demo in support of victimised cleaners

There is an ‘unofficial’ (so far) cleaners’ demo, tomorrow Thursday 12th February at 13:00 pm outside Willis’s building at 51 Lime Street, London EC3M

This is a result of negotiations breaking down over the reinstatement of six Unite union activists who were made redundant on the spurious grounds that they could not alter their shift hours exactly as Mitie cleaning company demanded. The dispute is detailed here.

Still doesn’t look like Unite will be supporting them. Please bring placards, banners, whistles, megaphones and anything else that makes noise.

The protest is being supported by Schroders bank cleaners.

To confirm you’re coming, text or call Alberto 07803 634 319

16th february forum: the storm in the world economy

The last winter has seen the biggest breakdown in the world financial system since the Great Depression, and the opening-up of what promises to be a deep and prolonged recession.

Banks have collapsed. Household names from Woolworths to Wedgwood have gone to the wall. The ideological dominance of the free-marketers and neoliberals has been swept away.

And yet few are challenging the real cause of the crisis – capitalism itself. The broadsheets write acres about Karl Marx, but in most Western countries the workers’ movement is not even fit to take a punch at the ruling class.

We will be discussing the composition of the global working class today, its relation
to the economic crisis and the prospects of uprooting this system. Speakers:

Kim Moody (leading figure in the American rank-and-file trade union publication
Labor Notes)

Andrew Fisher (Left Economics Advisory Panel)

7pm, Monday 16th February, Lucas Arms, nr. King’s Cross, London

protest for decent housing in hackney

On Saturday 7th around sixty people marched down London’s Stoke Newington Road to Hackney Town Hall in protest at the council’s neglect of Hackney residents in temporary accommodation, who are subject to very low levels of maintenance and poor hygiene as well as expensive rent. After speeches by residents outside the Alexandra Court Hostel describing the bad conditions (as detailed below), we marched through the streets. The protest was organised by the London Coalition Against Poverty, whose appeal for the protest is reproduced at the bottom of this piece.

14th february conference: gender, race and class

Discussing and organising our fight for women’s liberation – open to all those who want to learn, think and plan for grassroots feminist activism…

Join us for workshops which identify the interconnections between oppressions and our struggles against them. Work together with other feminists to find ways to actually change the material conditions of women’s lives. Workshops include: learning from feminist history/ sex workers’ rights/ challenging domestic violence/ international solidarity/ a woman’s place is in her union?/ reproductive freedoms/ rape and asylum/ community organising/ queer and trans politics/ prison abolition/ self-defence workshop/ feminists and the capitalist crisis/ films, stalls and campaign planning.

Saturday 14 February 10.30am-6.30 pm, School of African and Oriental Studies, Thornhaugh St, Russell Square, London, WC1. Fully accessible venue. This event is free!

For more info see www.anticapitalistfeminists.co.uk: to register email anticapitalistfeminists@gmail.com

reminder: 9th february reading group meeting

The next meeting in our reading group on ‘communism from below’ takes place on Monday 9th, and the reading material is available online.

While reading the texts, we ask people to think about these questions:

– Is Parliament a neutral arbiter between classes? Does the state bureaucracy have autonomous interests of its own?
– Is state intervention in the economy in Britain today at odds with the interests of private capitalists, and is it of benefit to workers?
– To what extent is it worthwhile for the labour movement to have a parliamentary wing?

The first text is The new forms of appearance of state-capitalism by Andrew Kliman. It argues that the crisis shows that state intervention is not in contradiction to free-market ideology: pro-privatisation dogma means the state squeezes social services and yet uses huge amounts of public cash and regulation to more safely structure capitalist exploitation.

Section 18.4 of Istvan Meszaros’ Beyond Capital argues that because capital’s dominance over the working class extends throughout society, we cannot consider that capital and labour have a “level playing field” in Parliament. Rather, the parliamentary-state apparatus serves to balance the interests of competing capitalists in the interests of capitalism as a whole, and so it follows that we need to look beyond such structures in order to effect real social transformation.

The meeting is taking place from 6:30pm on Monday 9th February. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to request a printed copy of the texts, register your interest and find out more details of the central London venue. Click here to download leaflet.

defend cleaners’ rights: protests 30th january

URGENT: DEFEND LATIN AMERICAN WORKERS’ RIGHTS

The MERU [Ecuadorians’ movement in the UK] solidarises with our comrades unjustly sacked by Mitie, who include Bolivian, Ecuadorian and Portuguese workers.

This dispute started a few months ago when Mitie, without consulting the workers as it ought to have done, established new contracts with Willis Group forcing workers to work full time at night. A situation which the cleaners could not accept.

This attack was confronted by the workers, but today the struggle is still going on and needs fresh support. So MERU is putting out a call out for a protest against the Mitie company so that the workers are either allowed back to work or re-located.

