Cruddas,Thompson & The Category Error

Colleagues,


Please excuse a brief post but I needed to write something as a reaction to the statement by Jon Cruddas on Newsnight on Wednesday in suggesting that "foodbanks are here to stay". The man who ostensibly is in charge of New Labour's policy review then went on, as these people do, to reinvent and re-categorise, fundamental concepts of working class and labour movement history.



Cruddas: A history lesson is in the post



Indeed, so flawed was the Cruddas attempt to make food banks analogous to labour movement history that I am going to post to him one of my dog eared copies of the seminal Making of the English Working Class by EP Thompson, which coincidentally celebrates it 50th year of publication.

Thankfully Thompson is not alive to hear Cruddas engage in what constitutes a category error, that is when "a sentence that says of something in one category what can only intelligibly be said of something in another", and by that I mean the disgraceful attempt to align the spirit of the 19th century labour movement with that of the expansion of food banks under the austerity-driven policies of the Coalition.

To understand what I mean, have a look at this post supplied by the Ipswich Unemployed Action: http://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/

When Cruddas confuses 'self-help' with foodbanks he does himself and the Labour Party a profound discredit as he obscures a scenario where the explosion of food banks is in direct correlation to the massive expansion of poverty across the UK. This is evident who you look at those who are reliant on foodbank provisions: refugess and asylum seekers with no recourse to public funds, the young homeless, the disabled who find that benefit reform has removed a means by which they can maintain dignity in independent living. And that isn't including the significant number of those in-work and in receipt of the benefit, the very people who disrupt the cosy, arrogant notion of the division between strivers and skivers.

At my most cynical I can only think that the gambit of Cruddas is to institutionalise foodbanks so that as poverty lingers under a New Labour government they are soon as a core, constituent and acceptable means by which you deal with an inability on the part of the large portion of the UK to maintain decent living standards.

Whilst I remain a member of the Labour Party I utterly reject what is happening here and voice this criticism whenever I can, and using the most distinct means possible.

In Solidarity

Ian

Still the Enemy Within: The Miners' Strike 30 Year Anniversary

Colleagues,

Very well done to Sinead Kirwan and Mike Simons for getting together (using the Kickstarter platform (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theenemywithin/still-the-enemy-within-a-film-about-the-miners-str) the money needed to film and record material which will be used to create a film to mark the 30th anniversary of the 84-85 miners' strike. The link to a film clip is below, it may take some time to load/play.



A central theme of this project is that the miners remain, in Thatcher's vindictive terms' the enemies within'. It's not surprising that ex-miners and their families still feel this legacy as the current battle against blacklisting and fight for an inquiry around police corruption during the Orgreave dispute (generated as a result of the expose of official police corruption during Hillsborough) reminds us as trade unionists that the state (not least in the guise of the police and secret service) have consistently been complicit in working with governments and business to attack basic freedoms and ultimately to attack trade unionists (and their families) if/when they appear to be gaining strength.

The film will be made this year and I do hope that Ruskin College (and more importantly Northern College - given its central role in the dispute and its strong historical relationship with the NUM) will be a venue for a screening of this during 2014.

In Solidarity

Ian

Stand Up - Start Living: CWU Black Leadership Weekend

Thanks to (from left): Roseberry, Lloyd, Jonas, Sylvia.Olufemi, Prince, Worrel, Sadiq Khan MP (guest speaker), Adam, Bash, Pete, Moses, Hayden, Shaik, AJ, Linda Roy (CWU Nat Equalities Officer), Sammy and me on the end.

 

Colleagues,

 

Just recovering from a tremendous weekend of solidarity and action leading a CWU black leadership course at the union's education centre in Alvescot, Oxon.

 

The first thing I must state unequivocally is how committed and supportive the entire group were to discussing and analysing the current state of BME representation in the union, and what they, and other black workers, must do about it.

 

As part of this early discussion, the group adopted as their unofficial motto the phrase used by the striking WalMart workers in their fight for greater representation in the union: stand up, start living.

 

The focus of the weekend was the recently completed Proportionality Report which paints a poor picture of BME (and other eg women, LGBT etc/) representation across the union: no FTOs, no NEC reps for starters. The mood throughout the weekend was never pessimistic however, indeed, the ultimate focus was upon the reponsibility of those attending to effect change.

 

The guest speakers (Zita Holbourne and Sadiq Khan) sparked huge debate around, for example, austerity and its impact on BME communities, and thus the need for a wider relevancy on the part of trade unions.

 

Ultimately, the weekend was fundametally positive and focused and one of my most enjoyable experiences recently of working with BME activists on issues of leadership and activism.

