Vestas wind turbine blade workersoccupied their factory at St Cross,Newport, on 20 July. They de-

manded that Vestas hand over its two Isleof Wight factories to the Government, andthat the Government nationalise them andcontinue production.

The factories were not unionised: at-tempts to recruit workers into the Uniteunion had been repressed by manage-ment. But, after a campaign of leafletingand meetings, the workers acted.

The occupation made Vestas central totwo big issues: the fight for jobs, and thefight to save the planet from destructiongenerated by profiteering.

Geographically, Britain is specially wellplaced to use wind energy as a renewable,zero-emissions alternative to fossil fuels.On 15 July, Energy and Climate Changeminister Ed Miliband published a WhitePaper about renewable energy whichcalled for 7000 more wind turbines to bebuilt.

Yet the Vestas sites were Britain’s onlywind-turbine blade factories.

After telling workers in 2008 that theywould be re-equipping the factories for amore advanced production process in2009, on 28 April the bosses of Vestas, abig Danish-based multinational, an-nounced that they were ending produc-tion on the Isle of Wight, keeping only aresearch and development operation. 600jobs would go.

The workers occupied. Vestas refused tonegotiate. On 6 August Government min-ister Joan Ruddock met workers and theRMT union, which many workers had

joined after the occupation started, but of-fered only warm words.

On 7 August Vestas finally got and en-forced an eviction order against the work-ers. It sacked 11 of those who hadoccupied, thus depriving them of their re-dundancy money.

After 7 August workers and supporters— local people, environmentalists, social-ists from AWL and SWP — maintained a24-hour picket at the St Cross factory’sfront gate, and later also at the marinegate, the gate through which blades andother large items have to be moved inorder to go on barges and be taken toSouthampton.

On 22 September, large numbers of po-lice finally steamed in to clear the marinegate and open the way for Vestas to re-move blades which had been trapped inthe factory since the occupation started.

Many Vestas workers, however, re-mained committed to carrying on, with abroader labour-movement campaign forjobs — green jobs, unionised jobs, jobswith decent pay and conditions, and jobswith openings for young people.

Introduction

1

Vestas worker: Chris Ash

Chris Ash was a worker at the East Cowes Vestas factory, and oneof the occupiers in Newport. He talked to us in mid August.

The last three weeks have not just changed my views, but changed my life. Before, Iwas just a normal worker. I came into work, I did thejob. I didn’t really care what I was building. I got paid

and I went home.Now I understand that we’re doing something for the fu-

ture, for our kids and our grandkids. It’s going to helpchange the future of the world if we can get this factory na-tionalised or we can keep it open.

I have no regrets about taking part in the occupation. I’mproud of myself and what I’ve done. Everyone calls me ahero. I don’t feel myself to be a hero, but I certainly wish Icould do it all over again with what I know now.

I think a lot of unions have got involved in this because itis a green issue. They haven’t been able to speak out beforebecause they need the workers to step in. It has brought alot of unions together, where before they were just out forthemselves.

We need to build up a lot more support, and get a lotmore people campaigning to push the Government and thecouncils.

Wind turbines are important for the future. We’re cer-tainly not giving up the fight.

I didn’t know much about socialist and environmental activism before. I thought it wasa matter of “tree-huggers” and “eco-warriors”. Now I have a lot of respect for the cam-

paigns and the actions of the people whohave come to help.

I’ve worked for the company for threeyears. You get treated like rubbish. To themanagement, you are just a number;you’re not an individual.. You get screwedover at every opportunity.

In the occupation, they sent us our ter-mination of contract notices with a slice ofpizza. When they served the injunction,they went round posting it through peo-ple’s letterboxes, harassing people’s fami-

lies. They made no attempt to talk to us directly.When I first came across people talking about resisting the closure, I didn’t think much

of it. I only got involved in the two or three weeks before the occupation. I think a lot ofother workers’ views changed in the same way.

We came to be friends rather than just colleagues, to stand together and to look out foreach other. It’s brought the island closer together. Five of the other people who were inthe occupation I didn’t even know before, and now I would count them among my bestfriends.

2

“To the management, youare just a number; you’renot an individual.. You getscrewed over at every

opportunity.”

Martin Thomas

It all started on 15 June, when a smallgroup of young members of the Al-liance for Workers’ Liberty set off forthe Isle of Wight. They had read in the

press about the planned closure ofBritain’s only wind turbine blade facto-ries, operated by the Danish-based multi-national Vestas at Venture Quays, EastCowes, and St Cross, Newport, on the Isleof Wight.

They had discussed it among them-selves and with other AWL members.They had cast around for contacts to givethem a first foothold on the Isle of Wight.

It wasn’t easy. The Isle of Wight — botha local-government county and a parlia-

mentary constituency — is a safe Toryseat, and has been nothing but Tory orLiberal or Lib-Dem back to 1832. TheLabour Party has never had a strong pres-ence on the Isle of Wight. The Labour votethere has dropped as low as 2.4% (1983),and has recovered only to 17%. The townsare small (Ryde, the biggest by a slightmargin over Newport, has 26,000 people).There has been no recent activist-left pres-ence. There is no active local Green Party.

The island has many advantages as abase for industrial production. The windturbine blades from the bigger Vestas fac-tory at St Cross — 40 metres long, difficultto transport by road — can be loadedstraight from the factory onto barges to goup the River Medina and over to

How Vestas workersbecame a power

3

Southampton docks for shipment all overthe world. But prisons are among the is-land’s biggest employers; an unusuallylarge proportion of the population is re-tired; unemployment is high; a lot of localjobs are seasonal in the tourist trade; andmany enterprising young people leave toseek wider opportunities on the mainland.

The young AWL members pitched theirtents on a campsite. They made contactwith some elderly activists who kept theRyde and Cowes Trades Councils tickingover, and with the island’s one Labourcounty councillor.

They began visiting the factories at theshift changes, handed out leaflets, talkedto the workers. They found a lot of angeragainst the Vestas bosses, but as yet littleconfidence that any fightback against theclosure was possible.

The AWL members made it clear thatthey were not there to substitute for theworkers’ own action, or to push workersinto doing anything that they did notwant to do. But they did want the workersto have a chance to discuss collectivelywhat they might do, with all the optionsbefore them — rather than each one, indi-vidually, feeling helpless in face of the col-lective, organised power of the bosses.

With a wider circle of Workers’ ClimateAction activists mobilised to come to theisland, they leafleted in the main towns aswell as at the factories for a public meet-ing on 3 July, co-sponsored by CowesTrades Council and Workers’ Climate Ac-tion.

A hundred people came. Ron Clark, aformer convenor of the Visteon Enfieldplant, spoke about the gains made by theworkers’ occupation there. But many ofthe other speakers, established labourmovement officials, thought workerscould do no more than join the Uniteunion — there was a handful of membersin the factories, though Vestas hadstamped on all attempts to unionise seri-

ously — and write letters to the Govern-ment.

The campaign still hung in the balance.About half a dozen workers gave contactdetails to the AWL members saying theywere interested in further discussionabout how the closure should be thought.Over the weekend 4-5 July AWL memberEd Maltby emailed and phoned them.Only one replied. He agreed to meet andtalk, and then pulled back, saying he was-n’t ready for that yet.

By Tuesday 7 July Ed was phoning theAWL office to say that he was returninghome for a bit to recoup his energies. Thehalf-dozen workers had his contact de-tails, and messages from him, and hewould return to the island if they showedinterest.

As his train approached Waterloo sta-tion in London, Ed got a phone call from aworker asking for a meeting that eveningbetween him and a number of workersfrom his shop. Ed got off the train at Wa-terloo and took the first train back to theIsle of Wight in order to make the meet-ing. A group of workers who wanted todiscuss active resistance to the closure hadbeen formed, and gradually grew by pass-ing the word on individually.

Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP) memberscame to the island to join the campaignagainst closure. On Saturday 11 July someworkers joined a session of leafletting andpetitioning in the centre of Newport. AfterAWL summer school on 11-12 July, whereVestas was a big theme, more AWL mem-bers came to the island.

By now the Vestas bosses knew thatsomething was afoot, but not what.

More and more workers got involved.But the dominant reaction at the factorygates to our leafletting was still — andwould continue to be, right up to the daythe St Cross factory was occupied — thatit was “too late” to do anything about theclosure; or, putting a brave face on the big

4

blow to Island jobs that the Vestas closurewould be, that they were glad no longer tohave to work under the Vestas regime,and just wanted to take their redundancymoney and go; or that in principle someaction might be a good idea, but they did-n’t want to risk losing their redundancymoney.

On 15 July Energy and Climate Changeminister Ed Miliband published a WhitePaper about renewable energy, and callingfor 7,000 more wind turbines to be built inthe coming years. (Britain currently hasabout 3,000 in operation or under con-struction). The Vestas closure looked evenmore absurd and unscrupulous.

The redundancy money was poor —twice the statutory minimum. The StCross factory has only been open nineyears, and only a handful of workers havebeen there since the start, so most workershave had only a short time with the com-pany and stand to get only a few hundredpounds in redundancy pay. But, at thatstage, even that small pay-out seemed alot to risk.

A positive, but still uncertain, gatheringof workers on 19 July got closer to dis-cussing definite plans. We brought inAWL members with experience of work-ing as trade-union organisers to giveworkers information on the legalities andlogistics of different tactics.

That meeting also formulated demands.Although leaflets had been headlined“Save Vestas”, that was not really whatthe workers wanted. They were glad to berid of the Vestas bosses. The demand wasformulated for Vestas to hand over theplant to the Government, and for the Gov-ernment to continue production by na-tionalising the plant under newmanagement. Workers who still wanted toleave should get better redundancy pay.

That meeting also featured a bizarrecross-purposes argument. Someoneseemed to suggest hanging a huge UnionJack over a factory building. Socialists im-mediately responded that it would not begood to repeat the “British Jobs For BritishWorkers” stuff that marred the engineer-ing construction strikes. Workers shooktheir heads. No, no. The East Cowes fac-tory has a huge Union Jack painted on itswaterfront wall, and the discussion wasabout hanging a banner against the clo-sure over it, to cover it.

