The following is a report by our Portuguese sister organisation on the one-day general strike that paralyzed Portugal on November 24, as Portuguese workers fight austerity measures being imposed by the Socialist Party government.

This is the first general strike in Portugal for the last 22 years and that alone should shed some light over the social situation in this country. In fact, class struggle in Portugal is quite low and the number of strikes has actually been falling for the past thirty years, despite the continuously worsening situation of the Portuguese working class. Unionisation rates tend to fall as well, as the two large Portuguese party-run Trade Unions serve more to appease and stall conflicts than to fight exploitation, and that hasn't gone unnoticed.

Below is the text of a letter sent by our local to the Liverpool Echo following the recent tragic deaths at the Sonae industrial plant. An edited version of the letter was printed in the newspaper on December 14th 2010.

I would like to express my condolences to the family and friends of the two workers, Thomas Elmer and James Bibby, who died following an accident at the Sonae factory in Kirkby.
 
It is tragic that, in this day and age, workers still risk losing their lives while simply doing their jobs.
 
It's not the first time Sonae has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. In the past there have been fires, chemical leaks and environmental concerns expressed by local residents.
 
I hope that, sooner rather than later, Sonae stops posing a risk to the people working there and those living nearby once and for all.
 
Lucy Parsons
Liverpool Solidarity Federation

Two workers have been killed at the Sonae industrial plant in Kirkby after they were reportedly dragged by a conveyor belt into the workings of a silo.

It is believed that James Bibby (24) and Thomas Elmer (27) had been contracted in to carry out maintenance work at the plant which manufactures wood-based panels for use in the furniture and construction industries.

One Sonae worker told the Liverpool Echo: "For a long time, staff have been warning about concerns over safety at the plant."

In Warsaw a rent strike has been going on since Oct.1. Despite the fact that the issues may effect up to a quarter of a million people in Poland's capital city, we cannot say that a significant percent of public housing tenants have joined. This is mainly due to a lack of tradition and the extreme social atomization of the population - something typical in many post-Soviet bloc era countries. There is also the issue of a minuscule grassroots social movement and the disdain of the left for anything radical and outside the realms of reformist and party politics. [1]

We're publishing here a letter to parents and school staff that we received from a local teacher.

Protests by college and school students on November 24th and 30th were an exuberant festival of disorder. Young people threw down a challenge to adults facing threats to our livelihoods from the all-party cuts currently starting to kick in. Students as young as twelve got out on the streets, stepping out of their allotted roles and creating a vibrant, positive response to the vicious attacks that their generation are facing. At one Brighton school over 550 pupils walked out - a third of the total school population - as well as hundreds from other Brighton schools and Lewes Priory.

The Millbank riot and some of the subsequent student protests have been widely condemned in the media as the actions of a 'violent minority'. NUS president Aaron Porter infamously described the riot as ‘despicable’. Property destruction, we were told, undermined the message of the NUS’ peaceful protest. This was the behaviour of ‘anarchists’, outsiders hijacking what would otherwise be respectable political protest in a liberal democracy. But liberals would do well to reflect on their own glass house before casting such rhetorical stones.

Liberalism: doctrine of the violent minority

Liberalism in fact is nothing but the ideology of minority violence par excellence. Margaret Thatcher’s favourite thinker, Adam Smith, was refreshingly frank about this back in the 18th century:

If money makes the world go round, oil sure comes a very close second. With surging worldwide demand, upward price trends (despite recent falls) and dwindling reserves concentrated mainly in US-unfriendly states, this priceless fossil fuel has become a major magnet for conflict, instability and power politics. Most recently, this has been borne out by the imperialist forays by Russia into the Caucasus, and by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan. The slavish and unwavering pursuit of oil as the catalyst to economic growth also remains the principal cause of global warming, with energy related emissions set to double by 2050.

Chris Wood – Dulwich, 19th December 2008

Chris Wood is a rare thing indeed, an articulate English folk singer with moving songs and an approach that takes on many of the ills of the modern world from a radical perspective.

I was fortunate enough to have been given a double album of his two CDs, The Lark Descending and Trespasser. These are both fine records that examine what it means to be English in a much more sensitive way than the likes of Billy Bragg, mixing contemporary songs with traditional, with a slight emphasis on Wood’s home in Kent.

Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism (updated edition) (Peter Marshall)

Fontana Press 2008 – 784 pages – £14.99 – ISBN: 978-0006862451

Navigating the broad “river of anarchy”, from Taoism to situationism, from Ranters to punk rockers, from individualists to communists, from anarcho-syndicalists to anarcha-feminists, Demanding the Impossible is an authoritative and lively study of what is to many a widely misunderstood subject. It explores the key anarchist concepts of freedom and equality, authority and power, society and the state and investigates the successes and failures of anarchist movements throughout the world. It covers not only the classic anarchist thinkers, such as Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus and Emma Goldman, but also other libertarian figures, such as Nietzsche, Camus, Gandhi, Foucault and Chomsky. No other book on anarchism covers so much so incisively.