This baseball batting rule, and punitive US incarceration policy against
the poor under successive Republican administrations, could well beapplied to the now flailing and failing strike movement of the last 18months. ---- Beginning primarily in construction and the transportsector, those sections of the RMT and Aslef still involved in actionhave recently been joined by hospital consultants joining junior doctorsas the most recent sector to back their demands with strike action. ----Instead of bracketing a mass movement whose momentum has built to acrescendo to these latest actions, the current strikes appear more likebookends on an empty shelf where a wave once broke and dissipated.The largest strike wave since the days Thatcherism relentlesslyassaulted our class appeared at one point to achieve the improbable ifnot impossible.Anti-labour and anti-strike laws have raised the bar high to limit thepossibility of strikes ever taking place, demanding not just majoritiesbut a 50% turnout in a voting process rigged by methodology - secretballots by post, not collectively, in person nor electronically unlikeother voting processes in the UK from an X on a card in local electionsto the X-Factor. Valid for only six months, any action has to beginwith two weeks' notice to enable bosses' preparations to limit our impact.Despite these hurdles, almost every working sector in the UK met thebar. Over the last 18 months this has included road and rail transport;health: midwives, physios, nurses, doctors, radiographers and ambulanceservices; fire and highway services; border security and civil service;schools and higher education; postal and communications workers;airports and ports, construction and power.At its peak in February '23, more than half a million workers were outculminating in 4 million lost working days. The achievement was seismicbut squandered. What an earth has happened?Despite an inflationary peak driven by war profiteering of 11% InOctober '22 (19% on food, on top of the cumulative increases previouslyand since), combined with a restorative pay gap of 30-40% since the 2008banking collapse, most strikes have ended with an average settlement of6.5%.A humiliating defeat by any measure, and, one might argue that, with howthe strikes were conducted, virtually no shots being fired. Our enemiesinside and outside the Government and Trade Union bureaucraticestablishments have played a blinder of delay and deceit, enabling acontrasting bosses pay rise of 17%, averaging 110 times the salary of anaverage worker.This is no reflection on the workers who have taken action, they,despite a generation without engaging in industrial disputes and beingfar from the militant traditions of their parents and grandparents, tookthe courageous decisions to risk all to resist the assault of austerity.Would, could they do it again? Why, when they have seen their energyand commitment wasted in penny-packets, losing them as much as they'vegained in outcomes. Months of a day here, two days there, has bled theirresources, morale, commitment and patience.Class struggle is by no means over, certainly not for the bosses who areincreasing the precariousness of our survival through increasedinflation and indebtedness to frighten us off the streets. But not forus either, aware of this travesty and our brooding resentment. It isnot however too early for an obituary for the lost promise of thiscurrent strike wave.The loyal opposition Labour Party 'government in waiting' is breathing asigh of relief, as the challenge to its reputation as the 'party of theworking class' recedes. No need to continue embarrassing bans of itsmembers from picket lines.The loyal opposition to the Labour Party, the left-wing of capitalism inthe form of social democrats and Leninists like the SWP will soon betrotting out the usual mantras on the lessons we should be learning fromthem on this.They will tell us the problem is the wrong kind of leadership (they willsay it should be them). They will say we shouldn't forget that theLabour Party is not a friend of the workers (though we should still votefor them). They will say the Trade Union bureaucrats cannot be trusted(though you should still try to be one). They will say that the TUC isa spineless ally of establishment legalism (while still insisting weshould demand they call a general strike). They will say what they havesaid after every strike. Ultimately, they will criticise whilesupporting the institutions that shut us out preserving the systemsstatus quo.The slogan 'Enough is Enough!' was meant to be that of a movement ofsocial resistance and solidarity that was growing. It should instead beturned against those whose alliances or weaknesses have activelyderailed this movement. These include not just the government andestablishment parties. It should include those who claim to opposewhile objectively supporting the status quo.That status quo includes the mindset of Trade Unionism as thelabour-management arm of the state, the fantasy that capitalism can bereformed and that we should be patient for those better to lead us tobring that about. That status quo includes the paralysing legalism andpassivity sold to us as reasonableness that ultimately puts a target onour back.Anyone who has been involved in committed rolling strike action,community defence and mobilisation, collective struggle in solidarityknows what lessons will endure.Striking is our break with capitalist normality where we glimpse ourautonomy and the absurdities we had accepted as normal.Breaking with normality lets us imagine an alternative and share newhorizons with our class peers.The struggle against that normality is where we experience solidarity,often for the first time with people and communities we had beenencouraged to see as strangers and different to us. The community itcreates has little in common with capitalist normality and where we asindividuals discover we have power and strength in numbers.Whether by design or incompetence, even the opportunity to experiencethese dynamics on a minimal level were unavailable to most strikers. Amovement without the living experience of their previous generation ofmilitancy was exposed to little more than a couple of hours of tootinghorns - encouraging diversion before returning to the isolation ofdomestic tasks and resuming working normality for another few weeks.On many pickets those on strike were told when to turn up and those whowanted to support them to turn up later for an hour - so much forbuilding solidarity. Even the Enough is Enough campaign issued suchinstructions to its members.The Trade Union bureaucrats were not the naive failures here. They arelong-standing institutions with deep historic memory, and jobs andsalaries and professional futures they wish to preserve.They knew full well the legal limitations and they chose to follow thoseliability limiting instructions. They are risk averse corporations ofthe establishment and pursued this minimum strategy with eyes wide open.Ultimately defeat in the form of the minimal outcomes suited theirpurpose and design.But even historically, the memory of that sense of liberation throughstruggle is more than just a fuzzy feeling. It is the learning, theevolving and the implementation of an expanding strategy of escalationand coordination.To a significant extent the learning from strikes of previousgenerations have been gerrymandered to stay there. Those lessons howeverremain as significant now and for the future of strike action andsuccess as they were then.When such opportunity for defending and advancing our needs is taken byor presents itself to us, we must consciously challenge and counter thepower of Trade Union sectionalism to divide and control our struggle.We must not be hamstrung in our first steps by the self-preservinglegalism of Trade Union bureaucracy nor it's rigged electoralism thatseeks to set our agenda.To empower this, we need to go beyond the artificial divisions of us asworkers by industry and trade, indeed beyond work, to connect to allcommunities of action and struggle.To protect our autonomy from their limitations and sabotage we need todevelop the mechanisms of mass and direct decision making through ourown assemblies and councils.Place our confidence and resources in direct action built oncross-sector coordination where our strength and numbers lie. Nothingshort of this will threaten the capitalist social peace that they needto make war on our class at home and abroad.Capitalism never delivers, it can't, it's greed and our need are notcompatible. It's State always represses us and cannot be reformed. Weonly ever have the power of our labour and the solidarity of class war,not to change, but to overthrow their wretched apparatus of oppression.The lesson for us is that the choice lies between the death ofcapitalism and its exploitation of us that sustains it, or its vengeanceand our ruin should we fail.This is what we mean when we say no war but the class war!Article by Dreyfushttps://anarcomuk.uk/2023/09/03/3-strikes-and-out/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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