Notes from the January organising meetings

We met on 16th January in Glasgow and 17th January in Edinburgh.  Here’s the composite notes of the discussion at the two meetings.  If you’d like to get involved in  any of the proposed activity do email on triple.e.scot@gmail.com

1. Outputs from the Just Transitions Conference in Edinburgh on 17^th November 2018:

• Videos of the plenary contributions – see scot.e3.wordpress.com
• A draft manifesto for a Just Transition in Scotland. A first version, a synthesis of the discussion on 17^th November, has been circulated. It is intended as a basis for further development. All suggestions welcome.
• A pamphlet/online resource focused on climate jobs and just transition. This has yet to be started on, but we have much of the text already in the Briefings (there are now nine of these). It was agreed that a small team should be gathered for this task. PC agreed to lead on this ER and CM agreed to be critical readers and EC agreed to transcribe the text of Andrew Feinstein’s talk at the conference.

2. We now have a simple constitution and a bank account (see details on website home page). For the latter we needed to submit a draft business plan. This was tabled and could be further developed. It was agreed that the plan should include explicit working aims, consistent with the implicit approach we’ve taken so far. These might look something like:

Scot.E3:

• Aims to contribute to a mass social movement that will make a transition towards a zero-carbon economy possible – in doing so it works with environmental, trade union and community groups
• Argues for transition policies that ensure social justice (Just Transition)
• Campaigns for 100,000 Climate Jobs in Scotland
• Focuses on education, agitation and organisation at a rank and file level to ensure that policy ideas are implemented with the urgency that is required
• Provides a platform for sharing information, ideas and discussion

3. The Just Transitions Conference Accounts were tabled, showing a balance of £0.40
4. Actions to be addressed now:

• Sharing the Draft Manifesto widely, identifying organisations to send it to, and encouraging them to discuss, debate, modify the draft and make it their own. A working group needs to be established for this. We already have three invitations to speak – from the Muslim Women’s Association of Edinburgh, the Fife Trades Council Women’s Conference in March, and Bella Caledonia
• Set up a small team to write the pamphlet/online resource (see item 1 above)
• Gather fund-raising ideas
• Organise to attend the STUC conference in Dundee in April
• Gather ideas for new briefings and other kinds of resources; the Economics of Just Transition was suggested as a subject of a briefing
• Raise funds to upgrade the website so that it can support debate and discussion
• Agreed to prioritise contributing to the debate and discussion around the Fuel Poverty bill that will be going through the Scottish Parliament – argue that it should include more urgent deadlines and should be integral to a developing strategy for Just Transition
• Agreed to write a response to the criticism of just transition by GMB Scotland and to ask Common Space if they would publish it
• Begin to think about another conference in 2019 – there was a suggestion that the theme might be alternative economic plans to support transition

5. Dates of next meetings: Wednesday 20^th February at 7.00pm in Glasgow, at Scottish CND office and Thursday 21^st February at 7.00pm in Edinburgh, at the Peace and Justice Centre