History

Minnie Lansbury

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Author: 
Janine

Janine on Stroppyblog commemorates Minnie Lansbury, whose memory deserves to be dragged from out of the shadow of that of her father-in-law George Lansbury.

Background notes on Marx's "18th Brumaire"

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Timeline of events

Since 1830 France had been ruled by the Orleanist faction of the monarchy. It was more liberal than the Bourbons; but "it was not the French bourgeoisie as a whole which ruled but only one fraction of it - bankers, stock-market barons, railway barons, owners of coal and iron mines and forests, a section of landed proprietors... the so-called financial aristocracy" (Marx).

Workers' Liberty dayschool: New Unionism: how workers can fight back

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Date: 
18 February, 2012 - 11:30 - 17:30
Location: 

Highgate Newtown Community Centre, 25 Bertram Street, London N19 5DQ (Archway tube)

Description: 

Click here to download leaflet.

Registration: £15 waged, £8 low-waged/ student, £4 unwaged. To register online, click here, and enter the details of the amount you're paying and the registration you require when paying online.

In the late 1880s, workers (often unskilled or semi-skilled, often migrants and often working in casualised and precarious environments) organised militant industrial unions to fight back against their bosses. Socialist activists like Eleanor Marx, Tom Mann and Will Thorne were crucial to the struggles.

Faced with increasingly similar conditions today, can we build a New Unionism for the 21st century that transforms and revolutionises the modern labour movement?

Agenda

11:30-11:45 – Registration

11:45-1:15 – Workshops

* How the socialists organised: the life and times of Tom Mann (Cathy Nugent and Charlie MacDonald)
* The movement for working-class self-education (Colin Waugh, further education activist, author of Plebs, the Lost Legacy of Independent Working-Class Education)
* Finding a political voice: from New Unionism to Labour representation (Martin Thomas and Sam Greenwood)
* Organising the unorganised: (Mick Duncan, Unite p.c; Ruth Cashman, Lambeth Unison p.c.)

1:15-2:00 – Lunch

2:00-4:00 – Workshops

* From the Matchworkers to the Chainmakers – how women organised (Jill Mountford and Louise Raw, author of Striking a Light, The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History)
* What came next – The Great Unrest 1911-1914 (Edd Mustill)
* Organising at work today: using the ‘Troublemakers’ Handbook’ (Kim Moody, founder of Labor Notes magazine, academic, author — most recently US Labor in Trouble and Transition — and activist)

4:00-4:15 – Break

4:15-5:30 – Closing plenary: New Unionism 2012? How can we reinvigorate the labour movement? Speakers include Eamonn Lynch (Bakerloo Line driver tube driver victimised for his union activity and reinstated following an RMT campaign), speaker from IWW London Cleaners' branch and Jean Lane (Workers' Liberty and Tower Hamlets Unison)

Tickets: £15 (waged), £8 (low-waged), £4 (unwaged)

Creche, cheap food and bookstalls

Poplar 1919-21: when a Labour council stood up and fought for the working class

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Date: 
11 November, 2010 - 19:00 - 21:00
Location: 

The White Horse pub, Peckham Rye (ten minutes from Peckham Rye station)

Description: 

Hosted by South London AWL.

In 1919, the residents of Poplar in East London elected a socialist Labour council - a council which did not just make left-wing speeches like those elected in the 1980s, but stood up and fought the Lib Dem-Tory coalition then in power. The councillors went to jail, but a mass movement eventually forced the government to fund the services the council had built.

As another Lib Dem-Tory coalition slashes public services, the question is: will Labour councils administer the cuts, or will they help trade unions and local communities fight back?

Speaker: Janine Booth, activist in the rail union RMT and author of the book Guilty and Proud of it, about the Poplar struggle.

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