5 things Vestas sit in is teaching us...

From the great blog River's Edge found HERE.

1. Capitalism is such a crazy profit-driven system that it does utterly ridiculous things, like closing a plant producing wind turbine blades at the precise time when the need for such technology has never been higher. If capitalism is allowed to continue in this unplanned and chaotic way, we will never achieve even the weak climate change targets agreed by world governments.

2. The social class that is most conscious of the threat to our environment, and best placed to do something about it, is the working class, because it does not share the insane lust for profit at the cost of anything else that is driving the owners of industry and the oil and energy companies to pollute and despoil our planet.

3. Workers who take militant action, like occupying a closing plant, are winning massive support and understanding from their community, and solidarity from around the world.

4. While the police, courts and legal system are designed to defend the right of a company to make profits ahead of the right of workers to work, and the need to save our planet by reducing carbon emissions, a strong campaign mobilising thousands can win victories, even here.

5. The Labour government has utterly failed to defend these jobs, or the plant, despite all their professed policies on climate change and the environment. Labour has abandoned the working class and is in the pocket of the big business polluters. Labour's commitment to the environment is an empty husk. We need a political alternative to Labour, and the Vestas workers could be key players in building and leading such an alternative.