thoughts for a militant autumn…

Steve Ryan shares his ideas for another wave of struggle.

Many Communists would traditionally have ignored the TUC congress this week.

However this one may prove of more interest. Debates will be had about pensions and jobs against a background of escalating industrial unrest as PCS, FBU, Teaching unions etc move to ballot for coordinated action. McCluskey for UNITE calls for civil disobedience. The TUC is actually backing the march at the Tory and Lib Dem conferences – even Barber is talking.

we can do so much more ourselves

This is a real challenge to the libertarian-left.

This IS the biggest wave of strike action for decades, building on the March demo and June strike. Student activists are back and angry with the possibility of further action. The riots demonstrated that there is anger growing – albeit unfocused in many urban communities.

Riots : when normal behaviour is meaningless.

Looking back at the Commune coverage of the riots.

Barry Biddulph suggests that we need to find a way to engage with the contradictory and elemental nature of  the recent riots.

Riots. We should have seen them coming. After all, the combustible material has been stacking up for some time. The majority of rioters who appeared in court were under 24, and from poor neighbourhoods. Strikingly: 41/% of suspects live in one of the top 10% of the most deprived places. [1] We already knew that in Hackney there are 22 claimants for every job. In Haringey, where Tottenham is located, there are 29  claimants for every vacancy. [2]  Youth unemployment  currently stands  at 949,000. [3] Add to these grim figures, the volatile mix of police harassment, affordable housing shortage, cuts in benefits,  resentment at bankers and parliamentary politicians robbing the tax payers, and what do we have? Alienation, and disaffection. As Naomi Klein put it in the Guardian,” When you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance.”[4]

Even so, many on the left did not expect this resistance. Furthermore, they did not  like the look of it. The Socialist Party was particularly disgusted. In their opinion, it was a tragedy for small shop keepers, and devastating for working class communities. As if capitalism in crisis wasn’t. The SP leadership was worried about the lack of police numbers. The view of Peter Manson of the CPGB was that the riot targeted working-class people. In a moment of self-doubt, he mused that at one level, it was a collective rebellion but on balance it was without political content with anti social gangs having a moment of power. [5] But the rioters’ most comprehensive critic was  the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty. The riot would have no positive effect. Indeed, it would have reactionary consequences. It would strengthen law and order, stimulate racism as well as alienate organised labour. [6]

the greater toronto workers’ assembly – towards revolutionary regroupment?

The Commune’s Tom Denning spoke to Herman Rosenfeld of the Greater Toronto Workers’ Assembly about an ambitious project to regroup revolutionary activists and reinvigorate working class politics in the city.  This interview is co-published with New Left Project.

Tom Denning: Who initiated the GTWA, and with what purpose? How does it work now, and what does it do?

Herman Rosenfeld: The GTWA was initiated by the Labour Committee of a group called the Socialist Project, based in Toronto. The idea of an Assembly was roughly based on some of the ideas floated – and experimented with – by Bill Fletcher Jr and others in the US. Creating a new and different kind of working class organizational form was seen as a way to get beyond some of the limitations of trade unions, which have been so locked into defending their members’ particular concerns; contributing to the need for a fightback in the face of the crisis; helping to bring together the socialist and anti-capitalist left; and working to create a new political space, to the left of social democracy.

reflections on june 30th strike day: tense debates over camping plan

Activist solidarity initiatives for last month’s J30 national strike day had rather mixed results. Daniel Harvey stresses the need to centre our activity around the workplace.

We sat around in a circle in room 3C of the University of London Union (ULU) building on Malet Street. The rain pounded down outside the window, as the residue of J30 activists discussed how the day had gone. In my short experience of the left it was probably the meeting least worth the train ticket, but it was in fact a microcosm of what the build-up to J30 had been from the start: a lot of open chat without much substantial organising focus.

Spanish protesters set up camps in public squares: was J30 time for us to do the same?

On the one hand was the activist side of the debate from the people’s assembly, who wanted to duplicate the events in Madrid and Cairo, and continue the revolution based the occupation of public squares.  On the other, some striking teachers, who said they would have liked the organisation of more pickets, and a more down to earth and local approach.

why is it difficult to sell a paper to a random stranger?

Daniel Harvey gives a theoretical insight into the existential problem of relating to others as a revolutionary in a liberal society.

The old slogan of bourgeois entertainment, ‘But you must have seen this’, which just represented a swindle in the market place becomes a matter of deadly seriousness with the abolishment of amusements and the market alike. Formerly the supposed penalty was being unable to participate in what everyone else was talking about. Today, anyone who is unable to talk in the prescribed fashion, that is of effortlessly reproducing the formulas, conventions and judgments of mass culture as if they were his own is threatened in his very existence, suspected of being an idiot or an intellectual.

Adorno, ‘The Schema of Mass Culture’

What's missing?

One of the most misleading delusions we hold about ourselves is that there is some insoluble distinction between our public and our private selves. This illusion gives us the flattering idea that we are only forced to wear social masks, that underneath this persona that capitalist society forces us to adopt, there is some redeemable ‘real me’, who would be able to express themselves if only they were allowed to.  This distinction supposedly makes us unhappy and depressed, alienated even, and we feel it separates us from bonding with the people around us.  ‘Express yourself’ is now probably the most common advertising principle, and it’s a true testament to advertisers professional skill that they have made doing this seemingly very simple task so expensive. Some sad cases in the 60s took this and turned it into an entire new ‘self discovery’ industry.  The wealthy and bored go on long and expensive retreats to monasteries filled with Indian, so called, mystics, and then Louis Theroux made a documentary about it.

on the march… at work

A London public sector worker striking on 30th June wrote to The Commune about an action which gave confidence to her and her workmates.

