Crisis in the air – Where are the workers’ voices?

Angry Workers of the World

Will they listen? And who is Britain?

British Airways announced that it would be sacking it’s entire workforce of 42,000 people and re-hiring three quarters of them on worse pay and contracts – up to a 12,000 would be made permanently redundant, and for those that get the new contracts, some of the longest serving cabin crew would see their pay slashed by up to 75%! The deadline for a union agreement has passed, leaving BA employees in limbo as to their employment status and what happens next. A good write up has been done about the current situation here [1], so we won’t repeat it in this article. Instead we will focus on: the general tendencies within airline/airport work; the role of the unions and their strategy going forward in this particular dispute; and what’s happening on the ground at Heathrow from a workers’ perspective.

As the pressure to…

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Compendium of Marx’s Capital – new ACG book

Anarchy in the Sticks!

Anarchist Communist Group

The ACG is pleased to be publishing the first English language print edition of Carlo Cafiero’s summary of Karl Marx’s Capital.

Capital, Marx’s epic work, describes in detail the capitalist system and how it functions. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin saw the importance of Marx’s Capital, to the extent that he put any rivalries with Marx aside and immediately embarked on the first Russian translation.

But Capital is a notoriously hard read…

The anarchist communist Carlo Cafiero, rather than translate it, wanted to popularise Marx’s work in order to make it easier to read and be better understood by those who didn’t have a university education or weren’t so well versed in economics. In other words, his Compendium was aimed at ordinary working people.

Cafiero’s Compendium is a gateway to understanding the contents of Marx’s Capital.

This edition, translated by Paul M. Perrone, contains…

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Cipriano Mera and the Battle for Madrid 1939

The piece below is from the D.i.Y.CULTURE#10 | The Anarchist Revolution – Then And Now edition.

PLEASE NOTE – For the best viewing experience, we recommend that you download the PDF of DiY Culture No.9 from DropBox to your PC/laptop/phone.

Richard Parry, Anarchist & Author of The Bonnot Gang

While the anarchist clash with the Communists and Republican government during the ‘May Days’ 1937 in Barcelona is relatively well-known, this does not apply to the fighting in Madrid in 1939. The anarchists of the FIJL (Libertarian Youth) and FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation) lost the battle in Catalonia, and the revolution was put aside in favour of winning the war against Franco’s Nationalists. The CNT Ministers exited the Republic government and the POUM Trotskyists were exterminated.

Cipriano Mera was a CNT Construction worker leader in Madrid and a leading FAI member. In 1936 he led an anarchist column before becoming commander…

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“Tracksuits, Traumas and Class Traitors”

Anarchy in the Sticks!

Long awaited book now out by our good friend DP Hunter. Sadly you won’t be able to pick them in Dorchester at the bookfair in August but you will be able to order them online.

Peregrin

“Tracksuits, Traumas and Class Traitors” available now from the Class Work Project

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“Tracksuits, Traumas and Class Traitors” is about the ways in which economically and socially marginalised people practice abolition on a daily basis. It’s about the fight for dignity in the face of unrelenting contempt. It uses some of the authors own experience living in poverty throughout his first 25 years, as he goes in and out of prison, the care system and homelessness, and how he and his fellow travellers navigate trauma and each other.. It’s about the violence of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism, and the ways in which this violence hurts our bodies and minds. It’s about love, care and solidarity…

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Call for International Week of Solidarity With Anarchist Prisoners 2020 // 23 – 30 August

The piece below is from the D.i.Y.CULTURE#10 | The Anarchist Revolution – Then And Now edition.

PLEASE NOTE – For the best viewing experience, we recommend that you download the PDF of DiY Culture No.9 from DropBox to your PC/laptop/phone.

“Anarchists are the radical of the radical – the black cats, the terrors of many, of all the bigots, exploiters, charlatans, fakers and oppressors. Consequently, we are also the most slandered, misrepresented, misunderstood and persecuted of all.”

Bartolomeo Vanzetti

A new decade has started on this planet. With the rise of right-wing movements and the slow decline of social democracy, we are looking into coming years of intense struggle with the state and capitalism. There are already many anarchists sitting in prisons for taking on this fight—forgotten or ignored by liberals and human rights NGOs for “violent” actions.
Quite often anarchists do get solidarity from parts of the society from…

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Message from Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Southampton Branch

Dear All
One of our long standing Members/Group Officers, Jon Ellis, whom many of you will know, is entering the Big Ride for Palestine this year.Below is a message from him.
To sponsor Jon: Please make a payment to Acc:08269513 Sort:08/90/26

For Mr J D Ellis and Reference it Gaza. It will be sent to the Middle East Children’s Alliance.