 

Many thanks to Trish Lavelle (Nat Education Officer) for the time, energy and committment in getting the weekend off the ground and for leading Sunday's session on the Proportionality Report. Thanks too to AJ Singh for acting as an outstanding role model - something thrust upon him - throughout the weekend and who helped to shape the debate.

 

This weekend - beacuse of Trish and those attending - is the start of something great!

 

In Solidarity

 

Ian

 

More pics from the weekend.....

 

The young, black voice of the CWU - Hayden and Mosi

 


Myself, Prince, Zita Holbourne, Hayden and Mosi after Zita's
speaker slot on Friday



Reflection and analysis were central to the weekend's focus
as with Prince and Roseberry here.

 



Mark Serwotka at Ruskin College (05-02-13)

Serwotka at Ruskin:
The Coaliton - dangerous for
democracy.

Colleagues,

Many thanks to Mark Serwotka for taking the time out to speak to a large gathering of staff, students and visitors tonight, and to my colleague for Peter Dwyer (tutor in radical economics for organising the event). Although I am far too old and cynical for hero worship, Serwotka automatically gained a thumbs up from me when he kicked off his speech by stating how important that his talk, the trade union response to austerity, was taking place in the UK's historical 'college of the labour movement'.

Indeed, having just recently spoken at the infamous Westminster School (educator of the likes of Nick Clegg) Serwotka was clear that Ruskin was a place for the 'ideas and debates' which are key to the way we promote working class interests - welcome words indeed.

His talk whilst wide ranging was fascinating in that it fell naturally into much of the territory that Ruskin's international labour and trade union studies (ILTUS) programme falls. His analysis of the current failure of pockets trade union leadership to take a decisive position on the 2012 TUC motion on a general strike was a case in point. For some, he argued, the call for a general strike was an attack on democracy. I agreed with his own position, which is that much of the Coalition's policy is the actual site of anti-democratic practice, the academies programme being a pertinent illustration of this.

The sense of urgency behind the TUC motion is felt palpably my many in the movement as it reflects what Serwotka referred to as the 'perfect storm' of economic crisis, with the poor and unemployment at the sharpest end of its impact, and frontal assault on trade unionism via the attack, for example on facility time.

That PCS will take a principled lead here is without doubt, my major concern however is the leadership of the remainder of the movement. Those who follow such things will know that the unified trade union front on public sector pension reform dissipated soon after the November 2012 action when the government succeeded in fracturing this coalition by offering different trade unions different deals.

As the impact of Coalition policy widens and deepens however, it is becoming increasingly difficult for reactionary elements within UK trade unionism to maintain a mantle of 'no to austerity' without providing a definining sense of what this alternative is, and in what way this provides a radical alternative to government economic and social policy.

So, the next 12-18 months in the UK will be defining for UK trade unionism, and as the period when the build up to the next general election starts. By then we will also know what a general strike, if it comes, means in this context - it is all to play for.

In Solidarity

Ian

Lower than Vermin: Tory Party 2013

Colleagues,

Today the Tory Party declaimed poverty, need and want (terms redolent of the UK in the 1930) by proclaiming that this country does not need foodbanks as the welfare state provides enough for all.

A mouthpiece of the Tory Party proclaimed today, on the basis that Cameron has been forced to visit a constituency foodbank, that "benefit levels are set at a level where people can afford to eat. If people have short-term shortages, where they feel they need a bit of extra food, then of course food banks are the right place for that. But benefits are not set at such a low level that people can't eat."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jan/30/downing-street-benefits-food-banks


Bevan: The NHS as an Ideal

A 'bit of extra food', where 'they feel the need'? This vernacular from the Tories reminded me why, whether for good or ill, I joined the Labour Party in 1984. Aged 16 I had read, amongst other texts, Aneurin Bevan's statement on his experience of the absolute rejection of the philosphical and moral case for the NHS by Churchill's Tory Party, leading to his famous 'lower than vermin' statement in the House of Commons.

That historical statement is as valid today as it was in 1948. These people are are not just lower than vermin, the Conservative Party today occupy a position in political life which attempts to reduce to the lowest comon demoniator the means of debating how we tackle poverty and inequality. And why? beacuse it is in their interests to maintain this manifest degradation.

And so, Bevan was right, and here is what he said in '48, and why it remains relevant today as much as ever:



"That is why no amount of cajolery, and no attempts at ethical or social seduction, can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party that inflicted those bitter experiences on me. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin. They condemned millions of first-class people to semi-starvation. Now the Tories are pouring out money in propaganda of all sorts and are hoping by this organised sustained mass suggestion to eradicate from our minds all memory of what we went through. But, I warn you young men and women, do not listen to what they are saying now".

