A-Infos (en) Britain, Aanarchist journal Direct Action #40 - comment - Manc SolFed refuse to be gagged / a closer look - In the same boat, on the same journey...

comment - Manc SolFed refuse to be gagged

While newspapers have had a significant fall in their sales over the last 20 
years, in some cases up to a third of their circulation, the boss class still 
own and control the mass media through which they are able to manipulate the 
opinions of a large number of people. Meanwhile the authentic voices of 
anti-capitalism have to make do with small circulation magazines, papers and 
leaflets.

However, it seems that even these are seen as a threat to Labour's consumerist 
utopia. In recent months in Manchester political groups distributing leaflets 
and selling literature in the city centre have been harrassed by council 
officials who, among other things, have threatened to have SF members arrested 
who dare to run stalls distributing anti-Labour material.

We're told that leafletting is illegal without a permit. Not so; the by-law 
exempts political, religious and charitable groups. We're told that we can't 
sell magazines; or that we're causing an obstruction - although the distributors 
of the Manchester Evening Nazi or the various coffee, baked spud and ice cream 
vending stalls appear to be just fine. They, of course, don't give out leaflets 
informing people of their rights at work, or attacking the Labour Party, or 
urging trade union members not to pay the political levy.

However, simply refusing to budge and pointing out to the officials their 
obvious political motivation soon has them shuffling off muttering about "only 
advising us that you might get asked to move on". Of course, this never happens 
and our stalls continue.

a closer look - In the same boat, on the same journey...

...Egyptian class struggle in 2007
<image>
Egyptian workers celebrate another victory

Since December 2006, Egypt has seen a wave of strikes the likes of which has not 
been seen since the end of World War 2. Tens of thousands of workers have used 
wildcat strikes and occupations to fight not only their bosses and the Egyptian 
state but also the General Federation of Egyptian Trade Unions. The prominence 
of women in the struggle, challenging the patriarchal attitudes of the rest of 
their class, is another important dimension in a traditionally conservative 
society. All in all, this outbreak of self-organisation and solidarity deserves 
a closer look from radical workers the world over.

Lack of ‘trickle-down’

The International Monetary Fund has congratulated Egypt on its economic growth 
since 2003 following economic liberalisation. Foreign direct investment has 
rocketed, reaching $6 billion in 2006, among the highest in Africa. However, to 
say this new wealth has found a little difficulty finding its way down to the 
working class would be like saying Marlin found a little difficulty finding 
Nemo. While inflation runs at 6.5%, wages have largely stagnated and 20% of 
Egyptians live in poverty. Those lucky enough to work in the public sector 
typically earn around £20 per month basic wage, rising to £35-38 with public 
sector profit sharing incentives. Public sector workers have accepted these 
conditions because they provide secure jobs for life and a pension for 
retirement, something those outside the sector cannot count on.

It's this security, and the threat to it posed by privatisation, which provided 
the catalyst for the recent struggles. As part of economic liberalisation, the 
Egyptian government has pursued a policy of privatisation, selling off many 
industries to foreign investors, especially in the textile sector. As a result, 
textile workers have been at the forefront of these recent strikes.

Back in March 2006, textile workers at the Misr Spinning and Weaving Company in 
Mahalla were pleasantly surprised to hear that their annual bonuses were to be 
raised from 100 Egyptian pounds (EGP) [= £8.88 at current exchange rate] to two 
months wages. They were particularly pleased because the last time such a raise 
happened was in 1984! However, in December, when the new bonus was due, the 
workers received the same old bonus. Incensed, 10,000 workers walked out on 
December 7th and gathered at the mill gates chanting "two months! two months!" 
Riot police just stood there as it became immediately obvious there was nothing 
they could do to quell the protests. There were too many workers, and they were 
too angry.

