Cllr. Blundell's Hypocrisy Emerges on May Day

A bespectacled Rochdale Cllr. John Blundell  trudges just behind banner on far left of photo

The most ironic picture of the year must be that of Cllr. Blundell walking behind the banner that reads: 'Homelessness Kills!' given his track record of supporting Public Protection Orders against homeless people in Rochdale. You could not make it up!!!

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“There is only one way to solve this issue…crack down. Fine aggressive beggars and arrest them.”
Councillor John Blundell  in the MANCHESTER GAZETTE (Dec. 21st, 2017)

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May Day Feminists' Fall-Out

Report from Freedom Press:

London: TERFs crash Mayday march

 

News, May 1st

 

Today in London, a group of Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists (TERFs) attempted to join the Mayday march with a transphobic banner.

After being challenged by the London Anti-Fascist Assembly (LAFA) and other members of the parade together with two members from Edinburgh Antifa,  the TERFs then called the march stewards who also agreed that their group and their transphobic message was not welcome. LAFA and the march stewards then removed the TERFs from the demo. The TERFs then called the police. Police Liaison officers turned up and the TERF group spoke with them. Cops initially asked the folks to leave the march but the march stewards stepped in to explain that the TERFs were causing the problems. It comes as no surprise that the TERFs were not then asked by the cops to leave, but the stewards were then able to peacefully convince the TERFs that they should leave.
LAFA said in their statement:
” A group of TERFs turned up at the May Day march in London, yelled abuse at a bloc of feminists and sex workers and briefly unfurled this banner.
Comrades from LAFA, AFN groups including Edinburgh Antifa and friends on the demo including queer and trans comrades peacefully stood in front of the banner. The TERFs responded by taking our pictures and attacking us however we continued to hold our ground and resist peacefully. They yelled “male violence” at us despite our group including people of many genders and yelled “racist” at us despite our group including black people, Asians and latinx. mino 

The Terfs called the march stewards on us, telling us they’d remove us but instead the stewards took our side. The march was stewarded mainly by Turkish and Kurdish leftists who’ve seen us at many of their demonstrations and today they responded by showing solidarity with us. The terfs then called the police on us. The police tried to remove us but the march stewards explained to them it was the Terfs who were causing the problems. Together with the stewards including older trade unionists and Kurdish and Turkish comrades we were able to collectively and peacefully remove the Terfs from the demonstration.

TERFs claim to be feminists but they receive funding from right wing extremists, Christian fundamentalists and wealthy individuals linked to pro life organisations. Their aim is to divide and weaken the feminist movement and to divide and weaken the working class. TERFs act in the interests of the bosses and the patriarchy, they are not our comrades, they are enemies of our class and the anti fascist movement and we will continue to confront them wherever we find them.”

Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists are no strangers to calling the cops on transgender folk, and today showed that they will do so even when there are other marginalised groups and individuals present. There were “organisations representing Turkish, Kurdish, Chilean, Colombian, Peruvian, Brazilian, Portuguese, West Indian, Sri Lankan, Indian, Pakistani, Bangla Deshi, Kashmiri, Cypriot, Tamil, Iraqi, Iranian, Irish, South African, Nigerian migrant workers & communities plus many other trade union & community organisations.”

UPDATE 3/05/2019
After the Mayday incident, the TERFs proceeded to spread a claim that one of LAFA members racially abused a black woman by using the n-word against her.  A video in proof of this claim was produced.

Since this claim is doing rounds online, we would like to clarify some things.
The video’s audio is very unclear.

A person who holds a degree in linguistics and works full time in the field of morpho-syntaction had run it through the  PRAAT software,  through the spectogram and analysed the formants.  This returned the result that the person accused said “fucking bigot”, and not the n-word. A nasal “n” sound is most similar to vowels and does not show up on the spectogram like the bilabial “b” did. The woman at the video is also a Spanish speaker and does not pronounce the “t” at the end of the word.

