James Connolly is most associated with the Easter Rising of 1916 when, amidst the imperialist slaughter of the First World War, Irish republicans and the revolutionary socialist Irish Citizen Army launched an armed uprising against the British Empire. The Rising triggered a series of events, culminating in the Irish War of Independence in 1919 and the Irish Civil War, and shaped the course of modern Irish history.

Before 1916, Connolly had almost three decades of activity behind him, as a socialist propagandist and a trade union organiser, in Scotland, Ireland and the United States. So who was Connolly and what were his political ideas? How did he come to be involved in the Rising, and what can socialists learn from his life, writings and political activity?

Micheál MacEoin, author of a forthcoming book on Connolly, discussed these questions and more at a Workers' Liberty public meeting: this is the audio recording of the intro speech.

Who was James Connolly? With Micheál MacEoin

Daniel, Ellie, and Edd discuss migrant workers' struggles past and present, and explore debates in the historic and contemporary labour movement around immigration controls, arguing that trade unions are strongest when they oppose border controls and seek to organise all workers, regardless of immigration status or national origin. 

The episode features interviews with Sujata Aurora from the Grunwick 40 Committee, who explains the history of the Grunwick strike and the Committee's work to commemorate it, and Henry Lopez, President of the Independent Workers' union of Great Britain (IWGB), who discuss his union's organising amongst migrant workers, including their ongoing dispute involving outsourced security workers at the University of London. 

Grunwick 40 Committee: https://grunwick40.wordpress.com

IWGB website: https://iwgb.org.uk

IWGB University of London branch, which is organising the dispute mentioned in the interview with Henry: https://iwgb-universityoflondon.org

United Voices of the World (not mentioned in the episode, but another radical union organising amongst migrant workers, including the ongoing cleaners' strike at the London School of Economics): https://www.uvwunion.org.uk

The articles referred to in this episode are:

"A Voice from the Aliens" (1905): available online at http://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/WES/4/2/9

"Free movement has failed — Labour and the unions must recognise it", by Paul Embery (Huffington Post, 2016): http://huffpost.com/uk/entry/13112058

"Trade union movement must connect with the working class post-Brexit", by Paul Embery (Westmonster, 2017): http://www.westmonster.com/trade-union-movement-must-reconnect-with-working-class-post-brexit

Gerard Coyne objecting to "the presence of a v large number of foreign nationals" (Twitter, 2017): https://twitter.com/gerard_coyne/status/815873144619728896

Intro music and audio motif taken from 'Labor' by Aesop Rock. We do not own this music, which is copyright Def Jux, 2001.

Ep 3: Trade unions and immigration

As a teaser for our forthcoming sixth episode on food service workers' struggles past and present, we're sharing part of our interview with McDonald's worker and BFAWU activist Steve, who talks about the reasons behind McDonalds workers' upcoming strike on 4 September. 

The full episode, which also includes a look back at the 1912 New York waiters' strike, will be released next week. 

For more information on the #McStrike, and how you can support it (including by donating to their strike fund), follow @bfawu1 and @fastfoodrights on Twitter, and visit fastfoodrights.wordpress.com. 

(As usual, we'd like to remind you that we don't own the intellectual rights to the music used in the podcast, which is copyright 2001 Aesop Rock and Def Jux Records.)

Ep 6 preview: #McStrike!

With McDonald's workers in two stores set to stage their first ever official strike in UK history, we interview striker and BFAWU activist Steve about the campaign, and discuss the issues it raises. 

We look back on the "McDonald's Workers' Resistance" network, whose archives are online at https://libcom.org/tags/mcdonalds-workers-resistance, and discuss Unite New Zealand's "Supersize My Pay" campaign (watch a documentary about it here: https://vimeo.com/54901659), and the ongoing "Fight for $15" movement in the USA (the movement involves a galaxy of different campaign groups, unions, and political organisations, but you can get a sense of some of its activity from this site: http://fightfor15.org). 

The newly tenured Professor Edmund Mustill takes us back in time, to tell the story of the 1912 New York waiters' strike, which you can read up on here: http://hotelworkers.org/about/history/the-story-of-the-first-contract?p=3

We also shout out our fellow labour movement podcast Smash Up Derby, so go check 'em out at http://smashuppodcast.com. 

Tweet your support for the #McStrike at @bfawu1, @fastfoodrights, and @mcstrike1, and don't forget to follow Labour Days at @labour_days.

Ep 6: The 2017 #McStrike and the 1912 New York waiters' strike

With far-right and fascist movements growing across Europe and North America, how can trade unions resist? 

We look back through history at some examples of how organised labour has confronted fascism, exploring specifically trade-union movement organisation rather than wider community-led anti-fascism, and focusing on perhaps less well-known examples rather more famous episodes such as the Battle of Cable Street. 

We examine transport workers’ resistance to fascism in the 1920s and 30s, and the Minneapolis Teamsters’ “Union Defence Guard” from the late 1930s, as well as postal workers disrupting BNP election efforts in 2009.

