notes from an fbu picket line

by Joe Thorne

The FBU has held two eight hour strikes in the past fortnight.  The cause?  The London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA) has threatened to unilaterally impose new terms and conditions, specifically a new shift pattern, and has said that any of the 5,500 London fire fighters not willing to sign up to them will be sacked.

The 90 day consultation period, which they are entitled to under law, expires on 26 November.  The LFEPA board meets for the last time before this on 18 November, and will decide whether to press ahead.  The FBU is therefore seeking to put the pressure on before this date.  If the changes are forced through regardless, it does not necessarily mean the fight is over – but it’s clear that the coming weeks are important. A 47 hour strike will therefore be held beginning on Friday, 5 November, at 10am.  Bonfire night.

crisis and class struggle in spain

Millie reflects on the crisis in Spain and the recent general strike

The recent boom in the Spanish economy was based on a real estate bubble and most new jobs were in construction and bars and restaurants.

When the crisis started, Spain had one of the biggest public deficits in Europe. The creditors started suggesting that Spain couldn’t pay their debts and was near to bankruptcy, and the credit rating was changed so the cost of the loans went up drastically. The government launched an austerity programme which involved cuts in services, the end of a recent 400 euro a month dole for people who didn’t have access to the contributions based system, and a pay cut for all public sector workers, whether temporary or permanent. So this was an assault on conditions for workers in the public sector.

tom hurndall memorial lecture 2010

waste disposal – towards zero waste by 2020

Dave Spencer writes on the failed Coventry incinerator project

A number of local Councils, including Coventry, have recently scrapped plans to build new giant £1 billion PFI waste incinerators.  These were being encouraged by the last New Labour government that believed in an “energy from waste” strategy – that is burn waste and turn the heat generated into energy for the National Grid. Obviously the prohibitive cost of PFI schemes has hit home with the local Councils.

To save money by scrapping these schemes is all very well but what is the alternative strategy for waste disposal?  The giant incinerator planned for Coventry, right in the city centre, a few hundred yards from my house, was due to take waste from leafy Warwickshire and snobby Solihull and from anywhere else that couldn’t be bothered to organise their own.  You can imagine the gleam in the eyes of the PFI private firms as more and more bin lorries came trundling down the M6 and the A45.  But Friends of the Earth backed by local residents’ groups campaigned against the plans and we won.  We are now left with the old incinerator about which our local councillor told us, “I’ve been assured by Council officers that the smoke coming out of the old incinerator chimney is cleaner than the air it’s going into.”  Ha, ha, ha.

resist cuts to jobs, services and benefits

A bulletin distributed outside Sheffield Council buildings this morning

Cameron, Osborne and their chum Clegg have declared war on working class people. They are attacking welfare and public sector jobs: 490,000 public jobs will go. The £81 billion cuts are not a neutral economic necessity.   They have been denounced by many leading economists as they risk slowing growth, reducing government income, and therefore making the debt even harder to pay off.  The real agenda?  Thatcher’s old tune: less for the working class, more for the powerful.

the cuts coalition

It is a lie to say that we are standing on the brink of economic ruin or that the money has run out. It is spin to claim that we are ‘all in this together’.

permanent revolution in the andes?

David Broder reviews S. Sándor John’s history of Bolivian Trotskyism

It is commonplace for western leftists to reduce Bolivia to a mere appendage of developments in Venezuela and Cuba. Yet it is in Bolivia itself that there is the strongest movement from below of any country in the Americas. Despite its relative economic underdevelopment and the small size of its working class, the rich heritage of class struggle in the country is the envy of most of the rest of the world.

Moreover, Bolivia is unique for its political culture. This has been shaped by the failure of Stalinism and classical social democracy to sink roots; significant indigenous and peasant movements; it is the only country apart from Sri Lanka and Vietnam where Trotskyism has found mass influence.

S. Sándor John’s book Bolivia’s Radical Tradition is a history of Bolivian Trotskyism written by a member of a Trotskyist organisation in the USA, the Internationalist Group. It offers a valuable insight into a much-ignored history, and is also important in what it tells us about Trotskyist politics more generally.

french resistance movement shakes sarkozy

Adam Ford writes on the unrest in France

On Wednesday 20th October UK Chancellor George Osborne launched unprecedented social cuts, as part of the new Coalition government’s Comprehensive Spending Review. Spending was slashed by an average of 19% across all government departments, and unemployment is expected to rise by around a million as a result. That the cuts had been demanded by the same financial institutions that got a trillion pound bailout from the previous government was underscored by confident predictions that UK PLC would now keep its ‘AAA’ credit rating. Meanwhile millions of working class people in Britain and Northern Ireland are today counting the cost, and worrying about their uncertain futures.