Dear Friend of Palestine,

This year numerous small and local Rides for Palestine will be taking place around Britain during the week ending Sunday 2 August. The annual Big Ride covering 100 – 200 miles with hundreds of participants is not possible due to Covid 19 restrictions. Local rides will have a maximum of 6 riders in a group.

On Saturday 1 August I am leading a Hampshire / Dorset Ride from Lymington Quay to Poole Quay and back again, a round trip distance of about 44 miles.

44 miles is significant. It is the length of the militarized fence which imprisons the Palestinian people of Gaza, the site of hundreds of Palestinian deaths and thousands of wounded.

Please join me for the Ride on 1 August if you are free and if you can cycle the distance. If planning to ride please seek sponsorship. If unable to ride with me please consider sponsoring me to complete the ride.

The route is substantially flat, including the Bournemouth and Poole seafronts, with small hills in Bournemouth itself and between Highcliff and Lymington. The weather forecast is good. There will be a ONE HOUR stop for lunch on Poole Quay, with short stops in Christchurch and Bournemouth for publicity.

The Ride will depart from Lymington Quay outside the Ship Inn at 10am, reaching Bournemouth pier at about 11.30am and Poole Quay at about 12.30pm.  We aim to return to Lymington by 4pm. The ride moves at the speed of the slowest, and goes whatever the weather. We ride with the Flag of Palestine.

The Ride will be measured and recorded on the sports website STRAVA.

You can reach Lymington by train with a bike via Brockenhurst  – half hourly service, bikes free.

Contact to ride or sponsor : Jon Ellis,   Mob.07775982908

lymfriendsofpalestine@gmail.com

For info about the national Big Ride for Palestine event go to :

https://www.thebigride4palestine.com/

Southampton Palestine Solidarity will be in Southampton outside West Quay on 22nd August from 10.30am to 12.30. Tell HSBC and the UK Government to STOP ARMING ISRAEL. Come and join us. More details will follow in a further email in about 10 days time.

Best wishes
Cathryn M Spiller (Secretary Southampton PSC)

Red and Black Telly roundup

Builder’s Crack film premiere, Thursday 30th July, and more workplace and repression news and events

Cautiously pessimistic

A few events listings:

On Tuesday 28th, minicab drivers organised through the drivers’ branch of the IWGB are holding a car demo in London demanding that the congestion charge exemption for cab drivers be restored.

On Thursday 30th, a long-lost film about rank-and-file workplace organising from the 1990s is having an online premiere:

“Builders Crack: The Movie is a long lost film of rank & file union organizing amongst “self-employed” construction workers in the 1990s. The London Joint Sites Committee and their notorious fanzine, ‘Builders Crack’ waged a 13 year guerrilla war against gangster bosses in the building industry. The grassroots activists in this film led some of the most high profile unofficial industrial action, not just during the 1990s, but over the past 3 decades.

In 2020, union films are everywhere. In the 1990s, no-one was doing this stuff. Builders Crack: The Movie was groundbreaking and is…

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Kurdistan Solidarity Cymru: Women’s power for social revolution

Kurdistan Solidarity Network

Statement from women organised with Kurdistan Solidarity Cymru

On the occasion of the 8th anniversary of the revolution in Rojava being celebrated on the weekend of 19-19th July 2020.

Women’s uprising against power structures has been crucial for revolutions of past and present. Only the revolutions that are spearheaded by the need for the emancipation of women and their participation and leadership in the life of the community are destined for both social triumph and the most bloody confrontation, since no state or power structure would bear to be overthrown by women.

The Kurdish revolution and specifically the Rojava experience is one of the most important revolutions of the 21st century, where women are leading the revolution from the front for the community. We celebrate and pay tribute to 8 years of resistance against fascism and patriarchy with a fight that is an example for the world, for feminist struggles…

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Lucio Urtubia: An anarchist, bank robber, forger, fugitive and bricklayer.

The Free

Posted on July 12, 2016 by Julius Gavroche

Anarchism has historically been essentially comprised of those who sought to live a world without authority and exploitation.  The forms that this desire took, and continue to take, have varied greatly ideologically, organisationally, practically.  The desire though has remained constant; it is a desire that has defined an ethics, a way of being in the world.

We share a modest part of an example of such an ethics, in the life of Lucio Utubia …

Lucio, The Good Bandit: Reflections of an Anarchist

by Marie Trigona, Toward Freedom

Outspoken and charismatic, Lucio speaks like a true anarchist. When asked what it means to be an anarchist, Lucio refutes the misperception of the terrorist, “The anarchist is a person who is good at heart, responsible.” Yet he makes no apologies for the need to destroy the current social order, “it’s good to destroy…

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