Broad lefts and rank-and-file groups

Trade Union Solidarity magazine has been relaunched as an activist resource for rank-and-file trade unionists. The first issue features a survey on bus workers’ struggles, an article on the public sector pensions fight and interviews with activists from various sectors and industries. AWL member Jean Lane is interviewed about being a Unison rep in Tower Hamlets, and hip-hop artist The Ruby Kid (also AWL) is the subject of a cultural feature. The magazine’s pitch is deliberately non-”political”; its interviews are more like worker testimonies than attempts to critically engage with “bigger”...

A promising new campaign has started in the Sheffield City (Local Government) branch of the public sector union Unison. The branch has been run by ineffectual officers with scarcely any democratic life or real connection with its members since it was closed down in the early 2000s by the regional bureaucracy in order to oust SWP members in the branch leadership. This has left it floundering in the face of cuts to members pay and conditions - most recently in the form of the single-status pay and grading changes and now a recruitment freeze and threats of redundancies as a result of the Labour...

Organise the rank and file! Paul Whetton (Manton NUM) draws some lessons [from 'New Problems, New Struggles', Socialist Organiser pamphlet, November 1989] What are the lessons of the early '70s, when trade unionism was on a high and we kicked the Tories and their Industrial Relations Act into touch, and the miners won two great (1972 and 1974) strikes. Everybody remembers '72 and '74, but nobody remembers '73. That was the year that we accepted the Coal Board's offer 'in the national interest". That led to'74. And when in 1972 the police had to back up and march away from Saltley Gate they...

Grass Roots Left (GRL), which emerged from Jerry Hicks’ campaign in the Unite General Secretary election, has officially launched itself as an organisation. A meeting of around 40 activists on 7 May decided that their main focus initially would be organising within Unite but that they hoped to help build similar groupings within other unions too. The existing broad left caucus in the the union, United Left, is closely linked with the dominant (now, after the general secretary election, more heavily dominant) section of the Unite bureaucracy. However, a large number of good rank and file reps...

The Grass Roots Left (GRL) which emerged from Jerry Hicks’ campaign in the Unite General Secretary election has officially launched itself as an organisation. The meeting of around 40 activists on 7 May decided that their main focus initially would be organising within Unite but that they hoped to help build similar groupings within other unions too. Activists at the meeting mentioned Unison, GMB, CWU and UCATT as unions where there was a need for rank and file groups oriented around fighting against cuts to jobs, services, pay and conditions; taking militant action including defying the anti...

Train drivers on Arriva Trains Wales have taken strike action in a dispute over a number of issues, including pay. Arriva drivers are amongst the lowest paid in the country, and ASLEF – one of the unions which organises the drivers – says they are paid substantially less than their English counterparts. The strike had a significant impact on services with only four scab drivers turning up for work. The action comes hot on the heels of a strike by cleaners employed by Mitie at First Great Western’s Cardiff and Swansea depots. Speaking before the action, RMT general secretary Bob Crow said “As a...

The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is floundering. It had a big opportunity with the “People’s Convention”, organised through the “Right To Work” campaign, on 12 February. The celebrity-heavy “Coalition of Resistance” (COR) and the narrowly factional NSSN had given it the opportunity, if the event were open, serious about debate, and oriented to unity, to become the centre for real networking against the cuts. The SWP went through the motions, issuing calls for unity and inveigling the Labour Representation Committee into co-sponsoring. But on the day it produced only a drabber version of COR...

The “People’s Convention” against cuts called by SWP and LRC on 12 February should be a chance to make good the damage done by the SP’s coup in the National Shop Stewards’ Network (creating a new SP-line “anti-cuts movement”) and the Coalition of Resistance (anti-cuts campaigning as an exercise in listening to lots of celebrities speak). To take that chance, all the SWP needed was good sense, telling them to make the conference practically-focused, open for serious debate, and unity-oriented. But four days before the conference there is no agenda — just an ever-longer list of workshops and...

The first meeting of the Coalition of Resistance National Council was held on 15 January. The main political blocs on the Council (which is over 100 people) are Counterfire (the key animating force behind CoR), Green Left and Socialist Resistance. There is a handful of SWPers, a few from Workers’ Power, individuals from smaller left groups and a scattering of independents. The first session consisted of speaker after speaker making long, windy speeches that reminded us all that cuts were bad and that we needed to fight back. My proposal that CoR support the National Campaign Against Fees &...

Dave Chapple, chair of the National Shop Stewards’ Network (NSSN), spoke to Solidarity about the NSSN conference on 22 January which will discuss proposals from the Socialist Party to set up another anti-cuts centre in rivalry with CoR and Right To Work. The weakness of the NSSN is that it’s never succeeded in building a grassroots shop stewards’ network. That is something which remains to be built if the Socialist Party does not succeed in wrecking the NSSN on Saturday. I don’t think those of us who genuinely want to build the NSSN have made many mistakes; I think some groups within in the...