On this day in 2019, three years ago, inspired by Greta Thunberg, school students in New Zealand launched a school strike but had to basically call it off because of the Christchurch mosques massacres.
Thunberg had started her solitary school strikes in 2018 these as a tactic spread very quickly simultaneously with the rise of Extinction Rebellion.
What’s interesting about the Christchurch killer’s manifesto is it incorporates standard eco-fascist tropes into his justification for the mass murders that he committed
What happened next?
The school strikes came and went . XR rose and fell – up like a rocket down like a stick.
And here we are.
For the avoidance of confusion – I am not saying do nothing. I’m saying do something different or do the same thing differently. But there’s this utter utter unwillingness to innovate, and a comfort in just keeping on bleating out renditions of “Beasts of England”
Manchester-based artist Jackie Haynes writes a guest post of her own reflections.
Marking International Women’s Day by tracing an intersectional one-hundred-year thread from Mary Greg’s collection of objects, through writers, artists and a group of climate justice activists, to arrive at ‘The Empty Space’ in Manchester Art Gallery’s new Climate Justice Gallery.
The Mary Greg Collection
The copper objects from the Mary Greg Collection currently displayed in Manchester Art Gallery’s new Climate Justice Gallery are amongst other copper-related items from the public collection. The items have been selected by the Climate Justice Group to draw attention to the implications of a photographic print from Nyaba Leon Oedraogo’s The Hell of Copper Series (2008). Also exhibiting at the Manchester city-wide We Face Forward Exhibition in 2012, Oedraogo described the disastrous working conditions resulting from electrical waste materials coming from Europe and the United States.
“The dump at the Aglobloshie Market spreads over 10 kilometres. From dawn to dusk, dozens of young Ghanaians, from 10 to 25 years of age, exhaust themselves doing this, seven days a week. Their mission is to disassemble the old computers and burn certain plastic or rubber components to cull the precious copper, which will then be resold. Everything is done by hand or with iron bars, makeshift tools found among the refuse. They have neither masks nor gloves. There are not even any functioning toilets.”
‘The precious copper’ is recyclable without loss of quality and the International Copper Association estimates that 80% of the copper that has ever been mined remains in use. The copper comb exhibit from the Mary Greg Collection was excavated from Holborn Viaduct, London in 1866. Writing extensively on the Mary Greg Collection, Platt Hall’s curator Liz Mitchell explains how Mary Greg’s belief in the personal and spiritual growth to be found in paying close attention to the small things of life adds another dimension to her varied gifts to Manchester City Art Galleries and beyond. Her collections may embody a certain nostalgia for the past, but her motivation seems to have been to inspire the present and the future.[1]
Injustices illuminated by the contrasting provenance and perception of value of the collected objects and the photograph point towards and away respectively, from caring for the planet’s people and resources. The Introduction to Climate Justice Gallery states the intentions of using Manchester Art Gallery’s publicly-owned collections:
We have chosen to call this gallery Climate Justice because tackling climate change involves tackling social injustice. Those who do the least damage are being harmed the most. Those who hold the power and wealth are responsible for global warming. “They have the least reason to change.”
Joining the dots between climate change, colonialism and capitalism can help us to understand the structural changes needed.
Art collections are often displayed to reflect the stories of the powerful. This is unjust. We need a more democratic approach to history, because we need radical change.
Manchester gets much credit for its ‘radical’ history, the industrial revolution and the cotton trade. Taking pride in our city’s history must come with the acknowledgement of the damage caused by industrialisation and its links to colonialism.
The gallery can be a starting point for reviewing this history. Over time, we will use the gallery and collection to encourage collective learning and action on climate justice through:
Learning from history
Activating a different future
Scrutiny of policy makers
Collective working and care
The injustices of climate change highlighted within this gallery do not end when you leave this space. You’ll find them throughout the art gallery, all over the city and beyond.
Our labels (next to the artworks) include the parts per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the year each artwork was made. The “safe level” of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been assessed as 350ppm; we passed this level in 1987.[2]
The curation and grouping together of the artworks around a theme such as copper, is an example of efforts made by the group to stimulate debate needed to address accumulating and overlapping injustices.
Noah’s Ark
Cross-cutting themes are deliberately abundant in the exhibition, radiating from each artwork and waiting to be activated by the thoughts and conversations of whoever happens to be looking at it. Manchester Art Gallery has three Noah’s Arks in its collection, practically a flotilla.
