for workers' power from below
by Joe Thorne
Criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, and the vast majority of our movement is not anti-Semitic, but it is a terrible reality that some anti-Semitism has been pulled along in its wake [1]. Therefore, we have a duty to acknowledge and oppose this. In fact, if we do not, we renounce the right to say we are true fighters against the brutality in Gaza.
by Solomon Anker, recently returned from Tel Aviv
The most dramatic event within Israeli society in the war has been the amazing lack of compassion for Palestinians. It is not true that Israelis are calling for “Death to the Arabs”: this is a very marginal phenomenon and outside the mainstream. However, in general people do not care about the almost 1,000 people of Gaza who have died so far.
Israeli television is giving off some soft war propaganda which does a good job of curing Liberal Israelis’ guilt for the crimes in Gaza, plus going a bit over the top about the effect which the Hamas rockets have. Nevertheless the media is telling people most of the truth about what goes on in Gaza and in fact the newspapers in Israel which tend to be left-wing (especially Haaretz) tell of all the war crimes that have taken place. Continue reading “the mindset of israelis in the gaza war”
by Chris Kane
About 120 people attended Saturday’s conference, which was called by the RMT rail union. It was much smaller than a similar event held a few years ago and unfortunately clashed with the anti-war march and the Socialist Workers Party conference. The event itself was not built widely with a clear agenda or purpose. The contrast between the vibrant militant youth of the anti-war mobilisations and this conference could not have been greater: it was veterans of the left, mostly over forty, male and white. But there was an open and extensive debate and plenty of time was allowed for contributions from the floor.
RMT leader Bob Crow opened the event by responding to criticism by a 90 year old communist who said that “this is just a talking shop”. Crow defended it on the basis that “there is a need to talk to break down the barriers of the past”. He said that if New Labour were to found itself as a political party today there would hardly be a “trade union which would affiliate”. It was in his view a thoroughly capitalist party and could not be reclaimed: he praised John McDonnell MP and Jeremy Corbyn MP, and pointed out that when they are gone, there will be no similar people to replace them. Continue reading “report: conference on working-class political representation”
For Gaza
Notice: Demonstrate against police brutality in solidarity with yesterday’s arrestees. This evening (Sunday 11th) at 5pm outside Kensington Police Station, 72 Earl’s Court Road. Directions: Come out of High Street Kensington tube and turn left. Left again at the next big cross roads.
On Tuesday, the Israeli army shelled a school designated as a refuge from the assault, killing 42 and injuring scores more. Two days later, thirty more civilians were killed as a second refuge was shelled. By Saturday, the number of dead from the past fortnight stood at over 800, with a little under a quarter children. Later that day in West London, cold as it was, and with frost on the ground, around 70,000 people marched against the massacre in Gaza.
Clashes between police and protesters erupted on a scale not seen for a decade in this country. This is a report by eye-witnesses associated with The Commune, who have also been at many of the demonstrations outside the Embassy over the past fortnight. We also reflect on the significance of the days’ events. Continue reading “mobilisation and militancy in the anti-war movement: photos and report of 10th january palestine demo”
by Brian Rylance
Bio-diesel has presented an unusual opportunity over recent years as various local workers coops have taken a relatively simple technology to make a mostly carbon neutral diesel from local used cooking oil. Food and energy are the most important goods to any community and they are subject both to fluctuations in the global economy and fickle state control. The opportunity to take local worker control of any portion of the energy they consume, however little and however briefly, is important on a scale beyond the actual goods they produce as it trains co-operators in the knowledge of fuel making and fuel makers in the practicalities of cooperating. Such local control has allowed genuinely ethical decisions to be taken for the community benefit rather than for purely economic reasons; all the coops associated with the Goodfuels Coop have freely chosen to use only waste cooking oil for feedstock rather than any unused food oils including dubious soy or environmentally damaging palm. Driven by profit alone it would have been far better for the balance sheets to import large amounts of palm oil from plantations that have been grown on slashed and burned rainforests. Continue reading “local energy and workers’ control”
by David Broder
Our readers will forgive us for another report on the daily protests at the Israeli embassy in response to the war on Gaza. Although the numbers at the 9th January protest were less than on previous days due to a simultaneous demo at the embassy of Egypt, whose government actively participates in the the blockade of Gaza, the protest was remarkable for the arrest of one activist and the aggression of the police, leading to another protestor’s arm being badly broken.