Towards the end of the video the black woman says “called me a n*****, called me a n*****”. That’s not the Spanish speaking woman and there are clear accent differences.

The fact that the woman in question said “fucking bigot” and not the n-word was confirmed by several witnesses.

What’s more, the TERFs keep insisting that the alleged abuser is a white man. Let’s clarify this too. She is a cis woman. A woman of colour for that matter, and an active member of several groups. To call her a man for publicity purposes is shameful to say the least.

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Dave Chapple’s MAY DAY Speech

Wells May Day 2018:

International Worker’s Day greetings from a life-long Somerset trades unionist, a school-cleaner for 11 years, a postman for 38, a shop steward for 35 of those years, to the Wells Constituency Labour Party for organising this, the first May Day March in Somerset for 24 years.

Solidarity, also, to Wells, from Somerset’s working-class capital: Bridgwater.

Bridgwater, a town where, today, 14 out of 16 town councillors; 10 out of 15 district councillors, and 2 out of 3 county councillors are Labour.

Bridgwater, home of 17 pub-based workers Carnival Clubs, which organise, at weekly meetings of 10 to 30 members, on November’s first Saturday, the greatest West Country working class cultural event, one enjoyed by 100,000 people from all over. 

 

Bridgwater:  The home of Robert Blake, Cromwell’s General at Sea, staunch republican if not a regicide, who personally inflicted some of the first Royalist casualties of the Civil War.

Bridgwater, where, after the battle of Sedgemoor in 1685, no member of the Royal Family set foot in the town for over 300 years.

Bridgwater, the town, a century later, that remembered Judge Jeffries sending 800 Monmouth rebels to Barbados sugar plantations, so well, that radicals like John Chubb organised Britain’s first ever petition against the slave trade.

Bridgwater, which, even if the town’s large factories have been replaced by warehouses, still hosts militant trade union organised workplaces, like the Unite union at Refresco-Gerber and ARGOS, who have struck for two weeks and three weeks, respectively, in the last few years. 

 

Like Hinkley Point “C” construction workers, who won back lost bad weather wages recently after a successful and illegal sit-in. 

 

Like my former workplace, the Royal Mail Delivery Office, where, still, national and regional managers are regularly thrown into panic upon rumours of yet another wildcat strike being planned by the CWU Reps and Committee;

But what of the rest of Somerset?  What of the Mendip area?  What of Wells itself? Well, it seems clear now, 33 years after the epic NUM strike of 1984/5, that Tory Governments planned, starting with the miners, to shut down whole industries in order to weaken or eliminate strong trades unions. 

 

Over the next decades, Thatcher, Major and Blair were glad to wipe out 90% of UK manufacturing, to critically wound trades unionism as a whole. So Somerset, too has been almost completely de-industrialised: we now have hardly any large factories that make things. 

 

Think at all those losses: the dozen or so Somerset Clarks shoe factories; Moorland and Bailey sheepskins; printers and packagers like Butler and Tanner, Mardon, Purnells; Cider makers like Showering; Evercreech dairy; Nutricia; St Cuthberts paper mill at Wookey; and for Wells, skilled engineers like Clares and EMI. 

 

So it wasn’t just the cities, not just the NUM: Somerset has, also, descended, within two generations, from a place where working-class people through their union could negotiate reasonable wages, conditions and pensions, to a dog-eats-dog individual race to the bottom: bullying supervisors, zero-hours, no holidays, no sick pay, no pension no rights at all.

But why, then, I am proud to announce, in the last few weeks, has Wells hosted the launch of Mendip TUC, the newest local trades union council in the UK?

Because trades unionism still exists in the Mendips, there are reps and stewards and union branch officers in every town and many villages.

Because rural trades unionism can still thrive: in every village school, every small town Royal Mail Delivery Office, every time you see a BT Openreach worker shimmying up a telegraph pole, shop in most supermarkets, try and find a job in one of the few remaining job centres, you will come across trades unionists: in the CWU, in the NEU, NASUWT, UNISON, in PCS, Unite, GMB or USDAW.

