We should remember – faced with natural horror at the event as well as the media frenzy, that Britain is using its soldiers to kill Afghans every day. Afghan women and children are not only witnesses but victims of these atrocities. Such actions are on a vastly greater scale than all the “terrorist attacks” in Britain put together.

The drone attacks by “our” US allies blow up and dismember whole families and lay waste to entire villages. In this sense yesterday’s attack was the “war coming home”. This is true no matter how much we may disagree with the actions of those who carried out the Woolwich attack or the London tube bombings.

If Britain had not supported the US in its war in Afghanistan and Iraq such events would not occur – the solution is to get the troops out now.

We should understand – without approving – what motivates a tiny minority of young British Muslims to become jihadis and “terrorists.” This is not just their brainwashing by radical Islamist clerics, or websites. It is a response to wars and interventions by Britain, the US and France in Central Asia, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa

The actions of imperialist forces naturally outrage far larger numbers of British people with origins in and family links to these areas of the world. So too does the media’s constant use of the word “Islamic” in front of terrorist – inflammatory when the huge majority of Muslims condemn such actions.

No doubt too the virtual disappearance of an antiwar movement on the streets of Britain leads some to despair and drives them to individual acts aimed at terrorising the population into not supporting the war.

Our criticism is that, quite simply this sort of action will not work. It is counterproductive. It will not make the population more opposed to the wars of our rulers. Quite the opposite – at least in the short run.

Such actions are far more likely to strengthen support for “our boys” and expose the Muslim people of Britain to acts of “revenge” or greater isolation and public hostility. Hence the reported attacks on mosques in London and Essex and the instant street mobilisations of the EDL. These may increase substantially in the days ahead as the fascists seize what they see as a great opportunity.

It is the number one duty of the left to defend Muslim communities against Islamophobia and more general anti-Nigerian, anti-Asian and anti-immigrant attacks. If the EDL attempts to carry out provocative marches and pogroms the labour and antiracist movement needs to mobilise the maximum forces to repel them.

In the next few days and weeks it will make life harder for consistent anti-imperialist and anti-war activists in the workplaces and in working class communities. We simply have to hold our ground as we did throughout the Irish war. The best elements amongst our workmates will respect us the more for it. Our key slogan remains:

All British and Nato troops out of Afghanistan and the Middle East NOW

Since April, workers campaigning for better wages and the right to unionise have shut down hundreds of restaurants in one-day strikes across five cities.

The low paid workers, many earning state minimums as low as $7.25 (£4.26) an hour are demanding a wage increase to $15 an hour and the right to set up unions without reprisal.

So far, hundreds of McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s franchises have been hit by walkouts in New York, Detroit, St Louis, Chicago and Milwaukee.

The strikes follow on the heels of a strike by hundreds of fast food workers in New York last November during a unionisation drive by the Fast Food Workers Committee.  In the same month retail giant Walmart was hit by hundreds of strikes at stores in 46 states.

Exploitation

In an industry traditionally dominated by high turnover and part time and temporary jobs, the difficulty in building viable trade union organisation has left bosses free to cream off huge profits by paying poverty wages.

US Fast food workers earned a national average $9.05 in March – after a below-inflation increase of just 2.7% in three years. The only group that earns a lower hourly rate in the US is farm workers.

Contrast that with the wages of McDonald’s CEO who rakes in almost 1,333 times what his average restaurant employee makes.

Can’t Survive on $7.25 is the name of one of the campaigns, referencing the New York state minimum wage – a wage that tells the employee ‘if we could pay you less, we would’. This wouldn’t be a living wage anywhere in the USA.

While low wages form the basis of the industry’s record profits, bosses are always looking for new ways to get more for less from their workers.

84 per cent of New York fast food workers are victims of wage theft, according to activist group Fast Food Forward.

This includes a whole range of infringements, which were formerly common practice, are at last beginning to be challenged. From working overtime without getting time and a half, to being denied pay during breaks, to not being paid for the time spent counting up the till before and after shift, a whole array of infringements adds up to the average low wage worker losing 15 per cent of their annual wage.

The latest scheme involves rearranging shift patterns to fall below the 30 hours threshold which would require employers to pay health insurance for their employees, due to come into effect in January 2014.

This is money which is sunk straight into fat cat pay or the billions doled out in dividends to parasite ‘shareholders’.

 Why now?

The strike wave is causing ripples in a labour movement which has seen only rare outbreaks of industrial action during the economic crisis – notably the mobilisations by teachers in Wisconsin and elsewhere against privatisation and attacks on collective bargaining.

This should not be a cause for surprise since Marxists like Leon Trotsky have always pointed out that trade union struggle, especially when it ignores broader political and social issues – will tend to be at a low ebb during the trough of a recession. And the trough of this Great Recession has lasted for years.

While the recession has barely dented the profit margins of the fast food industry, it has shaken up its workforce. If the ranks of industrial and service workers on full-time, permanent contracts have been decimated the numbers of part time or temporary workers – has grown massively.

The ranks of the 3.8 million fast food workers have swelled by 11.5 per cent since February 2010. At twice the rate of all private employees, this shows that such insecure jobs are often the only option for workers in a country with a pitiful welfare safety net.

But where previously these jobs would be dominated by young people and women passing through or supplementing a partner’s income, the recession has created the rise of a section of fast food workers who are supporting families or trapped with unaffordable rents – the so called precariat. In Wisconsin, a fast food worker on a 40-hour week would earn more than $400 under the state poverty line. With wage theft, shift reductions and other arbitrary costs, employees complain that ‘they can’t survive’ on such meagre wages.

These “precarious” workers are not, as some claim, a  “new class” but a part of the working class, and one whose struggles can inspire other sections of workers to organise and take action.

Building a union

With more and more workers having to stay in fast food work for significant periods of time, the incentive to organise has been driven by the twin pressures of rapid impoverishment and lack of alternatives.

While pressure for an increase to a living wage (still a low wage) has come from community and activist groups, the demand to form a union has come in large part from the workers directly involved.

Until now, organisers have emphasised the local nature of their strikes. But, sharing a common theme and with awareness spreading, many groups are now taking the initial steps of communication and coordination.

The Service Employees International Union has lent material support and organisers to the campaigns; this active solidarity is vital to demonstrating the power that collective organisation can deliver.

The fast food workers are right to pick up the demand that the chains accept their right to freely organise a trade union – such an organisation is the only means workers have of defending themselves in the workplace.

In an industry where trade union activity is summarily punished with reduced shifts and arbitrary sacking, winning the right to unionise is the sole guarantee that any wage increase will be maintained.

Without a union which can fight back and hit the bosses where it hurts, any promises of improvements in pay and working conditions are worthless.

Where next?

In New York City, more than half of the 70 restaurants hit by strike action have raised wages. This shows that determined action can force concessions from the most anti-union bosses. It shows these bosses have been super-exploiting their workers and there is plenty of room for short-term victories on wages. But the franchise nature of the industry means winning sustainable collective bargaining rights across chains will be a difficult task.

To achieve longer term more permanent gains  – significant reduction of hours with no loss of pay, permanent contracts, a living minimum wage in every state, union recognition and rights in the workplace will be a harder struggle. It requires democratic unions where the rank and file exercise real control and initiative. They will need all the support from the communities workers come from, plus solidarity from other sectors of workers and students too.

With echoes of the ‘Leagues for the Eight Hour Day’ which mushroomed across the USA more than 100 years ago, the spread of ‘Can’t Survive…’ networks has the potential to organise common action amongst one of the largest sections of the modern working class. Around the world the growth of these precarious jobs has created similar layers of workers. They can take enormous inspiration from their sisters and brothers in the USA.

 By KD Tait

Almost 80 years ago, the city of Minneapolis was a battlefield in the class war between workers and bosses. Three strikes in 1934 shook the city and American society to their foundations. The feature of these strikes by the Teamster Union Local 574 was that they were led by Trotskyists.

