Author: anarcomnet

The recent furore over Gary Lineker’s tweet that has ignited a firestorm on the political right [and to a lesser degree on the left] after he suggested on Tuesday that the British home secretary, Suella Braverman, was using language reminiscent of 1930s Germany to promote a plan to stop asylum seekers who arrive on boats across the English Channel.

The right predictably attacked him for using his “celebrity status” to promote woke ideas with over 36 Tory supported by some Labour MPs demanding he be axed from the BBC.  The BBC reacted by dropping him from their flagship football programme Match of the Day.  This led to other co presenters and pundits as well as commentators refusing to take part or “fill in” for him.  The final straw came when numerous football players asked the Professional Footballers Association [PFA – Footballer Union] for advice on boycotting the BBC’s coverage and got the go-ahead leading to Football Focus and Final Score being cancelled while Match of the Day will show matches using Sky TVs coverage only.

Meanwhile some on the left have criticised Lineker for his wealth and being critical of Corbyn.

So why should we care much less support the BBC boycott? 

Firstly, we must understand that football is a sport supported by a mass of working-class people and even though football is now a game of money and corruption at the highest levels it still commands massive loyalty amongst the working class and to dismiss it is to dismiss the working class, something that happens far too often on the left.  We need to engage with the working class and for class struggle revolutionists this is of crucial importance because many on the left will dismiss it as it doesn’t fit their nice little boxes of how you should oppose the government/state.  Until we do this we will always be a fringe movement.  We have a much harder fight in the UK because the so-called leaders of our class are reformers and traitors whether politicians, union leaders or the left as a whole.

It is also important because for the past couple of years (here in UK) there has been a concerted effort to say anyone with human decency is “woke/snowflake” and an agenda is being pushed to try and turn people against this.  To most people the BBC was still the independent mouth of the media, a paragon of “democracy”, after all It’s “our BBC”… they’d never lie to us!

Only a few days ago The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the right-wing press, the recent events shows that not only is the BBC not impartial but a state run broadcasting company but also how craven the they are, even more than the Lineker furore it shows that the BBC aren’t ‘neutral’  and on climate change they’re actively trying to down play the climate catastrophe.

What is happening now is a reaction to the “anti-woke” rhetoric put out there by the press/political parties etc and the general shift to the right that is taking the form around this. 

This is why it matters. It is also about how the state and media are sanctioning anyone who says anything that doesn’t fit their agenda while supporting those government fawners like Fiona Bruce as she defends domestic violence – when she described Stanley Johnson’s assault on his wife where he broke her nose as a “one-off”.  Despite condemnation from domestic violence charities and organisations the BBC defended her saying she was not expressing her personal views.

In the end this is not a football story. This is not a Gary Lineker story. This is a story about the government thinking it can silence criticism of its sickeningly inhumane policy of making applying for asylum essentially illegal. It is about the government using language that dehumanises and vilifies vulnerable people in desperate situations. Lineker called that out. The government objected. The BBC – fresh on the heels of censoring a David Attenborough programme for fear of government objections – behaved in a way that only amplified the point Lineker was making.

What Lineker said was important but no more important than what Joan Salter an 83-year holocaust survivor said in January when she confronted Braverman over the governments inhumane immigration policies. 

“The Holocaust began in a country where Jews and non-Jews had lived together in peace for generations. The small Jewish population – less than 1% – was so integrated into German culture that the majority looked upon themselves as Germans, with a variety of degrees of adherence to Jewish culture and traditions. So how did this relative harmony turn to hatred in such a short period of time? Through the use of language. The language of hate and division.

This was the method used by the Nazis to turn ordinary people, who went home each night to their wives and children, into the monsters capable of marching millions of Jews and other minorities – people just like them – into the gas chambers. It is what enabled ordinary soldiers to return to their wives and children, satisfied that they were protecting their country from social problems caused by people whom their government had convinced them were less than human”.

