|
|
Post by dodger on Jul 31, 2013 16:09:28 GMT
Features
Trade unions with the will to win
Friday 17 May 2013 by Doug Nicholls
Nineteenth-century engineering and ironworks remain as durable as ever.
There was real skill, confidence and staying power in such work.
Generations have walked across the immovable bridges, opened the canal locks, swung on the unbending gates or dragged sticks along the sturdy and decorative railings.
Things made and built then lasted. The solid architecture and internal decorations of many of the period's finest buildings - the Natural History Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, St Pancras railway station, Keble College - is here to stay, as defiant and as permanent as the Gothic cathedrals.
The engineers and builders of this period and people in scores of related trades built the trade union movement with the same attention to detail and determination as they put into their production of manufactured goods and tools.
Whatever foul weather confronts us, our trade unions have the will, not just to endure, but to win.
Our best unions are crafted like unbreakable tools. It's not just the spirit of 1945 we need, but the organisational skills of the founders of our movement.
And some of the greats - Ben Tillett, Will Thorne and Pete Curran - not only built their own unions but founded the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) as well.
The distinctive thing about the British trade union movement and its creation of over 5,000 trade unions over the decades has been its origin in particular trades.
Each union defended its occupation and the particular terms and conditions and culture that surrounded the nature of the work.
This gave power, pride and determination that no employer could unravel.
As trade unionism grew at the end of the 19th century the multiplicity of trades recognised their common identity in the struggle against the employers and a government of the landed and industrial elite.
This inevitably led to the call for a unification in action and federation of all trades to create a strong, single trade union home.
The idea of one trade union centre was born and has endured ever since in the form of the TUC.
Regardless of political views and the leanings of individual unions, the decision was made to unite with one non-sectarian voice.
But alongside the TUC, and indeed as a product of it, the GFTU was established in 1899.
It was recognised that additional support was needed for often small and specialist trade unions and sections of larger unions in the heat of industrial difficulties.
In particular, the engineering employers' lockout of 1897 led to the resolve that a strike fund needed to be created so that employers could never again starve engineers back to work.
It was recognised too that more international work needed to be conducted. The GFTU took on both of these roles. In addition, it worked with the TUC to establish the Labour Representation Committee, which established the Labour Party.
Once the Labour Party was formed, the TUC and GFTU worked very closely with it against the most insidious form of war on workers - unemployment.
Some of the first stirrings of the welfare state can be glimpsed in these early joint meetings as the unions pushed for a social security system for the nation.
British trade unions have been the main force for progress in the country since their inception long before the Tolpuddle martyrs.
The extension of the franchise, workplace dignity and industrial democracy and progressive ideas and a keen sense of political accountability have all flowed from our movement.
It is often said that our wings were clipped by Thatcher as we were too powerful.
The reality is the unions have never had enough power. If we had, Britain would not have an energy crisis, our utilities would not be unaffordable, there would be homes for all, there would be no unemployment, there would be no national debt and no destruction of the public sector, there would be stable prices on basics, a truly free press and a truly free National Health Service, land ownership would be taxed, education at all levels would be free and there would be no tax havens for the super-rich.
While many unions come and go with the changing patterns of the economy and production, many are as old as the GFTU and have proud continuous histories.
We think of the musicians, probation officers, furniture makers, journalists or footballers, all still among the leadership of the GFTU.
We think of younger unions seeking workers' respect and fairness in some of Britain's most feudal workplaces who now recognise the value of the GFTU's essential backup and support and training when they need it most.
We think of some of the professional specialisms in unions that benefit from our free education and research to protect their areas of work so vital to us all.
GFTU general council meeting delegates will meet beneath the imperishable first enamel plaque produced for it by socialist artist Walter Crane in the early 1900s and the huge bronze commemoration of its Euston HQ Central House, which was built by the foresight, financial sacrifice and savings of the early unions.
We will meet in the GFTU's new property the Quorn Grange Hotel, a new resource for the whole movement for meetings and training in glorious surroundings.
We will meet totally uncowed by the blitzkrieg that the coalition launched against our country without a mandate. We will plan how to achieve greater power in the future and how to engage a new generation in the democracy, staying power and winning power that is active trade unionism at its best.
Doug Nicholls is general secretary of the GFTU.www.morningstaronline.co.uk/news/content/view/full/133011
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Jul 31, 2013 16:40:15 GMT
 GFTU 100: Youth take centre stage Image | Posted on May 19, 2013 by gftublog GFTU 100: Youth take centre stage
“If we don’t fight – what we risk losing is so great.”
“We will lose our NHS, our welfare state and employment rights we have fought so hard for.”
“When I was 13 I was diagnosed with autism – if it wasn’t for the workers in the youth council i wouldn’t be here today.”
“We need to be the real alternative to this political system.”
“Only we the unions can make Britain great again.”
GFTU co-chair and young trade unionist Danny giving a political and personal rallying cry to trade unionists across Britain.
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
TWO OTHER YOUNG TRADE UNIONISTS SHOWED THEIR METTLE BY TAKING ON THE TASK OF CO-CHAIR--TAKING CENTRE STAGE.
gftublog.wordpress.com/2013/05/19/gftu-100-youth-take-centre-stage/
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Aug 1, 2013 13:55:49 GMT
www.wftucentral.org/?p=5195&language=enInterview with Bob Crow, General Secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT) of Britain
WFTU Press Room: Which is the core of the policy for the railways that both the previous and the current government are promoting in Britain?