Minneapolis boasted the strongest branch of the Communist League of America (CLA) the American Trotskyist organization. This branch was led by veteran workers leaders like Carl Skoglund and the Dunne Brothers, Vincent Raymond (known as Ray), Miles and Grant – and in the course of the strike recruited young Teamster militants like Farrell Dobbs. In the battles of 1934, the Trotskyists exposed the lie, so often leveled at Trotskyists then and now by the Communist and Social-Democratic parties that they were incapable of winning mass support and leading workers to victory.

The victory of the 1934 Minneapolis strike was of decisive importance for the development of Trotskyism; so too was it for the whole of the American working class. The victory of Local 574 in making Minneapolis a union town inspired other workers to take on the rapacious US bosses.

If the truckers could win against a powerful bosses’ organization like the Minneapolis “Citizens’ Alliance” backed up by the police and National Guard, then other workers could defeat their bosses. Following Minneapolis, the American working class, enthused and inspired by the struggles and tactics of Local 574, made a “giant step for labor.” A wave of mass strikes and factory occupations in 1935 and 1936 gave rise to the new industrial unions grouped in the CIO.

We dedicate respectively this article to Farrell Dobbs, Marvel Scholl, and to the heroes and martyrs of Local 574. We do this in the knowledge that their story is not merely fascinating history but one rich in lessons for the militants struggling against the bosses and their state today.

In 1929, the “Roaring Twenties” in America came to a juddering halt. In that year, the Wall Street Crash which started on of September 23 heralded an oncoming economic and long grinding Depression that wreaked havoc in the lives of millions of American workers. Between 1929 and 1933, unemployment rose from 3.2% to 24.9% as more than 15 million were thrown out of work. In the same period, the average wage in manufacturing industry fell by 2 percent. Poverty and hunger became the norm.

The response of the trade-union leadership to such a massive attack on the working class was “business as usual.” Bureaucrats like William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), were a dominated by reactionary narrow craft outlook and had already had purged their organizations of “radicals” in 1926-27. These “labor statesmen,” as they liked to be called, practiced “business-unionism.” They operated the unions as services for the bosses in return for meager reforms. However, during the slump, their services were not so necessary. By 1933, the AFL’s membership had sunk from over 4 million in 1920 to barely over 2 million, as even skilled workers found their lives ravaged by capitalism’s crisis.

But while the unions continued to decline in numbers in the early 1930s, the anger of the working class was demonstrated in a number of ways. Unemployed councils sprouted in every city. Their struggles against eviction and for relief often reached riot proportions. In Chicago, home evictions were suspended because of the direct action of the 45 branches and 22,000 members of these Councils. Such movements were normally brutally suppressed. The Ford Hunger March in Detroit in March 1932 was met with fierce state resistance, and four workers were shot dead by the police.

Non-unionized workmen struck spontaneously against sackings and wage cuts. In one such strike in North Carolina in July 1932, a few hundred hosiery workers walked off the job, and within days 15,000 workers had joined them, closing 100 factories. Such militancy needed to be organized on a permanent footing if workers were to defend themselves and advance. The urgent need for new non-craft based industrial unions and an independent working class political party was clear.

Hostility to the bosses’ parties

Indeed, hostility to the traditional bourgeois parties was evidenced in certain areas. In Minnesota, whose largest city is Minneapolis, the hostility of workers and smaller farmers was evidenced in the 1932 election of Floyd Olson as State Governor on a Farmer-Labor Party (FLP) ticket. But this experience was not repeated on a national scale. The Republican, Herbert Hoover, was the clear-cut candidate of Big Business. And the FLP channeled their efforts into supporting Roosevelt: A Democrat, who offered the vague promise of a New Deal.

The bare bones of FDR’s New Deal included an increased role for central government in an attempt to foster national-economic recovery. As strikes increased in 1933, undermining the prospect of recovery, one element of the New Deal became the creation of Labor Boards to defuse strikes, enforcing cooling off periods, and compulsory mediation: Symbolically, Section 7a of the National Industrial Recovery Act. granted Labor the right to “organize unions of their own choosing.” This legal provision was a useful propaganda weapon for the union militants. Nevertheless, the provision lacked teeth, and, to make organization a reality, militants had to fight every step of the way against union busting bosses. Minneapolis was a case in point.

The IBT

Minneapolis was the great market and transport hub of the vast Midwestern grain belt. Thus transport was central to its economy, and workers in this sector held a power economy was typical. It was organized by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) nationally in the iron grip of the odious business-union man, Daniel Tobin. Locally, its membership of less than a thousand was divided into splintered Locals according to the commodity trucked; Local 574, a General Division Local, was used as a clearing house for new members pending sub-division.

In 1933, its membership numbered 70 or so. With the exception of its president, Bill Brown, “a fighter by nature,” its executive was slavishly pro-Tobin: “On balance, there was little more in Local 574 than an IBT charter with which to begin an organizing campaign.” (Dobbs) This was precisely the objective that the Trotskyists set themselves. It was a crucial step in their attempt to root their forces in the working class.

The local CLA leaders, Carl Skoglund and VA Dunne and his brothers, worked in the coal hauling industry. In 1933, they began a drive to organize coal truckers and loaders. Stealthily, they organized a volunteer committee of workers to fight for admission into Local 574 against the local executive. During this struggle, eventually won in 1934, they democratically prepared the demands of the members.

In the thirties, the City was a communication and distribution center, a link between the vast agricultural expanses to the west and the large scale industry coming to dominate the neighboring cities around the Great lakes to the east. Its industry was ruled by the Citizens Alliance (CA), a federation of bosses dominated by the biggest capitalist concerns, which had crushed every strike attempt for 20 years. James Cannon, founder of the CLA, said of Minneapolis: “It was a town of lost strikes, miserably low wages, murderous hours and a weak and ineffectual craft-union movement.” (History of American Trotskyism)

They centered on union recognition, increased wages, shorter hours, premium pay for overtime, improved working conditions, and job protection through a seniority system.

On Sunday February 4th 1934, a mass meeting gave the employers 48 hours to negotiate and elected a strike committee. With Citizen Alliance backing the employers stood firm against the coal truckers’ demands. On Wednesday, the coal yards were struck. And not only had the Trotskyists picked their target well – coal shortages in sub-zero temperatures – but their organization and militancy shocked the employers.

The yards were tied up tight by over 600 pickets. Any coal truck movements were tracked and stopped by the use of cruising picket squads – or what are now called the “flying pickets.” By Friday, the bosses were forced to retreat. A Labor Board mediation resulted in union recognition and improved wages. This short, sharp shock for the “Citizens” and their open-shop policy was also an encouraging prelude to a drive to organize workers in other sectors beyond coal. In line with the union rules Local 574 had contacted head office for endorsement. Typically, the day the strike ended in victory, the strikers received a letter from Tobin: “Strike endorsement…cannot be granted.”

Rank-and-file rule

The organizing committee developed in the coal drive now became an official body by rank-and-file consent. A recruitment drive on industrial rather than craft lines was launched. As in coal, the young militants who spearheaded the drive built up the demands as they recruited. Objections of the official executive were overruled by the rank and file.

By April, the Local was confident enough to make public its growth. A mass meeting at Shubert Theater, packed to overflowing, heard Governor Olson’s message to workers: “to band together for your own protection and welfare.” By now, 3000 had been organized. Carl Skoglund argued the union’s next step and the meeting voted to strike on their demands if the employers failed to meet the union deadline.

A broad strike committee, elected from the meeting, then swung into action. Alliances were built with the unemployed and with poor farmers. Crucially, efforts were made to get the blessing, if not the help of the AFL’s local officialdom. This way the strikers hoped to neutralize the likely sabotaging interventions of Tobin. Following the lead of the earlier Progressive Miners’ Strike, a women’s auxiliary was set up.

As in the strike committee, so in the support organizations, it was the Trotskyists who took the initiative. CLA members active in the unemployed movement campaigned for an unemployed section of Local 574. Unemployed leaders were drawn into the union’s picketing plans. Far from being a source of scab-labor, as the Citizen’s Alliance hoped, and the union officials, contemptuous of non-contributors to their fat salaries predicted, the unemployed were drawn into battle alongside the strikers.
Organizing women

Marvell Scholl and Clara Dunne recruited women to the idea of active involvement in the strike: staffing the commissary, the office, nursing, and when the action started, picketing too. Farrel Dobbs described the motives, initial problems, and eventual success of building the women’s auxiliary:

“The aim would be to draw in wives, girlfriends, sisters, and mothers of union members. Instead of having their morale corroded by financial difficulties they would face during the strike, they should be drawn into the thick of battle where they could learn unionism through first-hand participation…The proposal (to form a women’s auxiliary – Ed.) was adopted although not with much enthusiasm. After I got some needling, especially from men who saw in their union activity a way to get an occasional night out, but all this stopped suddenly when the women went into action later on.”