The government and the BBC want this to be a “Lineker furore”. It isn’t. It’s a callous and inhuman government furore.

We must take heart from the solidarity of the football community over this and build upon its foundation.

Article by Mikey Dredd

Anarchist and Radical Bookfairs

Glasgow – 27^th May (TBC)

Hull – 12^th August

https://www.facebook.com/events/758249155574985

Bradford – 2^nd September

https://www.facebook.com/events/662263585501697

Manchester – 4^th Nov TBC)

Picture with thanks to comrades at Tridni Valka

On the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we continue to argue that a new, if historically familiar, tendency is emerging – an internationalist revolutionary class struggle realignment, as a response to the reality of war and its existential threat. 

Our response is to continue building good relationships with revolutionary internationalist militants on this basis.  War will not cease without it.  This is not new, as the following article written in 2014 by comrades in AnarCom marking the Russian occupation of Crimea in the 100th anniversary of the First World War demonstrates:

1914-2014 – the Great War continues

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

― Edmund Burke

As the threat of war looms in Eastern Europe echoing the threat of a third World War yet to come, the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War One looms more as a lesson for our time than merely an obsession of academic geeks.

In 1914, a violent act of Slav nationalism took the brakes off Europe’s alliances and treaty systems driving rival power blocks into a devastating armed conflict that wracked Europe with its consequences for the century to come.

The current conflict is as much framed by treaties and timetables as then.  Russia wants its share of Ukraine before it slides into the framework of the EU and NATO and the stakes would be higher.

Before the current fog over the Crimea there were those in Britain who sought to revise the First World War and claim it as a source of national pride and dress up the death of 13 million as a price worth paying in a ‘just’ war. 

Were the millions of workers led into a war between ruling elites of bankers and aristocrats “lions led by donkeys” or true sons of freedom defending all that was good in Britain?

The debate is a smoke screen to hide one of the greatest mass murders in history.  It’s hardly surprising that those who want to celebrate the generals and spirit of Empire and claim the war as ‘just’, are the privileged great grandchildren of the ‘donkeys’.

The current conflict has the same roots as its historical predecessor – a conflict between elites, the gangster capitalism of the Russian oligarchs versus the free market plunderers of the neoliberal European club. ‘Just’ or ‘unjust’ is the new smokescreen again.

International conflicts between or within states only have one lesson, and that is those of us with no real stake, workers on both sides, die, lead or driven by the donkeys, to preserve their power, profit and privilege. 

The lessons now as then are the same – we die, they pillage, and their pride is our shame.

Article by Dreyfus

Demonstrations outside hotels housing asylum seekers have gained traction after an asylum seeker was filmed sexually propositioning a 15-year-old girl. Despite the man being arrested the ultra-right, who were aware of his arrest, capitalised on it and stirred up a violent protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley, near Liverpool, despite the man in question not being a resident of the hotel. A police van was set on fire and projectiles were thrown at police by crowds of locals stirred up by those on the ultra-right such as Patriotic Alternative. Demos have now been organised by the ultra-right in various locations and its now possible that what happened in Knowsely could occur up and down the country.

Some were predicting this sort of thing would happen and it is not really surprising in a sense considering that significant numbers of asylum seekers have been placed in under-resourced, working class areas where there are political voids – all it takes is resentment in these places and instigation by the ultra-right to light the spark.

It is definitely the case that the concerns of these deprived working class communities should be taken seriously and listened to, but the ultra-right cannot be trusted at all and have a divisive and racist agenda. People should be aware that as usual these bigoted reactionaries are opportunistically trying to gain politically from the situation. And it should be noted that we should not be generalising about asylum seekers – a group of people should not be blamed for the behaviour of one person or a minority. It’s also an important fact to take note that sexual misconduct, abuse and misogyny is rife on the far- right and that there has been a long list of white men convicted of sexual abuse and paedophilia throughout the various far-right organisations. All sexual abuse is wrong and has nothing to do with ethnicity or race. It’s also the case that in an atmosphere of anti-refugee and racist hysteria, it is definitely possible that false allegations can be directed at asylum seekers and immigrants.