Bob Crow: It is a continuation of the European Union policy for the break up of any nationalized monopoly (e.g nationalized companies) and return it to private monopolies because for the full control of the transport system in the basis of profits. Those services that do not make money will be closed down and they will try to keep more money for themselves in the expense of keeping working conditions down.
WFTU Press Room: Which are the demands of RMT on this issue?
Bob Crow: RMT is not going to except any redundancies; any worsening of our members paying conditions. We are not going to except that the services of public transport are going to be diluted and closed down and that you get worse services for higher fares. Our members shouldn’t have to pay as a result of worsened paying conditions due to the expectations of the privateers trying to make even more money.
WFTU Press Room: RMT is the fastest growing union in Britain. What are the characteristics of the RMT?
Bob Crow: We are trying to have a union that respects its members, where the leadership represents the members’ wishes. We are trying to be as open and democratic as possible. We are trying to build a union where the members can feel that they can actually change the directions of the union. But most importantly we are not scared to fight the employers were our members wish to fight. The union is there to make sure that its members paying conditions are preserved and constantly improved; that they work in a safe workplace and that they will be able to leave for home in “one piece” without being injured or hurt. Our role at the work places is to protect our members from where there is employers’ negligence. Moreover, the union has a social role in order to improve life outside the workplace.
WFTU Press Room: The RMT is an affiliate of the Trade Union Congress (TUC). This confederation is closely linked to the Labour Party. Is there a relation of the RMT with the Labour Party today?
Bob Crow: The RMT was expelled by the Labour Party because we believed that its policy was against our members. They are trying to attack the labour laws, to repel them. They are still continuing on the basis of keeping the industries privatized which was the policy of the Conservative Party that was doing nothing for our shipping members. Actually the industry was disrupted by bringing low immigrant labour from around the world, which affected our members paying conditions. So there was another group in Scotland, a Socialist Party whose policy is in a favor of what our union wanted. As a result of it we gave the money to their members who were prepared to fight and that is the reason why the Labour Party expelled us.
WFTU Press Room: Why is internationalist solidarity important today according to you?
Bob Crow: Internationalist solidarity is more important than ever before since workers are being squeezed as much as possible for the employers to make maximum profit for themselves. The role of an organized labour movement is for it to be ready to defend the working people against big capital and to try to redistribute that wealth to other people in the society.
WFTU Press Room: Which are the relations of the RMT with the TUI of Transport and the WFTU?
Bob Crow: We are closely cooperating with the TUI of Transport which is an affiliate of the World Federation of Trade Unions. We recognize the tremendous role they play for the workers around the world. Our latest common activity is the participation of one of our Executive Committee Members at the WFTU International Solidarity Conference in Palestine. We are involved with a number of WFTU unions around the world, especially with the Brazilian comrades. We have always been involved to the expression of solidarity especially to our Cuban comrades who are part of the WFTU. We recognize them as great partners, true socialists and fighting trade unions who are prepared to role their sleeves up for the struggle for the rights of the working people.
WFTU Press Room: What was your general impression from the participation in the 16th World Trade Union Congress which called for coiling and militant counterattack against the capitalist barbarity and exploitation?
Bob Crow: It was a fantastic Congress. With a clear objective there need to be a global response of the workers against capital. Of course, our job first of all is to do the fight in our own country and to link that struggle with all the struggles of the workers around the world who are fighting for justice.
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Aug 4, 2013 17:43:24 GMT
www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.secondwave/worker-35.htm
First Published: As an editorial in The Worker, No. 35, September 13, 1979.
“IN THE THEORY of Marxism no true place has been found for organised labour, the trade unions, in being the main force for revolution.” So states the CPB (ML) document on The Party and the Trade Unions which is one of the fruits of the Fifth Party Congress held last Easter.
There are historical reasons why this should have been the case. In Russia, the country of the first proletarian revolution, there were two social conditions relevant to working class organisation differing considerably from Britain which, as the birthplace of the proletariat, was always Marx’s model. The polarisation of Russian society into “two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat,” or capitalists and workers, had not proceeded nearly so far and the trade unions had not developed into nation-wide organisations of the labour movement which in Britain as early as 1868 had been reflected in the first Trades Union Congress. The soviets were quite different organisations, resembling more in composition and in relation to factory base what we would call trade councils.
It was the first of these conditions which made it seem, even to Lenin, that the organised working class in Russia was not sufficiently well developed to generate revolutionary theory out of its own daily experience of class struggle. As Lenin put it: “Class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is, only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employer.” This distinction between economic and political struggle in reference to the specific conditions in Russia at the time differed from Marx’s dictum in the Communist Manifesto that “every class struggle is a political struggle”.
And yet when Lenin came to define the democratic centralism which was to be the main political feature of the Party of a New Type the best analogy he could think of was trade union industrial action. “Before a decision has been taken by the centre on a strike, it is permissible to agitate for and against it, but after a decision in favour of a strike (with the additional decision to conceal this from the enemy) to carryon agitation against the strike is strike-breaking.”
The Mensheviks were scandalised by this analogy and complained that Lenin seemed to look on the party as a “huge factory”. To which Lenin retorted that they betrayed “the mentality of the bourgeois intellectual unfamiliar with either the practice or theory of proletarian organisation. For the factory, which to some seems a bogey, represents the highest form of capitalist co-operation which has united and disciplined the proletariat, taught it to organise, and placed it at the head of all other sections of the toiling and exploited population.”
