Featured image: Dayak Culture Parade to commemorate Youth Pledge Day in Anjungan village, West Kalimantan, Borneo. Image courtesy of Antonsurya12/Wikimedia Commons.
A new report highlights systemic social and environmental problems that continue to plague the Indonesian palm oil industry and ripple far up the global palm oil supply chain.
The report looked at local and Indigenous communities living within and around 10 plantations and found that their human rights continued to be violated by the operation of these plantations.
The documented violations included seizure of community lands without consent; involuntary displacement; denial of fundamental environmental rights; violence against displaced Indigenous peoples and communities; harassment; criminalization; and even killings of those trying to defend their lands and forests.
The problems have persisted for decades due to ineffective, and sometimes lack of, due diligence by buyers and financiers along the global supply chain, the report says.
JAKARTA — Human rights abuses continue to fester in the Indonesian palm oil industry as global brands and financial institutions and investors turn a blind eye to the problem, a new report says.
The report by a coalition of NGOs documents the human rights and environmental impacts of 10 oil palm plantations in Indonesia that are currently supply to markets in the EU, U.K. and U.S., with consumer goods giants such as Nestlé and PepsiCo rounding out the supply chains.
The report found that local and Indigenous communities living within and around these 10 plantations continue to have their human rights violated by the operations of these plantations, which are the declared holdings of the Astra Agro Lestari, First Resources, Golden Agri-Resources/Sinar Mas, and Salim (Indofood) conglomerates.
The documented violations include seizure of community lands without consent; involuntary displacement; denial of fundamental environmental rights; violence against displaced Indigenous peoples and communities; harassment; criminalization; and even killings of those trying to defend their lands and forests.
“It is scandalous that Indigenous and rural communities endure years and sometimes decades without redress for harms inflicted by the palm oil industry, that continue to this day,” said Norman Jiwan, a Dayak Indigenous leader and co-author of the report.
Palm oil from these 10 plantations end up in the supply chains of numerous global brands, including Cargill, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Unilever, Wilmar International, Archer Daniels Midland and AAK.
And funding the operations of these plantations are prominent institutions and investors, including BlackRock, ABN-AMRO, Rabobank, Standard Chartered, Citigroup, Lloyds Banking Group, JP Morgan Chase, as well as various other banks and pension funds, according to the report.
“Our report is just the latest in a whole set of independent studies showing the Indonesian plantation sector and associated global palm oil trade are not complying with industry sustainability standards nor applicable laws,” Norman said.
New oil palm planting near a protected area in Indonesia. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Selling off problem assets
One of the cases highlighted in the report is the ongoing conflict between the Indigenous Dayak Hibun communities in the western part of Indonesian Borneo and plantation firm PT Mitra Austral Sejahtera (MAS).
The conflict started in 1996, when MAS obtained a location permit for the lands of the Dayak Hibun without their free, prior and informed consent, or FPIC. Despite that, MAS went on to obtain, in 2000, a right-to-cultivate permit, or HGU — the last in a series of licenses that oil palm companies must obtain before being allowed to start planting.
The HGU permit, valid until 2030, covers 8,741 hectares (21,600 acres) of land, of which 1,400 hectares (3,460 acres) overlap with the ancestral lands of the Dayak Hibun. As a result, the communities’ lives have been impacted by the plantation, with their sacred sites damaged and their environment degraded.
The land conflict has also led to injuries, threats, harassment and intimidation, and the criminal prosecution of four farmers seeking land justice.
Despite the conflict being well-documented over the years, MAS continues to be a supplier to Cargill, Nestlé, Unilever and Wilmar, and also supplies AAK via Cargill, according to the report.
Cargill had the case logged as “under investigation” in July 2019 without details and no updates in 2020.
Although MAS was named on Unilever’s 2018 mill list, Unilever said in May 2020 via its grievance tracker that MAS was now “outside” of its palm oil supply chain, though it precise status in 2021 is unclear.
Nestlé had not logged the conflict at the time the NGOs compiled their report.
