march 26th mass protest assembles on the embankment

The other phenomenon (that has received disproportionately more media attention) has been the much smaller scale actions of the more radicalised minority of mainly young people that took place around Oxford Street. It is, nevertheless, an important phenomenon. It is by and large a new generation that has been brought together by their experiences of a range of struggles from resisting the government’s attacks on their education to taking direct action over climate change and global corporate power. While they may have different tactics and ideas amongst each other, they are united by an awareness of the need to take ‘direct action’ – and scorn ‘A to B’ marches as of little value, frequently referring to the apparent failure of the massive ‘stop the war’ march in February 2003. This direct action has different forms – associated with different parts of the movement – from the collective act of the mass and peaceful occupation of a building to the ‘blac-bloc’ of masked ultra-mobile up hit squads engaging in acts of petty property destruction belonging to corporate targets. It is important to note that none of it is aimed at violence or harm towards individuals, despite the plurality of tactics. They also share a common potential pitfall as well – which will become clear as you read on.

On one hand I want to defend the emerging generation of radical activists who take ‘direct action’. I want to stand in solidarity with them against the state violence and media vilification that is being heaped on them. I also want to win my sister and brother trades unionists to stand in solidarity with them, and not line up behind the ‘official’ denunciations coming from the Labour and Trades Union movement high-ups. But on the other hand I want to question and critically assess the tactics of the radical direct actionists, in order to develop a better practice amongst all of us. I hope this is a learning experience for us all.

Ian Bone – the ‘notorious anarchist’ and founder of ‘Class War’ makes some useful points in his blogs discussion of last Saturday’s events. While orgasmic and celebratory in his relaying the spectacle of several hundred fit and fast young people grouped together in a very mobile version of the blac-bloc tactic, he makes some telling criticisms, albeit in a positive and supportive tone: “There was” he notes “no relation/connection with the 400,000 demonstrators in Hyde Park” and he goes on to declare that:

“We cant just run anarchist only actions. We need to find away in for the multitude comrades. For the rest of our class to take part in their war”.

He points to how the street-selling of ‘class war’, the paper he helped found used to form “some sort of bridge between the mass of demonstrators and the anarchists” and urges new ways to be found to make connections between ‘the mass’ and ‘the anarchists’. Likewise, the more ‘fluffy’ direct action advocates around the successful UK-uncut tactic of occupying or protesting outside tax-dodging high street corporations attempt to make these links – leafleting the main march with the call to break away and join them by ‘occupying for the alternative’. And thousands of angry young people did join them, wanting more than an ‘A to B’ march. But these ‘bridges’ are fragile and Saturdays events and how things have panned out now raise the risk that the divisions become even wider and the official Labour and Trades Union bureaucracies are able to drive a wedge between rank and file trades unionists and the youthful radical direct action networks.

It is important that the mass movement – of potentially millions of workers, trades unionists and their communities – is infused with radical and left-wing ideas and methods of struggle. It is important that it evolves into a movement of mass direct action, one that becomes a popular and mainstream phenomenon undertaken by many millions. This is vital for our victory. As events unfolded last Saturday I found myself not attending any of the self-styled minority ‘direct actions’. Instead I stayed with the mass march – which was anyway impossible to leave and at times agonizingly slow. Indeed this slow tempo and pre-determined route is in itself a great metaphor, taking on significance when contrasted to the dashing around and random mobility of the black clad youths. But I remained pressed solid amidst the trades unionists and individuals of all ages with whom I had travelled from my small northern town.

Embedded Radicals.
My experience of the mass march was enlivened by three personal highlights: Firstly the experience of the Lancashire National Union of Teachers special chartered train, which brought together over 500 assorted local activists mainly from the trades union and labour movements of four towns in my area. This shared journey alone has helped us build the networks of solidarity that will be crucial in the battles to come. Addresses and numbers were exchanged, along with campaign materials, experiences and much more. On board socialist groups sold their entire stocks of agitational newspapers, having to ration them. The second highlight was creating an impromptu march from our trains terminus at Euston Station to the official march down at the Embankment. We stumbled off the train in full effect, with our megaphones, banners and a samba band put to immediate and startling use! The band was of local musicians who work in education, complete with drums, saxaphone and trumpets! As we marched we grew in numbers, as thousands were heading in the same direction from all over. And we began to evolve a new art form – neither simple megaphone slogans nor pure samba rhythms – but instead a political chanting samba – that everyone could join in. It was great to be sweeping through the streets on a spontaneous route, from filling the echoing cavern of Euston with dancing and chanting, turning heads from ‘ordinary’ travelers, to drawing applause from bystanders on the streets along our way. The third highlight was then animating our section of the main march, helping it become a carnival of dancing and singing – collectively booming out ‘power to the people’ and such like. While it was exhilarating to mass up with half a million fellow trades unionists, it was also then of course a bit of an anti-climax finally arriving in Hyde Park to listen to the official speeches.