One Ark and its animal and human residents, dating back to 1840 and by an unknown maker, is placed below Francisco de Goya y Lucientes’ Flying Folly from the Disparates (1816), an etching and aquatint on paper. Together these works suggest a sea, land and airborne narrative of climate catastrophe. They form an ‘embankment’ to ‘The Empty Space’, a deliberately curated gap in the exhibition.
The ‘embankment’ on the other side of The Empty Space includes A Beach In My Living Room (2010-11), a photographic print taken in Ghana by Nyani Quarmyne. In the interpretation panel, group member Rabia Begum describes how
“Numour Puplampo of Totope has been forced to abandon his home as it has been buried by the sea. This image shows the nature of Totope where Climate Change is very real. A Ghanian man standing behind a window looks directly at the camera, as the pink and red painted walls begin to peel. The man and room are half-submerged in the sand. Whilst the West looks at “mitigation”, Africa looks at “adaptation”. Quarymyne explores how the affluent find ways to remain comfortable and the less affluent must find ways to adapt to this. “How would you adapt to this?””
A Beach In My Living Roomspeaks across The Empty Space to the flood narrative of the Ark, but The Empty Space is like a parting of the waves, held back to make way for the arrival of more artwork by global majority female artists, currently and conspicuously lacking in Manchester City Art Gallery’s collections. Watch this space and check back next International Women’s Day for a just and representative cultural tidal wave addressing this injustice.
Jackie Haynes joined the Climate Justice Group to make climate emergency-related links between Manchester Art Gallery and Platt Hall’s collections. This came about as a result of Platt Hall commissioning TSAP (Terrace Square Artists Project, Moss Side) to respond to collections with new artwork to display in Platt Hall’s public-facing windows in Platt Fields Park.[3]
No! Ah!(dismay followed by ideas) (2020) tells the story of the 22 modern day cousins of the 19th Century Noah’s Ark animals from Platt Hall’s Mary Greg Collection. The animals end their year-long trek towards Platt Hall Climate Emergency Hub, which began following the announcement by Manchester City Council of the Manchester Climate Emergency Declaration on 10th July, 2019. On the way to sheltering in the hub, they walk and talk through how they’d like to emerge from the emergency into a better world. The following video is the first in an ongoing series of both generations of animals’ climate activism. The video is silent because the animals are speechless with dismay, but quietly determined.
[1] Mitchell, Elizabeth Sarah (2018) ‘Believe me, I remain…’: the Mary Greg collection at Manchester city galleries. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University p.265
[2] The Manchester Art Gallery Climate Justice Group started meeting online in July 2020. We are gallery staff, artists and activists based in Manchester:
Rabia Begum: Artist, activist and member of Manchester Climate Change Youth Board
Janet Boston: Curator: Craft and Design, Manchester Art Gallery
Kooj Chuhan: Digital artist, filmmaker, activist and director of Crossing Footprints
Ana Lucia Cuevas: Artist and filmmaker
Clare Gannaway: Curator: Contemporary Art, Manchester Art Gallery
Jackie Haynes: Artist, art practice-based researcher.
Bev Hogg: Collections and Assets Assistant, Manchester Art Gallery
Jane Lawson: Artist and fungus grower
Adam Peirce: Core member of Climate Emergency Manchester
Hannah Williamson: Curator: Fine Art, Manchester Art Gallery
Emmanuela Yogolelo: Singer-songwriter, storyteller, music facilitator, cultural leader and producer
On this day in 1997, environmental activist Judi Bari died of breast cancer. In May 1990, Bari and her partner Darryl Cherney had been travelling in Oakland, California in a car when it exploded. They were environmental activists with Earth First, participating in what was called Redwood Summer to bring environmentalists and workers in the logging sector together in common cause against logging companies.
The FBI tried to suggest that Bari and Cherney had been blown up by their own bomb. This quickly collapsed. It is to this day not known who planted the bomb.
Why this mattersWe need to remember that people who are trying to stand in the way of the Ecocidal machine are at best smeared, at worst assassinated. Three years earlier, Chico Mendes had been killed. In 2016 Honduran activist Berta Carceras was killed. The list of people paying the ultimate price. In defence of nature and sustainability grows longer all the time.
