For those in UK especially, but also for those observing from afar - it would be interesting to put together experiences from the 30 November and discuss it from a left communist perspective, so maybe this thread could serve. I will come back later to talk about discussions at my workplace. For the moment I'm posting this link to the ICC's leaflet for the day which we are encouraging comrades to print off and distribute. http://en.internationalism.org/files/en/nov_30.pdf
Manchester I went to the the pickets at the hospital on Oxford Road. There was 200 people on the picket which I thought was quite good, especially compared to last years UCU strikes where there was barely anyway on the pickets at the universities. It is estimated there were 20,000-30,000 on the demonstration. The speeches were the usual TU/Labourite ritualised gaffe. I distributed Aurora (CWO's A3 Broadsheet). Politically though, there was not much questioning at all amongst those on the demo. or a great interest in discussion really. That was my experience at least.
November 30th: my impressions of the union day of action Preparing for the strike at my workplace In the run up to June 30th, the various unions at the sixth form college where I work didn’t do anything to prepare for the strike or discuss the problem of the strike being limited to NUT and ATL, and thus excluding the non-teaching staff who are in other unions like Unison or not in a union. Along with another comrade who works at the college we have formed an open discussion forum for staff and students where various issues can be debated. In the lead-up to the J30 strike this became the main focus for discussing both general issues and the practical organisation of the strike (picketing etc), with over 40 members of staff taking part the day before the strike. This time around, the union divisions were less obvious because most of the unions at the college would be officially on strike. But again there wasn’t much evidence of the unions calling meetings. The discussion forum called for a meeting on the eve of the strike, but on the same day our email went out to staff and the call-out was included in the student bulletin, the NUT rep called a meeting for last Friday (25th) open to all staff (though not for students), which I supported because the main thing was that there was a way for people to communicate across the union and departmental divide. But as it happened I then learned that a group of students had organised a ‘student assembly’ the week before in the main concourse of the college and planned to hold another one on Friday the 25th to talk about the strike. So the student/staff divide was already being put into question. On the Friday lunchtime the meeting of staff went ahead. This was fairly well attended and there were teaching assistants and site staff as well as teachers. There was general agreement that although most of the college would be closed and the students would not be coming in, we should have a strong picket and if possible send a delegation to Whipps Cross hospital which is nearby. Some of us then went to talk to the students. About 20 of them were sitting in a circle in the main concourse. They are a slightly expanded version of the radical core who took part in last year’s student movement. Some call themselves ‘socialists’ (SWPish) and others anarchist communists. They call themselves a ‘left wing students’ assembly’, which I criticised a bit because it would exclude people who might not see themselves as ‘left wing’. The students had talked about coming to the picket line The NUT rep said to them ‘Of course I can neither encourage you or discourage you to do this’, to which I replied ‘but I can’, and sat down in their circle. Although I didn’t expect too many to come to the discussion forum meeting after college on the following Tuesday (29th), there were six staff and 8 students from the assembly who had brought their banners to finish off. We had a good discussion about the general significance of the strike as well as what everyone would be doing the next day. Strike day A fairly good turn out for the picket and although the local NUT sent its members a long legalistic document saying how many pickets you could legally have, no one seemed bothered that we were well over the limit. The students came along as well. Heavy local SWP presence who like to claim every picket for their own. A few people went into work including some NUT members. There were some spirited arguments aimed at convincing them not to go in, but no one actually changed their mind. Some of us then went to the advertised rally in Walthamstow where I renewed some auld acquaintances. At this point people were not saturated with leaflets and were happy to take the ICC one we were handing out - http://en.internationalism.org/iccon...-token-gesture - which I had also given out at the meeting on Tuesday and at the picket line. The rally had a few set speeches but you couldn’t hear much and there was no attempt to actually develop a discussion - this was a rehearsal for the big rally later on. This was a signal for me to leave with some workmates and head into central London. My other comrade went back to Whipps for the lunch time rally. The march seemed very big. People were still arriving at Lincolns Inn Fields when the head of the march set off – there was a claim of 50,000 at the rally later on. The atmosphere was boisterous. Many varieties of leftism and numerous leaflets and free hand-outs so I wasn’t surprised that I got a lot of refusals. Not so many interesting discussions as people were just filing past. One remark was fairly typical, from someone who was familiar with our positions: ‘how come you’re here, you’re supposed to be against the unions’. This was the second time such a comment had been made today so I felt justified in relying: “that’s just a cliché, like ‘go back to Russia’. Of course we are here irrespective of whether the unions are in charge of it”. He was then more friendly and admitted to his mate that he really liked our book on the Dutch-German left, and bought a copy of World Revolution. Apart from that the best discussion I had was with a guy giving out a leaflet against workfare and who said he was just getting interested in anarchism and socialism. It’s interesting how you run into people you know even at very big at demos: apart from two of my comrades from the ICC who I had expected to be there, there were a few from the CWO and various people from libcom and the London anarchist milieu, as well as some colleagues who hadn’t been on the picket. It’s always encouraging to talk to comrades when there are so many leftists about. I stood for a while with a CWO comrade while he gave out Aurora and I gave out our leaflet. I also told an Anarchist Federation comrade that I thought their leaflet was good. Anyway: the big rally at Victoria Embankment at the end had a very efficient sound system and a big screen, and some big names like Ken Livingstone; but although I am biased I felt it was totally demobilising. People began leaving almost as soon as they arrived. I may also be biased but I felt that a lot of people were more willing to take the leaflet at this stage, especially when they saw the headline: ‘beginning of struggle or just another token gesture?’, because at this point this seemed a rather precise description of what was happening: it felt like massively organised powerlessness. There were quite a few discussions about the extremely vicious and provocative attacks on public sector jobs and wages that Osborne had announced on the eve of the strike. Do they want more to push the unions into organising more days like this? In any case, there is still enough anger to make it possible that they will provoke reactions that the unions will actually find much harder to control.
