Just over forty years ago, on 20th July 1969, a spacecraft landed on the surface of the moon. Apollo 11 was the first of six lunar landings that were to continue until the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. The last three missions were cancelled for lack of funds: to this day, Apollo 17 remains the last manned flight beyond Low Earth Orbit.[1]

For the millions who watched the moon landing on television, it was undeniably a moment of intense emotion. Who could fail to be touched by the images of Earth seen from the moon, to see the common birthplace of humanity so beautiful and yet so frail in the vast emptiness of space? Who could fail to admire the courage of the astronauts who had accomplished such an exploit? For the first time,humanity had set foot on another heavenly body. Beyond it, other planets, even other solar systems, suddenly seemed almost accessible. The Apollo expedition had made real John Kennedy's words, seven years earlier at Rice University in Houston - words which seemed to open a new epoch of human confidence and expansion, led, needless to say, by the United States with at their head a young, confident and dynamic president: "man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred.The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space (...) We mean to be a part of [the new space era] - we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding (...) Well, space is there (...) and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked".[2]

Reality was very different.

On 20th November 1962,in a private conversation with NASA Administrator James E. Webb, Kennedy declared: "Everything that we do ought to really be tied into getting onto the Moon ahead of the Russians (...) otherwise we shouldn't be spending this kind of money because I'm not that interested in space (...) the only justification for it [the cost] (...) is because we hope to beat them [the Soviet Union] and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple years, by God, we passed them".[3]

Far from opposing "weapons of mass destruction" in space, the Americans had been trying to develop them ever since World War II, with the help in particular ofscientists and technicians like Werner von Braun who had taken part in the German war effort.[4] During the 1950s, the RAND Corporation and others developed a whole panoply of ideas on nuclear dissuasion, and the means to counter-attack with nuclear weapons in the case of an enemy first strike (one rather fantastic proposal presented by Boeing in 1959 even envisaged the construction of missile launch sites on the moon![5]). Kennedy's words of "peace" were thus perfectly hypocritical, and could barely hide the fright caused to the American ruling class - and spread throughout the population by its propaganda - first by the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the inability of the US Army to match it,[6]then by the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's successful first manned spaceflight. The shock caused by Sputnik was all the greater in that the US had thought themselves to be leading in the development of missiles and space weaponry. On the contrary, the USSR seemed to have overtaken the United States in missile technology, above all in the technology of ICBMs which would be capable of striking directly at US territory. In January 1958, Hugh Dryden, director of the NACA (National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics) published a report on A National Research Program for Space Technology, in which he declared: "It is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our prestige as a nation as well as military necessity that this challenge [Sputnik] be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space...".[7] The result was the transformation, in 1958, of the NACA - a commission established during World War I essentially with the aim of developing military aviation - into the NASA, whose budget was literally to explode: from a NACA budget of a mere $100 million in 1957, the NASA was to swallow up $25 billion in the Apollo programme alone.

However, the fundamental reason for undertaking the Apollo programme was not directly military: the enormous Saturn V launchers were not adapted to carry ballistic missiles, while the launch bases were too vast and too exposed to be of use in wartime. On the contrary, the Apollo programme consciously diverted major funds from more explicitly military ICBM programmes. In 1961, the Weisner report prepared for the incoming president insisted that the main reason for the space effort should be "...the factor of national prestige. Space exploration and exploits have captured the imagination of the peoples of the world. During the next few years the prestige of the United States will in part be determined by the leadership we demonstrate in space activities".[8] For Kennedy, this factor of prestige certainly came first. Presenting his government to a joint session of Congress on 25th May 1961, Kennedy clearly placed the space programme in the context of the imperialist rivalry between the USA and the USSR and the period of decolonisation by the old European empires: "The great battleground for the defense and expansion of freedom today is the whole southern half of the globe - Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East - the lands of the rising peoples. Their revolution is the greatest in human history. They seek an end to injustice, tyranny, and exploitation (...) theirs is a revolution which we would support regardless (...) of which political or economic route they should choose to freedom.  For the adversaries of freedom [by implication, the USSR] did not create the revolution; nor did they create the conditions which compel it. But they are seeking to ride the crest of its wave - to capture it for themselves. Yet their aggression is more often concealed than open".[9]

In other words, the old empires (above all the French and British empires) have created a catastrophic situation in which national "revolutions" are likely to fall into the Soviet camp, not because they are conquered militarily but because the USSR represents a more attractive option for the new local bourgeois cliques emerging from the process of decolonisation. In this context, Kennedy put forward a whole series of measures for strengthening the US military, increasing military and civilian aid to friendly governments, etc. At the end of his speech came the Apollo programme: "Finally, if we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to us all, as did the Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere, who are attempting to make a determination of which road they should take (...) No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind [than sending a man to the moon]" (ibid).

Just like the "civilising mission" of the European colonial powers in the 19th century, the US commitment to this great "adventure for freedom" came with a big dose of hypocrisy: it certainly served as a mask to hide America's real imperialist aims in its struggle against the USSR for domination of the planet. In this sense, the real target of the Apollo 11 mission was not on the moon, but on Earth.

Nonetheless, it would be simplistic to see only the hypocrisy. The lunar expedition was also a colossal risk: a project of such cost, such complexity, and such novelty had never been undertaken before. The very fact that it was undertaken at all was also the expression of the American ruling class' remarkable confidence in its own abilities - a self-confidence which had been totally lost by the old powers, bled white after two world wars and losing ground economically and militarily.The United States, on the contrary, seemed to be at the height of their powers: they had suffered no bombardment of their home territory, and had emerged fromthe Second World War as the only undisputed victor, with an unequalled military power and apparently in the midst of an economic boom whose prosperity remained an object of admiration and envy for other countries. In the USA, the ruling ideology had, so to speak, lagged behind reality and it continued to express the self-confidence of a triumphant bourgeoisie which would have been more appropriate to the 19th century, before the bloodbath of 1914-18 demonstrated that the capitalist class was henceforth an obstacle to the future progress of the human species.

