Climate Camp, where next?

This weekend the Climate Camp where next? discussion moves on to Grow Heathrow.

I'm not involved in CC right now partly because I came to believe that the best way to stop climate change is not actually in tackling fossil fuels and emissions directly but by moving to a more just and democratic society and so that's what i'm working on. Largely inspired by the non hierarchical organisational genius of people i met in Climate Camp i'm trying to create some real grassroots democracy where I live, with the hope that this virus can spread. However, this weekend I will be attending the 'space for change' meeting with a question in mind - What is Climate Camp really? and what should it be in the next few years.

To my mind CC is the latest incarnation of a particular strand of anti capitalist, non hierarchical, very well organised, media savvy and pragmatic grassroots direct action movement with its origins in the Anti Criminal Justice Act and then Reclaim the Streets era.

Since then it's areas of focus and tactics of choice have been varied and shifting from CJA, Road protests camps, street parties, car culture, GM, Arms fairs, war on Iraq, transport policy, summit hopping, international bodies (WTO,G8,IMF) then in 2006 it shifted again to climate change. Climate had been a part of what it did from very early on as yet another reason not to build more roads, but they had the foresight to realise it was soon to become a dominant issue and a perfect platform to argue for and build a better, fairer world.

This was a choice made at a time when no one issue was clearly dominant, previously this movement had sometimes been able to choose an issue, but often had to react to issues that were thrust upon them (the CJA, GM or a road building programme) but this choice soon proved fortuitous with the skills built up inside the movement and the level of public discussion around climate issues rising generally they came together spectacularly with the Climate Camps of 2006 at DRAX and especially 2007 at Heathrow.

After this more and more people joined who were more specifically interested in Climate Change as a single issue and saw the camp as a better or complementary method to more traditional NGO campaigning as opposed to using the issue of climate change simply as one example among many of the failures of capitalism, also it seemed that during the years 2007-2009 all you had to do was mention climate change and you had a chance of getting some pretty radical politics all over the newspapers, but it couldn't last. Just as soon as mainstream media interest in Climate Change had arrived it seemed to disappear. At the same time a financial crisis and the opportunism of the politicians meant that many activists (and non activists) saw the most vital arena for challenging capitalism shift from climate to austerity, this shift was perfectly natural for the people most focused on changing society as a priority but the organisation that they had built was left behind, mostly because of it's name. Attempts were made to link cuts and climate, but this really isn't necessary - both are symptoms and only need to be linked to their real cause - capitalism.

Obviously a climate strand should continue (it's still a HUGE issue), but as part of a much larger group that continues the bigger theme of using whatever issues are out there to highlight the failures of capitalism using creative and confrontational direct action to expose and challenge the people / institutions / companies responsible - that is what it does well. Another strand should focus on austerity - UKuncut have shown a glimpse of what is possible, but have been rather timid in their politics, some people have tried to replicate the central square occupations seen in Spain and Greece but these could really do with the backing of the organisation formerly known as The Camp for Climate Action.