Cleaner activist Alberto Durango reports on a strike which shows that direct action works
According to the website of London’s Guildhall, it was designed to show the power of London’s ruling elite. This tradition is continued today by annual speeches by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England. The most recent event was a dinner in tribute to the new Ronald Reagan statue attended by the Foreign Secretary, Condoleezza Rice and other dignitaries.
London's Guildhall: a monument to the wealthy
Though regularly hosting wealthy patrons of this ancient and prestigious venue, they fail to pay the cleaners for the hours actually worked. Even when paid the cleaners get only £5.95 an hour, far short of the £8.30 ‘living wage’ calculated for one of the world’s most expensive cities. Continue reading “cleaners’ strike in the city pays dividends”→
John Keeley argues that it’s more than just Europe’s periphery that’s in crisis; it’s the entire capitalist system.
Democracy is derived from the Greek Demos (People) and Kratos (Power). This is what we are seeing on the streets of Athens – people power versus the EU/IMF dictatorship. But what are the roots of this debt crisis and why does the EU/IMF demand austerity?
To understand why each Greek owes €30,000 in debt requires an understanding of the role of credit in the capitalist system. Fractional reserve banking allows banks to lend more money than they actually have. In boom times everything looks rosy to the capitalists and credit is extended and profit rates look healthy. But this expansion of credit fuels overproduction. It then starts to dawn that debt-saturation means not all loans will be repaid. Banks become reluctant to lend to one another and credit dries up. This is a credit crunch. As capitalists retreat to cash, effective demand in the market reduces and a recession occurs. Continue reading “understanding europe’s crisis”→
College worker Siobhan Evans reflects on a hard-fought struggle against redundancies in her workplace.
A few months ago management in our college announced that 88 teaching and learning support staff (about 20% of the total) were “at risk of redundancy”. Now, after months of struggle and direct action, the redundancies have been withdrawn.
The dispute overlapped with the June 30th strike day
The college, in a poor area of London, has been badly affected by funding cuts. To give a concrete example, there are massive cuts in English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Until recently ESOL was free. The department had about a thousand students. They were mostly people out of work or on low incomes, often with health problems and housing problems. Fees were introduced about four years ago for any students who were not recieving benefits, and since then the number of students has halved. Now even worse restrictions have been introduced which mean that the only students able to get free classes are those on jobseekers and other active benefits, so again more students, mostly women, will be excluded. The Save ESOL campaign calculate that 99,000 people, more than half of all ESOL students, will lose their free classes. To make matters worse the jobcentre harrass the students who are eligible and often force them off our courses because they are studying too many hours. Continue reading “‘something out of the ordinary’”→
The next meeting in our London reading group takes place from 7pm on Monday 1st August at Freedom Bookshop, Angel Alley, Aldgate East.
During the period 1969- 1977 in Italy there were massive and profound struggles outside the workplace. We are going to focus on housing and the women’s movement. The scale of migration from the south and subsequent housing crisis led to rent strikes by tenants and an organised squatting movement. This was interconnected with many other working class struggles. The women’s movement challenged the whole political movement and forced a radical redefinition of what was ‘political’ and how and about what people organised.
Activist solidarity initiatives for last month’s J30 national strike day had rather mixed results. Daniel Harvey stresses the need to centre our activity around the workplace.
We sat around in a circle in room 3C of the University of London Union (ULU) building on Malet Street. The rain pounded down outside the window, as the residue of J30 activists discussed how the day had gone. In my short experience of the left it was probably the meeting least worth the train ticket, but it was in fact a microcosm of what the build-up to J30 had been from the start: a lot of open chat without much substantial organising focus.
Spanish protesters set up camps in public squares: was J30 time for us to do the same?
On the one hand was the activist side of the debate from the people’s assembly, who wanted to duplicate the events in Madrid and Cairo, and continue the revolution based the occupation of public squares. On the other, some striking teachers, who said they would have liked the organisation of more pickets, and a more down to earth and local approach. Continue reading “reflections on june 30th strike day: tense debates over camping plan”→
The August 2011 issue of The Commune marks a substantial step forward for our paper. We will now be distributing the paper for free, and in much-increased volume.
This issue features reports from the 30th June strike day, debate on the reasons behind the European crisis, and an extended essay on the war in Libya… and much more. See below for a list of articles.
You can download a PDF of issue 24 by clicking on the image above. If you enjoy the paper and would like to share these ideas with others, write to us at uncaptiveminds@gmail.com and we can post you some hard copies to distribute.
30th June (‘J30’) saw some 750,000 public sector workers take strike action over Tory attacks on pensions. This was the next step forward for the anti-cuts movement following the mass demonstration on 26th March. We discuss the significance of the day and its lessons.
July’s News International phone-hacking scandal focused attention on the links between big business, the media and government.
Millions were rightly angry at not only the hacking of mobile phones, but the clear signs of corruption cutting to the heart of the state. Police officers and journalists traded information for cash, all in the name of building the billionaire Murdoch family’s vast business empire. At the same time the media tycoons were wined and dined by the Prime Minister.
However, most left-wing analysis of the scandal stopped here: business and the Tories are in each others’ pockets. But this is not enough. Firstly, because the links between the corporate media and the state go far beyond ‘Hackgate’. The Murdochs are not just friends of Eton boys like David Cameron: they had a long incestuous relationship with the previous Labour government. Continue reading “their media and ours”→
Daniel Harvey gives a theoretical insight into the existential problem of relating to others as a revolutionary in a liberal society.
The old slogan of bourgeois entertainment, ‘But you must have seen this’, which just represented a swindle in the market place becomes a matter of deadly seriousness with the abolishment of amusements and the market alike. Formerly the supposed penalty was being unable to participate in what everyone else was talking about. Today, anyone who is unable to talk in the prescribed fashion, that is of effortlessly reproducing the formulas, conventions and judgments of mass culture as if they were his own is threatened in his very existence, suspected of being an idiot or an intellectual.