If you are a Mendip area trades unionist, join us at our next Wells meeting in the Lawrence Centre, Union St, 6pm on Monday May 21st!

What of the radical and socialist tradition in Mendip, and Wells itself?

George Howell was a bricklayer, shoemaker, and Chartist.  He was also an auto-didact, a historian, and Secretary of the TUC Parliamentary Committee in the 1870’s and 1880’s. George was born and grew up in Wrington. 

 

Fred Swift was a Writhlington coal miner, an ILP/Independent Labour Party socialist and, with the Bridgwater railwayman James Young, one of the first two socialists elected to Somerset County Council before World War One.

Arthur James Cook: AJ Cook, born at Wookey in 1883, brought up in Cheddar where he worked on Caleb Durbin’s dairy farm, became at 17 a Rhondda miner, a fiery and revolutionary syndicalist orator jailed twice, for sedition and for opposing World War One, and finally, leader of the MFGB during the General Strike and Miner’s Lockout of 1926. 

 

The General Strike, where the local Wells strike committee, led by railwaymen, ordered 200 copies of the TUC’s daily The British Worker during those epic nine days. 

 

From syndicalism to Parliamentary socialism: Only two generations ago, Labour and Tory were almost neck and neck in Wells: In the 1945 General Election, the Tory majority over Labour was reduced to only 2,465.

In 1950 Labour polled 18,000 votes to the Tories 20,600 in a turnout of 87.8%.

In 1951, Dai Llewellyn, former Welsh miner and veteran International Brigader from the Spanish Civil War, the Somerset Miner’s Agent, won 21,500 Labour votes and again came a narrow second.

It wasn’t until 1974 that the Liberals overtook Labour in Wells. 

 

You can never tell me, looking back at that astonishing working-class Labour support, in Wells, a Cathedral City for goodness sake, the “Belly of the Tory Beast” that what happened once, a long time ago, could not happen again, but better still, Labour winning Wells!

Why not? People can sometimes change very quickly! 

 

After all, 50 years ago, a fortnight before the French Revolution of May 1968, were not learned Marxist historians predicting decades of working-class subservience? 

 

To start winning, we do need to organise, campaign, show solidarity, on a Somerset county-wide basis. 

 

From Dulverton to Bath, Portishead to Chard, Burnham on Sea to Frome, Keynsham to Yeovil, Radstock to Wellington, Cheddar to Wincanton.

Poor public transport does make this difficult. 

 

You can get a bus from Clevedon or Wells to Bristol up to 10.30pm at night, yet try and get to Bridgwater from Glastonbury, or Burnham on Sea from Bridgwater, after 7pm, and this is the same First Group bus company! 

 

Reason: the Tory Somerset County Council is the only West Country county that cannot be bothered to have a County Transport Forum: then again, how many Tory Councillors have ever caught a bus? 

 

Somerset needs county-wide independent campaigns, supported by the six Somerset Trade Union Councils and all local Labour Parties:

Against Library Closures; 

Against cuts and closures to NHS Community Hospitals;

Support teaching and other education unions fighting Academy attacks on their pay and conditions;

Against Tory County Council cuts to children centres, children and adult disability learning services;

Against outsourcing of NHS District Hospital non-medical staff: 

 

The list of dismantled Somerset public services is almost endless. 

 

I suggest that, from 2019, trades unionists and socialists in every Somerset town host an event, such as a public meeting, on May 1st, but for all Somerset towns to come together in Wells, the centre of our County, to celebrate International Worker’s Day on this first May Saturday. 

 

Today, we still honour the sacrifices of those anarchist workers in Chicago who in the late 1880’s suffered state execution for fighting for the 8-hour day, but in dying for our socialist cause, they lit a torch that still, if sometimes dimly, burns.