Atmospheric concentration of C02 at the time:
Atmospheric concentration of C02 at time of publication: 419 or so
Follow the Keeling Curve on Twitter- @Keeling_curve
also known as “The last post.” (Almost) every day from Friday 11th to Thursday 24th February, a post (sometimes two) will appear on this site, to celebrate the Republic of Newtonia – a brief occupation of a site in Hulme in defence of Abbey Pond (near the Old Abbey Taphouse). In 1994, local people and environmental activists tried to stop the Council and the Science Park from filling in the much-loved pond. If you were there, and want to share your memories (and any photos or other material) please do get in touch via mcmonthly@manchesterclimatemonthly or on Twitter – @mcr_climate
Also, on Thurs 24th, the 28th anniversary of the Pond’s destruction, there is an online meeting, from 7.30pm, bringing together people who were at the Republic of Newtonia with campaigners defending green spaces now. You can book here (it’s free).
The campers knew the day would come. On Thursday 24th February, the Republic of Newtonia ended, under the bulldozers of the Council. There’s more to be said and written about this (there was a good piece in the Guardian, for example) but for now, a written account (from Do or Die, the Earth First publication), and a portion of the interview with Unity Kelly.
Anyone reading the Guardian on Friday 25th of February would have been met with the bizarre photo on page 5 of two individuals standing knee deep in icy water in a pond in Hulme.
This pair were locked together through a length of gas pipe, and one of them (me), had a 12 foot piece of children’s climbing frame d-locked to his neck. Was this a bizarre form of aquatic auto-asphyxiation? Was it a new cure for smoking perhaps? In fact it was the latest in the increasingly long line of Direct Action taken by Manchester Earth First!.
For two weeks we camped out on and around Abbey Pond, one of the most ecologically diverse ponds, (shouldn’t that read ’only ponds’) in Greater Manchester and the only green space in a huge I960’s architectural abortion that is Hulme, an area near Manchester City Centre. We risked death in one of the most violent cities in England, and weather which fell to bellow minus ten, snow, hail and rain were thrown at us by the great global warmer. We were trying to stop the Science Park, (City Council. University of Manchester and UMIST are shareholders with fellow planet trashers Ciba-Geigy, Granada TV, Courtaulds and Ferranti), from building Phase Four- a laboratory, offices and huge car park to join the other one that has no cars in which was built during phase three.
The actions in the intervening two weeks ranged from the cuddly ‘Burst Main Event’, an alternative fair for kids, to a fax from David Bellamy, (never mind the RTZ sponsorship and the Ford cars commercial), to direct action when the bailiffs came on to the site to remove us. We had massive support from locals of all ages, although getting them to turn up and get into the way of the development was harder.
Local kids, more used to trashing cars than most eco-activists, ranted about too many car parks and how much they loved the only green space near their homes.
The site consisted of about 0.6 hectares with a small pond surrounded by 25 year old trees.
A tree house was built and hammocks hung, while we also built the ‘Wanstonia’- concrete bollards to lock arms through. There were 30 of us up at the site at 7.30 am and about the same number of police and bailiffs, but with outside agent provocateurs brought in from Lancaster, Liverpool and Leeds, we delayed trashing the pond by seven hours. Every trick in the book was used- D-Locking, tree sitting, pond sitting, obstruction and young children. But in the end most of our activists were arrested and while we remained imprisoned the pond had a small proportion of its waters removed by a tanker, while most wildlife understandably stayed near to the bottom where they were bull- dozed over with rubble. We plan more action.
Hyperactive Pete, Manchester Earth First!
And from Unity –
And there was this roundmetal disc, one of the things that the Earth Firsters had rescued, they must have used several shopping trolleys [to transport it to the site] it was the base of a children’s merry-go-round in Hulme. And we put it up on the frame.
And as the bulldozers were coming in, I walloped it symbolically with a piece of wood, and it must have resonated, it made ar bloody good noise, the knell of doom resonating all over Hulme, until people pleaded me to stop doing their heads in!.
On this day, the 17th of February 2013, nine years ago, climate scientists, activists and activists were arrested outside the White House. They were protesting against the Keystone pipeline. Those arrested included James Hansen, actor Daryl Hannah, civil rights leader Julian Bond and environmental advocate Robert Kennedy Jr.
There were about 40,000 people on the march (though these guesstimates are always rubbery).
Why this matters
We need to celebrate resistance. Remember that we have resisted, albeit without much success, for who knows how much worse things would have been if we hadn’t.
What happened next?
