The Future for Rebel Cities

Colleagues

As I’ve spent the last couple of days watching the state’s response to the Carnival against Capitalism in London, formed as to the looming G8 summit and recognising London’s pivotal role in supporting the architecture of global capitalism, it has reminded me of the central thrust of David Harvey’s critically important 2012 publication Rebel Cities.

Here, Harvey partly laments the decline of the urban space as the site of and location for anti-capitalist resistance and explores this through an examination of cities from South Africa to India. In doing so though he critically navigates something vital to understanding the context of the on-going Carnival battles in London.

Harvey predicates the first part of his work on the work of the French philosopher, Henry Lefebvre, and his ‘right to the city’ thesis. Lefebvre’s approach to an understanding of the role of the city as a site of resistance is made all the more important with his analysis of the ‘urbanisation of capital’ and that in the post-war era urbanisation was replacing industrialisation as a means of survival for capitalism.

Crucially, Lefebvre argues, the occupation and control of space (through property ownership and the use/abuse of rent) – and in particular sites of strategic economic and and political importance becomes, from a Marxist perspective, a new means of understanding the strategy of capitalist accumulation. In this new analysis of space however Lefebvre contends that as capitalism witnesses a reduction in the means by which production offers a route to accumulation, space and property provide a politically and financially profitable means via which to maintain predominance as an economic theory.

Harvey is worth reading for much more than a revisiting of Lefebvre, not least in understanding how urban spaces can provide an important location for the generation and propagation of anti-capitalist activity, but in this ultimate urban call to arms it is important that we do not lose sight or understanding of why the state would invest so much time and energy in defending the City of London whilst so much of the UK remains in neglect.

In Solidarity

Ian

My Generation: Joining the Intergenerational Dots

Colleagues,

 

Life has been fairly frantic recently and whilst I've been keen to follow-up on the focus on Amazon et al and the thread that tax status and the omnipetence of multinationals there's been little time to sit down and get my thoughts together.

 

In the interim though just a brief note on a wholly worthwhile morning spent making the connection between differing parts of the UK's labour movement. On behalf of The Age & Employment Network (TAEN) which is now part of the General Federation of Trade Unions (GFTU) I was asked to chair a panel session (entitled My Generation) during the residential event for new National Union of Students (NUS) further education (FE) sabbatical officers.

 

TAEN is just ending a year-long European project seeking to generate good practice in the intergenerational engagement in civic and political life. To round off this project TAEN (www.taen.org.uk) was able to make a link with the NUS on the basis of exploring how differeing age groups, within the context of education and/or employment, could benefit from greater engagement with civil society institutions like the NUS and workplace trade unions.

I was particularly pleased to discover that the panel was to include the newly elected NUS President Toni Pearce (second from left above) who makes history as the first President to come from an FE background and who doesn't hold a degree. On a personal note, having sprung from Ruskin College in the early 90's as someone else without a first degree, and spent a significant period of my teaching career in this sector with adult learners, Toni's election is a welcome break from the usual suspects who tread a well worn path via the NUS into political life or that of the quancocracy or similar.

 

Also joining the panel was the indomitable Dot Gibson of the National Pensions Convention (http://npcuk.org/) (middle of picture above) and it was a genuine honour to share a platform with someone who has spent a significant part of their life fighting so hard for the rights of others. Unbeknown to Dot she now has a starring role in Ken Loach's new film, the Spirit of '45 - and you are thoroughly recommended to see it: http://www.thespiritof45.com/.

Also joining us was Keith Frost (last on right above) who has worked for TAEN and was joining Dot in providing for the panel discussion an historical perspective on the changing nature of work and of the differing contributions that older workers and learners can bring to bodies like the NUS.

 

The debate itself was thought provoking and on a personal note I have to say how rewarding it is to be able to hear from speakers representing age groups quite distinct from those of the mainstream TU officers and activists that my day-to-day work involves. The views expressed represented a genuine commitment to bring together student groups from diverse backgrounds in the different FE institutions the students were drawn from. All of those who spoke understood that the challenge of being an FE student can be just as difficult for those who are 'mature', part-time and carers.

 

The contributions of Dot and Keith helped underline the need for these sabbatical officers to tap into an additional, experienced body of support for the work of the NUS from older, and non-traditional leaners. In concluding the session Toni reinforced a message that was distinct in her election campaign, which was to re-energise the work in the NUS in FE and help bring the distinct voice of this often marginalised group of learners to the forefront of the union's work. I have no doubt that she will work hard at doing this, and I wish her, and the new NUS sabbatical officers in FE all the very best in meeting this goal.

