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As the WCP, we begin our Trades Council Roundtables
Why Trades Councils?
Trades Union Councils (often referred to as Trades Councils) are local groups of trade unionists who promote working-class solidarity in local communities. They are elected from trade union branches whose members live and/or work in the area. They promote effective solidarity in disputes, joint campaigns on issues such as health, education, welfare and transport. Many of these grassroots groups have historically been active on the issue of climate justice.
Many trades councils are contributing towards developing a just transition for their area, and others are keen to start this type of work. Our roundtables will help connect councils who’ve already made progress with others who want to learn more, helping energise a just transition in new locations and enabling cross-union collaboration.
First Phase
A series of three roundtable events will take place across February and March. At each event, three trades councils will present their work on climate justice to other local trade union activists and discuss learnings and challenges.
Here are examples of some exciting initiatives they will be sharing:
Collaborations with local climate groups on just transition and community wealth-building in Wakefield and Sheffield
Work on Climate Jobs in Blackpool which analyses how jobs could be created in green industries such as renewable energy, building retrofitting and public transport
Community solidarity campaigns such as Save St Fittick’s Park in Aberdeen which threatened access to green spaces for local communities due to a new port project and collaborations with Climate Camp Scotland
Organising events to explore climate justice and workers rights such as in Blackburn and Coventry
For the first phase, events are invite-only and we reached out to councils directly to invite them, but we will be sharing insights and follow up reports. Our first and second calls have taken place already, with the rest soon to come.
Next Phase
We are planning to then hold more workshops in the Spring to discuss the radical possibilities of worker-climate organising through trades councils.
We aim to collaboratively explore a method for trades councils looking at their local area and understand for examples
What industries are most at risk of closure due to action on climate change - for example, the oil and gas, automotive, and steel industries
What opportunities exist to create new sustainable sectors - for example, renewable energy, and retrofitting
What alliances can be created with local climate and community groups
Other factors affecting local workers and communities - for example, areas where there is no major industry but a huge need for sustainable jobs
We’re looking forward to working with this energised movement that cuts across trade unions, and seeing what emerges from their community action.
Help us to strengthen the struggle
If these exciting developments in our work make you want to help, we really need you as part of the team! We’re a small, volunteer organisation, so even a few more members is a massive boost to our ability to empower trade union structures such as trades councils in their struggle for a workers’ transition.
Go to our Get Involved page to join the team!
As the Worker-Climate Project rises, we say goodbye to LGND
There is no socialist strategy without a strategy for a worker-led transition away from fossil fuels. There is no socialist future without a worker-led green future. Let’s build the movement the world deserves.
Following substantial discussion on how a socialist climate politics can be developed in our current moment, LGND is coming to an end, with the Worker-Climate Project (WCP) continuing the campaign’s ambition in the workers’ movement. Read on for a look back at LGND’s history; more details about this decision; and how you can be involved in taking this politics forward with the WCP.
Nearly 6 years ago now, Labour for a Green New Deal (LGND) was founded, with the aim of developing a socialist climate politics both within Corbyn’s Labour Party and the British labour movement. In September 2019, LGND proved its effectiveness as an organisation by using the Labour Party conference to demonstrate that a huge mass of the British socialist movement was supportive of a transformative vision for our economy and society to address the climate crisis. Rather than an end in itself, this organising within Corbyn’s Labour Party played an important role in igniting a political current of socialist-climate thinking and policy, which undoubtedly influenced the ambitions of the 2019 Labour manifesto.
While this early success should be celebrated, it occurred in the context of a historical defeat for the British left –following a resounding electoral defeat and the victory of a hard-right Labour leadership. As an organisation, we were forced to begin the gradual work of building power in a political ebb. This meant an increasing focus on how workers were organising towards a transition in their workplaces, industries, and unions . We found many disparate, experimental efforts- with few clear successes to draw on. In this environment, the concept for the WCP was conceived to understand the forms of this embryonic movement, and to help build strong, strategic connections within it.
In early 2022, we formed the WCP, with our initial aim to organise a conference bringing together those most experienced in this struggle to share their methods, tactics and challenges. In the build-up to this October conference, we interviewed 24 activists to understand the depth of their approaches i.e. what union structures supported them, what networks they were part of, how they understood their methods and tactics –then produced sharable resources comparing these findings (which can be found on our website here). Outreaching for this conference also involved finding activists across the British labour movement, meaning we had a map of ~130 people with some details on their activities. The conference itself was a valuable space for tactical and strategic reflection from experienced and new organisers, and importantly produced the long-term feedback that a project of continuous networking would be our most valuable contribution.
Coming into 2023, this meant the WCP taking on the long-term work of creating team and administrative structures to be able to map and network this movement over a span of years. For a small team of volunteers, this meant taking an expansive view of the potential scale of our project, balancing between the limited capacity of our week-to-week work and preparing to be a growing project to be able to have the ambitious impact on this movement we saw it needing. Over the next two years, we conducted many more interviews; outreached further across sectors, regions and unions; and undertook deep consideration of the strategic interventions we could make alongside this work.
Alongside the development of the Worker Climate Project, LGND has continued to explore possibilities for interventions towards state power, even in the face of an explicitly hostile Labour leadership. In 2023, the Public Power Now project was launched to push the Labour Party to take a whole-system approach for energy nationalisation, from production to distribution and retail. While this pressure undoubtedly contributed to the announcement of their extremely limited ‘Great British Energy’ programme in 2022, LGND campaigners were increasingly finding left MP’s theoretically supportive but unwilling to break discipline. A new approach was needed; PPN was wound down and campaign members began to explore ideas for a project aimed at the level of local government.
Therefore, late 2024 found the work of LGND divided across two projects in very different phases of development; a very active and growing Worker Climate Project, and an embryonic Local Government Project. Discussions at a campaign wide general meeting about the changes to current political context in which we are organising since the campaign's formation in 2019 prompted reflections on the tensions arising between our aims for an ambitious socialist climate politics, and the current reactionary Labour party now in government. This led some key members of LGND to the conclusion that the most effective strategy for pushing for a radical, state-led response to climate change was now best achieved outside the existing structures of LGND. This divergence in the two key political projects previously united under LGND, supporting worker organising on one hand, and pushing for state power on the other, led to the difficult decision to end LGND as an overarching campaign.
So coming into 2025, this means the Worker-Climate Project building on its existing success, and the legacy of LGND, to reach even further in strengthening the fight for a worker-led transition. This means you’ll hear even more about our ongoing organising on our mailing list, with some updates from our sibling organisations coming out of LGND, as mentioned above. In the WCP, we will not only be expanding our ongoing efforts i.e. in-person and online outreach; in-depth interviews; comparative analysis and resource creation, but also beginning our first major intervention collaborating with a group of trades councils to help develop their just transition plans. This project will carry forward all the ambition outlined above, to explore how these cross-sectoral, cross-union structures can be used to coordinate climate struggles, and even lead on worker-led transition planning for their areas.
With these exciting developments, comes a pressing need. As we establish the WCP as its own organisation taking on many crucial political tasks, we need to grow our membership and support to make this happen. We are a small, volunteer team with a huge impact. So if you, or any comrades around you, are interested in getting involved in our work, you can massively add to our ability to be a transformative force. There are a huge range of skills, experiences, and types of organising needed to make this happen- to learn more check our information on getting involved here.