A-Infos (en) Britain, Anarchist Federation bulletin - Resistance 107 - November 2008

Contents of the November 2008 issue: CAMPAIGNERS SAVE LIBRARY, Anarchist view on 
economy, Workplace fightback, Liverpool campaign stall clampdown, Police 
Violence, Colombia demo, Greece general strike, BNP "Smash the Miners", and 
more. ---- CAMPAIGNERS SAVE LIBRARY ---- East London’s working class has moved 
one step closer to taking control of their community after defeating Tower 
Hamlets council’s opportunistic bid to flog Bancroft Library. ---- The historic 
record and archive library, open to all, was saved by a coalition of no fewer 
than 35 east London local groups, including the Ocean Estate Tenants and 
Leaseholders Association and East of London Family History Society.

The Library was due to be sold to Queen Mary University of London. If the sale 
proceeded as planned, the historic working class library would have been 
converted in to a post-graduate research centre. Queen Mary University would 
have had the ‘choice cut’ of the archive, with the rest being reunited at some 
arbitrary point in the future in an undetermined venue; in other words, not 
gonna happen!

Bancroft Library has played a pivotal role in recording the extraordinary 
history of east London. The local history library holds over 20,000 printed 
books and pamphlets dating from the 17th century to the present day. Recording 
the resistance of working people against feudal lords and even royalty, the 
library holds records on the peasant revolt ‘lead’ by Wat Tyler in 1381 ending 
at east London’s Mile End, accounts of the birth of the industrial working class 
and events leading to the 1936 battle of Cable Street, when local working class 
folk defeated Oswald Mosley’s attempt to lead fascists in a march through what 
was then a largely Jewish working class Whitechapel.

The campaign is now pushing to establish the Tower Hamlets Local History Centre, 
which must be planned in partnership with the borough’s local history librarian 
and the borough’s archivist, the borough’s primary and secondary schools and 
Tower Hamlets College, historians and geographers, local residents and others.

To find out more please visit the campaigns website: www.savebancroftlibrary.org.uk

---

THE ECONOMY: AN ANARCHIST RESPONSE

Though the economy is only beginning to slide into an official recession, we’ve 
been experiencing the effects of the credit crisis for over a year.

As has happened every time that capitalism has entered its inevitable crises, it 
has been workers who have paid for it in attacks on pay and working conditions, 
and in declining standards of life. This has prompted a wave of defensive 
struggles as workers seek to defend their own interests against those of their 
bosses.

We have seen large strikes across several sectors: the royal mail, local 
government, the NHS, the civil service, teachers, oil workers, tanker drivers, 
coastguard, transport, retail and manufacturing staff. The increasing 
willingness of workers to defend themselves after years of attacks should be 
welcomed. However, the unions have repeatedly behaved as you would expect 
organisations integrated into the state and the ruling party to; ineffectualness 
ranging from meekness to outright sabotage.

We have seen the union bosses call off mandated strikes at the slightest whiff 
of negotiations, sapping the will of their members as they drag out discussions 
and eventually capitulate, watering down demands that workers were willing to 
fight for. We have seen majority votes rejected by officials as not enough of a 
mandate, and unions witch-hunting their own members to ensure a good 
relationship with the Labour Party. We have seen them instructing their members 
to scab on other workers in different unions, and undermining attempts at 
co-ordination, splitting workers and rendering their actions ineffectual. We 
have seen them sell pay cuts to workers on behalf of the government as a ‘good 
deal’.

But nonetheless, some workers have fought for their collective interests 
irrespective of unions. On the 21st October, workers at the Ford plant in 
Southampton walked out in protest at the imposition of a four day week. August 
saw wildcats by council workers in London, manufacturing workers in Falkirk, and 
by workers at a nuclear power station in Plymouth. The Plymouth strike saw 
Polish and British strikers picketing together, despite the media’s attempts to 
blame the dispute on the Poles – against the explicit statements of the 
strikers. Wildcat strikes were frequent throughout the Royal Mail dispute last 
year, and have recurred this year too.

All this shows that workers must fight in their interests across the divisions 
of union membership, nationality, and workplace. We must struggle together 
despite what union bosses have to say.

---

ON THE FRONTLINE

Five thousand London bus workers with Metroline and First Group walked out in 
October over equal pay causing massive disruption across the capital, on a 24 
hour strike to protest at the huge pay difference between the 18 London bus 
companies.
Several sources reported solid support for the action, with very few drivers 
crossing picket lines with many routes completely cancelled.
A thousand workers at Metrobus were due to join the strike, but the employers 
were granted an injunction against the stoppage at the last minute.
Currently the 18 London bus companies all operate with different pay structures, 
with pay inequalities of up to £7,000 a year.

