Drivers.

         I post this article in full as I think it points out the truth about our lorry driver shortage. The powers that be put forward all sort of excuses as to why we are in this situation, from pandemic to Brexit, but the one they fail to mention is that heavy lorry driving is a stressful job with unsociable hours and shit conditions.

The following was lifted from Enough is Enough:

      Panic buying in the UK: The chicken’s come home to roost (but will the Turkeys get a reprieve at Christmas?)

           UK. The present crisis which has seen panic buying, particularly of petrol but also of the usual ‘panic’ commodities such as toilet roll and pasta, shows how vulnerable capitalism actually is. It exposes how the system is dependent upon a logistics workforce that potentially holds a great deal of power, should it choose to use it. And, in part, this crisis is a product of workers’ rejection of an increasingly stressful and badly paid occupation. 

Originally published by Anarchist Communist Group.

         The present lack of HGV drivers cannot simply be blamed on Brexit, although it has played its part. Prior to Brexit, the UK was short of 76,000 HGV drivers, with around 300,000 employed. European drivers constituted about 45,000 of that workforce in 2017. Logistics UK estimates that the deficit of drivers is roughly 90,000 drivers short for the requirements of distribution in the UK. With the changes to rights of residency that Brexit brought, many European drivers left the country, mostly to the European mainland.
         The Covid crisis also led many drivers to return home, alongside many others. According to the Office of National Statistics about 12,500 EU HGV drivers have left the workforce since the start of 2020. But this is dwarfed by the loss of approximately 55,000 non-EU drivers in the same time period. This has been put down to retirement, the lack of driving tests during Covid and tax changes, but also increased workloads, diminished working conditions and wages, and unsociable hours mean that lorry driving in the UK has become an increasingly unattractive occupation. So much so that there is thought to be 230,000 HGV licence holders under the age of 45 not working in the industry. The average age of a UK HGV driver is now 55. Workers have turned to driving for Amazon, Yodel and other courier and delivery services, which speaks to how stressful modern HGV driving has become.
         So, the 5,000 three-month visas being offered to EU HGV drivers is both a ridiculous drop in the ocean but may also not be taken up very quickly given that there exists a smaller, but significant lack of drivers in Germany, France, Italy and elsewhere, and frankly, three months’ work in the UK with all of the new bureaucracy to work around is unlikely to sound particularly attractive to many.
        The present situation does, however, give lorry drivers and their logistic support some potential leverage. The Professional Drivers Protest Group, an unofficial rank and file body, independent of Unite or the United Road Transport Union, emerged on Facebook earlier this year calling for a £15 per hour minimum wage, a 45-hour working week, time-and-a-half for overtime and double-time for Sunday work as well as other changes to working conditions and the group seems to have some support amongst drivers.
         In July this year, the government relaxed maximum working hours, which went from 9 to 10 hours a day, whilst allowing twice weekly 11-hour shifts. Increased exploitation has increased the anger. Strikes by workers at DHL (distributers for Sainsburys) and GXO Logistics Drinks Ltd (who supply boozers and other alcohol outlets) against pitiful pay offers were only just headed off by employers and unions last month. The present crisis can be turned to the advantage of HGV drivers and all those involved in logistics and distribution, but it will take rank and file leadership from the grassroots and innovative action.

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Choices.

  A new slogan suitable for our capitalist parasites ideology.

Photo courtesy of Erik R. Rishoff /flickr.

    

    By now it should be clear to everybody that crunch time is fast approaching and capitalism doesn't work for the benefit of the ordinary people. Everywhere you turn companies are laying off employees, the list is staggering.

   All the figures point to a massive increase in poverty, homelessness and deprivation, no blue horizon for the ordinary people of this country.

    Figures announced this morning state that the UK economy shrank by 20.4% in April, the largest monthly contraction on record, and it is all just beginning. In the coming months job loses will be on a scale not seen since the twenties and before. Here is a short list of what is known at the moment:

The Telegraph states that 250,00 business will be laying off employees.

Frankie and Benny's is closing 120 restaurants,

Roll Royce laying off 3,000,

UK car industry laying off 2,000

British Gas laying off 5,000

J Mathey laying off 2,500,

Airlines expected to lay off 70,000

BP world wide, laying off 10,000

Mulberry laying off 25% of workforce, 

Bentley cars laying of 25% of its workforce,

Airbus stated it will make job cuts. 

This list is by no means complete and comprehensive, and this as the cheery part of the picture. 

    And so the dark clouds continue to gather, and we haven't even sorted out Brexit and the mayhem that it will cause. Another factor, and I suppose we can blame the Thacher gang for this, most experts agree that UK will be hit hardest of the rich nations as 75% of its economy is in the service industry, and that will be devastated.

