May Day Picnic On Glasgow Green.

 

           May Day is fast approaching, sadly so many of our young people have had its true significance erased from their memory, its true purpose is never emphasised in our babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media.  They would rather spout it as a holiday, so go shopping, buy a ticket for a show or sit in front of your TV and overdose on the candy-floss and bubble-gum crap that it pours out over your living room floor. However, May Day is a very important day in the history and culture of the working class, the ordinary people. 

        It is a day to celebrate our victories in the struggle for that better life for all. A day to remember all those who tirelessly fought the battles to improve all our lives, our working class heroes. A day to meet up with old friends and make new friends, a day of chat, fun, discussion, for all that vast army of ordinary people who struggle day to day.

      In an attempt to bring Glasgow May Day, as it should be, back to that great celebration of ordinary people, in the open air, a group are holding a May Day picnic on The Green, on the First of May 2pm onwards, bring what you expect to find, bring the family and friends, bring your street. Enjoy singing, poetry, music, chat, fun, laughter and friendship. See you there.

 

     On Monday May 1st, from 2:00 pm in the east part of Glasgow Green next to the cycling centre, across from the Templeton Factory, join us for a family day, a fun day, a day to celebrate the solidarity of the working class and on the Green where it belongs.
      Music, poetry, banners, face painting, singing, food to share, friends to chat with, people to meet, stories from our radical past, and news of actions and projects of the present.

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

May Day, May Day, May Day.

       In recent years Glasgow's May Day "celebration" has descended into a sedate controlled march through the city, to a hall where we are expected to sit and listen to our political ballerinas spout how the will lead us to the promised land, the word "celebration" seems to have been misunderstood. Well a group us think that it is time we took hold of the word "celebration" and returned May Day to what it was meant to be, a "celebration", a coming together to chat, mix, to create new friendships, to honour or past working class heroes, to strengthen our bounds of solidarity by communicating with each other, a fun day. We also believe that May Day belongs on The Green, or any other public space, where people can come and go as they please.

         To that end a group of us got together last year and held a May Day picnic on The Green, it proved to be a success, and we enjoyed an afternoon of music, poetry and face-painting, plus lots of chat and food. So this year we would like to see it grow to an even great "celebration" of our working class traditions. You can help us do this.

         The May Day on the Green Committee is organising a May Day picnic for May 1 at 2 pm on the Glasgow Green near the bicycle area (Free Wheel North). Our purpose is to revive a long-standing radical tradition in Glasgow; an event on the Green to celebrate May Day, the day to demonstrate our solidarity with the struggles of working people around the world and to reaffirm our commitment to a new and better world.
       Our picnic on the Green will include poetry, songs and fun for children. Everyone brings food to share with others in a communal meal.
      We want this to be an inclusive event with everyone who shares our perspective welcome to join us.
        We need your support to make the picnic a success:

         --The Spirit of Revolt and the Clydeside branch of the Industrial Workers of the World have endorsed the May Day picnic. Help us to get out the word and get more organisations endorsing the event and publicising it. Contact Eric at echester1943@gmail.com
         --We want to have bicycles carrying signs that can go around the city on the morning of May 1 to tell everyone to come to the Green. Contact Bob at bob@citystrolls.com
        --We are looking for poets and musicians who would be interested in performing at the picnic. Contact John at john.c.at95@btinternet.com

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

The Workers Pledge In Time Of War.

      The blood curdling howl of the dogs of war reverberate through the airwaves, the babbling brook of bullshit, the mainstream media, blasts out the bugle call to arms. Meanwhile, in the Westminster Houses of Hypocrisy and Corruption, the Honourable Members, those who will never be called upon to wear a uniform, or lift a gun, call for others to shed blood in the name of some illusion. From their cloistered, pampered, privileged cocoons, they scream their frenzied insanity, calling on workers of this land, to kill workers in another land.

      Have no illusions, our super smart bombs are not really smart, they are blunt instruments of death. They will tear through the flesh of a child just as accurately and as brutally, as that of a "terrorist". The bombs will fall on villages, towns and cities, and will reap carnage on shopkeepers, nurses, invalids, gardeners, and fruit growers, the elderly will meet the same fate as the gunman. Villages, towns and cities will disappear from the map, their people will scatter to the four corners of our world, fleeing hell on earth, families will be dispersed, and hatred will grow like weeds and its seeds will spread in the wind of memory and folklore. 

Patriotism

No, I shall not die for the fluttering flag,

if truth be known, ’tis nothing but a multi-coloured rag

held aloft by some foolish hand

inciting worker and peasant to kill

on some green and wooded hill,

peasant and worker from some other land.

Nor shall I shed blood for the fluttering rag

that brings out fools to stand and brag

of brutal deeds painted grand,

deeds where rustic and craftsman lie so still

killed by my brothers' misguided hand.