Members of the National Union of Journalists working at Trinty Mirror’s 
newspapers in Birmingham have shown an imaginative way of getting around the 
government’s anti-union laws. The paper had sought to sack all its 295 
journalists and make them reapply for just 235 jobs. Following a successful 
industrial action ballot the union won reassurances off of management only to 
find the bosses trying to wriggle out of them. In response the union has called 
a mandatory meeting of all its members during the day which meaning that no one 
will be available to write the paper!

Some 270,000 members of the PCS civil service workers’ union are set for a 
national strike after voting for action over pay.
Fifty four percent of members voted to take action over below-inflation pay. 
While the vote was close, the anger among PCS members about low pay runs deep 
and members are serious about fighting for the six demands of our national pay 
campaign. Twenty five per cent of civil service workers earn less than £16,500.

Unite members at the University of Sussex have been on the picket line fighting 
attempts to close the university’s pension scheme to new employees. Outragously 
the pension arrangements for management are not being changed – just those for 
workers. Elsewhere in the university sector UCU members at Nottingham Trent 
University have taken industrial action following management’s derecognition of 
the union. The university has formally terminated recognition of UCU.
Meanwhile teachers are being balloted on further industrial action on their pay 
dispute – six months after their one day strike!

Over in the NHS thousands of health workers including health visitors, mental 
health nurses, laboratory staff and community nurses are being balloted to take 
industrial action in response to the government’s imposition of a pay deal that 
will cut the living standards of health workers. Earlier this year 95% of Unite 
members rejected the deal.

As the economy goes into recession bosses try to make workers pay – through 
redundancies and below inflation pay rises. But workers are fighting back. 
Unison are balloting Scottish Water workers on industrial action following the 
imposition of a pay deal worth just 2.4%. Inflation is 5.3% and rising.

---

DEMONSTRATION FOR SACKED CLEANERS

More than forty people demonstrated outside the Institute of Engineering and 
Technology in London in support of Colombian cleaners unfairly dismissed by 
employers Amey. There was also a simultaneous demonstration outside Amey’s 
Bristol offices.

One of the sacked cleaners and a former trade unionist in Colombia, Julio Mayor, 
said: “We were sacked for trying to communicate with the other staff at the 
National Physical Laboratory about Amey’s violation of the employment rights of 
cleaners there. We are protesting here to publicly request the National Physical 
Laboratory to take action against Amey to stop victimising cleaners.”

They were suspended for criticising the company for putting an excessive 
workload onto ever fewer staff, for changing working terms and conditions and 
for disrespecting grievance procedures. The five were sacked on 14th September 2008.

The cleaners were charged with bringing the company into disrepute after they 
sent a leaflet to other NPL staff explaining what was going on in the cleaning 
department and asking for their support, especially against the victimisation 
and bullying they were facing from their manager.

Since Amey took over the contract in 2006 the number of cleaners has been 
reduced from 36 to 10 as the company has looked to cut costs wherever possible, 
and in the process virtually getting rid of the living wage won by the original 
workforce.

In May 2007 two workers were deported to Brazil and one to Colombia after Amey 
called in the Home Office to check the immigration status of workers who were 
active in the cleaners’ union.

Amey, which posted a £75 million net annual profit, is a majority shareholder in 
Tubelines, which cleans parts of the Underground. Tube cleaners who went on 
strike for a living wage this summer were faced with paper checks, immigration 
raids and deportations to countries including Sierra Leone and the Democratic 
Republic of Congo.

The action was organised by several solidarity groups including the Trade Union 
and Community Campaign Against Immigration Controls the Latin American Workers 
Association, London Coalition Against Poverty, Industrial Workers of the World, 
Colombia Solidarity Campaign, Unite-Justice for Cleaners activists at Schroders 
investment bank and others.

There will be further demonstrations outside other Amey offices in London. For 
more information visit: www.caic.org.uk

---

COLOMBIANS DEMONSTRATE FOR JUSTICE

More than 30 people demonstrated their support for the Colombian social justice 
movement and striking sugar cane cutters in London recently on the same day as a 
general strike had been called in Colombia.

Sugar cane cutters have been on strike for over six weeks to protest against 
working conditions—described as modern slavery. The government has arrested six 
of their leaders.

On 23rd October 2008, the Colombian Central Workers Union organised a general 
strike bringing out many public sector workers to protest about pay and other 
issues.

The Colombian government’s response to all demands for social justice seems to 
be to blame the activity on ‘terrorists’ and to further step up repression, both 
by the police and army and also through covert groups.