In an attempt to seek remedy, the communities and the NGO Sawit Watch filed a formal complaint to the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2012, as MAS at the time was owned by Sime Darby, an RSPO member.
This complaint remains unresolved and still “under investigation,” eight years after the original grievance was lodged.
In 2019, Sime Darby sold MAS to PT Inti Nusa Sejahtera (INS), despite strong objections and pleas from the communities for Sime Darby to remain engaged.
The report says this shows how powerful palm oil conglomerates like Sime Darby are still permitted to wash their hands of responsibility for remedying community grievances by divesting “problematic” subsidiaries, even as formal complaints remain unresolved.
At the end of 2020, INS allegedly sold its majority stake in MAS to PT CAPITOL, citing difficulties in getting bank funding to finance acquisition, consolidation and operational activities. The communities affected by MAS’s operations have still not received any official notification of changes in the company’s ownership, according to the report.
The communities are also insisting that Sime Darby honor its earlier commitments to assist in resolving the case, the report says.
They say this can be done by providing funds to the Indonesian land agency to compensate MAS for relinquishing the disputed land to the Dayak communities, or to cover their legal costs to seek land restitution through the courts, the report adds.
The communities are also demanding the RSPO investigate Sime Darby’s divestment of MAS, given that RSPO members are discouraged from selling any subsidiaries subject to ongoing complaints, according to the report.
“It’s regrettable that the RSPO, Unilever, Sime Darby, PT Inti Nusa Sejahtera, PT CAPITOL and PT Mitra Austral Sejahtera have failed to remedy the human rights of Dayak Hibun communities in Kerunang and Entapang,” said Redatus Musa, a member of the Dayak Hibun community and the head of Entapang hamlet in West Kalimantan province.
On the issue of Sime Darby’s divestment from MAS, the RSPO pointed Mongabay to the resolution passed in November 2018 “discouraging” members from divesting units with active complaints.
“However, it is pertinent to note that the above resolution looks into measures to discourage members from divesting, and not to prohibit or refrain members from doing so as the RSPO recognizes its members’ rights to divest as part of its ongoing business dealings,” the RSPO told Mongabay in an email.
The RSPO added that its complaints panel may investigate the divestment “based on the independent legal review and the final comments from the parties of the complaint.”
Sime Darby did not respond to Mongabay’s questions on the issue.
Oil palm fruit bunches in a truck for transport to market. Image by John C. Cannon/Mongabay.
Weak due diligence
Most of the companies in the supply chains of the plantations linked to human rights abuses, and some of the investors, are prominent members of the RSPO and other sustainability initiatives.
“Yet, despite the fact that the violations uncovered are clearly contrary to RSPO standards, as well as the companies’ own ‘No Deforestation, No Peat and No Exploitation’ [NDPE] policies, the trade and investment continues unchecked,” the report says.
This is because existing industry accountability mechanisms, such as the RSPO complaints system, are typically slow and ineffective, according to the report.
It highlights this lack of effectiveness in the case of the Dayak Hibun communities, whose complaint against MAS has languished for more than eight years at the RSPO.
Most of the businesses were also found to have ineffective due diligence systems in place to uphold their human rights responsibilities and commitments.
In 2019, the Corporate Human Rights Benchmark (CHRB) initiative found that 49% of 195 large global companies surveyed scored between 0 and 10% against a set of human rights due diligence indicators, while only one scored above 80%.
Responding to the criticisms, the RSPO said some cases could take a long time to resolve since its complaints system “follows a rigorous process to ensure the highest standards of assurance and integrity are upheld.”
“At times, this may result in lengthy investigations, especially for complex cases,” the RSPO told Mongabay in an email, adding that it continues to address any inefficiencies in its system and expedite the resolution of complaints.
A woman collects oil palm fruit on an oil palm estate in southern Papua. Image by Albertus Vembrianto for Mongabay and The Gecko Project.
