issue 20 of the commune

The January issue of The Commune is now available. Click the image below to see PDF or use the list of individual articles as they are posted online.

Contact us at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you would like to buy a printed copy (£1 + 50p postage) or set up a subscription. (£12 a year UK/£16 EU/£20 international.

News

the truth about julian assange – Adam Ford writes on the WikiLeaks saga

tommy sheridan’s celebrity socialism – Allan Armstrong on the politics behind the perjury trial

Workplace

unite cans heinz strike – Alfred Stevens on the end of the Wigan Heinz dispute (updated/abridged in PDF)

PM: ‘striking never achieves anything’ – Sharon Borthwick didn’t think much of David Cameron’s advice to striking workers

‘no cuts?’ ‘no chance!’ – David Huckerby on Sheffield Homes’ cuts plans

an image of the big society? – ‘Lady Stardust’ looks at the cooperatively-run Woodberry Down Community Library

the global commune – 29th January Edinburgh meeting on trade unionism

Student movement

education: their vote isn’t the end of our struggle – editorial of The Commune

student occupations pamphlet: a call for contributions

can student struggles engage with campus staff? – students’ and workers’ struggles at Bristol university

build the movement or build the party? – Sinead Rylance saw sectarianism at play in the KCL occupation

LSE occupation: 1968 and all that – Jack Staunton saw more hope in the college students’ protests than the occupation at his uni

mobilisation versus representation – Joe Thorne looks at the conflicting dynamics of the November-December student movement and the role of the left

hope against hope: a necessary betrayal – Nic Beuret looks at the aspirations of the student movement beyond ‘freezing the fees’

Organising

where next for network x? – Daniel Harvey reports on the activist gathering in Manchester

feminism, organisation and class struggle – a day of discussion and mutual exchange, London, 20th February

issue two of the educator

our platform

our meetings

International

from celtic tiger to death by a thousand cuts – Ronan McAoidh on the economic and political crisis engulfing Ireland

a french thatcher? the rise of nicolas sarkozy – Noé le Blanc reports on the record of the new right in France

from palace coup to revolution – Camille Boudjak reports on the mass revolt in Tunisia

revolution in tunisia… just the beginning

Camille Boudjak reflects on the revolutionary movement in Tunisia

Ben Ali, the dictator who once terrorised the Tunisian population, was forced to flee the country on the evening of Friday 14^th January. Chief of state for 23 years, a kleptocrat and dictator, he spent six hours on a plane first trying to reach the France of his friend and supporter Sarkozy, then Malta and finally being welcomed by the reactionary Saudi monarchy.

At the time of writing the Tunisian population have still not won anything as regards their aspiration for freedom, nor the working-class demands against poverty and unemployment which in late December sparked the insurrection in the impoverished Sidi Bouzid region. The army patrols the streets and the cops of the Ben Ali regime continue to spread terror. No-one knows the future: the international history of our class is rich in betrayed and lost revolutions, but already the revolution in Tunisia represents a historic event.

heinz beanz is being really meanz

by Alfred Stevens of Communist Students.

The 1,200 striking workers at Europe’s biggest food manufacturing plant, the Heinz factory in Kitt Green of Wigan, suffered the first defeat in their ongoing struggle against the management and owners of the company, as the senior stewards decided to call off the 24 hour strike that was planned for Wednesday January 4th. The workers had been planning to strike for the fourth time over management’s sub par offer of pay conditions, including the removal of the performance related bonus and restrictions on overtime.

In an unsurprising move, given Unite’s previous of trying to buy its members off cheaply, the shop stewards accepted management’s demand that the planned industrial action on the 5th be called off. The shop stewards argue that this was to allow the offer that management had called ‘final’ to be voted on by its members. The offer though is hardly better than the previous one, which the workforce voted overwhelmingly to strike against.

no support for labour: no support for the lrc

At a Communist Students’ Exec meeting on the 13th of December, a decision was made to affiliate to the Labour Representation Committee (LRC). This statement was issued by members opposed to this decision, and we republish it here in the interests of debate.

The driving force behind this was Ben Lewis of the Provisional Central Committee of the CPGB, which has recently adopted a set of theses on the Labour Party.[1] Some points of which would get support within the ranks of the LRC, for example the democratisation of the Labour Party.[2] Crucially important though for the issue at hand is the dangerous conception of a permanent united front between Communists and the Labour Party contained within the theses. Where the CPGB’s contradictory perspective of simultaneously organising a political force independent of social democracy and at the same time trying to transform the Labour Party into a “real party of labour” and putting the Labour Party into office in order to expose its leadership, is made.

hope against hope: a necessary betrayal

Nic Beuret reflects on the deeper meaning of the recent student protests

What has been taken from them to make them so angry? Hope, that’s what. Hope, and the fragile bubble of social aspiration that sustained us through decades of mounting inequality; hope and the belief that if we worked hard and did as we were told and bought the right things, some of us at least would get the good jobs and safe places to live that we’d been promised.