We also need to be aware that the underlying problem here is capitalism – which is why asylum seekers are here in the first place and why people born in this country are suffering due to the deliberate inequality, poverty and austerity and rising inflation and why ordinary people are deliberately deprived of resources and a decent quality of life – a dire problem faced by the working class internationally. It is for this reason that asylum seekers and immigrants are scapegoated – by the bourgeois media, culture etc as a diversion to point the finger at those from overseas who have legitimate reasons to be here and who have escaped from the most dangerous and repressive places on the planet, and escaped the brutality and murder of the border regime on the European mainland and around the Mediterranean and are just people trying to get on and live their lives, look after their families and who want the world to be a decent place. The far-right and the bourgeoisie and its media happily stoke up this hysterical scapegoating to gain from this and it is the ruling class who runs the show to their own class advantage, they are the ones to blame for our suffering.

It’s the far right who help the ruling class and their capitalist system, which feeds off of the misery of the international working class, dispossessed and oppressed, which includes asylum seekers and immigrants,  as well as those of our class who are born here. It is the far right and their ultra-nationalism (capitalism taken to an extreme) that robs workers through exploitation and punishes the poor with austerity and the inequality of the class system. Nationalism has always been and will always be an anti-working-class ideology that divides the working class for the benefit of the ruling class. And it is the rich who create inflation with year on year profits – In order for profits to keep increasing wages and hours have to be cut and prices have to be raised, the rich all the while making obscene profits and hoarding everything, including most of the land and resources for themselves – so nationalism can’t us help at all and all nationalists actually defend the very system that causes us harm. Nationalism also deprives us of our freedom by enslaving the individual and robbing us of our autonomy for the benefit of the state, and again therefore the rich rulers who control it.

At the end of the day it is the class traitors of the far right who obsequiously serve the interests of the ruling class and that means racist scapegoating as a diversion to defend capitalism and divide the working class – this can only be at our grave expense and very much to our detriment as a class, simply continuing and worsening our misery and turning worker against worker. Instead, what the working class needs is to unite as much as possible against the ruling class and the far right and resist capitalism, wage the class war for itself and by itself, build autonomous alternatives from below and strengthen our communities in solidarity with each other as members of the international working class – rather than dividing and weakening ourselves to the advantage of the rich – then we will be genuinely getting somewhere and fighting for ourselves and our class interests – rather than going against them and being bootlickers for the bourgeoisie.

Nationalists and fascists are reactionaries who want to turn the clock back for their own political gain and power – they cannot be trusted and are anti-working class. They must be resisted now more than ever before. The far right is awash with power-hungry class traitors, weirdos, wrong uns, nonces and sexual abusers who want to use ordinary working-class people for their own ends and the working class will gain nothing from trusting them, especially as things now are so desperate for the working class. The far right have no real solutions and will stab workers in the back as they always have when gaining strength, they have nothing to offer the working class but division, hate and class betrayal and class defeat.

Article by Tom Hughes

New AnarCom flags ready for the picket lines!

Brianna Ghey was just 16 when she was found, stabbed to death on Saturday the 11th of February. Two 15-year olds, a boy and a girl, have now been charged with her murder, denied by police and government as a hate crime. Despite police claims that there is no evidence of the motive being hate-fuelled, Brianna’s friends have repeatedly said that she was harassed by gangs and received threats over her gender identity. Vigils in protest have been held across the UK, and other parts of the world, in her memory. 

Ghey has been harassed by the media and through accounts online, deadnaming her and promoting further violence against transgender people. Articles have been quick to attack activists for saying that this attack leaves blood on the hands of TERFs and governments who promote violence against transgender people. At the Anarcom Network, however, we ask how this murder is any different to the state-sponsored murder of other trans people. The backlash against those seeking justice for Brianna demonstrates clearly what society we live in, and who is at fault for it. 

