A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #358 - The North is Dark! An Interview About Tomjo's New Book (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

Tomjo, who has run the website chez.renart.info for several years, has 
compiled several texts in this book focusing on the sugar beet industry, 
the agri-food sector, and gigafactories (battery manufacturing plants). 
These are among the main pillars of the industrial reconversion (excuse 
me, Transition!) of the Hauts-de-France region, a project we've been 
hearing about for over 30 years now-ever since the announced closure of 
mines, textile mills, and steelworks. This 200-page work oscillates 
between a well-argued industrial critique, historical narratives and 
colorful biographies, an anti-tech indictment that doesn't shy away from 
class struggle, and even a cookbook... you'll learn a recipe for 
anti-tech pizza dough! The whole thing serves as a salutary reminder of 
the devastating social, health, and environmental consequences of 
capitalism in the North, based on serious investigative work conducted 
by the author over many years. Here are a few questions we asked Tomjo 
to entice you to read his writing.

1) Why did you choose to write about beets, pizza, and batteries?

It came about through current events! It all started with our legal 
action with ASPI (Association for the Elimination of Industrial 
Pollution), which we created in 2014 with friends and our girlfriend, an 
environmental lawyer. We joined a lawsuit against the TEREOS group-the 
world's fourth-largest sugar producer, but the largest in France, and a 
specialist in sugar beets. In April 2020, during the lockdown, the 
factory in Escaudoeuvres (Nord) accidentally released the equivalent of 
40 Olympic-sized swimming pools of "wastewater" into the Scheldt River-a 
river that flows from Cambrai to Antwerp, passing through Tournai and 
Ghent-causing the death of dozens of tons of fish. The media, 
preoccupied with the pandemic, barely covered it. At the same time, 
testimonies were emerging about working conditions akin to slavery in 
the TEREOS sugar cane fields in Brazil. That's when I decided to focus 
on sugar beets! With ASPI, we won a victory in early 2023 against 
TEREOS, which received a larger fine than Total for the Erika oil spill. 
Yet, we found ourselves quite alone against such a disastrous and 
centrally important industry for the Hauts-de-France region. You could 
say we were completely ignored by elected officials. This entire 
political class, which remained silent about this historic catastrophe, 
was marching in demonstrations barely a month after the verdict to 
prevent the factory's closure. From La France Insoumise (LFI) to the 
right wing, everyone defended the sugar company, completely ignoring the 
workers' conditions and the environmental impact of the beet farmers. To 
justify themselves and lend themselves historical weight, everyone 
trotted out the old imperial myth of sugar beets, of this industrial 
heritage of which they were supposedly so proud-concepts that greatly 
interest me (1)-and the fabricated story of Napoleon's invention of beet 
sugar to circumvent the Continental Blockade. I tell all about it in the 
book!

The topic of frozen pizzas was a suggestion from the publisher (Service 
Compris), my friends at Pièces et Main d'oeuvre. In 2022, the Buitoni 
factory in Caudry, right next to Escaudoeuvres, sold pizzas contaminated 
with E. coli bacteria. Seventy-five children fell ill, most were left 
disabled, and two died. By following the case closely, you stumble upon 
some incredible scenes. The arrogance of Nestlé executives, assuring 
everyone of the factory's impeccable hygiene, was contradicted the very 
next morning by a state inspection. Minister Olivier Véran, on camera, 
assured everyone of the factory's good condition, while the prefecture's 
hygiene department had been warning about its state for over ten years. 
And then you dig deeper and you uncover the shameful, hidden history of 
Buitoni, a company founded by an early fascist, a close associate of 
Mussolini and organizer of the March on Rome. I confess, I enjoy this 
kind of research! And then, as with TEREOS, the health scandal raises 
fears of the factory's closure, and this whole little class of local 
bigwigs suddenly rises up to defend jobs, while they haven't uttered a 
word of compassion for the dead.

