unite ‘united left’ no-platforms victimised activist alberto durango

by Chris Kane

There was uproar at the UNITE London ‘united left’ on Thursday night when any discussion of the Mitie workers’ dispute at Willis was blocked and the sacked UNITE cleaners rep at Schroeders, Alberto Durango, was denied the opportunity to address the meeting.

Two branch officers from the Clerkenwell and St.Pancras Branch of UNITE who have supported the sacked cleaners attended the meeting – the Secretary Monica Gort and the Organiser Chris Ford, and also some lay reps. They came with Alberto a member of the UNITE Cleaners Branch Committee. They attended expecting to secure solidarity from other UNITE activists in London in widening support for the cleaners and to back calls for Asst. General Secretary Jack Dromey to reverse his withdrawal of support for the dispute. The complete opposite occurred.

SOAS occupation ends with mixed results

by Taimour Lay

The occupation at SOAS ended disappointingly on Wednesday with a victory rally but few real gains. A statement released in the afternoon admitted that the ‘concessions’ made by Director Paul Webley and the senior management were ultimately more ‘symbolic’ than real. For many of those involved throughout what was often an inspiring protest against last Friday’s despicable immigration raid – an attack which SOAS facilitated and still refuses to apologise for – the question remains: Why did the occupiers walk out when still in a position of strength?

Some members of the occupation were shocked to read the ‘victory post’ that went up on the FreeSOAScleaners blog on Wednesday afternoon, and have collectively released a counter-statement today (posted on Indymedia) to temper the triumphalism. It calls not only for the continuation and renewal of the campaign against ISS, union-busting and collaboration with the Border police, but stresses that lessons must be learned from the occupation after so much promise and negotiating strength on Monday evening was allowed to dissipate in the rush for a deal.

the fate of democracy

by Nathan Coombs

What does the declining turnout for the European Union Parliamentary elections tell us? Most superficially: voters are apathetic, ambivalent and disconnected from the European Parliament. But more generally it highlights the paradox at the heart of the political discourse of Western liberal democracies: the ever-greater symbolic – even metaphysical – weight attributed to the word democracy, in the context of declining voter turnout and disillusionment with politics as a whole.

For instance, in the United Kingdom the panic initiated by the election of two British National Party MEPs and the MP expenses scandal have exposed a deep crisis in public trust for the political institutions and a sense of legitimation crisis on the side of the political class. In response to the expenses scandal, the reaction from most people is that politicians are all corrupt, and many people polled recently were not sure that they wanted to vote for any party. At this critical point the liberal media and political class have been united in repeating that we have to ‘defend our democracy.’ The motif of democracy in danger, democracy imperilled, has driven the crisis of legitimacy into the realm of one of an acute sense of constitutional crisis, with all the major parties proposing some sort of constitutional reform and paying lip-service to the motif of ‘power to the people.’

reply to socialist workers party’s open letter to the left

Comrades,

We write in reply to your Open Letter to the Left of 9 June, on behalf of The Commune (www.thecommune.co.uk), a small, relatively new group, which stands for communism from below and workers’ self-management.  We publish a monthly paper of the same name and are mostly active in London, though we have comrades across England and Wales.

We welcome the spirit of the Open Letter, and would be interested to participate in discussions concerning left unity in general, or a conference in particular.  Of course, you will understand, we have concerns – we are sure you do too.

We want to be sure that the lessons of the Socialist Alliance and Respect have been learnt.  In particular, we want to know what has changed – and it cannot be simply this or that personality – since packing meetings with raw recruits to block vote against independents and other groups was considered an acceptable tactic during the days of the Socialist Alliance.  And we want to know what has changed since the Socialist Alliance was wound down at your behest, in favour of the Respect project.  You cannot, after all, expect those of us who were involved last time to go through such disappointment again; to be shut out, or to have a project we have built tossed aside when the leading faction finds something more interesting to do.  If your perspectives have changed, we can accept that: but we need to be convinced of it.

twenty years after the ‘collapse of communism’: june 25th forum

click here for leaflet

Twenty years ago a revolutionary wave on the scale of 1848 and 1919 swept across Eastern Europe and the USSR. It brought down the state-socialist regimes which called themselves “communist”. Western capitalism declared the “collapse of communism” and some spoke of the “end of history” with a new era of liberal democracy. Instead the era of neo-liberal globalisation brought a new phase of war and recessions: in Eastern Europe the optimism of 1989 gave way to economic shock-therapy and widespread impoverishment, while in the former USSR the old elite has been replaced by the rule of exploitative oligarchs.

