Letters

Eye-witness

I work in Millbank Tower, and at about 1.30pm the fire alarm went off and the building was evacuated - all 29 floors. On the way down the stairwell we could smell an odour and then saw green smoke floating up.

When we got to the ground floor reception, we could see graffiti on the floor. The plants had been scattered, windows had been broken and a couple of the seats taken. Our normal evacuation point was blocked, so we assembled at the back of the building. We could hear the students chanting and saw them surround the building. They used their placards to build a bonfire, while projectiles were being thrown at the thin line of police guarding the doors.

Later I saw some students in the building, and from where I was, back at work, I could see about 25 people on top of the building with banners and placards.

Eye-witness
Eye-witness

Left lessons

Clive Power calls on the far left to unite in order to avoid falling into even greater obscurity (Letters, November 11).

Surely, the lesson the left needs to learn from its consistently dreadful electoral performances is that it needs to stop playing the electoral game and chasing votes. Participating in elections simply validates a corrupt and dysfunctional political system. Instead, sincere revolutionaries should be organising on a non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian basis, promoting direct action and mutual aid.

As Pannekoek wrote, “The belief in parties is the main reason for the impotence of the working class; therefore we avoid forming a new party - not because we are too few, but because a party is an organisation that aims to lead and control the working class.”

Left lessons
Left lessons

Not cynical

Having waited for three weeks after the government’s comprehensive spending review, I was disappointed (but not surprised) to see absolutely no analysis in the Weekly Worker of the disproportionate impact on working class women of the forthcoming Con-Dem cuts, and the consequences for gender equality - a subject that I know is close to all our hearts. Oddly enough, none of these developments has been covered by your paper at all.

Likewise, the huge strikes in Birmingham, Brighton and Leeds councils, when European equal pay legislation was implemented by reducing the pay of men were, sadly, omitted from this paper. Who could have guessed that employers would try that? Not, apparently, the union negotiators.

Numbers of low-paid women council workers still await back pay. How do we rate their chances in current circumstances? Some have given up waiting for what they see as incompetent union representation and are taking cases with lawyers, who are obviously happy to take the cases and the fees.

It is interesting to compare your coverage of this with your extensive criticism of state interference with the inalienable right of men to pay for sexual access to other people’s bodies, and to compare the GMB’s relationship with the pimps’ club, the International Union of Sex Workers, with what some see as its failure to provide representation of its women members.

A cynical person could almost imagine that much of the ‘socialist’ movement regards women as a subsidiary type of worker, in fact better regarded as a facility for the real workers, and that we would be better employed pandering to the egotistical ‘sexual’ fantasies of inadequate men.

I am, of course, confident that the tireless commitment to the fight for gender equality always shown by readers and writers of this paper precludes such tedious misogyny. I remain optimistic that your usual insight and analysis will be brought to bear on these issues in the near future.

Not cynical
Not cynical

Damn lies

When first the media announce to a fanfare of trumpets and an almost hourly repetition that ‘alcohol is more dangerous than heroin or crack’ and then it’s repeated in the Weekly Worker it makes you think (‘End the war on drugs’, November 4).

But then very rapidly afterwards you reflect on your own life and everyone you know in the world and every experience you’ve ever had, and conclude that this doesn’t match the reality. It makes no sense. Drinking is the same as - nay, worse than - taking heroin or crack? But our own lives tell us that isn’t true. Whereas you can get soundly bladdered on drink of all descriptions, and live your entire life doing this regularly and still live a normal life, this really isn’t the case with heroin or crack. The incubation period from your first shot or hit to arriving at the road to hell, destitution and death is very short and sharp. There is no sensible comparison on the individual effects of heroin and crack against drinking. I am not here saying that drink can’t kill you or put you in the gutter or wreck your life - indeed it can. But it takes some working on to get there, and is a much slower fall into the gutter, and easier to pull back from.

When we look at the actual statistics what do we find? They are talking of ‘an overall’ comparison, not weighted by respective numbers involved with heroin over drink. So, simply put, because far more people drink, millions more than heroin users, there are numerically more effects. By this logic, putting a gun to your head and pulling the trigger is less dangerous than drinking. Of course, because far more people drink than shoot themselves, in among the number there will be more people dying from excess drinking. But in reality is either of these conclusions true? Having a drink or even having several drinks is not actually more dangerous and fatal than blowing your head off.

If David Nutt, the world’s leading neuropsychopharmacologist, would like to debate this matter with a former coalminer, he can bring a pistol, and I’ll bring a crate of broon ale and we shall test the theory anywhere he chooses. Likewise, should this world expert care to take a needle and a fix of heroin and inject himself with it, while I get quietly stewed supping a bottle of wine, we should soon see who had actually done more damage to themselves.