But this was an experience of ‘embedded radicalism’, one that works within and alongside the mass mobilization. Socialists – either as ‘trot sects’ or wider networks of individuals including myself are always at the heart of the great mobilizations – publicising the protests with posters and flyers, organizing transport, etc. But it often means sticking to the slower pace of the mass march – literally and metaphorically. This raises the question of how socialists can make and deepen their connections with the ‘mass struggle’ while at the same time attempting to lead it towards the kind of mass direct actions that can defeat governments.

The socialist left think they have a clear answer in these circumstances – that is to help push the movement towards some sort of generalized strike action. A hopeful sign is that some unions including UCU, NUT and PCS are apparently now planning a one-day strike against the governments attacks on 30 June 2011. Some other union leaders are talking radical: Len McClusky, leader of UNITE told saturdays 500,000 strong Hyde park rally that “this is only the start. We need a plan of resistance including coordinated strike action.” Lets hope he puts his money where his mouth is – and turns words into deeds. If all the unions of the workers affected by the cuts called coordinated strike action this summer this could involve many millions of workers in direct action. The strike is the classic form of working class direct action. Compared to smashing a bank window it poses far more of a threat to the rulers – and what is more, it necessarily involves working class people in their own liberation as a collective act, rather than as mere onlookers to the radical spectacle. So socialists are trying to win mass support for this idea, passing pro-strike resolutions in every union branch and body – and if we pull it off, going for mass daytime strike rallies of all workers in every locality.

Future Hope
Many of the ‘new generation’ of radicals such as ‘UK-uncut’ have cut their teeth in movements such as the climate camp, which itself has roots in a long tradition of radical direct action from anti-nuclear protest to animal rights and anti-road / environmental struggles. What happens when these radical traditions meet with the workers struggle? What is apparent is you cannot simply occupy a workplace on behalf of the exploited workers within. Rather, you must help those workers organize action by themselves and for themselves. This is a much harder and more long term task, and runs up against the fact that the majority of workers may often feel atomized and defeated, the radical minority amongst them isolated and even where a union exists a stifling conservatism of spirit is exerted by its bureaucratic officials.

Nevertheless, progress on this front is being made. Saturdays march brought together thousands of groups of workmates who compose the base of the organized workers movement, clusters of shop stewards and reps, branch exec’s, lay activists and supporters. This would have increased the confidence of these people, who are key to now winning the demand for a one day public sector general strike.
But while this is undoubtedly a hopeful and realistic strategy it is still at a slow tempo, excludes those outside the unions, especially the angry youth – and ignores the streets as a key arena of struggle. As we have seen, claiming the physical space of a major square in a nations capital city can play a crucial role in galvanizing opposition and escalating the pressure on governments.

Here we return to the blog of our ‘notorious anarchist’ comrade Bone. While I don’t want people to think I endorse his views (he is usually stupidly wrong at key moments) he once again has something rather interesting about this to say on his blog, calling for an overnight encampment at Hyde Park Corner– ‘stay for one more day’. Other activists took up a similar idea, of turning ‘Trafalgar Square in to Tahrir Square’. While this didn’t happen last Saturday for various reasons – ranging from police violence to the activists lack of organization and the still sluggish overall tempo of the struggle, this tactic should remain on the cards for us. Governments are rattled when they face more than a one off demonstration – when they face a wave of permanent protest, with the streets filled every day, and central squares become protest encampments and carnivals of debate. The student protests at the end of last year were becoming weekly, escalating the sense of this possibility here in the UK.