Keystone may have been cancelled, but the extractivist infrastructures continue to be built…
On this day in 1993, a demonstration took place outside Parliament around the destruction of the Amazonian rain forest. According to the Press Association
“Police today dramatically foiled a bid by save-the-rainforest protesters to force a lorry laden with a mixture of sawdust and sand into the House of Commons. When police saw the lorry bearing down on them in Parliament Square they closed one part of Carriage Gates. An eye-witness said: “The driver spotted that just in time and swerved across the pavement to the other part of Carriage Gates which were still open.” But he bungled the angle across the pavement and couldn’t get in. He then started to raise the rear of the lorry to dump the load on the pavement outside. “Within seconds the police discovered that the driver had locked himself in the cab. An officer smashed a cab window and switched off the engine, thus stopping the unloading process. Hardly any of it reached the pavement. Scores of people – who had threatened to chain themselves to the railings – demonstrated outside the Commons distributing leaflets bearing the warning: “Wake Up The World is Dying.”
Hugh has kindly agreed to do a guest post about this, which you can read below-
I have just read this entry from the January 1993 Magpie. I am pretty sure this was the first piece of writing I ever had published and goodness me, I was angry! I had already been to the Twyford Down protests and joined the newly formed Manchester Earth First! My work life was centred around the One World Centre, a peace and environmental justice resource centre near Piccadilly Station – it was cold, damp and filled with some of the most amazing people I have ever met. The campaign against the trade in weapons of war and torture was innovative and at times terrifying. CND, Friends of the Earth, Tools for Self Reliance – busy, active, passionate people. The cooperative required I speak at meetings – I helped manage the shop – and this is where I overcame my fear of presenting in public (and have hardly shut up since!)
Just around the corner, unknown to the me who wrote this piece, life was about to change. I was about to get a call to head to Devon to radio-track hedgehogs, which led to directly to me writing a feature for the BBC Wildlife Magazine and recording a piece for BBC Radio 4’s Natural History Programme … which in turn resulted in me getting my one and only ever job, a year as a researcher at the Natural History Unit in Bristol.
You will have to forgive the rambling nature of this, I have just remembered that I had borrowed a Professional Walkman and microphone to take on the protest to London. I imagine I had been spurred into action Phil Korbel, who has remained on the media/communication/activist scene in Manchester ever since. I sent the tape to Radio 4’s Costing the Earth – having not really thought through what I could do with the material. The producer called me and asked me how I managed to make it sound like I was right in the middle of the protest, sat on the streets outside parliament … not sure my answer filled her with confidence as I said it was because I was sat in the middle of the protest!
So that got me started making radio programmes, and why I took a tape recorder out while stalking hedgehogs … which ended up on Pick of the Week and Pick of the Year … probably the best radio I ever made, and one of the first.
Since then I have become more entangled with hedgehogs, and also started writing books – have two to finish this year. But the campaigning heart still beats … maybe not quite so angrily though! I started a petition to get a tiny change in planning law enacted that would help hedgehogs (I remember when change.org asked me what I wanted to call for, to help return hedgehogs to their former glory … I suggested we call for the dismantling of industrial capitalism and the replacing of it with something nicer. They laughed.) The petition has become quite exciting – with over a million signatures now, each of whom gets an update every couple of weeks from me. [https://www.change.org/p/help-save-britain-s-hedgehogs-with-hedgehog-highways]
Reading the piece from nearly 30 years ago was initially quite a thrill – feeling that energy and desire for change, linking local and global action – but now, 500 new words on – there is a degree of despondency creeping in. What has changed? Damn, this is like an elongated version of the film ‘Don’t Look Up’ – so much of what we were campaigning against 30 years ago we are still campaigning against.
Well, it is not like any of us entered this world expecting an easy ride. I keep hopeful because the only guarantee of failure is to lose hope.
On January 24 2017, five years ago, a judge in the United States caused controversy when he decided to frame climate change as a matter of opinion, rather than settled scientific fact
A Washington state judge has sparked outrage for remarks questioning the existence of climate change and the role of humans in global warming. During the high-profile trial of Ken Ward, a climate activist facing 30 years in prison for shutting down an oil pipeline, Judge Michael E Rickert said: “I don’t know what everybody’s beliefs are on [climate change], but I know that there’s tremendous controversy over the fact whether it even exists. And even if people believe that it does or it doesn’t, the extent of what we’re doing to ourselves and our climate and our planet, there’s great controversy over that.” The Skagit County judge made the comments on 24 January while addressing Ward’s request to present a “necessity defense” in court, meaning he would argue that the grave threat of climate change justified civil disobedience. [link]
We have to remember the very successful campaigns in the early 90s. To shift public opinion, especially among older white guys from climate science as a thing to climate science as part of a culture war.
