Freedom of movement in Europe is a vital concern for performers who tour, writes HORACE TRUBRIDGE
THE fact that most unions here at the TUC Conference have put forward motions on Brexit shows just how important the issue of leaving the EU is to workers.
At the Musicians’ Union (MU), we have some very specific concerns that go right to the heart of what our members do and how they work.
Most professional musicians and performers rely on touring and travelling as part of their careers. Many of the MU’s 30,000 members work in Europe either on a freelance basis with orchestras, touring as an individual or group or working for theatre producers or orchestras on touring productions.
Some performers can be working in several different European countries over the course of a few days, and gigs or tours are sometimes arranged at very short notice, so the possible introduction of work permissions and/or visas for British performers touring and working in Europe could be extremely detrimental. Individuals without representation or financial backing are likely to struggle the most with the extra costs and admin that this might entail.
The vote to leave the EU is already having an impact in this area: the European Union Baroque Orchestra has already left the UK for Antwerp, in part due to concerns over restricted freedom of movement for working musicians.
In a post-Brexit Europe will a European festival find it easier to give the gig to a French band rather than a British band? That is my fear.
The MU is campaigning for reciprocal free movement for musicians and performers across the EU’s 27 member states, in the form of an exemption from visa and work permit rules for performers.
Over the past couple of months, we have been asking MPs and peers to sign up to a pledge — to ensure that professional musicians and performers continue to be able to travel easily across Europe post-Brexit for time-limited activities such as touring and performing with minimum administrative burdens.
To date, more than 80 MPs and peers have signed up to our pledge and we will be working with them to help ensure that musicians continue to be able to do their jobs post-Brexit.
Of course freedom of movement is not the only concern that we have associated with Brexit. The majority of copyright law that protects performers’ rights is enshrined in European law, and although we have had assurances that the government does not intend to reduce copyright protections post-Brexit, there are as yet no guarantees on that front.
Equally, the arts currently receive a great deal of funding from the EU. The loss of European Social Funds for arts organisations is going to hit particularly hard.
There are a number of regional music organisations that have been sustained by European Social Funding (ESF) that will see that money cease with very little chance of the shortfall being picked up by local authorities or central government.
During 2014-2020, the ESF and European Regional Development Fund were due to invest around €11.8 billion across the UK. How much of that money we will still receive remains to be seen.
The MU was vehemently against Brexit right from the start, not just for the reasons I have listed so far, but because Brexit threatens the whole culture of our country.
Music, and the performing arts more generally, rely on exchange of ideas and interaction between performers of different nationalities. Music flourishes in an open world with no borders — not a closed-off island that looks inward on itself.
Many of our members are themselves European citizens who have chosen to base themselves in Britain. They contribute massively to the culture and the economic success of our country. What does the future hold for them?
I haven’t even touched on the more general concerns about workers’ rights that we share with our brothers and sisters from other unions; concerns which I am sure will be discussed at length over the course of this conference.
The future looks bleak. And at the MU we would dearly love to see more MPs fighting against what most seem to have accepted as an inevitability. But musicians have faced many great challenges in the past, and we will meet this one just the same. My only hope is that we are able to reach an agreement that does not leave musicians, and the culture of our country, poorer.
- Horace Trubridge is general secretary of the Musicians’ Union.
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The lineup’s changed a bit since 1975, but the Morning Star/CPB remain staunchly little-England
After having backed the Tories against Labour over Brexit, and siding with David Davis against the foreign menace, it must have come hard for the loyal, patriotic and thoroughly nationalist Morning Star (second only to the Daily Mail in anti-European fervour), to have to publish some pieces opposing Brexit.
But the Morning Star’s difficulty is that, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, it depends upon the union bureaucracy to keep afloat: and that means publishing what they say, even when it goes against the patriotic stance of the Morning Star‘s political masters, the Communist Party of Britain, which hates Europe and all things European.
So, in Saturday’s Morning Star there were four pieces by union leaders (Horace Trubridge of the MU, Larry Flanagan of the EIS, Manuel Cortes of the TSSA, and Gail Cartmail of Unite), all of which oppose Brexit.
I’m sure the Morning Star won’t mind us republishing their articles, starting with Manual Cortes‘s:
If we on the left don’t take a united front position against Tory Brexit, it’ll help sink our people, says MANUEL CORTES
BREXIT ain’t the route to socialism in one country. Still less to world revolution. Disagreements over the best option for our class has split sections of the left since the referendum was announced.
Sadly, many have been slow to get to grips with the realpolitik, continuing to rehash the 1970s anti-joining positions without much regard for how 30 years of neoliberalism have changed the balance of forces for our side.
Those who thought that the referendum outcome would be Remain weren’t the only ones who failed to anticipate the Leave vote.
Neither did Nigel Farage or the three muppeteers Boris Johnson, David Davis and Liam Fox, who are committing political hara-kiri on Britain’s behalf on a daily basis.
The trouble is, if we on the left don’t take a united front position against Tory Brexit, it’ll help sink our people.
