Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 1,600 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 27 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

This doesn’t mean we are out of the woods as regards our fundraising.  As Dennis, our treasurer says “We recognise it is taking a bit of a risk with our outgoings still exceeding our income, so we’ll still have to dip into our reserves to cover any shortfall, but the Trustees, buoyed by the early success of the [fundraising] appeal, are prepared to take the risk of eventually reaching our target rather than making anyone unemployed when jobs are so hard to come by.”  And who are we to argue with him.

However we do still need to increase our donations to £80,000 per year by 2015 – we are currently at about £50,000 per year – so if you can give anything, or better still commit to give a regular monthly sum, visit our website at www.wcml.org.uk/appeal to find out more.

But in the meantime I’m still a chuffed librarian and looking forward to putting into place my master plan for the reorganisation of the book stock based on the colours of the rainbow!  You may not know, but the library is in a Victorian building that was formerly a district nurses home, and all the books are shelved in what were the nurses bedrooms.  So … my master plan is to have each room full of books with the same colour covers.  We’ll have a red room, an orange room, a yellow room and I’m particularly looking forward to setting up the indigo room.

Or has this new found job security gone to my head!

Jane
Librarian

Interview with Tim Gee – author of  “Counterpower: making change happen”.  New Internationalist,  ISBN 978-1-78026-032-7  £9.99.

The last time the Tories were in power  the left (roughly trade unions, the socialist wing of  the Labour Party,  left and community groups) responded to their agenda of destroying unions, local authorities and the welfare state.  This time round, instead of  opposing Tory cuts to local government services,  Labour councils are paying off thousands of public sector workers.  Opposition from public sector unions is muted and largely confined to symbolic mass marches with no follow-up. There are vigorous local campaigns but  no mass national campaign against the undermining of the welfare state.  In fact most of the imaginative actions against the government has come through the non-aligned groups such as the Occupy campaigns and the Uncut movement,   groups  which organise on a non-hierachical basis and with little formal structures.  You could not get much further from the more traditional trade union organisation.

Recently things have started to change.  Len McCluskey, head of the Unite trade union, addressed the Occupy London group, for instance. And perhaps  more significantly last week the Occupy Bristol protestors moved their camp to the picket line of the Communication Workers’ Union outside the Capita site in Bristol. Two very different groups in terms of their organising and structure but with a common aim  of opposing large corporations which are making vast profits (in this case through administering the TV license contract) whilst cutting the wages of their workers. It will be interesting to see how these campaigners from such different cultures work together and learn from each other.

Tim Gee’s new book “Counterpower: Making Change Happen” was written to educate and inform activists in campaigns such as the Occupy movement about how to challenge the power of elites and to show how change can be effected.  He uses the term “counterpower” to highlight how social change can come about by the actions of the most oppressed in society.  His stated aim is  to provide  a primer “which would inform people about the history of campaigns and how that knowledge can inform and educate people to get involved in present campaigns.”

Tim is probably fairly typical of some of the activists who are involved in the Occupy/climate change campaigns. He comes from a middle-class family, studied political science at Edinburgh University and now works for an NGO.  “I came from a family that discussed political ideas at the dinner table.  I got involved with the Section 28 campaign and met up with Peter Tatchell. We won the campaign and it showed me how campaigns can be successful.”

His involvement with a variety of campaigns from the wars in Afghanistan to Dale Farm has educated him not only in terms of how the state will use all its force to take on opposition but also how activists need to understand this and constantly change their tactics, pursue new actions and work together.  He decided to write a book to,  as he says, “get to the root of how change happens, with the intention of providing a way for campaigners today to learn from the movements that constitute our heritage.”

Unlike most historians Tim happily lines up with the oppressed in society. He has raided the archives of the Working Class Movement Library to produce an informed analysis of how people have won and lost struggles in the past and how these lessons can be taken and used by new generations of activists. He provides histories of many struggles from the liberation struggles in India and Vietnam to the campaign for the vote in England, the Miners’ Strike 1984-5 to the more recent global justice campaign.

I think trying to cover so many complex struggles in one book has led to the dilution of these histories and to some unproven conclusions. An example of this is his short chapter on “How the Vietnam War was Stopped” which looks at the anti-Vietnam war movement in the USA. Clearly it was influential but it didn’t stop the war on its own. The war came to an end for many complicated economic and political reasons of which the anti-war movement was part.

Tim has written an interesting and insightful book. But it is written for a specific group of people who are not irritated by the constant use of  “counterpower” terminology, and relate to and are familiar  with political  theorists such as Gene Sharp, Naomi Klein and George Monbiot. As a trade unionist I would have preferred more personal histories of political activists and campaigns.  What are also missing are any ideas about what kind of society we are all campaigning for. Perhaps the Bristol alliance may answer some of these questions.

