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Greening NewcastleWelcome to issue 15 of the magazine of Newcastle Green Party, January 2012

Core battle builds upUp and down the country, battles are breaking out over greenfield sites threatened by a tide of new construction. Even the famous ‘Watership Down’ in Berkshire is at risk. This offensive is being driven by the attempt by the government to ‘get the economy going’ by means of infrastructural projects such as new roads and high-speed train lines as well as speculative housing, retail and office developments. Far from addressing the real needs of ordinary people and coping with ecological threats such as adverse climate change and post-peak oil, these plans are actually a desperate bid to revive the ‘business-as-usual’.

The means by which such plans can be bulldozed through is the government’s National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF). Even pro-Conservative papers like the Daily Telegraph have been calling it a “developers’ charter”. The NPPF is still only a draft yet planning inspectors in places like Rutland and Nuneaton have been citing it to rule in favour of some very damaging housing developments. The fact that the NPPF favours “sustainable development” just shows how worthless that term has become.

Here in Newcastle the council argues that it has no alternative but to produce a plan like the One Core Strategy (1CS) since, otherwise, the government will impose a free-for-all. That is indeed a possibility but the developments threatened by 1CS are all too real. Indeed the council has gone and tempted developers with the thought of big profits on sites like Salters Lane (next to Gosforth Nature Reserve). It is going to be hard to get the genie back into the bottle as a result of this rash plan.

Unsustainable bubbleGiven what is now known about adverse climate change, ‘peak oil’ and many other growing ecological constraints, this attempt to bring back the ‘old economy’ is doomed in the long run, but, in the short-term, it will do immense damage. This will, in turn, make it harder to cope with the challenges ahead.

Thus global food prices are steadily rising yet what will be priceless farmland in future decades is being buried under brick, concrete and tarmac. Many of the development will simply add to the already unsustainable levels of CO2 emissions. Generally these developments just cover more of the country under urban sprawl.

Meanwhile such development will worsen traffic congestion. Given the current economic climate, they will just add to the

empty shops and vacant office premises that already dot several towns and cities. The housing construction at the heart of many such development will, most likely, create another speculative property bubble destined to burst, as has been seen across in Eire.

The few benefit… againEven if new-build does not go ahead, given the state of the property market, the very threat of large-scale construction work will nonetheless blight many communities. But the big building contractors such as Persimmons and Bellway will still profit. Changes in land use designations, removing protection from development, will inflate the value of the large amounts of urban fringe land they own or on which they have acquired options. In turn, such inflated assets would improve company balances, even though there has been no actual growth in real wealth.

At the same time, those now unemployed or whose jobs are at risk will derive little benefit. Any economic expansion is likely to be comparatively ‘jobless’, with profits used to fund more automation. Of course, construction work does create some employment but it is often temporary and does not necessarily help locals. Some new jobs in supermarkets hardly match those now haemorrhaging from the public sector and from the closure of so many local stores.

Trouble in ToonThe One Core Strategy of both Newcastle and Gateshead councils is accompanied by an economic programme imaginatively called The One Plan. The latter can be found in glossy brochures picturing ‘high-tech.’ research facilities and ‘creative hubs’. Given the current state of the university sector, it is hard to see that it will provide strong employment possibilities. Even if the envisaged ‘cutting edge’ companies do come into sustained existence (and look what happened to lots of dot.com companies) they are unlikely to offer jobs for the average unemployed person.

The One Core Strategy plan threatens to fatally cripple Gosforth

Protest againstcouncil plansMass ramble from Heathery Lane(near Gosforth Nature Reserve) along the ‘wildlife corridor’ to the ‘Cluny’ for late lunch

11.00 a.m. Sunday, February 12th.Details will be circulated but keep looking at:

http://www.savegosforthwildlife.com/

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Nature Reserve with nearby housing developments (Persimmons claim their constructions will improve biodiversity!). Other planned developments will smother local neighbourhoods to the north-west and west of Newcastle. Meanwhile, old urban areas like Scotswood and Walker, where locals want regeneration projects and where there is plenty of genuine brownfield land, will be marginalised. Across in Gateshead, large numbers of fit housing will be demolished, instead of being refurbished, in the manner of the now widely discredited ‘Pathfinder Programme’ (see Anna Minton’s excellent book Ground Control)

Local councillors and planners of course like to claim that they too do want to use brownfield sites. Yet, if given the choice as under the Strategy, developers will prioritise executive-style housing on greenfield sites. The government’s withdrawal of subsidies for brownfield development will accentuate this bias just as much as its slashing of support for solar installations will hinder the switch to renewable energy sources. The exclusion of ‘windfall’ brownfield sites (e.g. ones where, say, a factory has suddenly closed) from the strategic housing land availability assessment will accentuate this unsustainable bias to greenfield sites.

Many LibDem councillors who oppose the draft Strategy have called for a policy of ‘brownfield sites first’. Yet they also support the broad plan for economic growth. In the context of on-going physical expansion, the time would soon come where development would use up all such options, leading inexorably to more and more destruction of farmland, wildlife habitat and other open spaces.

Green alternativeOnly local Greens have posed the sustainable alternative: no more sprawl but better use of the existing built-up area, all within a vision of not overall growth but a ‘steady-state economy’. Instead of duplicating the excellent work of bodies such as the CPRE, local Greens decided to produce a broad critique, questioning the basic assumptions, some unspoken, beneath the Strategy.

There has been widespread and growing public opposition. Greens have played an important part. At the 420 strong public meeting at Gosforth Civic Hall last November to protest against the threat against the local nature, Gateshead Green Party member Dave Byrne, a Durham University professor, was the main platform speaker and the event was co-chaired by a member from the Newcastle branch.

It is very clear just how important political leadership is in such campaigns. At the last two council meetings, large numbers of protestors attended but it was obvious that many were uncertain what promises made by council leaders actually meant (usually little!). The same has been true of public meetings which the planners have organised. Some members of the public seemed to be taken in by the honeyed phrases being bandied about. Claims, for example that “people have to live somewhere” (… so this or that green field has to be built on) can sway the undecided. It is vital, then, that a different, well-argued and comprehensive view is articulated.

A number of false perspective and specific argument need to be challenged in such battles. The first is that the such plans rest a proper ‘evidence base’ (Planning Inspectors will check whether it is ‘sound’). Local Greens argue that the evidence for the Strategy is more like a “dodgy dossier”, with out-of-date statistics, unsound assumptions and poor reasoning.

Numbers countThe related issues of population, housing need and strategic land availability are critical. The birth rate has gone on Tyneside as is the case in most parts of Britain. Clearly that presents long-term problems which is why Greens have always warned about the

threat from human numbers. But the two councils actually call for an increased population as a strategic goal, an aim that is quite irresponsible in what ‘steady-state’ economist Herman Daly rightly calls a “full world”.

In reality what they really want a return of well-off council tax payers who have moved out of the area to move back within the boundaries of Newcastle and Gateshead. But the numbers themselves are used to justify a housing construction whose scale would be far higher than the best rate of the ‘boom years’, clearly a fantasy. Their dodgy projections for more and more house starts are based on other unsound premises. Thus rival councils in the area, all with basically the same plan, are counting the same people more than once, exploiting the imprecision relationship between resident and travel-to-work populations.