2018 should be the year that Somerset’s workers get of their knees, learn that if you fight you can win, if you never fight you always lose.

Don’t be a drop-out! Get up, get into it, get involved! Refuse to lose! 

Three rap titles from the greatest of all popular musicians, The Godfather of Soul, the Minister of Super Heavy Funk, James Brown.

But, 2018 in Somerset, not Atlanta, Georgia: Get involved in what? Refuse to lose what? Fight for what?

I hope you don’t mind me ending with a personal point of view.

Just remember, I was a Labour Parliamentary candidate a long 31 years ago!

I have been a Somerset socialist agitator for over 40 years, but I’m not tired:

I fight for a country that is run by a radical industrial workplace democracy, that has priority over councils and parliament; 

The fundamental units: Community Assemblies (They were called Soviets);

The old and still un-achieved Chartist demand for annual elections with recallable delegates;

An anti-militarist, non-nuclear federation of the nations, where the rotor blades of Westland/Leonardo PLC really are turned into Bristol Channel wind and underwater turbine blades;

Where swords really can become ploughshares;

Where, here in Somerset and throughout the world, the long-suffering working-class, the peasants and the poor are anything but meek, are so bloody-well organised that they really can inherit the earth.

See you in Wells on our very own First May Saturday in 2019?

07707 869144 davechapple@btinternet.com

'Social action or social media' asks Michael Netto

'Social media is no replacement for social action', says 

Michael Netto*, former regional President of Unite on Gibraltar

May 05, 2015

PEOPLE need to stop using social media in order to let off steam and direct their complaints to the unions who can do something to remedy them.

This is the opinion of Michael Netto, who has recently retired from his positions in Gibraltar Unite the Union, and whose efforts in the union movements have been second to none in the community, especially during May Day celebrations.

Netto started getting involved in the unions leafleting households to inform the public leading to his participation in the first real general strike for workers' rights and conditions in 1972.  'Whereas nowadays we have internet, when I was 16 I would go with brother and father handing out leaflets door-to-door about any issue which the union at the time wanted to highlight,' he said.

He stepped up his participation in the unions after finishing his studies at the technical college, where he remember the festivities at this time of the year:  
'The May Days of those years were done in the Regal Cinema where issues of the public and private sector were highlighted through films and documentaries that described the military coups in Chile or the strikes in England.
'However, the conditions of workers, both in Gibraltar and the rest of Europe were not what they were today. Even with the economic crisis now, they aren't as degrading with very little consideration for health and safety or employment rights back then.'

For workers

He recalled a May Day in the 1980s, which he spent picketing the South Depot of the MoD's Department of the Environment where a UK duty manager with a very colonial attitude tried to run over one of the union's shop stewards:  'Everybody was saying that unless that guy wasn't sent back to the UK we wouldn't start work and even though the MoD didn't shift him immediately, he was moved to the North Depot before finally being sent back after a couple of months.'
Netto, who headed the Trade and General Worker's Union (TGWU), constantly fought the GSD's decision to move May Day to the first Monday of the month, as along with its successors, Unite the Union, they felt that what was being celebrated were all the past victories for all our workers.
'We take for granted the 40-hour week, health and safety, maternity and paternity rights which among 1001 things have been achieved through union struggles all over the world," he continued. "Gibraltar has still got many rights that have been lost in many parts of Europe and there are still many things that need to be achieved so we are keen to maintain the May Day tradition.'
When the GSLP (Gib. Socialist Labour Party)/ Liberals came to office in 2011 they not only reinstated May Day but also chose to celebrate Worker's Memorial Day, reinforcing that desire to honour the unions' efforts, and those individuals that have lost their lives at work.
'In line with other European countries, political parties that pursue progressive ideas tend to do events on May 1,' said Netto.  'Unfortunately, there's only one party that has done that and that's the GSLP/Liberals, reflecting a very good relationship between them and Unite.'
He described the current Government having been 'more courageous' than the GSD ever was in pursuing worker issues both in the public and private sectors.

