The mass strike comes to Britain posted by Richard Seymour

You'll have gathered that I'm immersed in work at the moment, but it's definitely worth pausing to notice this.  The leaders of every major trade union in Britain, from Unison and Unite to the PCS, GMB, NUT, FBU, and others have reportedly said they will back coordinated strike action on 30th November.  They have named the day.  This could result in 3 million workers on strike, the biggest single day of strike action in the UK since 1926.  My article on the previous strike a few months back put it like this:

If Unison did join national strike action in October, and Unite participated along with the smaller unions, it would constitute a sea change in the culture of industrial relations in this country. Such co-ordinated action would be as close to a general strike as we've seen in Britain since 1926. It would have a much bigger impact in the UK than in the continent, where general strikes are a more regular occurrence. It would shock the government to its core.

That remains the case.  Stuart Hall, writing in The Guardian the other day, warned that "popular thinking and the systems of calculation in daily life offer very little friction to the passage of [the Tories'] ideas".  There is a great deal to this, and this is why people need a sense of their collective power.  Importantly, a number of union leaders are talking about defying anti-union legislation, which has been one of the factors inhibiting militancy since the Thatcher era.  It would, of course, be foolish to assume that what union leaders promise at conference will materialise without a struggle.  The ballots are still to be held.  Even if they are passed, union leaders can wobble and call off strike action.  The government, if it panics, may offer the major unions just enough concessions to cause them to back off.  The success of the strike ballots as well as the success of the action on the day depends on the arguments had, and alliances forged, between now and November. 

Labels: class struggle, david cameron, general strike, neoliberalism, public sector workers, strike, tories, trade unions, working class

3 million French people can't be wrong posted by Richard Seymour

About time we emulated this - we can make a start at the G20 protests.

Labels: class struggle, france, general strike, militancy, nicolas sarkozy

France's General Strike posted by Richard Seymour

Greek workers are up in arms, the Italian working class is revolting against the Berlusconi administration, protesters in Iceland have deposed their government, and now Sarkozy is the latest to feel the wrath. Today's strikes and rallies involved millions of workers and took place across the country as this map shows:



The strikes were in protest over job losses, pay cuts, and planned reforms of the education system which would deprive teachers of paid time in which to do their work. Polls show that 69% of people back the strike. Here are some pictures:

Labels: anticapitalism, france, general strike, protest, sarkozy, socialism, trade unions

Toppling Mubarak posted by Richard Seymour

Labels: egypt, general strike, mubarak

Mubarak's police attack strikers, provoke riots. posted by Richard Seymour

Amid all the justified talk about Mugabe's repression in the face of rebellion, Mubarak's dictatorship has just passed through another of it's - I hope - terminal convulsions. It comes in the form of an apparently well-planned assault on what might have become a general strike, in part motivated by soaring prices. It turned into a riot, a full-scale intifada, as Egypt's police unleashed hell on Mahalla al-Kobra textile workers yesterday. Hossam el-Hamalawy has full details here, with photos. You can see further images here. Zeinobi at Egyptian Chronicles has ongoing updates. Agence France Presse also has a decent report with photographs.

From the early hours of the morning, it seems, the factory at the centre of the strike was occupied by plain clothes security forces, including figures from the mukhabarat. Tens of known labour activists were prevented from entering the building, and a great deal of pressure was put on union leaders to call off solidarity strikes. It looked as if the strike had 'fizzled out' as one report put it. However, when workers and local residents gathered in the main square to protest, they were met by ranks of armed guards and beaten and attacked with tear gas. With what can only be described as incredible courage, the protesters resisted instead of dispersing, and what ensued was a lengthy battle, with rocks hurled and trucks and cars overturned. Across Egypt there were hundreds of arrests, many of them random, and bloggers were nicked alongside activists and politicians in an effort to prevent the news about what was happening from getting out. At least two people are reported to have been killed by the police, with 100 more injured. In Cairo, it is reported, the traffic was light and schools empty as people responded to the strike call. But where protesters tried to organise, the police attacked them. By 10pm, Mahalla was entirely occupied by security forces, with announcements instructing citizens to stay in their homes and power to the city cut off.