– Laurie Penny, New Statesman

A single image from a day of movement marks out competing visions of hope. A boot through a Millbank window fed the dreams of resistance that many in the Left have been craving since talk of austerity started. The same boot posed a question that plays out in the university occupations that preceded it and have since blossomed in its wake: what is it exactly that we are hoping for?

on violence against the police

by a participant in the Parliament Square demonstrations

The condemnations are as predictable as they are boring.  The public-school educated Sun hacks, who write like some coked up parodies of proletarian semi-literacy, refer to “louts” and “hooligans”.  The Daily Mail complains about someone urinating against Churchill’s statue, and the Telegraph is dismayed that Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall were “attacked”.  Probably by a “baying mob”.  Meanwhile, someone in a moustache on The Guardian talks about how, no doubt, this will provide a “distraction” from the “real issues”, whose repetition ad nauseam presumably has some intrinsic value for the solemn liberal contingent.

I can’t even be bothered to look up the precise terms of the condemnation this time.  It’s always the same.  A dash of the royal family, veneration for some long dead racist, shakes of the head from the banal but well intentioned.  Is anyone still listening?  Haven’t we read all this before?

keep up the fight!

A leaflet given out by The Commune on Thursday’s fees demo in London

Today is the fourth major day of action against the government’s attack on education.

Much about this movement has been new and original, and that can only be a good thing. The aspiring politicians who lead NUS have been swept aside.

We have stood up for ourselves in spite of media condemnation. The protests and occupations have benefited from being lively and spontaneous. While suited NUS leaders wanted to debate politicians on friendly terms in TV studios, the movement has shown real militancy and anger at this government of millionaires trying to screw us over.

LSE occupies against fee rises and cuts

David Broder writes on this week’s student protests in London

a teach-in launched the LSE occupation

Tuesday 30th saw the latest major student protest against the planned attacks on further and higher education, the ConDem coalition planning to cut Education Maintenance Allowance and raise fees to as much as £9,000 a year.

revolutionary syndicalism in interwar europe, monday 29th

Following our successful series of talks on political organisation over the summer, where we looked at series of communist political organisations (Kamunist Kranti in India, Potere Operario in Italy and finally at Big Flame in England), The Commune is hosting a series of discussion forums on revolutionary syndicalism.

The second meeting of this series is: Monday, November 29, 7pm: Revolutionary Syndicalism and Anarcho-Syndicalism, the Interwar European Experience. Like the other meetings in the syndicalism series, Monday’s will be held in The Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8ND.

bristol reading group 28th november: 21st century socialism in latin america?

The next Bristol reading group session is on socialism in Latin America. It will be on Sunday 28th November at Cafe Kino, Ninetree Hill, Stokes Croft, from 6pm.

All welcome. See below for suggested reading. It is not expected that you read all the texts – focus on the country or countries you are most interested in.

rimbaud and the paris commune

Sean Bonney was not impressed by a talk on French poet Arthur Rimbaud and the 1871 revolution in Paris

Last month, the Marx Memorial Library hosted a talk called “Rimbaud and the Paris Commune”, given by the latter-day “decadent” poet Sebastian Hayes. Hayes – whose qualification to talk about the revolutionary aspects of the poetic imagination didn’t amount to much more than having apparently hung out in Paris in 1968 – seemed to know little about Rimbaud, nothing about the Paris Commune and even less about Marx.

The most memorable part of the evening was his suggestion that Marx’s definitive account of the Commune, The Civil War in France was ‘not worth reading’ because it contains ‘too much detail’. It was also surprising to hear his claim that there had been no uprisings in France since 1968: presumably the riots in 2005, or indeed last month’s strikes – still going on while he was speaking – were not ‘poetic’ enough for him.

why are we still protesting this crap?

Bahar Mustafa writes on debates among feminists in Oxford over a lap dancing club

Oxford Brookes University sells itself as a modern, business-orientated institution which boasts a hefty contribution of £1 million every single day of the year to the UK economy.

As impressive as that may be to many people, some friends and I thought it odd that such a reputable institution, with its myriad of student organised societies, should be fiercely lacking in a space where gender inequality is highlighted and challenged. So earlier this year, an enthusiastic group of us of varying backgrounds, genders and sexualities, founded the first Feminist Society at Brookes; aka: OMFG! Organised Multicultural Feminist Group.

a strike made in hollywood

‘Feel-good’ hit movie Made in Dagenham didn’t make Sheila Cohen feel very good…

A film about a strike that really happened, a strike that brought a huge multinational to a standstill, a strike that was waged and led by women… What’s not to like? Only that Made In Dagenham fails to tell the true, and far more significant, story of the 1968 Ford sewing machinists’ strike – a story of class rebellion against exploitation rather than of softly gender-focused togetherness.

For its first half hour, Made In Dagenham looks good. Apart from the stripping-off scenes in the sweaty factory, unanimously repudiated by strike survivors, the film more or less tells it like it was – i.e. that the sewing machinists were involved in a grading dispute. The emphasis is necessary, because, along with almost every account of the dispute over the last 40-odd years, the next two-thirds of the film stubbornly present it as a “strike for equal pay”.

precarious work and solidarity

Tawanda Nyabango reports on discussions among cleaner solidarity activists

At this year’s Anarchist bookfair the Industrial Workers of the World organised a discussion around the issue of solidarity with cleaners. Speakers included a Cleaners Defence Committee regular, a leading organiser in the University College London Living Wage Campaign and a member of The Commune.

The meeting began with the speaker from the Cleaners Defence Committee giving a brief outline of the struggles and solidarity actions that took place earlier on this year. These included the Willis insurance and School of Oriental and African Studies cleaners’ disputes in 2009, and more recently the struggle UBS cleaners and the campaign to reinstate victimised shop steward Alberto Durango. The Cleaners Defence Committee has sought to assist and build links between these disputes.