Just like when Labour helped to prosecute the war with Iraq, we must oppose Tory Brexit because it’s “not in our name.”
Our union was resolutely in favour of remaining. Not because the EU offers any road to a socialist nirvana. But because we feared, rightly, that in Tory hands, Brexit would do more harm than good to working people.
Handing the Tories carte blanche for Brexit and subsequent trade deals is like TTIP on steroids, which ain’t good class politics. Not for ours, anyway.
From the perspective of TSSA members working on Eurostar, acquiescing to Tory plans to restrict free movement is to conspire with those in the boss class who seek to divide worker from worker by accident of birth.
Socialists shouldn’t be resurrecting borders that lock workers out of Britain or, for that matter, confine ours to our soil. Never mind one that could reignite a volatile situation in Ireland where our union organises workers from Cork to Belfast.
Looking at restricting free movement is already damaging our living standards and public services as EU citizen workers head elsewhere.
It is a sad fact that some of the people most concerned about immigration — those left behind by globalisation — are the first to be impacted by the flight of EU workers.
In less than a year the rate of EU nurses coming to work in the UK has fallen from 1,304 to just 46 this April.
The Health Foundation said there was a shortage of 30,000 nurses in England alone, adding that the NHS could not afford such a drop.
Last year we hosted some 85,000 seasonal workers through the autumn but now fruit is already withering on the vine and the price of homegrown produce is rising because 26,000 fewer agricultural workers are coming from eastern Europe.
Recruitment agencies report being hard-pressed to come up with half that number for this coming season.
The University and College Union is worried about the impact in education. Short-term employment contracts already make higher education a precarious employer so EU nationals, uncertain about their settlement rights, are now choosing to work elsewhere in Europe. Care homes are also in recruitment crisis and unable to access the labour force needed for our old folk.
Brexit is an economic disaster in the making as inflation is already rising and real wages are falling.
Worse is yet to come if we end up having to import even more food if there aren’t enough workers to pick and process food on our shores. And a Tory dog-eat-dog immigration policy will simply let the forces of reaction triumph. Building on the For The Many pledges in Labour’s 2017 manifesto we must continue to signal Labour’s route map to a new economic settlement which ensures noone is left behind.
Let’s put down those shameful “immigration control” mugs and refuse to let migrants be the scapegoats for the many ills we are facing.
The Tories’ “post-Brexit” plans for immigration will make our country poorer and even more divided. Wages will go further down because as the TUC has already warned, “illegal immigration” will rise, leaving more workers with no rights and no minimum wage.
Tory Brexit cheerleaders want to create a US-style labour market, where millions of so-called “illegals” toil hard to keep the biggest economy in the world motoring.
They have no rights and the fear of deportation means they can’t take on their bosses. The authorities pretend to clamp down, but in effect they turn a blind eye as the US economy will collapse without them. This is illegality by design which only benefits the bosses.
Morning Star readers know that the Tories really don’t give a monkey’s about immigration provided it gives capital a pool of cheap labour to boost their profits.
So far they have partly achieved this through deregulating our labour market. Brexit is them seizing their opportunity to create an underground economy in which workers don’t stand up to bosses because the penalty is deportation.
It’s time to call the Tories out on their intentions. Their leaked immigration policy, though a dogwhistle for xenophobes, is clearly in the economic interests of capital. Time now to stop shadow boxing and get stuck in.
The antidote to the Tories’ freemarket craziness is not restriction of free movement but an end to workers’ exploitation through labour market regulation, a living wage of at least £10 an hour and a trade union in every workplace.
The Tories seek to divide us. Our job is to create unity and build on Marx’s original vision of a world without borders where workers of all lands unite!
- Manuel Cortes is general secretary of transport union TSSA.
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The following report is based upon information received from the Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign, dating from 31 August 2017. Presumably, the situation will now be even worse:
After 24 days on hunger strike Reza Shahabi’s health is deteriorating. His condition is now said to be serious.
Reza Shahabi, a member of the Executive Committee of the Trade Union of the Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company, was ordered to return to prison on August 8th. According to a report by this trade union, Mr Shahabi began his hunger strike protest on August 8th as he entered Rejai Shahr prison in Karaj. He is protesting about the legality of his case and prison conditions.
On August 12th the Trade Union of the Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company issued a statement regarding the return of Reza Shahabi to prison, saying that the Tehran Prosecutor’s Office acted against the law in not considering Reza’s medical leave as part of serving his sentence and also building a made-up case against him while he was in prison. As a result this labour activist has been sentenced to a further year in prison: “Even though medical leave is counted as part of a prison term, the Prosecutor’s Office is considering this jailed toiling worker’s five months’ medical leave, which had been approved by the medical authorities previously, as absence. In addition, while serving his prison term, through building a made-up case, the court sentenced Shahabi to a further year’s imprisonment to follow immediately after the previous conviction and Shahabi must be held in prison for another year and five months, until January 8th 2019.”
Reza Shahabi is now said to be suffering from numbness in various parts of his body. According to reports, in recent days, due to the increased physical and psychological pressures of the hunger strike, he is losing, or has lost, sensitivity in his left side. This problem is more pronounced in the fingers of his left hand.