The struggle spreads

The next morning riot police attempted to break in to eject 70 workers who had 
locked themselves in the mill overnight. Word also spread that the mill had been 
closed because of electrical problems. This ploy failed and 20,000 workers 
turned up outside the factory, holding mock funerals for the bosses and 
demonstrations of support for the workers. Security forces were impotent again, 
merely watching the events unfold, powerless in the face of this level of 
solidarity. After four days of occupation, government officials offered the 
workers a 45-day bonus and promised not to privatise the mill. The workers 
suspended their strike, as both government and trade union officials left with 
their tail between their legs, humiliated by the workers taking matters into 
their own hands.

Now, you can't keep a good idea down, and the idea of workers' solidarity in 
struggle took off. The next three months would see 30,000 textile workers in 
over ten mills around the Nile Delta and Alexandria go on strike, or sometimes 
just threaten to strike, for what the Mahalla strikers had won. In nearly all 
cases they succeeded. As in Mahalla, riot police were sent in and, likewise, 
they failed in the face of the strikers' solidarity.

The struggle also spread beyond the textile industry into a variety of public 
and private sector industries. Not long after the Mahalla textile workers' 
strike, cement workers in Helwan and Tura came out while workers in the Mahalla 
auto-industry staged a sit-in. Railway engineers struck in January, blocking the 
first class train from Cairo to Alexandria. Taking a lead from this, striking 
truck drivers shut down the busy Cairo-Ain Sokhna highway on February 5th by 
parking their vehicles in the middle of the road. Meanwhile workers in the Cairo 
Poultry Company won their overdue bonuses after two days of strike action. All 
this, as well as strikes by bus drivers, rubbish collectors, public gardeners 
and sanitation workers, have meant that the Egyptian press had a new labour 
struggle to report every day for the first five months of 2007! Now if that 
doesn't put a grin on the face of every anarcho-syndicalist I'm not sure what will.

Women on the frontline

One of the most significant strikes was that at the Mansoura Spain Garments 
Company between April and June. Its importance, however, was not only due to 
militant tactics or length of the struggle, but to the fact that it was a 
struggle fought and led largely by women workers.

Workers at Mansoura Spain were told that the bank owning the factory intended to 
sell, leaving them facing destitution. As such, 150 workers (of a total 284) 
occupied the factory, day and night, demanding that the company not be 
liquidated. They also demanded unpaid monthly and annual social bonuses. For two 
months they occupied their factory while labour ministers and trade union 
officials tried to make them give up with assurances that their case "will be 
looked into". But their resilience paid off when the government intervened to 
make sure the company would not be liquidated. The workers also secured their 
bonuses, pay for the time during the occupation and assurances that there would 
be no victimisation of activists. Now, Egyptian society in general is very 
conservative and provincial towns like Mansoura especially so.

Women taking such a leading role in public life, let alone working class 
struggle, can only be described as pretty bloody spectacular! The fact that 
these women occupied their factory meant it was down to their husbands to 
looking after children. Moreover, the fact that they were sleeping outside the 
home, alongside men who were not their husbands, meant that the women of 
Mansoura Spain found themselves fighting not only their government, bosses and 
trade union but also sexist attitudes within their class and society in general. 
One of the company managers threatened to fabricate prostitution charges against 
the women. One of the workers was even assaulted by her family for her 
involvement. However, after a delegation of workers, both male and female, 
visited her family to explain the situation, the family changed their mind and 
supported her struggle.

The involvement of women was not just confined to the small town of Mansoura. In 
fact, women had been on the frontline from the very beginning. The initial 
Mahalla textile strike was kicked off by 3,000 women workers downing tools, 
walking over to the section where the men were still working and chanting, "here 
are the women! where are the men?!" It was after this that the men came out to 
spark off one of the biggest explosions of autonomous working class activity in 
the recent Middle Eastern history.

The gains won by the women took three forms. Firstly the bread and butter gains 
- these women fought for and won food for their families and communities. 
Secondly, the solidarity and direct action used won them confidence in their 
collective class strength. One of the Mansoura Spain workers, when asked if she 
was optimistic about the bosses keeping their promises, replied:

The management now knows what we are capable of. We will disband the sit-in 
after we get paid tomorrow. If they don't give us the rest of our rights we will 
occupy the factory again.