'Guerilla typists'

 Netto said he gets very disappointed with the way that ex-union activists criticise Unite's activities in the street or social media:  'I'm retired now but I intend to contribute in one way or another to the trade union movement rather than take on this bitterness that only aims to bring down the trade union movement.'
While he recognises that the trade unions locally and abroad are different to what they were in yesteryear, he believes that change has come because society itself has shifted.
'We no longer measure the success of the unions by the number of strikes we've had," said Netto. "Moreover, the way we do things has changed and people prefer to go to a lawyer than a union to the extent that sometimes our achievements work against us because people don't feel aggrieved anymore.
'Not only that but while previously workers would discuss their issues in the workplace or with the union, nowadays they become 'guerilla typists'. They explain their issue on social media to make themselves feel good rather than taking further action to find solutions.'

                                                                                      05-05-15 PANORAMAdailyGIBRALTAR
*   Michael Netto was a member of the anarcho-syndicalist Direct Action Movement (DAM), when he was working in England in the early 1980s, and his father, who became Regional Secretary of the then Gibraltar Branch of the British Transport & General Worker Union in the 1980s was a member of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (SWF) in the 1960s.
gibraltarpanorama.gi/mobile/displayarticle.aspx?smid=15209&aid=118306 

Working Class Movement Library Talks

Easter Rising talk

On  Wednesday 13 April at 2pm Robin Stocks visits the Library to talk about his book on Manchester and Salford volunteers in the Easter Rising.

We mark the centenary of the Rising with an account of how, in the middle of WW1, members of the Irish community in Manchester and other British cities resolved to travel to Dublin to prepare for a rebellion to achieve independence for Ireland.  Admission free; light refreshments after.


Last chance to see our WW1 exhibition - and news of our next one!Our exhibition To End All Wars, marking the centenary of the introduction of conscription in early 1916, ends on Thursday 14 April at 5pm.  It is open during our drop-in times of Wednesday to Friday 1-5pm.

Our next exhibition To Make That Future Now! - 150 years of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council opens on Friday 29 April and runs until 26 August. It's open Wednesdays to Fridays 1-5pm and the first Saturday in May, June and July 10am-4pm.  More information here.


Poetry, fiction and painting at the LibraryOn Wednesday 27 April at 2pm artist Richard Milward presents Luddites’ Nightmares.

Taking inspiration from the machine-breaking Luddites of the early 19^th century, Richard is producing a series of paintings which, in his words, ‘expose, exaggerate and ridicule the ways in which modern technology encroaches on – and distorts – everyday life’.  A loan to WCML of one of these paintings is marked by this event, when we are delighted to welcome three authors to read from their own work on themes surrounding our relationship with technology.

Joe Stretch, novelist from Stockport who recently won the W Somerset Maugham Award for his book The Adult, will be reading, alongside London poet Salena Godden and Richard Milward himself.

Admission free, light refreshments after.

Richard's painting ‘TV Interference’ can be viewed at the Library between 20 and 27 April, Tuesdays-Fridays 10am-5pm.  The painting is based around the idea that today ‘technology is in the saddle and rides humankind’ (Kirkpatrick Sale, Rebels Against The Future), as well as the potentially disruptive influence of mass media on the general public.

The Luddites' Nightmares paintings are being exhibited individually at a series of events this Spring/Summer (with readings from other contemporary authors on the technology theme) in what was the ‘Luddite Triangle’ where the original revolts took place 200 years ago: Lancashire/Cheshire to Yorkshire to Nottinghamshire/Leicestershire.


'TV Interference' (finished version)


Frow Lecture A reminder that Richard Cleminson will give the Library's 7^th annual Frow Lecture in the Old Fire Station, University of Salford on Saturday 7 May at 2pm. His topic is “A new world in our hearts”: anarchism and the Spanish Civil War. Admission free; light refreshments after.  All welcome.
Salford's Sarsaparilla SoundsThree institutions, Salford Museum & Art Gallery, Islington Mill and ourselves, join forces to fly the flag for Salford on the evening of Thursday 12 May as part of Manchester After Hours 2016. Using WCML and Salford Museum as locations, Islington Mill will curate a live programme of music and spoken word that’s in tune with these unusual locations.