On Monday Vestas’s top boss, PaddyWeir, got wind of the plans for occupyingat least one of the factories, as eventuallyhe was bound to. Evidently he didn’t feelsure of himself, so he did not do what aconfident boss would have done, and im-mediately sack the workers whom he sus-pected of organising action (shrugging atthe thought that Vestas would eventuallyhave to pay them money for unfair dis-missal, after an industrial tribunal). Hejust bawled them out, perhaps thinking onthe basis of previous experience thatwould be enough to intimidate them.

However, there was now a clear riskthat Vestas bosses would make new secu-

5

Vestas worker: Ian Terry

Ian Terry was a worker in the finishing shop at the VestasNewport factory, and one of the occupiers. He spoke to us in midAugust.

I’d say that the views I have now have always been there, but now I’ve see thechance of a fightback, rather than giving up. I’ve always thought the way things are

run was wrong, but before, I’d never seen a chance forpeople to stand up together and change things.

It’s a matter of organising workers to stand up forthemselves. The anti-union laws are against us, but thenumbers are in our favour, and we have to make surewe get those laws changed.

The main priority now is building people’s confi-dence, highlighting to people that they are not on theirown, and that together we can be much stronger.

I knew, working for Vestas, that the managementwere wary of unions. I don’t think I realised just howimportant unions are. After the miners were smashedin 1984-5, a lot of people’s confidence in unions wentdown. But there are still good unions out there, willingto organise the workers and take up the fight for them.

Unite, I think, has been poor because it is too closelyaffiliated with Labour. They didn’t want to rock the boat.But that can’t be all of it. You’ve had unions affiliated to

Labour who have supported you well, and unions that aren’t affiliated to Labour who haven’t.Isn’t it also a question of the degree of democracy and accountability in the union, and thestrength of the rank and file?

Yes, you have to make sure the people making the big decisions in the unions canunderstand the workers’ struggles rather than being paid big salaries. The same goesfor politicians, doesn’t it? They’d be reined in a lot more if they were in the same eco-nomic position that we’re in. At present there is obviously a big gap between the full-time union officials, and the lives they’re able to live, and the workers they represent.

In this campaign, a combination of many different reasons to fight has broughteveryone together. People have started to realise that everything is affected by therule of profit — how profit dictates how things go.

The reason why Vestas have been able to do what they’ve done is that the marketis run for profit, not for people. As in the unions, the people at the top are comfort-able. They don’t have to think about the people who are being affected by job lossesor wage cuts. Human beings aren’t brought in to the equation.

When industry is run for goals other than profit — when it is run for the useful-ness of the things it builds and the good of the people it employs and of the environ-ment — that is much better. More money would be delivered back into thecommunity.

6

rity moves to block an occupation. Inpreparation for the factory closing downthe bosses had already changed the nor-mal shift patterns as from Monday 20 July,telling both night shift and day shift tocome in days and then sending out a lot ofworkers to do courses or job-search whilethe remainder worked on finishing the re-maining blades and on clear-up.

They might tell more workers to stayaway. There was already talk of the bossesbringing in new, extra security guardsfrom 20 July. They might change the locksand security codes.

So on Monday evening, 20 July, a groupof workers started the occupation, enter-ing the St Cross factory between shifts andtaking control of the management offices.There was no extra security to block them.

Because the occupation started earlierthan the workers had expected, some whohad wanted to take part were unable tojoin in. In the event, that wasn’t so bad,because it left a group of more determinedand confident workers to organise the ma-jority of the workforce outside the plant.

On Monday evening, Paddy Weir soonturned up at the factory, in a rage. Veryquickly there were masses of police there.Weir spoke of getting the police to throwthe workers out, and had to be convincedthat legally he couldn’t do that.

From then until the Wednesday thebosses tried one hoax threat or ultimatumafter another to try to throw the workersoff balance. Time and again the workerswere told that they had “one hour” or“two hours” to leave, or else they wouldsuffer terrible reprisals.

The occupying workers stood firm. At7.45am on Tuesday morning, the rest ofthe workforce turned up for the start ofthe shift. Some had been phoned and toldto stay away. Those who arrived — at theVenture Quays (East Cowes) plant as wellas at St Cross — were told by managersstanding on the police line to take the day

off (paid) and come back “as normal” onWednesday. The bosses were scared that ifthey let the workers into their workplaces,they would face another occupation in theEast Cowes plant, and a bigger one at StCross.

At that point the managers thought theycould end the occupation within one day.They did not have the measure of theirworkforce at all. In disarray, Vestas bosseswould say nothing to the media until theend of the week. One reporter, from theTimes, had the phone put down on himwhen he tried to get a comment.

Some workers arriving on Tuesday didjust go home, saying that they did not be-lieve that the occupation could achieveanything, and that their only concern wasto keep their redundancy money. But alarge number gathered outside the frontentrance at St Cross.

The mood there was sympathetic to theoccupying workers, but also, at that stage,uncertain about what could happen next.Although AWL people had never soughtto push workers into doing anything theydidn’t want, only to create opportunitiesfor them to discuss collectively and tohave all the options before them, oneworker told us: “I’m just here to see thatno harm comes to my mates inside as a re-sult of them being riled up by people likeyou”.

Over the next day or so, the moodchanged. Eventually, on the Tuesday

7

Time and again theworkers were told that theyhad “one hour” or “two

hours” to leave, or else theywould suffer terrible

reprisals. The occupyingworkers stood firm.

Vestas worker: Tracey Yeates

Tracey Yeates worked in the finishing shop at the Vestas New-port factory, and is a member of the RMT workers’ committee.She spoke to us in mid-August.

The last three weeks have taught me that if people work together, we can get thingsdone, and we can, as a group, make a change. Perhaps before I would have turned

away. I think it’s changed me as well as my opinions.I’ve come to realise how much of a bad employer Vestas

were. Before, I tended to believe what the managementsaid and not what the workforce was saying. But now thatis changed.

What’s made the difference? I suppose at the start it wasbecause you, the activists from outside, showed us howwe could do something. Then we had our own way ofdoing things. If everyone puts their own unique bit in, itmakes a bigger picture, doesn’t it?

With Vestas, it is the first time I’ve ever worked for acompany. I was always self-employed before, and I worked on my own — I was anarea manager for Betterware UK — so I looked at things a different way. It suited mewhen the children were younger, because I could work from home, but then whenthey grew up, I looked for something else, and since I’d always been green-minded, Icame here.

I don’t believe the company should be allowed to do this. They have no regard fortheir workers or for the community.

It’s difficult for me to say how this has changed my view of unions, because myhusband used to be an active trade union-ist, a TGWU branch official, at Ford inSouthampton, and it seemed to me like hewas always out on strike.

The RMT seem to be quite well-organ-ised. My husband is a prison officer now,and he is in the POA, and they don’t seemto be well organised or have any clout.

Myself, I don’t think I would work againfor an employer that didn’t have a union. Iwould definitely make sure I was in aunion before I worked anywhere else.

Now, we’ve got to make sure that the lads who were in occupation get reinstated.That has got to be number one priority. I want see green jobs on the island, of somesort — if it can’t be Vestas, then somebody else.

I worry for the future of the island community. We already have an ageing popula-tion here. As jobs go, young families will move away, and before we know it, schoolswill be closing.

8

Before, I tended tobelieve what themanagement saidand not what the

workforce was saying.But now that is changed.

morning, we were able to get a meeting ofthe workers outside the factory entranceto elect a committee. We tried to help theworkers to organise a rota — so that eachworker would have set times to be outsidethe factory — though at that stage it didn’treally work.

Workers went off to buy food to take into the occupiers, and a gazebo to providesome protection from the rain to workersand supporters outside. (It rained a lotfrom Monday evening onwards, andthroughout the week!) After some thrash-ing around to find an office for the work-ers’ committee, one of the committeemembers brought his camper van to thesite, and de facto that became the commit-tee office.

Gradually, the minority action of the oc-cupying workers generated an active ma-jority among the workers outside, acollective will to resist. On Wednesdayevening, at what became the regular 6pmrally at the factory entrance, we heard ofyet another ultimatum to the occupiers.The speaker asked the rally: “What do wewant to say to the lads inside? Stay, orgo?” All the workers, including those whothe previous day might have said thattheir only real concern was to get the oc-cupying workers out safe and sound,yelled: “Stay!”

On the Tuesday, a rush at the policelines had got a few extra workers into theoccupation. After that, the police wereeven more vigilant, and stopped foodbeing taken in to the occupiers.

That police blockade was eventuallybroken on the Wednesday, on the initiativeof some Climate Camp activists who or-ganised a large number of people to walkcalmly through the lines of police and se-curity guards to below the balcony of themanagement offices and throw the foodup.

The police knew that when it camedown to it they had no legal authority to

use violence against people peacefullywalking across the factory forecourt, andthere were not enough of them to blockeveryone by just standing in the way.

After that, the police put up fencesaround the front entrance. Ironically, theywere fencing the management in as wellas us out. In disarray, the Vestas bosseswere paying their own workers to picketthem and erecting fences to reinforce thepicket lines!

On Thursday morning, 23 July, the dis-pute reached the national press front-pageheadlines (the Independent). That sameday, Ed Miliband felt under sufficientpressure to write a letter to the Guardianmaking excuses. The police and the Vestassecurity guards changed tactics, becomingmuch more low-profile.

The gathering in front of the the factoryentrance was settling down. The round-about opposite the factory entrance filledup with tents. The Socialist Party was ar-riving to join the AWL and the SWP insupporting the workers. Climate activists,and a miscellany of other people, turnedup too. Local RMT activists had been theresince the start, and other unions werequick with support. The local FBU arrivedon Tuesday morning with an immediatedonation of £150. On Thursday, RMT gen-eral secretary Bob Crow came down; onFriday, the RMT started recruiting Vestasworkers; by the weekend, a number offull-time organisers from the RMT na-tional office had been posted to Vestas.

The workers’ committee got more or-ganised. Increasing numbers of peoplewent out from the factory entrance toleaflet and visit workplaces and campaignin the towns. Increasing numbers turnedup to the 6pm rallies. Confidence grew.From that point on the outcome dependedon the debate among the workers aboutextending the picket into a proper block-ade, and on what support they could getin the broader labour movement.

