the human being, and to establish the reign of justice on the ruins of all the political and theological injustices of the present and the past, we must abolish economic inheritance.

The last question to be resolved addresses the practical measures we must take to abolish the right of inheritance. The right of inheritance may be abolished in two ways: either by successive reforms or by social revolution.

It can be abolished by reforms in those fortunate countries, which are very few in number if they exist at all, where the class of property owners and capitalists, the members of the bourgeoisie, inspired by a spirit and a wisdom that they now lack, finally realize the imminence of social revolution and earnestly desire to come to terms with the world of the workers. In this case, but only in this case, the path of peaceful reforms will be possible. By a series of successive, prudently planned modifications, mutually agreed between the workers and the members of the bourgeoisie, the law of inheritance could be abolished completely in twenty or thirty years, replacing the present customs of property, labor, and education with collective labor, collective property and-all-round upbringing and education. It is impossible for us to determine further, the character of these reforms, for they must necessarily be adapted to the particular situation in each country. But in all countries the goal remains the same: the establishment of collective property, collective labor, and individual freedom, through universal equality.

The way of revolution will naturally be shorter and simpler. Revolutions are never made either by individuals or by associations. They are brought on by the force of circumstances. The International by no means has as its goal the making of the revolution, but it ought to take advantage of [the spirit of R]evolution, organizing it as soon as it appears as the result of the increasingly clear injustice and ineptitude of the privileged classes. We must understand ,that on the first day of the revolution the right of the inheritance will simply be abolished, along with the State and juridical law, so,that on the ruins of these injustices the new international world may then appear, the world of labor, science, freedom, and equality, organizing from itself the bottom up, by the free association of all productive associations, across all political and national frontiers.

The Committee proposes the following resolutions:

Whereas the right of inheritance is one of the principal causes of the economic, social, and political inequality which governs,the world; Whereas, so long as there is no equality, there can be neither freedom nor justice but only oppression and exploitation—slavery and the labor of the people; Therefore, the Congress recognizes the need to abolish fully and completely the right of inheritance.

This abolition will be accomplished as. events require, either by reforms or by revolution.

*No such committee was formed; but see "All-Round Education" in this volume:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/action/text/edit/mikhail-bakunin-on-the-question-of-the-right-of-inheritance/m-b-mikhail-bakunin-on-the-question-of-the-right-o-1.pdf