Learning from the school of struggle

As I’ve travelled through political ideas and seen struggles come about develop and fade and paying particular interest to how workers learn as they struggle is fascinating in my opinion. For me there are no set modes of struggles we must take. Experience and lessons from all different forms of struggles. We must be flexible and open to new and different ideas on the ground not be fed from the top down what is neceesary to win. What may win for one strike and struggle may not for another. During times of austerity there is lots of ways to fight back whether it is through our unions or outside community campaigns or simply organising ourselves. To find ways to encourage and support workplace militants find space for them to flourish and develop is key. Learning as we go is not just simply making it up as we go along that is missing the point but what I am trying to say is we do simply learn as we go and that there is no blueprint that is predefined that will see us win every time. During a time of labour history where we are seeing defeat after defeat on the whole finding new ways to struggle and involving new methods and new ideas should not be feared. Everything starts small and organising very small campaigns can lead to small victories and can build confidence. Confidence is very important in labour struggles and must be encouraged at all times I feel. Building links with workers in the same workplace is vital to knocking down barriers of sectors. Building links with users of a service and the workers and focusing on a strong media campaign including a social media presence can really mobilise many people if they are fully engaged and drawn into a democratic campaign. There is no blueprint as I said to win and to struggle but we should be open to all ideas working in and outside of the traditional union structures. If a union bureaucracy will not budge or actively support a struggle then we should not waste our time in trying to use vital energy and resources to reform them but why not go around them and organise outside the grips of the union bureaucracy. We can win and have we have won. It’s important we promote and celebrate our past victories but also learn from them and how we can improve our ways and means of struggle over vital things that are all under threat today. Things are constantly changing and this is no different for unions and labour organising. Of course we cannot put the horse before the cart we must not try and skip stages and avoid the solid hard work that is built up over time its important to engage with all on the ground. Things will change on the ground very quickly so we must be open and fluid to change and to change our own tactics to adapt to the new situations. Trying new things and them not working is not something to shout down but it is important to learn from our mistakes find out what works and what doesn’t so well. By learning as we struggle we can learn to struggle to win. This is not an easy thing to do and will take time to develop links with unions and union militants. A crucial lesson is that we do not have to rely on our leaders who are often self appointed we can start to organise today from where we are. We cannot be held hostage by the past we must look forward and learn from the past. The future is there for the taking if we are open minded and confidence in our own power as workers taking action to win and to improve our lot. With trade unions today they may seem useless and in many ways they are today but are still huge organisations I would suggest that we don’t trust our unions but use them for our own ends. Unions have huge resources and should be working for us. But we must remember their role within capitalism of managing struggles and managing defeats to their memberships. Strike action is not the be all and end all but is the workers most powerful weapon available and can’t be ignored for its importance. Building militancy is possible and workplace wide meetings is one way I would suggest this with a democratic non hierarchical structure in place where no leads are able to co opt the movement. By keeping all involved at all times and not allowing any particular individual or party to take control of a struggle is very important for me where there is huge dis trust of hierocracy then a need for democracy and rank and file control at all times is vital. We must be aware of the conflict between rank-and-file workers and the union leadership who have separate interests in fact the leadership and the officials have a interest to maintain the right to negotiate with the boss’s this is not the same interest the rank-and-file workers do. Remembering this is important t recognise that unions are not one big body of people al seeing things the same way as it’s a traditional hierocracy mans that there are different interests at different levels within the union itself different layers of workers and officials all fighting for their own ends. Lastly I’d just like to say well done to the 3 cosas campaign at ULU in London who have organised fantastically this week in 48 hour strike action and with over 120 workers out on strike more on the 2nd day than the first and over £5000 raised for their hardship fund all away from the traditional unions such as Unison the union many who are now with the independent union IWGB have already started to win and will win again as their material states they are hugely determined to win and I think they will personally. Solidarity to them and all involved in the campaign this week and going forward.