The night starts from 5pm onwards at WCML with the focus on spoken word performance. We will hear from:
Louise Woodcock / Sue Fox / Bob Clowrey / Lauren Bolger / Alex Cook / Rachel Margettes / Rebecca Hurst - and more TBA.

In keeping with the ethics of the library founders there will be no alcohol served for the spoken word performances -  instead Steep Soda will be running a temperance bar, serving delicious and unusual soft drinks.

After 7pm the audience will be led across the road to Salford Museum & Art Gallery where they will spend the rest of the evening. Islington Mill will produce a live music programme, and there will be a bar serving alcohol and other refreshments.

More information here.

For more information about events across the cities on Thursday 12 May visit manchesterafterhours.com.

Benny Rothman book launchOn Friday 8 April at 1.30pm the Library hosts the launch of a new book about activist Benny Rothman.  Unite the union's biography Benny Rothman: a fighter for the right to roam, workers' rights and socialism, written by Mark Metcalf, covers not only the part played by Benny in the Kinder Scout mass trespass but also his battles against Mosley's fascist Blackshirts and his wide-ranging campaigns as a trade unionist and environmentalist.

Benny's son Harry will be in attendance at the event, and everyone who comes along will get a free copy of the 64-page book.   All welcome.


A poem, a cup of tea and a biscuit... The first of a series of events devised by University of Salford Chancellor Jackie Kay takes place on Thursday 21 April at 4pm at the Clifford Whitworth Library at the University.  Flight, Feathers and Quilt is an opportunity to view the Curated by Jackie Kay exhibition and to hear Jackie talk about her selection from the University Art Collection. Poet Patience Agbabi will read from Refugee Tales and Anna Pincus from the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group will also speak - the exhibition includes a unique quilt made by refugees from the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group..

All are welcome to this free event. Booking is essential.  Please reserve a ticket here.
 
Manchester May Day Festival 2016A series of events including talks, plays and music takes place on Saturday 30 April to mark May Day in Manchester.  Full details here. The Library is compiling exhibition boards at the Manchester Mechanics Institute about our collections, and specifically about the 150th anniversary of the Manchester and Salford Trades Council which falls this year. (Our exhibition about the Trades Council opens shortly - see above).

In the evening (8.30pm) Banner Theatre presents Chicago: the great teachers’ strike. Chicago tells the story of the 2012 teachers' union strike and explores the successful organising agenda that empowered the union members and mobilised parents, students and the wider community.  Tickets price £10 available here.

Marie Stopes symposiumThroughout her life Marie Stopes courted controversy and it is sometimes difficult to disentangle fact from the fiction that she created about herself. An international symposium on 23 June at the University of Manchester draws together leading experts from a variety of different disciplines to investigate 'the real Marie Stopes'.
The Symposium is open to both academics and members of the general public. It is free but must be booked in advance as places are limited. To book a place please email: info@symposiummanchester.com
More information at www.symposiummanchester.com.

Message from Salford Community Theatre

Salford Community Theatre are now recruiting for a team of volunteers to help with the running of their play
Love On The Dole which will be performed from 5–10 July, with two performances on the 10th.
They say: 'You don’t have to be available for all of these dates, if there is an aspect of theatre production, be that in costume and props or front of house and marketing, that you would like to try your hand at we will come up with a schedule to match your availability.
If any of this is sparking your appetite for community and theatre, or even just your curiosity we have a couple of events coming up where the production team and the cast will be more than happy to tell you more.
You can register your interest with an email to Rose.Fowler@salfordcommunitytheatre.org or give us a call on 07519344668'.