Marxism and Unions
Ironically, the very ideas Lenin developed in applying Marxism to a situation different from that of capitalism’s home, Britain, have often been imported back into Britain as the only way forward to revolution. Since the day-to-day class struggle was assumed to be “economist”, without political significance, would-be Marxist theoreticians have called (trade union activity “spontaneous”. Thinking of themselves as bringing Marxism to the workers from outside the class struggle between workers and capitalists they have said of such struggle, “since it is not what I think, since my thoughts, my plans for progress are not adopted, then it is without thought, that is ’spontaneous’”. These ’theoreticians’ have even wanted to write off altogether the trade unions developed by the working class over many decades as a defence to minimise the degree of exploitation and replace them with “red unions” of their own devising.
Mao Tsetung quite frankly stated that in applying Marxism to China he was dealing with entirely different conditions than those in Britain. He described the two-stage theory of revolution as “a feature peculiar to the revolution in colonial and semi-colonial countries and not to be found in the revolutionary history of any capitalist country”
As the CPB (ML) document on the Party and the Trade Unions states: “There is an acceptance that the working class is the revolutionary force. There must be an unqualified acceptance that the class struggle is waged most effectively, solely so, through the trade unions who are the most advanced section of their class...class struggle, which within capitalism goes on daily and continuously, is not synonymous with revolution, which is the accumulation of all forces within the contradictions gathered by the class in one fell blow to seize power and rule: but it need not and must not be separate. “The problem of the relationship between the two which is also the problem of the relationship between the trade unions and the communist party has never been solved because “no capitalist country has achieved a revolution.”
It is to this problem that the CPB (ML) has mainly addressed itself at its Fifth Congress. It is not a mere personal nor historical accident that the founder of our Party, presently attending the TUC conference as a member of the General Council, is an industrial worker and life-long trade unionist. So much for any idea that in Britain today revolutionary theory must or could “come from outside the economic struggle.”
And of the trade unions the CPB (ML) document concludes:
Do not despise these hard-wrought organisations. In the course of the class struggle such organs have twice been the force to destroy governments – the Labour Government over “In Place of Strife” and the Tory over the Industrial Relations Act. Then there is no limit to the proper application of this force for revolution, through a revolutionary Party, our Party, of the working class.”
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Aug 5, 2013 10:40:14 GMT
WORKERS POLITICS the Ethics OF Socialism.
by William Ash
Published 2007
Bread Books, Coventry
As luck would have it, when Marx Library asked me to review William Ash’s new book Workers’ Politics the ethics of socialism I had only very recently put down Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean by John Julius Norwich and was enthusiastically burning the midnight oil working my way through My Life by Fidel Castro as told to his chosen biographer Ignacio Ramonet, editor of Le Monde Diplomatique.
Bill Ash’s book is about ethics and philosophy in general and it is divided into four easy to follow sections: Values, Obligations, Rights and Alienation and Political Change. Ethics he shows to be philosophy in practice. Values originate in the production of commodities and derive its conception and meaning in social relations of production. Obligations describe the bonds that exist between social beings in their quest to co-opt nature. Rights, evolve from notions of human equality and are a reflection of the “equalisation of human labour in general which is the source and measure of value”.
All practiced through the great panorama of class struggles for ascendancy and against the decomposition that make up the capitalist societies in which we live and struggle to fashion change.
All good and easy enough stuff to understand? If only life were so simple!
That is why I mention both a history of the Mediterranean and Fidel. All of the four categories Ash so eloquently unravels have their denouement in history or rather, in histories. In the history of the Mediterranean one can come to understand the development of the great civilisations, from Rome to Greece, taking in Byzantium and Venice en route, and the great religions Islam, Judaism and Christianity across hundreds of years, dynasties and social systems: nomadic and primitive communism, feudalism, mercantile capitalism, industrial capitalism and imperialism.
To get to grips with the concepts Bill describes, a thousand year history of the crucible of western societies is an excellent tableaux and testing ground.
My Life is important for two reasons in relation to Bill’s book. In the first, Castro is workers’ politics and ethics, in practice, in the most difficult of circumstances. A man who, across five decades, has been the object of so many assassination attempts by the USA and her supplicants in Miami is well placed to talk ethics and morality. He still sleeps in a different apartment most nights. My Life involves so many of the issues raised in Ash’s book particularly to do with morality, now so highly politicized. There is collective and individual rights and obligations, the right to life and the death penalty, the freedom to move in and out of a country, the right to exist as a country unhindered by external pressure and much more. In a recent interview in which he explained why he took the opportunity to interview Castro for so many hours over such a sustained period, Ramonet explained that, he thought My Life was important, “because the left has not done theory for thirty years.”
An important point and a genuine criticism of many, but I would humbly beg to differ. There have been people “doing theory” for the last thirty years and Bill Ash is among them. Indeed Workers’ Politics is a re working of a book that has seen a number of pressings since the early 1960s with publishers in the UK, USA and India - prestigious publishers such as Routledge and Monthly Review. Bread Books, a new publishing venture, should be commended for keeping this important work, updated, in print and in the public eye.
Ash – a one time President of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain - has the advantage of being a writer by occupation [though in his hands it seems like he is a writer by birth] and is able to put across complex theories of social development, the development of knowledge and explain the origin of ‘thought’, in ways which open them up to a much broader audience. And philosophers who also want to change the world rather than obscure it or justify the politics of dismal capitalism are unfortunately in short supply.
The first three chapters remain topical and the last one more controversial. For these reasons alone the book is well worth the read. Most importantly, the book allows space for the reader to develop understanding as the proposition is revealed. You will not come out of this book without changing the thinking with which you picked it up.