Opaque finances
The due diligence failings are even more prevalent among global and local financiers and investors of the palm oil industry. Many global financiers and the corporate agribusiness groups in Indonesia and elsewhere that they finance or control don’t have public grievance logs, according to the report.
Financiers should step up their game, said Linda Rosalina, a campaigner from TuK Indonesia, an NGO that advocates for social justice in the agribusiness sector.
“Banks and investors should have looked at these cases and taken an active role to ensure that their clients could improve [the situation on] the ground,” she said. “It’s important for banks and investors to improve their regulations to ensure the mitigation of impacts [of their clients’ activities] on the ground.”
The report also calls for greater transparency in the finances of the plantation sector, with many corporate groups failing to disclose their beneficial owners. This opacity has allowed the persistence of offshore financial jurisdictions and shadow companies to enable investments in the sector, according to the report.
This study and related investigations indicate that beneficial ownership of subsidiary companies associated with land conflicts and deforestation is not being disclosed by RSPO members like First Resources in potential violation of RSPO rules on transparency.
As a result, companies and their financiers are evading accountability for violations against the rights of local communities and the public.
“Our research in 2019 shows that less than 1%, or 0.7% to be exact, of companies have disclosed who their beneficial owners are,” Linda said. “This is a far cry from companies’ responsibilities to be transparent, and I think responsibilities are key.”
Interior of an oil palm plantation in Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.
Falling through the cracks
While many conflicts are still awaiting resolution before the RSPO and other sustainability mechanisms, many others aren’t even picked up at all.
Tom Griffiths, responsible finance coordinator at the Forest Peoples Programme and co-author of the report, said those cases that come to the fore are only a sliver of the total conflicts brewing on the ground.
“The main finding [of the report] is that the impacts and grievances are not being picked up,” he said at the virtual launch of the report. “We know that companies increasingly have grievances logged or registered, but they only touch the tip of the iceberg of the grievances and harmful impacts.”
Most of the time, companies only respond to cases that are reported to the RSPO or documented in reports by major NGOs, Griffiths said.
“But other impacts that we have documented here are not being picked up or certainly not disclosed,” he said.
This is because companies further down the supply chain from these plantations appear to apply a flawed approach to the definition of community “grievances,” limited to formal complaints only, according to the report.
“This narrow focus is failing to identify numerous outstanding community concerns and grievances, which should be picked up and addressed through due diligence, thus overlooking unresolved human rights abuse cases in their operations and palm oil supply chains,” the report says.
These ongoing cases of human rights violations fall through the cracks despite companies and global food and beverage brands continuing to market their green credentials and claim to support due diligence and “environmental, social and governance” (ESG) principles.
The report calls for strengthening the due diligence process to identify the impacts that the whole supply chain has. Without it, affected communities will continue to be denied remedy, according to Griffiths.
“Many of these [communities], sometimes [they are] waiting for years or even decades, they have no remedy,” he said. “They’re still suffering from harmful impacts, and these are still ongoing.”
From Human Bodies to Digital Identities – Transgenderism, Transhumanism & 4th Industrial Revolution
In this short but very dense talk, Kat Lillian Hellwoman is explaining the connection between transgenderism, transhumanism and the 4th industrial revolution and the scary future vision that lies behind the relentless push of transgenderism by rich technocrats, governments and institutions.
Jessica Reznicek, a 39-year-old environmental activist and Catholic Worker from Des Moines, Iowa, was sentenced in federal court June 30 to eight years in prison for her efforts to sabotage construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.
In November 2016, Reznicek and Ruby Montoya, a former preschool teacher, set fire to heavy construction equipment at a pipeline worksite in Buena Vista County, Iowa.
Over the next several months, the women used oxyacetylene torches, tires and gasoline-soaked rags to burn equipment and damage pipeline valves along the line from Iowa to South Dakota. Their actions reportedly caused several million dollars’ worth of damage and delayed construction for weeks.
Editor’s note: We agree that “This is a landmark victory for the local communities who have stood up and held firm for over a decade to protect the climate, the Salish Sea, and their own health and safety.” We don’t put much hope into the Paris Agreement or all the UN climate summits. The best hope we have is us, so communities that develop and nurture a culture of resistance are the way to go.