The truth is, the government is continuing with the previous social conditioning campaign to stop us drinking. They think by saying alcohol is worse than heroin we will think, ‘Bliddy hell, I’ll stop drinking’. Instead heroin takers will think, ‘Well, that’s OK then - shooting up is not as bad as drinking. I’ll continue.’

We should never be overpowered to the point where we abandon our own common sense experience for the ‘evidence’ of statistics and the state’s moral agenda, instead of our own judgments. The effects of excessive drinking on any individual can be bad, or even fatal, but are far, far less likely to be so than taking heroin or crack or making holes in your head with a gun.

Damn lies
Damn lies

Populist

It is interesting to note that in a ‘recession’, and under a Tory government, British music gets better. Protest makes for good pop. ‘Ghost town’ by The Specials is arguably the best ever number one hit single.

Despite the fact that privately educated and Brit-school-tutored pop stars currently dominate the charts, there is clearly an upsurge of Marxist-influenced acts, which remind me of the good old days of the socially aware acts of the early 1980s.

A notable example is The Agitator, a rock ’n’ roll act currently supporting The Jim Jones Revue on tour; and my personal favourite (in that there’s clearly some humour there too), Thee Faction (a communist R&B band). Check out their blog - it’s excellent (www.theefaction.org). I love the description by Simon Price on BBC Southern Counties, where I first heard them last week: “think Dr Feelgood meets Citizen Smith”.

Populist
Populist

Gay marriage

Matthew Toresen (48) and Scott Maloney (42) this week applied for a civil marriage, in a direct challenge to the ban on same-sex marriages. They were turned away on the grounds that UK law stipulates that marriage partners have to be male and female.

Responding to the refusal, Matthew Toresen said: “We’ve been together for 18 years and love each other very much. We want to get married. It means a lot to us. Although this rejection is hurtful, it is just a temporary setback in the long struggle for marriage equality. Next month, together with other couples, we will bring a joint legal action in the courts to challenge the ban on same-sex marriage.”

The couple’s bid is part of the new Equal Love campaign, which is seeking to overturn the twin prohibitions on gay civil marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships. In the coming weeks, a total of eight couples will file applications at their local register offices. Four same-sex couples will apply for civil marriages and four heterosexual couples will apply for civil partnerships. We expect that all eight couples will be turned away. They will then launch a joint legal action to end sexual-orientation discrimination in civil marriage and civil partnership law.

We see the Equal Love campaign as a historic quest for justice - morally equivalent to the campaigns to overturn the bans on inter-racial marriage in apartheid South Africa and the deep south of the USA. A similar ban on black marriages would provoke an outcry. So why should the ban on gay marriages be tolerated?

Our legal team will argue in the courts that the bans on gay marriages and heterosexual civil partnerships are unlawful and unjustified discrimination. In a democracy, gay and straight couples should be equal before the law. Both civil marriages and civil partnerships should be open to everyone without discrimination.

Gay marriage
Gay marriage

Flame-fanner

The spontaneous march of 50,000 students and lecturers shows that the struggle of the working class in Britain has entered into an offensive stage. Beneath the supposed calm in the working class is a deep hatred for the regime and big capital.

In France in May 1968, what started as a rebellion of students against the French imperialist attacks quickly spread to all workplaces. Most were occupied and taken over by the working class. Thus, while the students’ demands were the trigger, what was really at stake was a workers’ rebellion against the regime. More than 11 million workers in France were on strike. What sustained the rebellion was the occupation of the workplaces by the working class.

In London today, the student demands merely reflect the deep, widespread class hatred against the capitalist regime. The working class are ready to take action against the regime, even to overthrow it, but what prevents the masses from doing it is the role of the treacherous leaders within the working class, including the Socialist Workers Party, the CPGB, Workers Power, Socialist Fight, the Communist Party of Britain and the trade union bureaucracy.

In May 1968, the French Communist Party marched at the head of the demonstrations in order to win control of the spontaneous uprising. The masses were raising the slogan ‘Away with de Gaulle’, but the French CP wanted the masses to concentrate on elections. Time and time again, the French CP raised economic demands: they raised a demand for a 35% increase in the minimum wage and a 7% general increase. This was rejected by the masses. They raised the demand of a 10% general increase and this too was rejected for a while. But eventually the revolutionary momentum was lost and, after 30 days of heroic battles, an agreement was struck and the strike ended. Section by section, workers still occupying the factories were forced out by the combined forces of the French CP and the imperialist regime.