Thus activists cannot simply summon the permanent street occupation – it will only come if a number of factors converge and the tempo of struggle increases. This is related to our ability to open up more fronts in the struggle, from pensions to the NHS, drawing together greater social forces – and on a crucial dialectic of actions between the workplaces and the streets. The street occupation would need to be part of daily protests and weekly mass mobilizations. And if and when we feel the time is ripe, the tactic will have to be carried out well.

If we were to have carried this off last Saturday, for example, we would have needed to summon 20,000 to 30,000 into Trafalgar Square after the half million strong march. We would need the coordinated action of all radical and socialist groups around this one common objective, filling the square with people, putting up tents, getting well known musicians and performers on a stage, creating a peaceful and calm atmosphere. And we would need an agreed protocol of no blac-bloc tactics of property destruction or similar provocations. Rather we would need to use tactics that maximize our links to mass public support to escalate the political cost of police violence against us. We would need the full use of all cultural tools of struggle, even the deployment of any sympathetic media celebrities plus cameras on our frontline! All this would be part of a massive publicity exercise with the unambiguous message that we were carrying out a mass peaceful street occupation. A key part of this involves denying the state an easy propaganda target through avoiding the self-marginalising habits and fetishes of the anarchist ghetto. The climate camp almost managed this on some occasions – maybe a mass anti-cuts street camp / festival will emerge out of the right combination of actions this summer? This would be a perfect supplement to the wave of strikes and continual protests that we need.

But to move towards this, the new generation of activists need to move beyond any elitist and patronizing dismissals of those on ‘A to B’ marches and the fetishisation of their tactics of self-marginalisation.

I have also updated a backlog of comments that had accumulated – both supportive and critical of the positions taken here – so let the debates resume!

The break from blogging since October signified something else – a return to ‘real life’ activism on my behalf. For it was in October that the anti-cuts movement took off in the UK. Since then I have been busy helping to organise local protests and meetings in my town – often hundreds strong – to defend public services. Time will tell if I can maintain both commentary and activism – and my day job – and my normal life!

Firdos Square during the famous toppling of the Statue of Saddam Hussein

A mass popular revolution achieves two things – not only can it bring down a tyrannical regime – but it also organises something to fill the vacuum. Civil society grows in a revolution – mass democratic organisations and associations emerge at the grassroots, able to unite the people. But none of this emerged out of the chaos of Bush and Blair’s ill advise Iraq adventure, and nor could it.

Now contrast the picture of Fardis Square, Baghdad in 2003 with pictures from Tahrir Square, Cairo in 2011. This is what a real revolution looks like – not a stage managed event – but the masses taking centre stage of history.

Tahrir Square, Cairo, 2011 - the masses topple Mubaraks tyranny

Lets hope this revolution – liberation from below – can bring real democracy and equality for the people of Egypt – in a way that Bush and Blair’s war machine never could for the people of Iraq.

I attended a lively protest of around 300 people outside the Town Hall of the small northern town of Lancaster on Wednesday. This was called at short notice to launch a local campaign, ‘Lancaster and Morecambe Against the Cuts!‘ and had a fairly good turnout for a weekday evening in a small city of only 50,000 people. Lots of people seem willing to demonstrate and campaign, hand out leaflets, put up posters and email workmates and friends.

Lancaster town hall protest against cuts

Image from Lancaster and Morecambe Against the Cuts!

This feels like the build up to the big anti-poll tax uprising of 20 years ago, or the big anti-war upsurge at the beginning of 2003. And this is before the scale of the cuts have hit home – communities will see their sports centres, swimming pools, libraries and many more local facilities threatened. Such measures could spark outrage and bigger protest campaigns reaching well beyond the various organised lefts and trades unionists who make up the bulk of this current initial wave of protest.

The Scottish TUC must be congratulated for calling todays march – and bringing together protest on a national scale. Today the TUC (covering all the parts of Britain) announced a national demo for London, proclaiming it would be its ‘biggest and boldest’ protest ever. This is good – but it is scheduled for the 26th March 2011! We need a big London March in the next few weeks! And looking to France, days of coodinated strike action might work here in the current climate of anger. However, we should still promote the TUC’s March 2011 event – which really could be big if it coincides with the anger that will be generated as the cuts really bite next year.