Below are several photos of the demo and a brief summary of the course of events. Continue reading “activist’s arm broken as police clamp down on gaza protest”
On January 10th the RMT is holding a conference on “the crisis in working class political representation”. Three years after staging a similar conference – and after three years in which no progress has been made – the union leadership is carrying out some of ‘the letter’ of its conference policy to set up workers’ representation committees, although the event on Saturday will have no motions, votes or powers to make decisions. Nevertheless it should provide a forum for discussing the question of where left electoral initiatives have gone wrong and what we can do next.
We will be distributing a bulletin arguing that saying “shall the unions stay in the Labour Party or set up a new party [a Labour Party Mk II]?” is asking the wrong question. We do not want either, but a wholesale reorganisation of the trade unions and an end to the rigid separation between workplace activism and Parliamentary/electoral politics which characterises so much of the history of the British labour movement. Click here for a pdf of the bulletin.
The event takes place from 11am to 3pm at Friends’ Meeting House near Euston Station. Speakers include Bob Crow, Mark Serwotka and John McDonnell – register at www.rmt.org.uk
Click on the picture to see a pdf file of the leaflet (two to an A4 page)
The first meeting in our new series of ‘uncaptive minds‘ forums on “capitalism and the working class today” will be on the subject of “resisting the recession”, discussing the tactics the workers’ movement needs to use to oppose mass redundancies and hold back the rising cost of living.
It will take place from 7pm on Monday January 26th at the Lucas Arms, Grays’ Inn Road, near King’s Cross, London. Speakers include Steve Hedley (RMT London Transport Regional organiser), Christine Hulme (PCS activist in the Department for Work and Pensions), Chris Ford (The Commune; LRC National Committee) and Gregor Gall (Professor of Industrial Relations, Hertfordshire University).
In further meetings in the series we shall be looking at issues such as the financial climate, globalisation and imperialism, casualisation and the changed shape of the workforce.
Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com for more info. See map of venue below.
by Steve Ryan, Wrexham PCS
Public and Commercial Services union members were surprised at the sudden calling off of the planned strike on 10th November. The strike was pulled at the very last minute on the Friday before the 10th, leaving activists frantically trying to contact members. The National Executive Committee claimed the cancellation was due to a “major breakthrough” in the dispute.
Surprise turned to bafflement and in many areas anger when the “breakthrough” turned out to be a letter from O’Donnell – head of the civil service – rather than the hard cash members were expecting!
The NEC claim the letter is significant in that it confirms there is no 2% cap in pay negotiations and allows for efficiency savings to be “recycled” into pay. No other union has been given this concession. NEC were also adamant that the campaign continues , that there will be further talks and that action will not be ruled out if the letter proves to be a con.
The early signs are not good. A close examination of the letter shows that the 2% will only NOT apply in very special circumstances. No claim settled or imposed for 2008 is to be reopened. It also appear to bind the PCS to tacit acceptance of the efficiencies. It is unclear where the efficiencies to be released for pay will come from. NEC claim that reducing use of consultants would go some way towards this but as pay negotiations are still delegated many departments will be offering savings made from job losses and office closures-totally unacceptable for any union let alone a “left” union like PCS.
The first big test was in HMRC, where there is an unsettled dispute. Straight away the letter failed as pay offer for 2008 was quietly imposed, without any protest from the Group executive. Again there are promises of open talks for 2009/10 . Members however cannot pay the bills on promises!
