Earlier this month I attended the Swedish Anarcho-Syndicalist Youth Federation (SUF) Federal Conference in Malmö as an observer from North London Solidarity Federation. This is the 23rd conference and in the 20 year anniversary of the group.
20 years ago the SUF formed in inpiration from the Central Organisation of the Workers of Sweden (SAC), the Swedish syndicalist union which left the IWA in dispute during the 50's. SUF was previously the official youth membership group of the SAC and today the two still work closely together. In Malmö, a small city in the South of Sweden, they share an HQ which allows the SUF local access to various resources and archives as well as a meeting space and office.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, including one of the key organisers and speakers having been taken seriously ill, we have had to reduce the conference to just Saturday 5th January 2013. Apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.
IWA-AIT 90th anniversary conference Hosted by South London Solidarity Federation
Final programme
12:00 – 13:15 IWA - 90’s years of ideas & practice For 90 years the IWA has been at the forefront of the struggle against capital and the state, a SolFed member with decades of experience as an workplace militant and long time IWA affiliate introduces the theory and practice behind anarcho-syndicalism.
Members of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT union and CGT union have gone on indefinite strike and occupied their workplace at the IMESAPI lighting plant in Granollers, Catalunya, Spain, demanding an end to the redundancy package which would see four of the 21 workers let go.
The workers – now 23 days into their strike – are responsible for maintaining the street lights throughout the small Catalan town, and therefore are of critical importance to the town council. IMESAPI itself is a part of the huge ACS conglomerate owned by Florentino Pérez, the multibillionaire engineering tycoon known internationally as the owner of Real Madrid FC.
Crucially, all of the workers at the Granollers plant belong to either the CNT or CGT unions, who have vowed to back the strike as long as it continues, unlike the mainstream Comisiones Obreras union,who signed off on similar redundancy packages at IMESAPI plants in Barcelona (which saw a failed strike) and Tenerife.
Workers are taking action against privatisation plans in a wave of occupations of hospitals and clinics across Madrid, with massive support from patients and from the population of Madrid. Today a 48 hour strike in health care in Madrid saw 80% of workers on strike. This is just the first of four planned walkouts. Huge demonstrations in support of public health care carried banners like “Health care, we don’t sell it, we defend it.” and “100% free and public.” There have been other occupations outside Madrid, such as the hospital occupation in Zaragoza just before the general strike. A grassroots mobilisation called marea blanca, “white tide” has been building in health care for several months. The privatisation reforms would mean patients paying upfront to see a GP and to have essential treatment.
Tens of thousands took part in demonstrations in about 100 Italian towns as part of the 14 November European general strike. Strikes affected many sectors including, amongst others, schools, railways, public transport and healthcare while students demonstrated around the country, leading to fighting with police.
The biggest protests were in Rome, where an estimated 50,000 people joined the demonstrations and which saw bitter fighting between police and protesters. Milan saw three different demonstrations with total attendance at around 10,000. One was from the CGIL (the largest of the mainstream unions), who had also called a four-hour strike for the day. The students held the largest demonstration in Milan, estimated at around 5,000, which also saw clashes with police. Sticks, eggs and flares were thrown at police, banks and an elite private university.
As workers are on general strike in Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain today, we will have updates throughout the day. Here are ongoing strike reports from Spain.
[update 14:00] Barcelona: a large roving picket, composed of pensioners, is blocking roads!
Violent police charges reported now in Valencia.
Caixa banks, responsible for the eviction of Emaya Egana who threw herself to her death just before the eviction, are covered in red paint all over Spain today.
Reports of evictions stopped today by force of numbers blockading the doorways.
Castro Urdiales, a small town, reports CNT demonstration of 400 people.
No trucks went in at MercaCordoba due to mass pickets.
Ferrol: number of workers on strike exceeds all previous general strikes. City completely shut down, nothing open anywhere in the centre of town, demonstration is too big to fit in the central square.
As the Spanish government announced a two year halt on evictions in “the most urgent cases” today, following two suicides by people evicted from their homes, more than a hundred people have demonstrated this evening outside the headquarters of the PP. Rejecting a “whitewash” and calling for a stop on all evictions they occupied various banks, including the Banco de España. Inside the banks people shouted “how many more will you kill?” and “these are not suicides, they are murders”. The government made the announcement following mass anger when a woman in Barakaldo threw herself from her window just before eviction, and a man in Granada was found hanged in his flat when the police came to evict him. Evictions are running at 500 a day in Spain.
A woman committed suicide today in Spain when she was about to be evicted by La Caixa bank. The woman, in Barakaldo, near Bilbao, threw herself from the window just before the eviction. There were protests in many places including Barakaldo and Madrid, and banks across the country are tonight wearing slogans such as "murderers" and "guilty". This is the forth suicide linked to evictions in two weeks.
There are more than 500 evictions a day in Spain and there is a growing anti eviction movement, which mobilises people to blockade houses and physically prevent the evictions from taking place.
Reflections by ASI-IWA, our Serbian sister section, at the occasion of their tenth anniversary.
In previous ten years ASI has intensively supported the organizing of revolutionary libertarian workers' movement. Apart from direct participation in workers' and student strikes and protests, we are regularly publishing our weekly bulletin “Direktna akcija” (Direct Action) and sustain active publishing activities. This year, as it has for the past eight years, our publishing-research body — Center for Libertarian Studies (CLS) will be participating in The Belgrade Bookfare with the intention to make the theory and history of the workers' movement accessible to people, as well as to confront commercialization of culture, and support spreading and strengthening of progressive thought and radical social critique.
Earlier this month I attended the Swedish Anarcho-Syndicalist Youth Federation (SUF) Federal Conference in Malmö as an observer from North London Solidarity Federation. This is the 23rd conference and in the 20 year anniversary of the group.