They also base their case on the fact of an ageing population, though the kind of housing that would be built offers little to senior citizens seeking to downsize. They further inflate their figures by counting the big influx of students, economic migrants and refugees into the city. But such growth is unstable and could be easily reversed. In any case, both local universities are building more halls of residence. Indeed recovery of terraced house property now rented to students could provide ideal homes for those at lower ends of the housing market. Recently groups like Poles have begun to leave the area seeking better opportunities closer to home.

Faulty projectionsLocal Greens have also argued that ‘evidence-based policy-making’ is not all that it is cracked up to be. Extrapolations from past circumstances which seem destined to disappear are far from sound. Thus many plans assumes that people could and should be able to drive their cars more or less as they did before (hence provision of houses with twin garages). Yet it seems evident that the end of large-scale private motoring could soon be in sight. In the past the UK was able to import lots of food. In the future that seems far less certain. Thus the conservation of farmland will be vital while plans for more ‘urban agriculture’ ought to be formulated. It is similarly unlikely that past growth in university provision will continue in the future.

In any case, there are often unspoken values and other assumptions beneath such policy-making with belief about desired goals also affected the way ‘facts’ are sought and used. Moreover, information can be ‘fixed’. Thus planners like to claim that they have come to their conclusions objectively. Often they will say that they have sieved possible sites in terms of their suitability development using various criteria. Yet a site that scores high (and ought therefore to be protected) can be marked down if the value of neighbouring site is altered or sites amalgamated so that, together,

Protest at Civic Centre last December against threat to local Green Belt

[No badgers were harmed in the making of this demo,]

Picture: Gemma Marriner

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they then score ‘better’ in the site selection criteria.Sometimes a particular site can simply be called a ‘neighbourhood

growth area’ even though there is, at present, nothing there that meaningful constitutes any sort of functioning neighbourhood. But it still sounds good (as does the promiscuous prefixing of the word ‘sustainable’).

Land abuseGreens argue that there are quite big brownfield sites in poorer parts of the city. Developers should be directed there. They also point to the sheer scale of empty property on Tyneside as well as the scope for accommodation developments above shops. They also ask why, if the situation is as critical as the two councils claim, is investment being sought for flagship store and flashy office developments (several local ‘business parks’ now stand half-empty).

The councils also confuse ‘demand’ (only the top-end of the property market, that for executive style housing, is currently buoyant) with ‘need’. In such a situation, those waiting for even a basic starter home will be ignored by reliance on so-called ‘market forces’. Indeed the evidence can be seen on the last big Green Belt grab to the north of Newcastle at the laughingly titled ‘Great Park’. There, only expensive houses have been thrown up and even so large bits remain empty such is the weakness in demand amongst even the better-off.

The Greens argue that many of the harmful impacts of such developments cannot be mitigated by developers’ money. Once wildlife jewels such as Gosforth Park Nature Reserve are gone, they are gone for good. Built over farmland is extremely hard to restore to full productivity should the need arise. In other cases, attempts to offset problems like traffic congestion or water pollution will be cripplingly expensive. Promises to leave ‘wildlife corridors’ have largely proved absolutely worthless in the past.

Greens have also to be fully aware of council machinations. In the case of Newcastle and Gateshead, the ruling Labour group tried to get the Strategy through ‘under the radar’. Few had even heard of it until a mass protest at the November council meeting forced the council to extend the consultation period. Only then was more publicity given to the plan. Before then the council freesheet, City Life, had failed to launch a proper dialogue.

Of course councillors and planners prey on public apathy and resignation in the face of threatened developments. Supporters of the One Core Strategy like to imply that it is rather pointless to resist. Local Greens have been calling this the ‘Vogon Argument’, after the Vogons’ battlecry “Resistance is useless” in The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The Vogons, it may be remembered, were a race of constructors and developers.

Fortunately, as the Objection also highlights, there has been growing public opposition. Andrew Grey, the local ‘lead’ Green Party candidate in South Heaton ward, made the following comment:

“The Councils wrongly claim that there is no alternative when, in fact, there are plenty of examples of better initiatives in several other cities and towns. We draw attention to many in our Objection. The two councils are using the forthcoming National Planning Policy Framework to justify a bad plan. It is the same old mix of wishful thinking and bad policy we saw in the now discredited ‘Going for Growth’ programme. We Greens think that the current Core Strategy is so flawed that it would be better to go back to the drawing board. Otherwise a Planning Inspector might just throw it out and we’ll be left with the nightmare of a developers’ free-for-all.”

Copies of the Green Party objection to the One Core Strategy are posted here:http://neengland.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/northeastfiles/Newcastle/%20Green%20Party%20response%20CS.pdf

More background can be found here:http://neengland.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/northeastfiles/Newcastle%20NL%2014.pd

Much anger on Tyneside has been stirred by the threat to the local nature reserve (above). James Littlewood, director of the Natural History Society of Northumbria, which manages the reserve told Greening Newcastle:

“Gosforth Nature Reserve is a SSSI, local wildlife site and Newcastle’s most important wildlife area.  It is unique in the city and cannot be replaced.   Indeed there are few such important wildlife sites in the UK’s major cities and Newcastle should be proud of this natural asset, which is one of the country’s oldest nature reserves.  In the past 12 months it has featured on the BBC’s Springwatch and as one of the reasons for Newcastle’s title of Sustainable City.   It is one of the city’s best natural assets and the jewel in the crown of an emerging green infrastructure network. There are currently 3 Bittern at the reserve and we are hoping that they will breed in the near future - the first time in the north-east since the 1950’s. We should be looking forwards to celebrating a rare conservation success story not mourning one.”

Keep up the oppostion to the ‘Core Strategy’.See page 4.

Join the mass ramble:bring family and friends.

Picture: Keith Cochrane

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Opposing the Core StrategyLocal groups are mobilising on the west side of the city against the threat of massive developments on their doorstep. Adam Vaughan of Newcastle West Green Belt Protection Campaign explains why:

Like most people in Newcastle, we first heard of the Council’s proposals indirectly. Somebody had read an article somewhere that mentioned house building plans for the West of the City. It didn’t take much digging to find out the scale of the proposed developments and everybody I met seemed genuinely outraged that such significant plans could be put forward without notice.

From our very first public meeting held in Callerton, it was obvious that we were going to have to step in where the Council had failed and urgently bring this to people’s attention. We soon gathered support from across all the affected areas, from Woolsington, Kenton Bank Foot and Kingston Park in the North, down to Wallbottle, Abbey Farm and Throckley in the South, and covering numerous villages and suburbs that will all bear the brunt of the plans.

We’ve spent a lot of time going through the One Core Strategy in detail, attending consultation events and speaking to officers. However hard we try, we just can’t accept that these decisions are being made in the best interests of the City. This is Newcastle’s Back Yard, and the green belt has prevented urban sprawl and villages from merging for generations. Now, the proposals, not least the Callerton Park Strategic Growth Area, are an assault on our countryside and green spaces.

The plans are based on questionable housing numbers to meet questionable forecasts of population and growth. They will result in an unsustainable sprawl giving rise to traffic congestion on all the arteries into the city, and an unnecessary burden on local services. They must be stopped!

See: www.nwgreenbelt.org.uk

WALK ON THE WILD SIDE

Join the walk along the wildlife corridor from Gosforth Nature Reserve to the River Tyne, Sunday Feb 12th.

Protest the outrageous proposal to build 600 houses next to Gosforth Nature Reserve, which would destroy buffer zones and block off the wildlife corridor through Jesmond Dene, along the line of the Ouseburn.