In Solidarity

Ian

Education for solidarity within spaces of resistance

Colleagues,

 

The tragic deaths in Brazil over the weekend have lent a further, separate and urgent impetus to limit fire-related deaths as a result of the neglect of multinationals and connected businesses in the global manufacturing chain supply 

                                                                                                                     

As reported today on the Labor is not a Commodity blog (http://laborrightsblog.typepad.com/  - an umbrella grouping comprising reportage from The International Labor Rights Forum, STITCH, SweatFree Communities and U.S. Labor Education in the Americas Project work)  even WalMart has pressured into action announcing a zero tolerance approach to health and safety standards and a range of other factors in the factories and workplaces of suppliers.

 

What remains to be seen however, is how serious WalMart take this new found zeal, and ultimately what impact it has. The catalyst to WalMart's decision was the unovering of the MNC's link to two companies both operating out of the Tazreen Fashion Factory which was the site before Christmas of the tragic, uneessary deaths of over 100 workers at the garment manufacturing factory in Dhaka: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/nov/25/bangladesh-textile-factory-fire

 

This disaster is, sadly, nothing new in this sector nor in Bangladesh. I reported before Christmas on the excellent new book by Doug Miller (Last Nighshift in Savar) which chronicles the global campaign between the Clean Clothes Campaign and the ITLGW following a similar tragedy in 2005.

 

Doug's book, whilst first rate in execution and coverage, is only one illustration of the global scale of the continuing aberration of what are in effect human rights abuses achieved as a manufactured outcome in the global operation of MNCs, and driven by governments who week to attract their investment.

 

The latest coverage from the Labor is not a Commodity blog provides s short, sharp sense of the scale of the phenomena as its current homepage starts with the WalMart annoucement, covers two other factory fires in Bangladesh and focuses on the recent release by Apple of the outcome of its annual audit of global suppliers revealing, yet again, the largescale use of child labour - amongst many other examples of abuse and exploitation - across its supply chain and particularly in China.

 

As Last Nighshift in Savar illustrates trade unions, NGOs and other civil society organisations can and do have an important role to play in resisting the worst excesses of global capitalism and this is explored more broadly in a fascinating book Globalisation, Knowledge and Labour by Mario Novelli and Anibel Ferus-Commelo. Whilst the focus of the book is, amongst others, an exploration of the valuable role that workers' education can play in generating organised resistance to exploitation, it helps to unpick the complex nature of MNC global supply chains and the subsequent deadening impact upon wider, broader worker solidarity and consciousness raising - making the need for educational initiatives all the more vital. Although not a cheap book, I thoroughly recommend it as a means to analyse the roots to new forms of worker collaboration with wider socially progressive movments and to newer, altered forms of worker organisation.

As with most of my writing in the blog, what Globalisation, Knowledge and Labour points towards are the prospects and opportunities for continued and revitalised forms of solidarity that reach beyond traditional notions, fixed largely on the activity of singular trade unions located in the nation state.

 

There is incredible room for optimism in seeking the means to resist and overcome the ideological, political and economic systems which lay behind the factory fires in Bangladesh, and the other day-today injustices faced by workers globally, and thus an urgent need, I would argue, to revisit the central role that trade union education can play globally in being central to this process.

 

In Solidarity

 

Ian



Union Voices: The Future of Organising in the UK

Colleagues,

Pressure of work since the start of the new year has kept me from posting until now, but I am pleased to use this first post of 2013 to focus on an issue of critical importance to the future of labour movements in the UK: for what, who and how should trade unions organise the unorganised?

These questions, and many others form the focus of a critically new important publication, Union Voices: Tensions & Tactics in UK Organising written by Melanie Simms, Jane Holgate and Ed Heery.

I am honoured to have been asked to speak about the book at its launch event on 22nd January (6-8pm) at the TUC. Register here: http://unionvoices.eventbrite.co.uk/

Without wanting to give 'the story' away (although many of you will be able to guess the end) the book provides a fascinating insight upon the potential of organised labour under New Labour between 1997-2010 to define and apply a model of renewal sufficient to respond to the onward march of neo-liberalism.

The problem largely of course was that that march was being led by New Labour itself (an account of this more specifically is here: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415426633/) and, as the authors reveal, compelling divergent interests flawed an overwhelming capacity of organised labour to, for example, renew levels of active participation by members, but ultimately to secure a dominant, embedded sense of the future of trade unionism.

Union Voices should be a must-read by all of those within the British trade union movement with responsibility for policy, education and organising.

Working at Ruskin College, and leading an MA for trade union activists and officials, a constant concern however, is the extent to which organised labour isn't always prepared to listen to informed, concerned critical analysis of political, cultural and political impediments to trade union renewal.

Union Voices is written by colleagues with a genuine concern for the future of organised labour in the UK (and internationally) it should in turn be read by, and acted upon, by all and any of those with an influence on this.

In Solidarity

Ian