This past Monday saw well over a-hundred radical workers and student activists gather in the Marchmont Community Centre to hold a 'public assembly' on the upcoming June 30th strikes.
On Sunday 1st May members of both North and South London Solfed celebrated Mayday by joining the anarchist contingent at Clerkenwell Green. Turn out was average, and we did not see the expected sea of red and black flags, yet a healthy crowd still gathered to listen to some rabble rousing speakers on an open mic.
After waiting at Clerkenwell for a few hours and distroing plenty of Catalysts we grouped together and joined the march down to Trafalgar Square, the anarchist bloc marching next to the Latin American Workers Association. We stayed in Trafalgar square a while, relaxing in the sun with a banner and chatting to UK UnCut activists occupying the square but after an hour or so we all swiftly retired to the pub.
On Saturday 14th May, Liverpool Solidarity Federation - along with members of Anarchist Federation and UK Uncut - held a picket outside a government office in Bootle. This was in support of PCS union members who were facing victimisation for upholding an overtime ban in defence of their jobs.
PCS reps have been on picket lines most Saturdays since before Christmas, reminding people of the ongoing national action. Overtime is being used as a way of masking job cuts, as well as speeding up the current workload so as to meet the "cliff face" at which job cuts can be made faster. 96% of staff in the building, not just union members, support the ban - but a tiny and vocal minority remain determined to stab their colleagues in the back for a quick buck.
Today, members of the Liverpool Solidarity Federation travelled to Moreton, to show solidarity with workers at the Burton's biscuits factory fighting to save their jobs.
A march and rally, organised by the Unite union, saw several hundred people assemble at Moreton Shore car park. The march took in much of the surrounding area, with lots of support and banter from local people, an march past the factory before returning to the starting point for a rally. SolFed members carried our banner on the march in a visible show of solidarity, before handing out copies of our freesheet, Catalyst.
The company had previously reached an agreement with Unite to guarantee work until 2012 and to make Moreton its flagship site. It has since reneged on that deal and is looking to close the plant. The union remains in negotiations, and has said it will be looking at a legal challenge to the closure.
Neoliberal ideology is a crock of shit and everyone left of Labour knows it. Critics have pointed out its flawed assumptions regarding perfect competition, consumer access to information, human nature and a host of other factors that nowhere apply in the real world. They’ve also pointed out that where neoliberal policies have been applied, the results have often been disastrous and rarely matched the promised outcomes of prosperity for the rich and trickle down for the poor. One famous example was the so-called J-curve model for transitioning the former USSR to Western-style capitalism. The ‘J’, a small downswing in transition followed by a long upswing when neoliberal policies worked their magic, turned into something more resembling an ‘L’, plunging millions into worse poverty than before.
Throughout the world it is the workers who are paying the price for the capitalist crisis. In Britain it took a trillion pounds sterling to save the banks from collapse and the government now aims to pay for the bank bailout by making brutal spending cuts. The attacks by the Thatcher government decimated many working class communities but the planned spending cuts go much further than Thatcher ever dreamed. Over the next 4 years the government intends to cut public spending by 25%.
Even the government admits that this will lead to the loss of half a million public sectors jobs. And as the British economy is so dependent on the public sector, again, according to the government’s own figures, there will be at least another half million jobs lost in the private sector. These job losses will be felt hardest in the old industrial heartlands of Britain, places like Scotland, the North of England and Wales, that were decimated by the Thatcher government.
"A number of Solidarity Federation locals have been mobilising to support our comrades in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in their struggle to defend their members in the US who are facing victimisation and sackings due to their union organising activities.
The list of workers sacked so far for their union activities is:-
Members of Liverpool Solidarity Federation have held an informational picket outside Zara, in Liverpool One, and handed out leaflets to customers, staff, and passers-by.
Despite some attention from security guards, who informed us we couldn’t operate on private property, we were able to hand out all our leaflets and our action was generally well received. One woman even came over as we were packing away to inquire what we were up to, and offered her support when we explained what we had been doing and why.
This was part of international solidarity actions supported by the International Workers Association (IWA) for workers in Peru, in response to the sacking of 35 trade unionists. The union members were working in a factory for ‘Topy Top’, one of the major suppliers to high street store Zara, and also a supplier for Gap.
Today, over 4,000 people braved wind and rain to march and protest against the Lib Dems and the cuts agenda. It was a demonstration of the level of anger people feel – but also the willingness of their “leaders” to merely act as a safety valve, defusing that anger before it reaches the ruling class.
People assembled by the Anglican cathedral to march down to the docks where the protest was held. There were a number of trade union banners, as well as the banners of the Solidarity Federation and Anarchist Federation, whose membership made up theRadical Workers’ Bloc. Despite the rain, the huge turnout and musical accompaniments made it a lively atmosphere.
But whilst the spirit of the rank-and-file made the march vibrant, this was in spite the planning done by trade union leaders, not because of it.
Two members of Liverpool SolFed recently visited Barcelona to show solidarity during the Spanish general strike of September 29th. They report:
During our stay in Barcelona we visited the Banesto building on Plaça de Catalunya which had been occupied for several days by anti-capitalists. They used the derelict space to celebrate resistance, as well as freely exchange information and radical ideas. However the building was later brutally repossessed by riot police.
On the day of the general strike, we joined a lively demonstration of several thousand organized by our sister organisation, the CNT, who put forward a much more militant message of resistance compared to that of the reformist trade unions.
While a one-day general strike is unlikely to the halt the Zapatero government's attacks on working people, it will hopefully prove to have been an important staging post for the long struggle ahead.