This article originally appeared in Common Dreams.
Featured image: The Whatcom County Council on Tuesday night approved landmark policies regulating fossil fuel expansion at Cherry Point, home to two oil refineries. (Photo: RE Sources/Twitter)
By Jessica Corbett
In a move that comes as wildfires ravage the Western United States and could serve as a model for communities nationwide, the Whatcom County Council in Washington voted unanimously on Tuesday night to approve new policies aimed at halting local fossil fuel expansion.
“Whatcom County’s policy is a blueprint that any community, including refinery communities, can use to take action to stop fossil fuel expansion.”
—Matt Krogh, Stand.earth
“For too long, the fossil fuel industry has been allowed to cloak its infrastructure and expansion projects in an air of inevitability,” said Matt Krogh, director of Stand.earth’s SAFE Cities Campaign. “It has used this to diminish local communities’ concerns and then dismiss or ignore their voices. Whatcom County’s new, permanent policy is a clear signal that those days are over.”
“Local communities and their elected officials do have the power to decide what gets built near their homes, schools, and businesses,” Krogh continued. “Whatcom County’s policy is a blueprint that any community, including refinery communities, can use to take action to stop fossil fuel expansion.”
The county’s new land-use rules (pdf), approved in a 7-0 vote, apply to industrial land at Cherry Point, located north of the city of Bellingham. As KNKXreports:
The area has a deep-water port and two oil refineries. It’s zoned for industrial use. It sits adjacent to waterways that connect the Northwest to lucrative markets across the Pacific Rim. It’s also where what would have been the nation’s largest coal export facility—the proposed Gateway Pacific Terminal—was canceled five years ago.
…Five years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers pulled the plug on Gateway Pacific proposal after the Lummi Tribe argued it would violate treaty fishing rights. The land at Cherry Point is adjacent to waters that are at the heart of the tribe’s usual and accustomed fishing area. And the state has designated that area an aquatic reserve.
Since that project’s demise, the council has enacted 11 six-month moratoriums. Tuesday’s vote permanently banned new refineries, shipping terminals, or coal-fired power plants at Cherry Point and imposed tougher regulations on any expansion of the area’s existing facilities.
The Bellingham Heraldnotes that while the five-year battle pitted the oil industry against environmentalists, “talks took a key step forward after the appointed county Planning Commission approved the Cherry Point amendments and a ‘stakeholder group’ of business and environmental interests began meeting to build a consensus over its final wording.”
“From the onset of the process five years ago, the County Council had set forth clear aims for new rules that would allow improvements of existing refineries while restricting facilities’ use for transshipment of fossil fuels,” Eddy Ury, a council candidate who led the stakeholders group for months while he was with the environmental group RE Sources for Sustainable Communities, told the newspaper.
“These dual purposes proved to be challenging to balance in lawmaking without overstepping authority,” Ury said. “The stakeholder group came together at the point where our respective interests were best served by cooperating.”
In a statement Wednesday, RE Sources executive director Shannon Wright welcomed the vote.
“This is a landmark victory for the local communities who have stood up and held firm for over a decade to protect the climate, the Salish Sea, and their own health and safety from risky and reckless fossil fuel expansion projects,” said Wright.
“There’s more to be done,” Wright added, “including addressing the pollution burden borne by local communities, in particular Lummi Nation, who live in close proximity to existing heavy industry and fossil fuel operations, and continuing to counter the threat of increased vessel traffic across the region.”
“When people ask local leaders to address their concerns, this is how it should be done.”
—Whatcom County Councillor Todd Donovan
Still, Whatcom County Councillor Todd Donovan celebrated that local residents “are now safer from threats like increased oil train traffic or more polluting projects at existing refineries.”
“When people ask local leaders to address their concerns, this is how it should be done—with input from all affected communities and industries, but without watering down the solutions that are most protective of public safety, the climate, and our waterways,” he said.