Workers’ Politics shows how vulnerable capitalism is to a critique, which goes much broader than a denunciation of its economics of exploitation. Capitalism is revealed as shoddy. It shortchanges its participants, worker and capitalist alike. It hits us in pocket, but also in heart, mind and soul. Humanity is capable of so much more and so much better. All that is quality in our lives, from education at a local school to the struggle to defeat cancer, is a product of human struggle in the teeth of capitalism. How much better, Ash contends, would human endeavor be, if it were set to gel within a social system whose essence was satisfaction of collective interests. This will not be possible while surplus value, is appropriated by private hands.
Capitalism, Ash contends, is vulnerable if it is confronted as a system of values rather than piece-by-piece. He describes a broad front, which is a focus of real struggles of, ideas, culture, language, morality, ethics and philosophy at home and in the workplace. In his hands whole new aspects of Marxism as a critique of capitalism are engaged. Categories like ‘good’; ‘freedom’, ‘ought’, ‘solidarity’, ‘liberation’ and ‘value’ take on new strengths. It is territory any reader of the founders of English socialism such as Ernest Jones, George Harney, William Morris, Ruskin and Robert Owen or Walter Crane would be familiar and comfortable with.
Ash has grasped the importance of asserting the positives.
Instead of shoddy goods to be foisted on a public given no other option, we are encouraged to insist on new qualities. Human endeavor should be set free so that each can work with others to satisfy human needs. In place of the steady diet of war and aggression he posits international cooperation the better to grapple with global challenges. In place of mock freedoms parading as ‘rights’ as in the abuse of unionism and strike action to throttle Venezuela’s oil industry or truckers subverting elected governments in Chile, freedom of expression and association are enriched by freedom from exploitation. In Bill’s hand, ‘liberation’ is restored as a term of the people opposed to the sham ‘liberal’ democracy, enforced by a World Bank. Solidarity and the right to join a union are asserted over ‘freedom’ not to join. This is a world turned the right way up.
Ash leaves few stones unturned. He scrutinises language, ‘truth’, the meaning of ‘value’ which arises as a category in antiquity with the production of goods for human use, normative judgments, what is ‘good’ and the bonds that tie us such as friendship, family, class and fellowship. None of these he contends is absolute. All evolve historically and are determined by the relative strengths of the classes which contend for power in society. But his analysis puts to shame, the current fashion for unthinking labeling using throwaway concepts such as ‘fairness’, ‘sustainable’ and ‘equality’.
Ash shows that, at the root of all this dysfunction, lies alienation that arose with the division of labour. Bill returns time and again to Marx’s 1844 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts and The German Ideology, two works deserving of much greater prominence and consideration. It was here Marx revealed that, in early commodity production, value and utility became separated as workers were separated and dispossessed of the tools that guaranteed their freedom as producers.
So much of modern day thought is anchored early on in the appearance of a division of labour and the appearance of labour power as a commodity. ‘Freedom’ is given to workers in the form of dispossession - i.e. they are free to starve or work. Ash observes, “The social fact of the division of labour implies a separation between productive effort and enjoyed satisfactions.” Much flows from this division. Our thoughts and definitions, our concepts and values are polarised. Ideas of ‘effort’ and ‘sacrifice’, of ‘quality’ and ‘fair’ remuneration are linked to production. Others, such as ‘emotion’, ‘image’ and ‘desire’ are linked to consumption. Production is collective and involves pooling of effort, interests and resource. Consumption is private and individualistic.
Try as it might, as a result of the division that sits as its inner core, capitalism cannot put these dynamics together. Instead it makes opposites of what should be unities: thinking and doing, town and country, reality and aspiration. As a result, it is unable to really satisfy human wants and desires. But it can and does sell them things, even when they do not want or need them. And what is foisted on them comes with built in obsolescence. With this goes a whole baggage of thinking and a value system, which Ash encourages us to challenge.
He points to the need to go beyond this capitalism to a society based on new sets of beliefs and values. In capitalism there is little joy of work which should be a noble pursuit, the pleasure in fashioning nature into value is pushed aside in the quest only for greater profit, the celebration of skill and collective endeavor at best begrudgingly rewarded. The motif of this new society would mean that, to quote Marx, “labour has become not only a means of life but itself is life’s prime want...”
Your reviewer found Chapter 3 the most interesting and topical. It analyses the scope and limits of freedom of choice. Socialism has taken a hiding in the last two decades in the name of freedom. The USSR never recovered from a crusade in the guise of ‘human rights’ launched under President Jimmy Carter in the mid 1970s and pursued under Reagan. Yet, in its early phase, socialism was the “watchword of liberty” and a hope of liberation for mankind.
The concept of freedom is loaded with the reality of class. Yet many on the left retreated from class during that period or gave prominence to aspects of class over the essence. It was precisely this retreat, which opened up the space for class rights to be supplanted in the popular mind with ‘human rights’, promoted zealously to this day by imperialism. It has been a hard struggle to regain the once firmly held high ground.
According to Bill, workers in eastern Europe were urged to assert a ‘right’ to withdraw their labour, yet when their counterparts sought to assert the same right under capitalism it was, “either at the wrong time, the wrong place or called for wrong reason.” In other words, class and the class struggle, lies at the root of rights and freedom.
The struggle over rights is pivotal to the direction of society today. Much of the passing confusion of the 1970s arose as a result of a misunderstanding of the relationship between individual and collective rights. Ash is spellbinding when he discusses this issue. The Marxist way, he reasons, is not to dismiss the rights or realities of individuals but sees individualism linked to consumption and as a destructive force. Instead, Marxists argue that the full flowering of individuals becomes possible when they recognise the collective nature of humanity and work to combine their unique character and talents, to harness nature for the good of all. That way each individual acts as a social agent.