The Citizen’s Alliance would not recognize the union. While they did meet the Labor Board “out of courtesy,” they were in fact making time for their preparations against Local 574. Red-baiting and intimidation was rife. The Mayor and the police chief, Michael Johannes (Bloody Mike as he came to be known), openly lined up with the bosses and declared their support for the union-busting struggle ahead as the new CLA recruit, Farrell Dobbs, discovered when he infiltrated an Alliance meeting.

On May 15th, Local 574 held a mass meeting and voted unanimously to strike in a standing vote. They disregarded in the name of workers’ democracy Tobin and the IBT’s ruling on compulsory ballots for strike action. On May16th, Local 574 went on strike.

Arthur Schlesinger, Professor of History at Harvard, noted: “The city, as they put it locally, was tied up as tight as a bull’s eye in fly time.” (The Coming of the New Deal)Once again, the extent and power of the union’s organization caught the Citizen’s Alliance on the hop. In the weeks preceding the strike, new headquarters were set up in a garage on Chicago Avenue. This housed a maintenance depot for the cruising picket squads. The commissary, with the expert help from the Cooks and the Waiters Union, fed 4-5,000 people daily, the offices, and a hospital.

Army-like operations

An elected strike committee of 75 rank and file union members organized a loudspeaker system to address daily mass meetings. Subcommittees were set up to promote material aid, handle complaints, arrange legal assistance, and under Ray Dunne and Farrell Dobbs, organize picketing. Dobbs describes this organized picketing:

“Cruising squads in autos ware assigned, district by district, on the lookout for scab trucks. A captain was designated for each of these squads…At all times a reserve force…was kept on hand. In situations where large forces were involved, a field commander was appointed…Special cruising squads with handpicked crews, were constantly at the disposal of the picket dispatches… captained by qualified leaders who carried credentials.”

In fact, it was a force operating like an army. But it was an army recruited from and controlled by rank-and-file workers, and it fought for their class interests. These innovations and developments inspired many other workers and union membership quickly doubled to 6,000. Help poured in from hundreds of unemployed volunteers and students. Then the Yellow Cab drivers, encouraged by its militancy, joined Local 574 and struck. “Nothing moved on wheels without the union’s permission.”

By May 18th, the Citizen’s Alliance had recovered from the shock to organize counter-measures. A “citizens’ rally” chose a “law-and-order committee” to emulate 574′s military-style organization and to enlist deputies. The next day, fighting took place, and a number of pickets were badly injured. That same evening, an agent provocateur who had infiltrated the strike HQ dispatched a team of pickets into a trap. The pickets, five of them women, were badly beaten by “police clubs and by saps in the hands of hired thugs.”

“Up to now, the workers had gone about their activities barehanded”; but they found that attempts to exercise their right to peacefully picket were being prevented. They tooled up with clubs of all sorts. The Alliance let it be known that they intended to load trucks in the market, and on Monday “two organized and disciplined forces were to face each other, club against club, in a battle fought along military lines.” Thousands of armed picketers prevented the scabs operating, and more than 30 cops and deputies were hospitalized. When, in frustration, the police drew their guns, Bob Bell drove a truck right into the midst of cops, allowing picketers to jump out and prevent shooting in the melee.

“Chief Johannes decided to call it a day,” but only to call up reserves. A repeat of the battle was ordered for the next day. 1,500 cops and deputies entered the fray. Many thought that a victory over the “lower classes” would present no problems at all.
James Cannon wrote that the deputies “came to the market in a sort of gala holiday spirit. One of the special deputies wore his polo hat. He was going to have one hell of a time down there knocking strikers’ heads around like polo balls. The ill-advised sportsman was mistaken; it was no polo game this time.” (History of American Trotskyism)

The pickets were organized; they knew their job, and they were led by seasoned picket captains. They proved the value of creating workers’ self-defense organizations where the mass picket is faced with violent police opposition. In the ensuing battle, the pickets concentrated on the less seasoned deputies. In the “Battle of Deputies Run,” two of the specials were killed in the fighting. The pickets won, and again nothing moved on the streets.

On Monday and Tuesday, when the fighting reached its peak, the Building Trades Council called a sympathy strike. The electrical workers, inspired by 2 CLA members, marched as a body to Local 574′s HQ to put itself at the Teamsters’ disposal. Delegation after delegation from union locals arrived to offer their support.

In these circumstances, a panicky Labor Board quickly prepared a 24 hour truce, suspending truck traffic and closing the market while a settlement was prepared. The “Friend of Labor” Olson mobilized the National Guard but was reluctant to use it, because of union and FLP rank-and-file pressure. Instead, the truce was extended to permit negotiations. Local 574 withdrew pickets pending “union recognition and an acceptable settlement.”

By May 25th, the union’s negotiating team, under complete rank-and-file control via regular mass meetings had reached an agreement which the strike committee could recommend to a mass meeting as a satisfactory compromise. Improved pay and conditions, the reinstatement of all strikers, a seniority system, and, most importantly, union recognition, were all won.

Membership soared to over 7,000; many of them “inside workers”: That is workers other than truckers and loaders but employed as packers and such like in the warehouses or markets. While this agreement was being carried out by the employers and scrutinized by the workers, a new row was brewing over whether the inside-workers were properly covered by the settlement.

To the strikers, the inclusion of inside-workers in the deal was a sticking point. This was an important statement of their commitment to industrial rather than craft-unionism. But the employers, then Governor Olson, and the Labor Board backtracked. In late June, Local 574 held a membership meeting which voted to press for union recognition for all its members and better pay. Preparations for a third strike began.
The “Weekly Organizer”

The CLA national leadership had earlier dispatched James Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, to the scene. In the light of the new events, it now sent out a team of Cannon, plus two journalists, an attorney, and Hugo Oehler, an experienced organizer of the unemployed.

Apart from offering Local 574 their experience in class combat, and a political understanding of the class struggle second to none, the Trotskyist cadres made one other vital contribution to the strike. They helped launch a union paper, the Weekly Organizer, under the editorial control of union leaders and party journalists. This paper, transformed during the next strike into a daily, was to become a formidable weapon to counter the bosses’ lies.

Alliances with the unemployed, women, and farmers were strengthened, and yet more streamlined organization developed. On July 6th, the Union showed its strength, when 12,000 filled a meeting hall leaving thousands more outside.

Five days later, Local 574 voted for an all-out strike by a standing vote. When the bosses countered about the undemocratic nature of the vote, the strike committee recommended a secret ballot to a mass meeting. The meeting threw out the proposal and re-affirmed its commitment to workers’ democracy by repeating its standing vote. On July 17th, Minneapolis was again brought to a standstill. The strikers elected a strike committee of 100, democratically accountable to them, to run the strike on a day to day basis.

The bosses retaliate

On the other side, the bosses organized too. They attacked the union’s leaders, wrote individual letters to strikers, and then hurled the forces of the police and the National Guard against their enemy within. They were ably helped in their attack by Tobin, who now castigated the earlier strikes as illegal and the Dunne brothers as “serpents in human form.” Tobin’s Red baiting was faithfully regurgitated in the bosses’ press.

The Red baiting was answered firmly and sometimes humorously in the Daily Organizer. In one edition the Organizer published a verbatim “confession” from the Editor:

“Well, to tell the truth, it was all planned out in Constantinople a few months ago. Some of the boys worked a week driving trucks and saved up enough money to take a trip to Europe. They went over to see Trotsky in Constantinople and get instructions for their next move. Trotsky said: ‘Boys, I want to see a revolution in Minneapolis before the snow flies.’ They said ‘OK’ and started to leave.” (Notebook of an Agitator)

The Organizer could afford to laugh; its readership of 10,000, who paid for the paper, and more besides through donations, had nothing to fear from the Trotskyist “Reds.” Their courage and their resolute defense of the workers’ interest had earned them the trust and respect of these readers. The Red baiting showed the bosses and bureaucrats fear of Trotskyism precisely because it was winning mass influence.