We also need the kind of politics which can unite the whole working class and wider society – otherwise people might fight each other in a game of divide and rule as councils try to get people to choose which services are cut – swimming pool users against library users, or whatever. We need to be able to point to the billions of pounds the super-rich have been exploiting from this society over the past decade. The richest 10% now own £4,000 billion – which is nearly 50% of all private wealth in the UK. The poorest 50% of the population own just 9%. The rich have got richer at the expense of the poor. Even if we just collected the unpaid taxes of the wealthy, we could get 100 billion a year! This is without raising the taxes to the level Thatcher had them at for most of her period in office – restoring these tax levels would bring in many billions more.

In other words, we need to re-articulate a popular politics of class in Britain. But Labour’s newly elected leader has already broken his campaign promises that made Trades Unionists feel he might do this. He pledged during the recent leadership campaign that he would speak at the TUC’s westminster rally on the eve of the cuts announcement last week. This was a major way in which he differentiated himself from his brother, who flatly refused to speak at the Trades Union protest. So Ed was able to pick up large numbers of Trades unionists votes, which won him the leadership. However, this week he backed out of this commitment, and refused to address the TUC event, frightened of the media jibes of ‘Red Ed’ and desperate to appease the bankers, ruling elites and the powerful right wing inside the Labour Party.

We will need to generate a grassroots movement of protest and resistance, like we did 20 years ago with the anti-poll tax movement that broke Thatcher. This movement had no official sanction from the unions or the labour party. Grassroots local groups just did it! But its still sad that our union leaders, with 7 million members and enormous resources are not pulling their weight. We can see what would happen if they really did get off their arses and mobilise properly – we only have to look across the channel and see the mass union actions shaking France, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy and elsewhere.

Todays Edinburgh March.

Great to see thousands of trades unionists and community campaigners lay siege to the Tory party conference yesterday. The footage on this well-made video shows a rich diversity of grassroots campaigners and working class movements. These included postal workers, health workers, teachers, council workers, private and public sector trades unionists, disability rights campaigners, community groups, including young and old and people of all ethnic, racial and religious groups. It was heartening to see all these united in the great common cause of our time – resistance to the public service cutbacks. Cameron and Clegg’s cut agenda aims to intensify the process of wealth redistribution from the working classes to the super-rich, making us pay for the crisis of their out of control system of finance driven capitalism.

This is just the start – protests, strikes and occupations must grow in response to the cuts that will be announced in the governments spending review on the 20th Oct.

The problem was that the centre is being cut – has just lost £47,000 – and the building itself, used by 44 local groups, faces closure as the council wants to sell it off! An outraged local community is campaigning against this, of course. He was therefore filmed being confronted by angry and concerned local people including parents, children, and workers at the centre. He even face the embarrassing and politically damaging moment of being presented with cards specially made by the children begging him and his government to stop the closure! Poor old ‘Nice Nick’ is inexorably becoming reframed as ‘Nasty Nick’.
Click here for the footage:

Opportunism in Crisis

This is of course a first class political blunder. But it is part of a much wider picture. The Lib-Dems have created their electoral base by hijacking popular local community campaigns against cuts exactly like this one. In the past they could always play the nice guy, opportunistically posing as all things to all people. Now we can see the real face of economic liberalism, as this party helps bring about the deepest and most destructive cuts in generations. In their foolish and greedy impatience for high office they have hitched themselves to an unprecedentedly vicious neo-liberal ideological and economic offensive against the welfare state lead by the Tories. Over time, as people experience and sometimes resist these bitter losses, the Lib-Dem’s electoral support will be fatally eroded, and they also risk tearing themselves apart.

Everywhere Clegg now goes, he will start to melt in this political heat. He is getting incredibly bad press – risking becoming typecast as ‘Calamity Clegg’ – as everywhere he goes he faces angry former supporters. So the very next day after this disaster at the childrens centre in London, he walks into the fire in Tyneside. The BBC headline is “Cuts dominate Nick Clegg’s return to Tyneside” while the Daily Mails spin is: “Clegg loses his cool: Deputy PM silences LibDem voter during ill-tempered meet-and-greet”.

