CWU Strategy
I am totally puzzled how the CWU expect to win their fight with the current strategy. Basically it boils down to two days on strike then they take a break until the next two days comes around.
In my experience when taking industrial action, you need to win as quickly as possible for obvious reasons. You need to keep the pressure on management daily because they will plot and scheme to break the strike and by giving them a pause it allows them to do this more easily. As importantly in the current situation it allows management time to lobby the government to bring in even more draconian anti-trade union legislation.
If you look at the strikes which have been successful recently, the Unite Union’s strategy in the Bin men/women's strike in Thurrock were spot on. The Union’s head office built up a war chest to provide a hardship fund to see the workers through the dog days when some will inevitably be considering going back to work, thus the strike was solid. Stop start is not the way you win strikes you need to be out of the gate. But then again perhaps I’m old fashioned a dinosaur of an earlier age.
We shall see.
Ukraine
Talk radio and the mainstream media continue to churn out propaganda daily about the situation in the Ukraine. Yet I cannot remember a single day when the likes of James O’Brien and others have said, hang on a minute where is this leading to? They seem to have forgotten the first casualty of war is the truth, or more likely they’re doing their masters bidding!
The whole point of government should be to keep the people they govern out of harm's way. Instead sanctions on Russia have back-fired with disastrous consequences and NATO have been pouring petroleum onto the flames of war. Approximately 4 years ago, the Ukraine was regarded as a failed state run by corrupt politicians and oligarchs, the only time I can remember it being mentioned In the MSM back then was when Joe Biden’s son had been doing dirty deals there, and when there was yet another political coup.
So what changed? The US, political, military and industrial complex saw an opportunity to take down Putin’s Russia and anointed the Ukrainian government as its proxy. No more talk of the Ukraine being the second most corrupt country in Europe. Not a mention of oligarchs, and fascists in its military as the money and armaments flooded in.
Almost overnight it became plucky little Ukraine and we are where we are on a cusp of a world war.
Next stop China?
⏩ Mick Hall is a veteran Left Wing activist and trade unionist.
What changed was that Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014 and began its first invasion of Ukrainian territory. On 24th February 2022 Putin invaded the rest of Ukraine with the intention of wiping it from the map and of liquidating the concept of Ukrainian nationhood and genociding its people. Mick, I think that your defence of Putin's aggression is an example of the moral bankruptcy of part of the "anti-imperialist" Left. Thankfully the wider Left rejects it.
ReplyDeleteThe anti-imperialist Left have made a strong stand against the war. They just question Western hypocrisy and double standards and ask why Rogue Russia is wrong for its war crimes but Rogue Israel is not. The Imperialist Left (usually Tankies - is there any struggle they have not shafted?) seem attracted by the authoritarianism of the Russian state. Given a choice between equality and authoritarianism, we know how they will go. I have long suspected that theirs is an adherence to Czarism rather than Marxism.
DeleteDisagree & agree
ReplyDeleteOn the first issue, conflicts differ as do the pinch points.
Each battle/campaign is unique. The variables alter. For example, how large is the available strike fund and how many will need to pull out of it?
Speed/impact is sometimes of the essence but sustainability matters too.
On Ukraine:
I've largely been influenced by John Mearsheimer's analysis on this issue for some time now and agree with your take Mick. That said, I do believe (that) we have responsibilities towards refugees fleeing conflict and acknowledge that here in the 26 counties, as EU members, we've obligations also. However those obligations will of course eventually reach an unrealistic, unrealistic and unsustainable position. In the end of the day, as I've suggested previously, these events will only drive on further a fragmentation across Europe. Ultimately a fragmentation leading to a dissolution of the EU itself.
We will most likely not know the effect of sanctions until the fog of war dissipates and more truth starts to emerge. But the same anti-sanctions sentiment exists in relation to BDS.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can see the Russian war has disastrously backfired rather than sanctions. We now face a serious enlargement of NATO which was more rhetorical than real prior to the invasion.
The best argument against NATO involvement is for Russian to reverse its own involvement. It would be very hard for NATO to persist once that happened. Were it to it has the potential to pose a crisis of legitimation for the West. If NATO's strongest selling point is that it will stop your country being invaded and that spawns a situational logic that Russia does not want countries in NATO so that it has more latitude to invade them, there is only one direction in which things are likely to go.
Richard Falk wrote a very penetrating piece on the war in Counterpunch. Well worth a read: totally suspicious of the US and West.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/10/21/ukraine-war-evolves-slouching-toward-armageddon/
ReplyDeleteHJ/Anthony I read the CP piece....Just discovered Richard Falk says what I have been saying about the ICC and International Law.....
DeleteSuch inflammatory behavior is underscored by a newly discovered West-oriented enthusiasm for the International Criminal Court, urging the tribunal to gather as much evidence as quickly as possible of Russian war crimes. This law-oriented posture is contradicted by intense past opposition to ICC efforts to gather evidence for an investigation of war crimes by non-signatories (of which Russia is one) in relation to the U.S. role in Afghanistan or Israel’s role in occupied Palestine......
Frankie, check out Col. (Retired US Army) Douglas Macgregor. He has some scathing criticism to offer on the West's proxy war too.
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