      Meanwhile the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been pouring billions of money he doesn't have into the coffers of the corporate world, to "save jobs" which translates into saving the corporate world from losing too much of their loot, and keeping them "afloat", you have to keep the shareholders happy. Money that the money lenders will shortly be knocking on the Chancellor's door to sort out a repayment method. Which will include cutting government spending, which means cutting social spending, much tighter and deeper austerity, a cap or cut to public sector wages, and of course selling off public assets to raise cash to pay for that bailout of the corporate parasites, for example, parts of NHS etc.

     So what should we the ordinary people do? Just grin and bear it, start thinking of charity shops, food banks and hand-outs, tighten our belts and get on with it? Remember, bringing your kids up under such conditions will stunt their potential, blight their general physical and mental health, scar them for life, and in all probability, also scar their children. 

     A lot of people during this pandemic learnt about mutual aid and found it worked and was enjoyable. We need to expand that feeling of community and and continue and expand mutual aid in our lives. Refuse to fall back into the consumer mode that the corporate world desire, buying crap and that endless supply of stuff that is out dated  forcing you to buy another. Start to organise to take control of our workplaces, and distribution centres, to produce what we want and need and distributing them in a fair and just manner.  Our lords and masters are already organising to get you back on the treadmill of ever increasing consumption and growth, all to the detriment of the planet and the the benefit of that pampered, privileged bunch of wealthy parasites. You follow them to your detriment or you resist and follow the path that will benefit us all in an equal and fair manner. The choice is simple, more and bleaker austerity, poverty and deprivation, or a chance to build that better world for all.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

And The Fox Makes Friends With The Hounds!!

 

       I don't often poke my nose into the "Brexit" pantomime, or should that be tragedy, as I feel I would be entering a very badly working dilapidated  shithouse. The Boris Brexiteers are all cock-a-hoop over a trade deal with America peddling the illusion that we would get a "good" deal. However what the public should be aware of is that America is raw capitalism, capitalism with the gloves off, bare-knuckle capitalism, and will eagerly gobble up anything and everything that will make a profit for the predatory moguls that control the levers of capitalism. However, this article has some interesting facts, so I thought it was worth repeating in full.

This from True Publica:

      By TruePublica Editor: In the magical illusions of the smoke and mirrors ideology behind Brexit, we should be acutely aware of what a trade deal with America means. In our article this week – The MAGA Agenda – it seems that among those on the radical right – the government, their acolytes and corporate donors – there is a widely held belief that a favourable trade deal can easily be negotiated with the United States. But this belief flies in the face of historical evidence as the US has proved on more than one occasion to be a ruthless and exploitative (so-called) partner where its own economic interests are involved. It is naive to think that America will be a cooperative and fair ally or partner in the common interest – it won’t. And being a sycophant of Trump’s America – with his MAGA agenda will prove to be the final nail in Britain’s coffin.
      The radical right – members of the ERG, such as – Michael Gove, Iain Duncan-Smith, Priti Patel and Chris Grayling to name a tiny handful are driving Britain into the arms of a country that exploits everyone except the very few. American values are not British values and we should never dismiss the scale of damage that the USA inflicted upon Britain over the decades since the last World War.
     For Boris Johnson to use inflammatory language to stoke up nationalism and adopt Churchillian euphemisms as a means to his own ends would make those who lost their lives to save this country from all sorts of evils turn in their graves. The fact is that the Americans exploited our position during the War and especially from 1945 for their own financial and economic gain. They were not just duplicitous, they were shameless about it and Britain should never trust them again – much as the Kurds in Northern Syria have just found out to their horror.
       In the background, as the political warfare of Brexit rages on in the mainstream media, various Bill’s that relate to Brexit and future trade deals are being heard. For any politician to say that the latest Brexit deal continues to protect the rights of workers, protects the environment, food and medical supplies is simply lying, blindfolded or doesn’t understand the deceitful machinations of this government.
        On the announcement of a new Trade Bill (1), Jean Blaylock, trade campaign manager at Global Justice Now, said:

     “Parliament needs to have a say on trade deals so that unaccountable government ministers aren’t able to use them to slash regulations, entrench privatisation and block climate action. This should be a simple, basic requirement in any democracy. MPs, Lords, business and civil society have all steadfastly been raising this for the past two years, and earlier this year Parliament introduced a clause in the old Trade Bill to guarantee that trade deals will be voted on. Yet Johnson’s government is so scared of having to answer to Parliament that it plans to have a new Trade Bill that conveniently leaves out all of these democratic provisions.
      “We know that Johnson’s government wants to do a trade deal with the US in a hurry. Trump’s administration has already told us what it wants in deal, and it’s very worrying – chlorine chicken, higher prices for medicines, and an end to any attempt to rein in the power of Silicon Valley big tech firms like Google, Amazon and Facebook. A deal like that demonstrates the need for Parliament to be able to review what’s on the table and have a vote.”