World imperialism and Stalinism have drawn the lessons of May 1968 in that they promote stayaways and pickets outside of workplaces. They do everything to prevent workers occupying workplaces because this directly leads to the development of a dual power of workers that could lay the basis for the workers to take power and overthrow the capitalist regime.

What is the immediate way forward? The first task is to make a call for general strike committees of workers, unemployed, students, rank-and-file soldiers, centred around the call of ‘Down with the imperialist Tory-Liberal regime and the monarchy’. Delegations should be sent to the army barracks to call the rank-and-file soldiers to form committees and to send delegates to the general strike committees. There should be the immediate setting up of workers’ self-defence committees as part of the general strike committees. Take over HSBC, the Bank of Scotland, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Barclays and all other banks, expropriate them without compensation to the capitalists and place them under workers’ control. Workers should occupy and take over their union offices, kicking out the treacherous bureaucrats who shield the imperialists by calling for symbolic action only in March next year. Share the work among all who can work, irrespective of whether you are British or immigrant, legal or ‘illegal’.

Call a congress of delegates of workers, unemployed, students and rank-and-file soldiers in Britain, where worker delegates from across Europe, the British colonies and semi-colonies are invited. Expropriate all imperialist assets in all the colonies and semi-colonies, without compensation, and place them under workers’ control.

The French CP and pseudo-left aligned against the French working class to keep the struggles defensive, ‘against the cuts’ and preventing at all costs that the demand be raised for the working class to take power in their own hands and doing away with the imperialist regimes with their own methods.

Indeed the first response of the CPGB is for all the coalitions to unite to form one anti-cuts campaign. The SWP calls for a broader student movement and a general vague call for more radical movements to be formed. Workers Power calls for an international ‘revolutionary’ student movement to be formed. The Socialist Fight are still hiding under the table (we can expect their profound words when the movement is on the decline). The SWP calls for support for a student movement, when the main task is to get the working class mobilised, to prepare to occupy the workplaces and to go on the offensive.

The spontaneous uprising of November 10 shows that the masses are already to the left of all the ‘left’ organisations in Britain. These ‘lefts’ want, just like they tried in 1968, to limit the struggle to student organisation - in other words, to neutralise any uprising against the state and big capital. They want to keep the demands centred on ‘maintaining’ past gains, whereas the only way to defend past gains and extend them is for the working class to take power in its own hands - no parliamentary route or law will win anything.

If the fight hots up, as in May 1968, whatever gains the capitalist makes will soon be eaten up by price increases. When imperialism and capitalism is in mortal danger, they will become the most ‘democratic’, the most ‘radical’; they will promise the earth. But, when the moment passes, they will turn on the masses, like they slaughtered the Paris Communards; they will make the streets flow with our blood.

Let the flames of London, Athens and Paris be taken to the whole of Europe and indeed the whole world! For those who support the above programme, we call for the formation of an organising committee to refound the Fourth International on the barricades of London, Paris and Athens.

The march starts with the Conservative Party HQ, it passes though the occupation of all workplaces, union offices and Buckingham Palace, the dispersal of the parliament and ends up with the new workers’ power, the dictatorship of the working class and the decisive end of the current dictatorship of the parasites, the handful of capitalists.

Flame-fanner
Flame-fanner

Anarchist guide

The organisers of the demonstration against the government’s cuts to education and the raising of the cap on student fees on November 10 initially expected about 8,000 to attend. But due to today’s zeitgeist (spirit of the times), it obtained far larger numbers despite the National Union of Students’ inability to organise a piss-up in a brewery.

An occupation of the Tory Party central offices in Milbank had been planned by London anarchist students and successfully executed. Word went round amongst some of the demonstrators to make their way to the Tory and Lib Dem offices, while most people were heading that way to get transport. The students outside the building then had to make a conscious effort to choose to remain there. The crowd had not been coopted by the anarchists. If anyone was coopted, it was the anarchists by the students. While maybe not quite the storming of the Winter Palace, it was still a great inspiration to those who are sick of us living on our knees.

The National Union of Students condemned the action not just because of its lawlessness, but also because of their subservient nature. The leadership of the NUS does not want wider links to be made to other government cuts. They think university students should be considered a special case. They see themselves and other students as middle class people who can appeal to government’s shared middle class identity. They are out of kilter with a vast number of students who have working class identities.

What would the NUS leadership consider a success in the campaign against proposed government changes? For the government to look at the figures again and make some minor adjustments. Better still for the NUS would be the new system of fees only being payable for new students.

