Believeing in syndicalism/radical trade unionism

[JHE]

People should not be so nasty to Shrek.

Some of his stuff is funny. That's no bad thing, is it?

It's also quite touching that he doesn't really know whether he's a Lib Dem, a Greenie or an Anarch. He's unusually honest about his confusions and ambivalences. The world is full of people with a mix of ideas. Most don't expose themselves so deliberately. Shrek's a political flasher.

Some of his stuff is also an opportunity to discuss potentially interesting things - for example, the the 'Winter of Discontent'. PeterTCA's post alone makes this thread worthwhile.

Anarchist ideologues - and Lib Dem and Greenie ones, for that matter - should see Shrek as an absolute gift. Up he pops again and again, asking to be taught the Correct Line. Come. Teach. Without paying an actor, you couldn't get a stooge to play the part of an eager learner so well.

What's so bad?

 

[butchersapron]

Some of his stuff is also an opportunity to discuss potentially interesting things - for example, the the 'Winter of Discontent'. PeterTCA's post alone makes this thread worthwhile.

The chances of this happening are, i think, long gone.

 

[nightbreed]

Ok. I take the point. Wasn't looking for pity but I get the message. I know I have created this impression of myself by posting nonsense.

Listen mate. this is an internet forum. It isnt worth anything so dont take it personally.

Get out there and talk to people. Go to meetings . Interact face to face. That means something.

If everyone takes what people say on an internet forum seriously then we are all fucked.

 

[sihhi]

As one who was a trade union official at the start of the winter of discontent I always feel ill when I read of unburied bodies and shop stewards deciding who should be admitted to hospita.

Yes, there were stewards over in Liverpool who refused to dig graves and there was an isolated incident of patients getting into hospital. It seems these obscure actions in themselves have come to symbolise trade unionism at the end of the seventies.

The reality was very different. I recall men and women trying to keep families together on bread-line wages and a labour government over-concerned with cut-backs and crawling up the arse of the World Bank.

My hospital union branch - rathet than cause discomfort to our patients - instituted a strategy of "imaginative industrial action". Ward occupations, sing-songs in administrative palaces, occupying the reception area of the plush offices of the regional NHS headquarters in Manchester, and so on...

I was one of many trade unionists to end up black-listed, sacked or finding one's career in ruins. One particular "imaginative action" was to see me end up in Crown Court.

Refusing to bury bodies? Bollocks. I look back to those days with pride.

I think refusing to bury bodies is/was an entirely legitimate response -
the Labour government's policies - cuts for pensioners, no pay for the low-waged, high fuel prices - were actually causing deaths.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/30/liverpool-gravedigger-strikes

The bodies stayed in a factory and were subsequently buried.

 

[audiotech]

Yep, all black propaganda by those state forces who believed Britain was about to be taken over by Marxists led by 'Lenin Murray'.

 

[nightbreed]

I think refusing to bury bodies is/was an entirely legitimate response -
the Labour government's policies - cuts for pensioners, no pay for the low-waged, high fuel prices - were actually causing deaths.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/dec/30/liverpool-gravedigger-strikes

The bodies stayed in a factory and were subsequently buried.

Only 80 workers went on strike initially up in Liverpool. Then followed up in a couple of other places by a small amount of workers. Hardly the downfall of western civilisation. Thatcher wanted the 'right of managers to manage'!!

Still , the ruling class knew where opposition to capitalist recession and cuts would come from. When Thatcher exagerated these disputes and introduced measures to hamper ALL workers fightbacks, it meant the capitalist class could manage future recesssions 'legally' through injunctions, sequestrations and fines!!

In 1997 Blair carried on this comittment.

 

[LLETSA]

Yep, all black propaganda by those state forces who believed Britain was about to be taken over by Marxists led by 'Lenin Murray'.

The kind of thing laughably repeated on here from time to time.

 

[trevhagl]

But I have explained why I joined the lib dems and what I really believe in. What is the problem? I'm trying to engage with anarchism and anarchists.

I don't think even the Lib Dems know what THEIR policies are. Also in the leaflet i mentioned there was a bit slagging off Durham Council (New Labour) for wasting loads of money on consultants ...... without mentioning that THEIR councils do exactly the same!

 

[sihhi]

Why on earth would you just take what Hattersley said at face value?

First off, the labour leadership/cabinet were not in favour of powerful unions influencing (or initiating) political events - they were in favour of strong right wing union bureaucrats delivering them funds and votes as part of their specific social base.

Thirdly, have you critically questioned Hattersley’s motivations for saying whatever he actually said?

Don't trust Hattersley should be a motto for everyone

Guardian
April 23, 1985

Labour warns unions on pay Shadow Chancellor Hattersley says wage restraint necessary to reduce unemployment

Responsibility for the speed at which a future Labour government could reduce unemployment rested on the trades unions' self-restraint over wages Mr Roy Hattersley, the shadow Chancellor, said yesterday.

In a clear reference to the need for a voluntary understanding with the unions over wages as well as investment, Mr Hattersley said: 'We cannot duck out of difficult questions which it is most important for us to answer.'

He insisted that he had 'not the slighest intention of advocating, even less of introducing, either a statutory incomes policy or an incomes policy which although theoretically voluntary is dependent upon government coercion.'

Mr Hattersley argued that there had to be a trade-off between pay and jobs. 'We have to decide how the new resources are to be shared between wages, public services and new jobs. My vote is for them to be concentrated on jobs. But I cannot make the choice alone, the choice has to be made in partnership. Your decision about the speed at which we reduce unemployment is more important than mine.'

Delivering one of his sternest lectures to the unions on pay for some time, he said that the division between trade unions and the Labour government was the single greatest factor in the electoral success of Thatcherism.

He attacked Labour Party attempts to support the miners such as when London councils supported a demonstration outside the Commons.

Interviewed on A Week in Politics on television's Channel 4, the Labour deputy leader said the Commons demonstration was a self-inflicted wound. 'While people go on behaving in that way our prospects of becoming the party which is naturally looked on to win the next election and achieving the popularity amongst floating voters that we need is, of course, reduced.'

He praised Mr Neil Kinnock for 'exemplary leadership' in attacking the tactics of the left wingers in a speech to the parliamentary party and said it had probably improved his standing and that of Labour. 'But the nonsense was a nonsense and I wouldn't admit anything else,' he said. Mr Hattersley's reference to the need to win the support of floating voters by avoiding such tactics will hardly improve his standing with the dissidents, who are already irritated by what they claim is the failure of the leadership to advance the cause of the strikers with sufficient force in the Commons. Mr Skinner, however, said in a BBC radio interview, that they had said nothing in the Commons about the party leadership.