According to the prison infirmary, where Mr Shahabi was examined during recent days, his loss of sensitivity needs to be examined by a specialist. Rejai Shahr prison neither has any doctor with this specialism nor have any steps been taken to take him to a health centre outside the prison.
Reza Shahabi is part of a large number of political prisoners in Rejai Shahr who are on hunger strike as a protest against conditions inside this notorious jail. Other hunger strikes whose health is deteriorating include: Saeed Masouri, Saeed Shirzad, Shahin Zoghitabar, Reza Akbari Mofared, Abolghasem Fouladvand, Hassan Sadeghi, Mohammad Nazari, Payam Shakiba, Mohammad Banazadeh, Amir Khizi and Mohammad Ali (Pirouz) Mansouri.
Already many labour organisations have supported Reza Shahabi and demanded his release. These include five French trade unions and confederations: Confédération générale du travail (CGT), Confédération Française Démocratique du Travail (CFDT), Union Nationale des Syndicats Autonomes (UNSA), Solidaires Unitaires Démocratiques (SUD) and Fédération Syndicale Unitaire (FSU).
The International Federation of Transport Workers (ITF) has also demanded that Reza Shahabi and Ebrahim Madadi, a fellow Vahed activist, be released.
Free all jailed workers and labour activists now!
Shahrokh Zamani Action Campaign
31 August 2017
Source: Harana News Agency and Trade Union of the Tehran and Suburbs Vahed Bus Company
Add your name to Labourstart‘s campaign, here
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Above: the leaked Tory plans
Open letter to the deluded pro-Brexit “left”
Yes, I mean you lot at the Morning Star/CPB, SWP, Counterfire and Socialist Party:
I take it for granted that as self-proclaimed leftists, you are knee-jerk anti-racists and internationalists opposed to anything that tends to divide, rather than unite, our class.
And yet you called for a Leave vote in the referendum, and continue to back Brexit! In the case of the Morning Star/CPB, you oppose continued membership of the single market and customs union – in other words you want a “hard” Brexit!
To its shame, the Morning Star continues with this folly, publishing Daily Mail-style editorials that more or less explicitly back David Davis against the “intransigent” Michel Barnier and the “EU bosses in Brussels, Bonn and Frankfurt.”
Some of us tried to warn you about the Pandora’s box of xenophobia and racism that you were opening. Yet even when the Leave vote was immediately followed by a sharp increase in racist attacks and incidents (in fact, hate crime in general, such as attacks on gays), you wilfully closed your eyes and stuffed your ears, mouthing shameful banalities and evasions like “there was racism on both sides” and “racism didn’t begin on June 23rd.”
Well, yesterday we caught a glimpse of what the Tories have planned for EU citizens in Britain, or coming to Britain.
The plans are not yet official government policy, but all the signs are that they soon will be. The leaked document is explicit about ending a rights based approach. EU citizens arriving after Brexit would have to show passports, not ID cards; they would have to apply for short term two year visas for low skilled jobs; they would be prevented from bringing over extended family members and be subject to an income threshold (£18,600 per year) even to bring a spouse.
Employers, landlords, banks and others would have to carry out checks on paper-work. The hostility towards immigrants Theresa May deliberately stirred up as Home Secretary would intensify, and rub off on all “foreigners” and ethnic minorities, whether from the EU or not. British-born people of colour would inevitably find it more difficult to obtain work and accommodation.
As immigration lawyer Colin Yeo has commented: ‘The first and most obvious [result] is that the plans would make the UK a far less attractive destination for migrants. This is of course the whole point. The Home Office is protectionist by nature and worries only about security. The economy, consequent tax take, international relations and “soft power” international standing are considered worth the sacrifice. But what would happen to the sectors of the economy dependent on migrant labour, such as agriculture, food processing and hospitality? Are the public ready for a huge recession, massive job losses and reduced funding for public services and infrastructure?’
Andrew Coates, who knows a thing or two about France, has noted that ‘the scheme is a policy of National Preference, close to the demand of the far-right Front National, for jobs to go to first of all to UK Nationals.’
Deluded comrades: how are you now going to explain yourselves and your craven role as foot soldiers for the carnival of reaction that is Brexit? Your original arguments and justifications for your pro-Leave stance during the referendum varied from the bizarre (after Farage and Johnson – us!) through the deluded (vote Leave to oppose racism!) to the frankly egregious (immigration controls are a form of closed shop!).
There was only ever one argument in favour of Brexit that made any sense from a socialist perspective: that EU membership would prevent a left wing government from implementing nationalisations and other forms of state intervention into the economy.
This urban myth has been perpetuated by left-reformist anti-Europeans and by Tory anti-interventionists for the last forty years.
But it’s wrong, at least according Article 345 of the Treaty of the Functioning of the EU of 1958, which states: ‘The Treaties shall in no way prejudice the rules in Member States governing the system of property ownership.’ This Article remains in force and makes a nonsense of the claim that existing EU legislation prohibits the kind of nationalisation, or other economic intervention, being advocated by Jeremy Corbyn.