Marx & Copyright Claim

HUNDREDS of works of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels has been taken down by the Marxist Internet Archive, a website dedicated to radical writers and thinkers, or the site was told it would face legal consequences.  The threat comes from the small left-wing publisher, Lawrence & Wishart, which has claimed copyright ownership over the 50-volume, English-language edition of Marx and Engel's writing.  The original German version is not covered by this ruling.

Some are suggesting that this is somewhat 'uncomradely', to use the law of intellectual property to deprive the left and other radicals of the writings of Marx and Engels on the Internet.  Ironically the deadline for complying with the order was on the eve of May Day (1/05/14) or International Workers' Day. 

The achive removed the disputed writings on time with a note blaming the publisher and a bold headline:  'FILE NO LONGER AVAILABLE'!

The International New York Times notes:
'The fight over online control of Marx's works comes at a historical moment when his ideas have found a new relevance, whether because the financial crisis of 2008 shook people's confidence in global capitalism or, with the passage of time, the Marx name has become less shackled to the legacy of the Soviet Union.'

It seems that Lawrence & Wishart, which has two full-time employees and two part-time employees and only just makes ends meet, publish journals like 'Anarchy Studies', and only about a dozen leftish books a year.   Curiously, some years ago the now defunct paper Freedom, the then anarchist monthly, was subject to a similar claim of copyright for the use of a photo in a book and paid-up to the demand of the left-wing photographer David Hoffman.  In the Lawrence & Wishhart case Peter Linebaugh, a professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio who has researched the history of communism, said:
'This is the triumph of capitalism, having the small fish biting at each other.'

Greater Manchester March and Rally for International Workers Day

SATURDAY 4th May

Assemble: Bexley Square, Salford 10am

March from Bexley Square at ~11am

Rally: Friends Meeting House, Manchester 12:30pm

with Dot Gibson, National Pensioners Convention, Pete Middleman, PCS NW Regional Secretary, and Ryan Bradshaw, Anti-Bedroom Tax Campaigner and Member of Young Legal Aid Lawyers.

Save our NHS – No to Cuts and Privatisation

Defend All Jobs and Public Services

Axe the Bedroom Tax! Scrap Welfare Reforms!

Make the Rich Pay! Don’t Cut the Poor!

International Solidarity against Austerity

Richard Lighten

Secretary, Manchester Trades Union Council

secmtuc@gmail.com

07841411013 

manchestertuc.org

Why So Miserable?

A major Manchester militant and Secretary of Manchester Trade Union Council , Geoff Brown, asked me this week 'why are you so miserable about it?' He was referring to my downbeat account of this year's May Day march in Manchester on May 1st (see 'May Day Mess' below).

I am miserable because the British Left is so profoundly conservative in every way. I am miserable because the Left here is not even aware of its own abject conservatism. I am miserable because each succeeding generation of the British Left is content to react to events and defend the status quo.

Examine, if you will, the faces on the video of the '40 or so' participants at the rally following the small May Day demo. Make your own judgement. Compare this with the Worker's Memorial Day event, organised by Hilda Palmer a few days early, with its healthy interaction between the participants. Or with the freshness of the spirit of the 3-week squat - the O.K. Cafe - down at Castlefield, which finished on May Day. The May Day demo was not a patch on either of them. I also had the benefit of seeing a Southern event the Anarchist Bookfair at Stokes Croft in Bristol or the People's Republic of Stokes Croft, on the Saturday following - the 7th May: say what you like but these Southern anarchists, both in London, and in Bristol know how to organise a bookfair.

What is wrong with the British Left is its underlying conservatism and silly slogans? To my mind the problem is rooted in its reactionary approach to politics and in this I include most of the anarchists and syndicalists. As I listened to the inane hectoring slogans on the May Day March, calling for an end to the Coalition Government, I felt overcome with weariness because I'd heard it all before. Without Blair, or Brown, or Cameron or Clegg to dispose of, the British Left would have next to nowt to say because the identity of the Left in this country only has meaning in reference to whoever is in power at this moment in time. There is no clear alternative program for change coming from the Left.