Because of the peculiar historical strength of organised labour in Britain, it is mainly the study of the economics of Marx, which has prevailed. Yet Ash makes an excellent case for looking at the issue of philosophy, which dominated Marx’s life. According to Ash, the struggle to free ourselves from exploitation is “the struggle to uncover the true relationships between people and as producers, thereby allowing us to think in new ways as a result of being able to recognise reality for what it really is.” This is the process which Marx called “a class for itself”.
In the bibliography there is a treasure trove of books and reading for anyone interested in further exploration. Most are readily available to members of Marx Library. On visiting the library you may well find Bill, at 90 years old, now an elder statesman of the labour movement, working on his next project.
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
For a one volume work that, in usually straightforward and clear fashion, addresses the relationship among economics, ethics and politics, it would be difficult to best this contribution. --Science Class and Politics
From the highly acclaimed novelist, script editor, journalist and writer William Ash, a clear, rooted, account of the importance of socialist ideas within the Marxist tradition. Ash, a decorated war hero and leading trade unionist and thinker, has written something of great importance to a new generation of those fighting for peace and progress.
Anti globalization protesters, trade unionists and genuinely worried workers will find this book a major wake up call to the simple, yet increasingly relevant concepts that underpin socialism.
The author considers values, rights, obligations and alienation and social change and shows how the modern ideas of workers, concentrated into Marxism, have enhanced the best thought of the past and offer us something powerful today. --..a highly original book . Morning Star
It is, as any good Marxist analysis, should be, a call to action, not a mere intellectual exercise . --Voice of the Unions
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Aug 5, 2013 18:30:07 GMT
hankroberts.org.uk/?page_id=4Not a voice in the wilderness. SOMEBODY WHO HAS SOMETHING TO SAY AND SAYS IT WELL. A scourge of those who would see our education destroyed by corporate greed. Teacher and class warrior. "Look--listen--learn," as the sign said above our black-board.
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Aug 17, 2013 15:08:17 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/thinking/guerilla2.htmlGuerilla StruggleWORKERS, NOV 2012 ISSUE Guerrilla struggle, irregular warfare, or as the US now calls it “asymmetrical warfare”, was developed as a successful strategy to win power, by Chinese communists, Cuban revolutionaries and Vietnamese national liberation fighters. In 1973, a time of intense working class action in Britain, our Party wrote a pamphlet that sought to apply the tactics of guerrilla war to civil political action, civil strife and industrial action in Britain. Classic tactics include “hit and run”, avoiding full frontal warfare, maximising your strengths and knowing your enemy’s weakness; maximising the damage to your enemy whilst minimising your losses. “When the enemy attacks, we retreat; when the enemy retreats, we harry them; lure the enemy in deep so we can surround them or attack their supply lines,” were all famous tactical quotes from the Chinese revolution. Guerrilla struggle is a strategy developed by Communists and successfully used by resistance and liberation movements. A well-known use of guerrilla struggle applied to industrial struggle in Britain was the flying pickets of the striking miners in 1972 and 1974 that closed other strategic sites such as the Saltley coke works in the West Midlands when engineers joined the miners. The remainder of the seventies saw guerrilla action by engineers playing off one employer against another, with rail workers, teachers and white collar workers joining the fray, and concluded with the Winter of Discontent that brought down the Callaghan government. The key was to hit the powerful employer where he was weakest and where workers were strongest, to take the employer by surprise but not to be adventurous, to avoid all-out confrontations that might lead to casualties, to know when to withdraw and strike the employer somewhere else, to spread solidarity, but most importantly to ensure control of the struggle was in the hands of local organised workers. The Governments of the seventies could not control these struggles and consequently organised workers brought down two governments. This is why Thatcher, after her election in 1979, made her priority destroying trade unions and outlawing anything that smelt of guerrilla struggle such as solidarity action, local strikes based on a show of hands or instantaneous walkouts. In the eighties, workers had to use their heads to avoid the Government stealing their unions’ assets. Today, with those laws still in place, guerrilla struggle is even more the key to victory. The construction workers at Lindsey Oil Refinery who walked out in 2009 over the use of foreign labour and who organised phenomenal solidarity strikes across the country are a good example. It’s time to use our heads again because only workers who know their employer well can determine these tactics
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Aug 17, 2013 15:38:56 GMT
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Aug 18, 2013 6:37:36 GMT
www.gftu.org/assets/userfiles/1014_GFTU_RESOLUTIONS_BOOKLET_FINAL_EMAIL.pdfGeneral Federation of Trade Unions
Biennial General Council Meeting
Policies 2013
This BGCM recognises the importance of the long held view in the GFTU that
manufacturing industry and strong public services are connected and that
workers and the private and public sectors share common aspirations and bonds
of union solidarity. The decline of manufacturing and the decline of public services
effect us all.
(02) This BGCM believes that the current destruction of our public services and the
welfare state built by our predecessors in the trade union movement is the logical
conclusion of a process that began in the 1980s with the attacks on manufacturing.
(03) This BGCM therefore believes that there needs to be a new commitment nationally
to rebuilding the British economy and strong public services, there needs to be
an integrated national industrial strategy directed by a democratically elected
government. This BGCM notes with concern that certain rules of EU membership
prohibit this.
(04) This BGCM completely rejects the market and the power of the banks and finance
houses and recognises that the wealth produced in manufacturing, work generally
and by making and selling real goods and developing beneficial public, must be
reinvested into the real economy and our infrastructure.
