Labour and the environment: An historical perspective.

Under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership the Labour Party significantly shifted its environmental policy offer. Indeed, during the 2019 general election campaign a 'socialism or barbarism' rhetoric emerged on climate change, with the contest presented as 'the last roll of the dice for humanity to avert climate breakdown'. (1) The suspicion that Keir Starmer may water down Labour's radicalism in this area has fed into his frosty reception among some vocal supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. There is not an inevitable alliance between the left and environmentalists, as an examination of Labour's relationship with the modern environmental movement in the 1960s and 1970s demonstrates. These two decades saw an unprecedented growth in the size and number of environmental groups, including a new party in the form of PEOPLE (later called the Ecology Party, and then the Green Party). Highlighting the tensions and synergies between Labour and the green movement, then, demonstrates that the party can meaningfully engage on the environment, but doing so will also involve confronting some uncomfortable trade-offs.

The Labour Party and the environmental movement in 1970s Britain

During the 1970s some on the left quickly identified a perceived alliance of interests with the emerging environmental movement, suggesting that a familiar enemy-capitalism-motivated both socialists and emerging campaign groups like the Conservation Society. (2) Sir Richard Acland, a key figure in the 1940s Common Wealth Party, was vocal on environmental issues at this time and argued in 1973 that if a new environmental party were set up it would have to be socialist as it would be necessary to reduce the power of big business to achieve any results. (3) Early figures in PEOPLE/the Ecology Party have suggested that they spoke to Acland to get advice on setting up a new party. (4)

The Labour Party responded to this newly political environmentalism. The Wilson government had carried out preparatory work for the creation of the Department of the Environment (DoE), which Ted Heath's Conservative government set up after the 1970 general election. Along with the Conservatives and the Liberals, Labour had deployed the term 'environment' in their manifesto to refer to a specific area of policy for the first time at this election. (5) Additionally, the Socialist Environmentalist and Resources Association (SERA) was founded in 1973 as the Labour Party's environmental group, originally advertised as being for people who are 'worried that the [environmental] message isn't getting across to the Labour Movement'. (6)

Timothy Cooper has argued that the 'role of the Left in the early genesis of British environmentalism' has been undervalued because 'the close connections between the anti-affluence ideals of both environmentalists and socialists, particularly those on the left of the Labour Party' have been neglected. (7) There are obvious linkages between the criticisms of affluence made by figures like Nye Bevan and those made by environmental campaigners. However, there are some important differences too. The Labour left's critique of affluence was not usually focused on its environmental impact. While the Labour left was deeply critical of how the British and global economy worked during the 1960s and 1970s, its members were not generally arguing for zero-growth. There were also other strains of thought within Labour which were actively hostile to the environmental movement. In 1971, Anthony Crosland had suggested that many of their arguments reflected a 'set of middle-and upper-class value judgements' and amounted to an attempt by the affluent to 'kick the ladder down behind them'. (8)

There were several reasons why Labour struggled to fully absorb the environmental politics of this period. For some, environmental politics meant eschewing party politics all together. An activist in the Oxford Ecology Movement in the late 1970s...