Muster at 11 a.m. at the west end of Heathery Lane (see map). Additional starting points: Gosforth Nature Reserve and Melton Park (10.30 a.m.) and West Moor Community Centre (10.15 a.m.).

The walk, following the line of the Ouseburn, will take approximately two hours, and we will stop at The Cluny for refreshments, then continue towards the Tyne, and Millennium Bridge.

For more information, tel. 0191 213 6063 or e-mail savegosforthwildlife@hotmail.co.uk.

www.SaveGosforthWildlife.com

The extent of the relationship between Persimmon Homes and Newcastle City Council planners has been revealed by a Freedom of Information request, released to ‘Save Gosforth Wildlife’ just before Christmas As early as October 2010, Peter Jordan, regional projects director of Persimmon Homes, wrote to Newcastle City Council urging it to include the site next to Gosforth Nature Reserve for development. He claimed that “the site is in an extremely sustainable location”. Subsequently, this site was included in the City’s preferred options for development.

Nick Glover explains why we must fight to protect Gosforth Nature Reserve

The Reserveis an oasis of calm in the urban area but also a place of richness and diversity in terms of the wildlife it supports. Two outstanding experiences that I have had at the Reserve in recent months underline its value for me.

One summer evening I was there as part of a bat watch; we were stationed by a known roost tree and, as dusk fell, a few individual bats emerged. Suddenly the few turned into a stream, too many and too quick to count, as we were supposed to do. To see perhaps 80 noctule bats emerge so dramatically in the space of a couple of minutes illustrated the largely hidden and unappreciated life that inhabits the Reserve.

The other occasion was on an early winter afternoon. I noticed small flocks of starlings starting to circle over the Reserve. Over the next ten minutes more and more groups joined the main body until we had a wheeling, circling flock, several hundred in number, giving a wildlife “performance” that would remain in the memory for a long time.

These are not unique experiences, but they illustrate the rich biodiversity that exists in, and depends upon the Reserve and the open land surrounding it. This is an area that we cannot afford to lose if we are to live in a sustainable 21st century urban region.

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No Way Bellway

The White House farm development (left) is only one of several proposed for North Tyneside, some of which can be seen below

The leaders of neighbouring North Tyuneside Council and their friends amongst the big development companies act as if it is the divine mission to destroy every last blade of grass in the area. The tide of sprawl has spread across more land there than anywhere else on Tyneside. The costs are the same though: loss of vital farmland and wildlife habitat, more cars on the road and longer journeys, the smothering of healthy ocal communities, loss of recreational space, greater greenhouse gas emissions and general environmental damage… Meanwhile once shiny new office developments stand half empty and genuinley derelct brownfield sites are left to rot.

A particularly bad example – though far from the only one – can be seen at West Moor where Bellway is seeking to dump some 366 houses and flats on the White House Farm site. 8 previous applications have been turned down but now the developers are back again, wanting to throw up even more speculative housing than the 267 they sought the last time. Yet, of existing sites that already have planning permission for new housing, an incredible 67% have not

been started. (Indeed, at nearby Newcastle Great Park, only 600 of the planned 2,500 properties have been completed)

Of course the White House Farm is near Gosforth Park and so developers entertain greater hopes of making a killing there. It certainly will help to kill off Gosforth Nature Reserve already menaced from the south by Persimmons. The White House development site constitutes 33% of farmland within a 2km radius from the centre of the nature reserve. This is vital foraging land. New roundabout construction will be needed on Salters Lne and, overall, a tide of new traffic from these developments thereaten choke areas such as Haddrick’s Mill en route to Newcasle.The local action group deserves maximum support:See http://www.westmooractiongroup.co.uk/Home.html So too do other groups fighting the development monster, not least:http://www.holystoneag.co.uk/article.php?start=5&tag=Whitehouse%20FarmPlease contact them and voice your support for their struggles.

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Tyne Green Talk a series of discussion meetings

organised by Newcastle & Gateshead

Green Parties

All welcome!

19.30, Wednesday, Feb. 15th,Topic:

TransportThe Central (upstair room),

Gateshead end of Tyne Bridge

(Metro: Gateshead)

Transport is a sector where society seems to be reaching the limits to growth most rapidly. At a time when the European Union, for example, is proclaiming strategies for what it calls ‘sustainable’ mobility, the reality may be that we have to start planning now for less movement. Mass mobility, both in terms of sheer volume, speed and specific modes of transport has already meant colossal levels of environmental, economic and social damage

Furthermore, the present transport system has been heavily subsidised directly and indirectly by government policy while alternatives have been strangled. The bias towards cars is grossly inequitable, discriminating against the needs of those who, for reasons of income, age or disability, cannot drive or who simply prefer to walk, cycle or travel by bus and train.

All kinds of technological ‘fixes’ have been pursued; the substitution of diesel for petrol engines, catalytic converters, more fuel-efficient vehicles, electric cars, car pooling schemes, bus priority lanes, road pricing, traffic-calming road alterations… However, continued growth in the number of vehicles must eventually cancel out possible gains. Some measures like road pricing are also highly inequitable since the rich could afford to pay up but not the poor.

Already some bus and train networks are badly congested; some cities are even suffering from a surfeit of cycles. Small-scale traffic calming measures like blocking off selective streets may merely transfer displaced cars and lorries to other thoroughfares. Some schemes like ‘high occupancy only lanes’ may need costly bureaucratic enforcement.

What is the best route to a sustainable transport system?The first of the new Green Party disucssion meetings

will explore the options. Join the debate.

Left, Twyford Down, destroyed by new road

Right, part of the proposed route of the London-Birmingham

high-speed train route

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Occupy?The so-called ‘Occupy’ camp has now disappeared from the Monument. Tony Waterston visited it and wonders about what the protestors had to say.

The protest movement calls themselves ‘the 99%’. They consider that they adopt the majority view in the country on the banking an economic crisis. True? Maybe – or maybe not. There are certainly very many in the country who agree that:

• The bankers who caused the crisis should not be rewarded;• There should be much greater regulation of the bank;• The current level of income and wealth inequalities is scandalous and should be remedied;• The political system is corrupting and is not working to the benefit of the majority

However, we may wonder how many agree that

• There should be voting reform towards a system of proportional representation;• There should be higher taxation for all to fund the health service and education;• There should be lower consumption;• Capitalism is the cause of our economic problems;• Increased growth is unsustainable and fuels global warming.

…I suspect not the majority.

How do they plan to tackle their aims? As far as I can understand, this is simply through their presence and their actions. They intend to be a visible (though non-violent) assault on the centres of corporate greed, thereby increasing political pressure for change. They wish to enable a dialogue with members of the public, the church and the bankers themselves on the harm being done by the present system. And they mean to demonstrate (at least in the St Paul’s demo) that democracy can work in a different way, through a daily assembly and a system of organisation which values all skills and personalities.

Does this mean becoming political? I’m not sure whether they want to, even though the Green Party is clearly the one to join. As a graduate of the CND marches, the Iraq war march and the climate change demonstration, and as a frequent visitor to Palestine, I have seen that numbers count. The huge London demonstrations had an effect on public opinion owing to their sheer mass, and in Egypt’s Tahrir square (which was an influence on the UK occupations), the numbers increased week by week. Greenpeace demonstrations have been effective through the sheer bravery and eye-catching insolence of their actions.

However I am anxious that in London and Newcastle, the numbers aren’t going to increase and the public will soon get bored – unless the strategy changes. Should this be towards non-violent direct action? To me, the urgency of the situation and the lack of any cohesive political action by government demands this approach.

