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Regional anti-cuts organising

thing is though if you take a negative attitude it is no wonder people wont want to listen to you and will view you as just another moaning person on a hobby horse the way that a lot of people viewed the left for many years . our save our service campaigns are bringing in service users and on a non political platform, not a platform from "the left" or whoever. many, many people who are in similar organisations are affected by these cuts and are unemployed. i agree that the trade unions and left wing organisations in general have been crap in dealing with claimants' issues in recent year,s, but that is a situation which is improving because of the fact that it is becoming an issue which effects so many people.

it would be good to have you guys on board the save our services campaigns, i think that we need more stuff like this and whatever anyone does against it is good , but at the same time it is no point complaining that nobodys doing anything and then not getting involved in what wider campaigns, whatever the flaws are, yourself. if you dont like the way things are run then offer suggestions to improve them and in my experience the organisers are always looking for ways to improve it. just saying like ...
 
im not, obviously, talking about people who dont know or arent in the position to know of the existence of these cmapaigns, but people who sit on the sidelines to have a go at whatever people are doing piss me off. im not saying either of you are doing that but that's the (limited) impression ive got from your post terratech
 
No, terratech like some others tried to get people involved, he has a website which he has attempted to draw in interest in the issues, having said that Andrew Coates of Ipswich Unemployed Action has had some some sucess but unemployment and welfare issues just aren't receiving the support they merit, ffs, youth unemployment is sky high now and welfare affects millions..

http://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/

anyway, I agree with streatham, keep this for announcemnts, sticky?
 
'Are you two bum chums or something?'

Wtf, homophobia, attacking people for caring about the most vulnerable, weird and very bad...
 
treelover said:
No, terratech like some others tried to get people involved, he has a website which he has attempted to draw in interest in the issues, having said that Andrew Coates of Ipswich Unemployed Action has had some some sucess but unemployment and welfare issues just aren't receiving the support they merit, ffs, youth unemployment is sky high now and welfare affects millions..

http://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/

anyway, I agree with streatham, keep this for announcemnts, sticky?
Click to expand...

ok, that's cool :) as i said i wasnt having a go, but just making a general point as it annoys me when people say stuff "oh the left isnt doing this" etc, actually alot of us are
 
treelover said:
'Are you two bum chums or something?'

Wtf, homophobia, attacking people for caring about the most vulnerable, weird and very bad...
Click to expand...

Erm no. Five out of his 38 posts were directed to you so I wondered if you guys knew each other. Homophobia ffs. :rolleyes:
 
'bum chums' isn't a derogatory term then?


maybe because there are so few people doing anything about welfare, I gave up at the lack of interest and also on the left as a consequence.
 
treelover said:
No, terratech like some others tried to get people involved, he has a website which he has attempted to draw in interest in the issues, having said that Andrew Coates of Ipswich Unemployed Action has had some some sucess but unemployment and welfare issues just aren't receiving the support they merit, ffs, youth unemployment is sky high now and welfare affects millions..

http://intensiveactivity.wordpress.com/

anyway, I agree with streatham, keep this for announcemnts, sticky?
Click to expand...

Have you ever thought that maybe the reason the 'far left' locally haven't thrown their all into terratechs campaign might be because they are aleady doing a load of other stuff. Most trade unionists I know are already involved in about three campaign groups currently. I myself am on the steering commitee of a sos campaign and a trade council, and I'm a rep. I could of been on the steering committee of another campaign and was asked to do so, but I couldn't accept it because I'm actually too busy to take on another thing. I was speaking to an SP member locally who had a meeting on every night this week. And he's got kids! Just because your local trade unionists and leftists don't devote several hours a week to your campaign, doesn't mean they don't support it or want it to succeed.

Given that by your own admission you are not a member of any group or trade union, why don't YOU help him?

@terratech: If you want to publicise your website or campaign nationally with the help of the 'far left', you can advertise in the Morning Star for a relatively small amount of money, or you can write into Socialist Worker or The Socialist, they often print letters with websites in them in their papers from contributors.
 
writing to Socialist Worker is good idea, they are everywhere so they must sell more papers than anyone else !!
 
grogwilton said:
Have you ever thought that maybe the reason the 'far left' locally haven't thrown their all into terratechs campaign might be because they are aleady doing a load of other stuff. Most trade unionists I know are already involved in about three campaign groups currently. I myself am on the steering commitee of a sos campaign and a trade council, and I'm a rep. I could of been on the steering committee of another campaign and was asked to do so, but I couldn't accept it because I'm actually too busy to take on another thing. I was speaking to an SP member locally who had a meeting on every night this week. And he's got kids! Just because your local trade unionists and leftists don't devote several hours a week to your campaign, doesn't mean they don't support it or want it to succeed.

Given that by your own admission you are not a member of any group or trade union, why don't YOU help him?