But even if it did, is anyone seriously suggesting that if Corbyn gets elected on a manifesto that includes public ownership, he would not be able to implement it if we remained in the EU? Nonsense. As the pro-Brexit right continually reminded us during the referendum campaign, Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world, and (unlike Greece) would have little difficulty in forcing the EU to accept a Corbyn government’s right to introduce such relatively minor reforms as taking key industries and services into public ownership. Anyone who’s ever taken a train in France or Germany knows this.
But, for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right and I’m wrong: what is the benefit for a social democratic Corbyn-style government, of voluntarily leaving the EU, rather than pushing ahead with its programme regardless, and (in effect) daring the EU to kick the UK out? That’s a question I’ve asked many times in debates with you lot, and to which I have never received a coherent reply.
As the reactionary, anti-working class and essentially racist nature of Brexit becomes more and more obvious, I cannot believe that anyone who calls themselves a socialist, is not appalled. It’s probably too much to ask the self-absorbed, self-deluded, ultra-sectarian groups that comprise the pro-Brexit “left” to simply admit that you’ve got it wrong, and reverse your disastrous policy on EU membership. That kind of intellectual honesty is not part of your culture. But I think internationalists and anti-racists do have the right to demand that you make it clear that you support free movement, oppose a “hard” Brexit and support the maximum possible degree of co-operation and integration between British and European people (and, in particular, workers via their organisations) in or out of the EU.
Is that too much to ask, comrades?
JD
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A review by Andrew Coates of what would seem to be a very important book – unfortunately only available in French at the moment.
From Tendance Coatesy:
La Fabrique du Musulman. Nedjib Sidi Moussa: ‘Manufacturing Muslims’
La Fabrique du Musulman. Nedjib Sidi Moussa. Libertalia. 2017.
In the wake of the Tower Hamlets foster care furore Kenan Malik has written of the “inadequacy of all sides to find an adequate language through which to speak about questions concerning Muslims and Islam.” (Observer. 3.9.17) This inability to talk seriously about these issues as shown in the prejudiced press coverage, risks, Kenan argues, shutting down criticism of outing people in “cultural or faith boxes” and “blurring the distinction between bigotry against Muslims and criticisms of Islam”.
La Fabrique du Musulman (Manufacturing Muslims) is an essay on very similar dilemmas about “La Question des Musulmans” in French political debate. Moussa tackles both the “box” theory of faith and culture, and efforts by those taken by the “anti-imperialism of fools” to align with the “petite bourgeoisie islamique” and form alliances with Islamist organisations starting with the issue of ‘Zionism’. In 147 pages the author does not just outline the left’s political bewilderment faced with the decomposition of the classical working class movement. He pinpoints the “confusionnisme” which has gone with its attempts to grapple with the problems of discrimination against minorities in the Hexagone – its relations with forces with ideologies far from Marxism or any form of democratic socialism.
Indigènes, Race War and the US left.
Moussa is the binational son of revolutionaries who supported Messali Hadj in the Algerian War of National Liberation. As the offspring of those who backed the losing side in a war that took place before independence, between the Messalists and the victorious FLN, who will not be accepted as French, he announces this to underline that he does not fit into a neat ‘anti-colonial’ pigeonhole (Page 11). He examines the roots and the difficulties created by the replacement of the figure of the ‘Arab’ by that of the ‘Muslim’. Furthermore, while he accepts some aspects of ‘intersectionality”, that is that there many forms of domination to fight, he laces the central importance of economic exploitation tightly to any “emancipatory perspective” rather than the heritage of French, or other European imperialism. (Page 141).
La Fabrique is an essay on the way the “social question” has become dominated by religious and racial issues (Essai sur la confessionnalisation et la racialisation de la question sociale). The argument of the book is that the transition from the identity of Arab and other minorities in France from sub-Saharan Africa to that of ‘Muslim’ has been helped by political complicity of sections of the French left in asserting this ‘heritage’. In respects we can see here something like an ‘anti-imperialist’ appropriation of Auguste-Maurice Barrès’ concept of “la terre et les morts”, that people are defined by their parents’ origins, and fixed into the culture, whether earthly or not. This, with another conservative view, on the eternity of race struggle, trumping class conflict, has melded with various types of ‘post-colonial’ thought. This is far from the original “social question” in which people talked about their exploitation and positions in the social structure that drew different identities together as members of a class and sought to change the material conditions in which they lived.
In demonstrating his case La Fabrique is a critique of those opponents of the New World Order but who take their cultural cue from American enemies of the “Grand Satan” and descend into ‘racialism’. (Page 18 – 19) In this vein it can be compared with the recent article, “American Thought” by Juraj Katalenac on the export of US left concepts of “whiteness” as a structure of oppression reflecting the legacy of slavery (Intellectual imperialism: On the export of peculiarly American notions of race, culture, and class.) No better examples of this could be found than Moussa’s targets – former Nation of Islam supporter Kémi Séba, “panfricanist” and founder of Tribu Ka, condemned for anti-Semitism, and a close associate of the far right, recently back in the news for burning African francs, and the Parti des indigènes de la République (PIR).
