In this interview by Cailean Gallagher and Stephen Smellie, Chris Hamilton sets out how the disappointments and failures after the Grangemouth Oil Refinery Closure has impacted workers, community, and any prospects of working together with the climate movement.

The Just Transition Partnership was established in 2016 bringing together Friends of the Earth Scotland with the STUC and a number of trade unions, including Unite, UNISON, PCS and RMT. It was a significant initiative to bring together trade unions and environmental campaigners who agreed that achieving a transition to a low-carbon economy would mean planning to ensure that workers in oil, gas and other fossil fuel sectors would need to have alternative employment in greener industries.

The JTP called on the Scottish Government to set up a Just Transition Commission to advise on how to plan for a Just Transition, which they did.

And yet, when in 2023 Petroineos announced the closure of the Grangemouth Oil Refinery, there was no plan and workers were made redundant, while the oil which continues to be piped to the site is sent south or abroad to be refined.

Chris Hamilton was the Unite Convenor at the refinery when the closure announcement was made. He reflected on the experience.

“With the benefit of hindsight, you can look at trends and events that happened that led to the eventual closure. But when they eventually announced it, it did come as a shock to the workforce. The site is so integral with this area. It is seen as a constant, it’s been there for 100 years. I think everybody recognised that the oil refinery was going to be different by 2050. But where the site was going next was typically always seen as tomorrow’s problem. There were problems today, the usual problems that we face as trade unionists in our workplaces with jobs, conditions and that type of stuff.”

As owners of the site, Ineos had a responsibility to plan for the future. The future they decided on didn’t involve most of the workers or the continuation of processing oil on the site. Chris recalled talk but little action from the company. That talk was usually about

“projects that might or might not happen on the site. To my knowledge, before 2023 it didn’t appear that anyone was looking at an overall big project for what the site could look like. It wasn’t as if anyone was looking at transitioning the site for transition’s sake.”

Instead, the company were looking at it commercially. They talked about hydrogen and bio refining technology, as other companies have done in other sites, but the talk never produced a plan to transition the site to protect jobs.

Post closure announcement in 2023 Unite met with the company and sought discussions about alternative uses for the plant but, as Chris points out, “there was maybe less said or done in the early days after the announcement of the closure about the site transitioning. These things take years and years and years.”

Talks with the company produced no positive results so the union campaign focussed on leveraging governments to save the site and its 3000 direct and indirect jobs.

In Chris’ part of the Grangemouth industrial complex 430 people were made redundant. 18 months after ceasing production, not even 10% of that number of new jobs have been created.

“It highlights that even if we had started this conversation a long time ago, with political urgency and all the money that was promised, they would still not have managed to deliver it.” He continues: “I think what that’s done for us as a union is highlight the failure in the trajectory of the just transition at present. It’s not that anybody’s against the concept of just transition. It’s just that for the ordinary members, at Grangemouth and then Mossmoran, we have seen mass job losses and very, very, very slow progress.”

Unite sought direct government intervention to save the plant, arguing that they should take a transitional stake in the company. That didn’t happen, but Chris points out that a different approach was adopted with the Scunthorpe Steelworks where the government did intervene.

Unite also discussed the possibility of a furlough scheme, to allow more time. That didn’t happen either, but Chris says, “I was pleased to see that it did transpire in principle at Alexander Dennis.” At Grangemouth, however, “there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever of government playing any role, whether that be subsidising or taking a form of ownership in the enterprise.”

For many, the villain of the piece is Ineos and Jim Ratcliffe. For others it is the government for failing to save the refinery. Amongst the workforce there are mixed views. “When I speak to workers who’ve lost their jobs about the closure of the refinery some point the finger in the direction of the company, some towards the government and many point in both directions.”

“It isn’t of course just at Grangemouth. Throughout the oil and gas sectors, workers are scunnered at the failure of governments to protect jobs.”

