2014 and what will the new year have in store for us?

Allot more of the same I should imagine. With a general election being many political thinking peoples main source of interest for me it is completely not. A period of sustained bullshit being pumped out from all sides and angles. Where party leaders are analysis in all different ways does their hair look good? Are their prime ministerial whatever that means and so on? I can’t wait as you can clearly tell. For me I am asked who do I want to win the election and would either side winning make any difference. Whilst I think it might change the land we fight on if it’s a Tory or labour headed up government it would be different we can’t ignore that. But the programmes both are signed up to are not different at all. "In the UK, I don’t think there have been many big, definitive moments that sum up the year as a whole: just like in 2013, life for most people has mostly continued gradually getting worse, and my real pay, just like yours, is probably worth less now than it was 12 months ago. Still, there have been moments of really inspiring resistance: in particular, the emerging movement against police brutality and white supremacy in the US has been amazing to see, and the amount of organising that seems to be happening around housing in London at the moment is also very encouraging. 2014 in feminism, gender and misogyny (content warning for discussion related to sexual violence):" "Just like in previous years, when thinking about themes that run through a lot of the year’s big stories, sexism and patriarchy have come up again and again. On the left, there’s not been anything to rival the SWP’s rape coverup and subsequent messy split, although Russell Brand’s continued interest in radical politics has, once again, raised the question of prominent lefty men with dodgy attitudes, most recently with the discovery that he endorsed pick-up artist Neil Strauss’s book. To his credit, Brand himself seems able to accept that his behaviour has been sexist and he needs to work on changing it; as I don’t know the man personally, I can’t judge his sincerity very well, but I do think that, when Brand is discussed, his sexist record needs to be part of the conversation. While I can’t say how much I do or don’t trust Brand as a person, what I do know is that, after all we’ve learnt about Great Men and their defenders, after Healy and Galloway and Assange and Sheridan and Smith and Hedley, anyone who’s still so desperate for an idol to look up to that they try to shut Brand’s problematic gender politics out of the conversation is definitely not to be trusted." "More generally, I feel like, compared to a lot of other movements for progressive change, feminism seems to be doing quite well; it’s hard to measure, but feminist voices certainly seem quite prominent in pop culture, and it feels like an encouraging number of people are growing up with feminist ideas as part of their “common sense” worldview. It’s always tricky trying to draw direct comparisons between one struggle and another, but I do think it is at least worth asking what other movements could learn from the progress that feminists have made in the culture wars. But while some progress has been made, there’s a long way still to go. This year hasn’t seen much in the way of big, high-profile national disputes. For my money, probably the most significant workplace action of the year was the 90 days of strike action taken by care workers in Doncaster, but the Care UK strike never really managed to break out of its isolation – Unison, let alone other unions representing care workers like the GMB, never wanted to treat the dispute as worth national attention, the left groups who got involved just pushed a strategy of calling on Unison to deliver solidarity, and other, more rank-and-file tendencies who might have been able to suggest a more practical strategy for relating directly to other care workers never really got involved. Now that it’s ended with the strikers accepting a deal that’s a tiny bit less bad than Care UK’s original offer, but far less than the wage they’d been on previously – roughly speaking, a cut of 30% rather than 35% – a worrying precedent has been set for care workers across the country: if the Doncaster strikers could display such exceptional determination, but still end up being ground down and picked off in isolation, what hope is there for any less militant groups of care workers?" "On the fringes of the workers’ movement, some progress has been made with organising in non-unionised workplaces: the cinema workers who’ve been organising at places like the Ritzy, Curzon Cinema and Everyman Cinemas, the hospitality workers who’ve been organising in Brighton and Norwich and Sheffield, and the ongoing organising effort among warehouse workers in West London. These efforts are mainly very small-scale, but they’re still a welcome step in the right direction." It is hard to not feel depressed at all is going on in the world and the lack of any meaningful fightback but there is always stuff going on which doesn’t get the attention they deserve. The highpoint of class struggle in the UK this year has probably been the steady growth of a self-organised movement over housing. Two particular highlights from the start and end of the year were the effective scrapping of the Bedroom Tax in Scotland in February and the victory won by New Era tenants who forced Westbrook Partners to pull out of their estate – a temporary victory, but a victory nonetheless - but there’s been a lot of other important action around housing throughout the year: the Carpenters’ Estate occupation, tenants in Bristol pushing landlords into making repairs and reducing rents, Glasgow tenants winning refunds from rip-off letting agents, the Poor Doors campaign pushing Redrow into pulling out of 1 Commercial Street, and, perhaps most impressively, direct action preventing evictions in a lot of different places – Nottingham, Newcastle, Liverpool, Southwark & Lambeth, Newham, Salford, Queens Park and beyond. Eviction resistance has to be one of the most powerful forms of (relatively) small-scale direct action. In a better society, of course, it wouldn’t be needed at all, but while evictions continue to happen, it’s good to see so many people willing to turn out to block them. In particular, it’s worth comparing the results of ground-level eviction resistance to the attempt to ban revenge evictions, which was sabotaged by two Tory