An interview with a member of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, in the wake of Barack Obama’s plan to send 30,000 extra troops to Afghanistan.
The discussion looks at the role of the US troops in backing warlordism and the empty sloganeering of the ‘war on terror’. See below for the second half of the video. Read the rest of this entry »
The first of a series of communist discussion meetings in Sheffield. From 7pm on Tuesday 19th January at The Rutland Arms, 86 Brown Street, Sheffield S1 2BS.
Recommended reading for the meeting includes: William Morris - News From Nowhere; Bertell Ollman – Marx’s Vision of communism – Critique 8; Cornelius Castoriadis – The content of socialism
Chris Ford introduces a 1974 piece by Tony Lane
The question of the trade unions and their relationship to working class political organisation has been an ongoing debate in the labour movement for many many years; it has become especially prominent in the last decade. In 1974 Tony Lane wrote the thought provoking book The Union Makes Us Strong: The British Working Class and the Politics of Trade Unionism. By considering the history of the labour movement Lane looked at the political consciousness of the rank and file, and the ways in which union leaders at all levels tend to become isolated from the worker on the shop floor. In particular he explodes the cherished myth that the failure of socialism can be laid at the doors of a succession of leaders who have ‘betrayed’ the movement.
He argues that trade unionism did not develop a ‘class consciousness’ in the full and proper sense of the term, which could grasp the total reality of capitalism. He considered the Labour Party as the parliamentary expression of the unions’ way of looking at the world as doomed from the start and concluded that the power to force much needed social change must be spearheaded by a new socialist party. Lane raised interesting questions for today in terms of the difference between a Labour Party mark II or an actual new workers’ party which would be something very different. Read the rest of this entry »
The next issue of our monthly paper The Commune will be appearing in early January 2010. The rates for subscriptions for the year (the perfect Christmas present…) are listed below, as well as details on how to donate to our group. Any money, but particularly regular income, is much appreciated and helps us maintain our press and our schedule of meetings.
Click on the relevant item to pay online by credit/debit card or PayPal.
£12/year UK
£16/year EU
£20/year international Read the rest of this entry »
It seems like the ultimate kamikaze action: mutually assured destruction. The company you work for is already in a huge amount of trouble, posting a £401m loss last year, a lot more this year, running a massive pension deficit and you decide to press the nuclear button by going on strike for 12 days at the busiest time of the year.
If you wanted to engineer the bankruptcy of your employer, put yourself on the dole early in the New Year and without much in the way of a redundancy deal, this seems to be the perfect way to do it. In a monopoly service this would not necessarily matter but we know passengers will choose another airline in order to get to their destination. And they won’t always come back either.
So the decision by 92% of those who voted “yes” for strike action on an 80% turnout is completely crazy, right? Read the rest of this entry »
by David Broder
Don’t ruin a million Christmases: BA chief’s appeal as he goes to court to halt strike (Daily Mail, 16th December)
Cartoon in today's Times
The proposed British Airways strike has brought down an avalanche of media attacks on the airline’s employees and the Unite union. Much as propaganda about “old ladies not receiving their Christmas cards” blighted the Royal Mail dispute last month, again the corporate press and the BBC are blaming Scrooge-ish “union barons” for their lack of festive cheer. But does the wintry weather really excuse a two year pay freeze, cuts in crew numbers and 4,900 redundancies? Not so, said a thumping 92% majority of BA workers on an 80% turnout, a ballot result showing both the level of anger and the desire to fight on to a victorious conclusion, given that the action will go on for a whole 12 days beginning on December 22nd. Read the rest of this entry »
Ricardo Noronha explores the limitations of the objective of a full employment economy
Italian mural: "no work, guaranteed income and all production automated"
“Holloway against the right to work”. It was under this heading that Francisco Louca published an article in the online journal Vírus, critiquing in a polemical tone an intervention by John Holloway at the International Colloquy “May ‘68: Politics, Theory and History” which took place at the Franco-Portuguese Institute in April 2008. The notes which follow look to contextualise Louca’s article in the wider politics of the party he leads – the Bloco de Esquerda ['Left Bloc', a reformist party in Portugal established by Trotskyist and Maoist groups] – and a political conception common to the ‘anti-capitalist’ or ‘anti-neoliberal’ parliamentary left in Europe. We will avoid using the terms in which Holloway puts forward his views and those Louca uses to critique them. For the purposes of what interests us, we will limit ourselves to explaining their analyses. Read the rest of this entry »
Sheila Cohen explores the relation of capitalist crisis to upturns in working-class struggle
Clearly, it’s difficult in the midst of the current “double dip” recession to predict whether further key struggles will follow the Vestas and Visteon occupations, or indeed the less obviously recession-related struggles of engineering construction workers, Leeds refuse collectors and postal workers – not to mention current disputes affecting airline employees, tube workers and bus drivers. The list could go on, and indeed has spurred recent thoughts of a “mini-upsurge” – but are these struggles symptomatic of recession or simply of the general (and grim) rigours of an unrelenting neo-liberal capitalism?
It has never been straightforward, historically, to work out whether recessions spark resistance or dampen it. The arguments are obvious on both sides of the coin – capitalist crisis, with its persistent tendency to dump the effects on the working class, can spur struggle through anger and desperation (the nothing-to-lose syndrome) or suppress it through the terrible fear of job loss, a disaster for working-class families. To use a wise old footballing adage, “It could go either way” – but which way will it go? Read the rest of this entry »
The next of our London reading groups on workplace organising and trade union theory takes place on Monday 14th December. We will be looking at the 1960s-70s upsurge in trade union movement in the UK and the limitations of corporatism.
The meeting takes place from 7pm at the Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, near Old Street. See below for the recommended reading material and the questions for discussion. Read the rest of this entry »
The Monday 21st December London ‘uncaptive minds’ public forum will be a review of the year’s class struggles, followed by Xmas drinks.
This open discussion meeting addressing the successes and weaknesses of our movement in 2009 will include participants involved in the Royal Mail, London Underground and Tower Hamlets College strikes as well as the Visteon occupation. Read the rest of this entry »
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