9

Vestas supporter: Jackie Hawkins

Jackie Hawkins is a local environmental and peace activist. Shespoke to us in mid August.

What’s most surprised me over the last three weeks is that people have remainedsolid, that they have stuck together and notdrifted away.

The main priority now is new ideas; keepingthe campaign fresh so that it does not stagnate;staying positive and keeping in mind that wecan win.

In the Isle of Wight, the [Tory] council havean “eco-island” policy, and keep bleating onabout how they want it to be a world-re-knowned green island. They should grasp thisopportunity and keep the factory open, as wellas bringing more green jobs to the island.

This campaign has got a community together.All sorts of people have contributed by donat-ing food or equipment for the picket.

There is a community building, and I’m hop-ing that when the planning application for[wind turbines on] Cheverton Down comes upin October, we can outnumber the Nimbies. Iwould like to see a lot of people turn up at County Hall that day.

In the last couple of months, there have been a lot of socialist and environmentalactivists coming from the mainland tosupport the Vestas workers. What do youmake of what we’ve done?

It’s been great — something I’vewanted to see for a long time. The islandis a very conservative area. I don’t meanonly politically conservative: people tendto be wary of mainlanders.

I was nervous at first, because I’m origi-nally an outsider myself, and I know theattitudes you can encounter. But in factthe people from the mainland have been

very well received. I haven’t heard any negative comments. That’s brilliant, ab-solutely brilliant.

This is not just an island issue. It’s not just nationwide. It is international. YesterdayI heard that we’d had support from young people in Australia.

It’s fantastic, the way it has gone international. Maybe the revolution is going tostart on the Isle of Wight. I wouldn’t have dreamed it.

10

This campaign has got acommunity together. Allsorts of people have con-tributed by donating foodor equipment for the

picket.

Joan Trevor

The Climate Change Minister, JoanRuddock MP agreed to meet sup-porters of the Save Vestas cam-paign during her constituency

surgery in Deptford, south London, on 7August, the same day that the last Vestasoccupiers left the plant on the Isle ofWight.

She was standing in for Ed Miliband,Secretary of State for Energy and ClimateChange, who was away in Brazil lecturingthem on their responsibilities as a devel-oping nation to mitigate climate change —but that’s an aside.

The previous day Ruddock had met twoVestas workers together with union offi-cials from the RMT, Unite, and the TUC.Q:What has the government done to

save the jobs at Vestas?R: I’ll tell you what I told a delegation of

Vestas workers, the RMT, Unite, the TUCyesterday. We’ve done a lot. Months agowe had notice of the potential closure. Weasked Vestas, what help can we give youas a government?

There was no help that we could givethem. They did not want money. Theywanted to move the factory for their owncommercial reasons. Let me tell you abouttheir product. The blades they make are 40metres long, they are not suitable for usein the UK...Q: But they can convert the factory to

make blades that are suitable...R: They can convert the factory. There

was discussion about that. The workerstold us that until recently the conversionwas going to go ahead. I don’t know thedetails of why that did not go ahead.

It is not just here, they have made alarge number of people unemployed inDenmark as well, where they are based.

Why wind turbine productionshould be publicly owned: aconfrontation with JoanRuddock

11

Q:Why not nationalise the plant? Youhave stepped in to nationalise the banksbecause there was a need to shore up thefinancial system. The government has setvery high targets for expanding renewableenergy, and very high targets for cuttingcarbon emissions. Is that not a similaremergency that would justify the govern-ment stepping in?R: It’s not up for sale! We can’t just na-

tionalise a whole company.Q: Not the company, the plant. We can-

not let meeting the targets depend on thebusiness decisions of private companies.We will not meet the targets if we dothat...R:We will meet these targets!... We are

not going to nationalise. You have a differ-ent model.

We have offered Vestas £6 million to de-velop the R&D facility on the Isle ofWight. That will be 150 jobs — it’s not 600,but it is something. Vestas will accept £6million for that.

We will meet the targets on the presentmodel of letting the market do it. We doagree on the general point of keepingmanufacturing jobs in the UK. We are hav-ing ongoing discussion about how wekeep and develop the skilled manufactur-ing jobs here.Q: Closure of the plant is devastating for

the Isle of Wight employment situationwhich is already bad, with 100 applicantsfor each job. What will you do to save thiscommunity?R:We have set up a taskforce, with the

South East England Development Agency,we are putting in place the support struc-tures, and continuing to work to maximisebusiness start-ups. Vestas might keep theplant and reopen again when conditionsare right.Q:Why should progress rely on busi-

ness decisions of private firms?R: You all have a different philosophy

from me about what is the best way to

produce jobs.Q: Can we subsidise travel between the

Island and the mainland, so that youngpeople can have more mobility? Travel isvery expensive at the moment.R: I don’t know, that is not my depart-

ment.Q: You have a belief in the market —

that’s your philosophy. But what aboutbeing practical? Have you done a feasibil-ity study into whether it would be bettereconomically overall to nationalise theplant?R: There has not been a feasibility study

because we are not going to nationalise,because we are sticking to our principles.Q: Your belief in markets is like a reli-

gious belief.R:We live in a market economy, all the

advanced economies think the same.Q:We live in a mixed economy, there is

a lot of state intervention in the economyand the balance shifts back and forth de-pending on politics. These companies donot do what they do out of a love for thepeople who make the profits for them.They go where profits are highest. Whatdo you think should happen to the work-ers who occupied, who drew our attentionto this issue?R:We will look at all the issues raised

by workers about their jobs. I’ve asked myopposite numbers in the Department ofWork and Pensions to look at what can bedone for the workers.Q:Will you undertake a feasibility

study?A: It’s not appropriate! The government

does not want to be producers of windturbines, and we did not want to bebankers.Q: Not even to save the environment?Q: The Tories nationalised Rolls Royce...R: That’s another story...Q: Nationalisation is what happened

with East Coast Mainline. You nation-alised it while you look for another buyer.

12

Can’t you do that with this plant? Nation-alisation doesn’t have to be like the na-tionalisations of the 1970s.A:We are pulling out all the stops —

short of nationalisation!Ruddock’s basic argument is that the

capitalist market can provide the solutionto climate change. She says that not na-tionalising Vestas is a matter of “stickingto our principles”!

The government claims that the shiftthat we need to make to using renewableenergy, including wind energy, is bestachieved by helping the market in renew-able energy to grow, and private compa-nies involved in this sector to makeprofits.

“The market” is really only the right ofcapitalist companies to seek maximumprofits where they can. Companies like BPcan shift into “renewables” if that looksmore profitable, or out if it doesn’t.

The government is prepared to jugglewith taxes and to offer incentives, such asthe £6 million it gave to Vestas to invest inresearch and development on the Isle ofWight. But if the market does not allowcompanies like Vestas to make as muchprofit in the UK as they can make else-where — eg, Colorado, USA, where mostof the “Isle of Wight” work is going, andthe government’s attempts to bend themarket fail, then that’s it. The governmentwill not nationalise the industry or take onthe development of renewable energy inthe public sector. That, for Ruddock, is“principle”!

The contrast with the government’s atti-tude to the banking sector is stark. The fi-nancial system must be shored up, even ifthat means nationalisation. But the cli-mate? Leave that to the market.

Ruddock insists that the UK will meetits targets for CO2 reduction by continu-ing on the tracks that it is going downnow. But the figures so far do not bear thatout.

Ruddock’s statement that the govern-ment does not want to make wind tur-bines or run banks begs the question,what does the government want to do?On this trend, it is only a matter of timebefore Ruddock states that the govern-ment doesn’t want to run hospitals orschools either. The government will regu-late private trade, and commission publicservices, and that is all.

In other words, vital services will onlybe provided as, when, and how they makea profit for private companies.

Companies relying on public contractswill obviously try to get away with pro-viding as little as they can for the moneythey are paid. Meanwhile, when the gov-ernment accepts private companies aspartners it implicitly takes the side ofthose companies in any disputes it haswith its employees.

That is very clear in the Vestas dispute.Of all the questions that we asked Rud-dock, the one she seemed most hostile toanswering was whether the governmentshould press for reinstatement of the Ves-tas workers who were sacked for occupy-ing their plant.

All she would say was that she wouldtalk to her opposite numbers in the De-partment for Work and Pensions. Aboutwhat? The workers getting the dole theyare entitled to anyway, without her talk-ing?

Vestas workers are adamant on that:they want to continue making wind tur-bine blades, but do not want to continueworking for Vestas. They want to work forthe good of the whole community instead,in a nationalised plant, with a manage-ment accountable to them.

They can see that “the market” will pro-vide neither decent jobs nor the necessarytransition to a sustainable economy. JoanRuddock cannot because she has blindedherself with New Labour “principle”.

13

Daniel Rawnsley

Iremember first hearing about a windturbine factory on the Isle of Wightbeing shut down at the Workers’ Lib-erty conference back in May.

We decided that someone should godown there. Why did I volunteer? We’dbeen talking about “voluntarism” — thenecessary element in socialist politics ofmaking things happen by will-power andinitiative.

I travelled to the island on 15 June withtwo other AWL members, Ed Maltby andPat Rolfe, and stayed for a couple of daysto make contact with local labour move-ment activists.

Members of the local Trades Councilshad been campaigning around Vestas, butwithout making much headway. LocalLabour councillor Geoff Lumley offeredhis support, but was unwilling to get in-volved in very militant action. We met thelocal Unite full-time official, Brian Kent.When we raised the idea of holding a pub-lic meeting he told us we were “pissing inthe wind”.

We also stood at the factory gates tryingto figure out what the shift times were andtalking to anyone we could find. Eventu-ally went back to London to work fromthe AWL office to mobilise activists tobring to the Isle of Wight to build for thepublic meeting which we had decided ondespite Brian Kent’s advice.

We all had very little experience build-ing industrial campaigns, but it was goodto know that we could phone the office for

practical advice from older comrades.We returned to the island again with a

list of people who would join us over thecoming days. I think there were as manyas eight people at one point and we man-aged to cover a lot of space, leafleting intowns and at both factories in Newportand Cowes.