Fearing the failure of their Red –baiting, and not fully trusting Governor Olson and the Federal Labor Mediators he brought in to settle the dispute, the employers decided to try and cow the workers into submission. Their lickspittle police chief did their bloody bidding with a vengeance.

On July 20th, “Bloody Friday,” the police ambushed two truckloads of unarmed pickets. Without any provocation, they opened fire. When their revolvers and rifles fell silent, 67 people lay bullet ridden, mainly shot in the back. Two of them, Henry Ness and John Belor, died. Thirty four had a total of 160 pieces of lead removed from them in surgery. The Minneapolis workers fought back with the methods of organized picket-defense and mass mobilization of other workers in solidarity strike action.

City at a standstill

On the evening of July 20th, 15,000 angry workers attended an open air meeting. On Saturday, there were four times as many pickets. The Organizer argued for a one-day strike by all transportation workers on Monday 23rd. That day, too, laundry workers went on strike alongside Local 574 for their own demands linked with those of the Teamsters. On Tuesday, Minneapolis was at a standstill, as 50,000 workers attended the funeral of Henry Ness.

As the police attempted to resume trucking; every operation was flanked by larger numbers of flying pickets. While the strikers had decided not to arm themselves with guns or knives, for tactical reasons, the police didn’t know this, and faced with mass organized cruising pickets, armed with clubs and instructed to “defend themselves”; they found it impossible to crack the strike.

Increasingly desperate federal mediators now proposed a settlement, endorsed by Olson, who threatened martial law if either side rejected it. Another sign of Olson’s get-tough policy was the arrest the same day of Cannon and Max Shactman, one of the CLA journalists. Then to the surprise of the Alliance, the strike committee recommended acceptance. The deal, which included recognition of the inside workers, was a basis to build on. Realizing this, the employers rejected it, and Olson imposed martial law that was, in every respect, used against the strikers not the bosses.

Far from being neutral in the conflict, the state forces actually punished the strikers for the bosses’ rejection. The powerful capitalists who ran the Alliance referred to the mediation as surrender. The strikers responded by warning that on August 1st mass picketing in defiance of the state militia would begin.

At 4 am that morning, Olson moved against the strikers. Their HQ was surrounded, and Ray and Miles Dunne, with Bill Brown, were thrown into the stockade.

To Olson’s surprise, the picketing after his crackdown intensified. The seasoned troops of Local 574, with its hundreds of picket captains, improvised on contingency plans. “Within a few hours over 500 calls for help were reported into military headquarters. Troops responded…usually to find scabs who had been worked over but no pickets.” Further Olson’s attempt to find softer negotiation merely gave him the chance to meet Kelly Postal, Ray Rainbolt – one of the few Trotskyist Native Americans – and Jack Maloney, three picket captains who refused to talk until their leaders were released. Olson retreated, and the strike leaders were freed.

As August wore on, some of the smaller employers were cracking despite Olson’s attempts at military strikebreaking. Back-to-work movements failed. Dobbs describes a war of attrition between militia and pickets well into August.

Eventually, the determined Local and its Trotskyist leadership won the day. AFL bigwigs, Olson, and Citizen-Alliance men all met with Roosevelt. A fresh mediation was launched under Roosevelt’s direct supervision. Olson now agreed the release of all picketers from the stockade prison. The union would be recognized, inside-workers too, wherever it won an election.

On August 21st, the strike committee recommended acceptance to a mass meeting. Local 574 was soon recognized as the bargaining representative in all the major trucking firms and most of the rest. Wages and conditions were improved. And to cap their victory, the workers elected their tried-and-tested representatives in place of its moribund predecessor.

A fighting union

The Trotskyists who led the organizing drive and three strikes were confirmed as Local 574’s leaders. In 6 months, Minneapolis had been transformed from an open-shop citadel into a union town. In that time, the Local had been transformed from a branch of 70 odd members under the control of tame Tobin men, into a fighting union of 7,000 plus, democratically run by its rank and file. More than this, their struggle had been closely watched by millions of workers suffering similar misleadership after a long period of retreat.

Three days before the victory, Cannon writing in an Organizer article, “The Secret of Local 574,” had said of the union:

“The outward form is old fashioned and ‘regular,’ but the inner content is modern and pulsating with new vigorous life. In sense of the word it can be said that Local 574 represents a fusion of the new and the old at the moment when the American labor movement as whole stands before the prospect of great change: to meet the modern needs of the workers.”

Two years later, the CIO was formed in a yet greater act of working-class revolt. The reasons why the Minneapolis strikes won are important guidelines to militants today. The democratic organization of the strikes embodied in regular membership meetings whose decisions were binding ensured that the members were mobilized in the strike and not left at home isolated. The rank and file ran the strikes. This was symbolized in the July/August strike by the election of the Committee of 100. Significantly its key leaders, CLA members, did number a single full-time official in their ranks.

Class struggle

In the struggle to win the strikes, Local 574 recognized the importance of defense and the spread of the strike. Every instance of brutality was answered in kind and used as a means of mobilizing support from other workers. The building of an active women’s auxiliary played a crucial role in this latter endeavor. Their role was organizing welfare plus spreading the strike and winning support for it. In the end the strikers won union recognition.

In an isolated town in vast America, they couldn’t hope to achieve much else. Union recognition itself was a tremendous gain. More than that, however, the influence of the Trotskyists made sure that Minneapolis achieved a more lasting significance. In the leadership of the struggle they showed that trade-unionism, if it was to truly defend the workers’ interests, had to be founded in class struggle not class collaboration. They showed, in the best traditions of revolutionary trade-unionism, what could be achieved when the workers fought the bosses – asserting their own needs and interests above all else.

Class fighters today must develop a similar understanding, an understanding that Cannon expressed well when he wrote in the Organizer:

“Local 574 doesn’t take any stock in the theory that capital and labor are brothers, and that the way for little brother labor to get a few crumbs is to be a good boy and appeal to the good nature of big brother capital. We see the issue between capital and labor as an unceasing struggle between the class of exploited workers and the class of exploiting parasites. It is a war. What decides in this war, as in all others is power. The exploiters are organized to grind us down into the dust. We must organize our class to fight back.”

Originally posted at www.workerspower.net

The first national Left Unity meeting last Saturday

It’s one week since the first national meeting of Left Unity, and after reading some of the more hostile reports and comments I wonder if I was at the same meeting.

A shambles, one report called it. What? 100 delegates assembled from more than 80 local branches, more than half of them elected from a minuted meeting of more than five people, and all from a standing start in little more than a few weeks? Try it. Then tell us this was anything other than a huge achievement.

No major political decisions?  Apart from one, of course. The meeting decided to set up a new political party to challenge Labour from the left. No small matter that! And to do it in November this year, on an accelerated timescale that made even congenital optimists like me gulp a bit.

Badly chaired or disorganised? On reflection, no, not really. After all it was complex. The delegates’ pack contained not just a Statement setting out the views of some leading members like Kate Hudson on what Left Unity should stand for, but a lot of amendments submitted from branches and delegates, and a last minute procedural motion that was always going to be a challenge to deal with.

Huddersfield sent in a thoughtful proposal for a kind of manifesto and wanted it debated. Southwark had adopted an amendment and a proposal from Nick Wrack of the Independent Socialist Network that aimed to strengthen the Statement by committing Left Unity explicitly to an anticapitalist, socialist and working class project (it was clear that Ken Loach supported this view, as he called for a clear socialist orientation in his address to the meeting.) Dave Stockton from Lambeth, a Workers Power supporter, proposed an amendment focused on what we could be fighting for in the here and now over the coming months.

