Solidarity 204. 18 May 2011

This is the second part of a three-part review article on Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism , by Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt. The first part (Solidarity 203) discussed the many point on which Schmidt's and van der Walt's version of anarchism is closer to Marxism than to traditional anarchism; their claim that Marxism equals proto-Stalinism; and their claim that "the broad anarchist tradition" is equivalent to "socialism from below". Click here to download all three parts as pdf . Part 1: All feathered up: a new defence of anarchism Part 2...

On Tuesday 17 May, Syrian activists used Facebook to call for a general strike throughout Syria on Wednesday 18th to protest against the Assad's regime use of tanks, bullets, and curfews to suppress the rebellion simmering across the country. As far as can be determined while outside journalists are excluded from Syria, it is unlikely that the opposition is strong enough to pull off anything like a general strike. A refugee fleeing across the border to Lebanon told Reuters: "They are entering homes and killing everyone in them, men and women. They are destroying everything inside the homes"...

On 15 May, groups of Palestinians living in Syria and in Lebanon gathered and crossed the border into Israel, in demonstrations to mark Nakba (catastrophe) Day (the Palestinian name for the anniversary of the declaration of the state of Israel). The Israeli army responded in typical ten-eyes-for-an-eye fashion, killing fourteen. According to a sympathetic report on the Lebanese border action in Counterpunch by Franklin Lamb, who took part in it, buses to the border were organised by the Islamist party Hezbollah. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah told the crowd that the action was a gesture of...

In Nottingham, a joint strike committee for 30 June is being convened through the Trades Council, and will meet on 24 May. Activists are building for a big meeting with as many rank and file union members as possible. Notts Save Our Services has been asked to send observers. Delegates from Unison, GMB, and Unite have been asked to attend, as well as delegates from the unions likely to strike on the 24th, NUT, PCS, UCU, and ATL. Nottingham City Unison has already accepted. On 30 June, the plan in Nottingham is not just for set-piece rallies where strikers and supporters listen passively to...

At its conference on 18-20 May, the civil service union PCS will vote to ballot its members for strikes over the issues of pensions, job cuts, and pay. Pensions will be the headline issue, and the PCS action is designed to link with teachers' unions, NUT and ATL, which have already decided to ballot. A strike by all three unions, plus the lecturers' union UCU, which has already balloted, is set for 30 June. Other unions, including the head teachers' union NAHT and the giant health and local government union Unison, talk of balloting later in the year, so bigger strikes could follow in autumn...

Israeli socialist Adam Keller, who is a spokesperson for the left-wing anti-occupation campaign Gush Shalom, spoke to us in a personal capacity about Israel’s repression of Palestinian protests and the class struggle inside Israel. One very important factor is the struggles in the Arab world. The [15 May] Palestinian protests were to some extent inspired by them. Young Palestinians have already been organising through Facebook and so on in the same way as young Egyptians, and they’d already had a big success – an agreement between Fatah and Hamas was their central demand, and its achievement...

19 Students were suspended at Shorefields Technology College in the Dingle, Liverpool on Tuesday 10th of May after some 150 of them had walked out in protest at management plans to turn the school into an academy. Their teachers, members of both the NUT (National Union of Teachers) and NASUWT (National Association of Schoolmasters/Union of Women Teachers) trade unions, were going out on strike the following day. The fight against the academy is one that is bringing together staff, pupils and the local community. The Dingle is a working-class area and, for Liverpool, very racially mixed...

Emboldened by the Tories' relatively good showing in the 5 May elections, the Government has called on business to "get stuck in" against "unions and interest groups". Speaking to the Institute of Directors, a bosses' club, on 11 May, chancellor George Osborne said: "If we are going to support private sector growth and create jobs, we can't shy away from looking at difficult issues like employment law... "Your voice, the voice of business, needs to go on being heard in the battle. Some of these may be controversial. Unions and interest groups may oppose them. I say to the business community ....

On Wednesday 11 May thousands of disabled people and their supporters marched to parliament on the 'Hardest Hit' demonstration. They demanded an end to cuts that are placing the burden of the financial crisis on society's most vulnerable. I'm not good at judging large demonstrations, but there were easily 2000 people present and likely more. That large numbers were mobilised shows the sense of moral outrage many feel towards a cabinet that expects the disabled to manage on significantly reduced benefits and with much less support whilst searching for jobs that exist only in ministers' wildest...