Many of the people attending the demonstration are youngsters from pre-university age. Does the NUS seek to organise the next generation of students? Of course not. Their interests may conflict with those of present students. The NUS wants to see its members as individuals with atomised interests, not part of a wider society. This seems more than a bit cheeky, as they want wider society to pay for their education. The wider working class doesn’t mind paying for education if it is provided reasonably broadly and gives working class kids a chance to improve themselves.

The last thing that appears to be on the mind of the NUS leadership is defending the students arrested on that day. Those students are representative of those who wish to rise up against the government attacks on our standards of living. The only interests the NUS leadership represent is their own. They have been shown to hold their membership in contempt and seem to have little regard for them when facing the adversity of having a criminal record.

The leadership of NUS is only interested of appearing to go through the motions. God forbid anyone take protest seriously. Their middle class sensibility views militant action as uncouth. Mr Porter has proposed more lobbying and regards the behaviour on November 10 as something that will undermine his ability to have a quiet discussion over a glass of port with Tory ministers. Any concessions will still turn university fees into a massive millstone to any members of the working class and many of the middle class people who attempt to go to university.

The most disappointing aspect of the day for partisans of the working class has been the amount of arrests. While much pluck was shown by the young, a degree of naivety was on display. It is a time for the lessons of the past to be passed on to a new generation.

It was depressing to see Tory Party workers photographing and filming protesters who had failed to mask up. Back in the 90s, we always found the best approach was to calmly explain that we and our friends did not give permission to have photos taken, and that not respecting our wishes would lead to, at minimum, a broken camera. The BBC seemed to think they deserved special licence - we explained this was not the case. Hoods came into fashion along with CCTV. Just like the police, we chose to dress the same as one another. The folk who stand around also give good service to the cause. Not everybody is the sort who can get ‘stuck in’. But they need to hide the combative folk and not give succour to the grasses who only seek respectability.

Demonstrators need to be careful not to up the ante in an unwise fashion. People throwing objects from too far back is another risk to protesters. We also have a duty of care to the wider public. That is why we could claim with pride when the police accused May Day demonstrators of endangering the public that no workers got hurt when shops got done over on the May Day events. While we can show how the police brutality not only ups the ante but kills people going home from work and going to work on the tube.

The lad who threw the fire extinguisher from the roof was being rather silly and his comrades should have prevented him from doing it. The crowd did call on the occupiers to stop throwing things and they did stop. This shows how the occupiers where not about acting willy-nilly without regard to the concerns of those who showed solidarity with their actions. Revolutionaries should not let themselves be held back by the passive, but they should show due regard to those they seek to appeal to.

This is also one of the important reasons that protestors who wish to be combative need to have friends around them that they can trust. In a crisis only the people that have a personal bond will generally look out for you while there is chaos around them. This is the best way of preventing yourself from doing anything silly, getting arrested or badly hurt.

Then there are the silly little bits of know-how - like kicking the windows in at the corners, not the middle. Having clothing that does not mark you out but can be turned into a disguise later is handy. Or how the police when trying to ‘kettle’ a demonstration walk into people’s body space so they instinctively move back, people need to show the self-awareness and resist this behaviour of the police. A police shield can be a two-way tool and is a very amusing way of giving someone a bad day.

What I would have loved to have seen is a five-day rave with every fruit cake in London out of their head on ketamine or other poison of choice, all getting in the way of the police like a sea of zombies, so the police could not give the Tories back their building. As Jasper Carrot pointed out many years ago, they all used to hang around with the lefties because they had the best grass.

Students will not learn such lessons from their lecturers. Universities and schools are to teach you how to be a productive, exploitable unit with just enough thinking power to make more profits for the ruling class. It is not to teach you how to overthrow the masters. That does not mean we cannot take lessons and reapply them to a different agenda. Students, you will not read the answers you need in the sort of academic books that universities consider suitable for referencing - unless they are studying riot control maybe.

To those who criticise the ‘violence’ - and, to be honest, there was very little - the best reply is that the Tory Party and the police deserve far more. We will always attempt to get away with what we can, so long as it is not counterproductive to our cause. It is generally the nature of British people not to make a fuss and a scene. The government will keep pushing back our privileges and that is all our ‘rights’ are if we are unprepared to defend them.

When the TUC say we need to be more like France or Greece, all they mean is safe, meaningless demos and strikes that go through the motions. What distinguishes those combative, proud working classes from us in the UK is that they know it means occupations and not letting the police push you around with a wave of their hand or stick.

Let’s face it: being prepared to stand up for ourselves collectively and refusing to be pushed around is the only language they will ever listen to. Bullies and thieves do not back down after some meek pleading. The meek will inherit nothing. The government will drive us to soup kitchens and begging if they can get away with it.

Anarchist guide
Anarchist guide