Stand.earth’s statement pointed out that the development comes as residents and activists in Tacoma, Washington are pushing for similar protections.
In a tweet about the vote in Whatcom County, the Tacoma arm of the environmental group 350.org said that it is “still waiting for Tacoma City Council to find courage to do the same here.”
The fights for local regulations on fossil fuels come as communities across the West endure the impacts of the human-created climate emergency—from deadly, record-breaking heat to ferocious fires. In Washington state alone, there are currently eight large active fires that have collectively burned 136,758 acres.
Conditions in the U.S. West, along with fires in Siberia and flooding across China and Europe, have fueled demands for bolder climate policy on a global scale. Parties to the Paris agreement—which aims to keep global temperature rise this century below 2°C, and preferably limit it to 1.5°C—are set to attend a two-week United Nations climate summit in Glasgow beginning October 31.
This post lists 9 Revolutionary moments and periods in Britain since 1381. This is a broad overview so I will look at the details and patterns of these moments and periods in future posts.
Following on from the previous post about learning from history, there has been a long tradition of the working class struggling to transform society. Several things are now different such as 40 years of neoliberalism, the atomisation of workforces with the large scale de-industrialisation of Britain, a heavily weakened labour movement, and a general lack of class consciousness for most of the working class. Class struggle in the 21st century is clearly going to be different as so much has changed. But there is much to learn from this history that I will go into in future posts. There are clear patterns through history in how different groups of actors operate during class struggles: the ruling class and state, the leadership of the trade unions, and the working class. Understanding these patterns is essential when thinking about class struggle going forwards.
In The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution 1381-1926, Frank McLynn identifies seven occasions when Britain came close to revolution. These are the Peasants Revolt 1381, Jack Cade’s Rebellion 1450, the Pilgrimage of Grace 1536, the English Civil Wars 1642-51, the Jacobite Rising of 1745-6, the Chartist Movement of 1838-48, and the General Strike of 1926. McLynn includes the Great Unrest of 1910-1914 and near revolution in 1919, as leading up to the General Strike of 1926.
Rob Sewell has written an excellent radical history of the British labour movement called In Cause of Labour: History of British Trade Unionism. Sewell writes from a Lenin, Trotsky, and Russian Revolution tradition. He identifies 4 Revolutionary moments and periods of the labour movement: early radical labour movement in the late 1820s and 1830s; The Chartist Movement; The Great Unrest 1910-14, near revolution between 1919-26; and class struggle from the late 1960s to mid-1980s.
I have also added the Long 1968 – from the mid-1950s to the mid-1980s.
The Peasants Revolt 1381
This was triggered by tax collection in Essex in May 1381. This resulted in rioting and protests that spread across the country. The rebels’ demands were tax reduction, the ending of serfdom and the removal of the King’s senior officials and law courts. The revolt was repressed by the end of June, including a battle in Norfolk.
Jack Cade’s Rebellion 1450
This revolt took place between April and July 1450. The grievances included corruption, abuse of power by the king’s advisers and military loses in France during the Hundred Years’ War. It was a southeastern uprising led by Jack Cade. The rebels looted London and were forced out of the city. The rebels were issues pardons by the King and told to return home.
The Pilgrimage of Grace 1536-7
This uprising began in Yorkshire and spread to other parts of northern England, in protest against Henry VIII’s break with the Roman Catholic Church, the Dissolution of the Monasteries, and the policies of the King’s chief minister Thomas Cromwell. The King said he would consider their demands so they returned home. Another uprising took place in January 1537 and Henry VIII considered this a breach of the amnesty so rounded up all the original leaders and had then hung.
“The English Civil War (1642–1651) was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Parliamentarians (“Roundheads”) and Royalists (“Cavaliers”) principally over the manner of England’s governance. The first (1642–1646) and second (1648–1649) wars pitted the supporters of King Charles I against the supporters of the Long Parliament, while the third (1649–1651) saw fighting between supporters of King Charles II and supporters of the Rump Parliament. The war ended with Parliamentarian victory at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651.
