A-Infos (en) Britain, Anarchist journal Direct Action #42 Spring 2008 - Content + Editorial

* Direct Action; Inside this issue; * The Aims of the Solidarity Federation * 
Editorial - Them and Us: class war, the credit crunch and a culture of * Comment 
- With Friends like These...why union bosses fail to protect our interests and 
what we can do about it * Organising - South London SF Act against Underpaying 
Restaurant * London Coalition Against Poverty * Comment - Exposed: Social 
Landlord Breaches Tenant Privacy * Organising - Education Workers Network/ EWN 
Statement on ‘single table bargaining’ * Class - No such thing as class?; 
Poverty in the UK: a denial of human rights; Education inequality widening; 
Health - better not be poor * War commentary - War is Murder for Profit: Iraq, 
Afghanistan and the War on Terror; The First Casualty of War: Harry, the Media 
and Afghanistan * International - Colombia: In the Face of Violent Threats; 
Poland: Solidarity Appeal * Our History - The ‘May Days’ in Barcelona 1937 * 
International - Mexico: Sexual and Reproductive Health; Iran: Bad Hijab Day for 
Modesty Coppers; Union Sindacale Italiana: Interview with Italian 
anarcho-syndicalist * Reviews - Beyond Bullets: the suppression of dissent in 
the United States (Jules Boycoff); Making a Killing: the political economy of 
animal rights (Bob Torres); The Anarchist Past and Other Essays (Nicholas 
Walter, edited by David Goodway); My Revolutionary Life (Juan García Oliver 
interviewed by Freddy Gomez); Red Mutiny: mutiny, revolution and revenge on the 
battleship Potemkin (Neal Bascombe) * Closer look: Anarchism, sex and freedom: 
The fight against capitalism, patriarchy and repressive religious morality * 
Solfed/IWA contacts * Friends & neighbours

------------------------------------------------------

Direct Action

Direct Action is published by Solidarity Federation, British section of the 
International Workers Association (IWA). DA is edited and laid out by the DA 
Collective, and printed by Clydeside Press. Views stated in these pages are not 
necessarily those of the DA Collective or the Solidarity Federation. We do not 
publish contributors' names. Please contact us if you want to know more.

Subscribe (For 4 issues): Supporters – £10/ Basic – £5/ (Europe – £10; rest of 
the world – £15). Standing Orders or Cheques payable to ‘Direct Action' – return 
form to: DA, PO Box 29, SW PDO, Manchester, M15 5HW

Contribute If you would like to help out or contribute articles or photos, work 
is entirely voluntary. We welcome articles of between 500-1,500 words on 
industrial, social/community and international issues; on working class history; 
and on anarchist/anarcho-syndicalist theory and history. Articles may be sent as 
hard copy, on a disk or by email, and can only be returned if accompanied by a 
request (and SAE if appropriate).

Contact us DA Collective, PO Box 29, South West PDO, Manchester, M15 5HW 079 84 
67 52 81 da@direct-action.org.uk

Bulk Orders AK Distribution, PO Box 12766, Edinburgh, EH8 9YE, Scotland 0131 555 
5165 ak@akedin.demon.co.uk www.akuk.com, or direct from the DA Collective

------------------------------------------------------

Direct Action ISSN 0261-8753

contents

Inside this issue:

     * 3: Editorial: Them & Us - the class war and economic slowdown
     * 5: Letters - respect / football fans bite back
     * 6: With Friends like these - what we can do about unions failing to 
protect us
     * 7: S. London SF Act against Underpaying Restaurant
     * 8: London Coalition Against Poverty
     * 10: Tenant Privacy Breached / Education Workers
     * 11: No Such Thing as Class? - poverty / education / health
     * 14: War is Murder for Profit - Iraq, Afghanistan & the War on Terror
     * 16: The First Casualty of War - Harry, the Media & Afghanistan
     * 17: International - Colombia / Poland
     * 18: The ‘May Days’ - a turning point in the Spanish Revolution
     * 22: International - Mexico / Iran
     * 23: Unione Sindacale Italiana - interview with Italian anarcho-syndicalist
     * 26: Reviews - beyond bullets / making a killing / the anarchist past / my 
revolutionary life / red mutiny
     * 31: Anarchism, Sex & Freedom - a closer look at the fight against 
capitalism, patriarchy & repressive religious morality
     * 35: Contacts Directory

Solidarity Federation IWA

------------------------------------------------------

The Aims of the Solidarity Federation

The Solidarity Federation is an organisation of workers which seeks to destroy 
capitalism and the state. Capitalism because it exploits, oppresses and kills 
working people and wrecks the environment for profit worldwide. The state 
because it can only maintain hierarchy and privilege for the classes who control 
it and their servants; it cannot be used to fight the oppression and 
exploitation that are the consequences of hierarchy and the source of privilege. 
In their place we want a society based on workers' self-management, solidarity, 
mutual aid and libertarian communism.

That society can only be achieved by working class organisations based on the 
same principles - revolutionary unions. These are not Trades Unions only 
concerned with “bread and butter” issues like pay and conditions. Revolutionary 
unions are means for working people to organise and fight all the issues - both 
in the workplace and outside - which arise from our oppression. We recognise 
that not all oppression is economic, but can be based on gender, race, 
sexuality, or anything our rulers find useful. Unless we organise in this way, 
politicians - some claiming to be revolutionary - will be able to exploit us for 
their own ends.