No allegiance have I for the Nation

this man made autocratic creation

that divides my brothers in a world so small,

binds us to a country's cause, right or wrong,

bids us follow its drum, sing its song,

then sheds our blood in some border brawl.

No, I'll be no slave to flag or nation,

have no ear for power oration,

though its iron heel is on my breast,

my back feels its leather thong,

at patriotism's barracoon, I'll be no guest.

        We cannot allow the insanity of our wealthy "lords and masters" wrapped in the cloak of patriotism and "national security" to drag us into another nightmare of carnage. We cannot see another generation born into a world of hatred and revenge. We the ordinary people of the world, have bled through endless wars, our families have mourned our dead for generations, we know the suffering of carnage, it has solved nothing. Don't be fooled by the frenzied screaming of the friends of wealth and power, the voice of imperialism. We have been bombing the Middle East continuously since 2001, remember Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and now Syria? Is the world now a safer place, a more peaceful place? Only a blind fool or a lying imperialist stooge would answer yes.

         Let us go back to the words of one of Glasgow's well known anarchists, and conscientious objector, Guy Aldred, and take some words from his 1929 pamphlet, "At Grips With War"

The Workers Pledge In Time Of War.  

   I refuse to kill any child's father.

   I refuse to slay any mother's son.

   I refuse to plunge the bayonet into the breast of any

                   woman's brother, lover our mate.

   I refuse to murder and deem the slaughter glory.

   I refuse to butcher with hands that were intended to

                   to serve and caress.

   I refuse to soak the earth with blood and blind my reason

                   with obedience.

   I refuse to assassinate another man and then hide my

                   stained fists in the folds of a bloodstained flag.

   I refuse to be flattered, cajoled, or driven into hell's

                   nightmare by a class of well-fed snobs, crooks

                   and cowards who despise my class socially, rob

                   my class economically, and betray and oppress it

                   politically. Let militarism do its worst, I refuse

                   to serve, I decline to kill.

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

Glasgow's Walk Of Pride, November 17th.

     Citizens of Glasgow should be proud of their heritage in working class struggle, over the centuries they have fought and won many a battle for better conditions in their homes, and in the work place, not just for themselves, but for everybody. It has always been a city of struggle for the many, and our previous generations of men and women have always risen with determination and pride to what ever challenge the system threw at them. It was February 3rd 1919 that one of Glasgow's better know anarchists, Guy Aldred, arrived from London to stay in Glasgow, when asked why Glasgow, his reply was," --he was attracted to Glasgow by its citizen's truculent attitude, rebellious spirit and disrespect for leaders."  Can we grow that spirit and add a large dose of pride.

      One of the many victories we Glaswegians can can take great pride in, is the 1915 Rent Strike. By solidarity, determination and co-operation, between the women of the districts of Glasgow/Clydeside and the workers in the yards and factories, they beat the landlords, and forced the government to freeze all rents across the country until the end of the war.

      November 17th. marks the centenary of that great victory, and to honour with pride that event, a Walk of Pride, will take place on November 17th 2015.

       Let's make this the noisiest, largest, walk Glasgow has seen in years. Bring the implements used in the Rent Strike, pots and pans, whistle, racquets, banners, let's show our pride in that massive victory and all those determined women and men that came together to make an unbeatable working class army.

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

I'm Proud.

     So January 14, is Poetry at Work Day. I have long since ceased to work, well as a paid employee, but I do like poetry. This one is dedicated to all those workers across the globe.

I’m Proud

I’m proud of my people, proud to be one of them,

that great mass on society’s bottom rung.

Those who, with coal-dust under their nails

in their eyes, in their lungs

claw at the earths entrails.

Their brothers,

cement in their hair

in their mouth, in their ears,

oil ingrained in their fingers,

on their face.

Sisters, glistening with sweat

midst the ceaseless noise of machines

that throw out shirts, shoes, toys, carpets

for other people.

Those with soil and sweat stuck to their skin

smelling of the earth, feeding the multitude,

grinding out their lives in a harsh pitiless system

weighted down

with a sack load of half-dead dreams,

sometimes brought to their knees

by a tidal wave of despair,

never defeated,

groping in the dark to find tomorrow,

keeping hope alive;

they amaze me.

Somehow, from somewhere

in this cold, cruel

unforgiving scheme of things

they find love for their children.

Not a teaspoonful, not a cupful,

but buckets full, to bathe them in,

to pour over them.

They seem to know

that one day this world will be ours

and to take care of it

we will need those who have been loved.

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

THE PRICE OF CAPITALIST ADJUSTMENT, DEPRIVATION.