Solidarity with striking outsourced workers at ULU

On Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 November, outsourced workers at the University of London will strike as part of their “3 Cosas” (“3 Things”) campaign for sick pay, holiday, and pension equality with their directly employed colleagues. The strike coincides with the University’s “Foundation Day”, due to be attended by Princess Anne. A protest is planned for 6pm on Wednesday 27 November at Senate House. A University of London worker spoke to Solidarity about the strike. ________________________________________ What are the demands of the strike? There are three demands which form the basis of the industrial dispute between our union, the Industrial Workers union of Great Britain (IWGB) and our employer, Balfour Beatty Workplace. The first issue is union recognition. We want a formal recognition agreement in order to set up a proper and formal negotiating infrastructure. Lots of the workplace issues that later turn in to formal grievances or industrial disputes could potentially be avoided if there was more dialogue between the company and the union. The second issue is terms and conditions. The current terms and conditions for Balfour Beatty workers, specifically for sick pay, holidays, and pensions, are far inferior to those of direct employees of the University of London. We want parity in these terms and conditions between directly-employed and outsourced workers. The third issue is job losses. The University of London is planning on shutting down the Garden Halls, a halls of residence where many of our members are employed as cleaners, next summer. We want the company to re-allocate these workers within the company as vacancies arise in order to prevent job losses. What can people do to support the strike? There are two important ways people can support the strike. The first is by coming to Senate House, where workers will gather, on the strikes days. We will be there from 6am to 1pm on the 27 November, and from 6am to 3pm on 28 November. The second way to help is by donating to the strike fund, so that those low paid workers going on strike won’t lose as much money. You can donate online here. What do you think about the University’s use of surveillance and police intimidation, including arrest, against activists on campus? The University of London has turned to increasingly aggressive tactics in order to silence the campaign. This includes attempting to ban protests on campus, collaborating with the police in order to arrest students, closing off spaces on campus with barricades and chains, and filming staff and students who protest peacefully. The University of London is resorting to these tactics because they simply do not have a moral argument. Furthermore, after the campaign ignored the University’s ban on peaceful protests, I believe that management felt the need to become even more aggressive in order to not lose face. Given that they are now arresting people for organising demonstrations, and the demonstrations continue to occur, I am not sure what their next move will be. Perhaps banning students from campus altogether? Gandhi once said, “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. Then they fight you. Then you win.” It is comforting to know we are nearing the end. What’s the relationship between outsourced staff and directly-employed workers? Despite the fact that the bulk of IWGB members at the University of London branch are outsourced workers, we have an increasing number of members who are employed directly by the University. Some have joined out of solidarity with the outsourced workers. However, more and more workers have joined in order to be part of a union that stands for something, is willing to defend workers in disciplinaries and grievances, and puts the worker first. Together with Unite, UCU, and Unison, we balloted our direct employee members to strike in the recent pay dispute. They struck on 31 October, and mounted joint pickets with UCU and Unison members. On 27 and 28 November, the directly-employed IWGB members will also strike. Our branch meetings are open to all members, no matter who the employer. Mutual support and coordinated action will benefit both the outsourced workers and the direct employees. What else does campaign have planned? 27 and 28 November are just the first strike days. If we do not make progress we will continue with a series of rolling strikes until Balfour Beatty starts to take us seriously. The status quo, where outsourced workers are forced to work when sick or injured, do not have enough time to visit family, and don’t have a decent pension, simply cannot continue. We have offered to sit down at the negotiating table with Balfour Beatty on various occasions. We agreed to talks through ACAS, but after four and a half hours of dithering they offered nothing. We had a 97% yes vote in our ballot. We expect the picket line to be quite large. With thanks to http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2013/11/26/outsourced-workers-strike-equality

South London Slavery case, Maoists implicated

Is a title I didn’t think I’d be writing for a blog when I started out but a recent case has exposed a really dark side of left wing sects? Today's revelations about the so-called 'Lambeth Slavery' case have linked those arrested to the remnants of a small Maoist group that operated in Brixton in the 1970s. The central allegation seems to be that supporters of the group formed a collective that degenerated over time into an abusive scenario where several women felt themselves to be controlled and unable to leave the house of their own free will for many, many years. Two people were arrested in a Lambeth Council flat at Peckford Place, Angell Town in Brixton - with press reports identifying them as Aravindan Balakrishnan and Chanda Balakrishnan, formerly leading members of a group called the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Unless and until this case comes to court and all the evidence is out there, it's probably best not to speculate too much about the details. It is pretty clear though that this would be a unique situation arising from very particular circumstances - and certainly no basis on which to generalise about slavery in modern Britain. Clearly there are disparate cases of extreme exploitation, abuse and servitude but maybe the isolated nature of such a tiny sect becoming detached from reality in more ways than one is a case for concern.http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/slavery_in_london_an_hysterical_morality_tale/14331 A really interesting piece over at Bob from Brockley http://brockley.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/brixton-maoist-sex-cult-slave-shocker.html "In some ways the Maoism of the group is irrelevant: their key features are those of a cult rather than those of a Leninist party. (As Lurdan writes in the Libcom discussion thread: "Looking at their writings now they seem to exhibit all the indicators of a classic millenarian sect based on an apparently literal belief in the immanence of global revolution.") However, there are features of Leninist parties that encourage cult-like activity. Comrade Bala's group is among a very small number of Leninist parties to degenerate into pure cults (NATLFED on the US West Coast is the classic example and the LaRouche network is the most successful) but many more Leninist groups are on a cult continuum. Being at war with the "bourgeois" (or "fascist") state is an exemplary control technique for forcing members into absolute loyalty and trust of insiders and absolute break with mainstream society. But more specifically there are two features of Leninist doctrine that lead to cult-like behaviour. The first of these is the notion of the vanguard party; the second is that of democratic centralism. Both are sketched out in Lenin's what is To Be Done?, written at the turn of the last century in the context of an ultra-authoritarian police state where open, democratic political organisation was impossible. The principle of the vanguard party came from Lenin's conviction (based on the thought of his two intellectual mentors, George Plekhanov and Karl Kautsky) that the "the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness," and not able to develop true class consciousness by itself. Thus - whereas Marx argued that the working class could only be emancipated by its own hand and that "communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties because] they have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat" - Lenin saw a need for a vanguard to bring class consciousness to the workers. This means, inevitably, that an enormous investment is made in the truth of the party's positions: only the party is able to pierce the veil of illusion under which the rest of us labour. And the principle of democratic centralism (fully formulated by the Bolsheviks in 1905, with an increasing emphasis on the "centralism" bit rather than the "democratic" bit only later) is that a party can come to a decision democratically but once it does it must carry it out without dissent. These principles were passed into the hands of the megalomaniac psychopaths who have flourished in the movement since Lenin's death. Both principles are used to enforce absolute obedience to the party leadership, and to stifle all criticism. Criticism, however trivial, undermines the party's claim on truth, exposing that it lacks the true consciousness the workers expect of it. It is this stifling of dissent and total identification of the party leadership with the truth that enabled Gerry Healy, the leader of the WRP (for many years the largest Trotskyism group in Britain) to abuse countless female party members, as detailed in Comrade Coatesy's "Vanessa Redgrave and the Red Sex Slaves: A Marxist Analysis": What was the character of this sexual abuse? It was later stated that the women Healy pressurised into having sexual relations with him ‘mistakenly believed that the revolution – in the form of the “greatest” leader demanded this, the most personal sacrifice of all. They were not coerced … physically, but every pressure was brought to bear on them as revolutionaries’. The situation was ‘not so much rape but … sexual abuse by someone in a position of power and trust’. It was Dave Bruce comments, ‘wholesale sexual corruption in a manner analogous to these religious sects. There’s a very close parallel’. It is what has enabled the Socialist Party (the WRP's successor as the biggest Trot group) to attempt to sweep under the carpet up all discussion of very serious sexual abuse allegations. And it is what enabled the Socialist Workers Party (until recently the SP's successor as biggest UK Trot group) to totally cover up a series of allegations about leading member (and Unite against Fascism organiser) "Comrade Delta". In the lowest moment in the SWP Delta saga, the SWP refused to subject him to "bourgeois courts" (although it hasn't stopped their activist Professor Michael Lavelette from threatening bourgeois legal action against those making accusations about his role in getting Comrade Delta an academic sinecure in, of all the most inappropriate places for someone facing a rape allegation, a social work department). The SWP's refusal of "bourgeois courts" is different in degree and not in kind from the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought's view of "the fascist state"; Comrade Delta's actions are different in degree and not in kind from Comrade Bala's enslavement of Rosie and other women." Alot of murky things go on on the far left and i've been witness to some. We can’t simply brush these things under the carpet or pretend these people do not exist. We must confront them and confront our own traditions and practices on the left which allow these groups and people to get into these awful positions. My thoughts are with the women now who have an incredible uphill battle to regain their lives and start again. After 30 years of forced slavery I cannot imagine how hard it will be for them to readjust back to everyday life.

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Payday loan companies capped now lets scrap them entirely !