      The big problem with having made a career out of writing fantasies and falsities as Boris Johnson has done is that no-one believes the promises of habitual liars. And so it is with the one institution that stands heads and shoulders above all others in the UK – the NHS.
       Last month, promises made by Boris Johnson that the NHS is “off the table” in negotiations over a post-Brexit trade deal with the US simply cannot be relied upon. As Nick Dearden says:

      “Johnson’s promise to protect the NHS should be taken with a very large pinch of salt, because the threat to our health system will be written across a US-UK trade deal, from the new powers it gives big pharmaceutical corporations to charge higher prices for medicines, to restrictions on preventing Big Tech companies from mining the NHS database.

     This will go well beyond a US trade deal, however. Johnson’s government is talking to countries across the world who will want to use Brexit to insist on even more damaging environmental policies from the UK. Only last week Malaysia said that reducing regulations on palm oil production would be the price of a post -Brexit free trade deal.”
      The other point to remember is this – why would any country rely on America in any deal to play fair and by the rules. They don’t even in their own country. American’s don’t trust the regulatory agencies to do their work properly or professionally when most of them are drenched in corruption or bribery scandals. Take for instance the USDA’s National Organic (food) Program. Described by national media organisations as a ‘feckless agency‘ involving its complicity in what might be the biggest consumer scam in decades: the sale of phoney organic food. It’s a scam that’s been going on for years and years and yet the federal government looks the other way. Millions of American consumers have been — and are still being — duped, buying pricier “organic” products that are imported into the country without the correct licences or country of origin certificates, repackaged and sold on – making huge profits along the way. Food products can arrive from places like China, South America or Africa, be covered in pesticides and ridden with deadly heavy metals and sold as healthy organic produce simply by repackaging with misleading attractive labels.
      Corporations all across America consider being fined billions of dollars for fraud and corruption as the cost of doing business. People and consumers are the last consideration. And healthcare companies are some of the worst in America. As the Forbes said at the end of last year – in an article entitled ‘Shame, Scandal Plague Healthcare Providers In 2018′ – “Unfortunately, the problems (of corruption) are endemic and deeply embedded in medical culture.”
       Nowhere are these ill-effects more apparent than in cancer care. A recent report titled “Unintended Consequences of Expensive Cancer Therapeutics” found that the last 71 chemotherapy agents to receive FDA approval extend life by an average of only 2.1 months—time often spent in pain, isolated from friends and family – purely for the purposes of making bigger profits. It’s extortion practices even extend to the heartbreak of a family member dying before your eyes.
        In America today – two-thirds (66.5%) of all bankruptcies are caused by not having the right health insurance. Last year, 530,000 families lost everything – homes, savings, assets built for retirement – to save a family member from illness – only for everyone else in the family to be pauperised. A recent study found that only 40 per cent of Americans have enough saved to cover a $1,000 emergency expense – and medical care comes with co-pay (percentage of contribution) costs that can roll into thousands depending on the cover.
       In 2019, the average price of health insurance rose above $20,000 for families that obtain their coverage through work. They pay just over $6.000 assuming that someone in the family has a good job as they employer stumps up $14,000 per employee – per year. The Keiser Foundation report into American healthcare costs said:

        “These numbers are grotesque. Insuring a single family for a year costs almost as much as a Honda Civic. This fact should be a subject of daily outrage, and it probably would be if more workers realized just how much of their compensation is devoured by the cost of health care. After all, every dollar a company pays to Aetna or Cigna is a dollar it might otherwise be able spend on salaries and wages.”

       Boris Johnson knows this. He was born in America. From faking his ancestral history to bendy bananas, eurocoffins, and the banning of prawn cocktail crisps. Boris Johnson has been fired more than once for lying and made to apologise for outrageous allegations such as he did about the Hillsborough disaster. From his philandering and now accusations of corruption with a pole dancing ‘entrepreneur’, Boris Johnson’s honesty and integrity in any area of life mean nothing. He will be as happy selling Britain down a river without a paddle for a bit of personal glory and people will believe him.
       Was it Noel Coward who once said – “It’s discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.”
      This trade deal cannot be trusted to be in the best interests of Britain if left to the whims and fantasies of this government.

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

Brexit, We Need A Bit More Anarchy.

         I have mostly stayed away from the Brexit pantomime being performed by our political ballerinas, as it is nothing more than a squabble between the various capitalist groupings in the UK on how best to exploit the people of this island. My only comment was to say that in or out, half way in or half way out, we will still be governed and exploited by the capitalist class. My only surprise is how they have managed to get the vast majority of the exploited to join in and take sides in this battle on the methodology of how to exploit the people of the UK.

       I post the following article because it more or less repeats my sentiments and lets me vent a little bile.