Governments have rolled out severe anti-trans laws in recent months. Both Sunak and Starmer say that ‘biological sex matters.’ Last July, the Conservative Equalities Minister, Mike Freer, stepped down, accusing the government of funding a ‘culture war’ against transgender people which he ‘fundamentally disagreed with.’ There is no government that stands to protect transgender people. 

Under the current conservative government, the only transgender health clinic providing support to minors has been shut, and plans to ban private transgender healthcare have been drafted. Brianna Ghey herself received private hormone replacement therapy, using DIYHRT; not from private healthcare providers, but through online pharmaceutical orders, this treatment of transgender people clearly demonstrates the aims of those in power – eradication. 

Everyone is familiar with the photo of the nazi book burning, but how many people know what books are being burnt in the photo? The books are from the German Institute of Sexology, which contained books written on transgender healthcare. This nazi burning set back transgender healthcare by around 100 years, and similar attacks are being conducted today. In Florida, libraries are being looted and stripped of books, so that they can be confirmed to be in accordance with state views. Don’t Say Gay bills are only getting more brutal in the US, and more anti-trans healthcare bills are currently being drafted and passed through congress. Other western countries are following suit – the UK is only growing stronger in its anti-protest and censorship laws. 

Brianna Ghey was a politically active young woman whose transgender identity was hidden by the media until it could no longer be kept secret. Upon the reveal, media outlets released a torrent of transphobic bile, all the while asserting that her murder was not hate related. The AnarCom Network stands with all transgender people against state and individual violence and the growing government funded culture wars taking place. Brianna Ghey must be remembered as a victim of the culture war, and as a reminder of why we must stand against hatred, wherever we see it. 

Mermaids – UK charity supporting trans and gender-diverse children, young people and their families.

Mindline trans + – Emotional and mental health support helpline for anyone identifying as trans, non-binary, gender variant, and their families, friends, colleagues and carers. Their phone line is open Mondays and Fridays, 8pm to midnight. Ring 0300 330 5468.

Spectra – Peer-led trans services accessible to all trans and gender-diverse people, including 1-2-1 health advocacy support, and counselling, peer mentoring, referral and signposting to relevant partners, talks and workshops and monthly online and in-person social groups. 

Stonewall – UK charity campaigning for LGBT equality.

Article by ACN member

Communities nationwide are worried about a lack of transparency, meaningful progress and a willingness from service professionals and authorities to accept responsibility with regards to their failings on recent and historic CSE cases.

There has been a growing sense of miss trust and anger which the far right has capitalised on and identified as a propaganda/recruitment tool.

This had led to some survivors’ stories being hijacked by the far right (often against their wishes) in order to spread discrimination and recruit others into their ranks, thus further exploiting survivors.

Local communities are vulnerable to this, as many people are desperately looking for answers and assurance that lessons have been/will be learnt.

The far-right narrative aims to push accountability in the wrong places with many groups claiming that sexual abuse is a racial issue and that the whole Muslim community are complicit in. They also focus solely on white girls and disregard the horrific experiences of young people from other backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities. The far right also ignore male abuse survivors.

Perpetrators of CSE are often in a position of power to the victim (movie star, millionaire, football coach, family member, religious leader, famous musician, social media influencer, TV personality, role model etc the list goes on). A key theme in many recent CSE case (eg so called “grooming gangs”, Benny Bennell and historic CSE cases in UK football and the Jeffery Epinstien scandal) is that victims were often extremely vulnerable and from complex backgrounds with little to no role models and an absence of primary caregivers such as parents.

It is not ethnicity or culture that determines how perpetrators identify their victims, it is usually class. Young people from working class backgrounds have less access to services, and due to labelling and stereotyping, tell-tale behaviours are usually brushed aside as bad behaviour. Further to this, working class young people are segregated from wider society which makes them extra vulnerable to been targeted. Authorities in the UK have long discriminated against and failed to listen to vulnerable working-class young people, which often mean things such as CSE can be missed, this is well documented.