In 1962, Kennedy proposed to send a man to the moon in ten years. In the end, it was only seven years later that Apollo 11 touched down on the moon. But far from marking the beginning of a new triumphant era of expansion into space, in the image of the expansion to the West in the 19th century, the lunar programme's success marked the moment when capitalism's decadence caught up with the American Dream. The country was bogged down in the Vietnam War, Kennedy had been assassinated, and the first signs of the economic crisis were beginning to appear - the USA would abandon the gold standard in 1971, bringing to an end the Bretton Woods system which had guaranteed the international financial system's stability since World War II.

America's space programme suffered the same fate as its declining economy, military invincibility, and ideological self-confidence. The objective fixed by Reagan for the 1980s was no longer exploration but the"Star Wars" programme: the out and out militarisation of orbital space. The ambition to develop cheaper and more effective means to send men and equipment into space thanks to the space shuttle, came to nothing: today the shuttle is thirty years old and the USA is itself dependent on equally aging Russian rockets to supply the International Space Station (ISS). In 2004,George W. Bush announced a new "vision" for space exploration, with the completion of the ISS and the launch of a new moon mission in 2020 in order to prepare later missions to Mars. But as soon as one looks a little closer, it is obvious that this is nothing but a bluff. The cost of an expedition to Mars would be truly astronomical, and at a time when the US government is sinking billions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is nothing to show where it will find the necessary funds for the NASA. And although Obama is presented as a new Kennedy - young, dynamic, and a bearer of hope - it is obvious that he has not, and cannot have, Kennedy's ambition. The United States are no longerthe triumphant power of forty years ago, but a giant with feet of clay, increasingly contested by second or even third-rate powers. Even the plans for manned lunar flights are more and more under attack within the Obama administration, let alone manned flights to Mars.[10] There will be no "new space era": the great powers are on the contrary engaged in a race to militarise near space with spy satellites, and no doubt soon with laser-armed anti-missile satellites; Low Earth Orbit is becoming an enormous scrap heap of obsolete satellites and abandoned rockets. World capitalism is a moribund society which has lost its ambition and its self-confidence, and the great powers think of space only in terms of protecting their own petty interests on Earth.

Can we reach the stars?

Of all the human species' exploits, the greatest is certainly that undertaken by our distant ancestors 100,000 years ago, when they left humanity's cradle in the Rift Valley to populate first the African continent, then the rest of the world. We will never know what qualities of courage and curiosity, of knowledge and openness towards the new, our predecessors called on as they set out to discover a new world. This great adventure was that of a primitive communist society (or rather a proliferation of such societies). We cannot say whether humanity will one day be capable of leaving Earth and travelling to other planets, or even other stars, but this much is certain: such an exploit will only be carried out by a communist society which no longer pours gigantic resources in war, which has repaired the damage done to the planet by capitalist anarchy, which has put an end to the terrible waste of its youth's physical and mental energy in poverty and unemployment, which undertakes exploration and scientific research for the good of mankind and the joy of learning, and which will be able to look to the future with confidence and enthusiasm.

Jens

 

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[1] LEO is defined as between 160 and 2,000km above the Earth's surface.

[2] 12th September 1962: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/We_choose_to_go_to_the_moon [2]

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Race [3].

[4] Werner von Braun was responsible for the development of the German V2 missiles which were used to bombard London at the end of the war. After the war he worked on the American ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile) programme, before becoming the architect of the Saturn V launcher used in the Apollo missions, and director of the Marshall Space Flight Centre.

[5] See "Take off and nuke the sitefrom orbit" in a 2007 issue of SpaceReview [4].

[6] In December 1957, the US Army's attempt to launch a Vanguard rocket failed miserably in full view of the TV cameras. The need to put an end to the rivalry between Army and Navy aerospace programmes was one of the motives behind the creation of the NASA.

[7] Quoted in Mark Erickson, Into the unknown together - the DOD, NASA, and early spaceflight.

[8] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/report61.html [5]

[9] See Kennedy's speech at the JFK Library.

[10] According to a report just presented to the White House, the NASA will need an extra $3 billion a year from 2014 onwards if it is to undertake missions beyond Earth orbit, its budgets having been eroded by the transfer of funds to other, more pressing needs. 

