Labour Days: A Labour Movement Podcast

Tony Blair once reassured a journalist that, even after New Labour’s moderate reforms to employment law, Britain would still have “the most restrictive union laws in the western world.” What do those laws consist of, where do they come from, and how can we resist them? Prof. Mustill, Ellie, and Daniel rattle through the chronology. Ellie also bigs up the ongoing election campaign of John Moloney, standing to be re-elected as Assistant General Secretary of her union, PCS. We’ve mentioned John on a previous episode (https://soundcloud.com/labour-days/rank-and-filism-101-whats-the-bureaucracy-whats-the-rank-and-file), particularly highlighting his pledge to take the same salary he was paid as a rank-and-file worker and donate the rest of his official’s salary to the PCS strike fund. Voting for PCS members opens on 9 November and closes on 14 December. Check out John’s campaign here: https://john4ags.org/ John is running alongside Marion Lloyd, who is standing for General Secretary: https://twitter.com/Mario

Our own Liam McNulty has written a new political biography of the Irish revolutionary James Connolly, entitled ‘James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist & Internationalist.’ In this episode we discuss Connolly as a workplace organiser and theorist of trade union organisation, looking at his role in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and in major disputes such as the 1913 Dublin Lockout. You can buy Liam’s book here: https://www.merlinpress.co.uk/page/backlist/?act=search&find=connolly For further reading, try Liam’s article on ‘Connolly’s Legacy’: https://workersliberty.org/legacy-james-connolly-wl-373 You can also learn more about Connolly’s trade unionism in the Workers’ Liberty pamphlet ‘Effective Trade Unionism’, which brings together several of Connolly’s writing on workplace organisation and features a foreword by Liam: https://www.workersliberty.org/connolly-unions See previous episode descriptions for copyright info on our intro music.

Yes, we're back... did you miss us? No, we didn't think so. But, we're back anyway. The promised episode on Liam's book about James Connolly, which we teased back in January, is still in the pipeline, but we decided to just get back on the road with a loose discussion about the ongoing strike wave that's been taking place in Britain since summer 2022. With Ellie and Liam absent, you're stuck with Edd and Daniel, a duo of smug, irritating men who were in the podcast game long before Campbell/Stewart and Balls/Osborne. They chew over a few questions that have arisen in the strike wave, including strike tactics and strategy, the role of the law, the need for clear demands, and how we can develop independent rank-and-file organisation. Some background links for this episode: - "UK Workers Strike Back" (January 2023), an article by Daniel for the US socialist collective Tempest: https://www.tempestmag.org/2023/01/uk-workers-strike-back/ - A video presentation by Daniel based on the above article, hosted by the

It's been a while since our latest episode but we're back. Our producer Liam McNulty has just had a new book published which will be of interest to Labour Days listeners. James Connolly: Socialist, Nationalist, and Internationalist by Liam McNulty is published by Merlin Press. You can order it here: https://www.merlinpress.co.uk/page/forthcoming-books It takes a look at one of the key figures in Irish labour movement history, James Connolly, who has featured in a number of our episodes. This is a short preview in which Liam introduces and reads an extract from the book, made exclusively available to Labour Days listeners. A full episode discussing the book and its relevance to those active in the labour movement will follow. For now, over to Liam!

Edd takes us through the history of the tactic of workplace occupations, and we discuss their re-emergence in Britain and Ireland in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash. We're very lucky to be joined by Jaymie Rigby, one of the workers who occupied the Vestas wind turbine blades factory on the Isle of Wight in 2009. As we face a new wave of job losses, can we rediscover these tactics? Some selected additional reading: “How sit-down strikes built unions in the USA” https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/04/07/how-sit-strikes-built-unions-usa Genora Johnson remembers the Flint sit-down strike http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/dollflint.html “With Babies and Banners”, documentary film on the Flint strike, focusing particularly on the role of women activists https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa75V-tdBko France 1968: https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2018-05-21/france-1968-when-ten-million-workers-took-capitalism-throat https://libcom.org/library/general-strike-france-1968-factory-factory-acc

