Strikes and trade union history

Mussolini and Italian fascism

Unlike Hitler Mussolini had made compromises with the monarchy and the Church (in 1929 he gave the Vatican the status of an independent state and allowed the two million-strong Catholic Action to continue to function). Mussolini also had to manoeuvre between, balance, and play-off several competing cliques inside his own movement. Regional fascist organisations were organised through powerful local bosses often linked to organised crime. These structures and problems placed additional limits on his dictatorship which was authoritarian, but never totalitarian. Mussolini was a vicious thug –...

Mussolini and Italian fascism

“I am constantly amazed by man’s inhumanity to man.” Primo Levi “It is necessary, with bold spirit and in good conscience, to save civilisation. We must halt the dissolution which corrodes and corrupts to roots of human society. The bare and barren tree can be made green again. Are we not ready?” Antonio Gramsci A rapid and intensive development of modern, industrial capitalism took place north eastern Italy, especially in the area in and between Genoa, Milan and Turin, in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and the first two of the twentieth. The first electric power station in...

Frank Little, IWW organiser, lynched, 1917

Frank Little was an American trade unionist who, at the time of his death, sat on the General Executive Board of the Industrial Workers of the World. He was lynched in 1917 by six masked vigilantes; his “crime” was organising workers and denouncing the government in his speeches, calling US troops “Uncle Sam’s scabs in uniform”. Little was born in 1879 and, before joining the IWW in 1906, organised the Western Federation of Miners. He became heavily involved in campaigning for free speech rights in several places, most notably in Missoula where Little was arrested for making a speech on a...

Rebuilding working-class power

The “New Unionism” of the 1880s saw hundreds of thousands of unskilled and semi-skilled workers, many of them migrants, and prominently including groups of women workers like the Bryant & May match workers, launch mass organising drives that shook up the old labour movement. Their struggles challenged the orthodoxy of the existing unions and confronted conservative attitudes about whether such workers could, in fact, organise. The struggles of that period, and the “Great Unrest” which followed early in the 20th century, paved the way for the modern labour movement. On 29 March 2014, working...

Rebuilding independent working-class education

Colin Waugh from the Independent Working-class Education Network spoke to Solidarity about their draft manifesto. In the preamble to the manifesto, it is said that the document could be used as a pamphlet in order to build the network. What do you see as the main purpose of the IWCE network, and towards what end do you see it being built? To me, the central purpose of the network is to draw together a group of people who want to rebuild a form of independent working-class education that is in the spirit of the Plebs League but adapted to present-day circumstances. Through speaking engagements...

The Scab as Hero: The Miners Strike, 1984-5

"BY THEIR heroes ye shall know them... for in the individuals whom they exalt and glorify and hold up to the youth as example every class and every movement unfailingly reveals its standards of worth, its morality, its very soul. Thus, the communist workers of Germany glorified the name of the courageous and incorruptible Liebknecht who sacrificed his life in battle for a great cause. The degenerate Nazis countered with the dedication of their official hymn to Horst Wessel the pimp who was killed in a brawl... "The Southern (USA) slaveholders hanged John Brown. But the feet of the slave...

The Year of the Heroic Scab: The Miners Strike, 1984-5

"BY THEIR heroes ye shall know them... for in the individuals whom they exalt and glorify and hold up to the youth as example every class and every movement unfailingly reveals its standards of worth, its morality, its very soul. Thus, the communist workers of Germany glorified the name of the courageous and incorruptible Liebknecht who sacrificed his life in battle for a great cause. The degenerate Nazis countered with the dedication of their official hymn to Horst Wessel the pimp who was killed in a brawl... "The Southern (USA) slaveholders hanged John Brown. But the feet of the slave...

Industrial news in brief

Campaigners presented online retail giant Amazon with a 56,000-strong petition demanding it pay living wages. The hand-in, which took place on Friday 28 February, was the latest action in an ongoing media campaign to expose exploitation in Amazon warehouses. Campaigners have now set up a blog where Amazon workers can share and discuss experiences of working life. Yorkshire care workers' seven-day strike Workers at Care UK in Doncaster, South Yorkshire struck for a week from Thursday 27 February. Care UK, which won the contract tendered by Doncaster council to provid its supported-living...

Workers' Control of Industry in Bolshevik Russia

A MISTAKE MADE BY BOLSHEVIKI (From The Boston Traveler, Nov 21,1918) One of the big mistakes made by the Bolsheviki in Russia, was their failure after they got in power to keep managing brains in charge of businesses. They assumed that ownership of properties conferred upon them special magical powers which would enable them to operate businesses efficiently. If we may believe the dark reports that come from Russia, and there seems to be reason for doubting them, business has been paralyzed, factories are closed down and workers are everywhere down and workers are everywhere idle. The new...

The Origins of Work’s Control of Industry in Revolutionary Russia

A MISTAKE MADE BY BOLSHEVIKI (From The Boston Traveler, Nov 21,1918) One of the big mistakes made by the Bolsheviki in Russia, was their failure after they got in power to keep managing brains in charge of businesses. They assumed that ownership of properties conferred upon them special magical powers which would enable them to operate businesses efficiently. If we may believe the dark reports that come from Russia, and there seems to be reason for doubting them, business has been paralyzed, factories are closed down and workers are everywhere down and workers are everywhere idle. The new...

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