the road to oil: hope and fear in congo

War-torn eastern Congo is preparing for another natural resource struggle: this time for two billion barrels of oil at Lake Albert. Controversial British companies are set to play a defining role.

by Taimour Lay
from Democratic Republic of Congo

To travel the warped, pot-holed road east from Bunia, the war-torn capital of Ituri, eastern DRC, to the shores of Lake Albert, is to follow a trail of old enmity and blood. The first town you pass is Bogoro, site of one of the most notorious massacres of the Congolese civil war (1998-2003)  – 200 civilians killed in just a few hours on 24th February 2003, a crime for which militia leader Germain Katanga is now facing trial at the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Then the placid coastal village of Tchomia on 31st May: 250 killed. Next the town of Kasenyi: another 100 lives lost.

the state of the struggle: london forum, 2nd february

The next of The Commune’s series of London public forums will explore the themes raised by the coming general election campaign. The first such meeting will review the class struggle in the era of the New Labour government. What were the successes, what opportunities were missed, and how will we resist the post-election ruling class onslaught?

The meeting takes place from 7pm on Tuesday 2nd February at the Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, near Old Street (map below). Speakers confirmed so far include participants in last year’s Royal Mail, Visteon and Tower Hamlets College strikes.

solidarity with the people of haiti – US troops out!

by Claudio Testa
Socialismo o Barbarie

Much of the media has portrayed Haitians "looting" - the US has intervened to "restore order"

Although UN troops have been occupying the country for six years, the USA has decided to engage in a second invasion of its own, without even going through the farce of “consulting” previous occupiers.

tube pay deal: the wages of disunity?

A member of Finsbury Park RMT looks at the London Underground (LUL) dispute and the role of the unions on the Tube

Once again it is nearly a year since we should have had a pay rise. It has been settled after a protracted campaign led industrially by the RMT while the other unions maintained a deafening silence (apart from a certain union leader who encouraged his members to scab in the summer).

the limitations of corporatism: discussion on 1960s-70s trade unionism

The next of our London reading groups on workplace organising and trade union theory takes place on Monday 25th January. We will be looking at the 1960s-70s upsurge in the labour 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.

anger over obama healthcare bill creates uncertain future

Jane Slaughter looks at the US healthcare debate and the Democrats’ defeat in this week’s Massachusetts senate vote (from Labor Notes)

A Massachusetts local union president called it before the January 19 vote for senator: “I’ve never seen this much anger at the Democrats from union people,” said Jeff Crosby, president of a General Electric factory local near Boston, as he prepared a last-minute leaflet to hand out in the plant. “It’s worse than NAFTA.”

Top union leaders had bargained a compromise slowing down the health care benefits tax President Obama insisted on, but it was not enough to placate union members—and others—infuriated that Obama had broken his campaign promise not to tax benefits.

bristol communist discussion group, this sunday

The first of The Commune’s Bristol reading group sessions will be on Sunday 24th January at 6pm in Cafe Kino on Ninetree Hill, Bristol.

The series of sessions is entitled “Alternatives to capitalism”. The first session is called “Capital and capitalism”. A brief look at the features of capitalism. Capital, wage-labour, profit, capital accumulation and its effect on our lives.This first session sets the scene and will allow us to contast proposed alternatives.

radical education reading group

A small group of us have been meeting once a month to make some time to think about the links between education and social change. Last year we had some really interesting discussions on adult literacy, privatisation, Marxism and education, Freirian pedagogy, and deschooling, but we want to get bigger. If you are someone interested or involved in education and like the sound of manageable amounts of reading, informal conversation, and hopefully some stimulating ideas, come and join us. We meet on the first Thursday of the month between 7-9pm in Bethnal Green.

The next meeting is on Thursday 4th February (use email below for the venue details), and will be a discussion on the ideas of A.S. Neill as embodied in his Free-School, Summerhill.