I work in a big public sector workplace, where redundancies have just been announced. Not only are people going to lose their jobs, but some of the services will just be scrapped and very poor and vulnerable people will lose the services that we provide.

People knew the redundancies were coming and there was a lot of anxiety, over who, how many… When we recieved the results there was outrage as it was felt to be decided very unfairly. My department sent a message to management that we were not going to accept these staff being treated so badly and we rejected this list. In the end the process was delayed and then the list was drawn up again to include basically pretty much everybody.

The day to day atmosphere was complicated. On the one hand people were tired and upset. The department has had a few redundancies year on year so people have watched again and again as their colleagues lose their jobs, the department gets smaller, people lose their right to the service, fees go up. Everybody knows if they don’t lose their job this year they might lose it next year. We are a relatively active and traditionally left wing workplace and people had been on a lot of demos this year, there have been some good campaigns around defending the service but there was a tiredness and a bleakness in people’s faces.

On the other hand people were going from angry to furious. The name of a place where recently people had taken very strong strike action suddenly began to be heard again and again in the corridors. The year on year attacks seemed to be making people feel simultaneously ground down and wound up. In a meeting with management a co-worker stormed out. More and more often little meetings broke out, voices were raised.

pcs votes to join ‘j30’

Steve Ryan reflects on the prelude to the upcoming day of co-ordinated strike action by public sector trade unions, due to take place on the 30th of June.

PCS members on strike in 2010.

So its official, the big strike on June 30th is on. Already the excitement is palpable with Scrota all over the news, twitter and face book full of delighted civil servants, all changing their profiles to reflect J30,

organising for june 30th – open assembly – 7pm monday may 23rd

Please forward far and wide, join the Facebook event group and publicise!

Organising for June 30th // Open Assembly // 7pm Monday May 23rd // Marchmont Community Centre WC1

30th June 2011 may well turn out to be the most important step forward in a mass fight against public sector cuts. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be involved in strike action, from as many as four or five different unions including NUT, PCS, UCU and ATL.

Let's join community mobilisations to strikes: direct action against austerity

Often strike action can be ignored by those in power but also the vast majority of workers not in unions or directly effected by the issues. Therefore we, rank & file union members, students, precarious workers & unemployed are calling for a mass show of solidarity for those taking strike action and to generalise the strike on June 30th.

building for the june 30th strikes: discussion on monday 9th may

Time: 7pm, Monday 9 May
Location: Freedom Bookshop, Angel Alley, 84b Whitechapel High Street [Map] (near Aldgate East tube)

For the Facebook ‘event’ – click here

30th June 2011 may well turn out to be the most important step forward in a mass fight against public sector cuts.
Hundreds of thousands of workers could be involved in strike action, from as many as four or five different unions including NUT, PCS, UCU and ATL.

Even as we know the strike plans to be inadequate – at the end of term, and just one day (again) – if we want to do more than complain about the union leadership, we need to discuss how to build for the chance of something better happening in the future.

the unions and the fight against austerity

In an article commissioned by New Left Project for their May Day International collaboration with ZNet and others, Tom Denning considers the current position of the unions in relation to the fight against public sector cuts.

Teachers and school support staff strike together in Tower Hamlets in March: 3,000 filled the streets

On 30th June, up to 750,000 public sector workers, including many members of the UCU, NUT, PCS and ATL unions, perhaps along with Unite health workers, are expected to strike together [1].  The reasons given on the ballot paper will range from pensions to job losses.  But in each case, the root of the indignation is the cuts, which will crush pensions, jobs, pay, services, and the day to day experience of working life.  The strikes follow a demonstration of several hundred thousand in London in March, the first salvo in what promises to be a bitter battle. 

diverse, colourful, joyful, but angry!

Alice Robson writes on her experience teaching, and campaigning in defence of, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL)

In December last year, I left my job as an ESOL teacher at a South London further education college. I had been at risk of redundancy for almost half of the year I had worked there. I was swapping this uncertainty for a permanent contract in an organisation where ESOL was expanding, and where the vast majority of courses had free childcare to enable women with young children to study- both very welcome differences from the situation at most Further Education (FE) colleges.

A few weeks before I started, the government published Skills for Sustainable Growth, which they described as ‘a radical reform of the skills system to support growth’. Though this document left open many questions, for example limiting ESOL provision to those from ‘settled communities’ (a category that was not then nor since defined) it was clear that the document represented a major attack on ESOL.

what it would take to beat austerity

After seeing our leaflet for March 26th, Red Pepper got in touch and asked us to put together an article which put the argument in slightly extended form.  Here it is.  Strikes and other action must be controlled by workers themselves, argues Tom Denning.

A week on, the feedback from the TUC demonstration seems broadly positive.  To seasoned marchers, it might have seemed like just another trudge along Embankment – but for many it was their first demonstration, and the sheer weight of numbers carried some exhilaration with it.

A Debate on Imperialist Intervention in Libya.

Opposition to the military intervention in Libya has been muted in the UK, and positions on the left have been exposed by the tension between support for democratic struggle in the Middle East and a deep distrust of Western motives. This is an edited version of an online discussion between Commune members between 20-25 March, which aimed not at expressing a final position but exploring some of the contradictions.

Reflections on the 26th of March

Steve Ryan reports on the TUC’s March 26 ‘March for the Alternative’ demonstration.

The 26th may well turn out to be a turning point in the anti cuts movement.

Firstly as an event it was an undoubted success. Up to half a million marched, sang and chanted their way in lively procession from Embankment to Hyde park. The march clearly attracted many thousands who had not been on a demo before, many who had pulled back from political activity and were pulled back in, in short this wasn’t the usual suspects.