Admittedly it was a tall order to expect people to discuss and vote on all of this at short notice. But there was no need to abort the process altogether. The procedural motion from Nick Wrack and Simon Hardy, which said we should not vote on the motions and amendments, took so long to discuss that it prevented any political discussion of the documents, which in turn meant we didn’t really discuss the political situation in Britain today and what we could do to stop the Tories.

Hindsight is 20-20, but looking back there would have been a much easier way of dealing with it. We could have begun the discussion, and if people felt unable to decide , someone could then have referred the vote to the next national meeting. That could have happened after the political discussion, not instead of it. Oh well, tomorrow is another day, and there will be another meeting in September.

Nor, I have to say, did the meeting ‘firmly rebuff’ the involvement of existing socialist groups in Left Unity, as one article claimed. Yes I’m biased because I’m a member of a group, but I think some ex-members of groups might be being a bit biased too. For example, while many delegates understandably feared sectarians and opportunists moving in and taking over or breaking up Left Unity, there was a definite and legitimate trend in the meeting arguing for a less defensive approach. Everyone agreed members of the SWP or the SP can join as individuals. So why not make it easier for them to counter the discouragement of the sectarians in their ranks by issuing a public appeal to them and making them welcome? That was why I voted for the proposal to give the groups observer rights, though I accept that it was clearly defeated. But:

- Two members of existing socialist groups were elected onto Left Unity’s national coordinating group directly from the meeting: Terry Conway of Socialist Resistance, the British Section of the Fourth International, and Tom Walker of the International Socialist Network, which recently left the SWP

- Several speakers including Will McMahon from London, Pete McLaren from Rugby, Leander from Birmingham Communities against the Cuts and Kris Stewart from the International Socialist Network spoke in favour of Left Unity making approaches to and working with the rest of the left including the largest socialist groups.

Of course it would be ridiculous to imagine that Left Unity can actually ‘unite the whole of the left’. At the same time it is self-defeating to exclude socialist groups that do actually support the project, like Socialist Resistance, Workers Power, the International Socialist Network and so on. I know some comrades won’t like it, because of all manner of concerns, some of which are understandable given the SWP’s behaviour in the Socialist Alliance and Respect. But we should take care not to tar every group with the same brush. And we should avoid like the plague beginning with exclusions, condemnations and a hothouse atmosphere. After all, we want to build a mass party open and appealing to new people. We want to transcend the sects, not add to their number.

Finally, on the debate on women’s representation.  The delegates who support Workers Power (five of us on the day), were not all agreed on how to vote on the quota system of assuring at least 50% of women on the national coordinating group. Some us, myself included, voted for; others voted against. But one thing is for sure. The fact that the discussion took place had its effect, and even without operating the quota the coordinating group we elected on the day had 60% women on it. That means Left Unity begins without reproducing the gender imbalance that capital imposes on most organisations, including on the left. And that is a very good thing.

I’m looking forward to the coming months. I hope we can have an excellent discussion, and that we get to debate out not just the motions and amendments submitted to the 11 May meeting but many more contributions from across the network. I hope we continue to draw in hundreds and hundreds of new people. And I hope our September national meeting can lay the basis for a deep policy discussion that results in the founding of a new, mass, socialist party in 2013-14.

The Bedroom tax came into effect on 1 April, cutting the housing benefit of a working age social tenant (council-owned or housing association) by 14% if they are deemed to have one more bedroom than they need, and by 25% if they are deemed to have two or more spare bedrooms.

But nowhere are there enough single bedroom properties available to move into, thanks to three decades of failure to build new council homes. As a result there are scores if not hundreds of potentially affected people to every single bedroom property available.

Nearly a million households across the country are on council waiting lists for single bedroom properties. In Leeds at one point there were forty such properties for 9000 affected, and the same figures apply everywhere – there’s nowhere to move even if people were willing to leave their homes.

Benefit cuts mean private profit

Of course the Tories are happy to force people into the private sector where they face higher rents, substandard overcrowded properties and dodgy landlords – who the taxpayer will then subsidise with higher housing benefit. The bedroom tax is a clear attack on social housing since it only applies to this sector not private tenants receiving housing benefits – so you might as well leave your council house and go private, rather than see your benefits slashed.

So it isn’t just an ideological attack on those relying on benefits, it also is a big gift to private landlords. On the 5 March the Mirror newspaper exposed that one third of council housing bought by tenants in the 1980s under Thatcher’s right to buy scheme are now in the hands of private landlords, including big Tory millionaire tycoons like Charles Gow, son of Thatcher’s housing minister, and his wife who own at least 40 ex-council flats on one South London estate. Many others are owned by holding firms based in offshore tax havens. They are the ultimate beneficiaries from the bedroom tax and other attacks on council homes, like a renewed drive to flog them off to tenants at bargain basement prices, and further degrade the sector. The National Housing Federation says the housing benefit bill could go up by £143 million.

Enter Labour

Already thousands are going into arrears, sparking unusually large and angry demonstrations like the one in Leeds on 20 April of over 1000 protestors, and growing organisation, exemplified by the launch of a Scottish anti-bedroom tax federation on the 27 April.

In a classic case of waiting to see which way the wind was blowing it took Ed Miliband over three weeks to pledge to scrap it – time for growing anti-bedroom tax campaigns to worry Labour’s May local election planners.

The delay was a bit hypocritical too, since Labour’s official website as early as 2 April stated “Labour calls on councils to vote in opposition to bedroom tax”. It quoted a statement by Hilary Benn MP, Labour’s Shadow Local Government Secretary and Leeds Central MP, aimed at councilors specifically, arguing “let’s stand up against this unfair policy which has not been properly thought-out.”

What a contrast to Labour councils across the land – including Leeds – threatening to evict nonpayers and sending out intimidating letters every week to those falling into arrears!

SNP and Greens pledge no evictions, sort of

To Labour’s shame, not only are its actions lagging behind its own words, they’re lagging behind the Greens and “Tartan Tories” in Scotland.

In Dundee, where tenants affected would lose on average £600 a year, the SNP council on 11 March voted on a policy of no evictions (for one year) while Green councillors in Brighton a few days later pledged there would be no evictions – which provoked criticisms by the leading Labour councillor – but was confirmed by the 9 May council meeting.

On 23 March Alex Salmond announced at the SNP Spring Conference that councillors from the nine SNP-led authorities would follow the Dundee policy of no evictions. However nationally SNP leaders have refused Labour’s calls to make them change the law to make it illegal for any local authority to evict tenants affected by the bedroom tax, leaving it down to local councils.

The Labour-led Fife council (6300 affected) in late March also pledged no evictions; however it has since blocked proposals from the SNP opposition to give a stronger commitment on no evictions.

The Labour–SNP Edinburgh council followed suit on 16 April, where 4,000 council tenants and a similar number of housing association tenants are affected. The Labour Glasgow council, with 15,600 affected, has given no such assurances, despite a 5000-strong demo at the end of March.

Even where anti-eviction policies have been passed, they are only a temporary halfway house with conditions attached in the small print beneath the headlines.  The SNP council guarantees are for the next year only, to see them through the current wave of protests. Eviction guarantees only kick in if people are “genuinely in need of support” and have done “all they reasonably can” or tenants don’t turn down offers of alternative support, for instance refusing to move.

This is a divide and rule policy, it could see political campaigners who refuse to pay the tax are targeted for eviction while the “good” tenants who just can’t pay are temporarily helped out.

And even the “good” tenants won’t be safe if they can’t pay. The SNP and Brighton policy, saying using all “legitimate” means other than eviction means weekly threatening letters, pushy visits from housing officers, requests for meetings where you will be bullied into coming to a financial agreement. These “anti-eviction policies” are just a tactic to defuse the resistance to the bedroom tax, using the carrot and stick to push tenants to pay, and isolate the campaigns.

And with 2013 the year that 80 percent of the Tory cuts occur with a sea change in welfare – council housing benefit cuts, benefit cap, universal credit in Autumn, etc. – it will be hard for tenants to prove they have fallen into arrears as a result of the penalty or because of other cuts, as the sector magazine Inside Housing (25 March) has noted.

Hard Labour

Generally in England, even where they have reacted, Labour Councils have been even less forthcoming with promises than the SNP.  The great majority have refused to give no eviction pledges, with Islington one supposed exception.