These sackings are taking place in various workplaces, so we must be on the alert and fight back in unity to guarantee our rights at work.

PROTEST FOR THE DIGNITY OF THE CLEANERS, SO THAT THEY ARE ALLOWED BACK TO WORK, FOR UNITY AND SOLIDARITY WITH CLEANERS

Assemble at the Willis Building, 51 Lime Street London EC3M 7DQ (nr Liverpool St) at 1pm, Friday 30th January.

Contact Edwin Pazmino 07931464890 or Juan Carlos Piedra 07908099375

info@movimientoecuador.co.uk, williscleaners4justice@live.co.uk

A second demonstration in defense of Sodexho cleaners will take place from 2:30pm on Friday 30th outside ING Bank, 60 London Wall.

monday night’s forum on ‘resisting the recession’

On Monday night we held the first in our new series of ‘uncaptive minds‘ forums on ‘capitalism and the working class today’. The subject of the meeting was ‘resisting the recession’, and 26 people turned out to take part in a discussion on labour movement strategy led off by Christine Hulme (PCS), Chris Ford (The Commune), Steve Hedley (RMT London Transport regional organiser) and Gregor Gall (Professor of Industrial Relations, Hertfordshire Uni). This theme tied in somewhat with the new second issue of The Commune, particularly in that both Christine and Gregor had articles featured.

The next reading group is on Monday February 9th, whereas the next ‘uncaptive minds’ forum is on 16th. The title is ‘the storm in the world economy’, with Kim Moody (US activist involved in rank-and-file publication Labor Notes) and Andrew Fisher (Left Economics Advisory Panel) leading off discussion on the composition of the global working class today and its connexion to the current crisis of capital. Click here for leaflet about February’s meetings.

If you were there, do feel free to post your comments and thoughts.

reading for 9th february reading group

The reading for the next meeting in our reading group on ‘communism from below’ is now online.

While reading the texts, we ask people to think about these questions:

– Is Parliament a neutral arbiter between classes? Does the state bureaucracy have autonomous interests of its own?
– Is state intervention in the economy in Britain today at odds with the interests of private capitalists, and is it of benefit to workers?
– To what extent is it worthwhile for the labour movement to have a parliamentary wing?

The first text is The new forms of appearance of state-capitalism by Andrew Kliman. It argues that the crisis shows that state intervention is not in contradiction to free-market ideology: pro-privatisation dogma means the state squeezes social services and yet uses huge amounts of public cash and regulation to more safely structure capitalist exploitation.

Section 18.4 of Istvan Meszaros’ Beyond Capital argues that because capital’s dominance over the working class extends throughout society, we cannot consider that capital and labour have a “level playing field” in Parliament. Rather, the parliamentary-state apparatus serves to balance the interests of competing capitalists in the interests of capitalism as a whole, and so it follows that we need to look beyond such structures in order to effect real social transformation.

The meeting is taking place from 6:30pm on Monday 9th February. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to request a printed copy of the texts, register your interest and find out more details of the central London venue. Click here to download leaflet.

reminder – 26th january forum on ‘resisting the recession’

The first meeting in our new series of ‘uncaptive minds‘ forums on “capitalism and the working class today” will be on the subject of “resisting the recession”, discussing the tactics the workers’ movement needs to use to oppose mass redundancies and hold back the rising cost of living.

It will take place from 7pm on Monday January 26th at the Lucas Arms, Grays’ Inn Road, near King’s Cross, London. Speakers include Steve Hedley (RMT London Transport Regional organiser), Christine Hulme (PCS activist in the Department for Work and Pensions), Chris Ford (The Commune; LRC National Committee) and Gregor Gall (Professor of Industrial Relations, Hertfordshire University).

In further meetings in the series we shall be looking at issues such as the financial climate, globalisation and imperialism, casualisation and the changed shape of the workforce.

Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for more info. Click here for leaflet. See map of venue below.

activists disrupt israel’s pr operation – report and video

Activists disrupted the offices of the British Israel Communications and Research Centre (BICOM) in central London on the morning of Tuesday 13th. The lobby group’s media centre, which is playing a key role in Israel’s public relations operation during the assault on Gaza, was shut down as protesters occupied the building.

Photographs of civilian casualties from Gaza were pasted on to the computer screens of public relations executives, phone lines cut off to halt the organisation’s media rebuttal unit and leaflets thrown out of window on to the main road and handed out to staff pressing them to confront the truth about the human cost of Israeli aggression.

reminder: january 19th reading group on self-organisation and communism from below

Our series of reading groups kicks off at 6:30pm on Monday January 19th with a discussion on the subject of working class self-organisation and “communism from below”.  Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to find out more info on the central London venue. The texts for this first meeting are:

The Communist Manifesto (click here)

Arguing against different conceptions of “socialism” prevalent at the time, such as paternalistic “utopian” projects, Marx and Engels’ 1848 Manifesto argues that it is the working class must take power in order to revolutionise society. Tracing the development of Western society through the ages, Marx argues that we must get rid of capitalist ownership and the repressive social order and create a new, free and collectively organised system based on the development achieved by humanity thus far.