Chris recognises that “other political parties” are opportunistically trying to take advantage of workers’ concerns and blame government policies on Net Zero to promote themselves. Amidst Unite’s campaigning to protect the oil and gas jobs, the Tories won the Aberdeen South by-election on a ticket of standing up for the North Sea, and Reform and far right parties have sought to use the issue of redundancies in the sector to stir up division. How does Chris see Unite resisting Reform’s approach?

“I see it less about what Reform are doing, because I believe what they are doing is actually secondary. I think the primary thing is the failure to deliver. If the SNP and Labour were handling these big industrial issues in the way working class people want them to, in my opinion, Reform or anyone else wouldn’t have a word to say on the issue.”

Over many years, trade unions have worked with the environmental movement, becoming “more green” while the other side became “more red,” as Roz Foyer, STUC General Secretary once urged them to be. As unions adopted policies recognising climate change and the need to take action, environmental campaigners joined the pro tests against the closure of Grangemouth and worked with offshore workers to champion Just Transition policies. In Chris’s view, that alliance has broken down.

“I would say we’re probably back to being entrenched in two different positions and I see it probably more hostile now than it was before. I think there’s a number of reasons for that. I’ve absolutely nothing against anybody who’s got the point of view or the opinion that we need to do X, Y or Z on any issue. I know what they’re saying they want to achieve, but they’re lacking an explanation of how we do it. And you might argue that’s also the same for other things like trade unions, but my point is it’s difficult for us as a movement when it results in job losses at present.”

Unite has tried to work with some environmental groups. Chris has personally been involved in events alongside climate campaigners including speaking at an event in Westminster with them. “We were speaking about the fact that workers should be put front and centre. And these organisations appeared to support that view.”

“As just an example, not long after that specific event, activists from some of these organisations abseiled off the Forth Road Bridge in a staged protest. It stopped all shipping going to Grangemouth and there was a threat that day of the site needing to close because of production issues. Understandably events such as these put me as an individual in a precarious position because I’ve now got to face these workers after sharing platforms with these groups not long before.”

Chris recognises that stunts like that get coverage, and that climate groups and campaigners have increasing influence. He argues that this is what his sector in Unite have been trying to replicate with public facing campaigns so that the narrative is not controlled by groups who appear not to be on the side of the Unite members whose jobs are at risk.

But for now, he sees little scope for joint campaigning with the environmental campaigners, whilst Just Transition doesn’t deliver. Chris lives in the Falkirk area where last year there were pro tests outside a hotel housing asylum seekers. These protests involved individuals from known far-right and fascist groups along side locals. Chris was not surprised that the failures of Labour and SNP to protect working class communities had left a void which far right organisations try to fill.

“I was disappointed to see Falkirk become the focus point for this specific issue. At the same time that was happening Grangemouth was closing, Alexander Dennis was up for threat of closure, and I don’t recall these so-called defenders of working people protesting then.”

Chris recalls a local campaign to save the swimming pool in Bo’ness. A protest was organised.

“I went along and there was 1000 people standing outside the local community centre with the placards to stop this closure. I don’t believe that got the same publicity as the anti-immigration one did. And there were probably more folk at that community one. As a movement, more generally I believe that’s the stuff that we need to do. Promote the consistent good work we are doing across communities, in and out of the workplace.”

“We know some organisations will select certain issues, make them big, come in, and then present themselves as if they are the ones that are going to change it. If I take the example of the community centre, we as trade unionists and or community campaigners have clearly got the ability to organise and elect councillors of our persuasion if we really wanted to, but we’re not doing that. If anybody’s best placed to solve some of these problems, in actual fact, it’s probably us. So, I think as a movement there’s a general acknowledgement that we should be demonstrating this to working people – not leaving it to anyone else.”

Chris’ message is that working people need their unions to speak up for them. He says. “If it wasn’t for the Unite union, who would we have had to champion a workers’ perspective about Grangemouth? We couldn’t rely on the company. We couldn’t rely on the SNP. We couldn’t rely on Labour. When all was said and done it was the trade union that was there to represent their views and be their voice.”