It is important to remember that most sexual abusers in the UK are white, and also that CSE cases affect young women and men of all backgrounds and cultures.

Muslim survivors of CSE have mentioned that because they are often ignored, this can add to the shame they already feel in coming forward and seeking justice against the perpetrators. They can often feel that no one will listen or care about them as the media focus has been on white victims of such abuse.

There has been systemic failure of services to safeguard young people country wide. For example, recent CSE cases in West Yorkshire have been subject to a review into the failures of authorities. The interim report has been released and is conducted by Dr Peel.

The Peel report states that service professionals, including the police, pinned blame on two of the victims that came forward. Service professionals felt that the victims were merely behaving in an over sexualised manner and went as far as to record the girls’ statements about the abuse but took no action blaming certain behaviours on the service users.

Victim blaming, bias/labelling and lack of action feature predominantly in CSE cases, as does lack of accountability and poor decision making.

Such instances are completely unacceptable, for any professional to brush off potential safeguarding issues by blaming the victim is not good enough. This absolute failure in safeguarding has allowed prolific CSE cases to continue and has led to some perpetrators escaping justice.

Many far-right groups often claim to march against “grooming gangs”, but they will not address the large number of convicted paedophiles in their ranks or their casual misogyny towards women.

The majority of far right “protests” on grooming gangs are not grounded in legitimate community problems, and they should be labelled for what they often are…a far-right fascist march with the intention of targeting Muslims and other minority ethnic groups.

Survivors need genuine change and to be involved where possible in the conversations and reflections so that we can build a more cohesive structure that doesn’t just ignore the concerns of the people that have been affected by this issue. It is not just policy change that is needed, but indeed a change of culture among professionals too.

We stand with ALL survivors of CSE, and we won’t sit by and let the far-right further exploit survivors for their own selfish gains.

Love and Solidarity to all victims of CSE abuse.

Article by (Anon) CSE survivor and FLAF member.

For comrades, sympathisers, capitalist haters, revolutionaries, proletarians, working class people and those who hate capitalism in general – not from the right! 

Gondolkodó Autonomous Bookshop has been operating for 30 years now in Budapest, Hungary. We distribute and archive Communist, Anarchist, Anarcho-communist, Marxist, Anarcho-syndicalist, Leftist, etc. publications, as well as other things: literature in fiction, social studies, history, fine arts, philosophy, etc.) It is a meeting point for comrades, sympathizers, activists, friends. We organize debate events, and produce our own publications regularly. We are the only continously operating radical distribution place in this region.

And now we are in the look for a new place ( our dear landlord will kick us out in July). We’re looking for a place above 15 sqm (rentfree, would pay overhead costs) ideally with functioning bathroom. For this purpose, we’re asking for your help!

We would also need regular financial support. Please circulate our appeal and support us according to your possibilities.

Gondolkodó will continue to distribute at events, online, at our own events, at a local community centre Gólya, and, if we can find one, at our new place.

Hungary is a very conservative country, it is nationalist with strong fascist tendencies – this, combined with the world-wide crisis of capitalism force us to ask your regular support to maintain the functioning of Gondolkodó.

Comrade, sympathizer, activist, friend: please share our call for Aid, and support us, if you can, according to your possibilities in the name of the international solidarity of the Proletariat!

WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

GONDOLKODÓ AUTONOMOUS BOOKSHOP

Our address (as for now):

Gondolkodó Antikvárium

Budapest, 1012 Logodi utca 51., Hungary

website: gondolkodo.mypressonline.com

e-mail: gondolkodo@citromail.hu

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/352224161646555

Over the last few days, 2,000,000 workers have taken to the streets nationwide, closing one of the largest industrial ports, blocking factories and refineries, cutting the energy system while ensuring supply to vulnerable communities – a social or ‘Robin Hood’ action.  In the capital half a million brought the city and work to a standstill forcing even national monuments to close. 