---

ARRESTS IN LIVERPOOL SPARK PUBLIC PROTESTS

Merseyside Police prompted public outrage when they raided stalls, confiscated 
materials and arrested activists at a peaceful demonstration on the right to 
protest freely in the city centre.

The protest, which took place on 11th October 2008, had been arranged by the 
Liverpool Freedom of Expression group, a diverse collection of campaigners, from 
Liverpool Anarchist Federation (AF) to the Socialist Party.

The groups were holding stalls together in solidarity against a prolonged 
campaign of police harassment and intimidation, which has included arrests, that 
these groups have frequently faced on peaceful and legal city centre protests in 
the past.

Refusing to give explanations or quote any valid law, Merseyside Police seized 
pamphlets, broke up stalls and demanded names and addresses of activists. An AF 
member who refused to give his name and address was arrested and now faces a 
summons for ‘wilful obstruction’, whilst a woman who protested at his arrest was 
dragged inside the van for ‘criminal damage’. With a lack of any damage in the 
vicinity, police have subsequently changed the charge to ‘causing alarm and 
distress’ – they do not specify to whom.

Outraged by these arrests, campaigners and supporters, along with members of the 
public, gathered around the police van that held the two arrested and began a 
chant of “let them go”. Police vehicles were prevented from leaving by the 
crowd, who refused to move and continued their chants as the police radioed for 
reinforcements.

When backup arrived, their tactics in clearing a path for the van included 
pushing a disabled woman with a walking stick out of their way and hitting a 
young woman of 17 in the chest.

It appears that the police are now trying to take the position that they were 
caught in the middle of a dispute between political groups and shopkeepers, 
which does not explain why they refused to engage with one side of that dispute 
on the day, only wishing to appear reasonable after public humiliation that they 
feared would be repeated.

Our city centre is for everybody, not just those who use it to make money, and 
we will continue the fight to use it for free speech as long as there are people 
willing to listen.

---

‘SMASH THE MINERS’ - The British National Party show their true colours

“Barnsley is going to become a leftist no go area so I’m warning you and your 
leftist mates in the town to leave NOW … because no one is going to f**k with 
me,” writes BNP thug Simon Goodricke in a letter received by the Anarchist 
Federation this month.

Goodricke, a one-time detective who lost his job after conning a pensioner out 
of £1,000, stood in this year’s local elections just days after being arrested 
for brandishing a gun at his front door.

After continuing with more insults and threats, Goodricke signs the letter off: 
“Smash the miners! (ohhh I forgot that lovely Thatcher bird already did). 
Victory to the police!”

Had he drank one too many cans of cheap lager or was he just fed up with 
maintaining the ‘respectable’ face of the BNP? Either way it’s nice to have it 
in writing that when thousands of miners were fighting for their jobs in the 
1980s the BNP would’ve been firmly on the side of the police, and Thatcher, 
giving the miners a kicking.

He goes on: “Victory to Capitalism!” That’s it Simon, let it all out.

Posing as some sort of ‘radical alternative’, it is pretty clear that when you 
scratch beneath the surface, ignoring all the bigots, nutters and football 
thugs, that the BNP are really just soldiers for the rich and privileged … and 
the enemies of all working class people.

---

FAMILIES MARCH AGAINST POLICE VIOLENCE

Several hundred people, including many family members and friends of those who 
have died in suspicious circumstances in police custody, prison and ‘secure’ 
mental health facilities, marched at an appropriately funereal pace through the 
centre of London in October.

For many people at this annual event, there was this year an added sadness and 
grief in the absence of a dedicated campaigner on this issue, Pauline Campbell, 
who devoted herself to the cause after her daughter died because of the neglect 
of the authorities in Styal prison in 2003

Many of us heard Pauline speak at previous annual marches organised by the 
United Families and Friends of those who have died in custody and had come to 
know and respect Pauline through her single-minded campaigning.

News of her suicide at her daughter’s grave this May came as a shock and it was 
appropriate that she was remembered at the start of the march in Trafalgar Square

Pauline was one of many whose name was not listed among the over 2,500 people 
who have died in care of police and prison staff, either through violence or 
neglect, but her and many other deaths are also very much a result of their actions.

Despite the publicity achieved by this campaign, and various investigations by 
the media, inquest verdicts and other enquiries that have made the damning 
evidence crystal clear, nothing seems to have changed. Racism, the lack of a 
proper culture of care and an almost complete lack of accountability mean that 
healthy people, mainly but not all black, continue to die in police and 
psychiatric custody as well as prisons. In the past year there were 182 such 
deaths recorded, and the banner carried in the march listed over 2,500 who have 
died.