As we stood outside factories, I began tolearn how to talk to people about theirwork and that it’s most important firstlyto listen. In many cases you start just byrepeating back to people what they’ve al-ready told you, and convincing them thatit’s important and useful to be angryabout mistreatment.

Our initial activism had already putmanagement ill at ease. Paddy Weir, theboss at Vestas, had come out one day totry to intimidate me and another activist,Benny. I think he was honestly surprisedto see someone standing up to him, andhe had absolutely no reply to the fact that

An activist’s diary: how theVestas campaign started

14

he hadn’t provided adequate health andsafety gear for the workers, some ofwhom were suffering from skin disordersbecause of the resin they worked with.

The day of the meeting approached, andI began sleeping less and less. I didn’tknow what to expect.

In fact, over a hundred people came andthe majority were workers. Four police of-ficers came to stand outside the meeting;they had been warned to expect a “breachof the peace”. Management had put extrasecurity on at the plants over the weekendafter the meeting.

But in some way the meeting was verydisheartening. It was overly weightedwith union bureaucrat speakers who wenton for too long about joining a union... sothat the workers could be helped to findother jobs.

Ron Clark, former convenor at VisteonEnfield, and Ed Maltby spoke from theplatform and offered a straightforwardmessage on the importance of an occupa-

tion. When a discussion at the backamongst the workers began, independ-ently of the chair, it was quickly quashed.

We attempted to speak to as many peo-ple as possible, but we ran in to the sameperspective time and again; “I’m up for it,but no one else will do anything, it’s notpossible”.

We managed to get contact details for afew workers, mostly young people whowere getting very low redundancy pay-ments. Eventually a small group of fiveworkers began to meet and discuss tactics— and to grow.

At the AWL summer school on 10-12July Pat Rolfe said he thought there was atwenty percent chance of an occupation.Only eight days later, the occupation wason. I returned to the island hours beforethe occupation began. I rushed down tothe factory to see what was going on andfound a group of people milling aroundoutside and banners hanging from win-dows inside.

15

28 April:After telling workers, in 2008, thatthey planned to re-fit the factories in 2009 toproduce larger blades with a better produc-tion process, the Danish based multinationalVestas announces instead that it will closethe Isle of Wight wind turbine blade facto-ries, the only such factories in Britain.15 June:Workers’ Liberty activists arrive inthe Isle of Wight to start leafleting and talk-ing to workers about the Vestas factory clo-sure and ways to resist it.3 July:Workers’ Climate Action and CowesTrades Council call a public meeting to dis-cuss campaigning against the closure of theVestas factories.Two weeks starting 6 July:A minority ofworkers begin to discuss action. As the con-versations spread, the idea grows that thereare alternatives. Meanwhile public cam-paigning against the closure continues onthe streets of the Isle of Wight.Wednesday 15 July: Government publishesa White Paper calling for 7000 extra windturbines in Britain in coming years. (3000 arecurrently operating or being installed).Monday 20 July: Vestas management hearabout the conversations and try to forestallaction by threatening workers. 7.30pm:workers decide that they should move be-fore the management try further pre-emp-tive action, and occupy the St Cross factory.From Tuesday 21 July: Vestas bosses tell allother workers, at Venture Quays as well asSt Cross, to stay home (on full pay) insteadof working. Workers rally outside the StCross front gage. They elect a committee toorganise their campaign. Management makerepeated empty threats against the occu-piers. They also refuse to let in food. Supportcomes in from FBU, Unison, CWU, GMB,PCS, and especially from the leaders of the

Portsmouth RMT branch, which organiesthe Portsmouth-IoW ferries.Wednesday 22 July:A Families and Com-munity Campaign is set up to back the Ves-tas workers.Thursday 23 July: The Vestas story reachesthe front page of the national press (the In-dependent). Ed Miliband writes an evasiveletter to the Guardian about Vestas. Vestasbosses start supplying food to the workers,but serve summonses for a court hearing on29 July for a possession order. RMT leaderBob Crow comes to Vestas and offers RMTlawyers to help the workers.Friday 24 July:Many Vestas workers joinRMT so that it can represent them with theVestas bosses. 300 people march from New-port town centre to the St Cross factory.Saturday 25 July: Vestas bosses start givingthe occupiers hot food.Tuesday 28 July: Vestas bosses issue noticesof dismissal to eleven workers.Wednesday 29 July: Court hearing on Vestasbosses’ claim for a possession order. Caseadjourned to 4 August.

Saturday 1 August: Police and Vestas bossesallow RMT to take extra food into the fac-tory. (However, this proves to be a one-off).Monday 3 August:Workers’ Climate Actionactivists show solidarity with workers by su-pergluing themselves to block the entrance

Timeline of a campaign

16

to the government Department of Energyand Climate Change. The TUC puts out astatement calling on the Government to in-tervene to save jobs.Tuesday 4 August: Sixteen union leaderspublish a stronger statement of support:leaders of Unite, Unison, GMB, and CWUare not among the sixteen. Vestas bosses wintheir “possession order” in court. Activistsoccupy the roof of the Vestas factory at Ven-ture Quays in East Cowes, and use its promi-nent waterfront position to display solidaritybanners.Thursday 6 August: Climate change minis-ter Joan Ruddock meets RMT and Vestasworkers (and TUC and Unite reps). She of-fers warm words but no commitment; claimsthat Government tried to buy the Vestas fac-tories, but Vestas refused. Governmentagrees to continue talks with RMT.Friday 7 August: Occupiers evicted, despiteWorkers’ Climate Action mobilising 25 ac-tivists from London to join the Isle of Wightpicket from 3am. Occupiers remain defiant.At the 6pm rally at the St Cross factory gate,they call for the pickets to be continued andbuilt up into a blockade.Saturday 8 August:Workers and supporters,marching from a rally in Newport town cen-tre, briefly reoccupy the factory grounds.Sunday 9 August:Well-attended meeting ofVestas workers and supporters in Newportdebates strategy for the next phase.Monday 10 August:Workers and supportersstart a presence at the back gate of the New-port factory. Vestas bosses responded byerecting fences all across the back of the fac-tory.Wednesday 12 August: National day of ac-

tion. Five rallies on the Isle of Wight; meet-ings and protests all over the country; Work-ers’ Climate Action activists occupy SouthEast England Development Authority of-fices.Friday 14 August: The East Cowes occupierscome down from the roof. Back pay and re-dundancy money goes into workers’ bankaccounts. The workers continue the cam-paign with a continued picket, a demonstra-tion in Ryde on 15 August, and plans for anational day of action on 17 September.Monday 17 August: Vestas brings in its“clean-up” team, but workers picket the fac-tory gates in protest. Workers and support-ers stage “sit-in picnic” protest at local JobCentreTuesday 18 August: Vestas bosses an-nounced their latest financial results. Theyexpect revenue to rise by 20% to 7.2 billioneuros this year, and the operating margin (ofprofit) to be between 11% and 13%.

Friday 4 September: Vestas ships bladesfrom the Venture Quays factory (EastCowes), but, seeing a sizeable blockade atthe “marine gate” of the St Cross factory(Newport), holds back there.Wednesday 16 September: Isle of Wightcouncil gets legal letters delivered to theblockade at the “marine gate” warningabout action to move people from there.Thursday 17 September: Second nationalday of action.Tuesday 22 September: 120 police raid thecamp set up by workers and supporters atthe “marine gate”, and clear the way for Ves-tas bosses to move the blades.

17

Patrick Rolfe

The action taken at the Vestas windturbine plant demonstrates a reali-sation on the part of two socialmovements that they are inextri-

cably linked.The environmental movement has re-

alised that the only system capable ofmaking the economic changes required toachieve sustainability is one of democrati-cally controlled, social production.

In parallel, the socialist movement hasrealised the imminence of environmentaldestruction — we cannot wait until thedemocratisation of production before webuild a sustainable economy. The seeds ofa new society — socially and environmen-tally sustainable — must be germinated inthe rotting corpse of the old.

Capitalism can’t save the climate — itcouldn’t even eradicate poverty, providedecent education for all, or make thetrains run on time.

We may have only a few years to transi-tion to a low-carbon economy. We have anageing population, and persistent levels ofpoverty here and all over the globe.

Yet, at a time when there is so muchwork to be done in society, factories, of-fices, shops and other workplaces are clos-ing. Unemployment is on course to hitthree million next year. Debates in themainstream press only consider howmany social programmes and researchprogrammes will have to be cut in orderto pay for wasteful PFI schemes, bankers’bailouts and inflated military spending.

The government are handing money tothose who have been destroying theplanet and exploiting its people for thelast three decades, while taking from thosewho have the capacity to save both fromoblivion. The logic behind this is simple:the state will seek to maintain the rule ofcapital at all costs.

Shareholders and company bosses, whocan pay to protect themselves from the ef-fects of climate change will take whateverthey want from the state, will squeezewhatever they can from the worker andthe ordinary consumer, and will opposeany productive technology that challengescentralised capitalism, high profit mar-gins, and easy exploitation of labour. Therecent CBI report, which supported“clean” coal and nuclear power, using out-dated assumptions that a National Gridreport released a week earlier had thor-oughly debunked, confirms this.

From Vestas to Total, corporations seekthe highest profit margin — there is nonecessary link between this aim and sus-tainable production for social need.

We, the workers, can and should decidewhat is socially useful, and only we canbuild a sustainable economy.

We have to use our own social power tochange the way production occurs. Thesource of all power lies ultimately in pro-duction — products are just as often usedas tools of oppression as they are “goods”for consumption, and the profits made inproduction are split between ensuring onthe one hand the luxury, and on the otherhand the power, of individual capitalists.Profits not are not only used to buy ivory

We will build thesustainable society!

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backscratchers and cocaine, they are alsoused to re-arrange workplaces and societyto make social change more difficult, andto devise complex strategies and systemsto squeeze the most out of every individ-ual worker.

It is only by seizingcontrol over produc-tion — by decidingwhat is produced, andhow it is produced thatwe can take back con-trol of society, and de-feat the destructivelogic of profit.

The Vestas workershave taken the firststep towards this —when their jobs werethreatened by management, they an-swered “why do you get to decide who isuseful and who is not?” The workers oc-cupying their plant, all the people on thepicket lines, and everyone demonstratingand supporting the campaign have takenaction that questions the right of a privateowner to determine what society pro-duces.