(05) This BGCM completely rejects the so called ‘economic’ reasons given for the
purely ideologically driven attack on our economy, public services, workers’
rights, pensions and welfare. This BGCM further notes how extreme the situation
has become with the EU and its allies in the banks taking further control over
governments, such as those of Greece, and imposing regimes of permanent
indebtedness.
(06) This BGCM rejects the profit motive and the capitalist worsening of the crisis and
calls on the GFTU to provide information, research and education to instil in a new
generation the recognition that there is a workers’ alternative to the situation
Blastissimo.....a musical term...some might be unfamiliar with.
A little Bible anyone?
Hebrews 12:19 and to the blast of a trumpet and the sound of words which sound was such that those who heard begged that no further word be spoken to them.
Exodus 20:18 All the people perceived the thunder and the lightning flashes and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood at a distance.
Matthew 24:31 "And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Aug 31, 2013 15:35:34 GMT
As the TUC prepares for its 145th annual get-together, we look at the real issues facing the Congress that many in the movement prefer not to talk about – real organisation, real democracy, real strength, real challenges...
The issues that the TUC and the trade unions can no longer duck
WORKERS, SEP 2013 ISSUE
A white elephant is a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of. And, oh joy – it’s that time of year and the Trades Union Congress has many of these animals on display as it gathers at its annual congress in Bournemouth this month, 145 years young.
One that comes immediately to mind is the “industry” within trade unions that keeps them meeting notional concepts of democratic engagement by generating annual conferences and congresses with wordy motions addressing the woes of the world.
But the real challenge is not wordy motions but deeds; not analysis but change. It is worth pausing to consider what democratic engagement is when most unions’ internal elections for national executive councils return pathetic voting figures of between 6 and 8 per cent.
Industrial action ballots vary but most feature only a minority vote, and then the membership army is not on the field.
Engagement
So what is democratic engagement? Not so much a white elephant – more an elephant in the room. There is a mind-set that drives too many TUC motions: concepts of decency, doing the right thing, do-gooding, fair play, fair pay, equality in an unequal world, rights guaranteed by the state, structures which do it for us not us doing things for ourselves, having a long list of injustices against the working class by employers and governments at home and abroad. Every other conceivable tick-box question-and-answer is included to send us home with a self-satisfied glow. Lots of white elephants there, then.
Only one motion up for discussion in Bournemouth actually pierces to the heart of the dangers from the European Union facing Britain, the British working class
and our industrial future: number 16, “Referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union”, moved by the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT). A handful of other motions try to address the future and the need for industrial, educational and health planning by indicating the need for a new national plan for Britain around energy, for the NHS and for education.
The separation of the trade unions from their roots in the workplace has resulted in too many of them pretending they are promoting so-called progressive politics which represent no one bar the cliques that have taken control of the fast-emptying house of trade unionism. The repeated call to organise in the “community” signals that we are not organising at work.
Organising at work means concentrating on the things that unite us and create collective issues: wages, safety, jobs, equality etc. But without the focal point of communality at work, you fall back on issues-based campaigning, which is here today but gone tomorrow. It’s epitomised by one London hospital that has six differing local campaigns to save it even though it is not really under threat!
Parallel organisations
The opening up of trade union membership to those not in work, without trade or workplace identity, effectively creates a parallel organisation to the traditional labour movement. Hence the creation, or re-creation, split and divide and then re-forming of phoney so-called people’s political assemblies, people's charters, people's parliaments, citizens' organisations, self-styled community campaigns etc.
All this is based on ego, sectarianism and ultra-left politics that see the working class as sheep to be corralled by their betters into organisations generating much noise and hot air but avoiding the real job – to organise in the place of work. They are desperate to have a general strike under any name but “General Strike” because they all recognise that the last one in 1926 was lost. The working class have learnt that lesson, but the infantile left haven’t.
Organising at the place of work means changing workers’ thinking – it is a ceaseless struggle. It means remembering that class consciousness, dangerously weak at present, is the most important unifying factor in our lives. Not race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation but class. A class consciousness has been lost over the past 30 years by the conscious connivance of many in the trade unions looking for easy solutions, the quick fixes to declining membership, the stupidity of importing so-called organising models from other countries and the deliberate importing of diversions into our ranks usually under the guise of so-called progressive thinking.
All the strands of working class power which made us strong – unity, workplace organisation, solidarity, collectivity – have been identified by the employers and targeted through their successive governments of the past 100 years. Fragmentation of the workplace and workforce, casualisation of employment, have taken us back to before the 1890s battles that defeated these measures.
We have seen the establishing of unprecedented legal straitjackets on the trade unions, permanent assault on any conceived workplace strength with a diversion that somehow phoney assurances of legal rights protect us. Outsourcing and privatisation, division and competition among our own ranks create weakness that the employer exploits.
Illusion
The illusion that technology will replace organising, or that so-called social media will replace face to face organising, is demonstrated by two examples. Most trade unions now recruit more members purely online than face-to-face in the workplace. They do not know who these recruits are or where they are or why they’ve joined the union. Individualism not collective reasoning equates to online recruitment. The concept of trade unionism as a collective resolution of problems is replaced with an individualist approach to the union. It is easier for some to depress a keyboard character to vote in an election rather than to attend a meeting and take face-to-face responsibility for a decision.
The failure to fight for wages (see Workers, May 2012) is another nonsense. Not having had a coherent pay strategy across public and private sectors has reduced trade unions’ room for manoeuvre and led to gesture actions against the so-called austerity strategy of this government and every other government in the European Union.