 

In Solidarity

 

Ian

Who Rules When There are no Rules?

Colleague, the allies at the Tax Justice Network (TJN) have beat me to an analysis of a great piece in the FT on April 30 about Amazon’s US political machinery which appeared as part of the paper’s tax competition and regimes series.

My particular interest in the piece however wasn’t the sheer arrogance of Amazon in rebuking countries for their effrontery in requesting that the firm comply with domestic and business taxation duties, but moreso how the article helped to articulate a corporate strategy of naked ambivalence towards any form of civil or moral responsibility to the nation states in which they operate.

There are indeed many on the right of political life who would argue that Amazon’s brutalist approach to managing its affairs are what comes within the domain at operating beyond the fringes of mainstream land-based, tax paying business – a kind of cowboy utopia. When, however, the US Congress now attempts to force online retailers to gather tax what we can see is the full force of a complex corporate assault upon federal and state’s rights to assert a dominant, restraining influence on business behaviour.

As we have seen with Amazon’s response to the UK Treasury select committee when challenged over its tax avoidance behaviour it threatens the relocation of jobs and divestment and much the same has happened in the US, backed by legions of lobbyists, and supported by a rabid army of anti-tax Republicans and libertarians.

This is all very much redolent of what I have written of in this blog before; an inherently mercenary business approach which expects to be able to cleave any advantage from its largescale business operations, whilst at the same time avoiding any responsibility that accrues from operating at that size and scale. 

I have previously written about this in the context of corporate personhood – the demand of the corporation to be treated as citizen in order to dominate civil society – but here with Amazon and their ilk we see something even more sinister – if that were even possible.  It is of an economic and political predominance so overweening that it can set the parameters and limits of how the state, government and civil society may ‘interfere’ in its activity.

This analysis is best summed up in the final paragraph of the original FT piece that kicked off this blog post.

Essentially, Amazon has become so dominant that it no longer cares to fight. It has played out the clock longer than it dared hope and would now like to be able to build warehouses everywhere without doing state-by-state battle over its “physical presence”. In other words, this is not a case of Congress finally choosing to act. It is a case of the owners finally giving it permission to do so.

The TJN and original FT pieces are linked here: http://taxjustice.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/ft-opinion-writer-gets-it-on-amazons.html

In Solidarity

Ian

Another Tragedy in Savar

Colleagues,

History is doomed to repeat itself as yesterday yet another building collapse in Bangladesh confirms what we know when corporates based in the global north seek to exploit the poverty and informality of the global south.

Earlier this year I reported on the publication of Doug Miller's account of an earlier building collapse (Last Nightshift in Savar) and of the global campaign by the ITLGWF and the Clean Clothes Campaign to seek justice for the widows and orphans of that earlier tragedy.

And in my last posted item I commented on a trip to the US in March of those who were effected by the November 2012 building collapse at the Tazreen Factory and the critical role this played in the campaign aimed at WalMart to improve global labour standards.

We were fortunate at Ruskin College to hear personally from Doug Miller when he visited to speak to the MA ILTUS students in March and a particularly informative aspect of his talk was just how ruthless ruthless multinationals are in selecting Bangladesh as a core feature in the supply chain for ready made garments (RMG).

Laia Blanch of War on Want has been quoted extensively on yesterday's tragedy stating emphatically that "It is dreadful that leading brands and governments continue to allow garment workers to die or suffer terrible disabling injuries in unsafe factories making clothes for Western nations' shoppers."

The power to effect change that is driven by multinationals is possible. Doug's book chronicles for example the decison by the Spanish corporate Inditex to financialy compensate the families of those affected by the 2005 factory collapse.

Even that however is essentially remedial, as the major issue in Bangladesh is building and labour standards.

Primark has yet again been found to have a supply chain connection with a major disaster and so we can only hope that some form of pressure can be brought to bear to diminish what on a human scale is the worst form of outcome for already impoverished, exploited workers and their families.

In Solidarity with Bangladeshi Garment Workers

Ian

Pretty Simple Advice to Wal Mart

Colleagues,

In an unprecedented showing of co-ordinated action representatives of workers across the global Wal Mart supply chain have collaborated to develop and launch a no-nonsense outline of simple to follow core principles to enable the multinational to meet key labour standards.