Why this matters: Yes, you can use the legal system as one means by which to try to ‘shift the dial.’ But it’s by no means the only one. Most of the people using the law know that, they don’t need telling from me.
Just days before this post went up, activists fighting the supine “regulator” of oil and gas extraction from the North Sea lost their case, because the judge said, well, read it and weep.
[Update 31st January – see foot of this post for comment by David Taylor]
On Friday 14th January 1972 a bombshell report, ‘A Blueprint for Survival,’ was released onto an increasingly worried world. Produced by the team at The Ecologist, it laid out not just the environmental and social problems, but also offered – the clue is in the name – a blueprint for survival.
Fifty years is a nice round number for reflecting, and this 30 page report [pdf, word.doc] is designed to help with that.
It explains little of the background to the report – the world it entered, who wrote it, how it was received
It doesn’t go into a great deal of detail about what the Blueprint actually says – read it yourself!
It does however talk about what happened next – what the media response, and the political response was [spoilers – scientists warning of trouble ahead will be derided as scare-mongerers, the public’s attention span is short, it’s really hard to ‘capture the moment’ – to do so you need absorptive capacity up the wazoo].
For any Doctor Who fans out there – there’s mention of two classic Pertwee stories.
It then talks a bit about the longer-term, and the birth of the “Ecology Party” (now known as the Green Party), before turning to some of the lessons we might learn around
Abeyance
Absorptive Capacity
Arrogance
Would love to hear people’s comments
Comment received on 31st January 2022 by one of the people behind the excellent “Green History UK” website.
I’ve read your article and it’s got loads of good perspectives. Hopefully we can add that to the site as well.
I trust you won’t mind if I draw your attention to one or two issues where I have a different perspective:-
The founders of PEOPLE always wrote the name in capitals, not lower case.
They did not, initially call themselves a ‘political party’. If you look at the early PEOPLE literature you will see that they were always just called ‘PEOPLE’. On some occasions (as on the material advertising the Jigsaw Conference) they referred to themselves as a ‘movement’. . Lesley W had researched the issue and found that you didn’t have to be a ‘party’ to contest an election, so they weren’t. It was others, particularly journalists, who referred to them as a ‘party’, because they contested elections. This later led to PEOPLE referring to themselves as both a ‘movement’ and a ‘party’.
In that it intended to contest elections Movement for Survival was as much a ‘party’ as PEOPLE. The two movements had similar strategies. This isn’t surprising as PEOPLE arose directly from Survival. The similarity wasn’t just because PEOPLE took over Movement’s box of contacts. The PEOPLE founders were also supporters of Movement and the Whittakers, in particular, had been meeting with Teddy throughout 1972. Teddy told me back then how delighted he was to have found a group of professional people (estate agent, solicitors) to take over Movement. There was no formal handover but the reality was that PEOPLE grew directly out of Movement, and took it over. There is a widespread misconception (reinforced by repetition) that the modern Green Party began when PEOPLE was publicly launched in February 1973. This ‘fact’ was one of the answers in a recent Mastermind quiz. The truth is that Survival’s launch, in the January edition of the Ecologist magazine, marked the actual beginning of the global movement of green parties.
You describe Goldsmith as ‘authoritarian’. During his time he was labelled many things -all of them wrong really. There were no good labels for what he was espousing. This is understandable as he was originating a new political philosophy and it didn’t fit comfortably into any of the existing categories. You describe Blueprint as promoting ‘radical de-centralisation’. I think this phrase better describes Teddy’s outlook. He was, after all, a big admirer of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin…
Thank you for what you’re doing. We need this history!
On this day in 2013 an activist called Jonathan Moylan sent out a fake press release, purporting to be from a major Australian bank, saying it was withdrawing funding for the Whitehaven Coal mine at Maules Creek. The share price briefly plummeted.
Why this matters – this issue became part of the culture wars over coal and climate in Australia, in the lead up to the 2013 federal election that saw the ALP swept from office after only 6 years. The Coalition has been in charge ever since, regularly toppling its own leaders while exacerbating the climate crisis through a … well, it’s an ugly ugly story.
As for Moylan, well he escaped a jail term. [These sorts of non-violent direct actions are now even more illegal than they were. We can expect to see a lot more of them between now and the breakdown(s).] And the mine? Well, what do you think?
On this day, next year,… no wait, what? Yes 2023. I thought it worth discussing what I used to call the “January 4 2023 problem”, since we’re almost there.
