film showing 10th november: the upper clydeside occupation

The next of our ‘uncaptive minds’ discussion forums on 1970s class struggle will feature a film showing about the Upper Clydeside dispute of 1971, where workers staged a fourteen-month-long work-in as a protest against the Tories’ planned shipyard closures.

As well as showing the 1971 Cinema Action film UCS 1 and sections of their 1977 film Class Struggle: Film from the Clyde (total running length: 36 minutes), we will be discussing the lessons of this important dispute in relation to the occupation and work-in tactic, trade union bureaucracy and the role of the Communist Party in the labour movement of the day.

The meeting is being held on Monday 10th November, from 6:30pm. The venue is in central London. Email uncaptiveminds@gmail.com to find out where it is, and to find out more information about our discussions.

If you’d like a Word file with the leaflet for the meeting, click here.

morales tones down constitution to secure his re-election

Bolivia’s President makes a deal with the parliamentary right-wing and seals the ratification of a bill calling a referendum on the new Constitution. The far-right, the fascist governors and the ‘hardest’ oligarchs, who control half the country, are preparing resistance and civil disobedience.

La Paz, October 21st 2008 – translated from Econoticias Bolivia

Early this Tuesday evening president Evo Morales could boast of achieving half of his objectives after the Bolivian Congress voted for the staging of a referendum in three months’ time to ratify his new State Political Constitution, re-formulated at the eleventh hour with right wing MPs, who agreed to make legal the re-election of the president, in exchange for eliminating from the constitution’s text all reforms they considered radical.

andrew fisher speaking about northern rock on bbc

Andrew Fisher from the Left Economics Advisory Panel, who recently spoke at our uncaptive minds forum on nationalisation and workers’ management, speaks on BBC news about Northern Rock, the newly nationalised concern which is nonetheless repossessing three times as many homes as other banks.

27th october meeting on 1972 building workers’ strike

In the aftermath of the 1972 building workers’ strike, police raided homes and took away men who were tried and jailed on “conspiracy” charges.

Among them were Ricky Tomlinson, now a successful actor, and Des Warren, who served his full three years and suffered from Parkinsons Disease as a result of drugs administered in prison. Des died of pneumonia on April 24, 2004, aged 66.

The “Justice for the Shrewsbury Pickets” campaign is for an inquiry into the convictions, with all the official papers to be opened, and a reversal of the so-called guilt.

Chair – Mick Dooley,
Speakers – Ricky Tomlinson, Arthur Scargill, Terry Renshaw

Meeting from 7:30pm, Monday 27th October, at the Welsh Club, 157-163 Grays Inn Road, London WC1 (Russell Square/King’s Cross).

pdf of leaflet for meeting

worse than they want you to think – a marxist analysis of the economic crisis

A talk by Andrew Kliman, author of ‘Reclaiming Marx’s Capital’*

update: click here for sound file

In the past few weeks, since we announced this talk, recognition has increased substantially that the United States, and now the world, are caught up in the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression.  Because Marxists are famous for “predicting five out of the last three recessions”, I need to point that the term crisis does not mean collapse, nor does it mean slump (recession, depression, downturn).  While the US is probably in the midst of a recession, the downturn has been-thus far-a relatively mild one. For instance, payroll employment has fallen nine months in a row, but the total decline, 760,000, is well less than half of the decline that occurred during the first nine months of the last recession, in 2001, which itself was relatively mild.  

mészáros, harman and brenner debate credit crunch

This evening the Socialist Workers’ Party’s Chris Harman, Richard Brenner from Workers’ Power and the Hungarian Marxist István Mészáros debated the topic ‘Marx and the credit crunch’ at Conway Hall in central London. Around 190 people attended the meeting.

solidarity action for sacked national physical laboratory cleaners

from Jake:

This is to invite you to our next action in support of the five sacked Colombian cleaners working for Amey Plc at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). (see background story at http://caic.org.uk/node/18)

Date: Wednesday 22 October Time: meet 12.30 Embankment station (south/river exit) to walk together to the Institute of Engineering and Technology, next to the Savoy Hotel, Savoy Place (south side), where there is an all-day conference which NPL is supporting

Bring: anything visible or noisy.

pics of pro-choice demo

Today’s Feminist Fightback action at the Department of Health, demanding the extension of reproductive rights, in particular allowing Northern Irish women to access abortions, was very well attended (about 35-40 people) and lively. A few pictures forwarded by other comrades are below.

A full report on the action is currently available here.

schroders cleaners’ demo 17th october

From Jake

The Schroders cleaners’ demo time has changed at the last minute to 1pm; the date is still Friday 17th October… here is their leaflet:

Schroders is a global asset management company with £130.2 billion (EUR 164.4 billion / $259.1 billion) under its management as of 30 June 2008. And it is paying its cleaners only £6 an hour.

The cleaners have been trying to get a pay rise for over 12 months. For all this time our management (Lancaster Cleaning Company) have kept promising an increase, and 3 times have stopped the cleaners demonstrating in front of Schroders Headquarters based on these promises.