Twenty-three suicides (plus 13 attempted) in eighteen months at France Telecom! Here's a new, tragic testimony to the fact that proletarians are more and more confronted by a climate of terror and unbearable pressures at work. For the MD of the firm, Didier Lombard, rejecting any responsibility for victims of a ferocious exploitation, it's just a question of a simple effect of "fashion" which only affects "fragile people". What cynicism!
For this unscrupulous capitalist boss, whose mea culpa is only a simple imperative of communications, the tragedy doesn't reside in the fact that human beings find themselves pounded by the implacable logic of profitability for capital, but in the discredit which affects the image of his business!
Faced with this development dictated by the laws of the cash register, a number of politicians, particularly on the left, make a show of emotion. These are the same hypocrites who have favoured massive redundancies in this firm for twenty years, thus contributing to accelerating the infernal speed-ups leading to today's tragedy. These are the same socialists who have multiplied stress through the introduction of the 35-hour week, including a flexibility that makes all work a more and more demanding chore. These are the same politicians who brought France Telecom into the stock-exchange in 1997 with management methods that we know today! At the time, it was none other than French Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, who proclaimed with pride, that the "change of the enterprise was a great success!" Elsewhere a France Telecom manager gives us a good idea of this "great success": "My job is to make cuts of 5% every six months. As much as you say it has been achieved, the question is knowing if one can cut an arm or a leg". To make this type of objectives palatable after the wave of suicides, it's not surprising that they are looking at more subtle ways of delivering the blows: in the sense of giving a "green number" for a supplementary control of the workers and management spreading out the effects at this firm. But basically nothing will change: it's quite clear that the objective of capital will always be profitability and more pressure still on the workers, up to their physiological and psychological limits. This is the dynamic and capitalism can only be about the exhaustion of the labour force. Today, it's not only the shop floor workers who are being squeezed like lemons, but also the engineers, the administrative and commercial sectors that the crisis and extreme competition have proletarianised and whose conditions of work are equally degraded. Already, at the dawn of its development, to assure its profit, Marx wrote in Capital: "capitalist production, which is essentially production of surplus-value, absorbing extra work (...) imposes the deterioration of the work force of men by depriving them of their normal conditions of functioning and development, physical as moral, producing the exhaustion and early death of this workforce". Today, it is the intensification of the conditions of work which pushes to this exhaustion.
The phenomenon of suicides is unfortunately not new, nor limited to France. The wave of suicides at work follows a growing and continual increase, even if it's deliberately unquantified. Since the 90s, the number of suicides has been aggravated by the violence and brutality of the economic crisis. It shows the fact that the capitalist world has no future, no perspective other than to generate social misery, barbarity and death. Throughout Europe and the world, the stress of work continues to cause havoc. In the US, the Department of Labor announced that: "the number of suicides at work has risen 28% for 2008. In all, 251 have been noted, the highest number since 1992". In China they've multiplied with factory closures. In France 2007, there was some publicity around suicides at Technicentre of Renault, PSA, EDF-GDF (Chinon), in the banks, Sodexho...
Nothing has changed, if anything it's worse. The pressure and the harassment of the bosses, the fear of unemployment and the blackmail of systematic redundancies, the price of growing overwork is invoked. The phenomenon of exhaustion at work, "burn out" is growing to an unprecedented level. What's called "moral harassment" is becoming the rule, a strategic given destined to adapt workers to sudden change or to straightaway get rid of "undesirable" workers, or those that are insufficiently productive, at the least cost. "Specialists" exist for this purpose of harassment, what's called "Cleaners" or "transition managers". They are paid well for this dirty work: destroy the personality of those who are labelled "ineffective" or "unsuitable", isolate the militant workers, push them into error or towards the door, often the oldest, and at the cheapest cost. There's a double objective:
- push those out that can't stand it at the least cost;
- demoralise and intimidate the others who stay and render them more docile and malleable.
However, the conditions of exploitation and the pursuit of attacks linked to the never-ending economic crisis will, in time, push anger and the collective struggle, solidarity and consciousness forward and deeper. The future is not competition between proletarians, but their growing union against exploitation. It's this future that gives hope, preparing for massive and unified struggle and, in time, the revolutionary perspective.  

WH 18/9/9

We are publishing below an article on the Kurdish situation by the ICC's section in Turkey

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Debate on what was initially called the Kurdish Reform and then the Democratic Reform have been going on for quite a while in Turkey now. It is being claimed that the rulers of the state woke up from the dream of Turkism one night, and decided to stop oppressing the Kurds and turn the country into a democratic flower garden. The ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) and the faction of the Kurdish bourgeoisie existing within it on the one hand, and the liberals who drool whenever the state rings the bell of democracy on the other; bloodthirsty Turkish nationalists lurking around and the PKK-DTP (Kurdistan Workers' Party, armed Kurdish nationalist group, and Democratic Society Party, its legal wing) line with its hawk and dove wings pursuing its own agenda... What is really going on? How did the DTP, who used to say that the AKP was its greatest enemy, end up negotiating with them? Similarly, when did Prime Minister Erdoğan, who said that whoever is involved with terror will be shot even if he or she is a child, become so concerned with the tears of mothers who have lost their children? Why did the MHP (Nationalist Movement Party - Gray Wolves, Turkish fascists) who used to be the maverick supporter of the AKP respond with such rabid ultra-nationalist hysteria? How did the CHP (Republican People's Party, Kemalists) which was the toady of the Army end up criticizing the declarations of the National Security Council?

The first point that needs to be clarified in the face of all this mess is that no one has any idea what the AKP, who has been telling the lie that democracy will expand further, actually wants to do. This "gift" reform package everyone talks about might indeed turn out to be absolutely empty. First, lets see how the process developed. On July 2009, the Turkish Prime Minister announced that they had launched the Kurdish reform. The AKP said about this reform that at the basis of it was the speech delivered by Erdoğan in 2005 in Diyarbakır (city considered to be the unofficial capital of Kurdistan). There was no other information in regards to what this reform included. If we examine the contents of this speech however, we can easily see that there is nothing that can distinguish it from the state policies of the past thirty years. In his speech, Tayyip Erdoğan says: "We absolutely defend our state, our flag and our republic. I am stressing again that terror is the greatest enemy of this country and can never be tolerated. The terrorists who massacre innocent citizens and send our heroic security forces into martyrdom, the terrorists who are assassinating the future of the nation, are also using innocent children of this country for their purposes." Obviously, there was no difference in the basic attitude of the state. On the other hand, the bell rung by the AKP was enough to arouse the liberal media's enthusiasm and drove the nationalist media mad with anger. For a while, the debates focused on whether this was an American project or not. US officials even made an official statement saying that this was not their project. After that came the roadmap of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdish nationalists. The details of this now famous roadmap are, just like the details of the reform package, still unknown. Nevertheless it is understood that what is proposed does not go muc beyond pushing for the strengthening of local governments and a few stylistic changes in the constitution. This being said, the ambiguous statement from Öcalan about Kurds needing their own defense force created a storm and basically put an end to the negotiations between the AKP and a wing of the DTP including some of its leaders, and pushed the AKP into consulting NGOs and trade-unions instead. In the meanwhile, the other wing in the DTP was insisting that it was the PKK and Öcalan who should be negotiated with. In any case, after Öcalan said that he was going to put forward his roadmap, the Minister of Interior, Beşir Atalay, felt the need to accelerate the process by inviting a group of ex-leftist liberal journalists to a briefing which, significantly, was to take place in a police academy. Eventually, with the talks between Turkey and Armenia starting, the debate on ‘Kurdish Reform' gace way to that on ‘Democratic Reform'.

