Direct Action posts

Anarcho-syndicalism has always been a theory of change derived from the practice of the working class. It started as a movement, expressing itself through action, and any theorists that emerged were militant workers who wrote for workers, not for social philosophers. They dealt with issues of the moment, not with metaphysical niceties that so impress intellectuals and academics. As such, their writings are not to be found in academic books but in pamphlets, newspapers and leaflets. Nevertheless anarcho-syndicalists have always had an overall, coherent view of ends and means.

Politics is the art of
governing mankind by deceiving them.

Benjamin Disraeli

One of the defining tenets setting libertarian socialism apart from authoritarian political traditions of both left and right, is an unshirking commitment to the principles of direct democracy. This is the means advocated by anarchists for exercising and enabling genuinely participative decision making in all domains of human life. Rejecting hierarchical organisation, we argue that both parliamentary “democracy” and totalitarianism have the same intensions – to maintain the distinction between leaders and led, rulers and ruled. Both, in the final analysis, are designed to ensure our passive acceptance of a system that oppresses us.

In March 1984, twenty five years ago, the National Coal Board announced it intended to close 20 pits with the loss of 20,000 jobs. Cortonwood in South Yorkshire was earmarked as the first to close, “imminently”, in the words of the NCB chairman, Ian MacGregor. The miners at Cortonwood immediately came out on strike and by March 12th the National Union of Mineworkers had made the strike national. This was to become the bitterest industrial dispute in most of our lifetimes and marked a major defeat for the working class.

Nicked the title from an old Financial Times article about the economy in the early 90s and whether we were in for a repeat of the crisis of 1976. Memories of 1976 include the hot summer, Man City’s last silverware, and early punk rock songs about anti-christs, anarchists and being “pretty vacant”. However, for the wealthy and powerful – and those of us who want to destroy wealth and power – 1976 was a catalyst for change and these changes are still going on over three decades later, in a crises that’s at least as severs as we had back then.

Primark’s use of a Manchester sweatshop paying way below the minimum wage is followed by TUC findings that over 1.5 million workers are being cheated out of the minimum wage – hairdressing, hotel and bar staff are among the most likely to be affected.

Dear DA,

As if the credit crunch wasn’t bad enough, many of us employed in local authorities are now also reeling from the effects of “Single Status” implementation.

The 1997 Single Status agreement between employers and public service unions called for a pay and grading review of all local government posts. Many were conned into believing it would give a fairer pay structure within and across local councils. Indeed, at the time, the union bosses told us that “many will gain and nobody will lose”.

Dear DA,

If Sapphire had been created to protect the rapist, John Worboys, they couldn’t have done a better job.

For 30 years WAR has been doing all it can publicly and privately for the police to take rape seriously, and for 30 years all we have seen is a series of public relations exercises while rape continues to be deprioritised and one case after another is sabotaged by the police.

Dear comrades,

On April 2nd, the multinational G20 circus descended on London. The G20 is composed of Finance Ministers from the world’s foremost advanced and emerging economies, and representatives from the IMF, European Union and World Bank. The stated purpose of the summit was “to seek solutions to the global financial crisis”. Abolishing capitalism, however, didn’t feature highly on the agenda. Instead discussion centred on measures aimed at restoring confidence in the battered financial markets and further attempts at “restabilising” the fragile world economy.

In the last 20 years or so, global capitalism has predicated growing social inequality, war and pillaging of the environment. The impact of this has been especially acute outside of the richest 20 nations. Just 4.3% of the recent Wall Street bail out could have ended world hunger (source: Dissent G20), but making poverty history is never the priority of the ruling elite.

Though asbestos in now banned in Britain, many buildings we live and work in today predate the ban. For example, about 90% of schools still contain asbestos. As a result, thousands of people are dying, and will continue to die, from asbestos related diseases which very often are not manifest until many years, even decades, after exposure.

Asbestos is a fibrous substance found in seams between layers of rock. The fibres are strong, flexible, and will not burn below 1000 ºC. There are different types but these days 95% of all asbestos mined is white asbestos, or Chrysotile.

When processed it is broken down into tiny fibres, which are so strong and pliable they can be spun and woven. There is practically no limit to how small these fibres can get. When asbestos is used, even if only handled, it gives off dust, some of it invisible. These invisible fibres can enter the lungs and are responsible for asbestos related diseases.

From Reykjavik to Rio, from Woolies to Whittards, the fall out from the economic downturn reverberates like a Mexican wave around virtually every inhabited corner of the globe. But this crisis, just as surely as it began, will eventually peter out – but not before wreaking misery and destitution upon millions. Alongside this latest recession is the environmental crisis, with far more irretrievable consequences, and a severity we are now only just waking up to.

Over 100 years ago Karl Marx foretold, how the inbuilt tendency of industrial capitalism to expand would give rise to not only continual cycles of boom and slump, but also the phenomenon we now call “globalisation”. More contemporary analysts, such as Murray Bookchin and the social ecology movement of the late 1960s and 70s, later warned of the profound ecological crisis that we now face.

After the super rich, it’s the professional middle classes who’ve done best from the Brown/ Blair years. This army of public sector managers, consultants, advisors, holders of quango posts and various other hangers on have bred like rats under New Labour. They even have a kind of ideology to unite them – an abhorrence of all -isms. These very very nice people have a hatred of anything sexist, racist or homophobic. Their ideology has even been codified in the form of political correctness through which they impose their (in)tolerance on the rest of us.