Bernadette Hyland  22/11/2011

Jenny, volunteer

And an anecdote we couldn’t resist.  Stuart has brought us in – alongside some very welcome money for WCML badges and books he sold along the route! – a book compiled by Lynda Walker recollecting Madge Davison, policital activist and campaigner.   Having gone to work in a tobacco factoy in her native Belfast after leaving school she became active in the civil rights movement and later returned to study, eventually becoming a barrister.  The book describes Madge being respected in the profession for her ability to combine hard work and a down to earth approach. Her colleagues say that she could be heard in court saying ‘Well the craic is this M’lord’…

Lynette

As that site says:
In 1936, fascism was gaining ground across Europe. In Britain, Sir Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirted British Union of Fascists (BUF) portrayed Jewish people as the cause of the country’s problems. East London had the largest Jewish population in Britain and the announcement that Mosley and his Blackshirts planned a provocative march through the area on October the 4th was greeted with anger and a determination that it should be stopped. A petition was signed and local politicians tried to have the march called off – but to no avail.

On the day, up to 250,000 people gathered to defend the East End. There was a fierce battle with the police when they attempted to clear a path for the march and a barricade was erected and defended in Cable Street. People in their houses threw eggs, milk bottles and the contents of chamber pots from upstairs windows, whilst at ground level, marbles were rolled under police horses’ hooves. The march could not proceed and Mosley was ordered to abandon his plans. It was a blow against fascism and that night there was dancing in the streets.

It had all been boxed up as a single subject, but I have divided it up into what I hope are more useful sections, i.e. Co-operative Union, Co-operative Party, Co-operative Societies (including the Co-operative Wholesale Society and Co-operative Retail Services) and a section for the Co-operative movement in general.

The pamphlets compliment our collection of books and periodicals, most of which were collected by Ruth and Eddie Frow over the years. They also compliment our collection of co-operative ceramic objects, such as the one on the right, which is a commemorative plate from the Manchester and Salford Equitable Co-operative Society.

If you are interested in our co-operative movement collection go to our online catalogue at www.wcml.org.uk/catalogue

Now all I have to do is catalogue the back log of stuff that has built up whilst I have been engrossed in the Co-op.

Jane
Librarian

In the early 1960s Malcolm was viewed  at home and abroad as a dangerous man. His  political journey  had started after he had become involved  with petty crime and drugs and been  jailed.  Like many political activists going to prison provided him with the time and space to educate himself. On leaving prison he left behind his family name (the name of slave owners) and took “X” to denote his rebirth and entry into the black Muslim separatist movement of the Nation of Islam.

The NOI struck a chord  with some black people in the 1950s in the USAwith its espousal of separation of the races and a fundamentalist approach to Islam and it began to attract considerable numbers of converts.  By 1957 Malcolm was the National Representative of the founder, Elijah Muhammad, and a key figure in what had become a  nationwide mass movement.    As Malcolm developed his political thinking, however,  he  began to reject that of the NOI.  Marika notes that  ‘his disappointment at his inability to persuade the NOI to engage in political action is well documented.  We also know that his discovery of Muhammed’s hidden mistresses and illegitimate children disturbed him deeply’.  Malcolm’s comment on the death of President Kennedy in 1963 that it was a “a case of chickens coming home to roost”  led to his final break with the NOI.

Malcolm was invited to speak in Manchesterby the Federation of Students’ Islamic Societies, which was made up of undergraduates  who were from Iraq, Malaya and Mauritius.  The invitation had asked  Malcolm to “explain his stand on the question of racism in the US and also to clear the misconception the media had of the man.”  His  visit to Manchester was not without problems. The President of the Students’ Union was not keen on the meeting, perhaps wary of public controversy,  and permission was only given two days before.  Publicised merely by the words “Malcolm X speaks”, so many people wanted to attend  the meeting that the door of the Union had to be closed one hour before the start  as the hall was already packed. That day the university came to a standstill.

Malcolm X was one of the most influential black leaders of his generation and this is confirmed by some of the people who attended this meeting and are quoted in the book.   ‘His talk was a historical survey of slavery and the Black situation. ..He was a most charismatic speaker, slow, clear and powerful.’   Malcolm’s analysis of the situation had led him to form the Organization of Afro-American Unity and to now believe that black people in the USA would not get civil rights and freedom from the Government. Their struggle was about achieving human rights  and must be taken to the United Nations.

Incredibly  no one filmed or even recorded the meeting so Marika has painstakingly  used interviews, newspaper and individuals’ memories to recreate the event.  She has produced in this book an important chapter in the life of one of the most influential  Black leaders of modern times. Malcolm’s travels and his political development continued until 21 February 1965when he was assassinated at a public meeting  in circumstances which are still deeply controversial.  But, as Marika points out in the book, many of the issues he grappled with including the effects of globalisation and his growing interest in socialism to counter racialism and inequality are as pertinent today as they were in the 1960s.

 Malcolm X,  Visits Abroad April 1964-February 1965 byMarika Sherwood (SavannahPress). ISBN 978-09519720-0-7. Available price £5.00 incl p&p from marika@marikasherwoodl@org.uk

By Bernadette Hyland