But they need only look across the Channel for an example of determined opposition to government austerity measures. France is currently convulsed by a wave of protests, strikes, blockades and occupations, as President Nicolas Sarkozy seeks to implement two year increases in the state pension age.

women at the cutting edge… 30th october

A day of discussions hosted by Feminist Fightback. 11am – 5pm, Saturday 30 October at The Arbour, 100 Shandy Street, London E1 4ST (nearest tube Stepney Green)

On 20 October the ConDem government’s “Spending Review” will detail enormous cuts in public services. We are already feeling the impact of earlier cuts many effected by Labour; nurseries and libraries are closing, jobs are being lost. As the government “austerity drive” steps up, the reality is that cuts will hit the lives of all but the wealthiest. In many cases women will be hit the hardest with recent reports estimating  that women will suffer 72% of the tax and benefit cuts.

fighting their attacks, defining our alternative

On 11^th September The Commune hosted a conference ‘From Meltdown to Upheaval’, discussing the effects of the crisis and the existing working-class response. The purpose of the day was not just to rhetorically condemn the cuts and celebrate resistance, but rather to help define our demands and means of organisation.

This website will feature reports based on the discussions at the day’s workshops, starting with the two below on ongoing struggles and community and voluntary organising.

bristol reading group 24th october: spaces outside capitalism

The next session of The Commune’s Bristol reading group on alternatives to capitalism will be looking at spaces outside capitalism. We will be discussing the value – or otherwise – of ‘autonomous zones’ and ‘co-operatives’ as a means of working outside the system.

From 6pm on Sunday 24th October at Café Kino, Ninetree Hill, Stokes Croft. Recommended reading below – email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for more info.

berns salonger demo 22nd october; cleaners’ defence committee meetings

Call-out from the Cleaners’ Defence Committee

On Thursday 21^st October the Cleaners Defence Committee will hold a mass meeting covering cleaners struggles in UK and Berns, at UCL. After the demonstration on Friday 22^nd October there will be a social in aid of the Berns workers at LARC, and there will be 3 meetings that will include coverage of these struggles at the Anarchist Bookfair on Saturday 23^rd October.

a miserable case of british ‘justice’

Sarah Taylor reflects on the case of a French migrant worker in a battle with her employer and the courts

In late August I attended a court case of a female factory worker who was suing her employers for negligence. How I came to be there in the first place is not important, but what I observed and saw that day made me want to share the experience. I have attended a few court cases as an observer in the public gallery.

The case involved a French migrant worker who was suing her employers for negligence in a personal injury case.  She had been told to lift a container off a factory conveyor belt and in the process had badly injured her wrist. She testified that she was instructed to do so by an aggressive line manager whose bullying and aggressive behavior had made her working life miserable. After the injury had occurred she had decided to seek compensation since it had rendered her unable to work for some time.

the conspiracy of equals and the birth of communism

Jean Léger examines the history of Gracchus Babeuf and his ‘Conspiracy of Equals’, a communist organisation which emerged during the French Revolution. First appeared as ‘Babeuf et la naissance du communisme ouvrier’ in issue 2 of critical Marxist journal Socialisme ou Barbarie (May-June 1949).

Babeuf was the first example of a militant formulating a coherent socialist doctrine, struggling for a “plebeian” socialist revolution, in his view indispensible for the reorganisation of the economy and society as a whole. These attempts at the first communist party and doctrine are of great importance to us: they allow us to understand how revolutionary thought has developed. They moreover offer the opportunity for a concrete analysis of the link between the revolutionary militant and the working class in a given historical period [1].

welfare capitalism and the cuts – sheffield, wednesday 3rd november

The next meeting of the Sheffield communist forum takes place from 7pm on Wednesday 3rd November at the Rutland Arms, 86 Brown Street, S1 2BS. Considering the current historic attacks on the welfare state we will be considering defending ‘welfare capitalism’ and the need for an alternative.

Questions which we hope to discuss:

1 Are the cuts an economic necessity?

2 Will the cuts smash or restructure the Welfare state?

3 Do we simply defend the welfare state?

4 Can trade unions defend jobs and services?

The texts listed below may provide an insight to differing views on this issue.

Essential reading:

Are the cuts Necessary, and does it matter? – Oisín Mac Giollamóir
and subsequent comments.

Other suggestions:

A war on the welfare state – Keith Harvey in Permanent Revolution issue 17 summer 2010.

Where does resistance come from? – Sheila Cohen

In and against the state (1979) – London Edinburgh Weekend Return Group

People over profit – Noam Chomsky

Karl Marx on the nature of trade unions, in Results of the Direct Production Process of Capital Volume 1.

Contradictions of the welfare state – Claus Offe

The future of the capitalist state – Bob Jessop.

Trade unions under capitalism – Tom Clarke and Laurie Clements.

The political Economy of the welfare state – Ian Gough.

Class capital and Social policy – Norman Ginsburg.

State and capital – John Holloway and Sol Picciotto.

Crack Capitalism – John Holloway

Housing and the welfare state – Peter Malpass

All welcome. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for more details.