the truth about the postal strikes

A message distributed to supporters of the ongoing postal strikes.

There has been a lot of misinformation put about by management about the current strikes. They say it is about local issues that other areas have already signed off on – flexibility, or georoutes – so you don’t need to strike, its just London being bolshy.

They claim that the union is lying, that they are talking to the union and nobody will be forced to go part time. And of course they are laying it on thick with the blackmail that if we strike it will hurt the business, customers will leave and our jobs could suffer. All of this is just spin. Here’s the facts:

imperialism and populism in latin america: the case of peru 1968-75

by David Broder

For many mainstream commentators, the clashes following the coup against soft-left Honduran president Manuel Zelaya fit into the usual analysis of a continent-wide battle between pro-US conservative parties and a radical “pink tide”.  It is indeed striking how prominently supporters of the Honduran military coup allege interference in the country by Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, a theme also particularly commonplace in the political discourse of the right in Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia. The Times[1] this week approvingly quoted one observer to the effect that “Chávism versus anti-Chávism is a new version of Communism versus anti-Communism”.

However, while the Venezuelan president is evidently an influential and controversial figure and the focus of much attention, we must go beyond the typical media epithets about his personality – ‘firebrand’, ‘outspoken’, and so on – and ask: what dynamics and social forces do these conflicts represent? Why has Chávism and anti-Chávism generalized across Latin America, how irreconcilable are the divisions, and to what extent are these questions of anti-imperialism and class struggle?

To understand what is taking place, it is important to contextualize the supposed “pink tide” led by Chávez in the history of Latin America, and in particular the continent’s many examples of ‘populist’ governments with supposedly ‘anti-imperialist’ and statist agendas. This article looks in particular at the case of the ‘Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces’, which governed Peru from 1968 to 1975.

defend ukrainian community activists against repression!

from Liva Sprava comrades

On 27th July court hearings will take place on the case of Andriy Movchan and Sergiy Movchan, members of the independent student union “Pryama diya” (“Direct action”) and activists of the initiative “Save old Kiev”. They are accused of group hooliganism during a protest action.

More than one year ago, 6th June 2008 the “Save old Kiev” initiative (a social movement struggling against illegal building) were conducting an action against illegal building on the site of public park at Umanska street. Activists together with locals were protesting against the destruction of a green zone and the privatization of public space. During the action people took down the fence around the building site in order to attract public attention to the inactivity and negligence of the authorities. For a long time beforehand local people had repeatedly tried to appeal against Kiev council’s decision about the allocation of land. But bureaucrats gave us the run-around. Even when the city prosecutor ruled that it was illegal, the building work continued. That was the reason for the radical action.

upcoming dates for activists

Friday 24th July, London: Willis picket

There will be the weekly picket at Willis tomorrow (Friday 24th) in support of the sacked cleaners and in protest at the immigration raid there last week. Meet 12.30 outside Liverpool Street station McDonalds or go straight there: 1pm, Willis Building, 51 Lime Street London EC3

Next week, Isle of Wight: Vestas occupation

Comrades are making regular visits to the occupied Vestas wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight. Some of us will be going down in the middle of next week: email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com if you’d be interested in joining us.

Tuesday 4th August, London: Solidarity with cleaners in struggle

Public meeting called by the LRC, 6:30pm, Tuesday 4th August, Somerstown Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street, near London Euston, with speakers including RMT cleaner activist Clara Osagiede, victimised UNITE activist Alberto Durango, John McDonnell MP,  the NUJ’s Jeremy Dear, Gill George from the UNITE exec, and the SOAS Unison cleaners’ rep.

Saturday 8th August, London: The Commune’s aggregate meeting

National organising meeting to discuss our positions, activism, meetings and publications, open to members and supporters of our network.

We have an open culture and we would encourage people interested in The Commune to attend, since we want as much feedback as possible from our activities and for people to feel a sense of ‘ownership’ over our network. 12-4pm: email
uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to register your interest and find out the venue.

the “molly maguires” and the communist party of the usa: political repression in a free country

by Hal Smith

At the rise and decline of the American labor movement, the media and courts saw demons among the working people: “Molly Maguires” and Communists. Who were these radical “conspirators,” and what was their “crime?” Theirs is the transatlantic story of militant workers, and the law as their masters wield it.