This from Anarchist News:
via Anarchist Communist Group

      The spectacle of the Brexit debacle would be comic if it weren’t for the fact that the consequences of the antics of the politicians will be felt largely by the working class. We are seeing the complete inadequacy of politicians of all shades. The phrase, ‘they couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery’ comes to mind! So why do we still let them decide our future?
       It is clear that they are only thinking of their own political futures rather than sorting anything out. The right-wing Tories want to see Britain becoming some kind of Singapore – an offshore unregulated tax haven off the coast of Europe in which workers are exploited even more then they are already. The SNP has eyes only for what might make people more likely to vote for an independent Scotland. Labour is divided between those who think leaving the EU and curtailing immigration will somehow make it possible to have a workers’ paradise under the leadership of Corbyn and those who are forging links with business interests who want cheap labour and free trade. The centre – some Tories and Liberal Democrats – are mainly concerned with business stability and keeping markets open to business. Then there are the racists and the little Englanders who think that by leaving the EU the British Empire will live again.

       For anarchist communists, whether in or out of the institutions that are the EU, we know that the only way we will be able to resist the attacks from the bosses and the State is to build up a strong international working class movement. We argue for no borders, not the open borders of capitalism, but the free movement of people whether they are from Europe or elsewhere. Low wages and poor conditions can only be fought by a strong united movement which includes all workers wherever they come from originally.

 

 

Visit ann arky's home at https://radicalglasgow.me.uk

 

Dismiss The Capitalist Economic Arguments.

       I post the following article in full, though it is filled with what should be accepted and obvious to any anarchist/libertarian-socialist. It should also be obvious to the public at large, but sadly this is far from the case. It highlights the futility of framing your arguments in the capitalist economics frame. We have to see ourselves as other than economic units profitable or otherwise.

The article written by Panos Theodoropoulos appears in INTERREGNUM:

 

The Thief and the Cash Cow: Twins from a union of enemies

       As the Brexit debacle gets more surreal and confusing by the day, people in the UK are continually bombarded with information and propaganda. Whether or not the Brexit result was ‘about migration’ or, alternatively, was the outcome of a combination of various intertwined grievances, the issue of migration has played a dominant role in both right and left-wing arguments. These arguments shape ideas and create the ‘common sense’ which frames people’s thinking. And it is from these arguments that we can understand, and thereby confront, troubling underlying assumptions that are, most of the time, left unscrutinised precisely because they have already established themselves as an aspect of what their proponents consider ‘common sense’.

       One of these perspectives, which the right wing heavily relies on in its propaganda (an idea that is shared from Tommy Robinson all the way to the Conservative Party), is that the presence of migrant workers in the economy lowers wages and impoverishes working conditions. This is what I will call the ‘Thief Argument’. It forms an important pillar of their wider discourse, enabling them to say that they are not racist; they are simply stating the ‘obvious’, since ‘we have to look out for our own people first’. The left, once again in most of its denominations (from communists to the Labour Party), respond in exasperation, and in what they believe is a defence of migrant workers. They say that migrant workers are ‘good for the economy’ because they passionately work, staff the NHS and other vital services, pay taxes, and are disproportionately not recipients of state benefits. I will call this the ‘Cash Cow Argument’.

       Yet, despite their vehement proclamations of mutual enmity, these two sides are much closer than seems at first glance. In a manner not uncommon in UK political discourse (centuries of colonialism tend to leave their mark in a plethora of ways), both the left and the right tend to view migrants purely in terms of their economic costs or benefits to the host society. It is basically the same way that you view your car: if you think it’s doing a good job, you admire it; if it is underperforming, you want the problem ‘dealt with’. Yet, surprisingly for some, we have not come to these islands simply to work in your warehouses or to benefit from your patronising ‘protection’; we are more than machines. Furthermore, far from being confined to the realm of migration, these twin perspectives betray a wider conception of the human condition under capitalism as such. This article will attempt to very briefly dismantle these ideas, in the hope that we may at some point be able to forge more social movements that fight for the dignity of both locals’ and migrants’ lives.

      The ‘Thief Argument’ is probably my favourite, because of how easy it is to dismantle when you have a drunken conversation at the pub with one of its supporters. Yet it still needs to be confronted because it is strongly established in common discourses and propagated by powerful interests. In all its simplistic glory, the argument states that migrants, either in their quest for jobs and conditions better than the ones they left behind or due to the insecurity of their status, are willing to work for smaller wages and in worst conditions than the locals. This, they claim, creates a race to the bottom which impoverishes British workers. Everybody has heard it. It is propagated by the likes of Nigel Farage, UKIP, Leave Means Leave and sections of the Tory party. Recently it was given an air of credibility by the right-wing, anti-migration think tank Migration Watch UK and by a study conducted by the Bank of England which found that migration ‘impacted wages’ in the ‘semi-skilled/unskilled occupational group’. Its strength is in its simplicity; the argument seems straightforward and ‘obvious’, so much so that it has even polluted some of the Labour party’s ideas, with Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 echoing UKIP in placing the blame with international employment agencies which enable employers to ‘import cheap agency labour to undercut existing pay and conditions in the name of free market orthodoxy’.