I wrote earlier this year of a similar focus on fire safety which had been driven largely by the factory fires in Bangladesh and Pakistan in 2012. Here however, labour movement organisations have looked right across the history of Wal Mart's poor approach to employment and working conditions to generate a set of standards applicable globally and rooted in a wide variety of gross breaches of rights and other violations of basic and human rights.

The news of the meeting has been reported in several forums and as ever the coverage supplied by those behind the Labour is not a Commodity blog and International Labour Righs Forum is to be welcomed. For this blog though I'd like to draw on the  coverage supplied by a relatively new US-based labour movement body, Warehouse Workers United (http://www.warehouseworkersunited.org).

Wal Mart is facing pressure currently on a number of fronts, not least domestic arising from the series of wildcat strikes carried out by their own workers in late 2012 and reported in this blog. The most consistent form of pressure on the multinational has however come from the labour movement globally and so the meeting on 9th April leaves Wal Mart yet a further headache.

At this meeting were represenatives of  the National Guestworker Alliance, Bangladesh Center for Workers Solidarity, Warehouse Workers United, New Labor, Warehouse Workers for Justice and Jobs with Justice. Strategically this event coincided with the arrival in the US of Bangladeshi workers who have survived the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh last year. These workers are here to press the case for the adoption of the Wal Mart labour code with senators and representatives in a series of meetings in April.

The WWU coverage of this development is well worth reading and if you follow this link you'll also be able to read the detail of the proposed code. Over the next few months I'll be following the progress of this work and will write this up for the blog: http://www.warehouseworkersunited.org/global-supply-chain-workers-pressure-walmart-to-get-serious-about-labor-conditions/

In Solidarity

Ian

Margaret Thatcher: My Part in Her Downfall



CPSA & NUCPS Strikers Outside EOC HQ Sept 1989

 Colleagues,

With the tremendous news of the departure of Thatcher I am reminded of my own part in her demise as Prime Minister - or at least, this is the story I've been peddling for decades.

Prior to heading off to Ruskin in 1989 via a TUC scholarship I was a CPSA activists occupying various branch roles in what was then the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) in its head office in Manchester.

Then, as now, the Tories took the opportunity of being in office to hammer those statutory agencies which in any way addressed the inequities of capitalist society. So, under various Home Secretaries from 1979 the EOC suffered yearly cuts in funding and influence. In addition, the Commission was one of those organisations which was treated as a pilot under Thatcher's infamous Next Steps initiative to commence the path to outsourcing, privatisation etc.

Quite rightly the EOC decided that enough was enough and by 1988 we decided that a strike was on the cards. And, in an early crowning achievement as the EOC Branch Secretary I worked with the Branch Chair (Mark Dodman - to my left in the picture above) to steward and organise a joint strike with the more moderate members of what was then NUCPS.

The picture above was taken in September 1989 and shows the vast bulk of staff out on a day's industrial action, supported by colleagues in regional offices in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The strike was a succes in as much as it united staff and brought a sense of solidarity - even if not the extra cash we were after.

A month later and I was starting my Diploma in Labour Studies at Ruskin and, with this news this leaked to Downing Street, Thatcher starts to crumble and at this point the likes of Heseltine et al commence the slow, steady process which witnesses her tearful exit from No. 10 in November 1990.

So, farewell Thatcher, you are as despised as you are venerated and I, like many hundreds of thousands of young men and women in the 1980s, remember starkly an era of hopelessness and despair. Thankfully I was able to pursue a route out of this vacuum via the labour movement - and remain thankful for tis- but for far too many others this was not the case. For the gross negligence of the misery your wrought I am one amongst many who are glad to see the back of you.

In Solidarity

Ian

A Cause for Concern in St. Davids

Colleagues,

Am having a splendid time with my wife and youngest daughter in the beautiful west Wales city of St. Davids. Plenty of bracing walks, fresh (very cold) air and good food. The cathedral here is fantastic and even for the wretched sinner like me it is worth a mooch about. Off to see the ancient megaliths tomorrow and then heading home for teaching at Ruskin this weekend.

 

 

 

Despite the rest and good times here, it has been quite depressing to read the coverage of the perfect storm of austerity measures which came into being yesterday. There are changes now being implemented that not even Thatcher would have thought of.

 

The good news (for some at least) is that even the Tories themselves expect a sound kicking at the country council elections in May. Have a look at this story and follow the links to related items: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2013/apr/01/conservatives-county-council-elections

 

In Solidarity

 

Ian