Email radicaleducationforum@gmail.com for readings and more information. Hope to see you there.

comments on the commune by the communist workers’ organisation

Issue 50 of Revolutionary Perspectives, published by the Communist Workers’ Organisation, carried a critique of The Commune’s politics. Joe Thorne, a member of our network, wrote a response to that article, and here we publish the latest reply from the CWO.

We would like to thank The Commune for their reply to our critique of their group which we published in Revolutionary Perspectives No 50. We will start by clarifying the issue of who we are.

the burj khalifa: capital excess and worker exploitation

by Nancy LaPlante

The Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building was opened with impressive light and sound shows as well as a breath-taking fireworks demonstration. This structural marvel was renamed the Burj Khalifa for Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed who had provided an $80 billion bailout for Dubai, the United Arab Emirate state which had been heavily in debt. While the current economic crisis stalls the sucking out of any immediate and enormous profits from this tower of capitalist overindulgence, the brutality in its history of construction puts directly side-by-side the lavish gluttony of the bourgeoisie against the expendable lives of the workers who built it. While there are many incredible details about the Burj Khalifa only a few are named here, followed by a brief tip-of-the-iceberg list of the examples of worker exploitation and their attempts to fight back against their severe exploitation.

a history of women in afghanistan

by Malalai Joya
an extract from Raising My Voice

Western journalists rarely challenge the fables that are spun for them. Because of the laziness and complicity within the mainstream media, the United States and its allies have been able to perpetuate the myth that Afghanistan has always been an ungovernable state, and that the oppression of women is embedded in Afghan culture. The brutality of the Taliban, the myth goes, was only an extreme expression of an old problem. And so only foreign occupation can save Afghanistan from itself.

time to vote labour?

a letter to The Commune by Bill Butlin

The impending public expenditure cuts look like being a key issue for trade unionists at the next general election.  The Labour Party and the Tories both maintain that cuts are unavoidable and that no alternative exists to their implementation.

In an interview with Andrew Marr at the beginning of January the Tory leader was gung ho on this issue. He maintained that the cuts identified as necessary by New Labour were not stringent enough. Clearly any pretence by Cameron that he represents the acceptable One Nation face of the Conservative Party, and one that has left Thatcherism behind, is challenged by this professed policy objective. An objective that will not only see public expenditure cuts but further privatisations and a parallel attack on public sector trade unionism.

barack obama’s first year in charge

by Ernie Haberkern
from Berkeley, California

The enormous enthusiasm that the election of the bright, well-spoken, African American woke in the liberal left is fading fast. Of course, much of that enthusiasm was a result of the justified revulsion provoked by the Cheney-Bush presidency and as that bad memory fades liberals are forced to face the current reality.

an alternative view of the classroom

by a primary school teacher in Tower Hamlets

When I was at school I worked hard, did what I was told and got good results. When I was at university I hoped an under graduate degree in education would shed some light on the true potential education has to make a better world. I studied philosophy and sociology of education at a university for whom the faculty of education, its roots in vocational training, was a slightly embarrassing poor relation, best kept at arms length and occasionally derided. The message was sometimes enlightening, the medium certainly was not. I embarked on a PGCE at the Institute of Education where I lost all hope that our education system held any radical elements that might actually cut through the elitist bureaucracy of government policy; clearly it was up to the individual to find the tiny cracks around the edges of the system wherever they could and fill them with something that felt more like being alive than a standards-driven agenda of mind-reducing mundanity.  The real tragedy being that the vast majority of people didn’t seem to realise that there was any need to look for the cracks, let alone feel able to start to think what mind-expanding possibilities you might be able to fill them with.

And then I found a place that was one big crack, through which sun-light streamed. A place that had been built on the solid principles of child-centred, class conscious principles, and by in large stuck to them in both its theory and practice. The place isn’t perfect, but is a place with more integrity than any other educational institution I’ve been involved with. So here are a few things that our ordinary state funded community primary school is and does that shows us that you can.