The Solidarity Federation consists of Locals which support the formation of 
future revolutionary unions and are centres for working class struggle on a 
local level. Our activities are based on Direct Action - action by workers 
ourselves, not through intermediaries like politicians and union officials; our 
decisions are made through participation of the membership. We welcome all 
working people who agree with our Aims and Principles, and who will spread 
propaganda for social revolution and revolutionary unions. We recognise that the 
class struggle is worldwide, and are affiliated to the International Workers' 
Association, whose Principles of Revolutionary Unionism we have adopted.

------------------------------------------------------

Editorial

Them and Us: class war, the credit crunch and a culture of resistance

Notions of belonging to the working class are…outdated and belong to the era of 
flat caps, factories, steel works and going down the pit.

Such denials by various academics, politicians and other commentators of what is 
as plain as the nose on your face are one clear reflection of the ongoing class 
war. Another is the inequality that is rife throughout most aspects of Brown’s 
Britain. It is with this in mind that the latest installment of our series ‘No 
such thing as class?’ (see page 11) has a look at class divisions as shown up by 
poverty and access to education and health services.

expenses, fiddles & pay-offs

Yet another way the class division is manifest is in how people expect to be 
treated when things go wrong. Or to put it another way – it’s one rule for them 
and another rule for us.
What would you expect to happen if you were to completely mess up your job? A 
£¾million golden goodbye plus £2.5million pension pot? Maybe not, but that’s 
what Adam Applegarth, incompetent former chief executive of Northern Rock has 
walked off with after master minding the first run on a UK bank for over a 
century. No such luxury though for the 2,000 Northern Rock staff set to lose 
their jobs as a direct result.

What would you expect to happen if you were caught siphoning off tens of 
thousands of pounds of your employer’s money to family and friends? A 10 day 
suspension and then just carry on as if nothing had happened? No? Well that’s 
exactly what happened with Tory MP, Derek Conway, after it emerged he’d paid his 
son a full salary and parliamentary expenses for three years for not a tap of 
work. A stark contrast indeed to the treatment of those on or below the poverty 
line who come under the merest suspicion of fiddling their benefit claims.

These are just two of the more prominent examples of how the system is stacked 
in favour of our rulers and bosses. We can add the revelations regarding 
Prescott’s food bills, Blair’s TV licence, Brown’s cleaning costs and Cameron’s 
mortgage payments, all claimed from public funds. We can add the case of Rose 
Gibb, the NHS boss who presided over Britain’s worst superbug outbreak which 
contributed to over 300 deaths at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust. Gibb 
has rejected a £75,000 pay off and has begun a legal claim for a bigger pay-off, 
reported to be in the region of £¼million.

We could go on, but the point is that these people not only get treated 
differently, they absolutely believe they are entitled to it. And with the 
coming economic slowdown guess who they think should bear the brunt.

culture of resistance

And the attacks have already begun. The recent budget has removed the 10p tax 
band while the government is trying to impose a 2% ceiling on public sector pay 
rises over the next three years. If this goes ahead it will amount to pay cuts 
for millions of workers since, as everyone knows, the real inflation rate is far 
higher than the massaged figure the Treasury works with.

However, there are signs of resistance. The coordinated one day strikes by 
teachers and civil servants that are due to go ahead as we go to press are to be 
applauded. If Labour’s attacks on the British working class are to be beaten 
off, anarcho-syndicalists and other workplace activists must use the anger and 
momentum that is building to revitalise and reestablish workplace based 
organisation and links between workplaces that go beyond the divisions imposed 
by reformist trade unions. It is only this kind of escalating pressure for 
action that can wrest control of the struggle from our union leaders, prevent 
them from doing shoddy and inadequate deals behind our backs and go on to 
establish the basis of a genuine culture of working class resistance to 
capitalism. Such recent offerings by the likes of the Unison leadership and the 
way forward are the subject of ‘With friends like these…’ (see page 6).

Beyond the workplace too, the slowdown will inevitably exacerbate the yawning 
inequality that a decade of New Labour has only served to widen. However, here 
there are also hopeful signs of the growing culture of resistance. One inspiring 
development involves the use of direct action principles to tackle official 
shilly-shallying and outright illegality in areas like housing provision (see 
‘London Coalition Against Poverty’, page 8). The potential for this kind of 
approach to empower people at the sharp end of Labour’s anti-working class 
offensive are very clear.

also in this issue...

Besides this, we have provided some war commentary (see ‘War is murder for 
profit’, page 14, and ‘The first casualty of war’, page 16) while this issue’s 
historical focus is the Barcelona ‘May Days’ of 1937, which were a major turning 
point in the fortunes of the anarcho-syndicalist led social revolution that took 
place during the Spanish Civil War (see page 18). Amongst our international 
coverage we have an interview with a militant of the USI, our Italian sister 
organisation, which gives some insight into the issues facing workers and 
anarcho-syndicalists in Italy (see page 23). As well as the usual review section 
we also take a closer look at the relationships between patriarchy, capitalism 
and religious morality in ‘Anarchism, Sex and Freedom’ (see page 31). Enjoy the 
read.

Anarchist Writers & Publishers' Bookfair & Conference. 1in12 Club, 21-23 Albion 
Street, Bradford, West Yorkshire, BD1 2LY
Bookfair - Saturday 17th May. 12.00 - 6.00 (followed by disco 8.30 - 11.30 !!)
Conference - Sunday 18th May. 10.00 - 4.00

Manchester Anarchist Bookfair
Saturday 7th June - 11.00-5.00. Jabez Clegg. 2 Portsmouth Street, Manchester, 
M13 9GB (opp M/cr University Students Union) www.bookfair.org.uk 
manchester@bookfair.org.uk

your letters
If you have any comments about the content, or any other issues, please e-mail 
or write to us.
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://ainfos.ca/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en