Louise Gilmour: The ‘just transition’ is simply doublespeak

George Orwell never heard of a just transition but he knew plenty about doublespeak.

His most famous novel, 1984, revealed how the simplest words can be bent out of shape to confuse and conceal. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength and, as Big Brother didn’t say but might have, “a just transition is not just possible but already under way”.

If a single job had been created every time our leaders hailed this j*** t*********, the renewables revolution would be won by now.

The two little words that have come to mean nothing at all have generated cubic tonnes of hot air but not turned – or built – a single wind turbine in Scotland.

The blether has been cross-party with SNP and Tory ministers equally fluent in transitional jibber-jabber.

Meanwhile, new chancellor Rachel Reeves’ budget failed to calm uncertainty in the North Sea while energy secretary Ed Miliband’s big plans remain more hope than reality. He fondly imagines oil and gas winding down as skilled, well-paid workers seamlessly start harnessing the power of wind, sun, and sea.

Communities built on these good, unionised energy jobs will be unharmed because – cue the M&S voiceover – this isn’t just any transition, it’s a just transition, a fair and inclusive transition.

“Isn’t it pretty to think so,” as another novelist, Ernest Hemingway, wrote.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves.

Mining communities stricken by sudden, savage pit closures 40 years ago were only transitioned into despair and dereliction and nothing suggests this time will be any different.

We will, of course, need oil and gas for decades while building renewables capacity, but thousands of Scots workers – off shore and on – have already taken their skills and experience abroad. More will follow them to more certain climes along with their firms’ rigs, investment and supply chain contracts.

Contracts for our renewable infrastructure are routinely off-shored and 13 years after Alex Salmond predicted Scotland would become the Saudi Arabia of wind, we remain stuck in the sand.

We have wind and waves – even sunshine – but lack leadership, ambition, vision and urgency.

What we have is a procession of ministers, who come and go without shaking the grass, civil servants who would rather have a meeting than an original idea, and a skilled workforce looking for their passports. Our repeated failure to seize engineering and manufacturing chances is dispiriting.

Today, right now, we have two yards, currently owned by Harland & Wolff, again mired in uncertainty when they should be key links in a thriving renewables supply chain.

At Ferguson Marine, a blameless workforce is delivering two huge ferries, which their shipyard was never equipped for, despite the very worst efforts of every quango, civil servant and minister involved.

Meanwhile, a contract for small ferries, exactly the kind of work this publicly-owned shipyard successfully completed for generations, is out to tender as ministers stare at their shoes and mutter about competition rules.

Scotland once built big things and big leaders.

It does not help to remember politicians like Tom Johnston but it is hard not to think that a Scottish secretary who, along with so much else, drove through the creation of hydro electricity in just 30 epic post-war years might, for example, have dualled the A9 by now.

He didn’t chunter on about just transitions. He just made them happen.

We should retire the phrase. Let politicians learn a new language uncoloured by, in Orwell’s words, “euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.”

Because, it turns out, war is not peace, freedom is not slavery, ignorance is not strength. And, right now, there is no transition, just or otherwise.

Louise Gilmour is GMB Scotland secretary.