Brighton SolFed

"A number of Solidarity Federation locals have been mobilising to support our comrades in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in their struggle to defend their members in the US who are facing victimisation and sackings due to their union organising activities.

The list of workers sacked so far for their union activities is:-

• Joseph Agins, sacked December 12th 2005
• Charles Fostrom sacked July 11th 2006
• Evan Winterschiedt sacked July 18th 2006
• Daniel Gross sacked August 5th 2006
• Isis Saenz fired November 1st 2006

All sackings so far have taken place in New York.

So far SolFed members have been involved in a number of pickets of Starbucks stores and have enjoyed some success in sending potential coffee-drinkers elsewhere! It seems that the principle of never crossing a picket line is not quite dead despite all the years of defeat and ruling class propaganda. The struggle of the IWW's Starbucks Union has inspired action in some fifty cities around the world, including in Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and of course the US and UK. We hope that SolFed members and others can assist our IWW comrades in winning some breathing space for those trying to take on the harassment and intimidation of this particularly anti-worker multinational. It doesn't take much to hand out some leaflets outside the store and the case is a pretty simple one to argue! See www.starbucksunion.org for further details."

Few can still harbour any illusion about the Labour Party. Hardly any brain cells are required to see that Labour is just a continuation of Thatcher's vicious free market polices glossed over with a touch of caring concern. This says much about the reasoning capacity of boneheaded trade union leaders who still insist on handing over millions of pounds to Labour.

That the Labour Party has finally evolved into the Tory Party will not come as a surprise to anarcho-syndicalists. One of the driving forces which gave birth to our movement, in the early years of the 20th century, was the disillusionment felt by workers with newly elected MPs. In country after country newly franchised (mainly male) workers used their votes to elect socialist and communist party members to office for the first time; only to find that, once in office, their elected representatives were quickly seduced by the trappings of power. In a number of countries they were corrupted to the extent of supporting the use of troops to put down strikes.

The revulsion over this betrayal led to the embryonic revolutionary unions adopting a firm anti-parliamentary line. They rejected electoral politics and took up direct action as the means by which the working class could keep democratic control of their own struggle and confront capitalism directly. Instead of placing their faith in politicians and governments, they sought to build a mass movement that would use boycotts and various forms of strike action as part of the wider struggle against capitalism. The ultimate aim was to launch a social general strike which would be the means of overthrowing capitalism and creating a better world.

The experience of those early workers and the direct action alternative is still relevant today. As Labour transformed themselves into the Tories, numerous socialist parties have stepped in to try and occupy the place once occupied by Labour. We should not be fooled; the whole history of electoral politics, not just here but across the world, is that once in power political parties soon ditch any thoughts of destroying capitalism and become part of the elite ruling over us in the same old way.

Older readers may remember those far off days of the 1970s when attacking greedy militant trade unionist was all the rage. A rain forest's worth of print was produced arguing that organised workers were grabbing all the wealth, causing economic havoc and creating a more unequal Britain. The low paid, less well organised workers, were supposedly left behind in the wage race by their unionised brothers and sisters.

Well the demon of the wildcat strikes has been tamed and as a result so has trade union power. Surley now without all those greedy trade unionists Britain has become a more equal place. Not quite, in fact just the opposite. In the last 30 years Britain has become a far more unequal place to live. In 1934 13% of the national income was owned by the richest 1%. By the 1970s this had dropped to just 4%. The Thatcher years saw it rise again 11% and under Blair we are back to the 1930's levels. Their share of the country's wealth has also shot up. In the 1970s the richest 1% owned 17% of the country's total wealth; by 2002 this had risen to 23%. During the same period the bottom 50% of the population's share of wealth dropped to just 6%. After 30 years free of mindless militancy the richest 10% now earns more than the total income of the bottom 50% of the population.

At the other end of the scale the poorest 10% of the population have faired even worse in our strike-free paradise. Under Thatcher their earnings fell by 8% in real terms. Under Labour their lot has hardly improved and in both 2002 and 2003, the disposable income of the bottom 10% fell. This at a time when some 75,000 people now own 50% of Britain's total liquid assists, with their earnings actually increasing by 66% in the last five years. In the last nine years the richest 1000 people have seen their wealth increase from £99 billion to £301billion. While in the strike ridden 1970s a top executive earned 25 times more than the average worker, they currently earn 120 times more or around £46,000 a week.

Yet surprise, surprise we hear little about the greedy rich and growing inequality from the politicians and media. It seems that for ordinary workers to strive for a living wage in the 1970s was greedy, it wrecked the economy and somehow caused greater inequality. While in 2007 the super rich ripping off an ever larger proportion of the country's wealth helps the economy by attracting the right people to the top jobs. This mysteriously leads to greater equality, due to some magical process no one can explain, under which the fortunes earned by the rich somehow trickles down through society enriching the needy poor.

The truth is that under the post war system of free collective bargaining workers were able to begin to challenge both the power and the earning of the rich ensuring that the earnings of all sectors, including the low paid, increased in real terms. That is the real reason why militant workers were so despised for much of the post war period because they challenged the power of capitalism to make money.

We should learn the lesson well; we cannot trust the state or politicians to defend workers rights because they will always side with capitalism. Our only defence is workers collective power, based on self organisation and direct action. It is only through our collective strength can begin to challenge growing inequality and rid the world of the evil that is capitalism and replace it with a better world based on common ownership and workers democratic control.