This Is The Modern World

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Direct Action

Via LabourStart:

SOUTH AFRICA

Union refuses to touch Zim arms

2008-4-17 22:48

Durban - Opposition to a shipment of arms being offloaded in Durban and transported to Zimbabwe increased on Thursday when South Africa's biggest transport workers' union announced that its members would not unload the ship.

SA Transport and Allied Workers Union (Satawu) general secretary Randall Howard said: "Satawu does not agree with the position of the South African government not to intervene with this shipment of weapons. "Our members employed at Durban container terminal will not unload this cargo neither will any of our members in the truck-driving sector move this cargo by road."

He said the ship, the An Yue Jiang, should not dock in Durban and should return to China.

"South Africa cannot be seen to be facilitating the flow of weapons into Zimbabwe at a time where there is a political dispute and a volatile situation between the Zanu-PF and the MDC."

"The view of our members is that nobody should ask us to unload these weapons," he said. [READ MORE]

Hat tip to Jim D over at Shiraz Socialist.

To Discourage The Others

Following on from the recent post/link on the blog relating to working class history in Hammersmith and Islington, John B over at Class Warfare blog has a post on William Jobling, the last man to be gibbeted in England.

Jobling, a native of Jarrow, was a miner convicted of the murder of Nicholas Fairles, a colliery owner and local magistrate, way back in 1832, and in the articles that John B links to in his post, there is still some doubt 175 years later whether or not Jobling was in fact guilty of the crime.

There can be no doubt that the gibbeting of Jobling - gibbeting being the public display of executed criminals in iron gallows-like constructions to deter other would be 'criminals' - was as much about the period and place of when the murder took place, as it was about the murder itself.

The North East of England was in the throes of heightened class antagonism between the miners and the mine owners at that time - there had been two major strikes in the area in 1831 and 1832 - and the conviction of a miner for the murder of a magistrate/colliery owner had to be seen to be acted upon swiftly and decisively. A message sent out to the miners and their supporters that this is what happens to your kind if you cross us.

It's a little known piece of working class history, and as John B. states:

"Many in the labour movement will be able to tell you about the Tolpuddle Martyrs. There is even an annual two-day event in Dorset to commemorate them and indeed the wider struggle of the labour movement. How many, I wonder, could mention the case of Will Jobling, a miner from Jarrow who was gibbeted at about the same time as the men from Tolpuddle were being sent to Australia, or indeed of seven men from Jarrow who were likewise deported for their union activity? "

The sooner we know a little more about our history of our class, the sooner we can move on from being swallowing the 'official version' spoon-fed to us by those who don't want us to know any better.

A Bitter Dispute

Ouch, it can be a bit of a pain in the arse for union bureaucrat types when the workers decide to get a bit too militant in the wrong places.

Via the Dreaming Neon Black blog comes the news that the servers who work at various music festivals for the Workers Beer Company have decided to set up a union.

According to Adam Ford - who was a worker/volunteer himself for the WBC at the recent Leeds Music Festival - apparently trouble has been brewing for a wee while now with disputes over such bread and butter issues as health and safety, working conditions and what happens to the tips given to servers.

It's still early days, so there's no information about which union they are seeking to link up with, but you'd think that they'd give the IWW some consideration? The original Bread & Roses crew for the Pot Noodle & Festival Tickets generation.

I have to admit that I have a declared interest here: the WBC bar was ridiculously overpriced in the Leftfield Tent at Glastonbury Festival a few years back when four of us spent six days in the Green Fields doing an SPGB stall. Surrounded by the spiritual and the trustafarians, alcohol was needed in high doses to get us through the week, and the WBC and their pricing policy had us by the short and curlies.

Couple that with the fact that the WBC pub, the Bread and Roses is just around the corner from the SPGB's Head Office. As I remember it, it was a wine bar masquerading as a pub, with chintzy black and white pictures of Arthur Scargill on the wall, and a clientele that seemed to have stepped out of the pages of Marxism Today, circa 1988. The personal being political, I opted for the Manor Arms pub a few hundred yards down the road.

Hat tip to Alan J.

RUSSIAN DOCKERS' LEADER BEATEN AND STABBED - AN URGENT APPEAL FOR HELP

From the NYC Wobs discussion list:

. . . . on 7 June, Mikhail Chesalin, the chairman of the local Dockers Union in Kaliningrad, Russia, was savagely stabbed and beaten outside the union office. An unknown number of assailants attacked Chesalin when he got out of his car, stabbing him numerous times in the spine, and beating him severely about the head. He was left lying face-down, unconscious, in a pool of blood. Chesalin's colleagues believe that the attack was orchestrated by Vladimir Kalinichenko, the General Director of the Sea Commercial Port where the dockworkers' union is currently running an organizing campaign.

When we talk about "urgent action appeals" this is exactly the sort of thing that we mean. It is our responsibility as trade unionists to rally to the support of our brothers and sisters in Kaliningrad and to demand that attacks on trade unionists cease and workers' rights be respected. Please send your message of protest today:

Labor Start Solidarity Campaign

And most important -- pass this message on, mobilize members of your unions, let's send thousands of messages to Russia today.

A day late, a hundred years on

One of the most interesting bloggers on the block, Charlie Pottins, has a post marking the hundredth anniversary of the Belfast 1907 strike led by Jim Larkin.