The outcome of the war was threefold: the trial and execution of Charles I (1649); the exile of his son, Charles II (1651); and the replacement of English monarchy with, at first, the Commonwealth of England (1649–1653) and then the Protectorate under the personal rule of Oliver Cromwell (1653–1658) and briefly his son Richard (1658–1659). In England, the monopoly of the Church of England on Christian worship was ended, while in Ireland the victors consolidated the established Protestant Ascendancy. Constitutionally, the wars established the precedent that an English monarch cannot govern without Parliament’s consent, although the idea of Parliamentary sovereignty was only legally established as part of the Glorious Revolution in 1688.”
The Jacobite Rising of 1745-6
This was an attempt by Charles Stuart to regain the British throne for his father James Stuart, from George II. Most of the British army were fighting in Europe. This was the last in a series of uprisings between 1689 and 1746. Charles landed in Scotland in August 1745, gaining Scottish support and won the Battle of Prestonpans. They reached as far south as Manchester before turned back in December. Battles were won on the retreat to Scotland and Charles escaped to Europe.
Early radical labour movement late 1820’s and 1830’s
Trade unions were legalised in 1824 resulting in the huge growth in the number of trade unions and their memberships. There was open class struggle between the workers against the government and employers. Strikes took place all over the country. In 1830-1 rural agricultural uprising took place led by the fictional ‘Captain Swing’.
The Merthry Rising took place in 1831 in Wales, where coal and steelworkers protested about wages and unemployment. This spread to nearby towns and villages. In June 1831 the red flag was raised in Merthyr Tydfil.
The Grand National Consolidated Trades Union was set up in 1834 to abolish capitalist rule and the revolutionary transformation of society. This had explosive growth with 500,000 members. Strikes across the country increased with demands over wages, recognition, and the eight-hour day. Repression increased with an example made of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, who were sent to Australia for attempting to set up an agriculture labours union. Repression resulted in many trade unions ceasing to function.
The Chartist Movement of 1837-48
Chartism was a national working-class protest movement for political reform with strong support in the North, Midlands and South Wales. Support was greatest in 1839, 42, 48. It presented petitions with millions of signatures to parliament, combined with mass meetings with the aim of putting pressure on politicians.
The People’s Charter called for six reforms to make the political system more democratic:
A vote for every man twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and not undergoing punishment for a crime.
The secret ballot to protect the elector in the exercise of his vote.
No property qualification for Members of Parliament in order to allow the constituencies to return the man of their choice.
Payment of Members, enabling tradesmen, working men, or other persons of modest means to leave or interrupt their livelihood to attend to the interests of the nation.
Equal constituencies, securing the same amount of representation for the same number of electors, instead of allowing less populous constituencies to have as much or more weight than larger ones.
Annual Parliamentary elections, thus presenting the most effectual check to bribery and intimidation, since no purse could buy a constituency under a system of universal manhood suffrage in each twelve-month period.
Chartism did not directly achieve any reforms but put huge pressure on the ruling class and generated significant working class solidarity and class consciousness. In 1867 urban working men were given the vote, but it was not until 1918 that full manhood suffrage was achieved.
The Great Unrest 1910-1914 to the General Strike 1926
The Great Unrest from 1910-14 saw a massive national increase in union membership and strikes in response to employers’ attempts to reduce wages and intensify the exploitation of workers. The main sectors included miners, transport workers, and dockers. The government responded with warships, troops and police using violence to intimidate workers. Syndicalism was an important part of the struggle in this period.
This period also saw the Suffragette movement use militant tactics in their struggles for the vote for women.
There were mass strikes again in 1921 in response to wage decreases and increasing unemployment. The Minority Movement was launched in 1924 with 200,000 trade union members in the major sectors. Its aim was to overthrow capitalism, the emancipation of workers from oppression and exploitation and to set up a socialist commonwealth. Miners strikes continued in 1925 and the government backed down because it was not ready for a confrontation with the labour movement.