Research that informed this episode includes:

¡No Pasarsan! The ITF and the fight against fascism - https://spanje3639.files.wordpress.com/2016/12/no_pasaran_en.pdf

Teamster Politics by Farrell Dobbs (1975)

“It can’t happen here”, by Joe Allen, International Socialist Review #85 (September 2012) - https://isreview.org/issue/85/it-cant-happen-here

“Teamsters against the Silver Shirts”, by Charlie Salmon, Solidarity 140 (16 October 2008) - http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2008/10/16/teamsters-against-silver-shirts

We also give brief mention to the Communication Workers’ Union’s recent excellent campaign to win their strike ballot in Royal Mail. Check out this analysis by Gregor Gall: https://www.bradford.ac.uk/news/expert-opinion/2017/conversation-gall-royalmail.php

Check previous episode descriptions for copyright info. We don’t own the music featured in this episode, which is the intellectual property of its respective owners.

Ep 7: Trade unions against fascism

How did trade unionists, and the trade union movement, respond to the revolutions of 1917 in Russia? Edd The Brain takes us through a few examples, and we discuss what implications they have for contemporary working-class solidarity.

As promised in the episode, here's Labour Days' Great (But Not Exhaustive) Russian Revolution Reading List:

General histories of the Russian Revolution

Leon Trotsky, The History of the Russian Revolution (1930) - https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/hrr/
John Reed, 10 Days That Shook The World (1919) - https://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/
Paul Vernadsky, Russian Revolution: When Workers Took Power (2017) - http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2017-09-21/russian-revolution-when-workers-took-power
Alexander Rabinowitch, The Bolsheviks Come To Power  (2009) - https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/879-the-bolsheviks-come-to-power

People should also check out the work of Katy Turton on the role of women in the Revolution, and Dan Healy's work on LGBT people's struggles within the Revolution.

On the role of trade unions in the Revolution itself

Steve Smith, Red Petrograd: revolution in the factories 1917-1918 (reprint 2008) - 
 https://libcom.org/library/red-petrograd-revolution-factories-1917-1918-sa-smith
David Mandel, "The Factory Committee Movement in the Russian Revolution", in Immanuel Ness and Dario Azzellini, Ours to Master and to Own, (2011) - https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/366-ours-to-master-and-to-own
Daniel H. Kaiser, The Workers' Revolution in Russia, 1917: The View from Below (1989) - https://www.abebooks.co.uk/Workers-Revolution-Russia-1917-View-Below/18667199435/bd

If you have access to JSTOR, the online archive of academic journals, you should also check out "Skilled Workers and the Strike Movement in Revolutionary Russia" by Diane Koenker and William G. Rosenberg, from Journal of Social History, Vol. 19, No. 4 (Summer, 1986), pp. 605-629. It's online here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3787980

On international trade union solidarity with the Revolution:
Colm Bryce, "Ireland and the Russian Revolution", Irish Marxist Review Vol. 17 No. 6 (2017)
Ralph Darlington, Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism (2008)
P J O Farrell, "The Russian Revolution and the Labour Movements of Australia and New Zealand 1917-1922" 


See previous episode descriptions for copyright info on music, etc. None of it's ours, we're not making any money off it, please don't sue us.

Ep 8: Unions and the Russian Revolution

With Ellie out of action, wafflers-in-chief Daniel and Edd discuss whether trade unions have a particular role to play in the struggle to prevent the planet becoming a charred husk (spoiler: they do). 

Verity Burgmann, co-author of ‘Green Bans, Red Union’, joins us to discuss the New South Wales Builders Labourers’ Federation’s “green bans” of the 1970s, before Edd talks us through the history Lucas Aerospace Workers’ plan of 1976, and Daniel reminisces about his time campaign on a roundabout in support of the Vestas wind turbine factory workers’ occupation of 2009. 

Here are some links mentioned in the show, and a few extra ones:

The new edition of ‘Green Bans, Red Union’ is available here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Green-Bans-Red-Union-Saving/dp/1742235409/ref=nodl_ 

‘Rocking the Foundations’, a film about the BLF, can be viewed here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2-xkxU0wu8

The Lucas Plan 40th anniversary website is here: http://lucasplan.org.uk/

Hilary Wainwright and Dave Elliot’s book on the Lucas Plan can be purchased here: http://www.waterstonesmarketplace.com/Lucas-Plan-New-Trade-Unionism-in-the-Making-Hilary-Wainwright/book/14986886

The Workers’ Climate Action website (inactive since 2011, sadly) is online here: https://workersclimateaction.wordpress.com/. The WCA briefings on the BLF and Lucas are here: https://workersclimateaction.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/blf-briefing2.pdf and here: https://workersclimateaction.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/lucas-briefing.pdf