Unless you have a strategy to destroy the European Union, not reform it, not
recreate it on "socialist" principles but destroy it by withdrawal, then there is no strategy that will defeat the austerity programmes.
Likewise instead of creating a plethora of pay fights with employers, as has always been the tradition in Britain, we have been hooked on wretched US community campaigning tactics for “the living wage”, or the “London living wage” or “the living wage plus”.
This strategy is slowly undermining the achievements of national collective bargaining arrangements by assisting the employers to depress wages through setting not a new ceiling but an acceptable minimum like the national minimum wage. It also splits workers over some heart wrenching liberal appeal that distinguishes low-paid workers from fictional better-off or well-paid workers. Instead of unifying us it divides us.
If we want to achieve improvements in wages we have to bargain, negotiate and force the employer to cough up.
Another issue ignored at the TUC: if you want wages you have to fight for them. That involves struggle and involves loss. There is no point engaging in struggle that results in defeat but there is a growing fatalism that nothing can be done. Plenty can be done if we pick our time, place, issue and employer.
The other fatalism, which is growing, is that this government is here for good because the old false safety valve of the 2015 general election is already bust with Miliband and Labour. The truth is that capitalist government has always been with us and always will until we think and organise as a working class for total change.
So how many elephants are there sitting there in the room? ■
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Sept 2, 2013 6:55:17 GMT
Who needs the membership?
WORKERS, APRIL 2009 ISSUE
The ultra-left in Unite, Britain’s self-proclaimed biggest trade union, using anti-trade union legislation, appealed to the Certification Officer and forced a re-run of the General Secretary election. These were exactly the same tactics used by the present co-General Secretary, Derek Simpson, to unseat his predecessor Sir Mike Jackson.
The re-run election has returned Derek Simpson as co-General Secretary with Tony Woodley. Derek Simpson will retire shortly leaving Tony Woodley as the single General Secretary. But the tactics of the election reflect the divorce of self-styled “left” politics from the membership. Two ultra-left sectarians run against each other, one gathers 39,000 votes, the other 28,000. An additional “left” stalking horse runs and pulls another 30,000 votes. Simpson cruises through the debris to win on 60,000 votes.
Out of a claimed membership of 1.5 million members a return of 10 per cent! So 90 per cent of the membership voted for Mr Nobody. Who speaks for whom? Leadership by absence? If this is a sign of a healthy trade union then best to call the funeral directors.
.....................................................................................
Dunces Cap, perhaps, a golden opportunity to bemoan trade union bureaucrat betrayal/? More like a wake up call. For communists and our class.
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Sept 4, 2013 10:12:26 GMT
RMT takes motions on EU referendum and co-ordinated strike action to TUC Congress and plans direct challenge to Ed Miliband over betrayal of working people
Transport union RMT will be taking hard-hitting motions calling for a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU (Motion 16) and co-ordination of strike action and campaigning against austerity (Motion 54) to the Trades Union Congress which assembles in Bournemouth this weekend.
RMT has also pledged to take every opportunity to directly challenge Labour Leader Ed Miliband, who addresses the Congress on Tuesday, over his betrayal of working people on the anti-union laws, support for privatisation and the bosses’ pro-cuts/pro-austerity agenda.
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow will be addressing a number of fringe meetings throughout the Congress, notably the “NO2EU – Yes to workers’ rights” fringe at 12.30 on the Monday at the Hermitage Hotel and the Action for Rail meeting on the Monday at 5.30pm in the BIC.
RMT General Secretary Bob Crow said:
“This year’s Trades Union Congress marks the point when the talking has to stop and the action has to start. With our colleagues in the postal sector and the fire service looking at the prospect of action over the coming months, and unions across the industries and services the length and breadth of Britain engaged in fights over jobs, privatisation, working conditions and pensions, there has never been a better time to unite the struggles into co-ordinated, generalised action.
“The trade union movement also has to recognise that we cannot be by-standers while the issue of Britain in Europe is being discussed everywhere from the canteen to the boardroom. Our movement cannot duck the issue of support for a referendum any longer and whether you support the RMT’s position of withdrawal, or want to remain in, the time has come for that debate to take place and to end the nonsense of the European issue being hijacked by UKIP, big-business and the chattering classes in their own self-interest.
“On Tuesday, Ed Miliband will be in Bournemouth and RMT will take every opportunity to ask the Labour leader just why he is signed up to an agenda that betrays working people at every turn on key issues like workers’ rights, privatisation, benefits and the bank-led austerity assault. The treatment of millions of trade union members as nothing more than voting fodder is a sure fire way to let the ConDem coalition sneak back into power in 2015.”
ENDS
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Sept 4, 2013 13:05:13 GMT
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-23955577The GMB union is to cut the affiliation funds it gives Labour from £1.2m to £150,000 in the wake of a row over reforms, it has announced.
The union said there would also be cuts in spending on Labour campaigns.
The changes will take effect from the start of next year.
It comes ahead of Ed Miliband's move to reform union funding so individual union members have to opt in to support the party, rather than being automatically affiliated.
Currently unions are easily Labour's biggest donors. Of the £3.14m the party received in the three months from April to June, the GMB gave £486,000.
The GMB said its decision to reduce its funding for Labour reflected its estimate of the number of union members who would be willing to affiliate themselves to it individually following Mr Miliband's change.
At the moment the union automatically affiliates 420,000 of its members to Labour, at £3 each per year,
It estimates about 50,000 of the 650,000 GMB members would actually choose to affiliate with Labour. This figure is derived from the number who took part in the Labour leadership contest in 2010, it said.
............................................................................................