@terratech: If you want to publicise your website or campaign nationally with the help of the 'far left', you can advertise in the Morning Star for a relatively small amount of money, or you can write into Socialist Worker or The Socialist, they often print letters with websites in them in their papers from contributors.
Click to expand...

exactly, at the moment im working 9-5, im doing freelance stuff for mates "businesses" and so on, doing stuff for the Oxford save our services AND the sp, i would love to help your campaign but dont have time , and thats the point i am making - why dont you make an effort to get involved in the save our service campaigns, which dont just invollve ranting lefties but actually involve the community, if you can't get along to it for health reasons or whatever why don't you at least tell people about them that would be more able to? this is not intended to be patronising but the people i know in these campaigns, are among the hardest working acitivsts i know and from what they ave told me they would LOVE to have more input from service users' and claimants groups, because they want to involve the wider public beyond the left and trade unions . last night a mate of mine came back from a demo to an emergency meeting bout indsutrlal action as hes a shop steward, and THEN came back to talk, and then tomorrow etc etc etc


Actually Treelover i may pm you as i have something you may be interested in, ione sec x
 
@GW
a reasoned post, but imo, still not really answering the fundamental issue of why welfare and anti-povertys campaign in the uk are so low down the priority list for all sections of the left and progressives? of course, someone might have meetings all week, but what issues? for most of the decade people choose to prioritise issues like Palestine and Iraq, always very well attended, but surely now as we can see in Ireland times are going to get incredibly hard for the most vulnerable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/30/ireland-cuts-public-sector-unemployment
 
treelover said:
@GW
a reasoned post, but imo, still not really answering the fundamental issue of why welfare and anti-povertys campaign in the uk are so low down the priority list for all sections of the left and progressives?
Click to expand...
but they're not, or not necessarily; groups are springing up everywhere, and reporting good turnout. I Don't think you can treat 'the left' or 'progressives' as one lumpen block either - that's the classic tbaldwin mistake
 
treelover said:
@GW
a reasoned post, but imo, still not really answering the fundamental issue of why welfare and anti-povertys campaign in the uk are so low down the priority list for all sections of the left and progressives? of course, someone might have meetings all week, but what issues? for most of the decade people choose to prioritise issues like Palestine and Iraq, always very well attended, but surely now as we can see in Ireland times are going to get incredibly hard for the most vulnerable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/30/ireland-cuts-public-sector-unemployment
Click to expand...

The issue now is to force things like this onto anti-cuts agendas. They're currently being driven by public sector support groups - you only get to challenge that by challenging it. Things can happen then.
 
they're not though. why don't you get involved if you want to change it?

unisons demos on wednesday which I went to had about 50 people, on possibly the shittiest afternoon piossible for a demo. my mate organised about 10 demos up and down bucks with about 150 people in total attending. this isn't some national bollocks in that tharr London that most people cant get to, its everywhere and this is gonna be a national campaign, but we need EVERYONE on board for it to be a success.

doesn't matter if yopu're "part of the left" or not.
 
Citizen66; Wow that must have taken time….. That’s what I like to see “Dedication” to a subject, personally however treelovers past(?) passion I respect and am glad to see he has not lost all of it in bringing up the issue.

Frogwomen… “Negativity” is an unfortunate consequence of the issue of unemployment but believe me this is not a personal failing. As you recognise the left have been lamentable in covering this issue and the consequences of that will be felt throughout the campaign against cuts. I wish this campaign every success and will be supporting it; with every chance of being involved in it. But as far as the issue of unemployment goes I believe there is a whole different ball game about to be fought around entitlement, privatisation and right now the plain survival of individuals.

On this one point are the unions prepared to financially support those now being chucked out from their homes? It may sound stupid but to hear of a campaign to save somebodies else’s job will not rub with the unemployed person unless their immediate need is met. With the movement I am trying to get off the ground, survival becomes the greatest incentive for a very distinctive self-identifying movement in which while non-ideological, will serve to politicise.

While I surf the net to get recognition for the Unemployment Movement as much ground work goes into promoting it (Manchester Anarchist Bookfair Tomorrow). I hope all of you will help me and as I know you don’t want to get frogwoman pissed off about sitting on the side-line, so just signing up and posting occasionally on the website would be great.

I dare you not too! Because you`ll be proving the exact point I stated with.

Grogwilton…. Thank you for your post.
 
