Monday, July 18, 2011

No Class (my arse)

They say that class don't matter,
But that just cannot be,
The jury said they're innocent,
They each had a degree.
No previous bad character,
And references galore,
A soldier and a nurse for friends,
Well who could ask for more?
They say we are all equal,
It's simply just not true,
The way the law applies to me,
Does not apply to you.
We all sat in the courtroom,
Accused of the same crime,
You're getting on with your life,
I'm in here doing time.
I'm angry at the system,
The judges and the law,
That sit in ivory towers,
The rich above the poor.
This is our 'big society',
It isn't worth a cus,
There'll always be one law for them,
Another one for us.

Sean Cregan A5769CE HMP Wormwood Scrubs

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

solidarity is a two way street

from the Norfolk Community Action Group
by Ruahri ó Cléirigh



It’s been an interesting week, watching the media talk up a riot, public servants ‘STRIKING…RALLYING…MARCHING!’

Yet it seems it doesn’t have enough ‘oomph’ anymore for the press. It’s only newsworthy if there’s a ruckus involving ‘latchers on’ from the ‘anarchist movement’…heaven forbid an anarchist might themselves be part of a Labour Party recognised trade union…

HEADLINE! READ ALL ABOUT IT! THE SCARY UNIONS HAVE LOST THEIR MOJO! HOODED MENACE TO TAKE OVER PLANET! More dangerous than Al Qaida…till next week…

Likewise it’s been an interesting and pleasing week watching friends and comrades rising to the challenge in defending the unions and taking the struggle to the streets against the Tory/Liberal ‘coalition’ government…who seem hell bent on destroying our welfare state…much to the derision of the press and unions in equal measure of course…

It’s also been a sad sad week. A week where comrades have been taken from us…

You know solidarity is a great great thing. There’s not enough of it about these days. So it fills me with joy to see it on display.

It is however a two-way street. And it is rarely reciprocated.

Over the last year I’ve spent a lot of my time involved with my organisation in our local ‘Coalition Against The Cuts’. Those on the inside ‘leading the fight’ are a hodge podge bunch, of local and regional union officials, some permanently involved in the usual paper-sale and petitioning for this months big issues, others less politicised but falling into place behind their more ‘senior’ union members. Hidden caucuses, caucuses hidden or within caucuses that are hidden from caucuses…

They use great and meaningful words like ‘worker’ and ‘working-class’. Even…’comrade’…although it’s often followed my a snigger and a red face…

These words however just seem to roll off the tongue.

There’s little passion there. It’s as if they’re acting out a part and the main lines of the script have become their catch phrases.

They talk of ‘fighting’ and ‘uniting the class’…

And this friends is where they start to lose me…when they eagerly discuss booking whole trains to take down to demos held in London which would ‘easily be filled to the carriage’ by a happy throng of ‘the class’…who would be eager to ‘rally to the cause’…

Only it’s all just fantasy…

As is all the talk of ‘the class’…

Class… They don’t belong to my class. Increasingly…they don’t belong to my class…Increasingly they don’t share the same life experiences, of dole, and housing office queue…of the prison…

They work for the state, they increasingly have the degree (that’s not a dig), often work in comfy offices, they have ‘expenses’, and something called’by the mile’… they work a rigidly set working week, hours never to be tampered with or there’ll be hell to pay…most of us don’t…and they have things called pensions…and their idea of conflict with the state…

Many of us too are currently in conflict with the state…and all it’s little branches…it’s offshoots…it’s wheels and centres of enforcement…

They work in the police station, the social services, the job centre, the housing office…’the public services’…the very services that many of these individuals will never ever have to utilise themselves… the very services that many of us have to deal with on a regular basis when we’re unemployed or in need of housing or desperate for work and money…or banged up…

‘NOW JUST HOLD ON!’ I hear you cry…’There’s nothing wrong with having a degree or working for the state and going on strike over pensions!’

You’re absolutely right, there’s not and my hat goes off to them…Likewise I remain steadfast and committed to the principle ‘a grievance to one is a grievance to all, I SHALL NEVER CROSS A PICKET LINE…’

But It would be nice if the solidarity that you and I believe in would be…and here’s that word again’…’reciprocated’.

It would be nice to know that those on the marches and rallies waving their flags shouting ‘support us’ and ‘join us’…that those same people this Monday weren’t going to be throwing us out of our houses, taking or children away, cutting our dole money, putting us in prison, and being the holders of the keys to our cell doors…

Because they will be.

Yes it would be nice if there was…solidarity…

The recent attempts made by the Norfolk Community Action Group within the local coalition to try and bridge this situation fell on deaf ears. So we chose to part company.

Our arguments that if they want ‘popular support’, and yes folks that does mean engaging with the Sun reader and the Daily Mail reader, then they will have to stop solely ‘agitating’ within their unions…an ‘agitation’ that often is nothing more than an email and a flyer on the union notice board or a phone call to the very same people who attended the meeting the week before, the pathological ‘preach to the converted’ who can only be bothered if it affects ‘them and theirs’…and get off their arses and physically start engaging with their local population explaining and arguing why they BELIEVE they are RIGHT to take the actions they are taking, in plain words with the use of plain English, without the use of a pre-script or the handing over of a leaflet that will never ever ever in a million years dear God get read because it’s cold, it’s heartless, it will not engage…

It can not engage.