What happened to the radical ideals of the freedom movements of workers and intellectuals which challenged the old regimes, which called for workers self-management, and end to all forms of oppression and alienation, which opposed the ruling bureaucracy and the restoration of capitalism? The legacy of totalitarian “communism” still hangs over us all; amidst the worse crisis of capitalism in decades there remains a real crisis of confidence in a viable alternative to this system.

Did communism really collapse? Can we develop a vision of an emancipatory communism in the 21st century? On Thursday June 25th The Commune is hosting a forum in London to address these questions.

nuclear waste transport protests in germany: ‘we shall be in the way’

by Ella Seebacher

‘Castor kommt. Du auch?’ (Castor is coming. You too?) has been the uniting chant since April 1995, when the first cross country transport of radioactive waste from France has brought the rural farming village Gorleben in the region of Wendland in Lower Saxony in the north-east of Germany to controversial fame. It triggered an overwhelming movement of protest, such as Germany has not seen since the student revolution around Rudi Dutschke in the 1960s. Typically, the corporate newspapers had a field day with pointing out the millions of Deutschmarks the immense police operation to stop the ‘Atomchaoten’ (nuclear rioters) would cost the taxpayer and were quick to blame ‘den schwarzen Block’, the anarchists. But no, far from it, the anti-nuclear protesters taking part were coming from all ways of life: the guy who runs a gardening service, the carpenter, the supermarket cashier, farmers, grandmothers, small town politicians sitting in the constituency of Lüchow-Dannenberg, teachers and pupils. Doctors and punks and indeed, a complete army of vicars from every village and small town around expressed their opposition loudly.

leaflet for compass conference: the party’s over

Leaflet for Saturday’s COMPASS conference: click here for PDF

The economic crisis and the collapse of faith in Parliament have posed a significant challenge to the authority of our leaders. Not only the free market ideas which were only a few months ago the dogma of all main parties, but also the supposedly unshakable British unwritten constitution, have come under sustained criticism both in the media and a public crying out for an alternative. However, the European elections demonstrated that it is right-wing populists, and not the left, who have taken advantage of the establishment’s crises.

Why this failure to find support? Perhaps because, for all the talk at the Compass conference that there is ‘No turning back’, the current left consensus represents precisely that. Rather than using the twin economic and political crisis to point to the possibility of some better way of running society, most of the left instead hark back to the 1970s—the days of ‘responsible’ MPs and benign state intervention in the economy. Such champions of more ‘regulation’ and more power for bureaucrats are hardly likely to make much headway at a time when the BNP is winning votes by posturing as ‘anti-establishment’.

the fantasy world of UKIP

by Solomon Anker

The results of the European Elections have lead to many people being very worried about the rise of the BNP, but few haveany fear for the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) despite them having great success. While it is true that UKIP are far from the aggressive racists of the BNP, still the nationalism of UKIP as well as their right-wing agenda on other issues is all very damaging. UKIP came in 2nd in the recent European Elections ahead of both the Labour Party and Liberal Democrats, and due to this strength, in many ways they are even more dangerous than the BNP.

Out of the 16% of British voters who supported UKIP, very few of them know anything about what UKIP really believe in except for their anti-EU attitude. But in general these voters are not that ignorant of UKIP because as UKIP are a very shallow party there is not really much more to understand. In short UKIP’s basic ideas are based on a victim mentality that poor Britain is being oppressed by Europe and needs to escape from this occupation. In their fantasy, Britain is also this heroic country of Winston Churchill who defeated the Germans in World War II and is the home of freedom, peace and justice. This is of course the type of thing that all nationalists think about their country and it is a mixture of truth and non-truth. Britain has achieved many great things but Britain has also committed some of the worst crimes in history and its economic policies towards the 3rd World continue to be oppressive. But of course UKIP don’t care at all about the 3rd world.

an introduction to the commune

By Joe Thorne

The Commune is a political project incorporating a newspaper, a series of pamphlets, and a series of open discussion forums.  It is a group organised round these activities; small at present, but growing.

We are feminist, anti-capitalist, internationalist; against the structure of this society, based as it is on mass powerlessness, overwork and war.  We are for change from below, through mass direct action, and a society where everything is held in common.  Based on a broad conception of the working class, including all those who are divorced from social power and rely on exploitative work, state income support, or debt, we say that the liberation of the working class is the task of the working class itself.

le rétif: the secret life of victor serge

by Ernie Haberkern

In the early 1960s when I joined the socialist movement I was attracted to the “Third Camp” anti-Stalinist tendency in the American movement. One of the first books I read was Memoirs of a Revolutionary which had recently been translated into English by Peter Sedgwick. The author was Victor Serge a widely respected victim of Stalin’s purges, one of the few who survived to tell the tale. He also had a reputation as a “libertarian” among those on the American left who saw in the American IWW and the French Syndicalists the representatives of the “anti-authoritarian” tendency in the movement.