        The weakness of this argument is that it ignores the wider social and economic conditions that create our common reality in the UK. To begin with what should be obvious, wages and employment conditions are not set by migrants but by the parliament and bosses. It is true that many migrant workers work in jobs that have low wages and worst labour conditions; yet, as I have analysed elsewhere, they are in these jobs because the UK economic system is designed by default to have them there. This is something that has been going on since the British empire; more recently, the government and employers capitalised on the expansion of the European Union in the early 2000s to provide cheap and insecure labour to many industries that were to profit greatly from it. Indeed, the principle of free movement of the EU is designed, and supported by big business in the UK, almost exclusively for that purpose. Weaker economies are artificially kept in a state of underdevelopment, which pushes migrant workers to the more ‘developed’ economies to serve as workers.

        For example, many warehouses and factories rely on agencies to provide them with temporary labour to fill their short-term needs (try to imagine the chaos in one of Amazon’s warehouses during the Christmas period). Employment legislation passed by the UK government allows insecure, short-term contracts which employment agencies use to essentially ‘rent out’ workers to the employers that require their labour. The agency usually pays the worker something around minimum wage (once again established by the UK government) while receiving a lot more from the employer than what goes in the pockets of the worker. The insecurity of the contract enables the employer to dispose of the worker once there is no need for them (while at the same time not needing to concern themselves with nuisances such as sickness or maternity pay), and the sheer volume of industries enable the agencies to consistently shuffle their workers from one location to the next, making profits all year round. On the other end of the equation, many migrant workers share some characteristics that are used by this government-business complex in order to boost profitability. These include de-skilling (the non-recognition of qualifications gained abroad), language difficulties, lack of information regarding trade unions and general labour rights, as well as an initial preference for a quick job to get settled down as fast as possible.

      As time passes and networks are solidified, occupations become linked with the people performing them, creating a cycle which reproduces itself (think of the ‘Polish plumber’ stereotype). If you have a look at ethnic community groups on Facebook, you will routinely find British employers advertising vacancies. Studies in the US have shown that the extent of employers’ preference to migrant labour is so deep that they have even drawn racialised, biological conclusions as to why certain ethnicities are better for certain jobs; for example, some believe that Mexicans are naturally suited to agricultural labour due to the design of their bodies. It is not the migrant workers that ‘take jobs’; the reality is that the whole economic system is designed to employ migrant workers in those specific conditions, purely to maintain profitability. In a study on the issue of migrant work, Anderson shows that the arguments that ‘migrant workers fill jobs that British people don’t want’ and that ‘migrant workers take jobs’ are equally invalid. Migrant workers simply accept the jobs and conditions that have already been established by the government and by employers, with existing migration controls playing a key role in creating precarious workers that are useful for profitability. The real culprits of the impoverishment of the UK’s working classes are the government and the bosses, and in these classes, migrant and British workers have a lot more in common than their differences.

While the ‘Thief Argument’ is pretty easily confronted through a basic understanding of how the UK’s economy works, the ‘Cash Cow Argument’ is harder to dispel because: 1) it usually comes, paradoxically, from an ideological source which claims to support migrant workers and 2) because it is actually true, but in its very proclamation is directly counterproductive to the purpose its proponents pretend to support. Yes, the UK economy has been designed to employ migrant workers at specific jobs, and as such it would be unrecognisable (and unimaginable) without them as it is currently structured. Yet how pitiful, weak, and dangerous is it to propose a group’s economic benefit to this society as the main argument in support of their value and humanity? While the right and the far-right hide their underlying racism behind economic arguments, the most vocal forces of the left betray, through their own proclamations, that they want migrants to stay in the UK only because of the benefits their exploitation brings to British employers. In doing so, they inadvertently support the wishes of capital more faithfully than their far-right opponents. The far-right wrongfully claims that ‘migrants are bad because they harm the economy’ and the left replies, very factually, that ‘this economy needs migrants’; in so doing, they prop up the very system they claim to be against. What is common in both of these perspectives is an infatuation with the health of the UK’s capitalist economy and a simultaneous conception of the migrant as purely an economic vessel, a thing, something with no value other than the profits it can or cannot produce.

       We need to be aiming for more than this. Anti-racism needs to be much stronger than a call to arms for capitalist exploitation of migrant workers. We need to highlight the common sources of the plight of both British and migrant workers, and foreground the objectives of solidarity, community power, and the overthrow of this economic system as such. The dominant ideological characteristic of neoliberalism is that every individual is no more than their productivity and their capacity to survive in an intensely competitive environment. This perspective has underpinned the state policies that impoverish and exploit British workers just as much as they do migrant workers. It is contradictory and damaging to argue against this system while at the same time proclaiming that migrant workers are welcome precisely because of the role they serve within it.