In his book 'The School for Dictators' Ignazio Silone said through his character Thomas the Cynic: 'A regime of freedom should receive its lifeblood from the self-government of local institutions.' He goes on to say: 'When democracy, driven by some of its baser tendencies, suppresses such autonomies, it is only devouring itself.' 'Unfortunately', as Silone points out, 'the democratic and socialist parties have always been, at least in Europe, the most active in promoting centralization to the detriment of local and regional autonomy, following the tradition of the Jacobins, who felt that the hegemony of the (State) capital over the rest of the country provided them with a weapon against the priests and the nobles.'

The whole purpose and being of the British Left is defined by the Government and the establishment, in its reaction to the agenda which the governing regime sets. If the Left has any tin-pot plan it has been historically that of the 'All-Providing State', which at one time through its cry for subsidies and protective laws gained supporters for the socialist parties while at the same time stifling local autonomy. Thus in some countries, like in pre-Nazi Germany, this led to a startling contradiction of what Silone calls 'the maximum and numerical strength of the democratic and socialist parties immediately preced(ing) the collapse of democracy.'

It seems to me, given the recent goings on between the SWP and the Socialist Party in the National Shop Stewards Network which has now been reduced to just another anti-cuts campaign, that most elements of the British Left have yet to understand this apparent contradiction in their programs in so far as they have such a thing as a program.

MANCHESTER'S MAY DAY MESS

LAST SUNDAY - May Day - was a mess in Manchester and they can't blame the weather. The coalition Government may be an Eton Mess, but up here it was a May Day Mess. Less than two hundred miscellaneous politicos paraded round central Manchester on May Day in a celebration called by Manchester Trade Union Council. It was the kind of inconsequential and uneventful demo typical of the left up here but even more poorly attended than usual. The SWP was in evidence but it was more of a political than a trade union occasion and it did not match last Thursday's Workers Memorial Day rally by Greater Manchester Hazards Campaign which was a distinctly trade union do.

Geoff Brown, Secretary of Manchester TUC and an affiliate of the SWP, was up and down like a blue-arsed fly trying to get the rally off the ground but it was a total flop. I feel for him; he did his best but it showed the feebleness of the left round here. It might have something to do with the inability of the British left in general to get outside the incestuous political bubble. Yet these people are shortsighted and don't seem to help themselves. I asked him if he and the SWP were giving Dave Chapple, former Chair of the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN), and those other non-Socialist Party dissidents, who broke away from the NSSN in January 'the run-around' or 'fobbing them off' and he assured NV that he and the SWP wasn't. Yet, despite everything that has happened and accused of 'dithering' by some, the SWP hang on in the NSSN with their principle enemy and competitor the Socialist Party and Linda Taaffe.

Stefan from the Greater Manchester County Association of Trade Union Councils was there pushing for yet another conference against the cuts. More and more conferences, more and more demos, more and more calls for a general strike: rhetoric, rhetoric let their be rhetoric. Fake enthusiasm, slogans, and blather. And on the edges of the rally, friction with the younger end who insisted on making music during the solemn speeches of the tired politicos. Steve North, newly elected to the job of Secretary of Salford City Unison, was there urging people on to fight the cuts and to go to an anti-cuts demo in Salford on Monday the 2nd, May: did many go? I fear not -  reports suggest 40 protested. Yet, Mr North managed to strut, snubbing the salesman of Northern Voices indignantly as if he had now moved on to higher things and the awesome ordeals of office in place of Ray Walker who he beat.

Then there was the food for those that could endure it: rice with spinach and lamb or a chicken leg perhaps - a truly May Day Mess. No threat to the Coalition and not up to the standards of the Eton Mess which is a desert of English origin including a mix of strawberries, meringue and cream traditionally served at Eton College's annual cricket game against the students of Winchester College.