Adorno, ‘The Schema of Mass Culture’
What's missing?
One of the most misleading delusions we hold about ourselves is that there is some insoluble distinction between our public and our private selves. This illusion gives us the flattering idea that we are only forced to wear social masks, that underneath this persona that capitalist society forces us to adopt, there is some redeemable ‘real me’, who would be able to express themselves if only they were allowed to. This distinction supposedly makes us unhappy and depressed, alienated even, and we feel it separates us from bonding with the people around us. ‘Express yourself’ is now probably the most common advertising principle, and it’s a true testament to advertisers professional skill that they have made doing this seemingly very simple task so expensive. Some sad cases in the 60s took this and turned it into an entire new ‘self discovery’ industry. The wealthy and bored go on long and expensive retreats to monasteries filled with Indian, so called, mystics, and then Louis Theroux made a documentary about it. Continue reading “why is it difficult to sell a paper to a random stranger?”→
Support the cleaners’ strike at the Guildhall, in the City of London! Picket outside from 5:30am ’til 10am on Friday 15th July: see here for map. Read below for details of the dispute.
The Guildhall, London according to its own website was designed to show the power of London’s ruling elite. This tradition is continued today by annual speeches by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Governor of the Bank of England. The most recent event was a dinner in tribute to the new Ronald Reagan statue attended by the Foreign Secretary, Condoleezza Rice and other dignitaries. Continue reading “cleaners strike 15th july at guildhall, city of london”→
Donal O’Falluin writes on Irish working-class football culture
On the northside of Dublin, there is a football stadium. Only a short walk from the 82,000 seater capacity Croke Park, home of the Gaelic Athletic Association, a small stadium with a capacity of about 8,000 sits. Pele, Zidane and many other greats have run out onto the pitch of Dalymount Park. It is considered by many ‘the home of Irish football’. It is symbolic of where the game is today that this historically important stadium, once home to the Irish international side, today crumbles. Like Dalymount Park herself, football in Ireland has endured a fall from grace.
On paper, the football experience in Ireland is something which greatly excites the English football faithful, from an outsiders perspective. With standing in stadiums commonplace, and terraces still the order of the day for many, not to mention a ticket cost averaging €15, it’s an almost romantic throwback to a time before the topflight game in the United Kingdom passed into the hands of speculators, becoming a sort of ’22 men on a pitch’ version of Monopoly among the world’s wealthy. On the ground though it’s evident the game in Ireland is in a seriously troubled state. Continue reading “the beautiful game in ireland: a story of neglect”→
David Broder reflects on this weekend’s Marxism festival, a thousands-strong conference organised by the Socialist Workers’ Party. He argues that the libertarian left should be doing more to engage with SWP comrades in order to provide a positive alternative for those put off by how it organises.
Marxism is the biggest event on the British left. Across five days several thousand people converge on London for the Socialist Workers’ Party summer school, including representatives of most other significant left groups. The conference itself is SWP self-promotion, so they do not invite groups they disagree with for debate: they prefer to give a platform to ‘big name’ trade union leaders, politicians like Tony Benn or Marxist academics, who may sermonise for socialism but won’t really question the SWP’s own modus operandi.
This is a great shame, since ‘Marxism’ has great unfulfilled potential. It could be a weekend for the left to debate strategy and ideas in a collective way. Instead, the meetings are heavy on top-table speakers, while SWP audience members tend simply to reaffirm what the speaker has already said. Often in an anti-cuts meeting or similar, The Commune members will question whether we should really be collaborating with Labour politicians, what kind of direct action is appropriate, or if we should be making more radical, positive proposals rather than purely defensive demands. The SWP stock reply is: this isn’t the time to debate among ourselves, we need to be ‘out there’ campaigning. OK, so when can we have these debates? Continue reading “a weekend at marxism: how do we relate to the SWP?”→
Oisín Mac Giollamóir explores the complexity of how the Eurozone crisis affects particular states
If the working class has no country it is for one reason: because capital has no country. But of course capital is often national. The emergence of the nation state and capitalism are contemporaneous. As capitalism emerged so did the nation state. As various historical class relations are dissolved into the capital/labour relation, the notion of the nation’s common interest emerges. But what happens when the nation becomes a constraint on capital accumulation? It expands.
Over the last 60ish years, through the emergence of the EU, Europe has seen the emergence of an integrated capitalist system. However, a major limit of this integration is that the national myth, the idea of a common interest between capital and labour, has not developed on a European level. Continue reading “national divisions and the eurozone in crisis”→
Barry Biddulph found the Sheffield anti-cuts alliance heavier on top-table speakers than real politics or organisation
The second public meeting of the campaign against the cuts in Sheffield was was far smaller and less representative than the first founding meeting last year, despite the recent demos and strike votes. Less than one hundred people sat in a University lecture room with seats for five hundred, to listen to seven speakers. It was a trade union rally, not a meeting for activists to discuss the socialist alternative to the crisis of capitalism and how to organise to make the transition to a real movement.
The character of the speeches was very defensive. It was all about keeping what we had. Defending our welfare state against the Nasty Tories as if the Labour Party was not making cuts in Manchester and elsewhere. There was no criticism of the Labour Party or those union leaders reluctant to fight the cuts. The political implication of the speeches was the Labour Party could somehow represent the fight back or to register that there was a trade union fightback. There was no analysis of the economic crisis and no speaker including a Permanent Revolution supporter, mentioned the S word. John McDonnell MP came closest with his call for a new society. Continue reading “sheffield anti-cuts: a fairer capitalism?”→