We had been congratulated for our good job, but congratulations don’t pay our bills.

Now we have been told that not only will we not receive the London living wage, but also will lose our jobs because Schroders want a night shift to replace our 4 hrs part time shift, and to reduce the staff from 30 workers to 9 workers.

We are appealing to all Londoners to help us stop this injustice by supporting our demonstration in front of Schroders Headquarters: 31 Gresham Street, London EC2V 7QA on Friday 17th October 2008 at 1pm.

You can also send your letter of support to our email: schroderscleaners4justice@live.com

We want to thank you in advance for your support.

Sincerely

Cleaners from Schroders

meeting on ‘new methods of organising’

[click here to see the recommended reading for the meeting]

On Monday evening UNISON activist Anton Moctonian gave a talk at our ‘uncaptive minds’ discussion forum about new public sector union organising methods in the 1970s, with particular focus on the growth and decentralisation of NUPE and the development of its shop steward organisation.

NUPE, which organised hundreds of thousands of low-paid local government employees, is now well-known for the strikes which meant “rubbish piling up in the streets” and “unburied dead”, playing an important role the collapse of Jim Callaghan’s 1976-79 Labour government. The union experienced rapid growth in the period under discussion in our forums, with 265,000 members in 1968; 433,000 in 1973; and 712,000 by 1979.

strategy for industrial struggle

We have published a new pamphlet ‘strategy for industrial struggle’, a reprint of a 1971 solidarity pamphlet with a new introductory essay by Chris Kane.

The solidarity pamphlet explores different forms of working-class action (strikes; occupations and sit ins; sabotage; work-to-rules and go-slows; etc.) and looks at how different tactics used relate to rank-and-file involvement and control over struggles. Similarly, Chris’s introduction examines the lessons and relevance of these ideas for today, and stresses the centrality of self-organisation, democracy, and resistance to the conservatism of the trade union bureaucracies when faced with draconian anti-union laws.

The 24-page pamphlet, the third we have produced, costs £1, or you can click here to download it: industrialstrugglepamphlet.pdf

If you would like to be posted a printed copy of the pamphlet, email us at uncaptiveminds@googlemail.com or write to The Commune, 2nd Floor, 145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY

photo-report of ‘march on the city’ demo

by David Broder

Friday 10th saw a demonstration in the City of London called ‘march on the City’. The organisers of the 200-strong protest were the Socialist Workers’ Party, but a number of anarchists participated (no organisations or papers though) as well as two of us and a friend, a few from Workers’ Power and one person from the Socialist Party. The large majority of those in attendance were students.

The protest reprised some of the slogans of the “anti-capitalist movement” which existed around ten years ago, and there was plenty of militancy and activist energy on show. Of course, the real aim of the protest was not to put pressure on the government or banks (to do what?) but rather to give the SWP students “something to do” as part of the organisation’s current turn from East-End electoral work towards anti-fascist and anti-capitalist “activism”.

A rather more worthwhile protest will be the Schroders cleaners’ demonstration at 5pm on Friday 17th (details in Jake’s comment here). The National Shop Stewards Network has organised a further protest on Monday 13th at noon.

Below are some photos and a video. A couple of them are ripped off other websites.

‘march on the city’

by Jack Staunton

A demonstration has been called for 4pm on Friday 10th October at the Bank of England (Threadneedle St, London EC2, Bank tube) with the slogan “We won’t bail out the bankers”.

Chris Bambery writes in Socialist Worker that “we need to take to the streets to demand, “No bail out for the bankers – we will not pay for their crisis!” From small acts of resistance we can craft a political force that can knock back those running this destructive system.”

Of course, working-class action amidst the financial crisis should not be some instrument for building a party, but rather action which actually helps us weather the storm of the economic situation. While demonstrations mocking bankers like Friday’s may seem attractive, the most pressing matter is not to make shallow propaganda arguing ‘look: capitalism is crumbling’ as if power is about to fall into our lap, but rather for the workers’ movement to organise to defend ourselves from the worst concrete effects of the current economic climate (which is not limited to side-effects of the financial slump). Unemployment and underemployment, casual work with no stability (as experienced by many of the UK’s 750,000 call centre workers) and huge increases in utilities bills are all set to become even more aggravated.

We have produced a leaflet ‘the cost of living: it’s time to act’ about reshaping the workers’ movement for modern realities – the text is below.

between secession, revolution and suicidal deals

The Commune has published many reports from Bolivia, mostly translations of articles by the trade union news website Econoticias. We have also established contact with Socialismo o Barbarie, a group who have comrades in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica and Paraguay as well as Bolivia, and so are pleased to publish this translation of a recent SoB report on the social crisis there.

Bolivia on the brink of partition
By José Luis Rojo and Martín Camacho
From Socialismo o Barbarie in La Paz, 17th September

“The fascists shall not pass: the people will crush them”.
La Paz – Once again, events are moving rapidly in Bolivia. After two years of relative “calm” in the class struggle (2006-2007) in recent months the social and political convulsions traversing the country have again become red-hot.