Michael Gove is the keynote speaker at a conference organised by the
Specialist Schools and Academies Trust on Monday 11th October. The
conference is for schools wanting to become academies. Gove only managed to
get 32 Academies open this September and he was hoping for a lot more. He is
now desperately trying to sell it to more and more Heads and schools. We
need to make sure that schools know that all the unions are united in
opposing these plans. The conference is in the Hotel park plaza at 18 Albert
Embankment, just by Lambeth Bridge. If you think your union group may be
able to join and/or support a protest outside it, please reply to this
email.
Click to expand...

don't know the person I got this from personally, so pm for email address
 
treelover said:
@GW
a reasoned post, but imo, still not really answering the fundamental issue of why welfare and anti-povertys campaign in the uk are so low down the priority list for all sections of the left and progressives? of course, someone might have meetings all week, but what issues? for most of the decade people choose to prioritise issues like Palestine and Iraq, always very well attended, but surely now as we can see in Ireland times are going to get incredibly hard for the most vulnerable.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/30/ireland-cuts-public-sector-unemployment
Click to expand...

@TL a good and reasoned post, but its still not really answering the fundamental issue of why welfare and anti poverty campaigns or indeed any campaign is so low down the priority list of things for you to do with your time, and rank considerably lower then other very important things, like pointing out that the left isn't prioritising them.

Seriously why did the left put welfare stuff lower then union/anti war stuff? I'd say they prioritised anti war stuff for a while because we were about to go into a massively stupid war. They prioritise unions stuff over welfare stuff for two reasons:

Firstly, unions and employed people have far more power at their disposal for defending their conditions then people on welfare, and so the amount of time you put into union work will pay dividends for not only the groups involved but also the unions and the workers benefitting from the action a lot more then organising claimants. It is notoriously difficult to organise claimants, and even if they are organised, they have very little power because they can't go on strike.

Secondly, if you are successful with union work it makes defending welfare a lot easier. The reason welfare and claimants have been hammered so much is that unions and those willing to defend claimants in the last 20 years have taken a hammering.

Oh and every meeting that SP member went to would have been anti cuts stuff. I have respect for the SP as an organisation but the one place they really fall down is any anti war stuff.
 
grogwilton said:
Oh and every meeting that SP member went to would have been anti cuts stuff. I have respect for the SP as an organisation but the one place they really fall down is any anti war stuff.
Click to expand...

Anti-war campaigning has been a fundamental campaign for SP for quite some time. I think events with StWC put obstacles in the way of SP participating in a united front type body, whatever the rights or wrongs of all that, but in terms of public campaigning then troops out is key.

Have you had much to do with UWU, GW?
 
If its a fundamental part of SP campaigning then they must be pretty bad at campaigning! When I lived in Exeter it had a really active 'anti war scene' within and without the STWC, and the SP there never got involved in any of it. Though that may have been down to the local SP members, and they weren't great in number when the anti war stuff was at its peak. I know they put anti war stuff on their publications but their involvement in anti war stuff I've been on has been minimal. I'm not having a go- I always thought the lack of emphasis on anti war stuff was a genuine and reasonable political position, not a sectarian idiocy, I like all the union/anti cuts stuff they did and do.

I haven't been very involved in the UWU. I don't live in a large city center, and the fact they seem to be limited to large centers I think underlines my point that stuff like the UWU is not easily organised. The example of the 1930s stuff by terratech isn't really a fair comparison with now- as I pointed out organising the unemployed is easier when its in the context of a large working class movement of organised workers. Unions were a lot bigger in the 30s, left parties were a lot bigger, and the WC movement was a lot bigger- so naturally the Unemployed workers movement would be a lot bigger, if only because a lot of the unemployed would have been in unions before they became unemployed or lived in areas were unions were seen as vital parts of the community.

How many of todays young unemployed even know what a union is let alone have been in one?
 
grogwilton said:
If its a fundamental part of SP campaigning then they must be pretty bad at campaigning! When I lived in Exeter it had a really active 'anti war scene' within and without the STWC, and the SP there never got involved in any of it. Though that may have been down to the local SP members, and they weren't great in number when the anti war stuff was at its peak. I know they put anti war stuff on their publications but their involvement in anti war stuff I've been on has been minimal. I'm not having a go- I always thought the lack of emphasis on anti war stuff was a genuine and reasonable political position, not a sectarian idiocy, I like all the union/anti cuts stuff they did and do.

I haven't been very involved in the UWU. I don't live in a large city center, and the fact they seem to be limited to large centers I think underlines my point that stuff like the UWU is not easily organised. The example of the 1930s stuff by terratech isn't really a fair comparison with now- as I pointed out organising the unemployed is easier when its in the context of a large working class movement of organised workers. Unions were a lot bigger in the 30s, left parties were a lot bigger, and the WC movement was a lot bigger- so naturally the Unemployed workers movement would be a lot bigger, if only because a lot of the unemployed would have been in unions before they became unemployed or lived in areas were unions were seen as vital parts of the community.

How many of todays young unemployed even know what a union is let alone have been in one?
Click to expand...

Aye, well I can't comment on Exeter tbf. Yeah, UWU is a good initiative but obviously difficult to organise. Imo, an unemployed workers' union needs the support of the unions & the TUC to stand a chance. It needs funding.
 
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