Hydro for the Future?

 Pumped storage hydro schemes are renewable energy projects with the potential to cut carbon emissions and hit climate change targets.  It has been decades since a new scheme has been constructed in the UK. The UK has four existing pumped storage projects - Cruachan and Foyers in Scotland, and Dinorwig and Ffestiniog in Wales and none of the projects has yet progressed beyond the planning stage. Experts suggest the creation of a new market for pumped storage hydro would be the best solution to unlocking its potential.

The schemes involve two bodies of water at different heights. The water flows from one to the other through tunnels, passing through a power station inside a cavern that has been created by hollowing out part of the mountain. When there is a low demand for electricity from consumers and/or when surplus power is available from wind farms, electricity is used to pump water from the lower level to fill a reservoir further up the hill. The water can then be released from the upper reservoir, flowing down the tunnels to drive turbines that generate hydro-electricity. This happens at times of high demand, or when there is not enough wind to power wind farms.

Developers argue the current energy market does not have the mechanisms to make such major projects attractive to investors.

They are not cheap to build - costs can run to £500m and more. They also take a long time to construct - between five to eight years.

The massive green power projects stuck in limbo - BBC News

Solidarity with the Dispossessed and the Downtrodden

 What the Socialist Party means by socialism is the same as the pioneers meant—the ending of the exploitation of man by man, the abolition of the system of rent, interest and profit, planned production for use instead of profit, and the ownership of the means of production and distribution by the working people. We reject the view that capitalism can reform its way out of its problems. We are living under a system that is more and more clearly revealed as the enemy of humanity.  It imposes draconian cuts in living standards on the already poor, simply in the interest of still greater profits for the capitalist class. Capitalism plunders the resources of the planet. Its armaments industry directs most of the world’s research and development and the arms trade cynically profit from a series of local wars of unparalleled destructiveness. Capitalism’s guiding principle, the quest for profit, takes precedence over any human interest. Capitalism jeopardises the future of humanity.  It threatens the genocide of whole peoples. Capitalism cannot be reformed. It has undergone many changes in its history, but these have simply meant finding new ways to exploit the people.

The world is capable of satisfying the needs of all its people. But today the great majority of our people are faced with the threat of poverty, deteriorating health, education and other welfare services. Capitalists control our world and make vast profits off the backs of the working people and from the natural resources of the land. All the major means of production - the factories, forests, farm and fisheries are in the hands of a few hundred capitalists. Capitalism is a system of exploitation. A handful of parasites benefit from the labour the workers. The capitalists get rich from our toil. At the end of the week, a worker collects their pay. The capitalists claim this is a fair exchange. But it is highway robbery. In reality, workers get paid for only a small part of what they produce. The rest, the surplus-value, goes straight into the hands of the capitalists. The bosses get rich, not because they have "taken risks" as they would have us believe. The more they keep wages down and get fewer workers to do more work, the greater their profits. If the bosses think they can make more profit somewhere else, they just close their factories and re-locate. People live in misery so a small clique of very wealthy individuals can live in luxury. The idea that everyone can get rich under this system is a lie invented by the rich themselves. Under capitalism, the only way to get rich is to trample on someone else. There is only room for a few capitalists - at any time the great majority must work and be robbed. This is why workers have only one choice: either submit to this wage slavery or abolish the wages system.

The only solution is to end it and build a new social system. Only socialism can end the contradiction between social production and private appropriation, abolish the exploitation of man by man, make possible long-term planning, and utilise resources and every new development in technique and scientific knowledge for the benefit of the people. Socialism will be a better society, one which will present unprecedented possibilities for the improvement of peoples' lives. Rational planning will replace the anarchy of the market. We hold that poverty and war are not inevitable. The socialist society of the future will draw its strength from the new organisational forms thrown up by a mass class struggle movement. When working people gain control of the great wealth they produce, they will be fundamentally able to determine their own futures. The end of exploitation of one person by another will be a liberating and transforming force. With socialism, goods and services will be distributed on the basis of from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs. We are internationalists. We are carrying out the socialist revolution to make our contribution to the struggle for world socialism.