Finally, regarding gigafactories, the issue is unavoidable here, with 
the opening of five battery plants and ministers parading around every 
other day in their hard hats. Courant Alternatif has already dedicated 
an issue to it (2). So, like any well-intentioned citizen, I kept a 
close eye on the media, read the impact studies and consultation 
documents, and, as with Buitoni, I stumbled upon the shameful history of 
the SAFT company during the war, the main French battery company that 
opened the first gigafactory - called ACC in Billy-Berclau/Douvrin - at 
the National Archives. My interest in gigafactories also stems from the 
massive and rather clumsy propaganda surrounding the "Transition," to 
the point that no critical voice exists. Here again, you come across 
some truly remarkable scenes where anti-nuclear associations and parties 
wholeheartedly applaud factories that can consume the energy of a single 
reactor. But the local environmental movement is full of surprises, as I 
already mentioned in *The Green Hell*, in 2013.

2) Your point is striking. But actually, is the North really so bleak? 
Why is it such a unique region in your opinion? In its economic and 
political history, its geography?

Why did we get to this point? There are several factors, some more 
well-known than others. First, the North, Flanders, which belonged to 
the Netherlands, saw the emergence of early capitalism. Without being 
exhaustive (3), you observe: an agricultural revolution that freed the 
workforce from servitude as early as the 12th-13th centuries; the 
historical presence of a textile industry that traded from the Baltic to 
Syria; an extremely wealthy bourgeoisie that invented the Stock Exchange 
and triggered the first speculative crisis in history, the Tulip Mania 
(1636); an early division of labor in the textile industry and 
shipbuilding; A republican revolution two centuries before the French 
Revolution, in the United Provinces, with a fervent Protestantism as its 
ideological foundation, advocating hard work. Finally, though this story 
is better known, there's the tragedy of coal mining from the late 18th 
century onward, which devastated the textile, railway, and steel 
industries, among others.

The North was at the forefront of capitalism, and local capitalism is 
now at the forefront of managing its own negative impacts. We can 
mention these data center and battery warehouse projects on land too 
polluted to be used for anything other than paving it over. A friend 
came up with the expression "while it's still too late...", which we 
used for an exhibition in Roubaix, to describe this perpetual cycle in 
which disaster creates opportunities for new disasters. Finally, on a 
cultural level, I would say that we are paying the price for centuries 
of paternalism in textiles, mining, and sugar. For 150 years, your boss 
was your landlord, your mayor the one who built your church, organized 
your leisure activities, paid your medical bills, and sent you on 
vacation. A totality took hold, encompassing all of life, so much so 
that you have a terrible time escaping this industrial fantasy. Look at 
the reactions to promises of jobs in the automotive, steel, battery, and 
nuclear industries: we are still subject to the benevolent care of the 
good boss who will create a good future for us.

3) Your anti-industrial critique is scathing; no one is spared, whether 
it's the bosses and the state (of course!), but also the unions and the 
workers who produce crappy products... But you manage to stay on the 
razor's edge between "anti-tech" criticism and class struggle. In your 
opinion, what are the possible connections between these two aspects?

One can have a class position while being anti-industrial. The history 
of the labor movement proves this. In early 19th-century England, the 
Luddites smashed up the looms that competed with them, stealing their 
livelihoods and autonomy. Various sectors rose up against their 
mechanization/proletarianization: typesetters, printers, locksmiths, and 
some silk weavers (canuts), who were at the forefront of the revolutions 
of 1830 and 1848. Many more examples could be cited, in England, 
Belgium, and elsewhere.

We can therefore consider both sides, provided we delve into the Marxist 
legacy. Marx was brilliant at understanding the socio-economic 
consequences of the division of labor and capitalist appropriation, but 
his political errors are definitive: the development of the productive 
forces did not create the conditions for transcending capitalism, but 
quite the opposite! The single example of nuclear waste illustrates 
this. It places us, for millennia, under the authority of experts, 
technocrats, and their police.