Indeed the HMRC experience indicates that the campaign may be a defeat. Members expected action or a significant pay increase – in the event they have neither. This has led to further anger with the union.
The key will be whether the dispute is allowed to wither away. Activists must now pressure the NEC to ensure that
> There are no further below inflation settlements -flat rate rises for those who lose by % rises
> That all departments open the books to members to identify the savings
> No savings from job losses to be used for pay -instead mount a national campaign against job losses and actualisation
> End performance related pay
> Progressions to rate for the job to be paid separately as elsewhere in the public sector
These demands would need to be backed up by coordinated and innovative industrial action beyond the one day strikes – members’ confidence will also need to be rebuilt.
Politically there also needs to be an open and frank debate about where the allegedly most left wing union in the TUC is heading. The preparatory ground for a Rank and File is already there.
Jack Staunton reviews Hotlines: Call centre – Inquiry – Communism
When we pick up a left wing paper or magazine and scan its contents we can be fairly sure that its editors will not have failed to offer a piece on shifts in the world’s stock markets, analysis of the businesses felled by the recession, and a take on the latest wheeling and dealing by the world’s statesmen. Whether dry, rational and down-to-earth commentary, or grandiose predictions of the final crisis of capitalism and vast forces of chaos sweeping across the globe, we can be sure enough that developments in the activities of the ruling class will be recounted in some detail.
But ours is not a movement which limits itself to attacking the dominant system: it is a movement for the self-emancipation of the working class. To put that in the language of the current crisis: no-one simply wants capitalism to ‘collapse’ chaotically in a heap of bankruptcies and mass redundancies. Quite obviously, the unravelling of the irrationalities of capitalism will not in itself create a better society. Rather, we have a better, alternative vision for humanity: we want the working class to organise to displace those who control the levers of political and economic power and re-organise society from below on an egalitarian, collectivist and democratic basis.
So surely it should follow that the left ought to privilege understanding the state of the working class – the people and the movement who are actually going to revolutionise society. This is all the more the case since although no-one would deny the existence of capitalism, for the last two decades it has been a commonplace assertion of much of academia and the media that the working class no longer exists. For such ‘commentators’, the term ‘working class’ is itself merely a label for a narrow cultural stereotype: for example, in March 2008 the BBC’s White season featured a documentary ‘Last Orders’, detailing the lives of white working-class pensioners in northern working men’s clubs, proclaiming that a few of this “endangered species”, the working class, do in fact still exist. Continue reading “the “workers’ enquiry” and call centre communism”
A review of Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. By Oksana Dutchak.
…the more powerful the vision of some increasingly total system or logic […] the more powerless the reader comes to feel…
Fredric Jameson
Naomi Klein is a famous contemporary socio-historical journalist, master of scandal journalist investigations, one of the most outstanding popular critics of the important tendencies in modern society. Klein became popular after publishing her first bestseller No Logo which had attracted a lot of attention in academic, political and broader circles. I find The Shock Doctrine just a logical continuation of her critical interpretation of the modern neo-liberal capitalism, presented in the first bestseller. Continue reading “power and powerless in the shocking epoch”
Steve Hedley, the left candidate for the role of RMT London Transport Regional Organiser, has been elected after winning some 60% of the vote.
An RMT activist for over two decades, who has been sacked five times for standing up to management, Steve has a strong record of building the union and encouraging member involvement.
We wish him all the best in his new position.
Through the first half of 2009 we are holding reading group meetings every three weeks, with the texts focussing on different conceptions of communism and the organisational forms needed to get there. Click here to see the full list of dates, subjects and texts.
The next meeting is on January 19th, on the subject of “Self organisation and communism from below”.
All meetings start on Mondays at 7pm, and the venue is in central London. We aim to have inclusive and undogmatic discussions, and all are welcome: email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to register your interest.
The series will run parallel to a series of forums on “capitalism and the working class today”, starting on January 26th: more details to follow.