What can be drawn from all this is that the AKP is executing this process based on the need to create a favorable public opinion on the questions of its own policies regarding energy issues, the US talks about withdrawing from Iraq and focusing on Afghanistan, Iran's situation and so forth, under the framework of the developments in the EU and the changes that are happening in the regional conjuncture. What is going on is not an expansion of democracy, not a step towards the solution of the Kurdish question, but a clash of ruling powers based on their need and that of different bourgeois fractions to reorganize their respective positions. The hesitant statements coming from the Army, the lack of any policies or reason for the attitude of the CHP, the rabidly bloodthirsty moanings of the MHP are all a result of the liquidization of some of the previous rulers of the civil and military bureaucracy. The bases for the legitimacy of these forces are being dissolved in the light of the interests of imperialist politics in the Middle East and creating the area of ‘greater democracy and rights' which the AKP is using to boost itself. Yet this area itself is shaking, in the fashion of one step forwards, two steps back. The issue is not recognizing the rights of the Kurds put giving those who pretend to be their representatives a piece of the pie to keep their mouths shut, and more importantly to recreate social problems over "identities".

It is also important to analyze the place of the DTP and the PKK in this situation. The wing within the DTP which has previously been called the ‘doves' saw its role as being negotiators when the AKP decided to launch the ‘Kurdish reform'. Closed meetings took place between prominent leaders of this wing and the government officials. Those who made up this wing seemed more independent from the PKK, or at least from Öcalan's line. The roadmap of Öcalan being announced and the wing which has been called ‘hawks' in the DTP pointing to the PKK as the force who should be negotiated with, on the other hand, harmed the ‘dove' wing's plan to negotiate as representatives of the Kurds. In the end, the expression ‘Kurdish reform' was abandoned and replaced by the ‘Democratic reform'. Meanwhile, the clashes between the PKK and the Army, and naturally the number of the soldiers who died started increasing drastically. On the other hand, the ultimatum of one of the leaders of the ‘dove' wing, and previous DTP co-chairperson Aysel Tuğluk stating that they will considering separation and independence if they are pushed out of the process was criticized by Öcalan himself. Of course there is not much point in speculating about the reasons of this conflict, but we can say that the determining factor is, leaving aside the feelings and intentions of the rank-and-file, not the ‘dove' wing wanting to create peace or the ‘hawk' wing aiming to defend the rights of the Kurds in the strongest possible way, but the conflict of different political and economical interests created by conditions of national oppression and war.

We can thus say that in the current situation, none of the political tendencies whose behaviors, statements and attitudes we have been examining are either able or willing to solve the Kurdish question. Above all the conditions for solving the ‘national question' historically do not exist today. Today, the promise of ‘liberal democracy' by the same paradigm which dominated the post-1990 era and included the recognition of different identities and minority rights, is nothing but a necessity of capitalist looting. No movement based on ethnicity is capable of providing ‘freedom' unless it is supported by an imperialist power, and the ‘freedom' that can be provided by those who are supported by this or that imperialist power is far from being freedom in any meaningful sense.

This being said, there is an international economic reality also behind this debate and this reality can not be ignored. After the US invasion of Iraq, the imperialist powers who have assumed the role of patrons of this area want their share of the control of the enegry sources. The Turkish bourgeoisie is among these imperialist powers who is increasing becoming a part of this process. The Turkish Kurdistan is seen as Iraq's door to the world and the negotiations in the region regarding Armenia and Cyprus are expressed in the reform debates which under the names of ‘democracy' or ‘facing history'. It is completely clear that both the Turkish and the Kurdish bourgeoisie are making the ‘freedom' of Kurds a card of negotiation for the sake of economic interests.

The following days include those in which political and military conflicts are intensified. What matters, on the other hand, is for the working class to create its own agenda. After all, the effects of the economic crisis are getting worse every day, and barbarism and poverty prove the urgency of class based politics not only for Turkey but for the whole of the Middle East. Only this way can such insoluble questions which became impossible to solve (such as the freedom of Kurds) can cease to be trumps in the hands of the bourgeoisie and only then could confusions dissapear.

The Kurdish problem can't be solved the way the tendencies claiming to represent the Kurds used to say, with the formation of a new nation-state, since today the Kurdish population has a significant existence outside the Kurdistan geography, and we have also seen how the bourgeois nationalists becoming the local dominant power in the Iraqi Kurdistan has not improved the conditions of the Kurdish workers there one bit.  The Kurdish question can't be solved the way these tendencies say it can be solved now either, by reconciliation with the Turkish state with the blood of minorities and workers it slaughtered still dripping from its teeth and nails. The solution of this question will take no less than the complete destruction of all the existing states in the Middle East in the hands of the Middle Eastern proletarians of Kurdish, Arabic, Iranian, Jewish, Turkish and all other nationalities, as a part of the revolutionary struggle of the international proletariat.

Cem & Gerdûn

At the 12th September rally in support of the striking Tower Hamlets College teachers leaflets were distributed by the recently formed London Education Workers Group. The leaflet called for solidarity with the striking workers. In particular, and in contrast to the sterile bombast of the union speakers at the rally, the leaflet emphasised the need to go beyond union divisions "The most important thing is to continue spreading the struggle, to continue getting support and solidarity from other colleges facing cuts and anyone else next in the firing line. Part of this means going beyond the boundaries set by membership of different unions and professions. Having meetings open to all staff regardless of union affiliation increases our strength as workers and keeps actions under our control. We must seek out each other's support, even if that means not waiting for the unions to make those links for us and doing it ourselves."  We wholeheartedly agree with this approach! In the period to come it is vitally important that the working class is able to wrest control of its struggles from the unions.