If you missed it, it’s because this happened in France.  The capital is Paris and the port city Le Havre.  War Austerity is being resisted there too as elsewhere in Europe, where the task ahead is increasingly clear.  As one French worker told a journalist: “It’s less joyous, less a feeling we can win with a few demos. But it is serious and sober about the job in front of us,”.  Such scale and combativity has yet to find expression here.

It is a year since we saw the birth of the current industrial unrest in the UK, beginning in the construction and education sectors. It’s nearly 8 months since one of the key sections of our class still organised and confident, the transport unions, began to take on the Tory government.  The growth of the strike movement since then has spread to health, legal and civil services as well as postal and delivery, fire and ambulance emergency services amongst others.

We’ve just seen the largest single number of people on strike, across sector and industry, than we have seen in more than a generation. How much longer can you go on like this?  Striking by rote, one or two days at a time and weeks apart.  Drip by drip gains neither momentum nor progress. 

It risks bleeding energy, funds and morale from workers and the strike movement ultimately empowering the status quo and thus the bosses.  Combat fatigue and mission drift will be the consequences of the cautious trade union strategy designed more to stay on the right side of the bosses law than win by overwhelming it.

By refusing and sabotaging negotiations, the government is revealing its hand.  Firstly, it believes it can win by dragging things out and demoralising those on strike and secondly, it is clearly not feeling threatened.  It is prepared to pay in lost production what it would have cost to settle the disputes because it’s aim is not resolution but our defeat!  Current tactics risk dancing to their tune.

We need to recall that before inflation, the war in Ukraine and these strikes, was Covid, Trump and Grenfell.  Before that was the Syrian war, Brexit and the Islamic State. And still earlier, banking collapse, recession and the Fukushima nuclear disaster.  This isn’t new, it never stops.  This relentless war of capitalism and all its needs devouring us in its wake. This is class war, our subjugation for their ruthless adventures in search of profit.  How does it change?  What change have we seen?  What have we gained?

Challenging the social peace and costing capital a fortune by withdrawing labour is not ‘very little’, though nowhere near enough.  Our role is to highlight that, as frustration grows.  We sink or swim together as workers, not judge from the sidelines.  Those on strike know what they are risking and will at some point see it could all have been in vain if there is no escalation, risking the safe TU strategy and taking some more radical leaders with them. 

At this stage it is a process not an event and we have written about ‘social (‘Robin Hood’) strikes’ as in France, being a possible step forward. Trade Union caution though is clearly a restraining factor and we need to say what we see – postal strikes called off due to legal challenge, nursing unions in Wales pausing for ‘considering’ an offer, rail strikes delayed to allow talks.  And for what result?

Our role as workers and militants is to highlight what we see and experience ourselves and on the picket lines – where strikers are unambiguously clear, we want to win!  Enough is enough must not just apply to our increasing impoverishment and drift towards capitalist war.  It must equally apply to the timidity of our strategy and tactics to fight against this.

The labour establishment Trade Unions, unlike their members, are as reluctant to escalate as the loyal opposition Labour Party.  Their caution, their priorities, indeed, their role is to prevent that happening.  They are the log on the line that can yet derail the strike movement and the fortunes of the millions who are already sacrificing through struggle and solidarity. Stepping up is not just an option, it is a necessity to challenge the social peace and shake the bosses.

We have said it before and will continue to argue for and encourage other workers and communities to keep or seize the moment and momentum.  Form where possible grassroots coordination and decision bodies or assemblies.  Networking and showing solidarity across industry and trade for a unification of demands and action, under our direct control not through a bureaucratic filter. 

For direct action and the self organised generalisation of strike action everywhere!  BEWARE BUREAUCRACY SELL OUT! ESCALATE! COORDINATE! VICTORY TO THE STRIKE MOVEMENT!