The PIR’s spokesperson Houria Bouteldja, offers a picture of the world in imitation of US Black Power lacing, in her best known text, diatribes against Whiteness (Blanchité) and laments for the decline in Arab virility, more inspired by Malcolm X and James Baldwin than by the nuances of Frantz Fanon. In the struggle for the voice of the indigenous she affirms a belief that commemorating the memory of the Shoah is, for whites, the “the bunker of abstract humanism”, while anti-Zionism is the “space for an historic conformation between us and the whites”. Bouteldja is fêted in Berkley and other ‘post-colonial’ academic quarters, and given space in the journal of what passes for the cutting edge of the US left, Jacobin. (1)
La Fabrique outlines the sorry history of the PIR, highlighting rants against integration, up the point that Bouteldja asserts that the wearing the veil means “I do not sleep with whites” (Page 51). The discourse on promoting ‘race’ is, Moussa, is not slow to indicate, in parallel to the extreme right picture of ‘racial war’. He cites the concept of “social races” offered by Tunisian exile and former Trotskyist, Sadri Khiari on a worldwide struggle between White Power and Indigenous Political Power (“Pouvoir Blanc et la Puissance politique indigène”) (Pages 60 – 61). Moussa notes, is the kind of ideology behind various university-based appeals to “non-mixité”, places where in which races do not mix. One can only rejoice that Khiari has not fused with Dieudonné and Soral, and – we may be proved wrong – no voice on the left France yet talks of a “transnational Jewish bourgeoisie” to complement the picture, and demand that Jews have their own special reservations in the non-mixed world.
Many of the themes tackled in La Fabrique are specifically French. Britain, for example, has nothing resembling the concept of laïcité, either the recognition of open universalism, or of the more arid arch-republicanism that has come to the fore in recent years. The attempts at co-operation, or more formal alliances with Islamists, and the sections on various moves, between opportunism and distance of those in and around the Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste (MPA), intellectuals of the ‘left of the left’, and the ambiguities of Alternative Libertaire on the issues, though important in a domestic context, are not of prime interest to an international audience. (2) Other aspects have a wider message. The convergence between ‘Complotiste’, conspiracy theories, laced with anti-Semitism, circulating on the extreme-right and amongst reactionary Muslims, finding a wider audience (the name Alain Soral and the Site, Egalité et Reconciliation crops up frequently), including some circles on the left, merits an English language investigation. There are equally parallels with the many examples of ‘conservative’ (reactionary) Muslims who, from the campaign against Gay Marriage and equality education (“la Manif pour tous”), have become politically involved in more traditional right-wing politics, and the beurgeois, the prosperous Islamic market for Halal food and drinks.
Islamogauchistes.
In one area there is little doubt that we in ‘Anglo-Saxon’ countries (a term in the book that jars), that is the English speaking world, will find the account of alliances between sections of the left and Islamists familiar, So familiar indeed that the names of the Socialist Workers Party, Respect and the Stop the War Coalition (StWC) are placed at the centre of the debate about these agreements, from the 2002, 2007 Cairo Conferences Against US and Zionist Occupation (Page 74), attended also by Hezbollah, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), to the definition of Islamophobia offered by the Runnymede Trust (Page 87).
If one can criticise Moussa in this area it is not because he does not discuss the details of the failure of the SWP and the forces in Respect and the StWC have failed to carry out Chris Harman’s strategy of being “with the Islamists” against the State. The tactic of being their footstools collapsed for many reasons, including, the SWP’s Rape Crisis, the farce of Respect under George Galloway, and was doomed in the Arab Winter not just after the experience of MB power in Egypt, Ghannouchi and Ennahda in Tunisia and, let us not forget but when the Syrian uprising pitted the Muslim Brotherhood against Assad, Daesh was born, and the British left friends of ‘reformist’ Islamism lapsed into confusion. If the Arab ‘patrimonial states’ remain the major problem, there is a growing consensus (outside of groupuscules like Counterfire) on the British left that actually existing Islamist parties and movements are “deeply reactionary”. (3)
To return to our introduction: how can we talk about Islam and Muslims? We can, Moussa suggests, do without the use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ to shout down criticism of the ‘sacred’. The tendency of all religious believers to consider that their ideas make them better than everybody else and in need of special recognition cannot be left unchallenged. They need, “libre examen…contre les vérités révélés, pour l’émancipation et contre l’autorité”, free investigation against revealed truths, for emancipation against authority (Page 143). There should never be a question of aligning with Islamists. But systemic discrimination, and economic exploitation remain core issues. It is not by race war or by symbolic academic struggles over identity that these are going to be resolved. La Fabrique, written with a clarity and warmth that gives heart to the reader. Whether all will follow La Fabrique and turn to the writings of Socialisme ou Barbarie and the Internationale situationniste to find the tools for our emancipation remains to be seen. But we can be sure that in that “voie” we will find Moussa by our side.