MPs, both landlords, just talking the bill out. This shows the difference between top-down and grassroots solutions: trying to change the law ultimately depends on relying on the property-owning class, and even actual landlords, to act in our interests. Tenant-led action like eviction resistance allows us to act for ourselves, without relying on anyone else. The New Era and Focus E15 campaigns have been hugely inspirational, but what’s most important is that they aren’t just isolated outliers, but just the most visible tip of a movement that includes many other, less well-publicised groups, like Housing Action Southwark & Lambeth. While a lot of the most impressive anti-austerity action this year has been about housing, worthwhile action has taken place on a lot of other fronts as well. Near the start of the year, there was the wave of claimant protest that led to Atos pulling out of the Work Capacity Assessment contract, while the direct action campaign led by pensioners and disabled people in South Yorkshire has won full reinstatement of disabled travel passes, partial reinstatement of elderly travel passes, and beaten attempts to break the campaign by using the law against key activists. They now intend to continue until the cuts to travel passes are completely reversed. Recent months have also seen a partial revival of the student movement, with a large and unruly demonstration not sanctioned by the NUS as well as a number of occupations, and more marches for free education planned at the end of January. The long-running campaign against workfare has also continued to make steady, small-scale progress, with a number of workfare users pulling out after being targeted. Meanwhile, over in Ireland this year has seen an impressive campaign of resistance to water charges, with huge demos just being the most visible point of a campaign that’s also included widespread direct action to stop water meters from being installed. Elsewhere, there have been other important struggles against repression: in just the last few months, there’s been huge protests in Mexico after the police-linked kidnapping of 43 students, along with the shooting of several others, and Greek anarchist prisoner Nikos Romanos has won the right to education after a hunger strike backed by a massive solidarity movement across the country. Meanwhile, the Operation Pandora crackdown on anarchists in Spain has triggered an angry response, and Operation Pandora is just part of a larger repressive trend that’s also seen a new “gagging law” with the introduction fines of 100-600 euros for offences such as filming police, lack of respect for the police, and unauthorised gatherings in public places, as well as heftier fines of 601-30,000 euros for preventing an eviction, resisting authority, or refusing to dissolve a protest, and incredibly high fines of 30,000-600,000 euros for “organisation of events or recreational activities despite prohibition by the authorities”. In the UK, we’ve seen survivors of a number of historical cases of repression continuing long-running fights for justice: from blacklisted construction workers like Dave Smith, and the surviving members of the Shrewsbury 24 still continuing their fight against the state that fitted them up, to the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign and the women tricked into long-term relationships with undercover cops. In all these cases, their persistence and determination has been admirable, and I wish them all the best for the New Year. Looking to the future: The next few months will be very difficult for anyone committed to independent working-class politics. As much as I dislike the various political parties, it’s still the case that a lot of good, committed activists are drawn to one party or another, and it’s often possible to work productively with individual party members on a local level. If you’re involved in an organising project alongside party-affiliated activists, then get ready to take on a disproportionate amount of responsibility or else put the whole thing on hold for the next few months, as the odds are that they’ll suddenly find their union or community commitments are completely eclipsed by the need to go out door-knocking to spread the good word about their favored candidate. Conventional political wisdom has it that elections are an important opportunity for activists to “get their issues on the agenda”, but, to take an example that’s so obvious it’s practically a cliche, students did a pretty good job of getting tuition fees on the Lib Dem electoral agenda last time around, and it didn’t do them a whole lot of good. We might be able to get politicians to talk about the issues that matter to us in the weeks leading up to the election, but once it’s over that still doesn’t leave us with the power to actually make them do anything. The challenge is not to try and influence politicians – a strategy that inevitably ends up with our schedules and priorities being set by the politicians we want to try and appeal to, rather than worked out collectively from below – but to work out our own agenda, and stick to it – not to push a particular electoral candidate, or even to push an anti-electoral message as such, but to push the same issues and problems that mattered to us six months ago, and will still matter to us in a year’s time. To take housing as an example – if we can “put housing on the agenda” for politicians this election season, we’ll get some fine-sounding rhetoric out of it, and a few more politicians posing for photo-ops with New Era tenants and Focus E15 Mums, but that in itself doesn’t mean anything in terms of policy changes. In contrast, if we organise together with our neighbours, then we can apply our energies right now to preventing evictions, or pressuring crappy landlords into making overdue repairs, or getting unfair fees back from rip-off letting agents. And the best bit is, because our power to do this is something we create together, not dependent on any outside source, we’ll still have the same collective power to do these things long after the electoral circus has packed up and gone home. Whatever your main priority is, that lesson is worth bearing in mind through the weeks and months of electoral distractions that are coming up ahead. with extracts and quotes from the excellent blog over at Cautiously pessimistic http://nothingiseverlost.wordpress.com/2014/12/28/12-months-that-mostly-didnt-really-shake-the-world-that-much-2014-in-review/