But this only makes up half of Clegg’s crisis – the half composed of angry communities resisting cuts (communities which include dissillusuioned former Lib-Dem supporters). The other half is the Tory press and the Tory establishment who will also punish Clegg for two reasons. Firstly, they don’t trust him or like his occasional divergences from Cameron (seen as disloyalties) over issues like Trident or Iraq. Secondly as the coalition government becomes ever more unpopular and even hated by large sections of the public, the Tory press will need to find and focus attention on a variety of scapegoats. One of these scapegoats will be the Lib-Dem’s and their leader, who will be the fall-guys, crucified in a vain effort to save Tory skins (and seats)!

Clegg and the Lib-Dems are particularly vulnerable precisely because of their opportunistic past – of being all things to all voters. To appeal to disillusioned Labour voters the Lib-Dems posed as a leftish alternative to Labour, opposing the previous governments appalling record of wars, repressive laws, student tuition fees and other right wing policies. But they would put out a different tone of leaflet and campaign in more prosperous Tory voting areas. This usually worked until they took over a council, started privatising services and punishing the poor, soon becoming as hated as the Tories or the worst New Labour regime. But in the past, these were merely local problems for them caused by limited and localised exposures. Now, however, they are part of central government and this trick no longer works for them – and the chickens are coming home to roost.

So to answer the question posed in the title – yes – enjoy!

In this instance schadenfreude seems not only permissible, it may even be positively de rigueur! The Lib-Dem’s are the weakest link, the vulnerable pressure point in the Cameron regime. As their electoral support evaporates, more of the party will want to leave the coalition. This is the clearest way of bringing down the Cameron government and fighting its cuts.

But also lets build a genuinely radical alternative force in politics – one that challenges the dominant agenda of big-business, the war-mongers and sycophants of the super-rich. We need a force in politics which stands for liberty, equality and solidarity and which puts people and the planet before profit. We need a social and political movement which as its first priority organises to fight these cuts – and therefore fights to prevent this ugly Tory-Lib-Dem attempt to shift the balance of wealth and power still further in favour of the rich and ever further away from the common people.

Video: Matt McGinn sings ‘Wi’ Jimmy Reid and Airlie’ to images from the great UCS work in.
— — —

In the late 1960′s, British shipbuilding was in trouble, blighted by under-investment in new technology. For decades shipyard owners had milked the industry as a cash cow, relying on a super-exploited workforce and 19th century conditions. In response the Labour government, including Tony Benn, developed a strategy to save the industry and modernise it. They consolidated three major shipyards on Glasgow’s Clydeside into UCS – Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, part nationalising it with a 48.4% stake in the project and a £5.5m interest free government loan over the first three years. The new UCS had a labour force of 13,000 and an order book of £87m. By the end of 1970 the UCS Chairman could report that the company was “gaining in strength and morale as each day passes”.

However, the incoming Tory government of Edward Heath announced a shocking U turn, and announced the closure of the yard, threatening Glasgow with mass unemployment and an end to centuries of British shipbuilding, an industry where Britain had been a world leader.

The Tory plan to close the yard represented the beginning of a new core Tory strategy of de-industrialising Britain, as they began to pursue an alternative capital accumulation strategy around global finance. This new Tory strategy would also have one advantage for the conservatives – it would help shatter the power of their biggest enemy – the organised working class and the trades unions.

As the Tories brought in the liquidators, in response the UCS shop-stewards sprang into action, holding mass meetings in the yards. Lead by communist shop stewards Jimmy Reid, Jimmy Airlie and Sammy Barr they agreed that instead of striking and locking themselves outside the gates, they would stay inside the yards and occupy them. Furthermore, they would carry on working and building ships, defying the Tory liquidators, who were forced to accept that the workers were in control. The shop stewards insisted on strict discipline inside the occupied yards to portray the best image. Tony Benn led the offensive in parliament, highlighting the massive increases in productivity and the full order books for future ships.

Upper Clyde Shipbuilders Workers Occupation.

The workers occupation was able to rally the majority of society behind their fight. Mass protests of over 80, 000 people filled Glasgow to support the occupation, with 200,000 workers across the region joining solidarity strike action. Supporters from across society donated tens of thousands of pounds to help the shipyard workers cause, enabling those taking part in the work-in to continue to be paid throughout the action. The Scottish Trades Union Congress held a public inquiry that exposed the ideological nature of the Tory plan to close the yard, a plan hatched while they were in opposition, despite knowing the industry was viable. After 16 months of struggle, the Tory government gave in and agreed a settlement, giving £35 million in further subsidies for shipbuilding to continue. This represented a significant victory for the working class at the time.

