Strikes and trade union history

The left before 1968: two contributions

13 February 2016 conference: Before ’68: the Left, Activism and Social Movements in the Long 1960s Two contributions 1. Militancy and Solidarity on the docks in the 1960s 2. The life and times of Bob Pennington Click here to download pdf .

Les Forster, 1919-2016

The veteran Glasgow socialist Les Forster died last week, aged 96. Forster was the last survivor of a generation of socialist activists in the West of Scotland who broke with the Communist Party in the early 1950s and struck out to build a non-Stalinist and anti-Stalinist socialist tradition. That generation — which included Harry McShane and the lesser known (outside of Glasgow) Hugh Savage and Ned Donaldson — was a “bridge” between Glasgow’s “Red Clydeside” political traditions of the 1920s and 1930s and the New Left of the 1950s and 1960s. Born in Maryhill in the north of Glasgow in 1920...

When printworkers took on Rupert Murdoch

In 1986, Rupert Murdoch, working closely with the Thatcher government, set out to smash the print unions. Knowing how Murdoch did that is essential to understanding how he became a feared and feted establishment figure. Murdoch began his domination of media business in the UK with the acquisition of the News of the World in 1968, followed by the Sun (1969), then the Times and Sunday Times (1981). Soon after acquiring the Times/Sunday Times, Murdoch pushed through major staffing cuts and a wage freeze. A year later Murdoch went for further redundancies among clerical staff. At that time there...

The horror of ″the lump″

On Saturday 14 November, more than 100 people squeezed into the Three Minute Theatre in Manchester for a very rare showing of “The Lump”. ″The Lump″ is a film made for TV in 1967 by socialist Jim Allen, and produced for the BBC by Tony Garnett. It is an exposure of the corrupt building industry and the conditions of brutal exploitation and oppression of the workforce, especially of those trapped within the openly criminal, cynically violent, unregulated system of “the lump” — a government policy where workers were considered to be self-employed and therefore responsible for their own tax and...

“Bottom up not top down”

La Villita (Little Village), West Side Chicago, 2001. Parents demand that a school is built on vacant land. Nineteen go on hunger strike to achieve this goal. They pledge not to back down until there is justice on the south side of town. Many local people turn out to show solidarity with the hunger strikers. Not only do they win the demand for a school but also a role for teachers, parents and students in the design of the new building. So begins Banner Theatre’s musical account of the inspiring story of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and their supporters, in taking on and mostly defeating...

Race, class and the English worker

A review of Satnam Virdee's Racism, Class and the Racialised Outsider. Virdee covers two-hundred years of working-class history, but not as we know it. This is history, he says, “through the prism of race”, a contribution towards “unsettling the academic consensus which equates the history and making of the working class in England with the white male worker.” From the movement to abolish slavery to the rise of black self-organisation in the British labour movement in the 1980s, taking in the struggles of Irish and Jewish workers, the rise and fall of the Communist Party of Great Britain, and...

Independent Working-Class Education: a world to win

Hosted by educationalists and labour movement activists at Northern College on the last weekend of May, the IWCE's "A World To Win" was an excellent event which discussed key moments in the development of trade unionism in this country - from the Combination Acts to modern blacklisting, violent rioting in 1700s Liverpool to the GMB organising in ASDA. We also discussed the nature of what working class education should entail and considered Marxist economics, industrial history and philosophy. Practically, we set the basis for facilitating IWCE forums and talks in our towns and cities in the...

An Eyewitness Account of Norway's General Strike Against the Nazis

We present a day-by-day diary of the greatest strike movement which has yet taken place in the Nazi-occupied countries. It was written by a man who. Escaped from Noray. We think that this diary in its simplicity gives a better picture of Europe than ever-so many elaborate articles.It should be remembered, however, that events like this are as yet the exception and that in general the class struggle has not yet taken on such acute form. Monday, September 8 —The rationing of milk becomes effective. It provides that people will no longer get milk at offices or places of work. Only at retail...

The “precariat” of the 19th century

The Newport rising of November 1839, when a few thousand men from the south Wales valleys, many of them armed, marched in protest at working-conditions and for the right to vote, was the subject of a recent BBC documentary presented by actor Michael Sheen. Sheen’s brief was to explore the reasons behind political apathy (e.g. very low turnouts in elections) in a place otherwise known for its restlessness and radicalism. Retracing and walking one of the routes taken by the rebels into Newport, Sheen retells the story of the Welsh Chartism which inspired the Rising which ended in violent...

Books on war and revolution

War and revolution has been a theme of 2014. Workers’ Liberty comrades were asked to recommend some books on that theme, all readily available, and ideal for reading over the holiday period. The German Revolution 1918-23 by Pierre Broué This book is the most in depth account of a pivotal period of the twentieth century I’ve ever read. It has huge lessons for us today on the united front, transitional demands and the concept of a workers government. Paul Hampton Regeneration by Pat Barker The first book in this trilogy about World War One, starts by quoting “A Soldier’s Declaration”, Siegfried...

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