The General Strike of 1926 lasted for nine days in May. It was called by the Trade Union Congress to force the government to prevent wage reduction and worsening conditions for 1.2 million coal miners. 1.7 million workers went on strike: miners, transport and dockers, printers, ironworkers and steelworkers. The strike was defeated.
Long 1968
During the Culture Power Politics session on 1968, Jeremy Gilbert describes the ‘short 68’ and ‘long 68’. The short 68 is the events that happen in the year 1968. Gilbert describes the long 68 as a global revolt against colonialism and its legacies, against various forms of oppression that are typical of advanced industrial capitalism. He describes how the long 68 starts in the 1950s and ends with the global defeat of the left in the mid-1980s.
The social movements from this period include the women’s liberation movement, the gay liberation movement, green movement, disabled people’s movement, anti-racism and anti-fascism, and the peace/anti-war and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
The period from 1970 to 1984 saw an open class struggle between the state and the labour movement. There were a large number of strikes during this period. The 1972 miners’ strike over pay spread to sectors so the Tory government had to back down and the miners got increased pay and benefits. In 1973 oil prices quadrupled due to war in the Middle East and the miners introduced an overtime ban. The Heath government introduced the three day week in early 1974 and then called a general election in February 1974 but failed to get a majority of MPs so the Labour Party formed a minority government. The Grunwick dispute was a strike between 1976-78 for trade union recognition at Grunwick Film Processing Laboratories in London. It was not successful. The Winter of Discontent 1978-9 saw widespread strikes by public sector trade unions demanding larger pay rises, following the ongoing pay caps of the Labour Party. The government gave in to the demands.
The election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 saw a new aggressive approach to break the strength of the labour movement. There was a national miners strike in 1984 against the planned closure of 20 pits, resulting in the loss of 20,000 jobs. The Battle of Orgreave was a significant defeat for the miners following intense police violence. The miners’ strike ended in March 1985 with defeat. The Thatcher government closed over 100 pits and 100,000 miners lost their jobs. The 1980s also saw a number of radical socialist councils challenging Thatcher – the Great London Council, Liverpool City Council, Sheffield City Council and others – in what is known as the rate-capping rebellion.
George Lawson writes in Anatomies of Revolution about two common but unhelpful ways that revolutions are viewed. Either as everywhere – on the streets in the Middle East, to describe new technology, in films and also to describe political leaders. The second is that they are minor disturbances and “irrelevant to a world in which the big issues of governance and economic development have been settled.” [1]
In Revolutions: A Very Short Introduction, Jack Goldstone describes two perspectives of revolutions. One is heroic, where the downtrodden masses follow their leaders to rise up and overthrow unjust rulers resulting in gaining freedom and dignity. The second is that they are “eruptions of popular anger that produce chaos” and result in the mob using violence with destructive results. He describes how varied the history of revolutions is: “some are nonviolent, whereas others produce bloody civil wars; some have produced democracies and greater liberty whereas others have produced brutal dictatorships.” [2]
I see revolutions as a radical system change or transformation of society to improve the lives of the majority of people. I think Goldstone’s definition of revolutions is useful “both observed mass mobilization and institutional change, and a driving ideology carrying a vision of social justice. Revolution is the forcible overthrow of a government through mass mobilization (whether military or civilian or both) in the name of social justice, to create new political institutions.” [3]
Revolutions also need to be understood in relation to other forms of social change such as rebellions, coups, and civil war. Rebellions are not strong enough to overthrow the state, coups are but replace one elite figurehead with another. Civil war is a situation where the central authority that is managing two or more competing factions demands fails resulting in the factions fighting it out. [4] Hannah Arendt describes in On Revolution the close relationship in history between war and revolution. [5]
Types of revolution
There are three broad categories of revolutions: political revolutions, social revolutions, a broad category including any instance of relatively rapid and significant change. Political revolutions can be described as “any and all instances in which a state or political regime is overthrown and thereby transformed by a popular movement in an irregular, extraconstitutional, and/or violent fashion.” Social or ‘great’ revolutions can be defined as including “not only mass mobilization and regime change, but also more or less rapid and fundamental social, economic, and/or cultural change during or soon after the struggle for state power.” The third broad definition including any instance of relatively rapid and significant change including the industrial revolution, agricultural revolution, academic revolution, cultural revolution, feminist revolution, technology revolution, etc. [6]
The social or great revolutions include the English, French, Mexican, Russian, Chinese and maybe the Cuban. The rest are political revolutions of one form or another. Marxist or working-class revolution will be covered in a future post.