It's clear that the LEWG is a product of the search for forms of organisation which have a tendency to go beyond the unions. It says in the leaflet "The London Education Workers Group was established so that education workers throughout London can come together to oppose the coming assault on education. We reject the division of workers into separate unions and recognise that politicians, political parties, and union bureaucrats have nothing to offer us. Instead, direct action must be our weapon. Power comes from the grass roots and we, as education workers, must democratically and collectively controlled our own organizations". The leaflet also looks beyond purely immediate concern towards longer term, more political goals: "In the long term, it is only through opposition to both capitalism and the state that we can solve, once all for all, the problems that face us as education workers". We support this initiative and helped to distribute the leaflet at the rally and at a meeting held in another college where delegates from the THC strike had been invited to speak. 

 

Contact [email protected] [13]

Graham 30/09/09

Dave Douglass responds on the article: 25 Years since the Miners' strike

We are publishing below Dave Douglass' response, alongside our reply, to the article '25 Years since the Miners' strike [16](posted online 9 July 2009). We welcome comments on all our articles in order to develop the discussion between revolutionaries and will answer all serious correspondence.

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Dave Douglass:

26 July 2009

I'm probably on a hiding to hell here but let's try again. I've explained this sequence to you before and you simply take no notice of facts. Your ability to distort actual events in order to fit your anti union position would qualify you for the Sun journalists of the year award. The miners were not on strike in defiance of their union the NUM. We went on strike through our union and in defence of our union the NUM.

As you well know the union was not 'forced to make the strike official but only in one area' how and why was it 'forced' to do so? I presume here you're talking about the NEC - although you don't understand or care actually about the different levels and functions of the union. The strike started in the Yorkshire Area, and was official in that area. The area went to the NEC under rule 41 to declare the strike officially recognised as such by the National Executive. This was because the Yorkshire miners intended to picket out the rest of the country that was the point of doing it that way. The NEC also declared the strike in Scotland and Kent official under rule 41 in the same way and at the same time. The Areas then rolled on into other areas to bring out the rest of the country in picketing action. Your suggestion that the NEC wished to stop picketing just doesn't make sense; they only chose to go down the rule 41 route in order that this could take place. It's possible that you mean 'only in one area' as against ‘nationally'. If so the NEC had no authority to declare a 'national strike' in that manner, a national strike per se would require a national ballot. The area-by-area picketing route was counter-posed to not picketing and having a national ballot instead. Of course, we could carry on picketing and then have a national ballot if we chose, but only the rank and file could make that choice. We chose on 19th April at a national conference NOT to have a national ballot and to carry on picketing instead. These were all decision of the miners expressed through the union. All of this makes nonsense of your article, which says the NEC and Arthur Scargill were against picketing and trying to stop picketing. You take a single incident and try and inflate it into a whole policy. Yes, the Yorkshire area tried to restrain the pickets from Doncaster flooding over into Nottingham in the first hours of the strike starting in Yorkshire. The Nottingham Area was holding an Area Ballot (Like Yorkshire and Scotland had already had) to decided on strike action or not. The question was delicately balanced, the militants in Nott's thought rough scenes and fighting at the gates prior to the ballot would just swing it the other way, so asked us NOT to come into their coalfield until the result of the ballot was out. The rank and file in Doncaster said "bollocks" and picketed anyway. We always had intended to picket Nott's if the ballot was lost anyway, it wasn't a question of a once and for all decision. This was a tactic for a short period; the rank and file didn't accept it. The ballot was lost in Nott's, some say it was due to the premature picketing, I doubt that, but it didn't help. The point is though this didn't mean 'the union' however, you describe it, was against picketing as you say; this is just simply wrong or worse is a deliberate distortion. ‘At the same time, left wing officials asked the pickets to withdraw and Arthur Scargill talked about taking the heat out of the situation'. Yes, this is true, but so far, out of context as to be yet another deliberate distortion, you do not say WHY or WHEN this happened. You give the impression this was some standing policy on the question of picketing. It was never that.

In fact this is one incident arising after the death of Gareth Jones on the picket line at Ollerton. Jones had been killed either by police or the lads say by a brick thrown by a scab. As pickets flooded into the village, there was a resolve to burn the whole place down. Revenge was consuming the pickets and there was a strong chance of murder and multiple serious injuries on all sides. Now I for one didn't mind getting stuck into the scabs or police, or killing the odd one or two of them in revenge or just for the fuck of it, but the whole of Nott's and all of its inhabitants started to take on the colour of the enemy. The point was to actually win over or force out the Nott's scabs not declare war on Nottingham as a whole. Many innocent Nott's people of all ages could have been caught up in a search for revenge. In that context and in that context only Arthur arrived and tried to take the heat out of the situation. In that context and in that context only 'left wing delegates' called on pickets at other pits to stay at their posts and not abandon everywhere else in order to take action in Ollerton. Those are the facts. No one in that situation and none of the picket's delegates or AS wished to condemn the pickets or did so. Who is it who condemned pickets for defending themselves against the police? Arthur Scargill on each occasion refused to do so and so did the Yorkshire Area officials and Executive Committee. Kinnock and an army of commentators since have condemned Arthur for refusing to do so, you on the other hand stand truth on its head and say he did, and 'the union' did too. Well I was at the Yorkshire Area NUM Council meeting when some right wing North Yorkshire Area branches tried to get a resolution through condemning 'brick throwing and sabotage' It was massively defeated, and the Yorkshire Area Leadership led by Jack Taylor called for a vote against that resolution. So I don't know where this information of yours comes from, I didn't see any of you at the Council meeting or any other conference or mass rally where these things were debated en mass. You say we lost the strike because 'the union' stopped the pickets in the early weeks of the strike. What utter nonsense something like 20,000 pickets were in operation and in all areas all through the strike. Other than the one incident, I've explained, and this was a strategy meant to last two days and in any case few took any notice of, it has no basis in fact. You are so determined to see 'the union' as the enemy you are blinded to the actual events, worse you try to blind other people who are not so afflicted by telling lies. This is the kind of actions we would normally associate with bureaucrats and parliamentary politicians isn't it?

