One hundred years ago, a group of miners from South Wales published a radical economic and political pamphlet which ‘received a blaze of publication’ in The Times and other national newspapers. It was the topic of a special house of commons debate and ‘became a household word’ in the coalfields of Britain, according to miners’ historian R Page Arnot.
As the pre-First World War…
In the biggest strike in Britain in a generation, on 30 November, two million public sector workers took action against proposed cuts in public sector pensions. Hundreds of thousands marched in protest.
In London, Occupy activists took over the offices of the UK’s highest-paid chief executive officer, the head of the Xstrata mining corporation. They unfurled a banner from the roof, saying: “All Power to the 99%”. There were 75 arrests.
Along with, I’m sure, everyone in Wales and many people beyond our borders, I would like to pay tribute to the four miners who died in a flood at Gleision colliery near Pontardawe: Charles Breslin, Phillip Hill, Garry Jenkins and David Powell. My heart goes out to their families, friends and community.
Bethan Jenkins, Plaid Cymru AM for South Wales West, said: “The very real and cruel way in which the families were robbed of these men is something that I think it will take the local…
Taesun Kwon co-founded South Korea’s radical national daily newspaper, the Hankyoreh, born of South Korea’s democracy movement in 1988. She is now executive editor of the paper, which has a circulation of over 500,000.
PN : How is the Hankyoreh different from other South Korean newspapers?
TK: There are many differences between the Hankyoreh and other newspapers in South Korea. The first difference is the birth of the Hankyoreh. The Hankyoreh was established with the help of…
In spring 1906, Iran was being autocratically ruled by the Qajjar dynasty of Shahs who had been auctioning the country piece by piece to Britain and Russia. Howver strikes and a protest movement from the merchant community in Tehran had forced the Shah to accede to the formation of a parliament (Majles) which would write a constitution for the country.
To supervise the elections to the Majles, local councils (anjumans) were set up. But they would accept no straitjacket, remained in…
May Day has been celebrated as International Workers’ Day since 1890 when it was instituted as a day of commemoration for the Haymarket Martyrs, anarchist labour organisers who were hanged amongst anti-radical hysteria in Chicago in 1888.
It is celebrated with varying levels of enthusiasm and popular involvement across the globe. In every town and city in Spain it remains a day when the libertarian labour movement holds marches, rallies and fiestas; in Moscow numerous reconstituted…
PN: Looking over the postwar period in Britain, is there one experience that stands out as an inspiring advance towards workers' control and industrial democracy?
KC: The obvious thing is the UCS [in June 1971]. The government decided to rationalise the shipyards and close down the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders [with the likely loss of over 6,000 jobs]. The workers announced a work-in, that they wouldn't accept dismissal, and they'd work on and appeal for money from the labour…
On 10 March, in the teeth of mass political opposition, Wisconsin’s Republican-dominated state assembly passed the governor’s bill to repeal most collective bargaining by public employee unions, after police carried demonstrators who had been occupying the assembly ante-chamber.
The grounds given for the measure were that it would help the state to balance its budget There had been daily demonstrations at the state capitol building in Madison, often very large, since 15 February…
Unions and social movements have much to learn from each other. If we can combine the best of both, we can transform the world.
Unions and movements differ in recruitment, funding, means used to mobilise, and ways of achieving their goals. Most social movements, the peace movement included, recruit people based on their agreement with the movement's goals. If a social movement can get one percent of the population to turn out to a demonstration -- half a million people in Britain,…
The British press has been marking the 25th anniversary of the start of the miners’ strike of 1984-5, a shattering event for many of us who lived through it. The strike was one of the major events of postwar British history, marking a turning point for owners and managers, supported by the state, in exerting their authority over working people.
The strike was ignited by a government programme of pit closures aimed at breaking the power of the National Union of Mineworkers, and thereby…
The trade union movement in Britain, as elsewhere, has gone through periods where the rank and file has felt the need to organise itself in order to revive, reform or replace the existing structures. Perhaps the best-known attempt at initiating radical change within the unions was the so-called “Syndicalist Revolt” of the first decade of the 20th century.
Responding to a perceived timid reformism of the leadership and the bureaucratisation of the trade union movement, this revolt was…
“If we are to roll back the tide of privatisation and war, rebuilding the grass roots of our movement is essential.”
Bob Crow – General Secretary, National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT)
The National Shop Stewards Network was established in 2007, the first such initiative in the 21st century. Its origins lay in a conference called in October 2006 by the RMT union which was attended by 300 trade union officials and activists and addressed by the…
No review could ignore the success of the Save Crichton Cam- paign in September, where united action by the University and College Union (UCU), International Workers of the World (IWW) and others stopped the closure of the Dumfries Campus of Glasgow University.
Success at CrichtonBen Franks, UCU Dumfries: "The most successful actions embarrassed the Principal and his officials at prestigious events. As a result, the new Scottish government made the Crichton campus a top priority.…
Award-winning BBC business correspondent Paul Mason has set out on an important task in this, his first book: to keep alive the epic and inspirational stories of workers' struggles of days gone by and pass them on to the growing ranks of exploited working classes being created by the current expansion of global capitalism. Mason picks an international selection of key historical moments from the era of the first Industrial Revolution, and pairs them with examples of present day struggles in…
Until the May elections, the existence of a presence in the Scottish parliament of both a united left party and the greens (with six and four seats respectively) had been presented by commentators as evidence of a deep-rooted rad icalism amongst significant sections of the Scottish populace.
Whilst a particularly nasty split in the Scottish Socialist Party contributed to the loss of all their seats in May 2007, and, quite separately, the Green Party's representation halved, the…