        It is probably true that the ‘Thief Argument’ and its variants played a significant role in galvanising support for Brexit. However, it is equally true that the European Union is a coalition of capitalist nations, warmongers and bankers. Plagued by diminishing power and resources, and not having set the correct foundations beforehand to challenge the twin assaults of both racism and neoliberalism, the wider left finds itself disjointedly and contradictorily arguing without a coherent ideological and political goal. Supporting the European Union in the name of fighting for the rights of migrant workers is incoherent; the policies of the European Union, in conjunction with the those of the UK’s governments, are directly those which keep our countries of origin in a constant state of underdevelopment and force us to seek work elsewhere. These policies stem from the same sources which both throw British workers under the wheels of austerity and which fortify migrants’ exploitation. As a brief side-note, it is equally incoherent and counter-productive to suddenly jump to support EU workers’ rights while ignoring the struggles of non-EU migrants (a fault that the ‘3  Million Campaign‘ is particularly guilty of), who have borne the brunt of the UK’s racist migration regime for far longer and with much more painful results.

       We need to organise to develop community power from the bottom up, free from political parties and outside of the dominant institutions which exist to give an illusion of freedom amid soaring inequality. We need to fight for ‘no borders’, not ‘better borders’. We need to fight for ‘anti-capitalism’, not ‘better capitalism’. We need to show how borders are part of the same structures which create the inequality and social collapse that anti-migration Brexiteers are raging against. History has shown that solidarity is forged in collective action. Through initiatives such as Living Rent, both migrant and Scottish workers fight in unison to improve their living conditions, targeting problems which equally affect them both. Radical trade unions such as the Industrial Workers of the World and the Independent Workers’ Union of Great Britain bring both migrant and local precarious workers together in a variety of labour struggles, showing that solidarity is stronger than division.  In the same spirit of solidarity, locals unite with migrants against detention and immigration controls through initiatives such as the Unity Centre. All of these initiatives combine to prove that we as humans, in all of our diversity, are capable of not only resisting the assaults on our living conditions together, but that we are also able to forge new ways of existing, outside and beyond the scope of capital and profit.

      We are much more, and much stronger, than our economic roles attempt to constrain us into being. An essential step, therefore, towards organising for emancipation is to completely and permanently expel any traces of the ‘Cash Cow Argument’ from our rhetoric, while at the same time consistently dismantling and ridiculing the ‘Thief Argument’. This will set the foundations for the development of a relatively coherent (different parts of the left will always have important theoretical variations) anti-capitalist and anti-racist movement. The issue is not whether migrant workers are good for the economy; the issue is the economy itself and the plethora of oppressive mechanisms that maintain and reproduce it.

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

In Or Out, Or Half Way In And Half Way Out???

        I made a promise to myself that I would not join in the Brexit pantomime, but at the moment it is difficult to escape the spewing out of a myriad of Brexit scenarios from every avenue of the mainstream media. The views range from greater glory for the wonderful UK, to doom and disaster for this confused and bumbling nation state. After last night's massive defeat of the government by 230 votes, the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption was filled with our political ballerinas indulging in a range of expressions from wringing their hands in despair, to chuckling with glee, and on occasions, that dazed look of confusion. What is clear is that they all state that we, as a country don't know what is going to happen next.

      Perhaps my simple mind can add some clarity to the situation. Leaving with a deal, any deal, or leaving with no deal, to changing the direction and staying in the EU, one thing is certain. We will remain under the yoke of capitalism, the poverty and deprivation will remain, the homeless will still struggle to find shelter, the elderly will continue to die from fuel poverty, our children will still go to school hungry, social services will continue to be decimated. The only real debate is at what rate these injustice will move, certain conditions will accelerate the plundering of the poor, but no conditions under capitalism will alleviate these injustices.

     As long as we accept that our world be driven by the financial mafia and the corporate juggernaut, as long as we accept a world hell bent on profit, as long as we allow ourselves to be governed by "The Market" and the billionaires that control that "Market", we will continue to wade through the swamp of poverty, deprivation, inequality and injustice. In the EU, out the EU, half in and half out, the capitalist system will still control our lives. Until we sort that one out, as far as the ordinary people are concerned, nothing will change.  

     Instead of debating the Brexit, which is just another power struggle among the privileged parasites, we the ordinary people should be debating how we free ourselves from the grip of the capitalist system, how we can take control of our communities and our workplaces. The answers are there, the resources are there, we have the imagination and the intelligence to govern our own lives, creating a society that sees to the needs of all our people, all we need is the will to do so.