Bashing those on benefits

So the new year of 2014 has started in much the same way 2013 ended with much of the media and politicians scape goating people on benefits. In George Osborne’s Keynote speech the other day where he announced we will see a further 25 billion cuts in the next parliament this will mostly be taken from the welfare budget we are told. Further hammering of the poor the working and non working poor is the order of the day for George Osborne and his Tory mates it would seem. This is no surprise to me but I would just like to reiterate that people on benefits are simply not the problem and were not the cause of the economic crisis. While Tories and labour alike look to search for people to blame rather than focus on the real cause of the crisis we will be forever divided and ruled over if we end up blaming immigrants or those on benefits who are a consequence of the crisis not its cause as such. But it is clear with programmes on TV last night on channel 4 called benefit street trying to paint all on benefits as scroungers on the take and living the high life with LCD TV’s and all sorts of accessories. These people are the exception not the norm. Most people who receive benefits or social security as it should be called are actually in work of some sort. The strivers vs skivers false idea is an all wrong as we well know as you can be in work and benefits at the same time due to such low pay. Housing benefit too for example is no benefit at all in a way it is a landlord subsidy and those in receipt of housing benefit barely see it most of it if not all goes straight into the landlords pocket so the idea it is a great life and you can go on holiday after holiday and spend spend spend is just nonsense. I should not have to do this blog post again but I do as the media are relentless with their propaganda against the poor and those unfortunate to have to receive benefits to get by. We should look at the facts of the situation where those who have frauded the tax payer (another false idea as we all pay tax even if it’s VAT (by 1 billion. When you put in to context which the media never do that the estimated tax evasion by rich multi nationals is thought to be around 120 billion a year you can see why the media are trying to cover for their rich private business mates laughing all the way to the bank. It’s time we exposed the media for what they are apologists for capitalist exploitation and enemies of the poorest in society. We need our own voice. Not necessarily a new party as some on the left shout for all the time as labour mark 2 would not be any better but a voice within an alternative media starting from the bottom up holding all those who claim to speak for us to account if they don’t we should out them as soon as possible. Lastly I wish to extend solidarity to those under attack in words and actions I’ve had my benefits cut this year with my working tax credits its harder for me to get by this year than it was last. Many are suffering in silence. Let’s not allow this.

