the political impossibility of class struggle in the mind of the bbc

Joe Thorne looks at the media treatment of the recent engineering construction workers’ strikes.

It is perhaps not surprising that the BBC and other mainstream media represented the Lindsey strikes in terms of nationalism, not class struggle. After all, the Corporation’s recent ‘White Season’ showed that, for the BBC, white British working class people are scared, vulnerable, and not a little xenophobic. The strikes – in overwhelmingly ‘white’ areas of the country, but involving many Irish and Polish workers – were therefore understood by journalists and editors unwilling to get to grips with details, as being simply against “the use of foreign workers” in inspiration.

meeting for international women’s day

by David Broder

On Friday 6th March a meeting was held at the University of London Union to mark International Women’s Day.

Tamar Katz, a young Israeli woman who was repeatedly imprisoned for refusing to join the Israeli army, spoke alongside Laura Schwartz from Feminist Fightback, the Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (Hekmatist) member Houzan Mahmoud, the Independent journalist Terri Jude, Green Party MEP Jean Lambert and Maria Exall from the Communication Workers’ Union.

Particularly inspiring was the story told by the young Israeli woman who had rejected militarism and the ‘normal’ path of the country’s youths in favour of a principled stance of solidarity with Palestinians, despite repeated imprisonment as well as the criticism she was subject to whenever the question of her age – and thus her refusal to join the IDF – was raised. This speech was warmly received by the audience.

sixty years of socialisme ou barbarie

Many of the ideas generally associated with May ’68 were in fact inspired by the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie, which is now being made available online. By João Bernardo at Passa Palavra – slightly abridged for English-speaking readers.

On 1st March 1949 was published the first issue of the journal Socialisme ou Barbarie, which was produced regularly before finishing in 1965 with its fortieth issue. Now, in 2009, to celebrate the sixtieth anniversary, a collective of individuals and groups – “Projet de scannerisation de la revue Socialisme ou Barbarie” — has set itself the task of scanning-in all the issues and making them available online. The initiative has already put the first issue on their site. Recently there was a similar project with the Portuguese paper  “Combate” (1974-78).

self-management and the environment

Tomorrow sees the second Trade Union Conference on Climate Change – held at King’s College in London.  Ahead of the conference, Steve Ryan looks at the relationship between the recession, workers’ self-management, and climate change.

The recession is an important topic and is certainly preoccupying the minds of all from bosses through government to the Left.  This has very much put the debate about climate change and peak oil out of the limelight.

No doubt bosses and governments will be pleased with this. Buried in the news recently have been a number of disturbing items as regards the speed at which the poles are warming and the fact that Labour have watered down their commitment to carbon reduction under pressure from big business. Worse that the average temperature is now looking to rise by 4 degrees in the next 20/30 years… oh, and oil runs out in 2020!

the commune issue 3 – out now!

The March 2009 issue of The Commune is now on sale. £1 a copy, email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to order. Click here for pdf.

The new paper features the following articles:

Don’t moan, organise! – editorial on the recession

Factory occupation in Ukraine – by a comrade in Kyiv

Unions and left parties let down Greek youth uprising – by Valia Kaimaki

Lessons of the oil refinery wildcat strikes – by Gregor Gall

The impossibility of class struggle in the mind of the BBC – by Joe Thorne

Occupations for Gaza: activism goes back to university – by Taimour Lay

More arrests in Iran – by Sam Parsa

School students get organised – interview with Tali Janner-Klausner

Lassalle’s state socialism – from Hal Draper’s Karl Marx’s Theory of Revolution

Self-management and the environment – by Steve Ryan

demo for reinstatement of mitie cleaners

On Thursday 5th was the latest in a series of protests in support of cleaners unfairly dismissed by Mitie. The sackings came when the workers objected to being forced to work their full-time shifts at night.

Despite management threats and the weak stance taken by the Unite union, the demo, outside the City of London offices of the insurance broker Willis, attracted over thirty people. This was an improvement on the previous actions on Tuesdays and Thursdays over the last couple of weeks. The noisy protest used chants such as “Mitie, shame on you!” and “The workers, united, will never be defeated” (in English and Spanish).

Some photos are posted below. For pictures, reports and a video of previous actions, see here.

unions and left parties let down greek youth uprising

The Commune has published two articles on the recent events on Greece: a detailed and sympathetic account by two Greek libertarian communist groups, TPTG and Blaumachen, who participated in the movement, and a critical piece by Dan Jakopovich. In this article, Valia Kaimaki, whose previous article on the subject has been widely reproduced, asks what lessons we can learn from the December uprising.

If anyone has managed to understand the causes and analyze the results of the uprising by Greek youth last December, it is surely not Greek society itself. After writing an article exclusively for foreigners trying to explain what exactly happened here I was amazed to realise how many Greeks, friends, neighbours and colleagues complimented me on opening a debate on the subject. Any analysis, social, political or economical remained marginal and incomplete. There are a number of questions that should have been addressed by political groups, journalists and the public and at least some answers should have been formulated. The reason why nothing of the sort happened is that nobody was ready to open Pandora’s box.

school students get organised

Tali Janner-Klausner spoke to us about the new London School Students’ Union

How did LSSU come into existence?