Trade union activists may also find WCA’s ‘How to be an effective climate activist in your workplace’ briefing useful: https://workersclimateaction.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/how-to-be-an-effective-climate-activist-in-your-workplace/

For more on the Vestas struggle, Read Workers’ Liberty’s pamphlet ‘The Vestas Jobs Battle: How Wind Turbine Workers Became a Power’, here: http://www.workersliberty.org/system/files/vestas.pdf

Paul Hampton’s ‘Workers and Trade Unions for Climate Solidarity: Tackling climate change in a neoliberal world’ is basically *the* book on the overall subject matter of this episode, and is available to buy here: https://www.crcpress.com/Workers-and-Trade-Unions-for-Climate-Solidarity-Tackling-climate-change/Hampton/p/book/9781138283633

And finally, check out the Nationalise the Big Six campaign, mentioned in the episode, here: https://nationalisethebigsix.com/

Ep 9: Green Bans and Workers' Plans - How organised labour can save the planet

In this episode, we take a deep dive into questions of class composition and labour movement strategy via an interview with Kim Moody. 

Kim is a labour movement writer and activist, who co-founded Labor Notes in the USA (www.labornotes.org). His new book, ‘On New Terrain: How Capital is Reshaping the Battleground of Class War’ is published by Haymarket, and is available to buy here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1106-on-new-terrain

We begin the episode with a rattle through some recent labour movement news, including:
“An Open Letter to Fellow Aslef Drivers”, looking at questions of industrial unionism and class solidarity in railway workers’ strikes against the imposition of “Driver Only Operation”: www.workersliberty.org/blogs/2018-01-19/open-letter-fellow-aslef-drivers-which-side-are-we
The latest with the Picturehouse Cinema workers’ strikes. Donate to the strike fund here: www.crowdpac.co.uk/campaigns/250/picturehousestrike
The upcoming University and College Union pension strikes (www.ucu.org.uk/strikeforuss), and a recent local success for the UCU at the University of Manchester: www.ucu.org.uk/article/9141/Industrial-action-suspended-at-University-of-Manchester
More inspiring struggles from migrant-led unions like IWGB (www.iwgb.org.uk/) and UVW (www.uvwunion.org.uk/)
Potential disputes over public sector pay from unions like the PCS (www.pcs.org.uk/payup) and Unison (www.unison.org.uk/news/press-release/2017/12/council-pay-offer-considered-local-government-unions/)
A win for local unions and community campaigns against gentrification in Haringey: theclarionmag.org/2018/02/02/stop-hdv-campaign-forces-claire-kobers-resignation/
A strike at the Camell-Laird shipyard: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-42690268
Quite a bit to take in there, admittedly, but in our defence it’s been two months since our last episode. 

Drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter to let us know about any ongoing disputes you’re involved in, either directly or in a supportive capacity. 

Check previous episode descriptions for copyright info.

Ep 10: On New Terrain - an interview with Kim Moody

Solidarity 531/Workers' Liberty 70 — Automation and the working class. Lead article, Automation and the working class, by Martin Thomas.
Article at: https://workersliberty.org/story/2020-01-14/automation-and-working-class

See also:
https://soundcloud.com/workers-liberty/automation-2-the-future-and-robots-hipster-reformism-and-the-technological-fix
https://soundcloud.com/workers-liberty/automation-4-marxs-telescope
https://soundcloud.com/workers-liberty/automation-5-the-great-foundation-stone-of-wealth

Full pamphlet at: https://workersliberty.org/WL70
Browse and subscribe to all audio: https://workersliberty.org/audio

Automation

Automation 1 — Automation and the working class — lead article

How did the Corbyn surge of the last few years end up with Sir Kier Starmer as Labour Leader? And what should socialists be doing within Labour now? Duncan, an education worker from South London introduces the situation at a discussion group in April 2020. 

Upcoming meetings and more at https://workersliberty.org/c19-online

Video: https://youtu.be/gDV92V1NpHs

Starmer and the Labour Left — intro

At the end of May 2020, a group of casualised workers at Goldsmiths College, London announced they would be withdrawing their labour by taking part in a marking boycott, in response to a wave of redundancies, nonpayment for hours worked during lockdown and the management’s decision not to furlough staff. 

This conversation, recorded over Zoom, brings together five organisers of the wildcat strike to reflect on what made the action necessary, what its implications are for labour struggles in academia and beyond, and what its potential fallout- and future- will be.

Edited by Ash Reid.
Follow Justice for Workers [Goldsmiths] @ CleanersFor on Twitter
https://precariousatgold.wordpress.com/2020/09/23/goldsmiths-dispute-autumn-update/

The fee for this event was donated to Sistah Space.

Goldsmiths Wildcats in conversation

Workers’ Liberty fights for socialist revolution, for the labour movement to militantly assert working class interests. Follow us! Find out more, and get involved at https://workersliberty.org • fb.me/workersliberty • twitter.com/workersliberty

Who was James Connolly? With Micheál MacEoin

Workers' Liberty

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