And finally, in fighting for their class they also fought against the prejudices 
within it, prejudices that not only hold them down as a section of the class but 
that holds down the working class as a whole. They challenged the sexist 
attitudes of Egyptian society, in the face of social exclusion and legal 
retribution, forging a genuine solidarity within their class and opening up a 
significant space for the development of a working class feminism in Egypt, if 
not the whole Arab world. The lead role played by women in the strike movement 
was so central to its success that to not shout about it would be as good as 
denying the existence of half the movement.

With friends like these...

In case your grin isn't quite ear-to-ear yet, it's worth mentioning the 
independence of these strikes from established political movements and official 
unions.

Since the introduction of the Unified Labour Law of 2003, Egyptian workers can 
strike legally, but only if approved by the General Federation of Egyptian Trade 
Unions, which is firmly controlled by the ruling National Democratic Party. So 
all strikes since 2003 have been illegal.

With this strike movement, official trade union representatives opposed the 
strikes and attempted to call them off. The workers, sensing their own power, 
ignored the GFETU's attempts to abort their movement and there have even been 
rumblings of setting up an independent union federation. At Mahalla, workers 
began a campaign to impeach the local union officials who opposed the strikes 
and were close to the Egyptian security services. By the end of January, 12,800 
Mahalla workers had signed a petition demanding their resignation and the 
holding of new union elections, the union an ultimatum back by the threat of 
mass resignation. By mid-March, 6,000 workers had made good on this promise and 
left the union.

Another feature was that the Muslim Brothers, as the 'main' opposition group, 
were blamed for the strikes. In particular, the largest private sector strike, 
at the Arab Polvara Spinning and Weaving Company, was pinned on the Muslim Brothers.

These accusations are a little odd. The Muslim Brothers have no history of 
support amongst the organised working class. Funnily enough, however, they do 
have a history of burying their differences with the Egyptian state in order to 
break strikes. They certainly paid lip service of support for some of the 
disputes but even here they lacked anything substantial. The workers of the 
Mansoura Spain occupation complained that their local official, a Muslim 
Brother, had "only showed up once during the previous strike, and we never saw 
his face again". This half-arsed response to workers' militancy is, most 
probably, a direct result of the leadership representing nothing but the desires 
of affluent Muslim businessmen who couldn't care less about the trials and 
tribulations of working class Egyptian life.

The truth is that the workers in this struggle have relied on no one but each 
other to sustain their actions. Workers have found solidarity to be the key to 
winning their demands and to developing the future Egyptian labour movement. In 
a statement of solidarity with those struggling in Mahalla, striking Kafr 
el-Dawwar workers declared:

We, just like you, await...to see if the Minister of Labour will implement our 
demands...We do not put much hope on the Minister, though...We will depend only 
on ourselves to achieve our demands.

We are sailing with you on the same boat, and will embark together on the same 
journey...We are declaring our full solidarity with your demands, and assert 
that we are ready to stage solidarity action, if you decide to take industrial 
action.

Clearly, the workers of Egypt haven't started waving red and black flags and 
calling their kids 'Durruti', but what we do see is a growing confidence in the 
strength of direct action from the rank and file to make change happen. This, 
and a commitment to genuine union democracy, is evident in their words and 
actions. The establishment of the December 7th Movement, with its dedication to 
confronting the state-controlled sham unions, is definitely cause for 
celebration and, alongside recent workers' struggles in Iran and Iraq, 
represents the regrouping of the working class as a political force in the 
Middle East. An independent political force, fighting on its own terms, for its 
own interests, against both Western imperialism and political Islam.

Much of the information for this piece is from Hossam el-Hamalawy's 3arabwy blog 
which can be found at http://arabist.net/arabawy/
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http://www.direct-action.org.uk/DA-SF-IWA-40.htm
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