The march made its way in silence down Whitehall to Downing Street where, after 
the bouquets had been subjected to a police examination, family members were 
allowed to come forward and fix them to the gates in front of Downing St, where 
police had agreed they would be allowed to stay until the end of the protest.

Outside Downing St the marchers were encouraged to give vent to their feelings 
and make a great noise, before continuing to march, now chanting, to Parliament 
Square where there was a rally at which a number of people whose family members 
had been killed made pleas for justice to be done.

---

‘NOT ONE EURO TO SUPPORT THE CAPITALISTS’

A 24-hour general strike in Greece shut down much of the country’s industry on 
21st October.

The industrial action was in protest at the neo-liberal measures of the 
government and plans to reform pensions and social security.

During the main trade union march protesters criticised the £22bn government 
rescue package to banks hit by the international credit crisis.

Clashes between demonstrating strikers and riot police occurred in Athens. This 
was followed by a 24-hour strike of all shop workers on the following day.

Strikers and students attacked banks and one bookshop that was operating on 
scab-labour, forcing them to close down.

‘School is not a prison’

Meanwhile in Greece, the tide of secondary and high-school squats rises again 
across the country.

More than 300 high schools (a sixth of the national total) were occupied by 
their pupils demanding the reversal of several articles of the conservative 
educational reform that caused widespread revolt by students and university 
staff during the academic years of 2005–2007.

The renewed resistance to the law, which has been rejected by the entire school 
and academic community, is being faced with unprecedented measures of 
repression. There have been consistent efforts by the government and the local 
authorities to criminalise the school squats. Neo-nazi attacks against squatted 
schools in Athens have also been reported.

More recently, on the 17th October, the president of the pupils’ council and 
another pupil at a high-school in Karditsa were arrested after the pupils of the 
squatted school staged a protest against the installation of a fence around the 
premises, with the slogan ‘school is not a prison’. After protests from the 
teachers’ union the pupils were released.

While the repression escalates, several schools in Athens and Thessaloniki 
opposed the annual election of representatives, opting for mass assemblies instead.

---

LIKED RESISTANCE? GET ORGANISE!

New issue out now. See www.afed.org.uk for more details

---

RESISTANCE PIC OF THE MONTH

Oliver Stone entertains us this month with a portrait of the rise to power of 
the most dangerous man on the planet. That’s right, a ‘warts and all’ treatment 
of the man we have all come to know as ‘Dubya’ (and as the big man would say, 
this is not a tale to be ‘misunderestimated’). Stone leaves no stone (… ahem) 
unturned as the man’s relationship with daddy Bush, his drink and drugs issues, 
being ‘chosen’ by God to be president and his general linguistic buffonery are 
all exposed in a brutally honest fashion. Based entirely on biographical 
accounts of George’s early life and transcripts from inside the Whitehouse, 
treat yourself to some real ‘shock and awe’ and witness the sheer insanity of a 
system where enough money, influence and power can put you in the driving seat 
of the most powerful nation on the planet. Cinema Syndicate – Sheffield

---

Read/download this issue now in PDF format

---

The Anarchist Federation is an organisation of class struggle anarchists aiming 
to abolish capitalism and all oppression to create a free and equal society. 
This is Anarchist Communism. We see today’s society as being divided into two 
main opposing classes: the ruling class which controls all the power and wealth, 
and the working class which the rulers exploit to maintain this. By racism, 
sexism and other forms of oppression, as well as war and environmental 
destruction the rulers weaken and divide us. Only the direct action of working 
class people can defeat these attacks and ultimately overthrow capitalism.

As the capitalist system rules the whole world, its destruction must be complete 
and world wide. We reject attempts to reform it, such as working through 
parliament and national liberation movements, as they fail to challenge 
capitalism itself. Unions also work as a part of the capitalist system, so 
although workers struggle within them they will be unable to bring about 
capitalism’s destruction unless they go beyond these limits.

Organisation is vital if we’re to beat the bosses, so we work for a united 
anarchist movement and are affiliated to the International of Anarchist 
Federations. The Anarchist Federation has members across Britain and Ireland 
fighting for the kind of world outlined above.

Contact us at:

Anarchist Federation
BM ANARFED,
London, WC1N 3XX.
Email: info@afed.org.uk
Also visit: http://www.afed.org.uk and http://www.iaf-ifa.org

Subscription to resistance in print costs 4 pounds from the address above for 
one year of issues (usually 10 as we have one month off in summer, and one over 
new year). Non-UK subs are £8. A two issue (annual) subscription to our 
magazine, Organise! for revolutionary anarchism, is 5 pounds (£6 Non-UK orders).
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