The history of revolutions
The Revolutions podcast (also on iTunes) describes the major revolutions in good detail.
Socialist revolutions – starting with the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and all the revolutions this inspired
‘Third World’ revolutions – starting with the Cuban Revolution of 1959, resulting in several revolutions ‘against the odds’ which were led by a rural peasantry rather than an urban proletariat. Cuban provided assistance for revolution in Angola, Bolivia, etc
The ‘last great revolution’ – Iran Revolution in 1978/9
‘Colour’ revolutions – between 1989 and 1991, several revolutions removed Soviet control of Eastern and East-Central Europe, culminating in the end of the Cold War itself.
Arab Spring – uprisings and revolutions in 2011 in North Africa and the Middle East
Jack Goldstone in Revolutions: a very short introduction offers another framework:
Revolutions in the ancient world
Revolutions of the Renaissance and Reformation – including revolutions in renaissance Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries, and the English Revolution.
Constitutional revolutions: America, France, Europe (1830 and 1848), and Meiji Japan
Communist revolutions: Russia, China, Cuba
Revolutions against dictators: Mexico, Nicaragua, and Iran
Color revolutions: The Philippines, Eastern Europe and USSR, and Ukraine
The Arab Revolutions of 2011: Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Syria
Revolutionary waves are important historical events. There are a series of revolutions that occur in various locations within a similar period. A revolution or large scale rebellion in one country inspires uprisings and revolutions with similar aims in other counties. See here for a list.
Academic theory
There have been four generations of academic revolutionary theory. The first generation was in the first half of the 20th century and is based on Crane Brinton, who compared the stages of a social or great revolution to the symptoms of a fever. The second generation followed the Second World War and attempted to explain the relationship between modernization and uprisings in the Third World. Modernization led to rising expectations but economic downturns would result in frustration and potentially aggression leading to revolution. In the second half of the 20th century, the third generation developed in critical response to the second generation. This ‘structuralist’ approach argued that revolutions were caused by specific structural developments such as the commercialisation of agriculture, state crisis from international conflict and elite conflict, demographic changes destabilising social order by putting pressure on state finance’s, weakening government legitimacy, resulting in intra-elite competition. The fourth generation developed in the early 21st century and focuses on the factors that challenges state stability including: “how international factors such as dependent trade relations, the transmission of ideas across borders, and the withdrawal of support by a patron, along with elite disunity, insecure standards of living, and ‘unjust’ leadership”. [7]
Revolutionary theory can be broadly divided up into three phases related to how revolutions unfold: the study of the origins or causes of revolution, the process of the revolutionary event, and the outcomes [8]. For now, thinking about what causes revolutions is of most interest to me. Goldstone describes five conditions that can lead to instability in a society: “economic or fiscal strain, alienation and opposition among elites, widespread popular anger at injustice, a persuasive shared narrative of resistance, and favorable international relations.” [9]
Endnotes
Anatomies of Revolution, George Lawson, 2019, page 1
Revolution: A Very Short Introduction, Jack Goldstone, 2014, page 1/2
Revolution: A Very Short Introduction page 4
The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution 1381-1926, Frank McLynn, 2013, page 516
On Revolution, Hannah Arendt, 1963, introduction
No Way Out: States and Revolutionary Movements 1945-1991, Jeff Goodwin, 2001, page 9
Within and Beyond the ‘Fourth Generation’ of Revolutionary Theory, George Lawson, 2015, page 2-6, download here