*****
(1) Pages 66 – 67, Les Blancs, les Juifs et nous. Houria Bouteldja. La Fabrique. 2016. In discussing Fanon few who read him can ignore his sensitive complexity. For example, did not just discuss the ‘fear’ of Black sexuality amongst whites, but the dislike of North Africans for “les hommes de couleur”, as well as efforts by the French to divide Jews, Arab and Blacks. Page 83. Peau noire masques blancs. Frantz Fanon. Editions du Seuil. 1995.
(2 La Fabrique du musulman » : un défaut de conception. Alternative Libertarire. Droit de réponse : « La Fabrique du musulman », une publicité gratuite mais mensongère. Alternative Libertaire.
(3) See on the history of the period, Morbid Symptoms. Relapse in the Arab Uprisings. Gilbert Achcar. Saqi Books. 2016.
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Just a reminder that Islamist terror is not the only kind we have to worry about:
By James Cartledge at the Birmingham Mail 05/09/2017:
The quartet were allegedly members of banned neo-Nazi group National Action .
The men, a 22-year-old from Birmingham, a 32-year-old from Powys, mid-Wales, a 24-year-old from Ipswich and a 24-year-old from Northampton – were detained as part of a “pre-planned and intelligence-led” operation and there was “no threat to the public’s safety”, West Midlands Police said. An Army spokesman said: “We can confirm a number of serving members of the Army have been arrested under the Terrorism Act for being associated with a proscribed far-right group.
“These arrests are the consequence of a Home Office Police Force led operation supported by the Army.
“This is now the subject of a civilian police investigation and it would be inappropriate to comment further.
“Any further inquiries should be made to the Home Office Police Force.”
In a statement, police said the suspects were arrested “on suspicion of being concerned in the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism under Section 41 of the Terrorism Act 2000; namely on suspicion of being a member of a proscribed organisation (National Action) contrary to sec 11 of the Terrorism Act”.
All four are being held at a police station in the West Midlands and a number of properties are being searched.
The arrests were carried out with West Midlands Counter Terrorism Unit in conjunction with the Wales Extremism Counter Terrorism Unit and the East Midlands Counter Terrorism Intelligence Unit.
National Action became first extreme right-wing group to be banned under terrorism laws in December 2016.
The proscription meant that being a member of or inviting support for the organisation is a criminal offence carrying a sentence of up to ten years’ imprisonment.
An entry for National Action in the official list of proscribed groups said it was a “racist neo-Nazi group” established in 2013 and has branches across the UK which “conduct provocative street demonstrations and stunts aimed at intimidating local communities”.
The document added that the group was “virulently racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic”.
Its activities and propaganda materials are particularly aimed at recruiting young people, according to the list.
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By Maisie Sanders (Lewisham Young Labour) and Gareth Lane (Bakers’ Union) at The Clarion
On 4 September, McDonalds’s workers in the UK will go on strike for the first time.They are striking for £10 an hour, secure contracts with guaranteed hours and union recognition.
Forty members of the Bakers’, Food and Allied Workers’ Union at McDonald’s branches in Cambridge and Crayford in South East London have voted to strike for these demands, as well as grievances over bullying of union activists by management — with over 95% in favour.
Labour, committed to scrap zero hours contracts and a £10 an hour minimum wage, must rally round the strike and help spread its example.
Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have both said they support the strike and will be there on 4 September. Cambridge’s Labour MP Daniel Zeichner has pledged to join the picket line and other MPs have stated support, including former McDonald’s worker Laura Pidcock of North West Durham. But we need more, from the whole party and labour movement.
According to Cambridge McDonald’s workers, a third of workers there have recently had their hours cut without warning, leaving many unable to pay their rent. As Tom Halliday, a Cambridge worker, put it: “McDonald’s is a multinational corporation with unacceptable working conditions. We are asking to be treated with dignity and to be paid a decent wage, and for our right to form a union to be recognized by our employer. We believe it is our right to ask for a fair treatment for the hard work we perform”.
Fast food workers are terribly treated all over the world – but their fight is global too. BFAWU activists have taken inspiration from the ‘Fight for $15’ strike campaign in the US, as well as New Zealand fast food workers’struggles. Strikes in New Zealand doubled the minimum wage and forced the government to ban zero hour contracts, and won $64 billion in pay rises for three million workers. Global capital can move from country to country quickly, and trade unions need to do the same: workers’ solidarity must be international, and we are more likely to win against multinational corporations like McDonald’s when we coordinate action across borders.The first strike date coincides with Labor Day in the US, and a Fight for $15 national day of action.
Workers in the fast food industry, and in precarious private sector jobs generally, are often seen as impossible to organise. There is a high turnover of staff, workers are often young, significant numbers are migrants, and many live in poverty due to low wages and precarious contracts, working irregular shift patterns and faced with bullying by management.The struggles described above, as well as the recent victories by outsourced, mainly migrant cleaners at SOAS and LSE, prove that precarious, low paid workers can organise themselves into a force that can fight and win.