Workplaces are closing all over the

country — on the say-so of bosses, bankmanagers, or the government — work-places that could be doing some of thevital work that needs to be done over thecoming decades. Corus faces closure when

steel will be neededfor turbines and tidalpower stations, Nor-tel closes when thou-sands of call centreworkers are neededto give medical ad-vice about the fluvirus, car-plants atVisteon close whenthey could be con-verted to producingwheelie bins and re-cycling technologies.

“Green jobs” are not just jobs in windenergy or conservation — a green job isany job that we, as the vast mass of ordi-nary, rational, working-class people de-cide is useful to society. The only way wewill obtain such jobs is by occupying ourworkplaces, and by planning with eachother to build a sustainable future, fight-ing the boss, the bureaucrat and the capi-talist every step of the way.

19

It is only by seizingcontrol over production —

by deciding what isproduced, and how it isproduced — that we cantake back control ofsociety, and defeat the

destructive logic of profit.

20

Martin Thomas

Chairing a Vestas workers’ rally inRyde, Isle of Wight, on 15 August,Mike Godley, one of the workers

who occupied the Newport factory from20 July until evicted on 7 August, read outweb postings which attacked “outsiders”in the campaign.

The postings claimed that socialist andother activists who have come to the Isleof Wight from the mainland had manipu-lated the workers.

To great applause, Mike Godley refutedthe attacks. The socialists and environ-mental activists have been welcome, hesaid, and they have provided valuablehelp to a struggle which continues to bethe Vestas workers’ own.

Before the Vestas campaign started, nosocialist or environmental-activist groupswere visible on the Isle of Wight. Activistsfrom the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty ar-rived on the island on 15 June, to leafletand talk with workers at the Vestas factorygates, and to make contact with the not-very-strong local labour movement. (Ves-tas had blocked union organisation in itsfactories). With other Workers’ ClimateAction people, the AWLers built a publicmeeting, jointly sponsored by Workers’Climate Action and Cowes Trades Coun-cil, on 3 July.

From soon after that, as discussionsamong workers about a factory occupa-tion developed, members of the SocialistWorkers’ Party (SWP) from the mainlandstarted spending time on the island.

From the first hours of the occupation,

on 20 July, the roundabout outside theVestas Newport factory front entrance be-came a gathering-point for workers andsupporters. Local people from a range ofbackgrounds joined the crowd.

A group of four Climate Camp activistsarrived for a day on Wednesday 22 July,and made a very useful contribution. Astime went on, more climate-camp andother environmental activists arrived, es-pecially after the Big Green Gathering setfor 29 July was cancelled. The biggest sin-gle influx of mainland supporters, a con-tingent of 25 socialists, anarchists, andenvironmentalists from London, was or-ganised by Workers’ Climate Action on 7August, the day the occupiers wereevicted.

Five main elements (with many over-laps and exceptions) made up the round-about “community”: workers; localsupporters; AWL; SWP; and climate-camppeople. It did well at combining diversitywith unity in action.

The SWP at Vestas was in a differentmode from elsewhere. It worked chiefly atproving itself the “best builder” of thecampaign, putting much energy intoleafleting and organising for demonstra-tions of support on the island, and usingcontacts through the Campaign AgainstClimate Change (where SWPers holdleading positions) and the unions to set upsolidarity meetings round the country.

AWL members did a lot of leafletingand visiting workplaces too. Climate-camp activists, on the whole, were less in-terested in that sort of activity, but theymade a contribution which the socialist or-

Developing the resistanceinto a political campaign

21

ganisations, at our present level of devel-opment, probably could not have made.

It was the first four climate-camp ac-tivists to arrive who organised the firstsuccessful “rush” through the police linesto get food to the occupiers, on Wednes-day 22 July. At that time the Vestas bossesand the police were trying to block allfood supplies.

Climate-camp and other non-violent-di-rect-action people organised many othersuccessful actions, most spectacularly theoccupation of the roof of the East CowesVestas factory from 4 to 14 August. Soonmost of the workers active in the cam-paign recognised that prejudices aboutthese people maybe being “eco-terrorists”were misplaced. The courage, imagina-tion, and skills of the environmentalistsmade an irreplaceable contribution, help-ing to enlarge the workers’ (and maybesome socialists’) tactical ideas — anddoing it with very few arrests.

Such cross-fertilisation of workers’ andenvironmentalist struggle is one of themain aims of Workers’ Climate Action, agroup in which AWL has been active fromthe start.

One of AWL’s chief concerns throughouthas been to promote and help facilitateself-organisation: self-organisation of theworkers initially interested in occupying;election and organisation of a committeeby the workers outside the factory; organi-sation of a Families and Community com-mittee; organisation of local supportgroups in the different towns of the Isle ofWight; general meetings of supporters, orsupporters and workers, at the round-about.

To our mind, organisation is not just or-ganisational. It is political. The way theworking class transforms itself from ascattering of atomised individuals, eachone largely powerless in the market econ-omy and in the workplace, into a force, isby organising, discussing, and establish-ing an independent collective purposeand will. Self-organisation does not hap-pen automatically. Workers have to beconvinced of it.

Organisation requires collectively-de-cided direction. So we have also tried toassess things, without defeatism butsoberly, at each stage in the campaign, todeduce best policies, and to promote de-bate around them.

At the same time, we have tried to edu-cate ourselves and others, with readingand discussions about lessons from work-ing-class history.

None of that stopped us from havingfriendly unity in action with activists whohave other priorities.

When we proposed having generalmeetings at the roundabout, a couple ofclimate-camp activists first responded:“What’s the point? The SWP goes leaflet-ing, we do the cooking. Everyone is happydoing what they want. Why have meet-ings?” But once the meetings started, theclimate-camp activists were very construc-tive. There was more of a problem withthe SWP, often quick to say: “No moretalking! There’s leafleting to be done! Let’s

go!”At Vestas, the SWP has made a good

positive contribution. The deficiencies ofthe SWP here as a serious socialist grouphave been not lapses such as any group isbound to make, but limitations of the SWPat its best.

It has been much more concerned aboutusing its SWP machine to prove itself the“best builder” than to argue for or pro-mote wider working-class self-organisa-tion. Few of its leaflets and speeches havegot much beyond a combination of a fewpopulist ideas: capitalism bad, bankersbad, anger good, action good, SWP bril-liant.

The whole method was epitomised bythe SWP’s “big campaign”, pushed at Ves-tas for many weeks, to get people along toa demonstration at Labour Party confer-ence on 27 September. The demonstrationhad originally called by the college lectur-ers’ union UCU as a lobby for “jobs, edu-cation, and peace” but was re-branded bythe SWP as “Rage against Labour”.

Rage against Labour? The Tories andUKIP dislike Labour. Obviously this wasmeant to be a different “rage”. So the SWPclarified, by stressing specific, reasonedobjectives? No. The organised socialists,the SWP, were less specific about theiraims and strategies than the UCU unionbureaucrats!

In the end, the 27 September demonstra-tion — maybe 1500 strong, mostly SWPmembers plus others they had broughtalong from union branches or campaignsthey are involved in — was loud and hadlots of banners. But it plainly had no effecton Vestas or the Government.

A demonstration of that sort could havebeen useful in rallying for specific, sharp,demands, and thus helping to organise afight for those demands in the labourmovement. In fact, however, it was acatch-all effort — a demonstration abouthaving a demonstration, rather than a

demonstration for anything in particular.At Vestas the SWP ventured distinctive

ideas on three main occasions.• For 29 July, the first court hearing on

the Vestas bosses’ move to get a posses-sion order, they effectively advocated ageneral strike on the Isle of Wight: “everybus worker, every council worker, everyworker on the ferries [to] show up at thecourtroom instead of going to work”.Such talk just fills the space for properstrategic debate with unrealistic noise.

• The Vestas workers and the RMT gottalks with the Government on 6 August.Workers’ representative Mike Godley ini-tially reported back, rather despondently,that as far as he could see the Governmentwas sympathetic, doing all it could, butunable to do anything. SWPer JonathanNeale told the factory gate rally that wewere “halfway to victory” and neededonly to clinch the commitments.

• At a strategy meeting on 9 August,shortly after the occupiers were evicted,the SWP put all its emphasis not on pick-eting, or any activity at the factories, buton a “long campaign” of meetings anddemonstrations round the country centredon two “days of action”.

The “days of action” were not a badidea, though the second one (17 Septem-ber) was surely scheduled (on SWP insis-tence) for too late a date. But the idea thatthey could ever be decisive, and the prac-tice of pulling the central organisers fromamong the workers away from the factorywith the justification of “building for thedays of action”, did not help. Mostly theSWP dismissed all strategic debate.

The Green Party’s response was poor.The Green Party Trade Union Groupturned up with a stall for a day or so, butthat was about it.

Smaller left groups did little about Ves-tas. Maybe you can put that down to lackof resources.

With the Socialist Party you could not.

22

23

Though not a large group, the SP has areasof strength in nearby Southampton andPortsmouth.

The SP turned up in some numbers tothe Vestas picket line for a short time oncethe occupation had got going. Then, soonafter the occupiers were evicted, theystopped doing so, sending only occasionalindividuals to occasional demonstrations.

Like AWL and SWP, they promotedtheir own papers and leaflets. Fairenough. Unlike AWL and SWP, theyshowed little interest in leafleting and soon for the broad campaign.

Maybe the SP leaflets were so insightfulthat this matters little? On the contrary,they reflected the idea that “Marxism”means switching off your brain and usingstereotype phrases like “mass action” ascure-alls. For example, when climate-camp activists got food to the occupiers,and thus forced the Vestas bosses to startproviding food, the SP rebuked them. Itshould be done “not through short-termstunts, but by mobilising hundreds of peo-ple... to put pressure on everywhere wecan”. Aha! Now we know the answer tothe problem of no dinner in the St Crossfactory! Mass action, “everywhere”.

Mostly, the SP leaflets were about urg-ing us to vote SP, or for some coalition in-cluding the SP, at the coming generalelection. The cited grounds: that workersneed a “political party [that] has sent itsleaders to the picket and stands shoulderto shoulder with the Vestas workers”.