On June 12 of 2019, near the beginning of the latest wave of concern about climate change, I wrote an article which you can read here.
The TL:DR. Sustaining social movement organizations is really difficult, and especially so around climate change. Has Climate Emergency Manchester, the group I was until recently involved in, solved the January 4 2023 problem?
Twitter – @ClimateEmergMcr
It’s too early to say, obviously, but the signs are encouraging. And here’s what Chloe Jeffries had to say
From January 4 2022 through to January 4 2023 CEM has a clear vision of what it is trying to do but will be faced with its toughest challenges yet. You might think that setting up a group would be the most difficult stage. Or that our momentum stalled as the pandemic first hit. But CEM was founded at the start of an upswing in attention to the climate crisis. That cycle is over. We can debate when it next picks up, and from what baseline. But in 2022 we have to sustain a social movement organisation as much public and media interest drifts elsewhere.
This is why the ‘4th January problem’ is important over the next 12 months. It will keep us focused, or help us to reset when tasks slip or a mistake is made. Or, when a piece we put out sinks without trace. We have several things in our favour; a strong core group, bolstered by two new members who worked closely with us for over a year before joining the inner sanctum; a healthy cohort of new volunteers who became involved in the final stretch of the last attention cycle (COP26) and who have already cut their teeth on concrete tasks. We have good relationships with a wider group of supporters and organisations and must use this effectively in the coming year. It will be difficult for them too. CEM also ended 2021 on a high, with a strong piece of research (on Manchester’s airport hypocrisy). December outputs have the potential to tie us through the Christmas and New Year torpor.
Solving the 4th January 2023 problem will remain the goal, but that does not mean that our tactics will stay the same right through, that we march on regardless (if anything we will do even less marching, and we never did much). I’m conscious that some of CEM’s 2019 / 2020 repertoire no longer works as well as it once did, even if innovative when first trialled. To give an example, in our reporting of Manchester City Council’s scrutiny committees, the format of one volunteer assigned to one committee has peaked. Volunteers whose committees never discuss climate get disillusioned sharp; others go native on their patch. Meanwhile, we tie up resources covering 2.5hr meetings with little or no implications for the climate emergency and then cannot cover a damning report put out by the Manchester Climate Change Agency or (likely in 2022) a fuzzy statement by the new council leader. With the 4th January problem in sight, we should be able to spot issues around functioning and effectiveness sooner and adapt (in the example above, this will be through re-assigning volunteers and giving individuals a different brief, to follow an issue rather than a committee). Already a fresh programme of work we have begun on climate change and health inequalities is shaking up the kaleidoscope pieces, bringing some different names (both from the council and civil society) into play.
What happens after 4th January 2023? Even once this date is passed, I can see the value in setting a new date to backcast from and for this to again fall early in the calendar year. Invariably those first few weeks prove tough for sustaining morale, for all the recurring reasons that the original 2019 article points out. Since then, the cost of living crisis has only worsened. The coming years will see rising inflation and energy bills that bite hard in winter and make it hard to start work with folk we don’t already know.
On the surface, it may look like little is happening with policymakers or government at this time of year too, slumping back after the seasonal break. But is that entirely true? I hope the other entries in this series provide some evidence to the contrary. A gap in public meetings might remind us that plenty goes on behind closed doors. Local authorities have budgets to sign off. And you can usually bury bad news under a snowdrift. On my Christmas walks in 2021/2, I have been listening to Obama’s account of his first term in office (all politicians and political memoirs are flawed, but at 29hrs it gives great insight into the workings of government). The response to the financial crisis is a revealing episode (or three). Much was hammered out with the banks in early January 2009, before the inauguration. Not all the negotiations were reported in the press. Yet it struck me that many at the time might have seen what they wanted to see. If you remained wedded to the notion that January is all about easing back in, and looking far out on the horizon at the year ahead, you could have filled your boots on long reads about the new family at the White House, who might sing at the swearing in and What This All Meant for America. But if you maintained what we in CEM call ‘situational awareness’, you might have recognised that crucial decisions about the economy were being made day-by-day. In 2009, we got a competent tinkering of capitalism. In Manchester 2022, we also have a new leader who will make roughly the right public noises (including on climate) but not overhaul the system. Alongside the 4 January 2023 problem of sustenance / abeyance, we have the problem that comes with every new year (heightened in Manchester in 2022) of not letting power off the hook. Don’t start unsustainably, but don’t go gently into the new year.