A group of school student activists from Edinburgh had already set up a group, and a loose group of school students down in London discussed the idea and agreed that it will be increasingly important for school students to organise in the next few years. We held a meeting in early February to discuss the need for a School Students’ Union and what issues we should be campaigning on. We also had a member of the Edinburgh School Students’ Union come down to talk about their group and campaigns, and about the student movements in Europe.

forum monday 9th march: women in the class struggle today

The next of The Commune’s ‘uncaptive minds‘ forums takes place in London the day after International Women’s Day, and is on the subject of women in the class struggle today.

Women workers have been struck particularly hard by the economic crisis, and are also a significant majority of the low-paid and casual workforce. So what are the ties between gender and class oppression? How can we fight back? What are the lessons of the movements of the past? All are welcome to join the debate.

Speakers include:

Clara Osagiede (RMT cleaners’ grade rep)

Liz Leicester (chair, Camden UNISON)

Sheila Cohen (author, Ramparts of Resistance)

Mary Partington (Left Women’s Network)

The meeting takes place from 6:30pm on Monday 9th March at the Old Red Lion theatre, near Angel tube station (click for map).

week of action to stop the ‘welfare abolition bill’: 7-15 march

by Joe Thorne

A coalition of grassroots organisations, including Feminist Fightback, the Disabled People’s Direct Action Network and London Coalition Against Poverty have called a week of action against the government’s plans for welfare ‘reform’.  You can find out more about the government’s plans, and about the perspective of the workers charged with administering them, here and here.

more arrests in iran

by Sam Parsa

Following from last week’s offensive of the Iranian government against student activists, more  were arrested today. Four students, called Amirhosein Mohammadifar, Sanaz Allahyari, Nasim Roshanai and Maryam Sheikh were arrested, all of them members of the Freedom and Equality Seeking Students group, who have led protests and actions against the regime as well as against the war. This has brought great concern among our comrades in Iran.

video of mitie cleaners’ protest

On Thursday 26th was held the second of this week’s demonstrations in the City of London in support of the cleaners working for Willis victimised by Mitie, and twenty people – including cleaner activists and their supporters – turned out and mounted a strong display of solidarity in spite of the Unite union’s failure to do anything to help them. See here for reports on previous protests and posts outlining the dispute.

pcs: vote for moloney – but independent rank and file action is the key

by Chris Kane

National elections are underway in the civil service trade union PCS.  In a twist of history an independent left candidate of rank and filist politics is standing against Hugh Lanning, for Deputy General Secretary.   In 2000 the same Hugh Lanning was the candidate defeated by the then independent left candidate Mark Serwotka for General Secretary.   Then the Trotskyist Socialist Party backed Lanning against Serwotka, demanding a re-count when he won!   Today, the Socialist Party are again backing Lanning.

Hugh Lanning is painted as some kind of left candidate who stands up for workers – in reality he is a fake-left rightwing bureaucrat who should have been dumped when the old CPSA moderate group were defeated.  The current hierarchy of the PCS – for all the militant language has failed to match the bosses’ offensive in the civil service with an effective strategy.  Some of the leadership are simply politically bankrupt, careerist opportunists or both.  Aloof and out of touch they are more at home with on a committee or with management than amongst the members.  Much of the responsibility for what has gone wrong in PCS in the years since Serwotka’s victory has been the failure to build an effective rank and file movement and the bureaucratic antics of the Socialist Party, who have little resemblance even to their Socialist Party comrades outside of the Civil Service.   

photo report: national student demo against fees

Wednesday 25th saw around 700 students march through London in protest against top-up fees and demanding free university education for all. The demo, predominantly organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party and Education is Not for Sale (involving independent socialists and anarchists but also led to a significant degree by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty), was the first such demo in the last couple of years, given the National Union of Students’ virtual abandonment of any commitment to free education and its Labourite leaders’ cosying-up to the state bureaucracy, meekly making pleas that the government ought not increase fees beyond £3,000 upon its 2010 review.

Activists from across the country attended the demonstration, but the bulk of those attending were either from Trotskyist groups and their peripheries or a bloc of people with anarchist flags. Although most of the speakers at both the start and end of the protest called for student-worker unity, and many of the slogans advocated support for trade union struggles, in fact there were very few workers on the demo, even from the ranks of the UCU or NUT, since there is in reality little integration between workers’ organisations and the student movement, even its left wing. Nor did working-class students from sixth form/FE colleges attend in strong numbers, although some are building a London School Students’ Union.

Unfortunately, the mobilisation was also weakened somewhat by the fact that there were two separate organising committees (one for each group)… such is sectarianism. Furthermore, the Socialist Party’s shallow front “Campaign to Defeat Fees”, who mobilised several dozen on their contingent but were not really involved in organising the demo itself, voiced the “line” that we ought to use this national demo against fees as a springboard for a… national demo against fees.

Students have of course mobilised en masse in opposition to the Gaza war – 27 faculties having been occupied in the last couple of months – but when asked to protest in defence of specifically university-centred concerns seem to be rather less effective, no doubt in part due to the transitory nature of their spell in higher education and the extreme difficulty of successfully resisting measures such as fees, which cannot be pushed back in any one institution. Of course, more blandly “bread and butter” concerns such as free education should be at the heart of the student movement’s struggles, but it is also the case that so-called “big politics” around such issues as ecology or imperialism are of equal or greater importance for many young people.

Below are some photos and comments on the day: