Organise mass working class resistance to austerity

Come to the National Shop Stewards Network rally at the TUC Congress

Join fellow trade unionists and socialists including Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and BFAWU (Bakers Union) general secretary Ronnie Draper on the NSSN lobby of the TUC in Brighton on 11 September, 1pm in the Ashdown Suite, Holiday Inn, 137 King's Road (seafront), Brighton, BN1 2JF

Junior doctors and teachers march together in a joint BMA and NUT demonstration in April. Now Cameron is gone we need to get Hunt and the rest of the Tories out photo Paul Mattsson   

Rob Williams, Socialist Party industrial organiser

TUC congress is taking place at the end of what has seemed like a hot summer, industrially at least. In the run up to the event, the figures for days lost in industrial action in 2015 were published.

On the surface, they are alarming. The lowest number of workers on strike - 81,000 - in a single year since records began in 1893 and only 170,000 days lost through action - the second lowest in history. In the 1980s, on average more than three million days were lost.

No doubt the conclusion drawn by the pessimists and cynics within the trade union movement will be that this confirms that the organised working class is too weak to defeat the employers and their government.

In fact, the TUC press officer, Michael Pidgeon, has used the figures to argue that the Tories had no need to bring in the repressive Trade Union Act, the biggest attack on the unions since Thatcher's anti-union laws three decades ago.

They will also be used to justify the absolutely baleful role of the right-wing union leaders in the fight against Tory austerity over the last six years. No serious campaign of co-ordinated strike action has been called against the biggest jobs cull ever seen in the public sector. Last year, it was estimated that 400,000 workers had been sacked, with the possibility of another half a million going by 2020.

Opportunity

The biggest opportunity to confront the cuts was the 2011 struggle to defend public sector pensions which saw 2 million workers walk out on the 30 November strike that year. If that dispute had been continued and escalated, it had the potential to stop Cameron and Osborne's austerity offensive in its tracks. Instead, the conscious sell-out only emboldened the Tories to go further.

The result has been devastating in terms of jobs, services and pay as well as pensions, which have contributed to the 10% drop in wages with increased pension contributions. No wonder the income of workers in the UK is still at pre-crisis levels. It was this position that forced joint action over pay in 2014. Although that too only lasted one day.

But it would be a huge mistake to draw pessimistic conclusions from a superficial view of these statistics. In some respects, they are a reflection of the disappointment of workers at the seeming inability of the unions to lead an effective fight against the Tory cuts.

As we have pointed out, this is the responsibility of the right-wing union leaders. Two of the three leaders who were primarily responsible for the ending of the pensions dispute, then leader of the TUC Brendan Barber and GMB general secretary Paul Kenny, were knighted by Cameron. The other, Unison general secretary Dave Prentis, is under increasing pressure from members of his union because of his role.

Joint action

The ability of the Tories to drive through cuts in the public sector (which has a majority of union members and is where their density is greatest) without large-scale joint action over the last two years has undoubtedly had an effect on the figures.

But this masks the huge discontent and anger that exists. This has been reflected in individual union disputes in the public sector. For example, there have been national disputes by civil servants' union PCS and the Fire Brigades Union.

There have also been prominent local disputes, such as by Unite members in Bromley and Greenwich councils and Unison in Glasgow and Barnet. Socialist Party members have been prominent in some of these struggles.

There are many other disputes that don't even make the figures. Over the last few months there has been an uprising of teaching assistants in Derby and then Durham against pay cuts of up to 23% by Labour councils.

In Durham, 500 of these low paid workers filled a meeting and launched a public campaign but no actual official strike days have yet been sanctioned by theunions, Unison and the GMB.

Similarly, there have been three incredible disputes in London recently, at Deliveroo, UberEats and among contracted cleaners. It is likely that not one day of their action is officially recorded as neither of the small independent unions involved - the United Voices of the World (UVW) and the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain (IWGB) - have a recognition agreement with the employer.

Nevertheless both Deliveroo drivers and UVW cleaners have won victories against their brutal working conditions. Many of these workers are migrants and many have to hold down two or more jobs to have any chance of a living.

'Self-employment'

Their struggles should be celebrated and show that it is possible for unions to flourish in the era of zero-hour contracts and bogus self-employment. The trade union movement, especially 'new unionism' in the late nineteenth century, was built in similar exploitative conditions.

The strikes also showed a number of features that are becoming increasingly common. The use of social media has been important to advertise the disputes and build solidarity, including protests and financial support.

UberEats workers ride into town to face down their bosses photo Scott Jones, photo Scott Jones   (Click to enlarge)

The IWGB raised £8,000 in two days in their dispute with Deliveroo. PCS raised over £100,000 that helped pay National Gallery strikers during their dispute that lasted over 100 days last year. In fact, a number of disputes are seeing longer action.

Some of these disputes - such as those by BFAWU bakers' union members in 2-Sisters plants in Sheffield and Newport and PCS in the Welsh and Scottish Museums - were over employers attacking premium pay to compensate for the increase to the new National Living Wage.

The RMT has appeared to be on strike on all fronts - including Eurostar, Virgin East Coast, Southern Rail and ScotRail. Many of these have also involved protracted action. There have also been bitter disputes by Unite members on the buses in Leeds and Weymouth.

Construction workers went on strike at the Fawley oil refinery in Hampshire to ensure that migrant workers were paid the same as UK workers. Also, the first strike took place in the offshore oil industry for nearly 30 years. Both of these strikes got results.

Trade Union Act

The Tories may find that their Trade Union Act could actually up the ante, as the new law means that disputes could be timed out after six months, forcing a re-ballot. Workers could draw the conclusion that they might as well go all-out from the beginning.

Actually, far from dismissing the threat from the unions, the right-wing Tory press have a far more realistic appraisal of the potential threat of the unions.

They have particularly been fulminating about the rail strikes, demanding the immediate introduction of the new undemocratic higher voting thresholds or even outlawing strikes altogether!

In response to the new strike figures, Matthew Lynn of the Telegraph wrote, "Strike action may have fallen to the lowest levels in over a century - but the sooner it is eliminated completely the better." He was railing against the Southern Rail strike but also what he calls the 'public sector middle class'.

Of course, the most prominent of disputes among this group has been the inspirational junior doctors. They exploded onto the scene, not just on picket lines outside hospitals but campaigning in town and city centres.

Scandalously, the overwhelming support they have received from fellow trade unionists and the public hasn't matched by that of the TUC and most union leaders, especially in health.

However, the junior doctors have rejected the government's offer and are embarking on the next phase of action. It should be a key debate at TUC congress to turn support into active solidarity. 

At the very least there should be a national TUC demonstration in support of the BMA doctors' union and also widened to defend the NHS.

National demonstration

There is already a national demonstration called by the National Union of Students and lecturers' union UCU in November to defend education, just as national action has been taking place by teachers and lecturers.

The potential exists to bring all these struggles together. 90 years after the 1926 general strike, an increasing number of workers are groping towards the understanding that mass strike action can transform the political, as well as the industrial, situation.

The attempted Blairite coup against Jeremy Corbyn has deliberately deflected attention away from the historic crisis within the Tories after Brexit. The main architects of the brutal austerity offensive, Cameron and Osborne, are history.

May's government has no authority and she is only prime minister because of a defeat for an administration she was part of. In any other circumstance, there would be a clamour for a general election. Even if only semi-consciously, workers can feel that this is a weak government and this will only increase as more workers engage in action.

The National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) is again holding a rally before the start of TUC congress.

Its two main themes will be for the unions to prepare the mass strike action necessary to take on what's left of the Tories and also to defend the left Labour leadership of Jeremy Corbyn against the Labour right. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell will be addressing the rally alongside leaders from some of the most militant unions.

The political and industrial are beginning to fuse. The second Corbyn wave, created by the whip of Blairite counter-revolution, has drawn more workers into the struggle against the Labour right.

Workers understand how much is at stake as the right wing try to turn the political clock back. This is not a period of passivity but one of increasing volatility. If given a lead it can develop into a mass movement of struggle to defeat the Tories and their Blairite agents.

Join fellow trade unionists and socialists including John McDonnell and Ronnie Draper on the NSSN lobby of the TUC in Brighton on 11 September, 1pm in the Ashdown Suite, Holiday Inn, 137 King's Road (seafront), Brighton, BN1 2JF

A Trend in the Wrong Direction..in history..

 

 

 

 

A Trend in the Wrong Direction

(The case for defending an independently elected Party Control Commission was made by US revolutionary James P Cannon at a time when the Trotskyist party in the US, The Socialist Workers Party, was experiencing a growth of members as a result of the student radicalisation of the 1960's.
Posted for those interested in past discussions relating to organisation and cadre development in a Leninist Party.-Martyn Ahmet)



November 12, 1966
Copies to:

Ed Shaw, New York

Jean Simon, Cleveland

Reba Hansen

New York, N.Y
Dear Reba:
This answers your letter of November 2 with which you enclosed a copy of Jean Simon’s letter of October 12. I was surprised and concerned by Jean’s proposals to change the constitutional provisions providing for an independent Control Commission elected by the convention, and making it a mere subcommittee of the NC, which would mean in effect a subcommittee of the PC. This would be the de facto liquidation of the Control Commission as it was originally conceived.
As far as I can see all the new moves and proposals to monkey with the Constitution which has served the party so well in the past, with the aim of “tightening” centralization, represent a trend in the wrong direction at the present time. The party (and the YSA) is too “tight” already, and if we go much further along this line we can run the risk of strangling the party to death.
As I recall it, the proposal to establish a Control Commission, separately elected by the convention, originated at the Plenum and Active Workers’ Conference in the fall of 1940, following the assassination of the Old Man. The assassin, as you will recall, gained access to the household in Coyoacan through his relations with a party member.[6] The Political Committee was then, as it always will be if it functions properly, too busy with political and organizational problems to take time for investigations and security checks on individuals.
It was agreed that we need a special body to take care of this work, to investigate rumors and charges and present its findings and recommendations to the National Committee.
If party security was one side of the functions of the Control Commission, the other side - no less important - was to provide the maximum assurance that any individual party member, accused or rumored to be unworthy of party membership, could be assured of the fullest investigation and a fair hearing or trial. It was thought that this double purpose could best be served by a body separately elected by the convention, and composed of members of long standing, especially respected by the party for their fairness as well as their devotion.
I can recall instances where the Control Commission served the party well in both aspects of this dual function. In one case a member of the seamen’s fraction was expelled by the Los Angeles Branch after charges were brought against him by two members of the National Committee of that time. The expelled member appealed to the National Committee and the case was turned over to the Control Commission for investigation. The Control Commission, on which as I recall Dobbs was then the PC representative, investigated the whole case, found that the charges lacked substantial proof and recommended the reinstatement of the expelled member. This was done.
In another case, a rumor circulated by the Shachtmanites and others outside the party against the integrity of a National Office secretarial worker was thoroughly investigated by the Control Commission which, after taking stenographic testimony from all available sources, declared the rumors unfounded and cleared the accused party member to continue her work. There were other cases in which charges were found after investigation to be substantiated and appropriate action recommended.
All these experiences speak convincingly of the need for a separate Control Commission of highly respected comrades to make thorough investigations of every case, without being influenced by personal or partisan prejudice, or pressure from any source, and whose sole function is to examine each case from all sides fairly and justly and report its findings and recommendations. This is the best way, not only to protect the security of the party, but also to respect the rights of the accused in every case.
As far as I know, the only criticism that can properly be made of the Control Commission in recent times is that it has not always functioned in this way with all its members participating, either by presence or correspondence, in all proceedings - and convincing the party that its investigation was thorough and that its findings and recommendations were fair and just.

* * *

It should be pointed out also that the idea of a Control Commission separately constituted by the convention didn’t really originate with us. Like almost everything else we know about the party organizational principles and functions, it came from the Russian Bolsheviks. The Russian party had a separate Control Commission. It might also be pointed out that after the revolution the new government established courts. It provided also for independent trade unions which, as Lenin pointed out in one of the controversies, had the duty even to defend the rights of its members against the government. Of course, all that was changed later when all power was concentrated in the party secretariat, and all the presumably independent institutions were converted into rubber stamps. But we don’t want to move in that direction. The forms and methods of the Lenin-Trotsky time are a better guide for us.

* * *

I am particularly concerned about any possible proposal to weaken the constitutional provision about the absolute right of suspended or expelled members to appeal to the convention. That is clearly and plainly a provision to protect every party member against possible abuse of authority by the National Committee. It should not be abrogated or diluted just to show that we are so damn revolutionary that we make no concessions to “bourgeois concepts of checks and balances.” The well-known Bill of Rights is a check and balance which I hope will be incorporated, in large part at least, in the Constitution of the Workers Republic in this country. Our constitutional provision for the right of appeal is also a “check and balance.” It can help to recommend our party to revolutionary workers as a genuinely democratic organization which guarantees rights as well as imposing responsibilities, and thus make it more appealing to them.
I believe that these considerations have more weight now than ever before in the thirty-eight-year history of our party. In the present political climate and with the present changing composition of the party, democratic centralism must be applied flexibly. At least ninety percent of the emphasis should be placed on the democratic side and not on any crackpot schemes to “streamline” the party to the point where questions are unwelcomed and criticism and discussion stifled. That is a prescription to kill the party before it gets a chance to show how it can handle and assimilate an expanding membership of new young people, who don’t know it all to start with, but have to learn and grow in the course of explication and discussion in a free, democratic atmosphere.
Trotsky once remarked in a polemic against Stalinism that even in the period of the Civil War discussion in the party was “boiling like a spring.” Those words and others like it written by Trotsky, in his first attack against Stalinism in The New Course, ought to be explained now once again to the new young recruits in our party. And the best way to explain such decisive things is to practice what we preach.
Yours fraternally,
James P. Cannon

Solidarity with PCS Strike tomorrow - 20 March

Bristol Rally

12.30pm

Tony Benn House (Unite building), BS1 6AY.

Article by John McInally, Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) vice president, personal capacity

PCS members are preparing to launch our union's national industrial action campaign with a one-day strike on Budget Day, 20 March, when Chancellor Osborne will be announcing more cuts in the civil service and also on workers generally.

PCS members are aware of the scale of the attacks - job cuts, pay freezes, attacks on terms and conditions and trade union facilities, all of this to prepare the way for the mass privatisation of the civil service.

Our campaign will be effective and sustainable with the aim of causing maximum disruption to the employer to get them around the negotiating table.

It's unreasonable that they're not prepared to sit down and discuss the issues with us, preferring instead to press ahead with these unwarranted attacks.

PCS members are prepared to struggle and the government is wrong if it thinks it can attack us without determined resistance.

There will be a one-day strike on 20 March and a further half-day strike on 5 April which marks the end of the 2012/13 tax year - this walkout will begin a week of tax justice campaigning to highlight the £120 billion tax 'gap'.

Added impetus for the dispute will come from the announcement that all 281 tax enquiry offices in the country could close under new plans by the government, including 13 to be closed this year in the North of England.

Also, from 1 April, PCS members will have extra pension contributions imposed on them, while from the same date, millionaires are being given a tax cut.

Fighting austerity

On 20 March there will be rallies in cities up and down the country, where there will be speakers from other trade unions and campaign groups like Disabled People Against the Cuts and Black Triangle.

We want to make sure people know that yes, it's a strike against the attacks on our terms and conditions, our pay etc but it is also a strike against austerity and the failed programme of the government.

PCS particularly welcomes other unions' involvement. For example we welcome the strike of Unite and PCS members in the Homes and Communities Agency who have coordinated their strike for budget day.

As our general secretary Mark Serwotka told the pre-budget TUC rally: "We hope our strike action is successful but we're quite clear, our union is right to take action, but we all know if more of us take action together we have a better chance of winning ...

"On 26 June George Osborne will do another significant thing. He will announce his comprehensive spending review which will confirm the butchery of public spending for the next three years.

What a brilliant day that would be - that while he announces cuts in parliament - to see as many people as we can taking industrial action together, demonstrating together and protesting together. If we build that movement then we can turn our aspirations into reality."

Weekly meetings

Starting off as a one-day strike on 20 March and an overtime ban from 21 March, the union's national disputes committee will meet weekly. We will be calling further action at short notice.

We will implement work-to-rules throughout government departments. We will keep up the pressure on the employer until they are prepared to talk to us.

We will also be making sure that government ministers and senior managers get a warm PCS reception when they come to visit civil service offices.

For example on 13 March at a Ministry of Justice building in London, Cabinet Office minister Frances Maude didn't go through the front door.

He was driven around the back in his Jag with the blacked-out windows because there were 40 PCS members demonstrating outside.

He's going to have to get used to that because we're going to keep it up until he talks to us.

The union's departmental groups are looking at what action to call as well. There will be days of action with themes like equality, welfare, taxation and so on.

We're determined to keep the pressure up until the government is prepared to talk to us. Over the course of the past six months we've managed to win concessions in disputes within departmental groups.

The slogan: "Campaigning works, action gets results" is true. We'll be making sure that we build the action until they're prepared to talk to us.

Tunisia: Kiling of Chokri Belaïd provokes mass protests across the country

CWI Reporters: http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/6153

The CWI and its supporters in Tunisia vigorously condemn the brutal murder of the left opposition leader, Chokri Belaid. ‘Chokri’ was the leading figure of the left-wing ‘Democratic Patriots’ Party, with a strong influence in the UGTT trade union federation, and a spokesman and leading figure of the left coalition, the ‘Popular Front’. He was a well-known and long-standing opponent to Ben Ali’s dictatorship, as well as a lawyer with a long record of defending the victims of political repression, under the old as well as the new regime. He was imprisoned by both the Bourguiba and Ben Ali dictatorships.

On the morning of Wednesday 6 February, Chokri was ruthlessly shot with four bullets in the head, neck and chest, as he was leaving his house. Chokri Belaïd subsequently died of his injuries in hospital.

This act is not an isolated incident. Based on all evidence, it is clearly a professionally-organised political assassination, targeting a symbolic figure of the left. And this in a context of growing tension and political violence from the state forces, from fundamentalist Salafist bands, as well as militias at the service of the ruling Ennahda party.

In statements on the radio on the eve of his assassination, Chokri Belaïd reported death threats he had received recently because of his political stance. Last Saturday, he had similarly accused “mercenaries” hired by the Ennahda party of carrying out an attack on a Democratic Patriots’ local meeting in Le Kef, which left 11 people injured. The Ennahda-led government regarded Belaïd as one of the instigators of ‘social unrest’ in the country. By attempting to silence his voice, it is the revolution, and the resistance of the working class and the youth, as a whole, which are in the firing line.

The CWI has never hidden its differences with the political orientation of Chokri Belaïd and of the Democratic Patriots. We nevertheless want to express our full sympathy with all the activists of this organisation, as well as with the left in general and with the revolutionary people of Tunisia, and our deep feelings of resentment against this cold-blooded assassination. This adds to the already too long list of Tunisian martyrs who lost their lives fighting against injustice and oppression, and for a better society.

The overwhelming majority of Tunisian people reject this act of violence. Immediately after Belaid’s death, a large wave of anger is already resonating throughout the country. Shortly afterwards, tens of thousands of people were already protesting in Tunis, Le Kef, Gafsa, Sousse, Sfax, Sidi Bouzid and other cities, demanding justice and the fall of the present government and a “new revolution”.

Acts of violence, riots, and the burning of Ennahda offices have also been reported in some areas. While we understand the rage and anger which exists, we also genuinely think that the most efficient way to express it remains through the channels of organised mass mobilisation, the power of working class action and of their powerful trade union centre, the UGTT.

The setting up of collective bodies of defence and protection, democratically organised by the population in the neighbourhoods, could avoid excesses by rioters and face police repression, as well as the predictable violence of some militias. Stewarding teams could be set up in that context, working in conjunction with the UGTT, the UDC (unemployed union) and other popular organizations.
Towards a general strike! Down with this rotten and discredited government!

The best way to commemorate the death of Chokri Belaïd is to continue the revolution, more determined than ever, to end oppression in all its forms. Ultimately, only the mass mobilisation of workers can counteract the current downward spiral of violence by imposing a solution which can serve the majority.

The fact that the Ennahda Prime Minister, Hamadi Jebali, has announced the formation of a government supposedly composed of “apolitical technocrats” should fool nobody. It is a new attempt to prevent the masses from determining the government they want. It leaves this to technocrats handpicked and closely selected for their subservience to the current system. And the fact that this proposal was rejected by Jebali’s party indicates that the political crisis at the top of the State has reached a climax. It is time to put an end once and for all to this crumbling government, which has only violence, unemployment and misery on offer!

A general strike has been called for Friday 8 February by the UGTT, echoing the call made yesterday, Wednesday, by several opposition forces, including the Popular Front, the Republican Party, Al Massar and Nidaa Tounes, who have also announced the suspension of their participation in the National Constituent Assembly. The date of the strike is to coincide with the funeral of Belaïd.

The fact that the question of the general strike is back on the agenda for the second time in less than two months, while the last one took place in 1978, is in itself an expression of the organic crisis facing the country, and of the huge social anger that has been brewing for months on end. But two crucial remarks are necessary in this regard.

The first is that the UGTT activists and workers in general cannot rely solely on hypothetical and often very late watchwords from the top to determine what has to be done to build the struggle in the coming days. The experience of last December, when the national leadership of the UGTT arbitrarily decreed the cancellation of the general strike the night before, is still fresh in all memories.

For example, the magistrates and lawyers’ unions have already issued a statement in which they say they will be on strike for three days, the university teachers of ‘La Manouba’ are already on strike and the student union, the UGET, has begun a students’ general strike today. The regional branch of the UGTT, in Jendouba, has meanwhile decided to call a general strike in this region on Monday, 11 February.

Without further waiting, general assemblies should be convened wherever possible: in the workplaces, but also in schools, in universities, in the neighbourhoods, etc. This entails electing committees within them to take the fight in hand at all levels, so that the movement is structured around and according to the will of the masses involved in the struggle.

Discussion on the initiatives to be taken and the following-up of the strike actions must be brought up and democratically controlled from below. This can prevent a handful of union leaders concluding, behind the curtains, some deal without popular control, as has happened all too often.

If after the general strike on 8 February, the government has still not understood that it must leave the scene, an extension of the strike actions in the coming days, coupled with mass demonstrations, will be necessary to obtain a satisfactory result.

On the other hand, the support of parties like Nidaa Tounes for the general strike raises, at least, serious questions. The camp of its leader, Essebsi, is full of people with the blood of left activists on their hands, and who were complicit with the dictatorship against which Chokri Belaïd himself fought for many years.

The labour movement, the UGTT and the Left must at all costs avoid falling into the trap of a dichotomy based on the “secular” camp against the “Islamist” camp, a thesis dear to secular, but pro-capitalist parties, such as Nida Tounes. Their goal is not to defend the workers and the popular masses, but rather to better serve the interests of big business, the bankers and the imperialist powers, although with a different “colour” to that of Ennahda today.

Belaïd’s sister was correct to emphasize that Chokri was among those “on the side of the poor, the marginalized, the oppressed ...” contrasting with those in the political establishment who are now trying to cynically exploit his death, reducing his character to an “enemy of Islamists”, putting aside the fact that Belaïd was also on the radical left.

In this sense, the Tunisian masses may not want to bring down the government, only so that those driven out the door two years ago can come back quietly through the window, using, in addition, the revolution and the strength of the working class as a Trojan horse. In this sense, we say: no to the plague, and no to the cholera - no Jebali and no Essebsi! Yes to a sustained mass struggle until the creation of a revolutionary government of the workers and youth, supported by the trade union movement, the left and popular organisations!

In the current context, the ‘Popular Front’ and its many activists around the country could serve as a backbone for a mass campaign with the strategic vision of establishing such a government, independent of the capitalist class, from its political parties and its so-called ‘technocrats’, and taking decisive action to put the key sectors of the Tunisian economy under the management and control of society.

We demand:

For the continuation of the revolution until victory! For a general strike until the fall of the government!

Not to a government “re-modelling” behind the backs of the masses! For truly democratic elections, and the formation of a government composed of representatives of those who actually made the revolution!

For a revolutionary government of workers and youth! Down with the capitalist exploiters and the politicians at their service!

Capitalism out! For a socialist planned economy, serving social needs, and democratically run by the people!

Solidarity with Bristol CWU postal workers in dispute against bullying and heavy workloads – No to all cuts & privatisation! Including Royal Mail!

Get the latest here; http://www.cwu.org/bristol-postal-workers-to-strike-again-on-monday.html

Crossrail dispute: Desperate BFK resort to violence

Palestine: Protests and strikes against high prices and Oslo shake the West Bank

By Shahar Ben-Khorin, Maavak Sotzyalisti/Nidal Eshteraki (CWI in Israel/Palestine)

"A-sha`eb youreed esqat Oslo!" – "The people want the fall of [the] Oslo [Accords]!" – a paraphrase of the famous slogan of the ‘Arab Spring’ revolutions, has become a central slogan in the latest struggles in the occupied West Bank. A wave of angry protests and strike action by thousands shook the area at the beginning of the month against the unbearable cost of living and the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) government, particularly its slavish acceptance of the economic arrangements and conditions dictated to it by the Israeli regime.

Another slogan, "Yalla irh’al ya Fayyad!" – "Leave already, Fayyad!" – paraphrases a revolutionary song against the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Effigies of the PA prime minister, Salam Fayyad, a former official of the IMF and World Bank and a current stooge of Western imperialism, were set on fire and in Hebron demonstrators threw shoes over a large banner carrying with his photo. In an attempt to isolate the protestors, he rhetorically declared a willingness to resign if that was the will of the people and it would “solve the economic problems". Already at the beginning of the year, Fayyad was forced by social protests to reverse decisions to attack public sector workers’ pensions and raise taxes, but this time the protests are more extensive and radicalised.

At the end of May, the PA reaffirmed its support for a complete monopoly by Israeli petrol corporations for the next two years. As petrol prices were raised by 7% and set at an all-time record in Israel (8.25 Shekels / €1.63 per litre of octane 95) on 1 September, they were automatically matched in the PA enclaves (excluding the Gaza Strip), where GDP per capita is about 15 times lower than the Israeli figure of $32,000 and unemployment is on the rise, estimated at 17%. In neighbouring Jordan, thousands protested against the decision of the government to increase petrol prices for the second time in three months, which was enough to scare King Abdullah with the spectre of a mass movement and to spur him to reverse the government’s decision. In Jordan, the price of petrol is less than half of the Israeli rate! As if the general rise in the price of food and basic products wasn’t enough, the PA’s VAT rate, pegged to its Israeli counterpart, was raised at the beginning of September from 16% to 17%, imitating the measure taken by the Israeli government. And yet once again, after months of delays in the payment of wages, the 150,000 public employees of the PA (including over 50,000 non-governmental employees in Gaza), providing a living for nearly a million people, didn’t get their shrivelled salaries for August, and were forced to pay the price of the PA’s deep fiscal crisis.
Youth against Price Rises

All of this was received with great frustration and revulsion on the streets of the occupied West Bank. Tragically, similarly to many such incidents since the Tunisian revolution, these sentiments were accompanied by some attempts at self-immolation. One of these was in Gaza by an 18-year old unemployed person from the a-Shati refugee camp, who died soon after (a parallel wave of bitter self-immolation protests among impoverished Israelis since July has taken three lives). However, at the same time, hundreds of Palestinian workers and youth were also beginning to organize a fightback from 4 September. The day after, thousands demonstrated across Palestinian villages, cities and refugee camps in the West Bank. Youth, some of them organized in the new non-partisan front "Youth against Price Rises" (شباب ضد الغلاء), were leading the stormy blockades of main roads and junctions, aided by rocks and burning tyres, shouting slogans against the Ramallah government and its corruption and agreements with Israel. Alongside Palestinian flags and some Keffiyes, there were also some protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks, which have become an international symbol of social protest. Significantly, truck and cab drivers stopped their work and blocked roads and the Palestinian Teachers’ Union initiated several protest strikes as well.

Demonstrators were not impressed with the attempts by the PA president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose term was supposed to end almost four years ago, to endorse the protests, seemingly hoping to use them as a lever for his symbolic re-run bid to the UN General Assembly at the end of the month for the acceptance of the PA as a non-member state. Abbas himself met with angry protests in early July, organized by another youth group, "Palestinians for Dignity" (فلسطينيون من اجل الكرامة), in response to his willingness to meet with the leader of the Israeli Kadima party, Shaul Mofaz. The latter was IDF chief of staff during the Second Intifada (2000-2005) and responsible for several horrendous and bloody onslaughts against the Palestinians. Then, the demonstrators, already shouting against the Oslo Accords, managed to stop this planned meeting but were repressed brutally by Abbas’s security forces, with some ending up hospitalized. To pacify the anger over the role of the PA security forces as subcontractors for the Israeli occupation, an inquiry committee was set up. This time, Abbas initially implied that no force would be used against protestors, and on the ground parts of his Fatah party intervened in the demonstrations, apparently trying to focus the anger around the non-Fatah Fayyad. Those tactics didn’t help in watering down the general anger towards the PA. In the north-eastern governorate of Tubas, the governor was hit on the head by stones in one of the demonstrations. Very quickly, Fatah activists’ focus on Fayyad was answered in demos with matching calls against Abbas. In some incidents, protestors turned their frustration against PA buildings and threw rocks at the PA policemen. They were met with tear-gas and batons. Dozens were injured in Hebron and Nablus.

Read the rest of the article here: http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5951

Solidarity with Lonmin’s miners - South African police massacres striking workers at Marikana

From: http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5894

At least 46 workers were shot dead, and many more injured, on August 16 as a massive police assault was launched to crush a strike by thousands of workers at platinum miner Lonmin’s shafts in Marikana outside Rustenburg, in addition to at least six mine workers who were killed in clashes earlier on in the strike which began August 10. Two policemen and two mine security guards were also killed in the near-civil-war-like conditions. It is clear that the Lonmin bosses, backed by the entire big business elite and its servants in the ANC government, the police and army are hellbent on restoring order at any cost. The Democratic Socialist Movement (DSM - CWI in South Africa) appeals for socialists and trade unionists internationally to protest against the massacre that is now being set in motion.




The background is that thousands of workers at Lonmin, the world’s third largest platinum producer, went on strike in demand of an increase from their current R4000 poverty wages to a R12500 living wage on August 10. The strike was initiated by workers belonging to AMCU, a break-away union from the dominant National Union of Mine workers (NUM). It appears the strike, which grew in numbers to involve tens of thousands of workers, was attacked not only by the infamously brutal mine security but also by the NUM, which attempted to force workers to break the strike. This provoked mistaken retaliations such as the torching of a car which led to the death of the two security guards on Saturday and the killing of two police officers on Monday. This has given the government an excuse to restore “law and order”, and Lonmin’s rapidly falling share price, through what is nothing less than an orchestrated massacre.

The area is under siege, with the battle clearly being prepared for in the last couple of days. Lonmin withdrew from negotiations which had been agreed for August 15 stating that the matter would now be “in the hands of the police”. No longer able to rely on containing the workers through the NUM leaders, the bosses have now resorted to brute force. By drowning this uprising in blood, the bosses may win a battle but not the war which has been brewing on Rustenburg’s platinum mines for years now. As a result of the global economic crisis, the platinum price has fallen drastically and the bosses are desperate to make the workers pay.That is why they are resolved, with the backing of the entire ruling class, not to give an inch to the bold strike launched by the Lonmin workers.



The Rustenburg region is the world’s largest platinum ore deposit and the recent closure of shafts by some mines have alerted its tens of thousands of workers to the urgent need to fight back. In doing so, increasing numbers are turning their backs on the NUM –once one of the proudest, most militant trade unions in SA but now, through backdoor deals with the bosses, investment companies and an alliance with the capitalist African National Congress-government, it is so discredited that its leaders only dare to address workers protected by guns, life guards and police armoured vehicles. Seeking a way forward, many workers have gone into AMCU, and with the NUM, backed by management, defending its turf, a tense stalemate has been established this year.



The DSM is calling on workers in both unions to demand united solidarity action, beginning with a local general strike, involving all the platinum shafts and the bitterly poor local working class communities. We also call for a national general strike to end the shooting of striking workers, and for a campaign of rolling mass action for the nationalisation of the mines under workers control and management.

PCS calls off Home Office ‘Olympic strike’ after 'considerable progress'

From: http://union-news.co.uk/2012/07/pcs-calls-off-home-office-olympic-strike-after-extra-staff-are-posted-in/

by Pete Murray - 25th July 2012, 11.14 BST

PCS general secretary, Mark Serwotka has announced the union has called off the planned Home Office strike.

It follows a meeting between union officials and Home Office official yesterday at which he said the union had made ‘genuine progress’ on their issues of concern.

The decision comes ahead of a hearing at the High Court in London at which government lawyers are seeking an injunction to try to stop the planned strike tomorrow by thousands of Home Office staff.

Mark Serwotka said the case rested on a ‘minor technicality’ over 12 members based in continental Europe and that the union was in discussion with Treasury lawyers of whether the two sides would continue with the legal case.

Mark Serwotka said last night’s talks had released ‘significant new investment’ in Home Office staffing at border controls, with 800 new jobs, including at Heathrow, Gatwick and Luton airports and a further 300 jobs at passport offices.

Also speaking at the news conference at PCS head office, the secretary of the union’s Home Office section, Paul O’Connor said members preparing to go on strike had been subjected to ‘absolutely outrageous vilification’ in the run-up to the strike.

“They have stood firm in the face of that vilification.

“This is a significant step forward in terms of jobs in very crucial public services and that our people in this country depend upon.”

Officials describe the government’s change of heart as ‘a welcome step towards a recognition that the Home Office has been cracking under the strain of massive job cuts’ – with long queues at airports, a backlog of 276,000 unresolved immigration and asylum cases, and reports of holidaymakers having to wait weeks and travel miles across the country to get a passport.

The union says it has secured a commitment to ongoing negotiations to address the issues under dispute, in particular efforts to avoid compulsory redundancies in the passport agency.

Mark Serwotka told the news conference that management had agreed to discuss whether ‘a handful’ of compulsory redundancy notices against workers at passport offices in south Wales can be resolved.

Come to this National Shop Stewards Network conference this Saturday

The "hot breath on the back of the trade union leaders' necks"

National Shop Stewards Network Sixth Annual Conference

Saturday 9 June, 11am-4pm

Friends Meeting House, London NW1 2BJ

Speakers include:

Bob Crow, RMT general secretary

Mark Serwotka, PCS general secretary

Rank and File construction electrician

Kevin Courtney, NUT deputy general secretary

Article by Rob Williams, NSSN chair

On 9 June the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) is holding its sixth annual conference.

The NSSN was initiated by the RMT transport workers' union in 2006 and had its launch conference a year later. The potential of this organisation was clear, with the authority of one of the most militant unions behind it, and the Socialist Party immediately gave the NSSN its full support.

It wasn't long before the PCS civil service union, Communication Workers Union, National Union of Mineworkers and the POA prison officers' union also officially supported the network.

Now with the National Union of Journalists, six nationalunions back the NSSN. This is along with many trades councils, union branches, shop stewards' committees and individual stewards, branch reps, union activists and anti-cuts campaigners.

The NSSN was formed in preparation for the period of capitalist crisis and austerity we are in now. We've organised active solidarity to defend those being victimised and are proud of supporting trade union reps who have successfully seen off attacks by their employer, like the RMT members tube drivers Eamonn Lynch and Arwyn Thomas, and Paddy Brennan the Honda Unite convenor.
Pressure on union leaders

We're not here to replace the trade unions but to act as a vehicle where rank and file reps can channel pressure on to the unions and particularly the leaders. Two of the clearest examples of how that can happen is the public sector pension struggle and the 'sparks' dispute.

When Cameron, Clegg and Osborne announced their cuts programme, the NSSN was confident that there would be resistance from working class and middle class people. But we were adamant that the trade unions were absolutely central to leading this opposition, due to the economic weight of the organised working class. It was necessary to place demands on the union leaders and not allow them to avoid their responsibilities.

Therefore, we saw one of our prime roles as raising the idea of coordinated strike action against the cuts. Our message was clear on our leaflets and placards on the massive 26 March Trades Union Congress (TUC) 'March for the Alternative'.

Over 700 shop stewards and activists came to our lobby of the TUC the day before its September 2011 conference on the theme of a 24-hour public sector general strike.

The NSSN also gave out hundreds of thousands of leaflets in the run-up to the TUC conference, including on the 30 June 2011 (J30) strike which saw 750,000 civil servants from PCS striking alongside teachers and lecturers from the NUT, ATL and UCU unions.

The pressure put on union leaders, including by the NSSN and its lobby of the TUC conference, helped lead to the historic 30 November 2011 (N30) action.
Unison on strike

For example, following J30, the Unison leader Dave Prentis said that his union "would never strike alongside PCS". Five months later, that is exactly what Unison members did, together with most other public sector unions.

The strike on N30 of over two million public sector workers, arguably the biggest single day of strike action since the 1926 general strike, is not only the highest point of the last year, it has transformed the consciousness of the leading activists in the union movement.

The Con-Dems, the Tory media, and even unfortunately many of the union leaders, say that the pensions battle is now over with a 'sensible' agreement - meaning public sector workers have to work longer, pay more and get less.

The NSSN allied itself to militant public sector unions like PCS before N30, when the movement was on the offensive, and after when the right-wing union leaders like those in Unison and the TUC looked to settle the pension dispute and in the process throw away the huge momentum built up by the strike.

We lobbied the TUC on 19 December 2011 against a shabby pensions agreement that was little different to what was on 'offer' before N30. We helped build for a big turnout when PCS Left Unity boldly organised at short notice an open conference on 7 January 2012 as part of regrouping those unions still prepared to fight on to defend pensions.

The 400,000 strong strike on 10 May, when PCS linked up with Unite in the NHS and the civil service, the UCU, Immigration Services Union (ISU) and Northern Ireland Public Service Alliance (Nipsa), along with the brave prison officers from the POA who took unofficial and illegal action, is the fruit of this labour. It offers the possibility of reigniting this struggle.

The massive police demonstration that day and now the strike vote of the British Medical Association, which saw 92% of junior doctors voting for action, shows how isolated the government is and why serious coordinated action can defeat them. We will continue to do all we can to make this possible, including supporting the rank and file NUT Local Associations conference on Saturday 16 June in Liverpool. This is open to all teachers, organised to force their unions and particularly the NUT back into the pensions fray.

We also welcome the TUC organised 20 October national demonstration against austerity. Such a demo has been a major demand of ours this year, although we think that it should have been called much earlier. But it can't be left at just a march. It should be the platform for further coordinated strikes, up to and including the N30 coalition, but also beyond it to reach out to the private sector.
Sparks' victory

The marathon and victorious struggle of the Sparks - the electricians, pipe-fitters and plumbers in the construction industry - shows how the years of retreat in the union movement can be reversed. The NSSN has supported this struggle from the beginning. It showed how rank and file workers can force the union leadership, in this case Unite, to take the dispute seriously.

As a result of countless protests in London and around the country, Unite general secretary Len McCluskey turned to his organising department and pushed the conservative officials aside, changing the tempo of the struggle. Eventually through the threat of an official strike against Balfour, the biggest of the 'Dirty 7' companies, their new Besna contract and the planned 35% pay cut was smashed.

The ripples of this victory are still being felt throughout the industry. There was a stoppage by Crown House workers at Heathrow terminal two in the middle of May. 600 construction workers walked out at Ratcliffe power station, Nottinghamshire, on 29 May to defend suspended health and safety steward Jason Poulter.

Over 1,000 workers at Sellafield power station, Cumbria, also walked out at the end of May to defend the jobs of two reps. On 31 May there was a stoppage at Alford Gas in Northwich, Cheshire.

A new period has opened up in Britain. The threats to our terms and conditions, trade union rights, the NHS, public services and the welfare state are real and devastating if the employers' and their government's offensive succeeds. Workers' organisations are central to resisting this onslaught and the sparks have shown that victories can be won.

The job of the NSSN is to be the 'hot breath on the back of the union leaders' necks'. The TUC must campaign for a massive demonstration against austerity on 20 October. Our approach should be: let's all march together to show our anger against the cuts, but let's use that to say clearly that we're going to strike together - public sector and private sector - before the end of the year.

85% of the government's cutbacks are yet to be made. Our movement has the potential power to stop this increasingly weak and divided government making those cuts. Let's do it!

Unemployed bussed in to steward river pageant

From today's Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jun/04/jubilee-pageant-unemployed

A group of long-term unemployed jobseekers were bussed into London to work as unpaid stewards during the diamond jubilee celebrations and told to sleep under London Bridge before working on the river pageant.

Up to 30 jobseekers and another 50 people on apprentice wages were taken to London by coach from Bristol, Bath and Plymouth as part of the government's Work Programme.

Two jobseekers, who did not want to be identified in case they lost their benefits, said they had to camp under London Bridge the night before the pageant. They told the Guardian they had to change into security gear in public, had no access to toilets for 24 hours, and were taken to a swampy campsite outside London after working a 14-hour shift in the pouring rain on the banks of the Thames on Sunday.

Kazakhstan: Urgent solidarity needed

Report by Sarah Zhakupova, Kazakhstan Socialist Movement

Larisa Boyar, a prominent member of the Kazakhstan Socialist Movement, and two other opposition activists - Baxatjan Torevozhina and Kanat Ibragimov - have been arrested and imprisoned. In the morning on 28 April, as protest demonstrations were due to begin, these ’Dissenters’ were grabbed by police directly from their homes. By 7.30 in the evening they had been sentenced to 15 days’ immediate detention. At the ’trial’, the prosecution used a video of a press conference given on April 24, where Larissa had called all active and concerned citizens to fight together with the Kazakhstan Socialist Movement at the week-end.




The judge in the court was asked to use discretion in relation to the language used and not judge people for their beliefs and the open expression of their views. Despite the defence’s arguments, the judge, A A Korazbaeva (daughter of "notorious" composer Altynbek Korazbaev) made a totally unfair judgement. This court decision is politically motivated and is yet again evidence of the authorities’ persecution of oppositionists for their beliefs.

At the demonstration there had been about 40 people who came from Shymkent. They had been there to highlight the problems of people being harrassed by banks over the loans they had taken for homes. Guests of the ’Dissenters’ also included workers from the corporation, "Kazakhmys", who are currently conducting an active battle over their union.

Over the past week, the Kazakhstan Socialist Movement and the homes campaigners of the ’ONJ’ (Leave the People’s Homes Alone) have had huge pressure put on them in the run-up to the protest demonstration. They were not able to talk to each other on the phone and relatives were intimidated with the threat of being sacked from their work.

The most active members of Socialist Movement have had criminal proceedings initiated against them with fines imposed of up to 300,000 tenge (around $2,000). Leaders of the Socialist Movement and of the Trade Union, "Zhanartu" - Ainur Kurmanov and Esenbek Ukteshbaev – have been pursued by the authorities of Kazakhstan and have had to go abroad.

Thanks to the international solidarity of socialists, with the active participation of Ainur and Esenbek, numerous protests have been organised around the world in the form of pickets and rallies at embassies. The unjust actions of the authorities of Kazakhstan against workers and activists have been roundly condemned. A massive campaign is now needed in support of the organisers of the ’Dissenters’’ demonstrations.

Release Larissa Boyar, Baxatjan Torevozhina and Kanat Ibragimov!
Drop all charges and stop harrassment of the ’Dissenters’

Donations are urgently needed to assist the campaign. They can be sent via the donate button on the Campaign Kazakhstan web-site (here).

URGENT: Leaders of all-Kazakhstan trade union, Zhanartu, in danger

http://campaignkazakhstan.org

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Click above to send the protest

Please send your protest to Kazakhstan mid@mid.kz Embassy of Kazakhstan in Moscow dolgey@dol.ru and to your local Russian and Kazakhstan embassies

Statement from Esenbak Ukteshbayev and Ainur Kurmanov.

To the Executive Director of the all-Russian movement ‘For Human Rights’,

Lev Aleksandrovitch Ponomarev

To the Director of the Institute for Human Rights, Valentin Michaelovitch Gefter

From Esenbek Ukteshbaev, president of the Kazakhstan Trade Union, ‘Zhanartu’ (‘Renaissance’), and vice-president of ‘Zhanartu’, Ainur Kurmanov

Statement

We, the leaders of Kazakhstan’s independent workers’ union, ‘Zhanartu’ (‘Renaissance’) – Esenbek Ukteshbaev, president, and deputy chair, Ainur Kurmanov – wish to alert you to the fact that we may soon be subjected to arrest or abduction, followed by our forced removal to the territory of the Republic of Kazakhstan, where inevitable arrest and imprisonment await us.

The basis for these assertions is the coming to Moscow of the head of the Department of Internal Affairs of the Mangistau region, Colonel Amanzhol Kabylov, with a group of intelligence officers, to conduct negotiations with law enforcement officers of the Russian Federation. This we got to know through communications from Russian journalists and from our sources in Kazakhstan. The subject of these negotiations is obvious – to arrrange the carrying out of a certain proceedure in relation to us, as we are currently on Russian soil.

The said senior officer of the Kazakh Interior Ministry is at present in charge of “investigations” into the case of the bloody events of December 16 -18 in Zhanaozen and at Shetpe station in the Mangistau region, which, according to our information, resulted in the deaths of a large number of striking workers and their relatives who had been involved in a peaceful protest.

As a result of the collaboration of the Internal Affairs Ministry and the Kazakhstan Security Service, many criminal cases have been lodged and dozens of people have already been arrested, such as worker-activists taking part in the massive oilworkers’ strike that has lasted since 17 May, as well as leaders of the opposition party ‘Alga’ (‘Forward’) – Vladimir Kozlov, Ayzhangul Amirov, Ruslan Simbinov, Serik Sapargali, as well as the chief editor of the independent newspaper, ‘Vzglyad’ (‘Viewpoint’), Igor Vinyavski. All of them, as well as dozens of people who are forbidden to travel, are charged under several articles of the Criminal Code: 164 ‘ incitement to social discord’, 241 ‘organising mass disorder’ and 170 ‘calling for the overthrow of the existing constitutional system’.

For our part, we have been, since 7 October, on a prolongedvisit to Russia, where we have been exchanging experiences with workers’ organisations and those media organisations who support the striking oil workers in Mangistau and members of our union in Kazakhstan. At home in our country, in the Summer, there was also a criminal case levelled against us on the initiative of the local authority with its ‘arbitrariness’ – under Article 327 of the Criminal Code. But at that time it was suspended and was supposed to be totally stopped due to an amnesty that was announced.

But as we learned from our sources within the law enforcement bodies, a new criminal case is already being fabricated against us under Article 164 of the Criminal Code for ‘inciting social discord’. In fact there is an attempt to blame us and the opposition for the tragic events of December 16-18 last year in Mangistau. This is the reason for the former Commander of Zhanaozen visiting Moscow to organise our arrest and subsequent delivery to Aktau.

We fear that our arrest may be made in secret and carried out in the form of an abduction, without any announcement about us being sought internationally, nor any compliance with all the requirements for legal extradition. Something like this has already been done by Uzbek and Tajik special services in relation to their oppositionists and dissidents who were in the Russian Federation.

We similarly assure you that we are in Russia legally and have not broken any local laws of the land. We have only been engaged in defending the rights of our fellow citizens, violated by the Kazakh authorities in our country. We are asking for help from your side, and the organisation of a campaign in our defence if there is any unlawful arrest or abduction by the Kazakh secret services on the territory of the Russian Federation.

Sincerely yours,

Esenbek Ukteshbaev, President of the Kazakhstan workers’ trade union, “Zhanartu”

and Vice-president of Zhanartu, Ainur Kurmanov

Moscow, February 10, 2012

Campaign at labourstart.org
Kazakhstan: Stop police violence against strikers
From www.labourstart.org

Urgent: Defend Vik Chechi - Unison branch secretary at Queen Mary University

Circulated by National Shop Stewards Network, please act on this if you can.