On that criterion, the SP comes out nobetter than the Lib-Dems. One local coun-cillor — a maverick Lib-Dem, but a Lib-Dem — was very active supporting thepickets. The local Lib Dem parliamentarycandidate turned up from time to time, of-fering vague sympathy. The Lib Dem par-liamentary front bencher for Energy,Simon Hughes, came to the picket line,and (initially, at least: I think later debateswung opinion) got a favourable response

from some workers and some climate-camp activists. One of the most active cli-mate-camp people from the mainland atthe roundabout is a Lib-Dem councillor inher home town.

Yet this is the same Simon Hughes thatboasted when standing for London mayorthat he would see off the RMT; the sameLib-Dem party that has policy to ban allstrikes in “essential services”; the sameLib-Dem party that is positioning itself toform a coalition government with the To-ries in case of a hung parliament.

Oddly, when workers’ committee mem-bers were questioning Simon Hughes, andlocal Tory MP Andrew Turner, they ad-dressed them as representatives of “Gov-ernment”, despite both representingopposition parties. Hughes and Turnerdid not contradict them much, since theydo not disagree much with Governmentpolicy on Vestas. But that a view of “Gov-ernment” as a sort of joint affair of all theparties, more or less indistinguishable intheir distance from everyday life, seemsplausible shows how far democracy inBritain has withered.

The local Labour Party has related toVestas as if it is overwhelmed with shameabout the Labour government. A numberof local Labour Party members were veryactive in supporting the workers. Thelocal Labour Party gave a big donation tothe workers’ fund, and brought its mem-bers to the demonstrations. But there wasno Labour Party “profile” at all. TheLabour Party people never identifiedthemselves as “Labour”.

The Vestas campaign should feed into abroader battle for jobs, for workers’ rights,and for green policies, on the island. Forthat, a socialist organisation on the islandis needed, one that can set itself to study-ing and educating as well as agitating,and one that promotes the self-organisa-tion of a broader local labour movementand working-class unity in action.

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Vestas supporter: Mark Chiverton

Mark Chiverton is secretary of the Isle of Wight Unison local gov-ernment branch, and the Labour prospective parliamentary candi-date for the Isle of Wight constituency. He spoke to use inmid-August.

We’ve had good support for strikes and industrial action on the island before,but certainly not this kind of campaign. This is unique, both in its nationaland international profile, and in the sheer courage, persistence, and commit-

ment of the Vestas workers themselves.We need to continue to build support, and get more island people involved.This campaign can be a catalyst for some very positive things on the island. It shows

that a group of relatively unorganised workers can achieve great things. A key lesson isthat the unions need to be organising and recruiting more, and not just in our tradi-tional areas of strength; and rebuilding links through Trades Councils.

Our local Unison members have been very supportive. We have had quite good num-bers attending rallies and demonstrations, and beyond that a huge amount of interestand support behind the scenes. There’s been no criticism at all of the branch’s positionof support for the Vestas workers.

We need to keep up the pressure on the local [Tory] council and the Government. Thelocal Labour Party can have a role to play here.

In some ways it has been a difficult time for the Isle of Wight Labour Party. We havehad large numbers of people at the demonstrations, as well as working behind thescenes to get channels of communication to Ed Miliband, but it’s been embarrassing forthe Isle of Wight Labour Party to be in a position where the Government comes outwith a commitment to lots of new green jobs but won’t save the wind turbine blade fac-tories from being closed.

The Isle of Wight council and the local [Tory] MP have been lamentable in terms ofpandering to Nimbyism.

The Government has invested strongly interms of research and development, but interms of manufacturing jobs, the response isinadequate. I’d like to see public ownershipof the Vestas factories to tide production overuntil such a time as wind turbine demandpicks up.

If the Government is set against that strat-egy, I think it’s essential that there is urgent dialogue between the council, central Gov-ernment, and the business community, to make sure that the Isle of Wight can continueto show a strong level of employment in green jobs and can preserve the skills that theVestas workforce has got.

I’d call on other Labour Parties across the country to come on board for this cam-paign. I know a number of Labour MPs have signed an Early Day Motion [supportingthe Vestas workers, initiated by John McDonnell], but it would be good to see one or

Huge sections of thethinking public see theGovernment’s stance ongreen jobs and on Vestasas a contradiction.

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Vestas supporter: Lanah Moody

Lanah Moody is a student at Ryde High School. Her father JustinMoody was one of the occupiers at the Newport factory. She spoketo us in mid-August.

The last three weeks have been incredible. I’ve notreally had anything to do with environmental ac-tivists and all the political groups before, and it

has opened my eyes. Reading the socialist papers, I nowknow that we don’t realise how much happens, all overthe world, that we don’t hear in the mainstream news.

And I’ve seen how hypocritical it is, the way the Gov-ernment is running the country.

My dad did talk to me about it before he went into theoccupation, but at first I didn’t really know what tothink about it. The first few days were absolutely mad.And now the campaign has spread much further, allacross the world. It has even been mentioned in the NewYork Times.

Now we have to keep going, keep spreading theword, getting in more people, making the campaignstronger, coming up with new ideas. We can’t just let it fade away. We have to be per-sistent.

All of my friends basically agree. At the end of the day, it’s our generation that de-pends on the future jobs. We’re all worried that we may have to move off the island.The campaign has made people re-think everything. A couple of my friends havehelped me with leafleting. I’m going to try to make sure that some of them come tosome meetings with me and come to understand more of the politics involved.

I’ve always wanted to get into politics anyway, so this has been my way in, learningby intuition. There haven’t been any political groups or environmental groups on the is-land before, but there should be.

two Labour MPs come to the island and talk to the Vestas workers.It is very important for the credibility of the Labour Government that it responds pos-

itively to this campaign. Huge sections of the thinking public see the Government’sstance on green jobs and on Vestas as a contradiction.

I’m sceptical about the Lib Dems claiming to support this campaign. I think they arequite opportunistic, saying different things in different places and at different times. Iwould recognise that one or two local Lib Dem activists have spent a lot of time on thiscampaign, but I believe that the wider labour movement needs to be spearheading thecampaign.

I want to see a Labour government rather than a Lib-Dem government, but I want tosee a very different sort of Labour government from this one — one that is in touch withits grass roots and one where there is much more vibrant and active grass-roots andtrade-union campaigning which it responds to positively.

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26

A discussion among AWL ac-tivists: Bob Sutton, Dan Ran-dall, Ed Maltby, Martin Thomas,Stuart Jordan, Vicki Morris

On 20 September, two days beforepolice finally broke the Newportfactory blockade, some of the AWL

activists involved in the Vestas campaigntalked over the experience.Martin Thomas: The Vestas bosses an-

nounced that they were going to close thefactory on 28 April. But there wasn’t muchcampaign against the closure until threeAWL members travelled to the Isle ofWight from 15 June.

There aren’t many examples in our ex-perience, or any other experience, of a fac-tory occupation being triggered by a smallgroup of people coming and giving outleaflets and talking with the workers. So— what allowed it to happen, and whatare the lessons?Dan Randall: The lessons are multi-

faceted, but a fundamental one for me isto do with the AWL itself. It was the cul-mination of a number of years of seriouswork around this question – the theoreti-cal work on ecology we’d done, lookingback at classical Marxist ideas about themetabolism between humanity and na-ture; the activist work around ClimateCamp and helping build Workers’ ClimateAction; our general culture around pro-ducing workplace bulletins and having anindustrial perspective. That’s all part ofthe DNA of the AWL. It’s what equipped

Ed, Pat Rolfe, and Dan Rawnsley to godown to the Isle of Wight and do whatthey did.

The SWP were sniffing around the fac-tory before we were but gave up becausethey couldn’t see quick results. What wedid was not something that any left groupcould have done given luck.Stuart Jordan: The conditions were

pretty ripe for an intervention. Vestas wasone of the biggest private employers onthe Isle of Wight, an area with very highunemployment. It was sacking 600 work-ers after treating them badly while theyworked there.Ed Maltby: Things depended on the

qualities of the small group of workers in-side the factory who first approachedus.They had a particular mentality, a sortof militant sensibility. It hadn’t come fromprevious trade union experience. It wasmore a “cultural” thing. Some of them hadtravelled widely. They’d read. One was in-terested in permaculture.

I hadn’t even heard of Vestas until theAWL conference at the end of May. Butother comrades had done research, andequipped me, Pat and Dan Rawnsley witha list of contacts.Bob Sutton:We didn’t start with a

ready-made highly-developed ability tohelp workers organise — but we didknow what doing that looked like. We hadan idea in our heads of what we should bedoing, and in the course of the strugglewe’ve very much grown in our ability tomake that idea a reality.

I’ve been very involved in the AWL’s

Sparking the struggle,seeing it through

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environmental work, but I’m not sure howcritical that was. I’m not sure it would’vebeen so different had we gone to a wash-ing-machine factory. Our environmentalperspective was more something that“kicked in” after the initial stages.Vicki Morris: Persistence was central.

It’s illustrated by the story of 7 July. Threeweeks after starting the campaign, andthree days after the big meeting on theclosure, on 3 July, Ed had drawn a blankwith all the workers who’d suggested atthe meeting that they might be interestedin talking further about resisting the clo-sure. He decided to return home for abreak.

As his train got in to Waterloo station,he finally got a phone call from a workerinterested in talking. So he turned roundat Waterloo and went back to the Isle ofWight again.

That persistence makes you very tiredsometimes, but you have to accept thatclass struggle has its own logic andrhythms and you’ve got to bend to them.

Persistence is also central to our attitudein the campaign as a whole. We’re seeingit out to the end, seeing it through withthe people who started it.Ed: The fact that we “chose” Vestas was

to do with our ecological ideas. While wewere engaging with workers there, thework we’d done on seeing workers’ con-trol as central to an agency for solvingecological crisis allowed us to deal with is-sues that we encountered, such as the in-credible wastefulness of the company, likethe fact that workers were more pissed offwith the poor health and safety than theywere with many other issues.

Because we were able to draw analogiesbetween capitalist environmental degra-dation and capitalist-workplace degrada-tion of workers’ bodies, we were able torespond intelligently to a lot of the issuesraised.