This story shows what working class action could achieve, and shipbuilding continues on Clydeside to this day. Unfortunately, the British ruling class were still committed to their class war against organised labour and the de-industrialisation of Britain, sensing richer pickings through following the path of global finance capitalism. Their class war continued under Thatcher, and the key sections of the organised working class and British industry were destroyed. But the UCS occupation pointed to an alternative future, one made possible where organised workers take militant and creative action and win the leadership of the whole of society, to take it in a different direction.

Whilst we are in a different situation today, the lessons still stand. The power of organised labour can save society from the devastation of capitalist crisis, and open up a different future for us all. Young workers today must learn these lessons from their history and take inspiration, we need a new generation of the like of Jimmy Reid, as we face the battles to come, against Cameron’s attempt to destroy public services.

Jimmy Reid in 1971, leading the UCS work-in.

“Hi Nick, isn’t it about time you apologised to the British people for your party’s long history of anti-Semitism, homophobia and attacks on the Muslim community?”.

The reaction is both shocking and predictable. Tatchell is manhandled out of the way by Griffins minders, the ugly squad of BNP thugs in suits. But when Tatchell responds by pointing out how this represents typical BNP behavior, commenting in a clear voice that could be picked up by the cameras: “”This is the BNP in action. Look at them, they’re thugs” the thugs and their controllers realise the trap they are in, and retreat, allowing Tatchell to continue his questioning of Griffin.

Griffin simply flees. This shows how broken he is, along with his party. There was no flair or confidence, no attempt to offer a riposte to Tatchell, no attempt to to seize the media situation. Simple thuggery and then a cowardly retreat. Nick Griffin must be a tired and troubled man, his party in crisis, weak and without the energy to spontaneously perform for media. He is just a posh stuffed shirt only able to act in stage-managed situations, delivering pre-written lines.
Griffin crumbles before Tatchell’s calm and courageous tactics. Tatchell has not been well, suffering from past assaults on him by thugs belonging to both Mugabe’s regime and Russia’s far-right homophobes. Once again Tatchell deploys a dignified and principled nonviolence in the face of real risks from the thugs of dictators and fascists.
The fascists of the BNP and the crazed anti-Muslim bigots and racists of the EDL might face certain limitations. The far right attracts bitter and broken people, desperate to lash out, but too submissive to confront the most powerful institutions – the capitalist class – so instead they attack the relatively powerless. They victimise the scapegoats – sticking the boot in to refugees, migrant workers, ethnic minorities. The basic cadre of fascist movements like the BNP is always going to be drawn from the reservoir of sad, failing people on a desperate ego trip, all scheming against each other, driven by vanity and delusions of grandeur, while simultaneously nursing a perpetual victim mentality. The EDL are also riven by fractions, some fascist and some pro-zionist, or rival football firms and competing agendas.
But however much the fascists and the far right may crumble and fall, collapsing under their own internal contradictions and general incompetence, they will always be revived by a certain life-support system. The capitalist system is in a deep and protracted crisis. To deflect the blame away from themselves, the capitalist class need scapegoats. Therefore the capitalist owned media whips up wave after wave of campaigns against Muslims. The Daily Express appears almost as a single issue campaign against refugees, migrants and Muslims, trying to marginalise and demonise these groups still further. But all the ‘tory tabloids’ and the mutinational media empire of Murdoch, with the Sun, the Times and the News of the World play the same dirty game. The Express also showed how it was prepared to go for other targets, to use homophobia as well as islamophobia and more general racism. When it can combine racism, xenophobia and homophobia together in the same story, it responds with an especially vicious zeal, as in the recent attack on LGBT asylum seekers:

Daily Express - a homophobic, islamophobic hate sheet, an instrument of divide and rule for capitalism.

In a similar vein, the tuely rancid Daily Star wrote about this issue, going into full-on right wing bigot rant headlined “NO ROOM FOR GAYS”.
Thus capitalism, the capitalist media and pro-capitalist political parties will always stir up prejudice in a crisis, picking on the easiest target they can find from amongst the poor, the weak and the stigmatised. This provides the ideal nutrients for the fascist fungus to keep on growing. But Peter Tatchell’s actions this week showed that with courageous and bold action, fascism can always be confronted and driven back.