Vik Chechi, the Unison Branch Secretary of Queen Mary University in east London has this afternoon been suspended by his employer. We suspect that this is with a clear view to sack him because management wants to weaken the union and the anti-cuts campaign in the University which has united staff and students. They have been alarmed because Vik and other union activists have managed to reinvigorate the Unison branch. This is a classic attempt to smash a fighting union branch to allow management to drive through significant cuts including over 100 redundancies at the same as students face a tripling of tuition fees. By disarming the union, this would be just the start of the attacks on staff and students alike.

 

This is also an attack on Unison in particular and trade unions in general, just as we build up towards the massive pension strike on November 30th. Plymouth City Council has recently attempted to de-recognise Unison and many employers in both the public and private sector are looking to cut back on union facilities. Workers cannot afford to see their union strength weakened at this critical time when jobs, terms & conditions and pensions are on the line.

 

Please protest immediately to Vik's employers demanding his immediate reinstatement - Queen Mary University c.pearson@qmul.ac.uk and 'Centre of the Cell' f.balkwill@qmul.ac.uk. Send copies to info@shopstewards.net

1911: Strike For Liberty

100 years since the 1911 railway strike

By Alex Gordon, RMT. Reprinted with author's permission from RMT News August 2011

August this year sees the centenary of Britain’s first national railway strike.  August 1911 was a turning point in trade union organisation, which created the National Union of Railwaymen (NUR), Britain’s first industrial union in February 1913 and hastened the Labour Movement's awakening everywhere. 

The causes of the 1911 strike are familiar today.  Wage levels fell 10 per cent between 1900-1910, while prices rose and bosses used anti-union laws to stop workers taking strike action. 

The August 1911 rail strike was one element in a huge upsurge of worker militancy between 1910-14 known as ‘The Great Unrest’.  Overall union membership doubled to 4.1 million.  Numbers of strike days rocketed from 2 million in 1907, 10 million in 1911 and 41 million by 1912.  The ‘Triple Alliance’ of miners, dockers and railworkers forged through industrial solidarity in 1913 became for a while the most powerful organisation ever created by British workers to fight for their interests. 

The frustration and anger of railway workers built up from 1907 when the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants’ (ASRS) ‘All Grades Movement’ to cut working hours, raise wages and secure union recognition was diverted into a ‘Conciliation Scheme’ that left pay and conditions unchanged. 

Tom Lowth, of the General Railway Workers’ Union (GRWU) said: “It does not look to me like a very satisfactory settlement” and he was right.  By August 1910 Lord Claud Hamilton, Chairman of the Railway Companies Association boasted: “The union of course is not recognised in any way.  Not a loophole as far as I can see has been left open for them.” 

The following month in September 1910 a full-scale, workers’ revolt broke out led by the South Wales Miners’ Federation against the Cambrian Coal Combine. 

On 9 January, 1911 Liverpool ship-repairers struck for better pay and the National Sailors’ and Firemens’ Union held mass meetings in London, Cardiff, Bristol, Southampton, Hull, Glasgow, Grimsby, Dublin and Manchester under the slogan “War Is Now Declared: Seamen Strike Hard and Strike For Liberty on 14 June 1911”. 

A 72-day national seamen’s strike began in Southampton on 9 June 1911 and spread like wildfire around British ports.  In Liverpool, Tom Mann the charismatic leader of the National Transport Workers’ Federation (NTWF) was invited to chair the strike committee.  Mann arrived at Liverpool docks on 14 June 1911, while the government sent 3,000 troops to occupy the city and anchored a Royal Navy gunboat in the Mersey. 

The ASRS leadership tried to negotiate a return to work by rail workers.  However, the rail companies were intransigent against demands for a 2-shillings per week wage increase and a reduction from 60 to 54 hours per week.  Unofficial railway strikes continued to spread from Hull, Bristol, Swansea and Manchester through June and July. 

On “Bloody Sunday” 13 August 1911 a mass strike meeting at St George’s Plateau outside Liverpool’s Lime Street station was attacked by police from Birmingham.  The Liverpool strike committee declared a general strike from midnight 14 August. 

Tom Mann announced: “A strike of all transport men of all classes; of railway workers, passenger as well as goods men, drivers, stokers.  It will mean all connected with the ferry boats, tug boats, river tender men, Dock Board men, Overhead and underground railways, flatmen, bargemen, dockers, coal heavers, crane men, elevator men, warehouse workers, carters, and in fact every conceivable section and branch of the great transport industry in Liverpool will down tools until this business is settled.” The strike initiated by seamen drew in 66,000 transport workers of all sectors who brought the Port of Liverpool to a standstill. 

The following day 15 August a joint meeting of the Executive Committees of four rail unions (ASRS, GRWU, UPSS and ASLEF) made a joint call for a national rail strike unless the railway companies agreed to immediate negotiations. 

The government offered rail bosses “every available soldier in the country” and on 17 August unions declared a national rail strike in the famous ‘liberty telegram’, which proclaimed: “Your liberty is at stake.  All railwaymen must strike at once.  The loyalty of each means liberty for all.” 

(1911 railway strike - the first in British history - commemorative medal)

Around 200,000 rail workers took strike action.  Organised attacks on parts of the rail system included 1,000 workers besieging a working signal box at Portishead, Bristol.  Tracks were ripped up and telegraph systems damaged.  In Derby troops ordered to defend the railway station fixed bayonets and charged unarmed rail workers leading to pitched battles.  In Long Eaton strikers impounded trains and it took 100 troops to release them.  Chesterfield station burnt to the ground. 

(Leicester Junction - the rail strike was strongest on the Central Railway)

The most violent scenes took place in Llanelli, South Wales.  Strikers blocked the South Wales mainline stopping the Irish Mail.  Magistrates read the Riot Act as strikers and their supporters sang “Sospan Fach” ("Little Saucepan") the song of Llanelli Rugby Club.  Troops then opened fire on the crowd killing two workers who supported the striking railwaymen. 

On 18 August the government offered a Royal Commission to discuss industrial relations and union leaders immediately called the strike off, although it took days for workers to return to work in Manchester, Newcastle and other centres. 

The Royal Commission reported in November and failed to meet any of the strikers’ demands.  However, the significance of the strike lay in its demonstration of the industrial power of transport workers acting together across shipping, docks, railways and road transport sectors.  The events of 1911 also demonstrated the willingness of railway workers of all grades to act together in solidarity to achieve their aims and undermined the grip of craft sectarianism, which the railway companies relied on to divide and rule their workforce. 

Most importantly the 1911 strike pushed leaders of three railway unions (the ASRS, GRWU and UPSS) to put aside their differences and to have the courage to start merger talks, which led in just over 12 months to the National Union of Railwaymen, one of the largest and most important trade unions in 20th century British labour history. 

Alex Gordon,

President RMT

11 July 2011

Further reading:

‘Pulling Together: A Popular History of RMT’ (available free to RMT members from b.denny@rmt.org.uk );

Philip Bagwell, ‘The Railwaymen: The History of the National Union of Railwaymen’ (London: Allen & Unwin, 1963);

Bob Holton, ‘British Syndicalism 1900-1914: Myths and Realities’ (London: Pluto Press, 1976)

China: Chinese regime repressing left-wing critics

For the immediate release of leftists, Lu Kun and Zhang Yaoyong • Stop the bans and breaking up of grassroots ‘red song’ concerts

Qian Lixing, chinaworker.info

The Chinese regime has launched a new wave of suppression against the left in China. Several active leftists and Maoists have been arrested and ‘silenced’ by the police and the state apparatuses. Several grassroots ‘red song’ concerts (organised by local pensioners, workers and youth) have been banned and harassed in different provinces. The so-called “communist” (CCP) regime in China severely represses any challenge or opposition both from the left wing or the right wing. It made the CCP’s 90th anniversary more like an irony. Meanwhile, bourgeois liberal sections of the media and liberal groups in China also continue to ignore the repression of the left and Maoists in China. Very little information about the left in China can really be accessed by the outside.