The most that some have done is to regrade a minority of properties or set up hardship funds – for those who show they are not simply refusing to pay for political reasons. The Labour-controlled Nottingham council have reclassified a thousand two-bedroom flats in high-rise tower blocks as one bedroom so they avoid the charge, and Leeds councillors have floated the idea of doing the same for 865 properties – though this is a drop in the ocean compared to 9000 affected in Leeds alone. They will be under pressure to keep such measures token as fewer bedrooms in a home means lower rents and less money for councils. In some cases residences are merely regraded from two extra bedrooms down to one, so the tenant still gets stung by the bedroom tax. As Helen Williams of the National Housing Federation says “reclassification is not a long-term viable solution for this unfair policy.”

Doncaster council has created a temporary hardship fund for its 3500 affected tenants who will collectively face paying £2.1 million more in rent this year – but only “where tenants will work with us on a sustainable solution. If tenants do not engage with us, we will use the existing rent arrears policy to deal with the debt” i.e. eviction. In Darlington the message is the same, as one councilor stated: “We can find ways round helping people, but if they ignore it there’s very little we can do. For those who can pay, but simply won’t, there’s nothing we can do to help them further down the line. Those in genuine hardship must talk to us.”

Even Islington’s pledge is partial. At a meeting of the Islington Hands off our Public Services (iHoops) campaign group, the Labour Town Hall treasurer Richard Greening promised not to evict anyone who falls victim to the “tax” if they had no alternative place to go, but wouldn’t give a categorical pledge that there would be no evictions.

From the report of the meeting on the iHoops website, one audience member said to Greening: “They’re asking people to move out of their homes when fat cats have dozens of rooms. I say to the council, we want to fight to defend our welfare state and if you want to stand with us, you’ve got to say you won’t implement the cuts. You’ve got to put your money where your mouth is and say no evictions.”

Absolutely right! Greening’s reply: “You are absolutely correct to demand no evictions, we understand that, but we also have to find money to keep public services running. I’m not going to give you the answer you want. But I’m going to say that we’re with you in campaigning against this tax.” We have to campaign till they do give us the answer we want!

No divide and rule: no evictions pledge, no exceptions!

Nigel Minto, from umbrella body London Councils, said “no London borough would be likely to give a categorical no eviction pledge”, and the same has proven true of the Scottish councils that have said they will not evict. Even in Brighton, the Greens are a minority on the council and hardly a strong guarantee of no evictions, considering the other cuts they have made to council services and bin workers’ pay – the only guarantee is a mass non-payment campaign that forces them to avoid evictions.

In Leeds three or four local union branches have passed motions demanding a no evictions policy, which have gone on to be debated at local CLPs and now will go to the District Labour Party to debate in the coming weeks. Even then that is no guarantee that councillors would be bound by such a policy.

Armley Hands Off our Homes has decided to lobby our local councillors, and produced a pledge for each one to sign so it’s crystal clear that their position is ‘no evictions without exceptions’. We should use it to name and shame every Labour councillor and MP who won’t pledge to defend their tenants, the great majority of who will have voted Labour.

Putting pressure on Labour to act is important – most people in the working class community voted for them – but it is not enough. We need to root our campaigns on the estates and streets hit hardest by the bedroom tax. We need to build up community organisation to resist evictions and bailiffs, just as many communities did during the poll tax.

The poll tax affected everyone and millions refused to pay. We are not in as strong a position but everywhere we have gone we have leafleted we have met with almost unanimous support. We will be much stronger if we can tap and help organise the widespread anti-Tory feelings and deep anger against the cuts. Our campaign will be miles ahead if we have a mass anti-cuts movement alongside, using the opening of the People’s Assembly as the launchpad for a national anti-cuts federation.

A national movement would allow us to develop active solidarity from those not affected by the bedroom tax, besides widening the struggle to defend all the things we all need – health, education, pensions, services, housing.

The Left Unity initiative means we can organise a new party that will fight consistently against every cut, aim to turf out the Tories and link this to the struggle for Socialism.

In Leeds the Trades Council is preparing to mobilise for the People’s Assembly, and Left Unity will have its launch meeting on 22 May.

There were people from trade unions, socialist organisations and workers who have recently taken part in strikes against downbanding at Mid Yorks NHS Trust.

After hearing a report of the recent Left Unity meetings in nearby Leeds, we discussed the progress of the strike at Mid Yorks hospitals, which so far has seen workers down several days of continuous action against pay cuts.

There was then a general discussion which positively addressed the problems of previous unity initiatives like TUSC and Socialist Alliance, while also recognising that all such attempts will throw up challenges and new experiences.

Meetings like this which bring together militants who are involved in campaigns and which debate out the politics of our struggles are the rock on which a successful new workers’ party must be built. We hope to see many more such meetings planning action and collectively discussing the political programme of the new party which, hopefully, thousands will work to build in the run-up to the policy conference this November.

One person was delegated to attend the national meeting in London on 11 May.

There will be another meeting of Wakefield Left Unity to report back from the conference on Thursday 16 May.

]]> http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2013/05/left-unity-launched-in-wakefield/feed/ 0 http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2013/05/the-futures-ours-if-we-want-it/ http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2013/05/the-futures-ours-if-we-want-it/#comments Tue, 14 May 2013 18:26:00 +0000 Kady Tait http://www.workerspower.co.uk/?p=5124 By K D Tait

Across the world young people are in the forefront of mass movements for democracy and human rights and against the exploitation and oppression of a system which enriches the 1% at the expense of the 99%.

From the teenage women stitching Nike shoes for poverty wages in China to the radical school students in Chile fighting the cops, demanding free education, young people are in the vanguard of struggle. The Arab Spring has been a movement of young people. This disproves the lie that ours is an apathetic ‘ipod generation’. But the fate of the revolutions in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia also proves young people can’t rely on established parties to look after our interests.

When we fight and even die for freedom the result all too often is that the fruits of our struggle are picked up by old established parties. Revolution gives way to counterrevolution; our networks that mobilised hundreds of thousands are unable to seize the power to really change the world. Repeated mobilisations without fundamental change in our daily lives eventually lead to despondency and disillusion.

We need to organise ourselves to make change permanent. We don’t need to reject politics – we need to reject every attempt to patronise and manipulate us. We need to find our own way – our own political strategy and way of organising – that can bring about a radically liberating, equal and revolutionary society.

The surge of support for Left Unity – the appeal for a new working class party to fight the cuts – has the potential to make a real difference for millions looking for a party that finally puts their interests first.

Everyone’s talking about uniting the left – uniting revolutionary groups, uniting independent activists, uniting disillusioned Labour party members. This is a welcome step forward.

But no one’s talking about young people.

It was young people who first stood up to the millionaire Tory rulers. We smashed up Tory HQ – a symbolic statement of intent: if you wreck our future, we’ll wreck your system.

Nine days later more than one hundred thousand young people walked out of schools and colleges against the Tories’ attempts to make young people pay for the capitalist crisis.

But fast forward to 2013. Many of those young people are among the one million 16-24 year olds without work, education or training. Many are working in compulsory workfare schemes. The minimum wage has been frozen for the youngest workers.

In Britain young people can be exploited fulltime at 16 but can’t vote till two years later, we aren’t allowed to create their own democratic organisations at school. And at work bosses pay us lower wages and we have little or no union representation. In the classrooms, the factories and the home, young people are bullied and exploited.

But despite – and because – of this, young people are often the first to say enough is enough and fight to change things for the better.

It was the young people in the Socialist Worker Student Societies who stood up to the bullying SWP Central Committee, over the outrageous way the latter treated the complaints of rape and sexual harassment levelled by young women members, who faced expulsion but whose rebellion has shaken the bureaucratic centralism of the party to its foundations in a way not seen for decades. It is these young SWSS members who are setting out to build an autonomous revolutionary socialist youth organisation in Britain.

Why so radical?

In the first place it’s because young people haven’t been ground down and demoralised by defeat. We haven’t yet been forced to buy into the system – although families often rely on income from their children, young people don’t yet have their own families and children to provide for.