'bout time we started to endorse ourselves. Good news. The Organ Grinder and monkey show is over.
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Sept 6, 2013 6:29:49 GMT
In the middle of a vast ocean, voices are raised and heard
 +
RIZAL PARK, Manila – Malou Perubia, 61, is tired of ranting in front of the television every time there are news reports about the more recent pork barrel scam. Even if she is not a member of any progressive organization, she packed a few essentials – umbrella, face towel and food – and headed to Rizal Park, or Luneta, where tens of thousands joined the protest action on Aug. 26, calling for the abolition of the pork barrel system.
“I do not find this protest action enjoyable — not when you hear and see what many people are going through in the face of such blatant corruption practices,” Perubia said, adding “It makes me angry.” She happens to be a first timer in joining rallies.
- See more at: bulatlat.com/main/2013/08/28/tens-of-thousands-gather-vs-pork-barrel-as-aquino-govt-skirts-the-issue/#sthash.czfELmMx.dpuf
|
|
|
|
Post by dodger on Sept 7, 2013 7:23:10 GMT
Monitor, the Care Quality Commission, NHS Litigation Authority or the National Commissioning Board in all its iterations can’t inspect quality in the NHS at a distance...
Only health service workers can be the custodians of quality
WORKERS, SEP 2013 ISSUE
AFTER THE Francis Report into North Staffordshire General Hospital was published Workers pointed out that only one group of people can put right the quality of care in hospitals – we who work in the NHS. We must take responsibility for this, not abrogate it as we have done with our pay and pensions. Monitor, the Care Quality Commission, NHS Litigation Authority or the National Commissioning Board in all its iterations can’t inspect quality in the service at a distance. We are the custodians, and a good starting point would be to take ownership of the “8 Ambitions” that came out of the review into the quality of care provided by 14 hospital trusts in England led by the National Medical Director, Professor Bruce Keogh. It is an excellent report and we commend it to you.
www.nhs.uk/NHSEngland/bruce-keogh-review/Documents/outcomes/keogh-review-final-report.pdf
Only health workers can ensure good standards of care.
Above: Unison general secretary Dave Prentis talking to union members at Mid-Staffordshire General Hospital.
Photo: John Harris/reportdigital.co.uk
Pockets of good practice were found in all 14 of the trusts reviewed alongside major deficiencies to be addressed. Keogh has ensured the public are now not just informed participants in a particular process but active assessors and regulators of the NHS. This represents a turning point in our health system from which there must be no return.
He concluded that over 90 per cent of deaths in these hospitals happen when patients are admitted in an emergency. Workforce issues included high rates of sickness absence and a heavy reliance on agency staff to compensate for large numbers of vacant posts, particularly among doctors and nurses. Inadequate numbers of trained nursing staff were frequently cited in certain ward areas.
Pressures
The main challenge in A&E Units resulted from pressures generated by the large increases in the numbers of elderly patients with complex and multifactorial problems who have diminishing access to care in the community. One of the primary causes of high mortality rates in these 14 hospitals was related to the provision of urgent and emergency care for older people. Five of the organisations have had medical staff training removed from the organisation by the General Medical Council because they were unable to meet the required standards.
The 14 trusts were reviewed on the basis that for the past two consecutive years they were statistical outliers on either the Summary Hospital Level Mortality Index (SHMI) or the Hospital Standardised Mortality Ratio (HSMR). But as Robert Francis (the QC who chaired the public inquiry into the Stafford hospital deaths) said, the use of HSMR and SHMI measures to quantify actual numbers of avoidable deaths is “misleading and a potential misuse of figures to extrapolate from them a conclusion that any particular range of numbers of deaths were caused by inadequate care”. A study has now been commissioned to determine the relationship between excess mortality rates and actual avoidable deaths. Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health, should await the outcome of it.
It is time for a considered debate, not one fuelled by gratuitous assertions aimed at securing a Parliamentary majority in 2015. And not one led by the current Health Secretary, who for example in January this year authorised the sale of our 80 per cent stake in the blood products company Plasma Resources. This company, which supplies the NHS with treatments for haemophilia and immune deficiency, is now controlled by Bain Capital, a US private equity firm with no shareholders or public accountability.
Between 2000 and 2010 the NHS was rightly focused on rebuilding capacity and improving access after decades of Thatcherite neglect. The key issue then was not whether people were dying in our hospitals avoidably but dying while waiting for treatment.
Spending on the NHS more than doubled in revenue terms from £40 billion to over £100 billion a year. We witnessed the biggest capital modernisation and building programme ever seen in the history of the service – but PFI-driven, lining the pockets of private companies and leading to the huge unsustainable debts crippling the trusts today.
High performance
Waiting lists and waiting times fell dramatically across all disciplines, including A&E and Cancer treatment, with performance close to the OECD pinnacle. The service boasted the highest-paid doctors and nurses in Western Europe, and during the decade average mortality rates in NHS hospitals fell by about 30 per cent (including in the hospitals under review) – even more statistically significant taking into account the increasing complexity of treatment and diagnostic intervention.
Now we have a Secretary of State who attacks the service and the people in it, for whom he is accountable. Pay is frozen, pension contributions hiked out of all proportion, funding “flat-lined” in spite of a 3.5 per cent demographic pressure. Unachievable cost improvements are set to support public expenditure constraints in pursuit of mythical “austerity” targets all at the expense of patients, their carers and relatives. He will realise his (and Blair’s) vision of health care as a network of privately owned providers but paid for by us through taxes if we permit it. Allow this to continue, and the NHS will be lost. And with it the great social achievement of the British working class |
|