The Molly Maguires began as a group of Irish Catholic peasants who resisted British landlords. Since Britain yoked Ireland in the 1600’s, the Irish served as peasants on semi-feudal British estates. In the 1840’s, the Great Hunger devastated Ireland, while Britain exported its food. Landlords evicted starving peasants, whose poverty forced them into the worst mines of America and England. Among the Irish immigrants were nationalist revolutionaries like Fenians and “Mollies.”

france’s cgt union: doing the immigration police’s dirty work

Winter 1980-81 in France saw the French Communist Party (PCF) use its municipal power to attack immigrants in Paris, with the Vitry-sur-Seine council organising bulldozers to stop the construction of a hostel for 300 workers from Mali (therefore leaving them homeless) and leading member Robert Hue, mayor of Montigny-lès-Cormeilles, leading a march against immigrants he had labelled “drug traffickers”. Now again in 2009 the chauvinism of France’s institutional left has reared its ugly head.

At midday on 24th June, migrant workers without papers were dragged out of the Paris Bourse du Travail, where they had sought sanctuary for the previous 14 months, by fifty of the security guards of the Confédération Générale du Travail, France’s largest trade union federation. This operation by the union occurred on the same day as anti-immigration hardliner Brice Hortefeux became the new Interior Minister, as la Promethée report:

The Paris Bourse du Travail is co-managed by the left-wing mayoralty and the trade unions. With the exception of the Solidaires union, all this “happy family”, relieved by the CGT’s initiative, has chosen to remain silent so that people might forget their failure to act to defend workers without papers. These sans papiers were not occupying the Bourse du Travail in the manner of striking workers occupying their workplace, management offices or a public space. They had found refuge there. It would make sense for such union buildings to protect workers without rights being harassed by the capital’s police, given that the latter would even invade churches to get at them.

vestas occupied!

Workers at the Vestas wind turbine blade plant on the Isle of Wight have occupied their factory in Newport in an attempt to prevent its closure, which was scheduled for the end of this month. Their brave fight in is an example of what workers can do when they get together and take militant action to save jobs and sustainable industries.

We call upon everyone around the country to send whatever support they can to the workers at Vestas. We all have an interest in a sustainable future, and we all have a responsibility to show solidarity to workers in struggle.

We have already reported on the significance of this struggle, both in terms of its concrete objectives, and in terms of how it came about.  The occupation has occured against a background of non-unionised workers, and activists from Workers’ Climate Action appear to have made a significant contribution to the organisation so far, including introducing the idea of an occupation.

More news will follow when we have it.  A list of resources, events, and things you can to do help follows.

cricket for iranian workers: hopi vs. lrc

Fundraising cricket match: Hands off the People of Iran vs. Labour Representation Committee. From noon on Saturday August 1st at Low Halls sports ground, South Access Road, London E17, followed at 8pm by social at Dalston Social Centre, 2 Belgrade Road, N16.

The plans are slowly taking shape for what should be an excellent day with cricket, a barbecue, a bar, and some promising entertainment in the evening provided by our fans and supporters (click here to download leaflet).

jlg france ‘explosion threat’: putting the squeeze on management

Workers at platform-crane manufacturer JLG in south west France won a 30,000 euro pay-out for each of 53 staff made redundant after three weeks of strike action. The tactics employed by the workers – including blocking a high-speed TGV train in a station and placing gas canisters around four cranes on site, threatening to blow them up – won wide attention in the French press and, as this Sud Ouest article demonstrates, showed the value of determined collective action.

“They had no other choice.” Christian Amadio, secretary of the comité d’entreprise at JLG France, is modest in success, despite the oviations by dozens of workers waiting outside the Tonneins mayor’s office until after 1am on Thursday-Friday night. The negotiations were long – more than 7 hours – and bitter. But they paid off in the end. “We won what we fought for. No more.” The agreement is based on a 30,000 euro pay-out for each of 53 workers who will be laid off according to plans announced by the platform-crane manufacturer in April. The names of the laid off workers will be announced in mid-September.

the cuban revolution – raya dunayevskaya (1960)

Introduction by Chris Kane

Many on the Left consider Cuba a socialist country, its defiant stand against U.S. imperialism is widely admired, and the idea that there is at least one country in the world where a classless society is being built has a powerful appeal to wishful thinking. Indeed, for those who consider that the essence of socialism consists of state planning, Cuba does meet their concept of socialism.