      Every economist comes up with their own personal idea of the "problem" with Greece and the Greek people and all of their answers usually are around some capitalist economic formula that is hinged to the "people" paying more to put things "right" by taking a greater hit to their already impoverished living standard, or by the state borrowing more and creating "growth". The former solution will be an even greater disaster for the Greek people, the latter, beneficial for the corporate world, but more of the same for the Greek people. All capitalist "adjustments" require deprivation, malnutrition, homelessness and mass unemployment to be heaped on the ordinary people. The Greek people's solution, like all those ordinary people across the globe who are at present suffering "austerity", does not lie in any form of capitalist economics, capitalist economic solutions are the problem, the only answer for the ordinary people, lies outside capitalism. 

      An interesting article by Nikos Libero, on the Greek situation taken from The Commune:

 

      Greece is living through its biggest crisis since the downfall of the military junta in the summer of 1974 – a consequence of the world economic crisis and the historical decadence of the Greek bourgeois elite. The same internal tendencies – with more or less the same characteristics as in the USA in 2008, at the beginning of the world economic crisis – are manifested in Greece today in an explosive form.

All the social conquests of the working class since 1974 have been lost in the last three years. Since the end of the second world war, there has never been, in a period of peace, such a dramatic decline in the standard of living of the majority of the population of any country in Europe, or such a violent redistribution of wealth in such a limited time.

         The crisis has given rise to an assault not only on the working class, but also on the middle class, which is being destroyed today. And here it should be noted that in 2009 the petty bourgeoisie is two or three times larger, as part of a proportion of the total population, than in the so-called developed capitalist countries.

       In November 2012, unemployment reached 30% – and 80% of the unemployed received no benefits. Since 2009, the real income of ordinary people has been reduced by 40%. And the downfall will continue in the next year.

      The minimum daily wage for people below the age of 25 is 22 euros, and for those above 25, 26 euros. Three million people, in a population of less than 11 million, are living below the poverty line. There are 40,000 homeless. The suicide rate is rising dramatically especially among the destroyed middle class. In tens of thousands of homes, the electricity has been cut off. Crime is rife.

Read the full article HERE:

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GOT SPARE CASH? GET OUT OF YOUR COUNCIL HOUSE!!!

        

      You wait for years for a council house and then finally you get one and it is in an area that your happy with, so you're all sorted. You start to do the place up and settle in and feel at home, your sorted for life. Well, not any more. Our millionaire well coiffured twins have just decided to change the rules. Now you will only get a short term rental agreement, probably about 5 years. After that period a committee made up of a bunch of wealthy bureaucrats will assess you to see if your are now well-off enough to buy your own house and therefore no longer in need of a council house. What if you don't want to buy a house and you're quite happy in the area you're in? Well tough, you have been assessed as not being in need of a council house, so out you go. It could be that you have been there for years and one of your family has left home. Well those same well-heeled bureaucrats will now assess you has having a house too big for you needs and move you to another council house somewhere else. That is assuming that you haven't increased you income in that period or it could be both, too well-off and your family is too small.

         This is another little gift to their millionaire mafia friends in the lending business, another way of forcing everybody into debt with a mortgage company whether they like it or not. Council housing will only for the poorest of the poor who will be assessed every 5 years or so just in case their circumstances have improved and then out they go. The corporate world must be able to make money out of you if you have any at all. Why else are you there??

        Another glaring example of who the millionaire twins at the Westminster House of Hypocrisy and Corruption really work for, they know who their friends are. Do we know who are the friends of the working class? Well it is us of course, the working class, the only group that will look after the interests of the working class.

 

 

 

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WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR COMMONS?

http://www.scottishcommons.org/

     They were stolen. Here is what Professor Cosmo Innes (1798-1874), the famous advocate and Professor of Constitutional Law and History in this Department wrote in his book, Scotch Legal Antiquities: - “Looking over our country, the land held in common was of vast extent. In truth, the arable - the cultivated land of Scotland, the land early appropriated and held by charter - is a narrow strip on the river bank or beside the sea. The inland, the upland, the moor, the mountain were really not occupied at all for agricultural purposes, or served only to keep the poor and their cattle from starving. hey were not thought of when charters were made and lands feudalised. Now as cultivation increased, the tendency in the agricultural mind was to occupy these wide commons, and our lawyers lent themselves to appropriate the poor man’s grazing to the neighbouring baron. They pointed to his charter with its clause of parts and pertinents, with its general clause of mosses and moors - clauses taken from the style book, not with any reference to the territory conveyed in that charter; and although the charter was hundreds of years old, and the lord had never possessed any of the common, when it cam to be divided, the lord got the whole that was allocated to the estate, and the poor cottar none. The poor had no lawyers.”

   Now here in the 21st. century they are still at it, selling off and stealing the peoples' common goods. Do we need lawyers to take back what was stolen from us???

 

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REJOICE, THE RECESSION IS OVER!!!!