99%?It is a good slogan: 1% versus the 99%. But income and wealth distribution is, of course, rather more complicated that the figures suggest. The poorest tenth of the population now have, between them, 1.3% of the country’s total income and the second poorest tenth have 4%. In contrast, the richest tenth have 31% and the second richest tenth have 15%. The income of the richest tenth is more than the income of all those on below-average incomes (i.e. the bottom five tenths) combined.

The proportion of total income going to the richest tenth is noticeably higher than a decade ago: 31% in 2008/09 compared with 28% in 1998/99. The rest of the income distribution changed little over the last decade. Clearly there are good few more than just 1% who have major stakes in the current social and economic system and live, as the Americans say, ‘high on the hog’.

The on-going Euro-crisis, in particular the imposition of bail-outs with stringent austerity terms, not least in Greece, has a political side which is being rather hidden by the furore over the cuts themselves. However elite groups in countries like Germany and France are exploiting the situation to pursue greater political centralisation across the EU. It would create structures that are far less democratic and far less responsive to the needs of local communities and environments. Instead the rule of the ‘Few’ would be much more deeply entrenched. On the danger of a new ‘Euro-Despotism’, see: this video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxMOW94V6xQ

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Word Game

strangle solar rivals). We cannot ‘work together’ (as ‘reformists’ so often advocate) with people who, deep down, have no intention of co-operating with us.

GigantismPerhaps the biggest word missing from Professor Jackson’s talk was a small five letter one: ‘scale’. It was absent in several ways. One of his slides, for example, featured the conventional economic model centred on the circular interaction between firms and households. But Jackson did not directly address the issue of the very size of some of those firms, something that can make them “too big to fail” (at our collective cost… to their further profit) and which gives them such political ‘clout’ that mainstream politicians quail before them.

Then there is still more important matter of the ‘scale’ of all those households and the people they contain. But human numbers did not get a proper emphasis. It is not just a matter of their pressure on physical space and resources. The ‘weight’ of each voter in society’s ‘household’, for instance, inevitably goes down with a growing number of voters, not an argument against democracy per se, but still something to be taken into account, not least in gargantuan excrescences like the EU. It might also be noted that some of the world’s worst violence is happening in lands with the most rapidly growing populations: it is no mere coincidence.

Then there is the scale of the total human economy (numbers x. per capita consumption x. type of technology used) in relation to the total ecosystem as well as equivalent local and regional carrying capacities. There must be some proportion or else ruin must follow, as surely as night follows day. Obviously if we have fewer people, the ecosystem could cope with greater consumption per person (not just goods and services but comparative intangibles like ‘privacy’).

But it is total pressures that tell. So we need ways of regulating the quality and quantity of human interactions with the rest of nature. Jackson tended to focus more on the need for new indicators

There seems to be increased interest in alternatives to the inequality, waste and destruction inherent in the today’s social order. In the next issue we will discuss the extremely well attended presentation by Richard Wilkinson, co-author of the ‘Spirit Level’ who argued that fairer societies are also happier and more secure ones. Here, we focus on the recent lecture by Professor Tim Jackson whose book ‘Prosperity Without Growth’ has also received considerable praise.

Professor Jackson’s lecture at Newcastle University was unusually erudite and engaging. Fortunately the big Curtis Auditorium was packed so many people got to hear his words of wisdom. Above all, he conclusively demonstrated that what he called the ‘old economy’ was finished, even though politicians, civil servant and business leaders run around helplessly trying to find some means of reviving it. He outlined the contours of a new economy that can satisfy genuine human needs whilst not trashing the ecological base on which any form of economy inescapably depends.

Debate about these critical matters is, however, often befogged by the language with which it is conducted. Thus Newcastle-Gateshead councils’ Core Strategy uses much of the language employed by Jackson (prosperity, sustainability …) to justify a concerted attempt to revive the ‘old economy’. The government’s changes to the National Planning Policy Framework have also been presented by ministers as a step towards more ‘sustainable development’.

Elsewhere there are individual commentators like Mark Lynas and Stewart Brand who are using ‘sustainability’ to justify a radical expansion of both genetic engineering and nuclear power. Others like Amory Lovins argue that ‘smart growth’ can do the trick, avoiding any need for more radical change. So there is a battle over the very meaning of such language.

Nice oneProfessor Jackson could not possibly cover even a fraction of what needs to be said in his allotted time but, hopefully, it may not be too churlish to note one or two absences, ones to do with words not said. First, however, a certain politeness in Jackson’s approach might be noted. Perhaps this stems from his personality, perhaps from too much time Jackson has spent in academia and the (outer) corridors of power (the recently chopped Sustainable Development Commission etc).

However, a bit more anger might be in order, not least to mobilise ordinary people. It might help to denounce more full-bloodedly the rottenness of our socio-economic order: the sheer stench of the present economic structures, the greed and irresponsibility, the breadth and depth of human suffering, the repression of protest, the violence against other forms of life… Indeed a TV show like the Tamara Ecclestone: Billion $$ Girl or the exposés of the ‘City’ in Private Eye might perhaps do more to open eyes about individual profligacy or corporate abuses than the most technically correct economic graph. Certainly we need to pack emotional punches as well as sharpen rational arguments.

What did not come through forcefully enough from Jackson’s lecture was the way certain individuals and groups gain profit and power from ‘business-as-usual’. They systematically deny problems, witch-hunt those who raise alarm (witness the story of Rachel Carson), disown their responsibilities (remember Bhopal), drag their feet when action becomes unavoidable (crawling pace over global warming) and sabotage alternatives that threaten their exalted position (look at how the nuclear industry has tried to

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and targets within the human economy (all necessary) rather than measures advocated by the likes of ‘steady-state’ economist Herman Daly to set limits to those total impacts. Daly also stresses the need for limits on economic differentials within society. If we must bake a smaller cake, it is even more urgent to share it out fairly.

Jackson effectively demolished one assumption after another of the ‘old economy’ loyalists, the growth boosters and the snake oil salesmen. Yet, at the end of his talk, the audience was not left with a crystal-clear presentation of the fundamental ‘paradigm’ choice: growth (of any shape or form) or the steady-state. [The latter is not some fixed point: rather it is more like the dynamic balance that a successful cyclist has to maintain] John Stuart Mill recognised this back in the 1840s so it is scarcely a modern insight. But it is still one that needs to be loudly voiced midst all today’s clamour “to get the economy growing again”.

Yet one more word was not heard loud and clear at this point: overshoot. There are, of course, dangers in voicing an excess of ‘bad news’ and, in any case, it must be presented sensitively. But facts are facts. Indeed, it only compounds the crisis if the reality is not faced that humankind – in toto – has already transgressed several ecological safety margins. Pursuit of growth of any kind at that point is like shovelling coal into the boiler of a runaway train heading for a cliff. 1

The proliferation of all sorts of social ills suggests that, beyond a certain point, pursuit of more growth triggers parallel breakdowns within the purely human community too. Both individuals and whole communities can only be ‘stretched’ so far, before the social fabric begins to tear. Here Jackson did indeed make some excellent points about the absence of any linear correlation between economic growth and increased consumption, on the one hand, and, on the other, personal and social well-being. It is indeed possible to have too much of a good thing, let alone bad ones.