Article by Dreyfus

AnarCom members joined the hundreds of thousands who marched and rallied in over 40 cities across the UK at the beginning of February, in solidarity with the half million workers out on strike and the half million more in between strike days.  The central focus of many though was opposition to the new ‘slap not clap’ essential workers legislation going through Parliament.

Modernisation (meaning sackings) and reform of labour practices (meaning sackings) to tackle wartime austerity have left many workers, not just here but throughout Europe, nowhere else to go than to lose pay and withdraw their labour. The sacrifice is theirs.

A list of what ballots have successfully overcome existing legal hurdles or are being considered, let alone wildcat actions without formal TUC recognition, would just be a list that changes day by day. Suffice to say that it already includes such sizeable and significant sectors as transport, health, education, legal and civil services as well as postal and delivery and fire and ambulance emergency services. 

Potentially a greater strike wave than the late ‘70 early 80’s. This is not a winter of discontent, but the culmination of a generation of discontent. This despite all the legislation setting targets and conditions aimed at making strike action illegal. A class is awakening!

For revolutionists this has been long expected. For capital too! This is why the government was so determined to provoke the rail strike last summer and defeat it at all costs, aiming to smash the last remaining organised stronghold of industrial labour since the defeat of the miners in ‘84/85. This failed to shatter the sharp wedge of resistance and stop those that have now chosen to follow suit.

Parallels with the great miners’ strike are inevitably being drawn, though the differences are as deeply significant as any similarity – the latter largely limited to government intent.

In 1984 Tories took on the NUM after 5 years of active preparation, stockpiling coal and negotiating some agreed ‘safety’ closures with the NUM under the new Plan For Coal. Through this latter facade they had spun Scargill who kept the miners quiet, whilst taking on and defeating other significant sections of the working class, from steel to shipbuilding, nurses to the railways (in 1982 ships returning from the Falklands War, having secured Thatcher’s second election, hung banners saying “call off the rail strike or will call an airstrike”).

The miners arrived late to the slaughter, driven by need and an avenging passion to redress those defeats and stop Thatcherism in its tracks. But the organised working class they needed solidarity from had already suffered bloody defeats. The TUC, guarding what little corporate presence it retained resolutely resisted the left’s simpering cries of “TUC, get off your knees, call a General Strike!”. The TUC didn’t, defeating capitalism was never their job, and the rest is history. It was the last kick of the last major cross-sectional strike wave – until now.

The difference now is that this is not at the edge of what is collapsing, but at the centre of what is rising. The icecap on the concept of class struggle is melting and those facing the challenge, whilst not from the generation accustomed to victory, are neither accustomed to defeat.

The formidable class weapon of transport spearheaded this renewed fight-back and those choosing to follow are motivated by their own need and resolution. A generalisation of strike action without the stultifying patronage of the TUC is unfolding in spite of them, raising possibilities of solidarity and unification of demands not experienced previously in the lifetime of most of those in work.

Supporting the linking and unification of class struggle is a central task of all anarchist communists, the more formidable with the blocking saboteur role of capitalist and Labour Party endorsed organised trade unionism. For this we unapologetically advocate autonomy, combativity, solidarity and the collective escalation of demands as confidence and coordination grow.

Crucial will be the rank and file taking control of their strike, communicating with other workers and encouraging each other to share and coordinate their own struggles in solidarity. Building for united action must include coordinating committees between different industries and groups of workers and building links with the struggles in the communities all workers come from. Winning will rely on each other, certainly not the bureaucrats of the TUC, or worse, the Labour Party that has banned its MP’s from attending picket lines!

TUC, stay on your knees where you belong! A general strike is de facto already unfolding and coordinating across all sectors.  For direct action and the self organised generalisation of strike action everywhere!  BEWARE BUREAUCRACY SELL OUT! ESCALATE! COORDINATE! VICTORY TO THE STRIKE MOVEMENT!

Article by Dreyfus