       We are all supposed to rejoice at the news that the recession is officially over. Of course unemployment will continue to rise as the corporate world streamlines for what it sees as “difficult” times ahead. The mountain sized bailout is still there, it still has to be paid for and that’s where you and I come in, we are expected to pay for it. The main political parties are arguing over just where to cut and by how much. Rest assured that there will be massive cuts in social spending, that translates into cut benefits and less jobs.

      We can accept this attack on our living standards by meekly holding out the begging bowl and pleading for some lousy job with no security and crap wages, so as to ensure that the privileged parasites can get their greed feast going in full gear once more. Or we can take what is rightfully ours, everything we produce. We the ordinary people built everything on the planet, we mined every piece of ore, we smelted every piece of metal, we made every piece of machinery. We grew every oat, apple, potato and banana and we transported them across the globe. It is our world, we have earned it by sweat and blood through generations, it doesn’t belong to the parasites. It’s time to take it all back rather than crawl for a hand-out from those parasites who produce nothing but power and privilege for their own class at our expense.

    In stead of protests and strikes we could start with more occupations, more of locking the bosses out, more taking what is ours and more control of our lives. The first step is collective seizure/management of workplaces, but the next step has to be to dismantle the relationships between the various enterprises, radically transforming them to be part of the community. The inherent relationship in the way capitalism and industry have set things up has an inbuilt value structure that must be destroyed, otherwise workers' self-management could function simply as a form of emergency management of failing capitalist enterprises, to be once more engulf in the capitalist value structure in a renewed and invigorated capitalism. The goal is for collective democratic management tied into the community and working in federation and solidarity with other like projects with the aim of expanding, depriving capitalism of its necessary growth and consumers. The bigger the capitalist crisis, the greater our opportunity to recreate society in the shape we desire.

 

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BENEFIT REGULATIONS TO BREAK A STRIKE?

       “New Labour’s new benefit regulations could be used, and I have no doubt that they will be used, to break any strike. The new regulations in trying to force people back to work, even where there is no work, state that after 13 weeks of receiving unemployment benefit and you are still unemployed but do not want your benefit to be cut, then you must accept a job interview allocated to you by your Job Centre liaison person.

       Sitting across the desk from your Job Centre liaison person this is the sort of thing you might hear, “It would appear that there doesn’t seem to be any jobs in your field of engineering, construction or even driving, however I have arranged an interview for you for one of those temporary jobs going at Royal Mail.” Of course if you refuse the job offered, you also lose the right to unemployment benefit. This is where the reserve army of unemployed can be called upon by any organisation that is facing strike action by its employees. I am sure this is how Royal Mail is attempting to break this strike and other employers will follow suit. This is also how a group of worried, vulnerable people in some degree of poverty, will be forced to scab on there fellow workers, not because they wish to scab or have no solidarity with the strikers but because it could mean extreme poverty for them and their families.

        This is just another example of how the state always works hand in hand with big business against the interests of the people of this country. And anther reason why all communities should fall in behind striking workers and give them unconditional support. Perhaps demonstrating outside job centres that use this bureaucratic fiddle to crush workers struggling to hold onto what meager conditions they might have, could be a start.

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YOU SAVE THE WORLD ----- FOR WHO?

       When the powers that be start telling us to save the planet, they are talking to you and me, the guys at the bottom of the ladder. We have to turn the heating down 1 or 2 degrees, just boil enough water for one cup of tea, have a quick shower rather than a nice deep bath. You should walk or get on your bike rather than the car, take the bus not the car. All very well, but while you’re sitting in front of the tele with the lights out and a tea-cosy on your head to keep you warm, just think on these few things.

         At the beginning of next year Russian oligarch Roman Abromovich will take delivery of his new yacht, it will be the biggest private owned yacht in the world. The 557 footer Eclipse is estimated to have cost £300 million. It comes equipped with its own private submarine that doubles as an escape vehicle. Among its other little extras are a military grade missile detection system, armour plating around his own master suite, bullet proof windows, two heli-pads, swimming pool, luxury spa and an anti digital camera device to stop people photographing his frolicking.

        You see he needs this one as his other three have specific uses. His Pelorus, (377ft.) room for 22 guests and 40 staff, that’s a nice ratio, is for entertaining and has two heli-pads. His Ecstasea, (282ft.) Chinese themed interior, is for cruising. While is dinky little Sussorro a mere 161ft, is for short journeys and loaning out to friends. You could ask??

         The annual overhead cost for his little fleet is more than £15 million and the cost of filling the fuel tanks on his Pelorus is a fiddling loose change of £73,000.

        You see, less energy for you, more energy for them. We could of course get rid of his type and that would mean we could boil a wee bit more in the kettle, keep the heating comfortable and have a nice long relaxing shower, now that’s not too much to ask, is it?

 

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