well yes, I was hardly expecting to be in a minority of more than one! not on here
your anecdotes are great, concerning as they do 'the foundry' where your grandad and dad had jobs for life and you had an apprenticeship, Longbridge and making stuff for the GPO. When I was a kid the men on our estate would occasionally all turn up at some really odd time of day and then just as suddenly all go back to work again. When I first tried I had real problems getting into the union, dealing with the restricted entry, getting nominated & seconded and that, but then the ticket got me onto card-check jobs with the stewards conflabbing about which grades should do what and the occasional down tools and threatened walkout. and, of course, the old blokes sending the new lad off to the stores for a left handed spanner...
it's great isn't it, nostalgia.
different world from today though. virtually no-one under 40 who doesn't read history books (or watch fuzzy documentaries with dodgy colour) will have a scoobie what we're on about, and many of those twenty or more years older went through all that and then turned their back on it, went on to elect, and re-elect, you know who.
Will it ever come back? for the majority, like. I doubt it but it might. Collective working (and the bargaining that goes with it) in industrial workplaces with clear demarcation based on the colour of overalls, the foreman and the steward, being able to stop the line over crude, obvious exploitation, the brazier by the gates, leapfrogging and differentials.
different world. if you still work in that world, if that's the reality around you, then good luck to you, argue your case, get your workmates onside, fight the collective battles against the clear class enemy, hang on to those traditions for dear life. Maybe there's some of it left in the public sector, I don't know, I've only ever dipped a toe.
The
IS tradition is based around that narrative.
Personally, when I left school, I could see the older kids who I'd looked up to when I was like 12 or something, as they sat next to their dad in the pub after their shift at the factory making bits of car, same body shape, same expression, same pint, same conversation, same eyes. I ran away. I worked in plenty of factories but never that one, and then it closed anyway. You can blame me for for the destruction of the collectively exploited working life if you like, but I've never regretted running away.
Now the site is a bunch of little units where people nominally do stuff about online shopping metrics or something but actually spend their time on Facebook.
Do you really think all the white collar, well educated, individual contract, aspirational modern working class wants any of that?
I wasn't for a moment suggesting you'd advocated collective class battles at every opportunity, just keeping the theme of this bit of the thread going, the theme that all socialists should be "Promoting strikes wherever possible".