BefoggedDiscussion of these matters particularly suffers because of a veritable fog created by vague words like ‘growth’ and ‘development’. Those two in particular have come to mean whatever their users want them to mean. Indeed, they can be used to justify all sorts

1. Some of those margins – or, rather, ‘minefields’ – are listed here:http://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/researchnews/tippingtowardstheunknown/thenineplanetaryboundaries.4.1fe8f33123572b59ab80007039.html

of unsustainable and unworthy things. The grossly over-praised Brundtland Report thus advocated an expansion of nuclear power, the putting of more land under the plough and a big growth in world trade. Another words is sometimes added: ‘quality’ (as in ‘quality of life’) or ‘qualitative’ (as opposed to quantitative) growth. Then ‘choice’ is also used promiscuously.

It might be wondered if all those heads nodding in agreement with Professor Jackson at the Curtis Auditorium event were actually agreeing with quite different things. In any case, the whole ‘old economy’ was denounced in generalities and, like sin, no-one was likely to stand up and publicly demand more of it. Of course, where it comes down to reducing, let alone banning of, specific activities and products, that unanimity might rapidly disintegrate. Thus calls for a lowered motorway speed limit, desirable on many grounds, trigger virulent opposition.

But there are also deeper problems. ‘Personal development’ may be very worthwhile for the individual, while most of us welcome some choice in our lives. Yet all these things do not exist in a vacuum. They depend on physical things. One might develop ‘musically’, for example, but it might help to have musical instruments, hi-fi systems and concert halls, all of which come with ecological price tags. Furthermore, individuals can only do so much; usually one (worthy) option comes at the expense of another, if only for reason of time constraints. Limits-to-growth and trade-offs apply again… and again, it is something lost in the verbal fog of ‘personal development’, ‘quality’ and ‘choice’.

Wreckers’ BallProfessor Jackson’s picture of the world tended to be somewhat lacking in flesh and blood. Real people and real organisations were absent. It sometimes seemed as if the ills he so deftly described were happening of their own accord or were simply due to misunderstandings and misinformation. But forces like so-called Big Tobacco, Big Sugar, the Fossil Fuel Barons and their ilk know exactly what they are doing and how much they stand to gain from doing more of it. Have we forgotten names like Monsanto, Enron, Halliburton, BP, Cargill, Dow, BAE, Goldman Sachs… ?

And we haven’t started on assorted religious fanatics, political crazies (Peru’s Shining Path’, etc.)… and Jeremy Clarkson. Governments too play their malign part (Trident, foreign wars, new nuclear power programmes, support for genetic engineering, a wealth of ‘perverse’ subsidies, tax cuts for the super-rich, blind eyes to tax havens, etc… and, in some countries, economic incentives for large families). Then there are the assorted kleptocrats (Suharto, Marcos, Duvalier and so forth, though it seems unfair to leave out the likes of Warren Buffett, the Koch Brothers, the Duke of Westminster and their kind too), ‘mafia states’ (Russia, etc.), non-states (Somalia and co.) plus a weird and not wonderful variety of ‘rogue states’: Syria, Iran, Israel, North Korea… oh yes, and the USA

So we need to be frank and forthright about all those vested interests. That includes full recognition of those large sections of the general public who, either as workers or consumers, support, in one way or another, destruction-as-usual (Jackson’s work is very perceptive about the psychology of consumerism). Many ordinary citizens play a willing, indeed wilful part of the waste and despoliation around us (from ‘litter louts’ to SUV enthusiasts). There is indeed a vast anti-sustainability army with many generals and many, many more foot soldiers.

There are plenty of examples of this mass zeal for consumerism. The average wedding cost is expected to be around £18,600 in 2011. It is not just a conspiracy by retailers to flog more stuff (an average bride’s outfit now costing £1500, for example) but something in which millions enthusiastically participate. The list

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could go on and on. The point is to be honest about the breadth and depth of opposition to what Professor Jackson called the ‘new economy’. It is certainly discouraging. But naïveté will lead to even greater discouragement.

It is all very well to call for a ‘national conversation’, a ‘great debate’, and ‘dialogue’. But what if they – the massed ranks assaulting the Earth – are not prepared to listen and will not talk. Look how long it took to take lead out of petrol even though the hard evidence was overwhelming. How many died quite unnecessarily in the meantime? Look at the failure to stop the hunters, trappers, poachers, poisoners, forest clear-cutters, ‘wall of death’ commercial fishers, factory farmers … and the consumers of their products who – together – are wiping out biodiversity. Will sweet words of reason stop them? If not, what? We certainly need to talk about that.

Blocked passagesAnother word might help disperse the fog created by the language of ‘growth’ and ‘development’. It is throughput: in other words, the physical space, energy and raw material passing through the human economy, whatever its actual form, capitalist or otherwise. A comparison might be drawn with the ‘throughput’ of food in the ‘economy’ of the human body: it has to come from somewhere, it creates side-effects as it passes through, and, of course, it has to go somewhere. An excess of even the healthiest foodstuffs does more harm than good.

The actual economy too depends on certain sources (limited by nature) and sinks (their number and assimilative capacities similarly limited) while the use of the actual good and services thus obtained can be disruptive beyond a certain level (e.g. more cars > more congestion > demand for more roads…).

The very title of Professor Jackson’s book Prosperity Without Growth rightly draws attention to the need to curb growth and strive for greater ‘service’ (fulfilment, contentment and so forth) from lowered impacts on the Earth’s life-support systems. But there does come a point beyond which we cannot keep on squeezing more satisfaction from fewer things. Indeed the disruptive impacts of Peak Oil and so forth suggest that the landing might be a hell of a lot bumpier than the common narrative of a comparatively painless readjustment suggest

No mention has been so far of that other variable: information. But it too depends on physical ‘holders’ (books, computers and so forth) and is therefore constrained. Human brains and sensory organs too suffer, beyond a certain point, from ‘overload’, i.e. excess throughput. Anyone who attends committees will be painfully aware of the counter-productive nature of excess throughput in terms of overladen agendas. Similarly, excessive throughput of data, targets, instructions and general co-ordination activity bedevils planning processes.

So all claims about smart growth, better planning, more research, the unleashing of human creativity, the construction of a ‘knowledge economy’ (a.k.a. the ‘weightless economy’), ‘dematerialisation’ and so forth do contain some wisdom but ultimately it all comes back to the ground: the Earth and the ‘rules’ that have enabled it to sustain life. It might not be a popular thought but perhaps the real challenge is not ‘prosperity without growth’ but ‘sustainable contraction’.

At your serviceThe ‘new economy’, as presented by Professor Jackson, seemed to depend a great deal on an expansion of the so-called service sector, including health, social care and education as well as opportunities

This diagram is taken from the excellent study ‘The Conserver Society’ by Kimon Valaskakis et al (Harper and Row, 1979)

QOL = Quality of life

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for leisure and what he called ‘creativity’. Now many of these things are very useful. The collective and individual costs of sickness, neglect and ignorance need no underlining. Most of us welcome the chance to go walking, do some gardening and in all sorts of other ways pursue what might be seen as ‘re-creation’.

But this whole sector of society does not necessarily carry a lower ‘footprint’ than the dark satanic mills of yesteryear. For a start, as noted above, these activities all come with price tags. Nature’s accounts do not distinguish the energy and matter embodied in armoured cars or ambulances, for example. Generally the service sector still depends on extractive and manufacturing industries for the buildings and equipment it uses, even if some of those items might now be made out of sight, in faraway places like China (and thus charged to their, not our, ecological bills). Large-scale transportation, with all its impacts, is central to much ‘service work’ (look at all the car journeys by care workers, for example).