The government is to introduce a new law to cap the cost of payday loans. The level of the cap, which has not yet been announced, will be decided by the new regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). The Treasury says there is "growing evidence" in support of the move, including the effects of a cap already in place in Australia. The cap will be included in the Banking Reform Bill, which is already going through Parliament. Speaking to the BBC, the chancellor, George Osborne, said there would be controls on charges, including arrangement and penalty fees, as well as on interest rates. "It will not just be an interest rate cap," he told the Today programme. "You've got to cap the overall cost of credit." He denied the government had a made a u-turn on the issue, and said he was not pre-judging the outcome of a Competition Commission inquiry into payday lending. "These things can go along in parallel," he said. Some payday lenders have been criticised for charging more than 5,000% annual interest - though the lenders say these loans are meant to be short-term so the annual rate can make charges appear worse than they are. 'Duty on regulator' Australia has an interest rate limit of 4% per month, after a maximum up-front fee of 20%. The FCA has already been given the power to cap the costs of payday loans. It has also proposed a series of measures to clamp down on the industry, including limiting loan roll-overs to just two. Labour leader Ed Miliband has already said his party would cap the cost of payday loans. This is something to be welcomed of course but in my opinion does not go nearly far enough. Payday loan companies are the scurge of the high street in times of austerity pray on the most vunrable. Its time to outlaw them entirely and to scrap them for good.

How powerful is global capitalism at present?

Well a very interesting question indeed as it would appear contradictory. On one hand you have a system which seems incredibly powerful and somewhat untouchable in terms of any real threat from an outside force from an opposing system. We used to have Stalinism of course in the east with the USSR and the Chinese totalitarian regimes which for all their brutal dictatorial and clamping down on freedoms and democracy at least offered the idea that there was at least a different system possible if you wished. Yet there is no movement that looks likely that it will take power any time soon in terms of an alternative economic system. Not to do the working class down as they are extremely powerful yet I am not convinced are ready to take power anywhere on the planet. On the other hand we have a system of capitalism which is in probably the biggest crisis its faced since the 30's and possibly ever some say. So we do have a real contradiction in many ways. It is hard to understand on the surface anyway how powerful and how strong of a system capitalism is at the moment. On the one hand it seems quite fragile and yet on the other side it looks indestructible and that there is no way of changing things. Of course as we know and as we learn from the past no social and political system is indestructible and nothing stays the same forever. Dialectics tells us as much so to think that capitalism is here to stay and it can’t be changed or removed is just not true. It may seem like we are a long long way from change and in many ways we are yet change is always on the agenda and is constantly happening even when we cannot see it at the very moment. Revolutions are not just things that appear they are constantly being developed and worked on. I do believe that we can start to begin to build the new society in the shell of the old by putting into practice our ideals and values right now not after the revolution we can begin to shape things even if all be it on a small scale to start with. We must be in a way the change we want to see to oppose things we don’t agree with and we don’t want to take with us to the new society we must start today by opposing the likes of racism, fascism , sexism and all forms of discrimination. We must lead from example as revolutionaries we cant expect others to follow us and buy into our ideas if we ourselves do not live up to our own ideals. So in terms of power capitalism is still very much in the driving seat but for how long and in what form we cannot say. We must remember any victory we win off the ruling class must be forced home and if there is the opportunity to remove this rotten exploitative system then we must cease any chance we get!

3 cosas workers to strike Nov 27 & 28 at University of London

Solidarity with the workers at the university of London fighting back. Outsourced IWGB members working for Balfour Beatty Workplace (BBW) at the University of London have voted overwhelmingly for strike action as they pursue their goals of recognition, protection for Garden Halls workers and the 3 Cosas. The ballot results, published last week , show a massive 97% vote in favour of strike action, on a huge 70% turnout. The first days of action have been called for Wednesday 27 November and Thursday 28 November, the first of these being Foundation Day at the University of London, the traditional event when the Chancellor Princess Anne bestows honorary degrees on the great and good. IWGB Vice-Chair Sonia Chura was resolute, declaring that ‘The ballot results are positive and excellent. 97% in favour of the strike. We workers are firmly demonstrating that we are united in our cause’. She once again stressed that the IWGB was still willing to negotiate, but warned that time was now growing short if BBW were to avoid inflicting massive disruption on the University, its staff and its students. If you can get down to their picket line on the days mentioned above the support would be hugely appreciated. Please donate to the strike fund – as low-paid workers already on the breadline, they will inevitably be affected more than most by the loss of earnings which a strike entails. By you can donate online at http://tmblr.co/ZEL_Hq_YHvLQ