For the facts on events, and who did what and why please see my forthcoming book Ghost Dancers, Christie press out next year, which deals with the run up to the strike, the strike and its aftermath and the whole process through John Major and the current situation It will deal in detail with the actual disputes and battles within the union between the rank and file and within the bureaucracy etc. for ongoing news coverage of what's happening and happened within the NUM and the pit communities see the rank and file website www.minersadvice.co.uk [17] (a site Arthur Scargill tried to close down - now that's something he did try to do).

David Douglass, NUM

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ICC's response:

18 August 2009

Dear David Douglass,

25 years after it happened the 1984-85 miners' strike in Britain is full of lessons for the whole working class. Addressing the ICC you claim "You say we lost the strike because ‘the union' stopped the pickets in the first weeks of the strike". We don't. We say that the strike was defeated because of its isolation and the major role that the NUM played in this isolation before, during and after the strike. Yes, workers' struggles can take place inside the framework of the unions, but the relationship is that of a body to a straitjacket. If you look at the two waves of wildcats in the construction industry this year you can see how the struggle developed against the wishes of the unions. If you look at the recent Vestas occupation, with a young workforce that was mostly not unionised, you can see a struggle that was lost through being limited, essentially to one site. We don't make a fetish out of whether strikes are ‘official' or ‘unofficial', but we do always try to show what role the unions play, in particular in how they stand in the way of the extension of the struggle. In Britain illusions in the unions are particularly powerful, and we know well that this situation is not going to change overnight.

The most important thing, that can never be underlined too often, is that the miners' strike was lost because it was isolated, because it didn't spread to other workers. When the dockworkers struck in the summer of 84 there was the possibility of two major sectors of the working class coming together in a struggle that could have inspired and involved other workers as well.

One of the main reasons that the miners were isolated was because of their misplaced confidence in the NUM. The struggles of workers in Poland in 1980 showed the capacity of the working class to extend their struggles across a whole country. It also showed how dangerous it is to have any faith in ‘free trade unions'. The miners in Britain not only had confidence in the NUM, they also got sucked into the idea that it was essential to make the strike solid in the mining sector, to get the Notts miners out, rather than see the necessity to spread the strike to other workers.

As we said in WR 273 [18], "The unions had utilised a split that had opened up between the Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire coalfields to fixate the miners on closing down the Nott's coalfields. It sent miners to black coal at the ports and it mobilised them into the blockade of the Orgreave Coal Depot where pitched battles with police became a daily ritual. This was all to the detriment of trying to spread the struggles to other sectors of the working class. [...] The best opportunity to spread the strike beyond the corporatist framework came right at the beginning, before the union imposed its stranglehold on events: "Early on in the strike, pickets went to the power stations, train drivers refused to cross picket lines and seamen blacked coal shipments. Many of the workers' initiatives went beyond or against union instructions. With all workers confronting the threat of the dole, there is already the potential steadily developing for a generalised struggle, and this is what the unions have been so anxious to avoid all along." ('Miners' strike: workers take the initiative', WR 70)".

Certainly there are aspects of our intervention which, looking back over a quarter of a century, we can see require a different emphasis. For example, after the end of the miners' strike, there was a widespread idea that things looked hopeless, many workers saying ‘if the miners can be on strike for a whole year and still not win, then what chance have the rest of us got'? The defeat of the strike had a much bigger impact than we acknowledged in our press, although we did insist that the length of a strike was no sign of its strength. Also, towards the end of the strike, when it was clear that the miners were defeated, we still gave the impression that the struggle still had a potential which a careful analysis of events couldn't justify. However, having said that, our emphasis on the need for the self-organisation and extension of the struggle remains entirely valid.

Clearly you have a different point of view. For a start you are on record as a supporter of a nationalised coal industry, in the name of opposition to the regime of the ‘private' coal owners. In reality all nationalised industries are just as ‘private' as any individual company when it comes to the interests of the working class. State capitalism is just as much an exploiter of workers as any 19th century entrepreneur. And if you look at the career of Ian MacGregor, from the board of nationalised British Leyland, to head of British Steel to boss of British Coal, you'll see someone just as loathed by workers as any pit owner from the past.

The most obvious point that leaps from your letter (received 26/7/9) is that it is exclusively concerned with the miners. No other workers are mentioned, or the possibility of the extension of the struggle.

When you say, "The miners were not on strike in defiance of their union the NUM. We went on strike through our union and in defence of our union the NUM" that is in a sense the crux of the matter. It was because of miners' confidence in the union that they didn't create their own forms of organisation

Details of picketing are not the most important thing because the corporatist framework of the NUM was a trap for the workers, all workers, not just miners, from the beginning. It was the NUM that sprung it and the only question for us was how the working class could get out of this trap. We've seen it too many times, a large, usually strongly unionised, sector taking on the government, being beaten down by a war of attrition and isolation, locked into a corporatist framework as much by the unions as by the state.

Even the simultaneity of several large sectors fighting together is not enough to take on the bourgeoisie if the latter is serious, as it was in taking on the working class in the early 1980s, because they all tend to corral the workers within their own boundaries and institutions. The trade unions were fighting organs of, representative of the proletariat in the hey-day of capitalism. Now, they're empty shells, all the proletarian content taken out, sucked dry through their consistent support for imperialist war, for worker killing worker. This is a position in which all unions are implicated with their inherent nationalism and their undying defence of the capitalist economy.

The defence of the union was a big part of the problem; it was the defence of the NUM and its corollary, the defence of British Coal, which isolated and strangled the strike. It wasn't just the bad leadership, or bad decisions by the NUM but the role of the union in keeping miners isolated from other workers, a task that was equally shared by all the main unions in the country. Our position is diametrically opposed to the defenders of the unions. While that point of view was concerned with the miners ‘winning a strike', we base our intervention on the lessons and needs of the historical struggle of the working class. Effectively there are two opposing class viewpoints.

The combativity and solidarity of the miners was obvious, but it was equally obvious to us that they were being led into a dead end by the NUM and the whole trade union structure, where they would be finished off by other arms of the state. The defence of the NUM and not the workers was the underlying problem of the strike. It could have been overcome; it wasn't insuperable as the mass strikes in Poland, 1980, had shown. But for this the miners needed to take the struggle into their own hands directly. A successful turn to the struggle of the miners would have actively included other workers and this would have inevitably come up against the NUM. Unfortunately the isolation and confines of the NUM held and the workers were controlled by it along with the action of the other main unions.