These activities also have their own direct impacts. Hospitals, for example, generate considerable amounts of toxic waste. Education buildings have covered large areas of land with brick, concrete and tarmac. [Professor Jackson’s lecture took place in a building that typifies the hideous carbuncles that many universities have thrown up; indeed much of the central campus at Newcastle University was carved out by destroying working class housing]

Communication systems, not least the banks of servers underpinning the Internet, consume large amounts of electricity and, in some cases, scarce minerals (a cause of war in places like the Congo). Indeed the scale of so-called ‘e-waste’ is now becoming quite unsustainable. Surely little needs be added about the costs of sport and tourism, be it the ‘green cancer’ of golf courses, the environments gouged out by all terrain vehicles of one sort or another, the waters polluted by leisure craft2… An increasing number of footpaths have been eaten away simply by the sheer number of walkers.

Limits-to-growth apply to the service sector in other ways. Many of its institutions have grown so big and become so bureaucratised that they frustrate the goals they were created to serve. Well documented cases of abuse, neglect and incompetence in hospitals and social services abound, suggesting that the problem is not just under-investment and poor training.

The incidence of iatrogenesis, for example, should discourage simplistic thinking that more ‘health care’, ipso facto, means more health. Schools, college and universities also suffer from a gigantism that make the whole experience more like a factory production line (one, with hugely rewarded managers at the top, as in the NHS,) than a rigorous and rich education. The inequalities inherent in private health provision, private schooling, private sports facilities and so on need no comment.

So perhaps we ought to be a bit cautious about Professor Jackson’s bright ideas about a new economy resting on an expansion of the service sector. It also has to be stressed that no new economy can be considered truly sustainable if the goods and services on which it rests could not be sustainably generalised across the planet.

In other words, we have to keep asking what would happen if the 1.3 billion inhabitants of China had, say, the same number of computers, hospital beds, or golf gear in equivalent per capita terms as, say, the UK.

YieldIn any discussion of economics, words like ‘productivity’ and ‘efficiency’ soon pop up. Again it is vital not to take them at face value. Thus mainstream economists, agribusiness representatives and many others will, for example, extol what they claim to be the high output from modern farming. Genetic engineers go further, 2. See: http://www.stopthrillcraft.org/definition.htm

claiming that GMOs are vital to feed the world (they never say anything about the number of mouths nor the hugely wasteful diets but that is another matter)

Such language must be contested. Perhaps Professor Jackson might have tried to find time in his admittedly short presentation to stress the central question of weighing output against total costs (cost of all inputs, side-effects and all other costs). Thus the ‘success’ of high output farming has to be set against not just the energy and raw materials it needs but also the nutrient depletion, soil compaction, aquifer depletion, water pollution, the destruction of biodiversity and so forth. It ought to include other costs like the nutritional decline of many foodstuffs yielded by the system. Full accounting would also include the break-up of rural communities due to the loss of local jobs due to intensive farm mechanisation.

Proper ‘book-keeping’ would also adopt a long-term time frame. Modern farming systems might be yielding much produce. But they are fast undermining their own foundations. The impact of ‘Peak Oil’ alone will doom this way of producing food. So in many respects what seem to be lower yield systems actually will produce more and more of better quality, albeit only over the long run.

In reality, genuinely sustainable production systems and associated technologies will be slower and smaller than today’s superficially productive farms and factories. The sustainable cake will cater only for greatly reduced demand. The reason is simple. Any stable system has to use a lot of what it produces simply to protect, repair and generally maintain itself: there is less left over for other uses.

So an agriculture based on the cultivation of perennials (as advocated by the Kansas Land Institute, for example) would be much more ecologically sustainable than one that cultivates annual crops but its yearly food yield would be lower. It is true that there are areas where there is avoidable waste such as planned obsolescence which offer scope for a better use of the existing throughput. Beyond that, increased productivity is possible only at the cost an increase in overall entropy within a system.

This is the absolutely critical point that many ‘anti-austerity’ campaigners seem unwilling or unable to grasp. One may critcise the gross unfairness of current austerity programmes and the things they target. But any government committeed to sustainability would have to make deep cuts, ones that dramatically lower the overall ‘throughput’ in the human economy. Those cuts would, in turn, mean less wherewithal for many current goods and services.

Resources running out?In his frequent – and obviously important – references to the finite planet on which we all live, Professor Jackson tended to stress resources per se. In doing so, he did not give due attention to the other side of the coin: the side-effects of resource extraction, manufacture, consumption and disposal. To be sure, he certainly was making a critical point. As the ‘low hanging fruit’ model suggests (most accessible and finest fruit picked first), there is an inevitable shift, in a growing economy, from the best resources to lower grade, more distant and less secure sources of supplies as high quality ones are depleted. So the peak of high grade coal is not far away, even if total reserves of that substance might seem voluminous.

Furthermore, some resources possess special qualities, ones that make the traditional practice of substitution far from sustainable. To be sure, the old ‘biofuel’ economy (wood-burning) was replaced by fossil fuels. Similarly, horses were replaced by powered vehicles. Uses were found for substances like uranium that were previously ignored.

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But past practices may not be replicable in the future as we begin to deplete the cheap and ready availability of all sorts of resources at more or less the same time. Then society becomes locked into a deadly game of musical chairs. We will need to do things differently in the future.

So, often, the problem is not supply per se. Rather it is ‘collateral damage’. There might be mountains of coal: what is more unsustainable is the wreckage wrought by extraction and the equally harmful impacts of burning the coal once it has been mined and transported to the point of use. Indeed, the human economy mobilises all sorts of minerals such as uranium, lead and mercury, ones present ‘naturally’ but not in the locations and concentrations that their extraction, use and disposal create.

Even the most carefully controlled mining, processing, milling and all the other processing will degrade and pollute as well as cause direct harm to people (silicosis, pneumoconiosis, cancers, direct injuries etc.). All such activities deplete wildlife habitat, regardless of the abundance or otherwise of the resource itself. So to do monocultures of any kind. Just look at the biological deserts that are coniferous plantations, compared to unmodified old-growth woodland.

It has to be stressed that the second law of thermodynamics tell us that there will always be unrecoverable ‘losses’ from use of energy and matter. Heat loss, material dissipation, wear and tear are unavoidable. Notions of a ‘zero waste economy’ are absurd, contradicting everything science teaches us. That is not to say that we should not try to maximise reuse, repair and then recycling. But again there are limits!

Carbon con?Of course Professor Jackson is perfectly aware of much of this. He duly stresses certain instances of such ‘collateral damage’, mostly notably global (over)warming. There is a danger, however, of falling into what has been called the ‘carbon discourse’. In other words, what in reality is a many faceted ecological crisis is reduced largely to one (albeit extremely alarming) manifestation: carbon emissions. This may can divert attention from other dangers, both within the threat from adverse climate change and beyond, as well as cast in a favourable but undeserving light certain policy options, ones that often go under the label of ‘low carbon economy’.3

For a start, greenhouse gases and carbon emissions are discussed so often together that they almost become one and the same thing. As a result, other ‘overwarming agents’ like methane may not get the attention they need. It might be wondered if there may be an element of self-censorship amongst many critics of the status quo. Gases like methane are intimately linked to basic activities like food production and therefore the number of mouths to be fed. That, in turn, leads to that most politically incorrect word ‘population’ (or, worse, the unwelcome thought that there may be too many mouths already).

