Bulletin No. 1 Spring 1999
PO Box EMAB, 88 Abbey Street, Derby, DE22 3SQ
Anti-copyright - copy and distribute !
”Solidarity on the picket-line is the economic expression of the inborn feeling of mutual aid” - Sam Dolgoff
EDITORIAL
Welcome to the first issues of the Anarchist Trade Union Network (@TU) Bulletin. The
aims of @TU are to:
1. act as a forum for anarchists to share, keep up to date with and exchange news and
views on union and work issues;
2. allow anarchists a platform to debate work and trade union related issues (see Peter
Good’s article in this edition on creative industrial action).
3. put anarchists in trade unions in touch with other anarchists in their union;
The newsletter will be printed at least quarterly and the @TU web site will have up to
date information and news on it.
The network will only work if readers send stuff in. This can be anything to do with work
- details of industrial action, views on an issue, information about individual unions or
branches, requests to make contact with other anarchists in your union, reports of union
conferences and elections. Get involved and get in touch !
TAMESIDE DISPUTE
The strike in protest against cuts in pay and changes in contracts following the transfer of
elderly person’s homes from the local Council to Tameside Care Group continues.
Donations and letters of support to: Tameside UNISON, 29 Booth Street, Ashton-u-Lyme,
OL6 7LB.
If anyone attended the Anniversary march and demonstration on the 27 March please
send a report in.
EVENTS
Although anarchists attend union organised events like the annual Tolpuddle rally there
is rarely a visible anarchist presence at these. If you are going to any of the events below
look out for other anarchists (normally found towards the back of marches) and make
yourself known !
10 April: Campaign For A Living Wage Rally, Newcastle. Assemble at 11.30 Gateshead Civic Centre for march and rally to Newcastle Telewest Arena to highlight union concerns about poverty and the low level of the National Minimum Wage. UNISON are running coaches to the event from most parts of the country. Seats will be available to non UNISON members. Contact your local activist or regional officer for details.
MAY DAY EVENTS
1 May: May Day March and Rally, Plymouth.
1 May: Reclaim Our Rights March and Rally, London. March from Clerkenwell to
Trafalgar Square. Organised by the Campaign Against Anti Trade Union Laws.
1 May: Derby 1833-34 Lock-Out, annual commemoration march - Market place Derby 11 am.
EDUCATION NEWS
At the start of March the AUT, one of the university teacher’s trade unions, was drawing
up plans for industrial action in anticipation of the employer’s refusal to meet their claim
for a 10% increase in salaries. AUT general secretary has warned that “this could be a
long running and far reaching dispute.” In Cambodia, where university teachers are also
protesting against their pay (currently £10 a month) they have decided to take a more
direct approach. Hundreds of lecturers, joined by students and school teachers recently walked out of work marched to the ministry of education in Phnom Penn with a pile of used tyres and cans of paraffin.
Once there they set fire to the tyres outside the ministry. Not very environmentally
friendly perhaps, but it got the message over. The government is now reviewing their
salaries!
In Russia school children are taking direct action. In St Petersburg up to 60 children have occupied their school, which is threatened with closure. The children supported by parents and school teachers are issuing daily siege bulletins !
UNION WEB SITES
If you have access to the Internet you will know that there are loads of union web sites.
The best starting point is probably LabourNet (http://www.labournet.org.uk). As well as
containing up to dates news it also contains an extensive listing of web sites organised
by country. Anarcho-syndicalist unions such as CGT in Spain, ASGM in Australia and
the Industrial Workers of The World are all listed.
The section for Britain includes individual trade unions along with sites of related interest ranging from the Keep Nazis Out of Dover to Job Seeker’s Allowance Campaign to McLibel.
Anyone wishing to get the Bulletin by e-mail (for free) can do so by sending their e-mail address to:
We’ll then send you the text each time we bring one out
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Trade Union recognition. According to the TUC trade unions are finding it easier to agree recognition deals. Between March and November 1998 34 new recognition deals were struck covering 63,500 workers. 106 union campaigns for recognition are currently underway. The government’s new Fairness at Work act will give unions a legal right to recognition but only if they already have 10% membership in a workplace and 40% of all employees who could vote do vote in favour of recognition.
UNION CONTACTS
Anarchists in the unions below wishing to link up can get in touch via the @TU address
or directly by e-mail.
TGWU (Richard): Grrp7763aol.com
UNISON (Bill): [email protected]
If you belong to another union and wish to make contact with other anarchists in your union get in touch with @TU
d e b a t e
ANARCHISM & TRADE UNIONS
This piece tries to set out where the @TU stands in relation to anarchist criticisms of
traditional trade unions. Contributions to this debate are welcome.
Bakunin described trade unions as “natural organisation of the masses” and “the only really effective weapon the workers could use against the bourgeoisie”. However, there is much that is wrong with traditional trade unions. They are hierarchical, dominated by white men and largely do little to challenge capitalism. Many anarchists reject such trade unions altogether.