Also, the experience at Vestas has al-

lowed us to teach a lot of environmentalactivists about some basic socialist ideas— especially people in the Climate Campmovement. We’ve given the notion ofworkers’ struggle as an agency real grip.Bob:We did punch above our weight. I

suppose you could describe that as beinga bit off-balance in terms of the resourceswe put into Vestas as against other cam-paigns.

Our ecological politics added a dimen-sion to our solidarity, and provided veryquick answers in the conversation youhave, when coming from outside the Isleof Wight, about “why do you see this asyour problem?” The implications of cli-mate change raise revolutionary politicsvery quickly.

Bringing in Ron Clark from the Visteonoccupation to the meeting on 3 July was, Ithink, a key catalyst.Martin:We should recognise there was a

lot of luck in it. We might’ve done it alland had nothing happen.

It shows the merits of being off-balance.If you try to do everything in a balancedway, you’ll just give a few seconds’ atten-tion to every struggle. It’s quite commonwith us, as with other socialist groups, thatwe’ll go along to a campaign, give out aleaflet, sell a few papers and come awayagain. We’re a small organisation and ourresources are spread thinly. Vestas showswhat you can do if you put in more sus-tained effort.

But the story of what happened between15 June and the occupation starting on 20July isn’t just the story of the AWL relatingto the Vestas workers. It’s also the story ofhow the initial group of workers whostarted discussing resistance to the closure,after 3 July, became larger and began tochange the thinking of a larger body ofworkers.

As late as the very day that the factorywas occupied, on the gates you still hadmost workers saying “yeah, it’s bad, but

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nothing can be done”. But there was aprocess by which one group of workerschanged the thinking of another.

It’s important not to see the workforce asa homogeneous mass. Or to see us as a ho-mogeneous mass, because we werechanged by it, too.

The end of the first phase of the cam-paign was the public meeting, sponsoredby Cowes Trades Council and Workers’Climate Action, held on 3 July.Stuart: That meeting had to be “legiti-

mate”. It had to have the look of a re-spectable labour movement affair.Unfortunately that meant a lot of full-timeofficials who saw their job as talking downany prospect of struggle. But it was impor-tant that Cowes Trades Council was host-ing the meeting, and Ron Clark was on theplatform, and he had something differentto say.

It’s always a problem being pro-trade-union with non-union workers when youknow how large the weight of conserva-tive officials is in the unions today. But onthe whole, I don’t think the meeting

played out at all badly.Bob: The involvement of other people

from Workers’ Climate Action — peoplelike Sam Wade from the IWW — was im-portant in building that 3 July meeting.Ed: In the course of the campaign,

Patrick Rolfe and I have kept on repeatinga quote from Lenin about the importanceof finding the next link in the chain andgrasping it. That was something we had todo at that meeting.

When I stepped off the podium, andwhen workers started looking disgruntledand leaving in disgust after the speechfrom John Rowse, the Unite national tradegroup secretary, who told everyone Unitewould help them sign on the dole, I re-membered something Ron Clark hadtaught me earlier in the week about theimportance of identifying potential lead-ers.

I ran around with my little notebook tak-ing numbers, making contacts, talking toworkers about things that could be donenext, like building up a telephone list andsounding out people on the shopfloor.

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Vestas workers speak out

Mark Smith worked in the finishing shop at the Newport factory,and was one of the occupiers. He spoke to us in mid August.

Without a doubt, the last three weeks have changed my view of the world.Firstly, on the question of unions. I’d probably never work at a place thatdidn’t want a union, or I’d

be very wary of it.We’ve had support from all differ-

ent types of people who I’d neverthought would support us, peoplewho don’t even know us. It’s beenreally good. And they all get alongtogether, they’re all pulling towardsthe same objective.Those who came from the mainland camebecause we saw Vestas as part of a biggerbattle about jobs, about workers’ rights,and about the future of the planet...

You’re spot-on about that. That’s what has brought a lot of people to support us.People can see that from the point of view of the future of the planet, it’s dire closingplaces like this.

I’m glad I went into the occupation, even though so far I’ve lost money from it. IfI’d done nothing and just walked away, then six months down the line, and for therest of life, I’d be kicking myself, thinking about what we could have done. It comesto a point where you have to stand up and fight for what you believe is right.

If you don’t stand up and fight, you just get pushed around.Now we have to keep up the pressure on Vestas and a lot of pressure on the Gov-

ernment — keep everything going, build on what we have already achieved, make itbigger and bigger.

We have to get everybody, nationally,to pull together, for us and for them-selves. If workers stick together in thefuture, and we all stand up and supporteach other, then we can change things.

You’ve seen different unions reactingdifferently in this campaign...

I joined Unite before the occupation,purely in order to have legal assistance.But then Unite didn’t turn up at all, for a

long time, and when they did, they weren’t that interested. Unite people had beentold not to get involved.

RMT did turn up, and have been a lot more militant. It’s a question of the relationbetween what you say, and what you’re actually willing to do.

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If I’d done nothing then sixmonths down the line, andfor the rest of life, I’d bekicking myself, thinkingabout what we could havedone.

Martin:After the meeting, you had theperiod from 3 July to 20 July, when the oc-cupation started, and then the first phaseof the occupation, to 24 July, when RMTfull-time officials arrived.

The period 3 July to 20 July was mostlyabout the initial group of workers who gotin touch with Ed meeting collectively,talking to other workers, drawing newpeople in, building momentum. Eventu-ally, on 20 July, someone snitched to themanagement. The management tried tointimidate the workers who they thoughtmight be involved in trying an occupa-tion. The workers decided that they had tomove quickly, quicker than they wouldhave done otherwise, and occupy beforemanagement changed the locks or triedsomething else pre-emptive. They occu-pied on the evening of 20 July.

We were very much helpers at thatstage, canvassing other trade unionists onthe island for support, leafleting on thestreets, trying to brief workers on what’sinvolved in organising an occupation.

On the morning of Tuesday 21 July, wewere in front of the factory with lots ofworkers milling around. The workerswere not there as a picket line. They hadturned up to work as usual. Managers hadtold them to go home again, but theywanted to stay around to see what washappening.Dan: On 21 July, I think we were right to

make a priority of getting a committeeelected by the workers outside the gate.That was important in terms of the owner-ship of the dispute and making sure thedispute was led by the workers them-selves.Martin: Looking back on it, I think that

on the evening of the 20th we should havespent more time talking among ourselvesand working out precisely what weneeded to do in the next few days.

At the time I thought we would haveUnite officials down within a day or so,

trying to take over. I was keen to get aworkers’ committee elected because I fig-ured the workers needed a collective wayof asserting themselves and trying to re-tain control.

It hadn’t crossed my mind that Unitewouldn’t show up at all, and that RMTwould arrive instead. Richard Howard,secretary of the Portsmouth branch of theRMT, was there very quickly, and played avery important role. We didn’t expect that.The weekend before we had tried tophone him to see if he was supportive buthad been unable to reach him.

What would we have done if the RMThadn’t turned up? I think we would’veapproached some other union — probablythe local GMB branch — but in any case itwas really important that the workerswere organised before full-time union offi-cials came in.

Those first few days were tremendous.On the morning of Tuesday 21st the work-ers were a crowd milling around outsidethe factory, concerned to see that no harmcame to their workmates who were occu-pying, but mostly not at all sure what theymight do about it or what might come outof it. By the evening of Wednesday 22nd,the workers at the gate were a collectiveforce, determined to support the occupa-tion and see the struggle through. We alsogot a “families and communities” commit-tee set up, though that never reallyworked properly.

We started to have regular meetings runby the workers. But mostly they were justone person making a speech, reportingwhat was going on inside the occupation.There wasn’t debate among the workersabout strategies. We had the idea of ex-tending the picket to other gates at the fac-tory, but it was never openly debated inthe meetings.

I wonder whether we should have beenpushier. We dealt with the issues by talk-ing with lots and lots of workers individu-

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ally and hoping that our arguments aboutopening out the meetings and extendingthe picket would reach a critical mass. Wesaw it as central to develop the workers’control of their own struggle, and weknew there was some apprehensionamong the workers about “outsiders”. Wedidn’t want to seize a megaphone andstart preaching.

Those were proper concerns, but maybewe acted too much as a sort of “thinktank” in that period, and we should havebeen pushier.Ed: It’s clear-cut from the political point

of view is that we should have foughtharder for sovereign meetings to be held.We tried to do it, and I don’t know whatsuccess we would’ve had if we’d triedharder. Maybe it just had to take sometime for that idea to percolate through aworkforce with no experience of unionmeetings, let alone democratic and livelyunion meetings.

After the RMT full-time organisers ar-rived from RMT head office, they startedorganising worker-only meetings, distinctfrom the general meetings of everyone atthe factory gate. At the time I saw worker-only meetings as a good move, potentiallybetter for the workers developing theirown independent voice.

In fact, however, the worker-only meet-ings were just briefings on legal mattersfrom the RMT organisers, not debatesamong the workers on strategy.Bob: The big lesson of this is that a poli-

tics of working-class self-emancipation in-volves giving people the skeletons andstructures to organise themselves.Dan: Bob is right, but I think we found

it quite difficult to combine being the peo-ple who focused on tactics, strategy andinformation with making ourselves visibleas an independent political element, withindependent activity, that people mightwant to join. SWP full-timers were prettyrelentless about talking to people about

joining the SWP; and SP organisers ar-rived and immediately seized the mega-phone to make long speeches aboutgeneral anti-capitalism and the claimedvirtues of their National Shop Stewards’Network; while we downplayed that sortof thing in favour of trying to get seriousconversations about what needed to bedone next.Martin: There was a paradox. Our focus

was on trying to help get a stronger organ-isation of the workers and a serious dis-cussion of strategy. Because that was ourfocus politically, we weren’t saying muchalong the lines of “we will do this foryou”, though in fact we did lots of practi-cal-help things. The SWP, both becausethey are a bit bigger than AWL, and be-cause they really didn’t care much aboutworkers’ self-organisation or have anyparticular ideas on strategy, could comeacross as having a lot to offer because theycould ply workers with invitations to gooff and speak at Campaign Against Cli-mate Change meetings here, there, andeverywhere.