You say we "don't understand or care actually about the different levels and functions of the union". On the contrary, we understand full well the function of the trade unions for capitalism, as agencies of the state. And, though details are not really important here, the Byzantine manoeuvres of the union, the Rule Book and so on, on top of the various regional fiefdoms of the NUM with their own infighting and manoeuvres were probably not ‘understood' by most miners let alone other workers. The question of ballots was a particular red herring, another fetter imposed on the struggle, another manoeuvre taking place within the whole rotten framework of ‘Defend the NUM'. Similarly, the ‘picketing out', which took place within the framework of the union and its Rule Book, reinforced the union's grip on the workers, whereas what the miners needed was to discuss, delegate and go to other workers.

Your remarks about Ollerton after the death of a picket ("there was a resolve to burn the whole place down. Revenge was consuming the pickets and there was a strong chance of murder and multiple serious injuries on all sides. Now I for one didn't mind getting stuck into the scabs or police, or killing the odd one or two of them in revenge or just for the fuck of it") are symptomatic of the cancer and bitterness that came directly from the NUM and went on to greatly contribute to the defeat of these isolated communities turning in on themselves. It was symptomatic of the isolation imposed by the NUM and on the other hand shows the need to open up and go out to other workers. It was because of the NUM that the Notts miners were portrayed as the enemy, rather than all the unions that kept the miners isolated. The miners were divided and it seems you would have been happy to reinforce that division with violence. There is no role for revenge by any part of the working class. It's a basic principle that relations within the working class are based on solidarity not violence. That's one of the lessons of Kronstadt 1921.

Overall, in our intervention we will continue to patiently explain what role the unions play, and the need workers have to take their struggles into their own hands. At the moment we are well aware that workers' struggles remain in the framework of the unions. Communist minorities have an essential role in the development of an understanding of what the means and the goals of the workers? movement are. Showing what led to past defeats is one of the most important responsibilities for revolutionary organisations.

Fraternally, WR

On 23 September, in Calais, a whole phalanx of journalists and cameramen took part in a major media carnival organised by the French government: the evacuation of the ‘Jungle' a refuge for thousands of migrants living in abject misery in tents or under trees, barely surviving thanks to a few benevolent souls.

We were treated to the sight of the forceful eviction of human beings who had been tracked down like animals, and contemptuously described as ‘illegals' as though they were criminals. And what was their crime? To have fled from poverty and war in their country of origin (many come from Afghanistan), risking their lives to end up in this pit. All were following the same dream: to get to Britain where they hoped to find work. To do this they were ready to be smuggled through border controls in lorries despite the detailed searches. These are the people who have been made into a scoop by the journalists - an unworthy spectacle not unlike the one we saw recently when the Stalinist trade union, the CGT, forcefully evicted migrants, women and children included, who had taken refuge in union locals.

After the media circus, most of these destitute migrants were parked in detention centres awaiting deportation. Those who evaded capture are hiding in the sand dunes or are starving to death on the streets of Calais.

As ever, the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie knows no limits. Thus we had Eric Besson, formerly of the ‘Socialist' Party, and now immigration minister, telling us that the aim of this operation was to fight not against the migrants, but against those who engage in people trafficking. Get out your handkerchiefs!

Sending in 500 CRS riot police against 300 people, more than half of them minors, is no doubt a heavy blow against those who traffic in human lives, despite the fact that the organisers of this traffic are often protected by the mafia who work inside the public authorities, and who frequently have their hands steeped in the sale of young people into prostitution all over Europe.

What's really behind this hypocrisy? The bulldozing of the Jungle, like the closing of Sangatte in 2004, won't halt the flow of disinherited people towards the borders, because they have nowhere else to go.

In fact, this spectacular, militarised operation is a warning from the French bourgeoisie that it is unwilling to permit increasing immigration into its territory. It is telling us that its policy of repression and deportation is going to be rigorously applied. With the massive development of unemployment and poverty, the French bourgeoisie will do everything it can to rid itself of such totally undesirable people. The message is clear: ‘Go and die somewhere else'. What's more, this policy of firmness is going to be put into practice in all areas to do with national security. And it will be echoed by the rest of Europe's governments who are rushing to point out that they have already been too generous and couldn't possibly take in yet another batch of illegal immigrants. The British bourgeoisie is particularly keen on pointing out how everyone wants to go to the UK, which is only a small island after all.

This whole disgusting scenario reveals the inhumanity of all governments and all those who zealously serve the capitalist system.   

Tino 25/9/09

As thousands of troops goose-stepped through Tiananmen Square, part of the celebration of 60 years of the People's Republic of China on 1 October, the media in other countries were not slow to point out all the evidence of continuing totalitarianism.

The Chinese state banned people on the parade route from opening windows or standing on balconies; those not invited were told to watch it all on TV.

The armed forces on show were arranged according to height, with everyone within a six centimetre range. Everyone marching had a mental health check-up to make sure they could withstand the pressure on the special day - with the result that at least 1300 soldiers received counselling.

Above all there was the proud exhibition of China's military hardware with, apparently, 52 weapon systems, including intercontinental missiles for the delivery of nuclear warheads, unmanned aircraft, tanks and a variety of other means of destruction, many of which the outside world had never seen before.

Yet no matter how much China's imperialist rivals deplore its repression and militarism there is still a lot of sneaking admiration. Haven't the living standards of many of the people improved? Wasn't 2008's Olympic Games in Beijing a great success? In a time of economic turmoil hasn't China been a rare success story?

Outside mainstream currents of thought, Trotskyists, Stalinists, Maoists and others, although in some cases unhappy about the direction China has taken during the last 30 years, have saluted China's escape from colonial domination, and in some instances still see it as ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics' or a ‘deformed workers state.'