Because there’s no soul in a leaflet…or a petition…especially when it’s a petition for OUR benefit…and our benefit only…

Yes that means job centre staff walking onto council estates, Yes that means teachers walking onto council estates, Yes that means housing officers walking onto council estates…Yes that means social workers walking onto council estates, Yes that means trade unionist from each and every sector of public services in this ‘country’ of ours walking onto council estates…

And engaging…

Not destroying peoples lives and being the first port of call of the oppressive state…

Only they won’t will they?

They won’t because there is a barrier…

They won’t because there is a barrier of ‘us’ and ‘them’…

They won’t because there is a barrier of ‘us’ and ‘them’ and ‘service provider’ and ‘service user’…

That is…dare I say it…a barrier…of one class against another, even if that ‘class’ can not be easily differentiated. They would if they could though comrades…’differentiate that is…

Long gone are the days of Dave Douglass and the great Hatfield Main branch of the NUM, all the miners, the steel workers, the toilers, the manufacturers, the print workers…

They have been taken over…by the bureaucrat…the degree in trade union studies…and the Tolpuddle Martyrs, more an historical quaintness than a model, example, direction and template of struggle…

Increasingly…not…my…class…

Increasingly…not…my… fight…

Unless miraculously new Dave Douglass’ appear and return the trade unions to their rightful place…holding meetings at the bottom of our streets, discussing and showing ‘solidarity’ and helping the unemployed with education and training, and building a real resistance to the aggressive Tory doctrine that has recently returned to plague us…

Unless…

You know comrades, only 26% of the workforce in Britain today are unionised…and it’s falling daily…

They had better appear soon…before trade unions go the way of the Tolpuddle Martyrs..and become ‘a quaintness’..

Saturday, July 02, 2011

reflections on J30


Miliband on BBC yesterday

I must admit to heretical thoughts in the lead up to J30, the first concerted national strike action in response to the Condem assault has been the subject to paeons of hyperbole from the left press whose salivating coverage was mirrored by the fake horror of the right wing press at what one might have thought from the coverage was the presage to the establishment of a revolutionary commune.
the truth was that a one day strike by teachers, civil servants and college lecturers involved far less strikers than any of the TUC 'days of action' that peppered the early years of Thatcher's reign, all of which were derided by the Left at the time as tokenistic and ineffectual.
the day to day roles of those who were taking action was also problematic. the PCS, UCU, the NUT and the ATL all benefitted from the rapid expansion of white collar trades unionism in the 1980s, the majority of contact that the working class are likely to have had with their members is almost uniformly negative ; from the engineered failiure of the school system, its indoctrination and petty rules in preparation of a life of regimentation as a wage slave, to the policing of the undeserving poor by the fortnightly humilitation and sly vindictiveness of the Job centre interview. Those on strike on thursday would be back at their desks by friday investigating 'dole scroungers' and arranging the detention and expulsion of asylum seekers; there was little to promote solidarity from the wider working class, and much to permit their demonisation by the Goverment and press.
But that isn't the way it worked out. The ham fisted attempts to accuse the unions of greed in demanding high pensions at the expense of the private sector tax payer faltered as private sector workers recalled the bankers and bosses that stole their pensions and now sit pretty on the ConDem benches.
As Rick Dutton pointed out on facebook-
"I hated most of my teachers when I was a kid, always got shit off the Jobcentre when I went to sign on, regularly took crap from the housing office when I was homeless, have had bad experiences of prison officers, hate the police, despise careerist Trot trade union officials...in fact most public servants I've had contact with are c~~~s...but I wouldn't cross their picket line ;)"


Basic solidarity.

the Tower Hamlets ALARM website reports from the London demonstration:
I felt a bit funny marching with lots of teachers, they deserve a good pension and good money, but whenever I’m around teachers all I can remember is getting detention for some pointless reason, sexually repressed RE teachers flying into rage at homework not being done, art teachers thinking their class matters, French teachers convinced they can teach another language to a group of kids that are mostly failing English…the list goes on. But I marched with them, avoiding detention.

Clearly no one was expecting anything more than a few pickets and a fun family march, but the police hadn’t got the message, after a bit of walking and a few speeches a group began to move up Whitehall. A kettle sprang out at the crowd. Police lines formed to the shock of everyone. Snatch Squads (a gaggle of police out to snatch people away from the crowd) circled targeting anyone under 18 who wasn’t white, and then moved on to just grabbing anyone.

Here I saw teachers at their best, not the scum from my childhood, but concerned teachers jumping forward and grabbing back their students from the claws of the police. Teachers willing to confront the crazed uniformed thugs, a real solidarity between the EMA kids of last year and the striking staff off today. Brilliant.


Basic Solidarity.

In fact the only person in the country who appears to have swallowed the ConDem Bollocks is the sad sock puppet that it is rumoured is in charge of the Labour party.