In describing the political situation in the early twenties in Russia Serge in Memoirs makes the following remarkable statement.

“… as long as the economic system remained intolerable for nine-tenths or so of the population, there could be no question of recognizing freedom of speech for any Tom, Dick, or Harry, whether in the Soviets or elsewhere. … we knew that the Party had been invaded by careerist, adventurist and mercenary elements who came over in swarms to the side that had the power. Within the Party the sole remedy to this evil had to be, and in fact was, the discreet dictatorship of the old, honest, and incorruptible members, in other words the Old Guard.” (Serge, Memoirs 188-119)

the commune’s pamphlets: reprints now available

More copies of our pamphlet series, many of which had sold out, are now available. The text of each of  the seven pamphlets is online (see the list of subjects below), but you can also order paper copies – £1 +50p postage per copy.

Write to uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to place your order. We take payment by cheque (addressed to ‘The Commune’, at The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St. John Street, London EC1V 4PY) or by transfer to Co-op account S/C 089299, A/C 65317440.

stop the union busters – victory to the rmt

Don’t scab for the bosses
Don’t listen to their lies
Poor folks ain’t got a chance
Unless they organize
Which side are you on boys?
Which side are you on?
Pete Seeger

by Chris Kane

The National Union of Rail Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) have called a 48-hour strike forJune 9th to 11th on the London Underground and Transport for London after workers voted by a huge majority to take action over pay, jobs and justice.

Transport for London is cutting 1,000 jobs, tearing up previous agreements on no compulsory redundancies. TfL are trying to impose a five year pay deal starting with a derisory 1% and for 2009 and RPI+0.5% for the next four years. This amounts to nothing more than a pay cut year after year, they refuse even to consider the RMT’s one year pay claim. Across the London Underground management have been engaged in a campaign of bullying and harassment of staff, ignoring established procedures on discipline and attendance. All this amounts to a premeditated bosses offensive against the RMT, the largest union of rail workers. The conduct of management has been nothing other than a provocation, the Tories want a fight – they have even brought in a union busting firm of consultants from The Burke Group.

This dispute is the first round of a fight with a Tory Party intent on carrying out wide scale cuts in the public sector. Whilst some sections of our movement are currently obsessed by the events of the Westminster Village they need to wake up to the reality of what is at stake in this dispute – if the strongest section of the trade union movement, both politically and industrially, suffers a defeat it will be a set back for the entire movement.

reading group: international working-class organisation

The next of The Commune’s London reading groups on ‘communism from below’ takes place from 7pm on Monday 15th June at the Artillery Arms near Old Street. The meeting will be focussing on the question of how the working class can organise on an international footing.

The recommended reading for the group includes two articles on ‘economic nationalism’ and protectionism in the workers’ movement, both of which appeared in Against the Current in summer 2000.

The articles by left communist Loren Goldner (click here) and Labor Notes editor Kim Moody (click here) relate to the US trade unions’ attitudes towards free trade during the upsurge in ‘anti-globalisation’ struggles a decade ago, unpicking the issues of identification with ‘national’ capitalism, the unions’ supposed sympathy for Chinese workers, and to what extent communists can support workers who mount powerful collective actions despite holding protectionist attitudes.

what chance a ‘left’ revival in the labour party?

by David Broder

Today’s Daily Mail front page screams “Rats desert sinking ship”, as ministers and MPs abandon the spiraling Brown government even before likely disastrous results in Thursday’s local and European elections. This morning there was further bad news for the Prime Minister when his factional opponent Hazel Blears – recently attacked by Brown for her role in the expenses scandal , in retort to her criticisms of his YouTube appearances – cut loose from the Cabinet, promising “to return to the grassroots, to political activism, to the cut and thrust of political debate”.

Blears’ move follows yesterday’s announcements by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes, former Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt and Tom Watson, a Brown ally who was at the centre of the botched summer 2006 “Curry House coup” against Tony Blair. Each of these had their different motivations for leaving government or leaving Parliament – some of them without significant animosity towards the beleaguered Prime Minister – but it all adds to the sense that the government cannot stumble on much longer.  Yesterday The Times – and today The Guardian – called on the Cabinet to get rid of Gordon Brown.

Sooner or later, Brown will fall, even if he does manage to cling on to power right up until May 2010, the latest date to which he can postpone the General Election. Clearly there is no serious prospect of him continuing to lead the party after such a defeat. Some on the left believe that this collapse will present new opportunities in the Labour Party, arguing that the turmoil which will follow Labour’s defeat will lead to factional “re-alignment” in the party and therefore an opening-up of debate in its ranks which we should participate in. So what signs are there of a space for the left to operate in Labour?