Socialism will not come into existence unless the majority of the people are willing to struggle for socialism and that means that they have some idea of what it is. If a person who votes for a Socialist Party candidate does not do so because he or she is a socialist but because they do not know what socialism is, of what good can that be for achieving the socialist goal? Socialism must depend upon the consciousness of the working people and not upon their lack of knowledge. The idea that we should first be elected to office and then teach socialism to the masses is so absurd that it should not even be contemplated. It can be stated with the greatest of assurance that a Socialist Party candidate who refrains from teaching socialism during the campaign, with the idea that it can happen once elected will forget all about socialism when in office. From the point of view of achieving socialism one hundred votes, obtained conducting a campaign where socialist ideas and the Socialist Party are stressed, are worth more than a thousand votes polled in a campaign where socialism has not been at the forefront of the campaign and left in the background.

No to Cambo

 A proposal is being pushed by Shell Oil and Siccar Point Energy to develop a large new oil field off the coast of the Shetland Isles. The government has not signalled its objection to the plan.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) released a report stating that to reach net-zero fossil fuel emissions by 2050, policymakers must end all new investments in oil, gas, and coal extraction.

Friends of the Earth Scotland called the possible approval of the Cambo oil field project "completely indefensible" and said it "would further damage the U.K.’s credibility on climate action ahead of the U.N. climate conference COP26 later this year."

"It is an obscenity that these plans are being progressed just months before the UN climate talks are due to take place in Glasgow," said Caroline Rance, for Friends of the Earth (FOE) Scotland.

Producing and burning the 800 million barrels in this field would be equivalent to 10 times Scotland’s annual climate emissions.

In its first phase, the project would extract 150 million barrels—" as polluting as running 16 coal-fired power stations for a year," said FOE Scotland.

Rachel Kennerley, an international climate campaigner at FOE England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, said in a statement that "if ministers are serious about facing up to the climate crisis they must end their support for climate-wrecking fossil fuels at home and abroad."

Siccar and Shell aim to continue producing oil at Cambo until 2050. The government is not considering the Cambo oil field proposal in its "climate checkpoint," which determines whether new oil developments are compatible with climate goals, because the companies originally sought licensing in 2001 and 2004.

 "In terms of oil, it's not a new license, there are no new licenses this year," climate change minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan told the Scottish Affairs Committee Wednesday.

Proposed New Oil Field in Scotland Ahead of Glasgow Climate Talks Decried as 'Obscenity' | Common Dreams News

Genuine Revolutionary Socialism

 

The Socialist Party is often told, “Your ideas are excellent but the word socialism has so many unfortunate associations that distance people.”

 The word socialism conjures up negative connotations. To many working people the word socialism means the same thing as the Communist Party dictatorship which ruled in Russia.

It is because of the confusion attached to the word socialism that our critics take great delight in flourishing the term wherever and whenever they can. We of the Socialist Party have nothing to do with such brands of so-called “socialism” or “communism.” We are Marxists because we know that Marxism is the only revolutionary socialism of the working class, and that is the only genuine socialism. History has demonstrated the spuriousness of every other brand. Socialism will not fall from the skies. Neither will it be gained by any appeals to the goodwill and compassion of the capitalist exploiters.  Socialism can be realised only as of the outcome of the class struggle of the workers. The class struggle is the motive force of history. Politics has no serious meaning except as the expression of conflicting class interests. Marx and Engels asserted, and we repeat after them, that there is an irreconcilable conflict of class interests between the workers and their capitalist exploiters. 

Capitalism robs the toilers of what they produce.  Socialism marks the birth of the era of prosperity for the workers. Under capitalism everywhere, wealth piles up automatically in the hands of the parasitic owners of the industries, while the masses of actual producers live barely at subsistence level.

When we say we will establish the cooperative commonwealth they still call us socialists. Whenever revolutionary socialists discuss the socialist road for their own country, they talk in terms of a worldwide struggle. Socialism, and only socialism, will create a true world commonwealth, a world without national barriers, without international rivalries, without masters and slaves. This global administration will not be a government of a dominant economic class but will be a decision-making body of all the peoples that inhabit the planet. Its primary duty will be to conduct the affairs of the world with the aim of eliminating poverty, hunger and general insecurity. Its sole criterion would be the needs of the people.

 The only possible remedy is the abolition of the private ownership of productive wealth. Socialism will destroy tile root evil of modern society, i.e., the private ownership of the means of production, the factories, mines, mills, machinery and land, which produce the necessities of life.  With socialism, the instruments of production will become the property of society, owned in common, producing for use, for the general welfare of the people as a whole. With the abolition of the private ownership of the means of life and with profit as the prime motive of production, the divisions of society between nations and classes will disappear. Then, and only then, will society be in a position to become a social order of abundance and plenty for all, for socialism will create a new world of genuine cooperation and collaboration between the peoples of the earth?

In abolishing classes in society, socialism will transform the form and type of governments that exist today. Governments will change into administrative bodies regulating production and consumption. They will not be the weapon of the capitalist class, i.e., capitalist governments whose main reason for existence is to guarantee the political and the economic rule of Big Business, their profits, their private ownership of the instruments of production, and the conduct of war in the economic and political interests of this class.

Socialism will solve the problem of poverty by abolishing capitalism. Socialism will not concern itself with profits but with providing decent housing for all the people. Socialism will create a system of health care in which the physical constitution and improvement of humanity will be the paramount consideration.  The aim of socialism is not the increased exploitation and intensification of labour, but to apply technology, science and invention to diminish toil, to create time in which to permit all the people to enjoy the benefits of social progress. Our world contains all that is necessary for socialism. All around us we see elaborate establishments containing the equipment and machinery which could produce the goods of life in abundance. Mankind has developed a marvellous technology to create a fruitful life of abundance. Only socialism can place automation and robots where it properly belongs: in the service of the people.

 People have a choice to make. Either we continue on the path of capitalism, one full of chaos, war and poverty or we take the socialist road toward a society of plenty for all which would end the exploitation of man by man for all time. 

The War for Hearts and Minds

 What the Socialist Party means when it is referring to the social revolution. By the term “revolution” is meant that complete change in the relationship between the classes in society, and the fundamental change in the institutions of society that are brought about by the rise to power of a class that has hitherto been held in subjection. And socialists, when we speak of the social revolution, refers to those changes in society which will be brought about when the working class, holding political supremacy, is the dominant class in society, and takes possession of the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution.

The Labour Party is a reformist organisation engaged in advocating the patching up of the present system of society. Although some of its leaders are termed socialists, and at times have claimed that title, they have time and time again made it quite clear that they are nothing other than reformers. The real cause of the slavery of the working class is not touched by any reforms. The cause of that slavery, with its poverty and insecurity, is the private ownership of the means and instruments of wealth production and distribution. It is true that the capitalist mode of production, with its property basis, was necessary for the development of the instruments of production to their present stage of efficiency. But the development of the machinery of production has long since reached the stage necessary for the production of the means of life in abundance for the whole of society. The present system is based, however, upon the production of commodities for profit. The struggle for markets wherein to sell these commodities becomes keener and keener, especially as the capitalist mode of production, with its more and more efficient machinery, extends in the one-time backward countries. Wars, commercial crises extending over long periods of years, unemployment, and the reduction in the workers’ standards of living—these are some of the consequences of this struggle for markets. More commodities are produced than can be sold for a profit. Therefore restrictions are deliberately put upon production itself. This is not always done openly, but cases occur, and have been restored in order to promote an artificial scarcity.

Socialism, the remedy for the workers’ slavery, cannot be brought about gradually, as the reformers would try to persuade their dupes. It can only be brought about by dispossessing the master class of the means of wealth production, and that cannot take place until the working class has made itself the ruling class in society. To accomplish this the proletariat must win political power, which means the control of the armed forces of the State. By this revolutionary method alone will it be possible to abolish private property in the means and instruments of wealth production and to substitute production for use for production for profit.

What are we organised for? What is our chief bond of unity? What is our avowed object? The abolition of capitalism. We work for the coming of the cooperative commonwealth. Our first aim must be winning to our cause the majority of working people by promoting revolutionary principles in the struggle for emancipation that must be fought along political lines, using in the immediate struggle the parliamentary phase of political action by electing where possible our representative to political office. A socialist movement unites and is guided by a cause. That cause today is a vision of humanity crossing into a new world of human freedom, peace and brotherhood, a world free of exploitation, ignorance and strife. No force exists that can prevent the people struggling against intolerable conditions from coalescing. The socialist vision is one of peace and harmony. Today, the level of the means of production makes realising this cause possible.

Manipulation of people’s thinking has relied upon the old tactic of divide and conquer. Working people are confused. They don’t know where to throw a blow or who to blame for their poverty and misery. The ruling class understands that as long as people lack a vision and remain confused about who is their friend and who is their foe, it can maintain its supremacy. The ruling class is waging a vicious, relentless campaign for the hearts and minds of the people. It emphasises “me, me, me, and to hell with everyone else.” Socialists must win the war for the hearts and minds of the people.