Happy New Year

So its now 2014 and I’d like to wish you all a happy new year with greetings to all who have been kind enough to red my blog over the last year and shared with their friends. Last year was a bit of a up and down one for me politically I came out of it thinking political parties are the problem rather than the answer and that democracy and solidarity are just words to some people. The level of bullying I received when I was a member of the socialist party shocked me and eventually leads to my resignation last September. The lengths some will go to to silence you speaking out are incredible too. I will always think independently and for myself and perhaps the party form never suited me in this sense. I do not like to be told what to think I’d like to make up my own mind. One of the big things I can take out of 2013 is that we are best when we do not rely on a central committee to think for us and we are best when we act and think for ourselves at all times. Socially I have made some good friends over the last year some who came to the surface recently who I didn’t know before but all who have stood by me I thank you for that and is much appreciated. I hope for change in 2014 with austerity looking set to deepen and the cuts biting hard I look forward to bigger and more focused fight backs. I will continue to support workers in action and communities standing up and fighting back. There is much to look forward to this year and much to be aware of. Ultimately the fight against capitalism continues and is something more will join as the year goes on. Our common solidarity with our fellow workers of men and women, black or white or any ethnic background is key to uniting the fight back. Lastly we are all on a journey mine has taken me from the labour party to a Trotskyist organisation and now to a point where I’m wondering what it is all about. I will continue to look into new ideas and learn for myself what is best route to take. As Karl Marx once said it is for the workers themselves to change society I believe that I do not believe anymore a party has the working class’s best interests at heart only their own self interests of the party. I think this is wholey undemocratic and not what is necessary any longer. I think autonomous struggles will develop from below as those at the bottom of the pile feel they have nothing left but to stand up and make a stand. We are a long way from changing society but each day in our small day to day actions we can have an impact building and organising are key ingredients to making something happen. We should not rely on our so called leaders of our movement and political figures be them of a party form or of a union to do it for us their role is different to ours ours is to remove all forms of power and structured power all together. We do not want political power but to do away with it in all senses. The hierarchy of structures like political parties and unions are not helpful a lot of the time but they do exist and we must recognise them for what they are there to safeguard dissent and to moderate how far radicals can go. To go beyond this and break out of the traditional modes has got to be our target in the coming period in my opinion Thank you for reading I wish all a happy new year and keep safe and strong.

A thank you at Christmas

To all who have read this blog during the year and even just skimmed read bits I thank you for stopping by. This year has been an emotional one for me where politically I’ve transformed myself going from an out and out Marxist and Trotskyist in the Socialist party to ending it being in no party questioning party politicise and Marxism itself. 2013 has been a big year for myself looking back at may where I stood in a local election in the county council elections where I received beyond my wildest hopes I gained 59 votes in a huge Tory are whilst standing for TUSC. Whilst this blew me away I never thought this would change much locally and nationally I still feel TUSC are plugging away in vain with a lot of the oppositional votes going to labour for now and frankly their strategy and message is not working and I have explained this elsewhere. But for me attending various protests and meetings earlier in the year to now where my activism is on the low side of things it’s been a big year of change for me. Personally I’ve reached point where I am no longer as big into politics as I was but still keep a firm interest in such matters and am still as I’d call myself a socialist but maybe with al to of anti leadership ideas and a few more autonomous views where democracy matters a lot more to me now than before. I am a lot more of an independent critical thinker now than I was and I feel better for it. I am no longer under the control of an unappointed leadership who see themselves as leaders of us all. A new start and a new wave of thinking is breaking out on the left and many of the old left parties are in crisis and will face bigger upheavals in 2014 I feel as they fail to adapt to this new period we are entering. Now I’m free of all dogma’s and party controls I feel free to express myself as best I can and I am happier for it. I encourage others struggling with a oppressive top down party to break from it you will be better off for it trust me they are not the be all and end all as I’ve discovered they are ultimately holding us back I feel. As Karl Marx rightly pointed out only works can change society no one else no self appointed leaders or parties they can only lead us to state bureaucracy and less freedom as shown in the last century we must learn the lessons and not repeat our mistakes. I have a few irons in the fire and my political journey may not yet be over but 2014 looks to be another big year with European elections and the Scottish independence referendum to watch closely the next year looks to be shaping up to be another big one for many who have progressive outlook on things and look to turn things around for the working-class. A lot has happened in the last year and 2014 will be interesting for many reasons many events are yet to happen that we will have no idea they will happen but to ground ourselves in solidarity with our common people other workers and those oppressed right across the world is key. I understand now revolution is not around the corner for us in the UK but things can change very quickly and we must be awake to them but things do not just happen our ground work this year will influence watt happens next year. The fantastic work by students on campus’s up and down the land but notably in London and Brighton has set the path for bigger and better struggles next year for students against cops on campus and outsourcing too. This looks set to be another big battle ground of struggle for 2014 which we should keep our eye on. But going forward we cannot make big predictions as some do at the end of a year going into new one but what we can say is that workers may have suffered b big defeats in the past but there is no grantee they will go on suffering big defeats a time will come where there is a layer in society with not much left to loose who will be the first to really fight back and give this gov a scare and possibly upset the whole apple cart. I once again thank all for reading this blog this year and hope you can continue in to the New Year and offering your suggestions for improvements if possible. # Happy New Year and a safe and prosperous 2014 to all.