Visit ann arky's home at radicalglasgow.me.uk

Usual UK Political Ballerinas Ignorance And Arrogance.

         I found this article to be a little breath of fresh air, in the midst of all the brexit fog, illusion and delusion our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media pours out. It is by Paul Walsh and is taken from Ceasefire:

       For Siegfried Sassoon, the frontline was the one place he could get away from the war. For the UK government, the Brexit negotiations are the one place they can get away from Brexit, as this is where their strategy of ignorance is deployed, a strategy which has turned these negotiations into something resembling an out-of-control drinking game — with round after round of insults, half-truths, and accusations — rather than the most important political and economic event in a generation. The process has descended into rhetorical trench warfare.
       So when UK leaders compare the process to a divorce they have a point, of sorts. There are important decisions to make, there are bills to settle, and worse still, lawyers to pay. Yet when a couple divorces, splitting the dog and car in half, divvying up the CDs and tallying up the tablecloths, they tend not to argue about what divorce means as a concept, as a phenomenon, and as a thing. Although there may be an emotional war, there’s no epistemological gulf to bridge. A divorce — messy, soft, hard or amicable — means a separation and a reckoning for both parties.
       Divorce means divorce. And we know this because we have dictionaries and Google. Just imagine the confusion otherwise. Divorce loses its meaning in a sudden freak accident, and one person is taking out cardboard boxes to the car (‘I’m leaving you!’), while the other flicks through travel brochures (‘How about a European River Cruise this year?’) You’d have two people living in two different semantic spheres, each with a completely different understanding of reality and events. Sounds familiar?
         This semantic dementia explains how the UK government, like a modern Miss Havisham, has morphed into a person avoiding the pressures of a real breakup; someone who prefers to wallow in the warm nectar of the past, the nostalgia of yesteryear — a nostalgia that can, in English minds ever susceptible to flickering daydreams of Empire, inflate to unmanageable proportions and like a balloon, just float away.
       This is the misty, nostalgic dream-world of the jilted lover; stranger still, the jilted lover who campaigned for the separation, voted for the breakup, yet who is dumb-founded by the reckoning. This is magical thinking, denial thinking, and the stuff of dreams.
And in that other dream-world of Alice in Wonderland, at the end of a race in which everyone runs in circles, whichever way they like, for however long they like, the Dodo announces: ‘Everybody has won and all must have prizes.’
        And so maybe the Dodo and the ardent Brexiteers are right. Maybe there will be prizes for all after Brexit. Control over immigration. Sovereignty. New trading relationships and new ties. New opportunities. New neighbours! (Who will become, inevitably, good friends.) Why can’t we have a ‘global Britain’ and a leaner, fitter EU?
         Yet as this divorce of separate semantic spheres spins out; as the pound keeps sinking, prices keep rising, and the economy splutters, it’s unclear whether the prize is worth the risk.
And the questions to ask are these: Are you ready to be taken ‘over the top’ by the Brexit officer class of Boris Johnson and co? Are the blithe reassurances and Cheshire cat grin of David Davies, Michael Gove’s invitation to “take back the billions we give to the EU […] squandered on grand parliamentary buildings and bureaucratic follies”, and Liam Fox’s promise of the “glorious joy of free trade” really enough? Or is this officer class simply deluded?
        Perhaps when thinking of the coming Brexit journey, we might heed the words of soldiers serving in the real trenches of Ypres, a hundred years ago: “This farce promises to be a great success and a long run is expected.”
        So be warned. As we fight across a no man’s land of our own making, the distant goal of national strength regained may turn out, on closer inspection, to be mere post-imperial frailty in disguise. And somewhere between now and March 2019, the UK government will realise that the rhetorical trenches from which they fire, and in which they hide, offer no escape from a Brexit reality growing more dangerous and absurd by the day.

Paul Walsh is a teacher, writer, and precarious worker. He writes mainly on grassroots politics, social movements, and neoliberalism. Find him on twitter:@josipa74

Visit ann arky's home at www.radicalglasgow.me.uk

No One Is Coming To Help Us!!

 

         I have not said much about the Trump affair, as it is difficult to grasp what has happened and why. One thing we can be sure of, there is a emboldened and growing far right, not just in America, but here in the UK and across Europe. We can debate the reasons why and come to different conclusions, but what we can't do is ignore this rise. To me it seems obvious that the people would be come disenchanted with the system, as it was never intended to see to their needs in the first place. The problem seems to be that in looking for answers, people have not picked up our ideas, we have to ask ourselves, why not? Resolving that question would be a good place to start. 