Lots of tremendously positive thingshappened in those few days between 20and 24 July, but the workers’ committeestill wasn’t functioning well at the pointwhen the RMT arrived. It depended on avery small number of workers, so run offtheir feet with emergencies that they hadlittle time to think, and they didn’t organ-ise meetings of all the workers where de-bate took place.

Bob Crow came to the factory gate onThursday 23rd, and by Friday 24th thefull-time officials from RMT head officewere there.Ed: The RMT was giving very useful

support to radical, militant action. Eventhose workers who were in the occupationand initially reluctant to join the RMTafter they came out now speak very posi-tively of it. But the RMT was still basicallyfunctioning as a service provider, not an

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agency to help workers organise them-selves. The RMT officials could’ve usedthe worker-only meetings to help theworkers develop their own strategy, totake more conscious control of the dis-pute. They didn’t. Then on 8 August,when we eventually marched into thegrounds of the factory, beyond the secu-rity fence, the RMT officials soon toldeveryone to get out again.Dan: I think there was also a problem

about the activity outside, in that periodfrom 20 July to the eviction on 7 August,being run just as a support operation forthe workers in occupation, “the boys onthe balcony”. Not enough was done to getVestas workers who weren’t in the occu-pation to get more involved and take a bitof ownership over the dispute.Martin: The paradox was that, when the

RMT officials kept saying “the workershave to decide”, that actually had an anti-democratic effect. Often the workers werenot well-informed about what the RMTleaders were doing and thinking. It would

have been better if the RMT had said tothe workers: “this is what we think shouldhappen”, and had a debate about it. Pro-moting workers’ control over their owndisputes is not about standing back andsaying “oh, we won’t bother you”. It’s anactive process.

We should’ve made much more of thegeneral argument for strike committees.We have put a lot of effort into gettingstrike committees organised in disputeson the Tube, and fighting to get the RMTtop leadership to respect them. We havean amendment to the RMT’s rules, to bedebated at the upcoming conference, thatsays that every dispute should be run by astrike committee.

In the period when the RMT officialswere on site and the occupation was inprogress, from 24 July until the eviction on7 August, a lot was centred around thetwo court hearings, on 29 July and 4 Au-gust, where Vestas sought legal authorityfor the eviction.

One of the things we were arguing in

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that period was that we should preparefor an eviction; that we should plan in ad-vance for an eviction not being the end ofthe dispute, but a signal to escalate thepicket of the factory into a blockade.

On 9 August, two days after the evic-tion, there was a big meeting of workersand supporters at the Southern Vectis clubin Newport. Mark Smith argued at thatmeeting for moving to a blockade. We ar-gued for it. The SWP put all their empha-sis on calling demonstrations on days ofaction — 12 August and 17 September —but didn’t argue against a blockade.

So, a big meeting agreed to move to ablockade. But as it turned out, we didn’thave the organisation to make it happenin the next few days. There were only atoken few people at the back gate of thefactory. Momentum started to ebb.Ed: Should we have risked looking

“pushy” and maybe putting some peopleoff by fighting harder for the tactics andthe strategy of blockading the factory?Maybe, but there are limits to what wecould have achieved from a position ofnot having an AWL member inside theworkforce.

Also, by that time some of us were verytired, and the most active workers were

very tired too. The gulf between the cam-paign deciding something and it actuallygetting done was becoming deep. Thatwas a big organisational flaw.Bob: A new workers’ committee was

elected at that 9 August meeting, and oneof its members was designated as respon-sible for organising the extension of pick-eting. But within two days he wasn’t onthe island — he was off for some days,speaking at meetings on the mainland,without anyone being chosen to take overhis organising job.

There was a long-standing policy of“pillaging” key activists, by both the SWPand the RMT, to take them off to do speak-ing tours and the like, which made it verydifficult for the workers’ committee tofunction systematically.Vicki: There was a certain inertia about

the camp at the roundabout outside thefactory’s front gate by this point. Peoplehad settled in to organising the camp al-most as an end in itself. It took somethingof an effort to re-focus on the industrialstruggle that was still going on.Ed:Although no-one at the 9 August

meeting argued against blockading thefactory — or against working to extendthe blockade to the other factory, at Ven-

34

ture Quays in East Cowes, where activistsoccupied the roof from 4 August to 14 Au-gust — I suspect that the extension of thepicket from the roundabout was seen assomething that was a bit ultra-left, a bitadventurous. We hadn’t fully won a politi-cal argument with the workers aboutusing their industrial muscle to build ablockade.Martin:A lot of the workers were very

impressed by the publicity they got. Afterall, most people never get on the frontpage of the papers at any point in theirlives. They don’t get Government minis-ters agreeing to meet them. They don’t getfront-bench politicians, like the Lib-DemSimon Hughes, coming to offer themwarm words.

I suspect a lot of workers thought that ifthey could just keep up the coverage, theywere going to win by sheer force of pub-licity. The SWP very much played on that,with their emphasis on the days of actionas the key focus, and their huge over-valu-ation of what government minister JoanRuddock said when she agreed to meetthe RMT and a couple of workers on 6 Au-gust.Ed:A lot of the workers regarded them-

selves as protesting, rather than attempt-ing to get the company in a headlock. Andthere was a line coming from the SWPleadership that the important thing wascreating a noise, putting up a flag, creatinga photo-opportunity as a focal point for acampaign of public meetings.Martin: So, after the eviction on 7 Au-

gust, we didn’t really move to an effectiveextension of the picketing. The action atthe factory remained mostly confined tothe camp on the roundabout, whichwasn’t blockading anything.

That was bound to lead to some loss ofmomentum. The day of action on 12 Au-gust was disappointing on the Isle ofWight. The main demonstration on thatday, in East Cowes, was smaller than ear-

lier ones, on 8 August or at the court hear-ings.

12 August was quite well supportedelsewhere. Yet, as we kept on saying at thetime, a scattering of meetings, demonstra-tions, and stunts is good, but not a way toforce concessions out of a hardline em-ployer or a government. That’s what we,as AWL, spend a lot of our time doing —meetings, street stalls, small demonstra-tions. We think such activity is very im-portant to raise awareness and buildlong-term campaigns. But we don’t foolourselves that it will force the capitalistclass into concessions.

On 14 August, workers got their redun-dancy money. It had been postponed from31 July. Thanks to the occupation, allworkers had got two and a half weeks’extra pay and some had extra redundancymoney.

We said that the redundancy moneycould tip things one way or the other. Peo-ple could see the payment as finishing thestory — “the protest was good, but it’sover now”. Or it could tip people intothinking that they now had nothing tolose and becoming more ready for radicalaction. In the previous weeks workers hadbeen inhibited from joining the occupationat the Newport factory, or starting one inthe East Cowes (Venture Quays) factory,because they feared, with obvious goodcause, that such action could lose themtheir redundancy money.

In fact, with the redundancy paymentson 14 August, things tipped towards anebb rather than a revival. Too much mo-mentum had been lost for them to tip theother way.

Of course, that’s to do with the generalstate of the labour movement. If there hadbeen solidarity strikes, things would havebeen different. Even if there had beenproper delegations of trade unionists visit-ing the picket line, rather than individualunion reps or branch secretaries coming to

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give support or donations, that would’vechanged things.

In the event, the campaign was quiteheavily reliant on an unstated idea thatpublicity alone would force Vestas and thegovernment to move. No-one wanted toargue against the strategy of blocking theblades held in the factories. But we got alot of workers saying that Vestas washappy to let the blades sit there for manymonths, and wouldn’t care about thevalue involved, £700,000. That has turnedout to be untrue, but it was another wayof saying: “I don’t really see the point ofthe blockade.”Bob:Again, it’s the same question of the

campaign not having clear forums wherepeople can get an overview. Questions likethis — blocking the blades, extending theaction to Venture Quays — were dealtwith in a way where people were licensedto go off and do things if they wanted to,rather than making clear collective deci-sions.

I remember getting very conflicting re-ports about how much the blades wereworth and whether Vestas was botheredabout them at all. Most workers have noclear picture about the business decisionsof their employer. The “open the books”line of argument should’ve been mademuch more central.

I think it remains clear that the indus-trial leverage in this dispute is the block-ade of the marine gate. Our ability tosustain that remains to be seen. But in acrucial week, six workers were taken tothe TUC Congress to conduct a bit ofpropaganda amongst the trade union bu-reaucracy instead. The different opinionsand perspectives have never really beendebated out.

The RMT officials never showed any in-terest in the blockade, and in the last cou-ple of weeks, crucial for the blockade,there have been no RMT officials on the is-land.

At a Campaign Against Climate Changemeeting in London on 7 September, BobCrow appealed for donations to the work-ers’ fund as a way to help compensate theeleven occupiers whom Vestas sacked forthe loss of their redundancy. He was im-plicitly saying that the use of the fund forcampaigning was secondary and that hedidn’t see the RMT as using the blockadeto push Vestas to reinstate the redundancymoney.Vicki: It’s important now to mobilise

enough people to go to the blockade sothat when the crunch comes, there’senough people there to make a goodshowing. The company might offer some-thing — that’s one scenario. Another sce-nario is that they’ll come for the bladesand get the police in to clear the marinegate. If it comes to that, we want at leastthirty or forty people there for that experi-ence rather than just a dozen.Martin: I think winning reinstatement

for the eleven is still possible. The block-ade should be seen not as a gesture, but asa tactic with a particular aim in mind. It’simportant to have a realistic assessment ofwhat can be won now, and what can’t be.

It’s also important to start at this stageto develop the next stage — about rebuild-ing the labour movement on the Isle ofWight, especially through the TradesCouncils, and organising a proper cam-paign for jobs. The tax office and Gurit, afactory just across the road from Vestas,are already cutting jobs. Jobs are likely tobe cut with the schools reorganisationnow under way. The postal workers’ dis-pute is about job cuts.

There are practical things to be doneand work on them has to start as soon aspossible, so that the people who’ve stuckthe Vestas dispute out to the end go on tothe next stage with some energy still fresh,rather than staying on this stage untilthey’re so exhausted that they have to stepback.

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