Solidarity 3/149
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Download pdf (see "attachment"). Solidarity 3/149 is eight pages, rather than the usual 20, because we have gone to press early in order to be able to get the paper distributed before the Easter holidays.
Solidarity 3/149, 8 April 2009
Workers occupy against job cuts
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“Sit-down strikes,” wrote the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky not long after huge waves of factory occupations in France and the US (1930s), “go beyond the limits of ‘normal’ capitalist procedure. Independently of the demands of the strikers, the temporary seizure of factories deals a blow to the idol, capitalist property. Every sit-down strike poses in a practical manner the question of who is the boss in the factory: the capitalist or the workers?”
Strikers, occupiers, don’t wait for union leaders!
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Olivier Delbeke, a CGT union activist in Paris spoke to Solidarity about the trade union day of action in France on 19 March
Demand freedom to protest
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On Wednesday 1 April thousands of anti-G20 demonstrators protesters converged on the City of London in a series of protests which aimed to highlight capitalist responsibility for climate change, environmental destruction, poverty and war.
The 1970s: 200 factories occupied in Britain
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In the four years from July 1970, British capitalism “lost” more than five million working days to combined industrial action against a new Industrial Relations Act and government incomes policy.
Jobs fight: London Underground, media
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As we go to press workers on London Underground are balloting over strike action to defend job cuts and pay.
London Underground is cutting more than a thousand jobs in administration grades. Transport for London is due to cut around three and a half thousand jobs over the next eighteen months.
Glasgow parents occupy
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The occupation by parents of the Wyndford Primary School and St. Gregory’s Primary School in Glasgow which began on Friday 3 April is part of a Glasgow-wide campaign (Save Our Schools) triggered by proposals for a city-wide cull of primary schools and nurseries.
Wirral campaign stops closures
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Just as the boards were going up on the first of eleven libraries due to be axed by Wirral Council, we were told that the closures would be halted pending a Government enquiry.
After student conference
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The National Union of Students conference (31 March-2 April) saw the union’s right-wing leadership in the ascendant. Having passed their new anti-democratic constitution, they used the momentum to ride roughshod over the left:
• Right-wingers repeatedly claimed that it is unrealistic to demand free education
How sit-in strikes built the unions in USA
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Throughout the twentieth century there were periods of class struggle that saw workers occupy factories and workplaces: in the 1920s in Italy; in the 1930s in France, the USA and elsewhere; in France in May 1968. And in Britain in 1973-75 there were over 100 occupations over job cuts.