       We will have to find answers in our communities  and to a degree do what the far right is doing, tap into that anger and disenchantment. The following extracts are from an interesting article by First of May Anarchist Alliance

       The surprise victory of Donald Trump this past Tuesday has quickly presented people in this country (and around the world) with a vastly different political landscape than we had expected. We are seeing a rise in right-wing attacks as the far right is emboldened by the victory, much like what happened earlier this year after the success of the Brexit referendum in the UK. The incompetence and capitulation of the Democratic Party has forced many of its former supporters to recognize that the fight against the far right cannot be won by liberal electoral politics. This new reality forces anti-authoritarians of all stripes to rise to the challenge of building strong movements for working class self-defense in this new atmosphere.

Why the turn form neo-liberalism to xenophobic nationalism?

      Another narrative states that in the rust belt as in Europe, the devastating effects of decades of austerity, neoliberal trade agreements, and an orientation towards multinational corporations have been challenged. That challenge in the U.S. and elsewhere has come in the form of xenophobic nationalism. There is a significant amount of truth to this as well, but it can’t explain much of Trump’s success without acknowledging the serious appeal that open white nationalism and misogyny has gained in this election.Perhaps the most revealing aspect of this moment is that after spending months describing Trump as a grave threat to the lives of women, people of color, queer and trans people and the disabled, the entire Democratic Party has immediately capitulated to him. They have made clear that they always held preserving their broken system to be far more important than our lives. Many among their base are for the first time seeing the party’s true colors, and are reaching out to radical organizations in the interest of carrying on the fight that the Democrats so quickly abandoned. Already we are seeing attacks on muslims, immigrants, people of every color besides white, queer and trans people. This is not abstract, it is already happening. We should expect more of this and must make organizing to oppose it a top priority.

So, what do we do?

 We are encouraged that so many have taken to the streets across the country. We hope more will do the same. Trump’s attacks in the form of policy and his supporters physical attacks and intimidation, must be opposed from day one.

Our organizations must be effective. The sense of despair many are feeling is grounded in the reality of an ascendant far right. Right now, they face little resistance. The sense of urgency many of us have felt is a recognition of the need to build that resistance. It is time for us to take up that task, to find new comrades ready to fight, and to fight. No one is coming to save us–we cannot use the electoral system to fight the far right effectively. It’s time to stop waiting and defend each other in the streets!

What Needs to Be Done: 1. No to National “healing”, working with, or a grace period for the Trump Regime 2. Take to the streets – build a militant resistance 3. Build working-class defense organizations that resist racist attacks, sexual assault, immigration and homeland security raids and deportations, police brutality and state repression 4. Agitate and organize for workers actions – including a general strike against Trump 5. No to containment of the struggle back into the Democratic Party, electoralism and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex

A PDF of the full article can be read HERE:

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Federalism.

Colin Ward. 

      Trying to make sense of what is going on, and what is possible in Brexit Europe and elsewhere, is difficult. Our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, pours out a spew-river of one directional doom, nonsense and exaggeration, from the pundits of the opposing camps, the Brexiters and the Remainers. producing confusion, disillusionment and boredom, among the general public.

 Pierre-Joseph Proudhon.

        Perhaps to get a grasp of what is happening and what is possible we should go back to 1992 and Colin Ward's "The Anarchist Sociology of Federalism".

 Peter Kropotkin.

       Needless to say, in efforts for unification promoted by politicians we have a multitude of administrators in Bruxelles issuing edicts about which varieties of vegetable seeds or what constituents of beefburgers or ice cream may be sold in the shops of the member-nations. The newspapers joyfully report all this trivia. The press gives far less attention to another undercurrent of pan-European opinion, evolving from the views expressed in Strasbourg from people with every kind of opinion on the political spectrum, claiming the existence of a Europe of the Regions, and daring to argue that the Nation State was a phenomenon of the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, which will not have any useful future in the twenty-first century. The forthcoming history of administration in the federated Europe they are struggling to discover is a link between, let us say, Calabria, Wales, Andalusia, Aquitaine, Galicia or Saxony, as regions rather than as nations, seeking their regional identity, economically and culturally, which had been lost in their incorporation in nation states, where the centre of gravity is elsewhere.

In the great tide of nationalism in the nineteenth century, there was a handful of prophetic and dissenting voices, urging a different style of federalism. It is interesting, at the least, that the ones whose names survive were the three best known anarchist thinkers of that century: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin and Peter Kropotkin. The actual evolution of the political left in the twentieth century has dismissed their legacy as irrelevant. So much the worse for the left, since the road has been emptied in favour of the political right, which has been able to set out its own agenda for both federalism and regionalism. Let us listen, just for a few minutes, to these anarchist precursors.

 

"Liberal today under a liberal government, it will tomorrow become the formidable engine of a usurping despot It is a perpetual temptation to the executive power, a perpetual threat to the people's liberties. No rights, individual or collective, can be sure of a future. Centralisation might, then, be called the disarming of a nation for the profit of its government ..."

Proudhon

First there was Proudhon, who devoted two of his voluminous works-------

Continue reading:

Mikhail Bakunin. 

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