At the time, there is not just an excessive growth in greenhouse gases from human sources but also a contraction, again to human activity, of balancing ecological ‘sinks’ as well as changes to the albedo of the Earth’s surfaces. The result is further overwarming and an even greater danger of a sudden flip into runaway climate change and resulting catastrophe. Complex and uncertain though these developments undoubtedly are, it is surely critical to use every opportunity to challenge widespread public perception that offsetting a few tonnes of carbon will do the trick.

The same goes for the idea of ‘low carbon economy’. To some extent this idea has roots in an older misperception that the problem is primarily pollution. Instead what humans put ‘into’ ecosystems may be less dangerous than what is taken ‘out’, by way 3. See: http://www.sts.vt.edu/faculty/crist/Beyond_the_Climate_Crisis.pdf

of general degradation and simplification. In other words, many destructive activities are comparatively ‘clean’. One only needs to look at hydro-electricity which has arguably done more harm than nuclear power (to date!). In some areas it is eve thought to have increased seismic activity due to the sheer weight of impounded waters. But there are many such ‘clean-but-unsustainable’ activities such as overfishing, poaching, wetland drainage, aquifer depletion, salinisation, dredging, river engineering (e.g. replacement of vegetation with concrete embankments), tree felling, monocultural planting, importation of alien plants and animals, and the paving over of land.

A ‘low carbon economy’ would defuse none of these timebombs. Take the ‘green car, for instance. To be sure electric engines have a number of advantages over petrol and diesel ones. But the problem is not just the question of where the electricity comes from. ‘Green cars’ would still consumes vast acres of space for roads and parking as well as infrastructure such as traffic controls and street light. Pedestrians and other forms of life would still be killed and injured in big numbers. ‘Green cars’ would still drive urban sprawl further out into the countryside. There might be a case for some electric vehicles, e.g. taxis and delivery vehicles, but limits still apply.

Economic formAnother word does not figure prominently in much discourse about sustainability and prosperity: ‘capitalism’. Of course, it is one where, again, there is much debate about its meaning. Some restrict it to ‘private production for private profit’, others define it more broadly (as in ‘state capitalism’). Certainly the Occupy movement has given the phrase ‘anti-capitalism’ more resonance. Whatever the vagueness of statements from that source, perhaps its supporters are closer to the truth than those who propose a ‘caring capitalism’, one with a ’human face’, one operating “as if the world matters”, to use Jonathon Porritt’s phrasing.

Whatever definition is used, there seem to be fundamental and irresolvable contradictions between capitalism and long-term sustainability. The growth imperative is fundamental to the system: it cannot be reconciled to the finite nature of the Earth. The ‘cash nexus’ and the market mechanism discounts the needs of those who, for one reason or another are able to bid enough in the market place (the poor, those yet to be born, other species). Market-based systems also tend to destroy competition as the more powerful players gobble up weaker rivals.

So a radical economic restructuring will be necessary. There will still be a role for small and medium size private businesses but they will have to operate within a framework characterised by strong public regulations and a strong public sector, with a large number of activities performed by co-ops and other such associations.

There is not the space to go into detail regarding the systemic shortcomings of capitalism nor the alternatives to it (on which, to be fair, much work still needs to be done). The point here is that the ‘plutocrats’ – or whatever one wishes to call them – are a major menace as are all the structures that create and sustain them. This needs to be said loud and clear. There should be no truck with the like of Will Hutton who seem to think that a few reforms (curbing ‘excess’ bonuses, etc) will suffice. Nor should we make the mistake of blaming just one sector, finance, or a few rogue traders when the real problem is a whole system, of which the banks are but a part.

The Big Plan?Of course ‘planning’ is not some cure-all. Frank Dikotter’s latest book Mao’s Great Famine documents in grisly detail how planned economies can go disastrously wrong. That was an extreme example. But socialist economists like Oscar Lange came to advocate a degree of competition because of the very real difficulties encountered in

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the operation of a planned economy. Clearly Stalinist tyranny and foreign hostility made the problems worse in the case of the Soviet Bloc.

That said, it is hard to create the conditions required for successful planning. Accurate data collection, analysis, projections, co-ordination are all easier said than done. Furthermore, planners do have a habit of treating, people and places as mere units to be moved around at will or least on their charts. Look at the many disastrous urban redevelopments and big housing projects that now scar modern cities.

However, if attempted more modestly and at a human scale, with full transparency and accountability, planning can really serve sustainability. Indeed there have been some remarkable examples of planning, though often it seems to require the stimulus of war (e.g. D-Day) or national competition (e.g. the Apollo programme). The Victorian public health programmes provide a more benign example of what collective action can achieve.

It might be noted that there is a considerable degree of planning inside big businesses while the introduction of market mechanisms has often has been downright harmful. Step forward the NHS! [We will leave aside notions of ‘popular planning’ since it is far from clear how many can really participate in such processes, as, again limits-to-growth theory warns us]

But, regarding issues of ownership and control, we have to avoid dogma and judge cases individually. Beer-making might be best done in private micro-breweries while inherently ‘collective’ things like water utilities and the railways should be in public hands. At times, some half-way house like Land Trusts or Housing Associations might be best. But only the state can attempt an overall limit to the size of an economy. Capitalism can never do that… until it is too late.

Beyond economicsLast but not least, we have to avoid the dangers of economic reductionism, of seeing today’s problems only in narrow economic terms. Many problems pre-date capitalism (however defined) and indeed have no necessary connection with any kind of economic order. Mention might be made of sexism, racism, bureaucratism, anthropocentrism and what Professor David Orr has called ‘biophobia’.

Indeed the conservation of non-human species cannot rest upon any kind of economic calculation. It depends upon the ethics of ‘intrinsic value’. Indeed the allocation of ‘shadow prices’ to ecological services, including biodiversity, could actually make things worse since it might show that there could be ‘cost-free’ eliminations of, say, certain flora and fauna.

Conversely there is much more to sustainability than just economic changes (vital preconditions they might be). Professor Jackson is to be thanked for pointing out many things that could and should be done. But perhaps we need to stop talking so much about targets and indicators, with more effort put into the details of what the carrots (and sticks) that will be needed to ensure that they are achieved.

Follow-up:Daly, H. (1992). Steady-Sate Economics. Earthscan.Greer J. (2008) The Long Descent. New Society.Heinberg R. (2011) End of Growth’. Clairview Books.McKibben, B. (2011). Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. St Martin’s. Ophuls, W. (1993) Ecology and the Politics of Scarcity. FreemanTrainer, T. (1995). The Conserver Society. Zed.Also search out the work of Saral Sarkar e.g.http://interactivist.autonomedia.org/node/29982and of courseTim Jackson’s Prosperity and Growth (Routledge, 2011)

We have no idea about the provenance of this cartoon nor the earlier one on education – they arrived with a circular email – but, if anyone can enlighten us, due credit will be given.

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Picturing Newcastle’s pastPhotographer Jimmy Forsyth deserves much more recognition.

Alec Ponton explains why.

From the cave paintings to snaps taken with smart phones, humans seem to have had a urge to make pictorial representations of the

lives and everyday activities of themselves and their communities. In the Middle Ages, scenes of ordinary life illustrate the devotional volumes known as Books of Hours, providing us with an insight into the work and play of those times. Seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish genre painting give us a rich account of all sections of contemporary society.