A recent editorial in the American Libertaian Labor Review put the argument neatly: “Unions are not organised to prosecute the class war but rather to smooth over disputes. They are dues-collecting machines whose continuity and stability rests on a passive membership”. Anarcho-syndicalists seek, instead, to build rank and file organisations relying on direct action and self organisation. Malatesta at the 1907 International Anarchist Congress stated “the trade union movement is not and never will be anything but a legalistic and conservative movement, unable to move beyond - if that far - the improvement of working conditions”.
In Britain today three quarters of people who work do not belong to any trade union, of the seven million who do almost all belong to traditional unions such as the GMB or AEEU. Kropotkin arguing in the 1890s against the wave of bombings undertaken by a handful of anarchists committed to ‘propaganda of the deed’ argued that anarchists “must be with the people ... who want men (sic) of action within their ranks”. This is the argument against abandoning traditional trade unions. Working within them anarchists can promote ideas of self organisation and mutual aid (for example pushing for their union to set up Credit Unions as the teacher’s union, the GMB and FBU have). Much workplace trade union activity is undertaken by lay representatives rather than paid officers. The Liverpool Dockers showed that it is possible for unions to move beyond narrow economic aims when they established The Movement for Social Justice. Social movement unionism is all about this - reaching outside of the normal work place concerns to, for example, welfare or environmental issues. The @TU does not have a line on whether anarchists should or should not join trade unions (given that this debate has been going on amongst anarchists for over a hundred years it is unlikely that we could resolve it !) The @TU does recognise that some anarchists with jobs belong to non syndicalist unions for a variety of reasons. It also recognises that unions are the largest social movement in this country and for all the faults of union hierarchies much good activity does go on at grass roots level and that anarchists should keep up to date with union matters. This is the role @TU hopes to fill. @TU is open to all anarchists with an interest in work and union issues. We hope it will act as a useful space for anarchists to debate issues.
ANARCHIST CONTACTS
Listed below are anarchist organisations and publications particularly concerned with
workplace issues and organisation. If you wish to be added to this list please get in touch.
Sol-Fed
PO Box 29, SWPDO
Manchester
M15 5HW
(Direct Action magazine)
Industrial Workers of the World
c/o Secular Hall
75 Humberstone Gate
Leicester
LE1 1WB
(Bread & Roses)
Organise (Ireland)
PO Box 505
Belfast
BT12 6BQ
(Rebel Worker)
Anarchist Communist Federation
84b Whitechapel High Street
London
E1 7QX
(Organise)
Black Flag magazine
BM Hurrican
London
WC1N 3XX
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IMAGINATIVE AND CREATIVE INDUSTRIAL ACTION
Tolpuddle Martys Festival & Rally This year’s festival and rally will be held on Sunday 18th July from 11.30 to 5pm, at Tolpuddle near Dorchester. It would be good to try to organise a visible anarchist presence at this event. If you are planning to go - let the network know.
By Peter Good
A prevailing characteristic of trade union activity lies in its innate conservatism and collective fear of stepping outside traditional responses to conflict. For myself, I have found that many trade union full time officers are creatures of habit and unwilling to consider creative options to resolving conflicts. For instance, in a one-time NHS dispute about nurses uniforms I proposed that nurses should comply with the management instruction to wear the resented lace hats as part of a new corporate uniform. Instead of objecting to the ruling I suggested that male colleagues should turn up to work wearing the same hats as women nurses. The union committee in question was horrified at the ‘irresponsibility’ of this idea.
Grunwick
At the famous 1980s Grunwick dispute a friend argued against the futility of trying to
stop a convey of lorries by mass picketing. Instead he proposed that 20 ton lorries could
better be incapacitated by lobbing condoms filled with two parts washing up liquid and
one part black paint on to their windscreens. The controlling joint shop stewards
committee quashed this idea preferring instead to have their members out on the picket
line night after night. They were eventually outwitted and defeated by their predictability.
Workplace Disputes
Workplace disputes tend to get themselves imprisoned into the same thinking tracks.
Vital amounts of energy get locked up into ideological stand-off positions where by a
perceived injustice appears to be resolved only by an exchange of letters or the promise
of a future meeting. It doesn’t take too long to work out that the options available to trade
unionists can be laid out against an obvious set of responses, and of course this is how the
authorities prefer it. So long as trade union activity stays within the traditional forms of activity it becomes easier to manoeuvre, deflect or misdirect.
Anarchism
Anarchism of course has its own shameful and stupefying traditions of narrow thinking.
Often its reasoning has been so impoverished that it has had no option but to hang onto
the apron strings of Marxist driven activity.
Creative Action
My plea is that anarchism must become identified with a new genre of unpredictable and
creative responses. It must be unique in its activity and actively willing to dismantle its
previous conceptual approaches. The planting of dead fish into air conditioning will far
more capture the public’s imagination than a crowd shouting “WHAT DO WE WANT
?!” Groups of workers who agree to yawn and deliberately limp into and out of work
entrances will have a seriously mischievous impact on a corporate image. After all as
anarchists we are outlaws and more on the side of tricksters and rogues than in awe of
stolid trade union hierarchies anxious for the security of its own pension scheme.
JOIN THE @TU NETWORK !
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