The socialists believed that the interests of the bourgeoisie and the 
proletariat were irreconcilable. They are indeed irreconcilable when it 
comes to the distribution of value and power. But an alliance 
systematically forms whenever it is necessary to preserve the means of 
production, however deadly they may be. We see this right now with 
Arcelor-Mittal in Dunkirk. Everyone agrees on saving "French" steel, as 
if the factory were a little earthly paradise, as if this industry 
didn't degrade the environment for centuries to come, as if it weren't 
the essential sector of the most disastrous industries: arms, 
automobiles, and nuclear power. No one disputes either decarbonization 
or the new steel production lines for electric motors. The only people 
I've heard speak out against Arcelor are those with asbestos exposure or 
retirees (4). I have only ever seen workers once demanding the closure 
of their factory, and that was in 2012 at the Ilva steelworks in 
Taranto, Puglia (5). Since then, I have no other examples.

Notes:
1 - For several years, Renart.info has offered a tour operator, 
"Nord-Pas-de-Calais Adventure," to explore the region's worst industrial 
sites, which have profoundly marked their surroundings. Recently, Tomjo 
has also started offering a guided tour of the now-vanished 
Saint-Sauveur district, a significant site in the local working-class 
history.

2 - See issue 350 of May 2025, available on the website 
https://oclibertaire.lautre.net
3 - For further explanation, read with interest the various chapters of 
the series "Blue Like an Orange" that Tomjo wrote on Flemish capitalism, 
which logically finds extensions in Northern France and elsewhere.
4 - See "Not a Penny for the Transition" and "Decarbonization or Hope in 
a Kit," renart.info. On the critique of work and the myth of miners, see 
100% Death Postscript, directed by Modeste Richard and Tomjo in 2017, 
when the mining basin became a UNESCO World Heritage Site amidst piles 
of silicosis-ridden corpses.

5 - Read "Death in Taranto," La Brique no. 33, Oct.-Nov. 2012

Pizzas - Beets - Batteries. These three regional specialties illustrate 
the same phenomenon, as total as it is undeniable: the subjugation of a 
region, its landscapes, its inhabitants, and its utopian ideals, to the 
industrial exploitation regime that has reigned for at least two centuries.

Here is the publisher's description. Service included.

Follow the guide. Tomjo tells us the astonishing and true story of the 
sugar beet, the pizza machine, and the electric battery. Enough to 
verify firsthand that electrical energy, whatever its source, is neither 
"sustainable" nor decarbonized, and that the so-called Giga-Transition 
is in fact merely continuing the scorched-earth policy by other 
technological means. Two centuries of deadly industry have replaced the 
mines, weaving mills, and steelworks between Lille and Dunkirk with new 
calamities. As if the people of the North were doomed to the curse of a 
land poisoned by factory waste; as much as they are by the hard, 
mindless, and unhealthy jobs they are all too happy to accept, in order 
to produce and consume the junk food they are force-fed.
We don't really know what's left to save in the North, or what hope 
remains; except perhaps the hope of speaking out about what we see, what 
we know, what we think; for those who refuse to die peacefully alongside 
industrial society.
Tomjo, a troublemaker from the North, an environmentalist and 
anti-industrialist, runs the website Chez Renart ("news from the North 
and elsewhere"), as well as guided tours of industrial wastelands and 
devastation in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. He has published *L'enfer 
Vert* (Green Hell), a project paved with good intentions (L'Échappée, 
2013), and numerous articles of technocriticism.

The book can be ordered in bookstores:
"Nord c'est noir" by Tomjo, Service compris, 2025 (ISBN 9791094229903)
By mail to Renart bookstore: EUR19 + EUR2.50 shipping, by sending a 
check payable to ASPI to the following address: Renart, Chez Rita, 49 
rue Daubenton, 59100 Roubaix, France.

Or through Renart's online bookstore.

http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4669
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en