The manner in which the Egyptian state aborted this strike and attacked protesters has prompted the Muslim Brothers to boycott upcoming elections. This is a landmark for the Mubarak state, in the context of a rising wave of rebellion against the government's neoliberal policies. Mahalla workers have been the most militant and effective fighters in the country, and their successes have enlivened the whole society. If this day of carnage and crackdown was supposed to put a stop to that, I doubt that it will be effective. But then I suspect that Mubarak knows that the issues over which people are protesting generalise very rapidly from apparently economic concerns into a critique of the regime and society. And do not forget the paymaster. The United States government has taken risks with its assets in the Middle East by gambling on the invasion of Iraq. Mubarak is significant enough for them that he is the second largest recipient of aid next to Israel. Like Iraq, Egypt has long been one of the major powers in the Middle East, and an obvious candidate to lead a regional insurgency against American hegemony should it fall into the wrong hands.

Labels: egypt, general strike, mahalla, mubarak, police state, repression

Nigerian general strike posted by Richard Seymour

In addition to the huge political crisis in South Africa resulting from the almost million-strong strike, there is a solid general strike in Nigeria over fuel price increases, low pay for civil servants and high VAT. The increases in fuel prices both boost government revenues and allow the offshore refineries to make a handsome fortune, (whereas I think you can guess what it, along with doubled VAT, does to the poor). The strike is indefinite, and the Nigerian government is calling it a 'political' strike, which would obviously be scandalous if true. It's as well the strike is indefinite, because it will take a while for it to seriously impact the oil revenues, which is what needs to happen for it to be effective, but go ahead and check those links: the incoming government is a fraction worried. The House of Representatives has apparently declared the government's VAT increases illegal, and the Federal Government are furiously seeking a deal, with some concessions - which the unions have rightly dismissed as 'too little, too late'.

In fact, the Federal Government's claim that the strike is 'political' is probably partially accurate. Obasanjo's neoliberal 'People's Democratic Party' won yet another rigged election in April this year, awarding itself almost 25 million votes, compared with 6.6m for the nearest rival, the right-wing Islamist 'All Nigeria People's Party'. The labour unions responded to these results with a two-day general strike last month. Is it important that the US was 'deeply troubled' by the 'flawed' eclections? Well, that was a Bush administration official who said that. However, bear in mind how crucial Nigeria is to the United States. Together with Angola it produces nearly half of Africa's oil output, and is the fifth biggest supplier of oil to the US. It produces low-sulphur, or "sweet", crude oil, which American refiners adore for the proportion of high-value gasoline it yields. The PDP carries on a tradition established by successive dictatorships and Republics since 1980: gutting the state, privatising, SAPing, selling on up. Among the results of this process is the 'Planet of the Slums' phenomenon. As Michael Watts wrote last year, urban poverty in Nigeria exploded during the 1980s and 1990s. The population of Lagos "grew from 300,000 to 13 million in over fifty years, and is expected to become part of a vast Gulf of Guinea slum of 60 million poor along a littoral corridor 600 kilometers stretching from Benin City to Accra by 2020. Black Africa will contain 332 million slum dwellers by 2015, a figure expected to double every fifteen years." As Mike Davis writes in Planet of Slums, a total of 79.2% of Nigeria's urban population, over 41 million, lives in slums. A fifth of all of Nigeria's children die before the age of five, and the immiseration is such that GNP per capita is actually lower than it was on the achievement of Independence in 1960. On top of the SAPs, there is a crippling debt, which takes up more of government expenditure than health and education combined. As you might have guessed, that is all because 'independence' has a strictly limited meaning, and the last thing the American Empire wants is a genuine democracy in Nigeria.

The organised working class is key to democratising Nigeria, which is why the government has been so eager to smash the National Labour Congress, and why its security services have targeted labour activists for arrest, while the cops are given to shooting at strikers. A victory here would make a huge impact, and it is as well that no one is listening to the government's pleas of good faith.

Labels: general strike, nigeria, south africa, working class