Neither are we so quick to look to the existing leaders for answers. Without unions and without the right to vote we aren’t bound by a hundred social and political ties to the reformist sell-outs in parliament and trade union leaderships.

Capitalism and democracy promise a lot but perform little. A good education leading to a decent job is a fast receding prospect for most of us. And governments and the millionaires who own and control the media manipulate its hollowed out democracy. Young people have shown they are not afraid to say so.

It’s this relative independence from the dead hand of capitalist socialisation which is our greatest strength. Defending and extending this independence to our forms of political organisation is the key to making sure that we can campaign in joint struggles without being manipulated as a stage army.

What is to be done?

In wealthy countries youth unemployment is rocketing under the economic crisis. 50 per cent without jobs is common and 20 per cent plus is now the norm. In the exploited countries outside of Europe and North America, young people are used to drive down wages and denied freedom of thought and action.

Young people see an environment being devastated by capitalism that threatens a future of epidemics, floods, droughts and famines – which the system is unable and unwilling to do anything about. They see “humanitarian” invasions and occupations that leave hundreds of thousands dead or homeless. They see the racism – from the police or from fascist gangs that persecute people because of the colour of their skin, their religion or their culture.

Where should we look to change this?

Most young people are part of the working class. It’s the working class that collectively produces all the wealth in society – but has no say over what is produced or how the wealth is shared out. Because working class people own no means of producing what they need to live, but at the same time must work together to produce all the things which society needs to function – this is what makes the working class the only social force with both the capability and the necessity to struggle for a world organised in a completely different way.

Young people have to be part of this struggle for a world where things are produced according to what people need and not to make profit for the millionaires – this is the struggle for socialism. We can bring our own methods, which take the best of the old and new; we can develop our own organisations which defend our right to think through politics for ourselves, develop our own tactics and strategies but fighting every step of the way with our older brothers and sisters and our parents in the working class.

We can have solidarity without subordination. We can build a movement based in the schools and colleges, in the workplaces and amongst the unemployed young families across the world.

We can campaign for a world without racism, war and exploitation, without sexism, inequality, cultural deprivation and the destruction of our environment.

To do this today we will be most effective if we build our own organisations, prepared to work alongside every progressive ally, but reserving to ourselves alone the right to decide for ourselves, by ourselves how we can win socialist liberation for our generation and those to come.

We can do this by building an organisation with revolutionary politics that is created and run by the young people in the schools, colleges and workplaces.

This will transform our radical actions from spontaneous uprisings that all too often miss their target and see others reap all the rewards, into a conscious struggle for the power to change the world – alongside a revolutionary party which spearheads the working class’s struggle for self-emancipation.

LFI: How is life in Yarmouk going now?

Thaer: There are 125,000 residents in Yarmouk, and it is under siege. The Syrian forces and the PFLP-GC [Ahmed Jibril’s Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Ð General Command] put Yarmouk under siege. They don’t let people get food, medicines etc. Every day, they try to invade Yarmouk. The camp is under shelling every day. They set up checkpoints at the gates of the camp and arrest every activist passing them. The camp is in urgent need of food, medicines and doctors. We are talking about 125,000 people, and there are no more than two doctors inside.

LFI: How are Palestinian leftist organizations engaging in the Syrian revolution?

Thaer: They don’t want to take either side, but the Palestinian population is different. The Palestinians [in Syria] are connected to Syrians through family, economy and culture. The leftist parties are led by Jordanians, Lebanese, Iraqis and West Bank Palestinians. It’s not in their interest to make a bridge between the Syrian and the Palestinian populations. They have their own interests, they have offices, cars and other facilities provided by the regime. Individual Palestinian leftists engage as individuals, without their organizations.

It’s a shame. When the regime’s airplanes are bombing Yarmouk, they do not say anything. But they accuse the Free Syrian Army (FSA) of bringing in Afghans and Chechens, which is a lie. It was Syrian and Palestinian rebels who entered Yarmouk. There were Palestinians in the FSA from the beginning. They are participating there, because they think it’s their own struggle to support the Syrian rebels.

Then Jibril’s forces put the camp under siege, and their “excuse” to do nothing was the foreign fighters.

On 16 December, the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, not to be confused with Jibril’s PFLP-GC], Fatah and the FSA had a meeting. They asked the FSA not to enter Yarmouk. The FSA said “Okay, we won’t go into Yarmouk, but you should control Jibril’s forces, because they are attacking us and taking the dead bodies of our fighters to Yarmouk.”

So they agreed to keep Yarmouk as a neutral zone, but PFLP and Fatah said that they couldn’t control the PFLP-GC. The FSA answered “So what do you want from us?”

Most Palestinians Ð even before the revolution Ð considered the PFLP-GC to be a branch of Syrian security rather than a Palestinian faction. Ahmed Jibril himself was an officer in the Syrian Army until 1965. In 1968, he left the PFLP to establish the PFLP-GC. Since then, everybody sees them as a Syrian government branch. Even Yasser Arafat and George Habash treated them as one. They are based only in Syria and Lebanon, not in Palestine.

Most of the Palestinian militant groups in Yarmouk are not with Fatah or Hamas or anyone else, they are sons and daughters of the camp. They refused to start fighting in Yarmouk from the beginning of the revolution. But the regime wants to enter the camp, and it will make a massacre. All the places they invaded, they made a massacre. So the Palestinians and the Syrians have the right to defend themselves.

LFI: How will the situation for Palestinians be challenged after Assad has gone?

Thaer: We have historic relationship, we have been one family for hundreds of years. Before the Sykes-Picot agreement we were one country, and after this we are still one country. And after Assad, we will still be one country. We did our duty for the Syrians, because they hosted us like their brothers. We have the same rights, we are facing the same situation, and we will continue like this. The only thing we are afraid of is that the regime will remain in power and punish all the Palestinians. I am not afraid of the Syrian people.

LFI: One myth about Bashar al-Assad is that he is the only Arab leader protecting the Palestinians.

Thaer: The Syrian parliament gave us equal rights in 1956, before the Ba’ath party came to power, and before Assad. Right now I can name 10 massacres Hafez and Bashar al-Assad did to the Palestinians. In Tel al-Zaatar in Lebanon, the Syrian regime destroyed this camp in Beirut. They destroyed two or three camps between 1985 and 1988 in the “War of the Camps”. This was done by the [Shi’a Lebanese] Amal movement and Jibril’s forces alongside the [Syrian] regime; they attacked those camps to remove pro-Arafat activists from there. In 1983, they put Tripoli under siege, and threw Yasser Arafat out of Tripoli. In the 1990s, the Assad regime arrested around 8,000 pro-Arafat Palestinians. Many of them died in prison.

So it’s a lie that Assad supports Palestinians. The Syrian-Israeli armistice line on the Golan Heights is the quietest border Israel has. When Israel invaded Beirut in 1982, nobody resisted them except for the Palestinians.

LFI: Syria has many minorities; as well as the Palestinians there are for example the Kurds and the Alawites. While the Kurds have been oppressed under Assad, Alawites have been recruited to his security forces. Both of them face the threat of reactionaries who want a civil war to continue after Assad. So it seems we need a post-Assad Syria to secure rights for all of them.

Thaer: I believe the Kurdish people have the right to a homeland. For 500 or 600 years, somebody has stolen this right from them. They didn’t allow the Kurds to speak their language. But if you talk about Syria, I don’t think it will face a sectarian war.

Why? Syria is among the first countries to establish civilisation, including all minorities. They have lived together for hundreds of years; their mentality is open to everybody.

After Assad is defeated, there will be a move to punish those inside the regime forces who committed crimes. But it won’t be sectarian, and we will all come together after this.

“Sectarian war” is an argument to do nothing for the Syrian people. There are 500,000 Palestinians in Syria. All the official Palestinian factions have left them alone since the Oslo accords. After the revolution, we will remove all those factions, because they leave us alone with the criminal regime, while Yarmouk has been under siege for four months. Nobody gets bread or gasoline for us, but they are talking about Chechen and Afghan fighters. They have Islamophobia. Actually they save the Orientalist consciousness more than the Orientalist “thinkers” did. They say we cannot get our freedom because our community is Muslim.