The Civil War in France – Engels’ 1891 introduction (click here) and chapter five (click here)

Marx’s thundering eulogy to the Communards – the Parisian workers who seized power in 1871 in the midst of France’s defeat in a war against Prussia – and the new order they established, casting aside the state bureaucracy and standing army and taking control with their democratic working-class “commune”. Introduction by Engels traces French history in the intervening decades and summarises the work.

Communism and Society (click here)

This section of British communist William Paul’s 1922 work argues against conceptions of introducting socialism through Parliament, and like Marx in The Civil War in France denies that the working class can take over the existing state machinery. Paul’s piece focuses on the self-organisation of the class and the manner in which the organisation of struggles against capitalism prefigures the society which will replace it.

Socialism and self-management (click here)

Yugoslav Marxist Mihailo Markovic’s piece looks at different aspects of workers’ self-management, with particular reference to post-war Yugoslavia where organs expressing elements of workers’ democracy were in conflict with the state bureaucracy under Marshal Tito. He argues that the state and party should be replaced by organs of workers’ self management whereby the mass of the population make economic, political and social decisions for themselves.

occupations for gaza in london! get down to lse!

In our report on Saturday’s demonstration, we urged students to occupy university buildings.  A leaflet which some of us helped to distribute also called for university occupations.  With demonstrations outside the embassy dwindling, and the PSC seeking to demobilise the movement with their latest (sexist) call for a “women’s and children’s march” following another mind-numbing rally at Trafalgar Square, occupations are vital to take the movement to the next level.

Students at SOAS have already occupied, and the university has agreed to grant several of their demands (including banning the military from campus, and allowing the student union to run a series of events for Gaza there during the week).   Tonight LSE students have embarked upon their own occupation.  We need to support these!  Get down if you possibly can, student or not, and help to make every occupation a centre of discussion and organisation!  Find more about the occupations here:

SOAS occupation

LSE occupation [Map and travel instructions]

These occupations pose a question of social power – i.e. who runs the institutions that make up society – and doing so while raising the banner of Gaza. Street mobilisations alone will burn us out without posing these questions of power, and leave us with no alternative centres of organisation apart from the PSC and the STWC which are already trying to demobilise the movement. Isolated actions – such as the disruption of BICOM on Tuesday morning – are broadly positive, but don’t provide an organisational centre to counter the national NGOs, and don’t do anything to link the situation in Gaza to broader questions of politics and power. Occupations can also be centres of learning and organising, they are exactly what needs to happen. Their potential will be defined by the number of people who attend and commit to them.

If you are at another university, consider organising your own occupation.  We also need to think about how these occupations can become a space, not only for students, but for the broader community of activists and demonstrators who have taken action over the past two weeks.

report: conference on working-class political representation

by Chris Kane

About 120 people attended Saturday’s conference, which was called by the RMT rail union.  It was much smaller than a similar event held a few years ago and unfortunately clashed with the anti-war march and the Socialist Workers Party conference.  The event itself was not built widely with a clear agenda or purpose.  The contrast between the vibrant militant youth of the anti-war mobilisations and this conference could not have been greater: it was veterans of the left, mostly over forty, male and white.   But there was an open and extensive debate and plenty of time was allowed for contributions from the floor.

RMT leader Bob Crow opened the event by responding to criticism by a 90 year old communist who said that “this is just a talking shop”. Crow defended it on the basis that “there is a need to talk to break down the barriers of the past”.  He said that if New Labour were to found itself as a political party today there would hardly be a “trade union which would affiliate”.  It was in his view a thoroughly capitalist party and could not be reclaimed: he praised John McDonnell MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP, and pointed out that when they are gone, there will be no similar people to replace them.

mobilisation and militancy in the anti-war movement: photos and report of 10th january palestine demo

For Gaza

Notice: Demonstrate against police brutality in solidarity with yesterday’s arrestees.  This evening (Sunday 11th) at 5pm outside Kensington Police Station, 72 Earl’s Court Road.  Directions: Come out of High Street Kensington tube and turn left. Left again at the next big cross roads.

On Tuesday, the Israeli army shelled a school designated as a refuge from the assault, killing 42 and injuring scores more.  Two days later, thirty more civilians were killed as a second refuge was shelled.  By Saturday, the number of dead from the past fortnight stood at over 800, with a little under a quarter children.  Later that day in West London, cold as it was, and with frost on the ground, around 70,000 people marched against the massacre in Gaza.

Clashes between police and protesters erupted on a scale not seen for a decade in this country.  This is a report by eye-witnesses associated with The Commune, who have also been at many of the demonstrations outside the Embassy over the past fortnight.  We also reflect on the significance of the days’ events.