What this ignores are the actual power relations in Cuban society. Power to decide upon economic strategy or foreign policy – or to repress dissent – is tightly held by the bureaucracy of this single party state. Capital is accumulated as state property. The mass organisations that exist are controlled from above; they do not express the free opinions of the workers, still less do they enable the workers to control production.

Here we reprint an article written by Raya Dunayevskaya in 1960, just one year after Castro’s guerrilla movement swept to power. Dunayevskaya reveals the new forms of class domination that were already being established in that unfinished revolution, and sharply criticises the “old radicals” who (then as now) cast themselves as cheerleaders for state-capitalism in Cuba. This article was originally published in the U.S. Marxist-Humanist paper, News & Letters, in December 1960.

solidarity with cleaners in struggle: public meeting – 4th august

A public meeting has been called by the Labour Representation Commitee on Tuesday 4th August to discuss solidarity with cleaners in struggle. This once agan raises the question of why senior figures in the Unite United Left have not so far been prepared to offer their solidarity to union members in struggle.  Download  pdf leaflet here.

Tuesday 4th August, 6:30pm
Somerstown Community Centre, 150 Ossulston Street, London, NW1 1EE, (5 minutes from Euston Station)

In recent years brave union organising efforts have been mounted by migrant workers to demand basic rights and a living wage. A number of cleaning companies have responded by sacking union members and activists; they have colluded with the Border Agency in immigration raids to break organised workers. This is an urgent issue for the whole labour movement – come and discuss what should be done.

Spanish translation follows.

the greek uprising, six months on

By Nikos Sotirakopoulos

Saturday night, 6th of December 2008, in the Exarhia area of Athens: a countercultural and libertarian stronghold. A group of young people have a verbal altercation with two members of the police special forces. The policemen leave the scene only to return after several minutes. Suddenly, one of the officers, Epameinondas Korkoneas, removes his gun and fires into the group. The bullet strikes and fatally wounds 15 year-old Alexis Grigoropoulos, who falls to the ground dead.  It was the incident that triggered more than 20 days of rioting and unrest that would shock the country. They were “the days and nights of Alexis” as the participants have called them, in memory of the murdered boy.

vestas – the struggle on the horizon

By Joe Thorne

An important struggle is brewing on the Isle of Wight: we all need to take note, both of what has happened so far (and the lessons we can learn from it); and the possibilities in the coming weeks.

A factory, the only remaining manufacturer of wind-farm turbines in the UK, is due to be closed by its owners, Vestas, who are making all 500 workers redundant.   The company, like so many of those making redundancies at the moment, is using the recession as cover for cuts which are motivated by nothing other than ordinary cost cutting.  Jobs are being moved to the USA.

But this is not only about jobs.   News of the planned closure has also ignited outrage in the movement against climate change.  When we should be converting to an economy based on renewable, low-carbon energy, the closure of the Vestas factory is just what doesn’t need to happen.  So Vestas is not just a class fight – though it is that.  It is a class fight which raises issues of climate change, and the tension between capitalist production, and social production.

Workers are now discussing occupying one of the two sites on the Isle of Wight, and need the support of workers and climate change campaigners everywhere.

tonight’s london reading group on communist organisation

The last in our current series of London reading groups on ‘communism from below’ will take place on Monday 13th July from 7pm at the Artillery Arms, 102 Bunhill Row, near Old Street station. It is on the subject of ‘communist organisation today’. We will be discussing the issues:

– Can communists with different ideas and perspectives co-exist in the same organisation? Is ‘forgetting our differences’ and ‘leaving past baggage at the door’ a precondition of left unity?
– Should we organise for specifically communist positions, or establish a broader ‘left’ presence filling some of the political space abandoned by Labour?
– Should we concentrate on propaganda and ideological struggle, or workplace and community activism… or can we integrate both?
– What useful role can communists play in solidarising with resistance to the recession?