According to information from various channels, Maoists Lu Kun (Online ID: Yu Hong) and Zhang Yaoyong (Online ID: Leiming Tingyu) were arrested by the police in Baoji City, Shanxi Province, and Beijing, the capital of China on 30 July.
Lu and Zhang were both active in an online Maoist group, the ‘Central Committee of Chinese Communist Revolution’, for the last three years. Lu is a computer shop owner in Baoji, and Zhang is an editor of a local press group in Beijing. When Lu made an online conversation with Zhang, he was arrested by eight policemen, who raided his flat and seized his two computers. Zhang was called by the party boss of the press he worked at soon after that, and has “been disappeared” since then.

In the recent period, the Chinese regime has harshly suppressed active and influential leftists and Maoists so as to prevent the spread of left and radical ideas. Many left-wing online groups and web-forums, including Trotskyists and other socialist currents, as well as Maoists, have been blocked and banned.

The regime has also used the iron fist against any activists and activity in the real world (beyond internet). For instance, some leftists, including Hua Qiao, from the so-called ‘Revolutionary Party of China’, who tried to make contact and intervene in the truck drivers strike in Shanghai in April, were immediately arrested and questioned by the police, until now Hua Qiao is still under house arrest.

From 2007 onwards there has been an increase in grassroots-initiated ‘red song’ concerts in different provinces and cities. These grassroots ‘red song’ concerts are usually organised by pensioners, former SOE (state owned enterprises) workers, and young people, who are Maoists or sympathise with the former Maoist regime. The regime only tolerates such ‘red’ manifestations if they are fully under the control of officials and praise, rather than criticise, the current regime. When such events are organised outside the its control, local governments and police will try to ban or break up the concert by themselves or by employing thugs, if they cannot buy off the organisers of the ‘red song’ concerts.

This has happened in several cities such as, Luoyang and Zhengzhou in Henan province, Taiyuan in Shanxi province, Jinan in Shandong province and Xi’an in Shan’xi province. For instance, from 2009, the police in Luoyang have taken away or stolen sound systems and speakers from local ‘red song’ concerts on several occasions. The local government has put at least four active Maoists, such as Wang Xiufeng and Liu Sanying, into ‘education-through-labour’ camps or mental hospitals for half a year to two years respectively, without any formal legal process.

The usual accusation is “violation of social order”. The ‘education-through-labour’ camps and mental hospital are the main facilities used local governments to illegally imprison and punish dissidents and petitioners. Recently, local media has reported that the government in Changzhou city, Jiangsu province, has put three petitioners into the ‘education-through-labour’ camps for one-year terms. The reason is that they rode the bus in Beijing without paying the one yuan bus fare, when they had gone to the capital to appeal their cases in 2009.

The repression of leftists and Maoists by the regime has further exposed the true autocratic face of the regime – a fake communist party. Even some reformist Maoists have desperately commented online, if singing ‘red songs’ cannot change China back to being red, “we have to use our blood to make it red”.

While we do not agree with the Maoists and some other leftist on political program, approach and analysis of the Chinese revolution and state, chinaworker.info and the Marxist supporters of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) consistently defend basic democraatic rights and are completely opposed to the regime’s repression, especially against socialists and the left wing. We call for the immediate release of all political prisoners, including Lu Kun and Zhang Yaoyong.

For more information on ‘red song’ concerts read

China: repression or ‘reform’? (http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1507/?ls-art0=15)

Twenty years since failed coup in Soviet Union

Historical CWI document ‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the Soviet Union’ translated into Chinese - http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1545/


19th August 1991 was a turning point in world history, signalling the break-up of the Soviet Union and the transformation of its member republics to corrupt and undemocratic ‘market economies’. This was followed by stepped up neo-liberal attacks on the working class internationally, and an unprecedented ideological offensive claiming the superiority of capitalism. On 19 August, the people of Moscow woke to the sound of tanks driving down the street. So-called ‘hardliners’ within the ruling Communist Party had launched a widely expected coup, but one that also collapsed within days due to its own internal weaknesses and refusal of military units to obey the coup leaders. These events were analysed at the time by the majority faction in the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) in the document ‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the Soviet Union’.

The coup took place in the sixth year of Mikhail Gorbachev’s rule as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Gorbachev and the ‘reform’ layer he led had attempted to steer the bureaucratic Stalinist system out of its deepening crisis by initiating economic and political reforms. Without this they feared a social explosion from discontented workers, peasants and discriminated nationalities that would sweep the entire system away. But the reforms themselves only aggravated the social and economic crisis, while not satisfying the masses’ desire for an end to economic decline and autocratic rule.

Genuine socialists had long explained that the planned economy, which was the outstanding and only remaining social conquest of the great Russian Revolution of 1917, could only function under a regime of full democracy and democratic planning by the working masses, not under the dictatorial bureaucratic elite that controlled society in the USSR. The so called ‘communist’ bureaucrats, both the ‘reformers’ and ‘hardliners’, some consciously and others less so, were preparing the ground for a return to a brutal form of capitalism.

The 1991 coup leaders – called the ‘Gang of Eight’ – miscalculated that they could profit from Gorbachev’s unpopularity and the general sense of crisis to re-assert a more centralized and dictatorial regime. They introduced martial law, a curfew and announced the aim of “fighting the black economy, corruption, theft, speculation and economic incompetence”. This, they said, was to “create favourable conditions to improve the real contribution of all types of entrepreneurial activity conducted within the law”.

Such statements showed that the coup leaders themselves did not represent 'socialism' or an attempt to go back towards a Stalinist system with its bureaucrat-controlled planned economy, but stood for a more controlled pace of capitalist ‘market reforms’ under a stronger, more centralised dictatorial regime. This was one of the contentious issues in the debate between the CWI majority faction and a minority faction led by Ted Grant and Alan Woods, who later left our ranks. This grouping was for many years in denial over the restoration of capitalism in the former USSR. The documents of both factions in this dispute are available on the marxist.net website.


The majority document ‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the Soviet Union’ stands the test of time. In contrast to the euphoria of the world bourgeoisie at the time of the break-up of the USSR, and the demoralisation of many on the left, it provides an analysis of these world-changing events and a perspective that enabled our international to anticipate in general outlines the subsequent events and to orientate ourselves accordingly. This material, appearing for the first time in Chinese, can be of special interest to Chinese readers.

The collapse of the USSR and its chaotic road to capitalism, especially in the early 1990s (when Russia’s GDP collapsed by around 50%), had a decisive effect on the mentality of China’s ‘communist’ rulers, coming just two years after their bloody counter-revolutionary crushing of a mass democracy movement in 1989, which contained important elements of political (anti-bureaucratic) revolution. The massacre of 1989 had not led to a reconsolidation of Maoism-Stalinism; the economic base of the Chinese dictatorship underwent fundamental change. As the CWI majority document explained, “… after this short period of re-adjustment, Li Peng and the hardliners have adopted pro-capitalist policies which are not fundamentally different from Zhao [Ziyang]’s”. The events of 1991 further convinced Beijing both that there could be ‘no return’ to central planning, but also that alongside capitalist ‘market reforms’ they must preserve the centralised one-party dictatorship to prevent a similar break-up of China and contain the pressure of the masses.

This doctrine – ‘economic reform without political reform’ – has been central to the Chinese regime’s outlook ever since. To this day, voices for ‘political reform’ make up only a small minority within the regime. This is why socialists explain that the decisive force for democratic rights in China will come from the masses, especially the vast working class, not from ‘enlightened’ elements within the one-party state and not from the capitalists who share in the benefits of the current repressive system.

The English version of the document ‘Revolution and Counter-Revolution in the Soviet Union’ and other material related to this issue can be found on marxist.net

                        Revolution And Counter-Revolution In The Soviet Union

CWI document, September 1991

A turning point in world events

1. The recent upheavals in the Soviet Union represent a turning point in world events. While this process began some years ago, the crushing blow suffered by the "old guard" signifies the collapse of Stalinism in the USSR. It will have enormous repercussions internationally, even greater than those which followed the collapse of the proletarian Bonapartist regimes in Eastern Europe. Marxists must assess what the prospects are now for the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe where this process was already underway. We must assess what this means for the world balance of forces, the position of Imperialism, and the prospects for the remaining proletarian Bonapartist regimes. It is also necessary to gauge the effect of these events on the consciousness of the working class internationally...Read the rest here