From the point of view of the working class there is nothing to be celebrated in the ‘People's Republic.' For all those who sold their labour power for wages in 1949 there are millions more today, millions who have no more control of their lives than workers did 60 years ago. Workers are still exploited and have to follow where the work is. When manufacturing in the coastal regions declines they have to return to the jobless countryside. Unemployment is as real for the working class as millionaires are common in the ruling capitalist class. There are a tiny minority who gain from China's export success, millions who see nothing but subsistence wages for their efforts.

China remains a brutally repressive class society. Chinese imperialism is still a ruthless force on the world arena. Workers struggles cause the Chinese bourgeoisie to worry about future social unrest. Hopefully the working class in China, as part of the international working class, can develop its struggles so that the future anniversary celebrations of the Chinese state are cut to a minimum.  

Car 2/10/9

This article is available as a leaflet to download and distribute here [26]

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Despite endless chatter about the ‘end of the recession', all the indications are that the present global system - capitalism - is in its deepest ever crisis and that there are no ‘green shoots' in sight. One thing is certain however: faced with declining profits and savage competition over markets, the ruling class has one answer: make the exploited, the real ‘wealth creators', pay through job-cuts, wage freezes, ‘modernising' working conditions (i.e. get us to work harder for less) and massive reductions of the social wage through cuts in the public services. Tory, Labour, Lib Dems and the rest all agree on the need for public sector cuts - their only argument is how to go about it and how to sell it.

For the vast majority of us, there can also only be one answer: to resist these attacks on our living conditions, which will not lead to a more prosperous future, but to further impoverishment and misery. And the signs are that workers are beginning to resist, all over the world, from mass strikes in Egypt, Dubai and Bangladesh, to workers, unemployed and students organising themselves in general assemblies in France, Spain and Greece, and widespread strikes and tenants' revolts in South Africa. In Britain too the same signs are there: the oil refinery wildcats last winter, where workers extended the struggle in defiance of anti-strike laws and began to go beyond the nationalist ideas that had initially distorted the meaning of the strikes; the occupations at Visteon and Vestas, which attracted widespread support from other parts of the working class. And right now, there are struggles brewing or breaking out in a whole number of sectors: Leeds binmen; bus drivers in Essex, Yorkshire and the Northeast, all facing wage cuts; firemen walking out in protest against new shift patterns; tube workers and BA workers being balloted for strike action, and of course, the postal workers.

The attack on the postal workers

Of all the current struggles, the dispute at Royal Mail is the focus of enormous attention from politicians and media. Mandelson has expressed his ‘massive anger' at the strikes, but Cameron is accusing Brown's government of being too soft on the postal workers. Royal Mail bosses have taken the provocative step of hiring thousands of extra casual workers during the strikes. The press and TV are banging the drum about the suicidal nature of the strikes and the hardships they are going to cause, even claiming that the strikes will put lives at risk because swine flu vaccines are being sent through the post.

This focus is no accident. The ruling class is perfectly well aware that there is a huge growth of discontent in the working class. It knows that this discontent can only grow when they start implementing the new rounds of cuts imposed by the economic crisis, above all in the public sector, which is the biggest employer of labour in the country. And it knows that the postal workers have a well-deserved reputation for militancy and self-organisation. In particular, postal workers have a long history of ignoring anti-strike laws and deciding on strike action in mass meetings rather than waiting around for ballots. That's why the state and the bosses are taking on the postal workers right now. They want to take them out in advance of having to deal with other sectors - isolate them, grind them down, and then cow them into submission, to prove to the rest of the working class that fighting in defence of your living conditions is just self-defeating.

Trade unions reinforce isolation

Right now there is a real danger that the postal workers will be isolated - not least because the trade unions are reinforcing that isolation. When CWU boss Bill Hayes said that he was in a better position than Scargill was in 1984, he was actually strengthening the fatal illusion that led to the defeat of the miners: the idea that if you fight long and hard enough in one sector, you can push back a concerted attack by the whole ruling class. The opposite is true: the more you fight on your own, the more you are likely to be worn down and defeated. The more our rulers sense the danger of struggles extending across the working class, the more likely they are to back down and make concessions.

And yet in every sector, the unions argue as if every dispute was a separate issue, of interest only to ‘their' members. In the post, the CWU - which agreed to a large chunk of the current ‘modernisation' package at the end of the 2007 strike - is presenting the issue as one of ‘consultation' and the particularly evil plans of RM management. In fact RM management, like all management, is just doing its job for the capitalist class and the state which protects it. Elsewhere, transport, fire and other unions are balloting their members over their own disputes with management, and preparing for strikes which they want to be tightly controlled by the union machinery and to remain unconnected to all the other struggles, even when they take place at the same time. 

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Picketing postal workers and Leeds binmen. Workers struggling against attacks need to come together.

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How can we spring this trap of isolation?            

The issue isn't whether to fight or not to fight. The issue is how to fight. We need the maximum unity faced with a united attack by the ruling class. But to achieve this, we can't rely on the unions, who police the bosses' laws and embody the division of the working class into innumerable sectors and categories.

Instead, we need to follow the example of the postal workers in past struggles, or the oil refinery workers last winter, by ignoring anti-strike laws and making the mass meetings places where real decisions are made (like whether to go on strike or return to work) and any delegations or committees have to be elected and accountable to the mass meetings. We need mass meetings to be centres of debate and discussion, where workers from other sectors can come not only to show their support, but to discuss how the struggle can be spread. The same goes for picket lines and demonstrations: they should be open to all workers - employed, unemployed, full-time or casual, and regardless of union affiliation - and try to draw as many different sectors together into a common front.

Even if at first it's only small groups of workers who see the need for this kind of self-organisation and class unity, these groups can make links with each other and try to spread their ideas as widely as possible. The future lies in our hands!

International Communist Current: BM Box 869, London WC1N 3XX. E-mail: [email protected] [27]. Next public meeting (on internationalism and WW2): 2pm, 14th November, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1.