These workers are the force that, organised and mobilised, can revive the labour movement. These struggles also provide a huge opportunity for organising among the millions of young people who were inspired by Labour’s election campaign, drawing them into the unions, into Labour activism and into socialist politics, and and giving them the confidence and tools to fight back at work.
Young Labour groups and activists, local Labour Parties and Momentum groups should do everything they can to support the strike. Organise fundraisers, invite speakers, put motions for support and donations, go to your local McDonald’s and start to talk to workers so we can spread the strike, and discuss organising in your own workplaces too.
Clarion supporters are raising the issue with motions to both the Labour and Young Labour conferences, but the most important thing is to get activity and links on the ground in as many places possible.
We must build links and solidarity between this dispute and the Picturehouse strikes, cleaners’strikes and as many others as possible.
Meanwhile the Labour left must double down on pushing the party to campaign for repeal of not just the Trade Union Act, but all the antiunion laws, and to restore our right to strike and picket effectively, including in solidarity with others workers. This issue cannot be allowed to drift any longer.
Unless the labour movement wages a serious campaign for free trade unions and a strong right to strike, we are fighting with one hand tied behind our back.
• To contact the Bakers’ Food and Allied Workers Union: phone 01707 260 150 or email info@bfawu
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By Richard Gold (Engage)
Hear David Hirsh talk about the book, ask questions, buy a signed copy
Sunday, September 24, 2017 from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Follow this link for more details and to get your free ticket. (no admittance without a ticket).
Antisemitism on the left is difficult to recognize because it does not come dressed in a Nazi uniform and it does not openly proclaim its hatred or fear of Jews. This book looks at the kind of antisemitism which is tolerated in apparently democratic spaces. It tells the story of the rise of the Jeremy Corbyn and his faction in the Labour Party; and it explains the controversy around Ken Livingstone. It analyses how criticism of Israel can mushroom into antisemitism and it looks at struggles over how antisemitism is defined. It focuses on ways in which those who raise the issue of antisemitism are often accused of doing so in bad faith in an attempt to silence or to smear. Hostility to Israel has become a signifier of identity, connected to opposition to imperialism, neo-liberalism and global capitalism; the ‘community of the good’ takes on toxic ways of imagining most living Jewish people.
The book combines narrative and case study with sociological analysis and theory to understand the controversial and contested phenomenon of antisemitism on the left. It is not a critique of the left but a contemporary history of how things may go wrong. It stands in the tradition of those on the left who have always understood and opposed the temptation to picture the evils of capitalism, modernity and imperialism as being intimately connected to the Jews and to their imputed behaviour.
Follow this link for some nice endorsements of the book.
Follow this link to see details of other events David Hirsh is doing.
Follow this link for Dale Street’s review of the book.
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Strikers and supporters at the Lifford Lane picket line
Birmingham refuse workers have returned to the picket lines after the Labour city council reneged on a deal and sent out redundancy notices.
Mountains of rubbish bags piled up on street corners before the last seven-week strike was suspended on August 16 after Unite and the council struck a deal at ACAS.
Now the council leadership has inexplicably torn up the deal (incredibly, even claiming that there never had been any deal!) and cancelled a meeting on Friday that had been called to ratify the settlement.
More bin collections are now likely to be missed with many of the city’s streets still strewn with overflowing wheelie bins.
the union said it would re-ballot members, meaning industrial action could extend until the New Year. The union is also considering extending the action to other council workers and services.
Unite assistant general secretary Howard Beckett said: “This is a deeply provocative act that drives a coach and horses through the agreement Unite reached with the council in good faith at the conciliation service Acas.
“It does a great disservice to the people of Birmingham and the city’s refuse workers who now face being made redundant and losing their livelihoods or pay cuts of thousands of pounds.”
He added: “The last thing refuse workers want to do is resume industrial action and see piles of rubbish accumulating on Birmingham’s streets. This is their city too.
“Our members want to focus on delivering a safe efficient service to people of Birmingham.
“Sadly, it seems the council does not want to see that happen. Instead of embracing an agreement that would have seen compromise on all sides, the council seems content to put people on the dole and cut their wages by up to £5,000.
“Unite calls on the council to come to its senses and withdraw these redundancy notices to avoid the disruption of industrial action.
“John Clancy [council leader] has said there was no deal in place, which is just outrageous. It is completely contrary to the ACAS statement that says there’s agreement in principle for the Grade 3 to remain, and consequently no redundancy steps are in place.
“The council is in a shambles. They have rowed back from a good agreement and have returned us to industrial chaos.
“We will be balloting across the council because I am now convinced that this is an ideological message the council is sending out – that they intend cuts, and cuts widely to the workforce.”
South Birmingham Momentum, which prior to the August 16 suspension of action, was actively supporting the workers, will now resume its solidarity activities, and demand that the council honours the ACAS deal. Consideration is also being given to a possible call for John Clancy’s resignation.