The invention of photography in the nineteenth century was a great leap forward since it enabled a true visual record to be made (although very quickly ways were found to fake reality, confounding the claim that the “camera never lies”). But older modes of representation lived on. Ronald Searle, at great risk to his own life, made drawings of the horrors of Japanese prison camps in the Second World War. Even so it is surprising how often events pass unrecorded.

In the post-war period, Newcastle, like many cities, underwent great changes as attempts were made to clear the slums replacing them with, it was hoped, clean, modern dwellings. Whole communities were demolished and rebuilt. Changes were also sweeping the countryside. In Devon, James Ravilious, son of the artist Eric, was commissioned to photograph the countryside and traditional farming as they were gradually overtaken by mechanisation and changed rural communities. However, no-one seems to have thought to make an official record of the old West End of Newcastle as it disappeared under the bulldozer. But then came Jimmy Forsyth…

James Forsyth, generally known as Jimmy, was born in the South Wales coalfield in 1913 and was not expected to live. That he did was, perhaps, an indication of an inner strength which sustained him through the next ninety-six years. He saw life in the harsh light of reality: a living had to be earned, work had to be sought. Death was an ever-present part of that reality, whether through illness, industrial accident or the ravages of war.

He left school at fourteen to be an apprentice fitter but unemployment led him to go to sea in the merchant navy. His fragile livelihood took him to many places, eventually to Tyneside in 1943 where he was recruited for urgent munitions wproduction. After only four days in the ICI factory, an accident left him blind in one eye. He continued to work there until he was sacked after a dispute with a foreman. On the meagre dole, he trudged round England looking for work, only to be told, upon returning to Tyneside, that he was no longer eligible for dole. He cheated death at an ironworks when a crane jib fractured his skull, and in 1955 he even tried self-employment as a general dealer, but without success.

However, in the early 1950s, Jimmy acquired a camera. Things carried on as before, working when there was work, but the camera gave his life an added dimension, restoring, in a sense, the eye he had lost. In the fifties and sixties Jimmy was pointing his lens at everyone and everything around him. The old order was fading fast and the brave new post-war world was arising out of the rubble of regeneration.

Two people, who might be portrayed as Jimmy’s guardian angels, were Steve Wood and Des Walton. The former was manager

of a photographic dealers shop in Newcastle, and somehow he kept Jimmy supplied with film, second-hand cameras and probably technical advice. The latter was a city librarian and local historian. Jimmy loved books of local history. He approached Des to look after his negatives as he feared they could be cleared out with his belongings in the event of his death or even if he was ‘moved on’. It was Des Walton who introduced his photos to the public in Newcastle, which led to national recognition and acclaim.

Whatever technical help he may have had, Jimmy Forsyth’s was a natural talent. His work, in a modest way, reminds one especially of two great American photographers. Firstly, Walker Evans, born in 1903, documented life in the depression years, recording the twenties and thirties across the United States just as Forsyth did in the fifties and sixties but on a much smaller scale. Walker’s work often has a conscious socio-political dimension of a middle class rebel. With Jimmy, this dimension is only discernible by interpreting the photos themselves, which are produced, as one might say, at the ground level of society.

Secondly, his portraits of the residents of Newcastle’s West End are reminiscent of Diana Arbus, who often sought to portray strange and unusual people. Whilst he was happy to snap the ‘ordinary’ residents of the West End, somehow he often managed to uncover an Arbus-like quirkiness in their character.

In his way, Jimmy was one of those people described by George Eliot, whose effect of their being on those around them ‘was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts’. Such is the extraordinary first-hand record at the cusp of change and social upheaval, produced by this little man, with one eye and a second-hand camera.

The Jimmy Forsyth Archive is stored with the Tyne and Wear Archive Service.

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Current officers and their contact details are listed below. If you know of any opportunities that the local Party might take up or want to raise any other matters, get in touch with John or one of the other officers. To reduce the number of emails in circulation, please use this magazine to draw attention to any papers you want to put forward for discussion. Just send your name, email address and the title of the topic and we’ll try to give it due publicity. John Pearson, Secretary, Contact and Treasurer:john.pearson@unn.ac.ukSandy Irvine, Chairperson & Newsletter editor:sandyirvine@blueyonder.co.ukFrances Hinton, Membership secretary:frances_hinton@yahoo.comTony Waterston, Media monitor.A.J.R.Waterston@newcastle.ac.ukAndrew Gray, Election Agent & Lead candidateandrewgray123@virginmedia.comTim Dowson, Election supporttim.dowson@blueyonder.co.uk

Branch officers

This is the issue 15 of a regular publication.Send material for the next one directly to Sandy Irvine(Tel: 0191 2844367 or Email: sandyirvine@blueyonder.co.uk)

Please pass Greening Newcastle to any person or organisation you like, and they can in turn pass it on themselves, provided it is transmitted at all times in its entirety as a PDF file and unchanged. Anyone may quote from our magazine, provided this is done in context and Newcastle Green Party is acknowledged as the source of the material.

Forthcoming eventsDate & venue Event Organiser

11.00, Sunday, February 12th Heathery Lane to the Cluny

‘Walk on the wild side’ big walk: http://www.savegosforthwildlife.com/http:/www.savegosforthwildlife.com/2012/01/14/wildlife-corridor-route-big-walk-12-feb/

Save Gosforth Wildlife campaign

19.30, Wednesday, February 15th ‘Central pub’ (upstairs), Gateshead end of Tyne bridge http://www.theheadofsteam.co.uk/gateshead/

Discussion on transport issues led off by Shirley Ford, NE Green Party organiser

Newcastle and Gateshead Green Parties

Weekend of 18th-19th February starting at 10.00 a.m. on the Saturday in the Curtis Auditorium, Hershel Building, Newcastle University

Conference on International Development http://www.idcnewcastle.com/conference.html

Newcastle University International Development Society

22-24th February Hancock Museum Newcastle.

Conference on climate change and sustainability http://webstore.ncl.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&prodid=106&deptid=9&catid=27

Tipping Point and the Newcastle Institute for Research on Sustainability

The first discussion meeting in the new Tyne Green Talk serieswill look at transport issues

and green policy.See page 6 for details.

ThanksSeveral people must be particularly thanked for help with this issue. James Littlewood and John Urquhart provided invalauble information about the Newcastle 1 Core Strategy and especially the threat to Gosforth Nature Reserve. Nick Lacey and Paul Carney similarly gave a great deal of help with material about West Moor (whose Community Centre is well worth a visit: it is really quite inspiring). Nick’s Powerpoint presentation on the issues is a masterpiece. Jonathan Essex of Redhill Green Party has given much advice about the new National Planning Policy Framework. The article on Professor Jackson’s thiking about prosperity and growth owes much to dialogue down the years with a numbe rof people, not least Ted Trainer, Saral Sarkar and, before their sad deaths, Teddy Goldsmith and Stan Rowe.

Greening Newcastle welcomes contributions, including notices of forthcoming meetings that may be of general interest. We are keen to broaden the issues we cover. As can be seen from recent issues, an attempt is being made, for example, to give more coverage to the arts and other cultural matters, albeit, of course, from a green or, at least, ‘greenish\ perspective. We are especially keen to get interviews with individuals involved in particular struggles in the area. It is hard to get visual material so photographs and cartoons will be most welcome. So please send contributions but remember, in the case of articles, to use only paragraph returns to identify paragraphs but, otherwise, do NO other formatting. It only has to be undone before layout in Adobe InDesign, making things a lot harder and slower to do.Back issues can be found here: http://neengland.greenparty.org.uk/region/northeast/ne_downloads.html