(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Decent Pensions)

On November the 30^th members of Nottingham Anarchist Federation were on the picket lines supporting the biggest UK strike in a generation. Three members (a university lecturer, university researcher and health support worker) manned picket lines at their own workplaces whilst students in further and higher education supported the pickets of their striking lecturers and teachers. Later, up to 10,000 people marched from the forest, again easily one the biggest marches Nottingham has seen in recent times.

Interview with a striking lecturer

I interviewed Bruce, a lecturer in Economics at Trent University to get a better idea of what the dispute was about. I think it’s fair to say that Bruce’s views are closer to  social democracy than our own, none the less we think it gives valuable insight both to what is happening at the university and across the sector.

The views expresses are the interviewees own, rather than the view of the anarchist federation. The interview was conducted in order to try and get an idea of the situation at hand.

The Lecturers Strike Back

Members of Nottingham AF today were down on the picket lines at Nottingham and Trent universities, as lecturers on strike and as students and fellow workers showing their support. This was following UCU members decision to come out on strike.

Where the needs of capital  and the needs of us as workers clash, as they always will, we always support workers in their choice to withdraw their labour. A strike is where the implicit tensions between us and them become explicit, where class tensions fissure and manifest themselves. We will support workers who choose this course of action, both inside and outside the union form, where the terms and conditions and wages won by them and generations before them are under threat. Solidarity is our strongest weapon and where there are strikes they should be supported to help people recognise their shared interests.

We’re already sick of “Tory cuts”

Since the election a “Tory cuts” rhetoric has been gushing from some of the Left ‘socialist’ parties and it’s already becoming wearing – not least since it neglects to mention that so much ‘reform’ was already implemented by The Labour Party, or that we are going through a fundamental crisis of capitalism, not a debate of party political different approaches to the economy. Lest we forget Labour, who bailed out the banks with billions of pounds of public money, was only suggesting to delay the cuts after all. Who knows how quickly the axe would have come down if they’d won another term?