NATIONALISE Grangemouth! That’s what the Labour Government should be hammered into doing by the unions, in response to the announced closure next spring by the Petroineos capitalists.

Nationalisation under democratic workers’ control would allow a plan of green production to be led by the real experts – the workers themselves, alongside scientists and governments.

Workers and communities shouldn’t be sacrificed on the altar of the likes of 23-times-over billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, the Ineos chairman and CEO.

This slaughter of jobs threatens to create yet another ghost town, just as the decimation of the coal mines in the 1980s left deserts of despair behind, declared as progress by the Tory government.

For months on end, the workers and their union have fought a tenacious publicity campaign, including the big demo I was proud to be at with a team of local SSP members.

READ MORE: Grangemouth: Serious buyer for oil refinery is in talks, SNP MSP says

Throughout that time, politicians made fine speeches of support but did little or nothing to fund the retention of workers’ jobs, or to lay out concrete plans to invest in rapid transition to green production.

Sir Keir Starmer made vague hints of saving the jobs pre-election; what’s he going to do now? He has the power to take the Grangemouth complex – which accounts for 4% of GDP and 8% of Scotland’s manufacturing output - into public ownership to save the jobs by investing in a rapid transition to green products. Is he going to carry out that “change”, or is it yet another example of the new Labour Government being at the beck and call of their big capitalist funders, to the detriment of workers and their communities?

Now rumours of “a potential buyer” are rife. Anyone worth their salt would welcome anything that saves these highly skilled workers from the scrapheap of unemployment. But as I’ve said to some of the Grangemouth workers, beware of vague rumours of a potential buyer hovering in the wings but never quite defined or named.

Unless there is something very substantial and real on offer, this is an age-old tactic in closure situations, where the falsified hope of a buyer is dangled to avert industrial action until it is too late.

The announcement that they will shut down the refinery and replace it with an oil import terminal is a repeat of the industrial vandalism by multi-billionaire Ratcliffe in 2013.

Then, he threatened outright closure, temporarily smashed union organisation, and held the Scottish and UK governments to ransom, extracting £150 million of public funds in subsidies and loans to fatten his profits. There’s a strong stench of deja vu!

(Image: Andrew Milligan/PA Wire)

Jobs, livelihoods, and the quality of air we breathe cannot be left in the dictatorial hands of Ratcliffe and his Chinese capitalist state partners. That’s why the SSP says: “Don’t subsidise, nationalise.”

The planet is on fire with droughts, wildfires, floods, mudslides, rising ocean levels, and climate refugees fleeing mass death and destruction, only to then face hostility from right-wing governments and fascists.

The science is unequivocal; we cannot halt the climate catastrophe unless we stop burning fossil fuels. For instance, the August 2021 UN IPCC Report stated that 64-84% of all CO2 emissions directly relate to fossil fuel combustion.

But tackling climate chaos cannot be done by creating the chaos of mass unemployment. We cannot tolerate a “no deal exit” from fossil fuel production, leaving Grangemouth and North Sea workers marooned without a future.

We must utterly reject the false “choice” between clean air and good, skilled jobs. On the contrary, to tackle pollution we need re-deployment of the skills of these very workers to institute a green re-industrialisation of Scotland – and beyond. A socialist green new deal, based on democratic public ownership of energy, transport, construction, major industries and banking.

Ownership is the key – you cannot plan or control what you don’t own. Instead of wringing their hands in pious regret at the threat to jobs, the UK and Scottish governments need to be forced to intervene, take the site into public ownership, and tap into the know-how of these skilled workers to devise an alternative plan of green production.

As far back as 1976, the Lucas Aerospace shop stewards’ committee drafted the visionary, eco-friendly Lucas Plan, based on hundreds of suggestions by the workforce, assisted by friendly scientists.

But their job-expanding plan was stymied, never implemented because the defence industry capitalist employers blocked it, and the 1974-9 Labour government refused to take it into public ownership. The lessons are clear.

It will take more than logical arguments to stop the slaughter of Grangemouth workers’ jobs. It will take collective action, backed up by solidarity from the wider trade union and socialist movement.

And the best way to cut through the apparent contradiction between saving these jobs and tackling fossil fuel destruction of the planet is for Unite, the STUC, and every union to spearhead a fight for democratic public ownership of all energy, and a worker-led plan for rapid transition to clean, green energy production.

As the research in our book Socialist Change Not Climate Change proves, this has the potential to create 70,000 new green energy jobs in Scotland alone – as opposed to Grangemouth workers becoming the miners of the 21st century.