The rigged ‘free market’

Since 2006 Royal Mail has been thrown into a profits crisis by government-rigged competition, where private operators like TNT and UK Mail cherry pick the profitable bulk mail accounts, collecting and processing mail from banks and big business, but then using Royal Mail to deliver the mail at below cost prices dictated by the regulator, a system known as ÒDownstream AccessÓ (DSA). Royal Mail must still shoulder the heavy costs of fulfilling the Universal Service Obligation (USO), delivering to every address, every day across Britain.

Over half of mail is now collected and sorted by private companies under the DSA. Now TNT has gone one step further and set up a delivery operation in West London, with its workers on low-wage, zero hour contracts – the casualised face of the future if postal workers don’t fight back. They intend to expand to all major city centres.

The regulator Ofcom has rejected the CWU’s demands that TNT be obliged to deliver to the same standards as Royal Mail and for a living wage minimum for the sector. The aim is to let privatisation rip.

Add in the rumours of future cuts to USO requirements (for instance, less than the current six day delivery) and the new TNT operation represents the biggest material threat so far to the USO.

The government’s plans to start the sell-off of Royal Mail this autumn will accelerate attacks on postal workers’ jobs and wages, and mean higher prices and worse service for customers.

Boycott the privatisers

In response the CWU has launched a campaign against privatisation, and in relation to the TNT delivery threat, is pushing the idea of a boycott of rival companies’ mail in defence of the USO and the union. A national meeting of local officials and area reps in March voted unanimously for the proposal, and the union’s annual conference in late April unanimously endorsed the plan too.

The call to boycott could get a good response. While workers outside of London don’t yet realise the scale of the danger with TNT delivery, everyone’s sick and tired of delivering competitors’ mail. But many will be confused since the CWU Postal Executive Committee (PEC) hasn’t explained that it means an illegal strike.

Some activists are confident a boycott will succeed, pointing to the fact that if Royal Mail suspended individuals for refusing to handle competitors’ mail, it would see a wave of wildcats like in 2003 and 2007. Others argue that defeats in 2007 and 2010 especially, where mass wildcats against victimisation were not enough to win, and the unopposed closures of the most militant mail centres since, mean we should not be complacent.

To ensure success we need to build up an active campaign to prepare members for the struggle ahead – just what the PEC isn’t doing.

The CWU postal leadership around Dave Ward and Billy Hayes won’t call a national strike against privatisation – also illegal under the anti-union laws. Instead they are throwing the initiative on the members to break the law, trying to spark a guerrilla war against the changes to the USO. And a militant union with an illegal strike victory under its belt would make Royal Mail privatisation a dead duck – who would buy it?

Then, if Labour is elected in 2015 it will all be ok – such is the thinking of Ward, Hayes and co. The danger is they are playing with a risky tactic without being serious about it, and willing to settle for concessions on the USO from the Tories – which would be temporary, aimed at getting the strike called off – but stop short of defeating privatisation completely. Ultimately with the USO in place, the CWU leaders can live with privatisation.

If the leadership don’t mobilise the membership, touring the branches with mass meetings to explain the issues and discuss how to make a boycott work, then it has little chance of success. Activists and reps against privatisation should network directly to make it work and turn it into an open all-out strike against privatisation, coordinating with other workers such as Post Office strikers. Let’s demand the TUC calls a general strike, as the quickest way to completely repel these Tory attacks or in defence of our union if the government tries to repress us.

That the current CWU leadership won’t do what it takes to defeat privatisation is a fact we must face. If activists can get together to form a rank and file movement to hold the leaders to account and take control of the action when they shrink back, like Ward and Hayes did in 2007 and 2010, then it could see a strike against privatisation through to the end.

By Rebecca Anderson

THE RAPE AND assault charges against members of the Socialist Workers Party, the RMT union and the Socialist Party have dragged into the light a long overdue issue.

Such actions are far from only existing ‘out there’ – outside the Labour Movement. Indeed, to our shame, they represent an “enemy within”. We need to ask ourselves why cover-ups and investigations that are just charades are a default response in unions with formally excellent policies and in far left organisations that proclaim their goal as women’s liberation.

Perhaps the exposés have had such electrifying effect because they are far from isolated exceptions but are symptomatic. The fact is that these unions and parties that exist in a sexist society can never be immune to the influence of reactionary sexist attitudes and practices. And unless the labour movement recognises this and takes serious steps to deal with sexist behaviour then it will continue to blight the lives of female activists and drive many away.

Proposals have been raised – by some of the women directly involved – for better internal procedures for organisations investigating accusations of rape, abuse and oppressive behaviour. One of the key proposals is the right of women to caucus and discuss issues and cases of oppression. This right should be rolled out across every union and working class organisation including parties and left groups.

Some organisations, like the Socialist Workers Party, have argued that caucusing is divisive. Wrong! It is sexist behaviour, its toleration and covering up, that divides the working class and the struggle for a better society.

So too does the SWP’s denial that men in general, including working class men, are the immediate agencies or enforcers of women’s oppression, benefiting from it in short term. Of course the working class (both men and women) also suffer from sexism in that it divides and weakens the fight for our class interests and emancipation. This is the objective basis for class unity – the struggle against oppression. You can’t effectively fight something if you are wilfully blind to it.

Caucusing, by empowering women to expose and challenge their abusers with the support of other women, seeking the support from their anti-sexist male comrades, helps overcome the divisions that sexism and other oppressive behaviour and attitudes promote. However, on their own, women’s caucuses are not sufficient.

First, they are still only available to a small minority of working class women, who are already in a union or party and able to become active.

Second, they can become bureaucratised, providing a power base for parts of the officialdom in return for privileges to leading members of the caucus.

We need to get together across unions, in the working class parties and socialist groups, to discuss our experiences, to develop ideas on what can be done to eradicate sexism and violence.

We need to develop a charter on the rights of women and on best practice inside the workers’ movement. A conference of women activists and delegates from across the unions would be a great start.

This collective voice of working class women would set the standards that we should expect of our organisations and empower women to challenge the behaviour and barriers they face. Such a conference could seek to involve women from beyond activists in the trade unions and socialist organisations and reach out to unorganised women, female colleagues and unemployed women.

Even if such a conference at first only commanded the support of a minority of unions and socialist groups, it would act as a deterrent, putting pressure on other unions and groups to take the issues on board. And of course, we would not try to limit such a conference to the issue of oppression within the workers’ movement, no matter how important it is today, but urge it to go further and found a working class women’s movement that could take up issues of women’s oppression and liberation in wider society.

We need a movement that fights fearlessly for women’s liberation and against women’s oppression in whatever form and wherever it manifests itself. To achieve this it will need to produce its own literature and materials, initiate and join campaigns for women’s rights and equality, and offer practical support for victims of women’s oppression.

We want a movement that is avowedly for working class women, one which develops an agenda that centres on their needs rather than the more privileged middle and upper class women who dominate much of the media coverage of women’s issues.

We need a movement that is organically linked to the working class movement through cooperation and coordination of campaigns and action, affiliations, political and financial support. Women now make up their highest ever proportion of the workforce and the trade unions.

The historic crisis of capitalism we are living through has impacted upon working class women very severely, both as workers, especially in the public sector, where they are often the majority, who have seen their jobs, wages and pensions cut and their workload increased, and as service users and carers, who have had to take up the slack caused by the cuts.

On rape and assault against women, faith in the capacity and political will of the police or the courts to tackle these crimes and bring the culprits to justice is at a low ebb, thanks to their institutionally sexist structures. For example, the police’s specialist sex crime unit Sapphire is under investigation over allegations that its officers routinely pressure women to drop rape claims.

There is also evidence to suggest that violence against women may be on the rise, or at the least that it may be being reported more. The Home Office has recently included for the first time 16-17 year olds in its guidelines on domestic violence.

We ask anyone who agrees that women in the labour movement need to raise their collective voice, to tackle the practices that caused or exacerbated the recent scandals, anyone who believes a conference could usefully be called to discuss these issues, anyone who wants to build a working class women’s movement that can fight for our liberation, to raise these ideas within their own organisation and to contact women in Workers Power to discuss how we can take this forward.