STOP PRESS:
In an unprecedented statement this afternoon (2 Sept) ACAS contradicted council leader John Clancy:
Acas can confirm that an agreement was reached between Birmingham City Council and Unite the Union on the 15th August 2017, following discussions at Acas.
The terms of the agreement were made public by Acas at the request of both parties, in a press release agreed with both parties.
– Acas statement
You can see the press release Acas is referring to here.
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Andrew Coates, who follows French politics very closely, reports at his blog Tendence Coatesy:
First Demo Against Macron’s ‘Reforms’, 12th of September.
Macron’s government unveils controversial labour reforms.
France 24.
After meeting with trade unions on Thursday, the French government unveiled President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial labour reforms, vowing to “free up the energy of the workforce” by making it easier for employers to hire and fire.
French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and Labour Minister Muriel Pénicaud met with trade unionists on Thursday before publicly unveiling the labour reform measures, which are detailed on some 200 pages.
The highly anticipated and controversial labour reforms, a centerpiece of Macron’s election pledge, are aimed at creating jobs.
The changes will be implemented via executive order, allowing Macron to avoid a lengthy parliamentary debate. The overhaul will be adopted by the government in September and must then be ratified by parliament, where the president’s La République en Marche (Republic on the Move) party has a large majority.
Criticism from trade unions
Right after the announcement of the reforms, some unions voiced criticism, denouncing measures that they perceive to be more favourable to companies than to employees.
Philippe Martinez, secretary-general of the CGT trade union, lashed out Thursday, saying, “All our fears have been confirmed and the additional fear is obvious and has been written: It’s the end of the working contract.” He qualified the reform as “old recipes which will not change the lot of the people.”
The communist-backed CGT has opposed the changes outright and is set to mobilise its supporters on September 12 for a street protest. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left leader of France Insoumise (Unbowed France) and a fierce opponent to Macron, is organising another protest on September 23.
France’s biggest private sector union, the CFDT, declared itself “disappointed” but said it would not be calling its members to join the CGT’s planned street protest on September 12.
Nevertheless, the CFDT is unhappy with the level at which dismissal awards in France’s labour courts will be capped, and unhappy with a section of the reforms in which employers will be allowed to negotiate directly with staff in companies with fewer than 20 workers.
The boss of the hard-left Force Ouvrière (FO) union, Jean-Claude Mailly, said he disagreed with some of the changes, but like Berger suggested he would not recommend his members join street protests.
Meanwhile, François Asselin, president of France’s confederation of small and medium-sized companies, the CPME, has praised the reform for being “particularly pragmatic”.
The CGT wants their Day of Action and Strikes to be the occasion to begin a serious moblisation against Macron’s ‘reforms’. (La CGT veut faire du 12 septembre la journée « contre la réforme du code du travail »)
To the lack of support from the two other main union federations there is also this.
La France insoumise (LFI), 17 deputies strong, to repeat, is organising its own demonstration on the 23rd of September, without the unions and any other group on the left. Jean-Luc Mélenchon appelle à un “rassemblement populaire” contre la réforme du travail le 23 septembre à Paris.
Macron has already seized on this to declare that Mélenchon is claiming not just to be the only real opposition to the President but also to be a “rival to the trade unions”. (Mélenchon à la tête de l’opposition ? Une chance, selon Macron. Le président de la République estime que le leader de la France insoumise se pose en “rival des syndicats” sur la réforme du Code du travail. RTL)
Whether this division exists, or whether the LFI march will have any impact, is not at all sure.
A few days ago the Parti communiste français PCF, which has 11 MPs, and close ties to the CGT, expressed reservations about this division amongst left parties. Their leader Pierre Laurent contented himself with noting a “lack of respect” (manque de respect) in the way LFI operates (le Monde. 26.8.17). A young member added, ” that for LFI “everything is built around his personality and his inner circle (tout est construit autour de sa personne et de sa garde rapprochée – literally his “bodyguard”).
One thing is clear: the serious campaign will be launched by the Unions.
By contrast LFI declares that they are leading the movement, ” «Nous proclamons en septembre la mobilisation générale contre le coup d’Etat social»” – we declare in September that there will be a mobilisation in September against the social coup d’Etat by Macron.. La France insoumise suggests that Mélenchon may soon be called for government if Macron is defeated, and they are ready to govern is need be. ” Jean-Luc Mélenchon affirmait ainsi : «Nous sommes prêts à gouverner demain s’il le faut” (Des «élections anticipées», nouveau credo de La France insoumise. Libération).
In the meantime…
For the best analysis of these reforms seems Gérard Filoche: Leurs mensonges sont énormes, Ils font le pire, ils ont passé le code du travail à l’acide
VIDÉO – Besancenot met en garde Mélenchon : “Personne ne pourra jouer solo”
Nobody can play alone.
As Olivier says, 1) the claim that LFI are the “only” opposition to the government, however much they have wind in their sails, is not the case, and 2) He will not be at the LFI demo since he is not part of LFI and 3) a united social front is what is needed.
http://www.lci.fr/politique/video-besancenot-met-en-garde-melenchon-personne-ne-pourra-la-jouer-solo-2062929.html
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