What role has organised labour played in anti-racist and civil rights struggles, past and present? We look at recent actions by workers and unions as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the historic role of black workers' organisers and socialists in the US civil rights struggle. We also discuss the unfortunate presence in the US labour movement of “unions” representing the police, and what might be done to challenge that. This episode also features an excerpt of an interview with Robert Cuffy, a Guyanese socialist currently based in New York, where he's a public sector working and trade union activists. Robert is a member of the Socialist Workers Alliance of Guyana and the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). Relevant/featured links for our segments are: Edd: A Freedom Budget for All Americans: Recapturing the Promise of the Civil Rights Movement in the Struggle for Economic Justice Today, Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates (2013) https://monthlyreview.org/product/a_freedom_budget_for_all_am

This episode features an interview with two comrades from the Angry Workers, a revolutionary collective whose members have been involved in workplace and community organising activity in the supermarket, food, and logistics sector in west London. Their new book, 'Class Power on Zero Hours', is available to buy now from PM Press: https://pmpress.org.uk/product/class-power-on-zero-hours/ The Angry Workers are online at https://angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/ Anyone interested in the issue of class struggle in the logistics sector should also listen to our interview with Kim Moody, about his book 'On New Terrain': https://soundcloud.com/labour-days/episode-10-on-new-terrain-an-interview-with-kim-moody However you're struggling through the pandemic... keep struggling. Solidarity! You might find these websites useful resources for class struggle in the pandemic: Safe & Equal campaign - safeandequal.org Coronavirus Workforce Support Group - facebook.com/groups/coronasupportgroupforworkers Hazards Magazine -

In a break from pandemic-related content, our hosts each pick a little-known, unusual, or otherwise distinctive strike from history, and briefly tell its story. Daniel spoke about the artisan tomb builders’ strike from ancient Egypt in 1157 BCE; Ellie chose the strike of Haudenosaunee (“Iroquois”) women in the 1600s, which was a strike of domestic and reproductive labour; and Edd talked about the “Skylab controversy”, a strike of three Nasa astronauts in 1973, the first strike in space. The main sources they used for research are linked below. Solidarity, stay safe, and take care. References: Daniel: https://libcom.org/history/records-of-the-strike-in-egypt-under-ramses-iii https://dianabuja.wordpress.com/2012/03/16/food-strikes-in-ancient-egypt-the-turin-strike-papyrus-etc/ http://edithorial.blogspot.com/2018/02/classics-and-strike-action-ancient-and.html?m=1 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/steep-commute-gave-ancient-egyptian-workers-osteoarthritis https://www.ancient.eu/article/1089/th

A special episode produced in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, looking at how bosses are attempting to exploit the crisis, and what workers are doing to resist it. In such a fast moving situation, a lot of the situations we discuss had changed more or less as soon as the episode was recorded, so some of the stuff in this episode will now be out of date. There are also lots of other ongoing and developing workers’ struggles which we didn’t mention, with new ones springing up all the time. We’re trying to boost as many of those as we can on our Twitter, so follow us at @Labour_Days. You can read more about some of the struggles Edd mentions in his section here: https://www.labornotes.org/2020/03/dispatch-italy-class-struggle-time-coronavirus https://www.labornotes.org/2020/03/rank-and-file-auto-workers-demand-national-shutdown-union-officials-partner-companies-keep The Raymond Challinor essay we review in our section about the Blitz is online here: https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2019-04-11/class

In our last episode of 2019, we speak to Caty and Chris, two activists involved in TUC Yorkshire and the Humber's "Summer Patrols" project. We discuss the aims of the project, and the broad horizon of organising young workers and reviving the labour movement. This episode was recorded in early November, before election fever really set in, so there isn't much election chat in this one. The list of disputes Edd mentions in the outro is also now somewhat out of date. You can read more about the Summer Patrols project here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/campaigns/2019-tuc-summer-patrol-young-workers. You can also follow TUC Yorkshire and the Humber on Twitter at https://twitter.com/tucyorkshumber We'll be back in 2020 with more class-struggle/industrial unionist/rank-and-file goodness.

In this episode, Edd speaks to Stacey Clare, author of the forthcoming book ‘The Ethical Stripper’, about her experiences as a stripper and sex workers’ rights activist with campaigns and unions such as the GMB’s sex workers’ branch, the East London Strippers Collective, and United Voices of the World. Edd and Ellie then discuss the issues posed by the interview. Daniel was absent for this episode, hence a distinct lack of Local 574 references. Check back in next month for more of those. You can check out some of the organisations mentioned, and others doing great work around sex work decriminalisation and workers’ rights, here: http://twitter.com/ethicalstripper http://twitter.com/unitedstripper http://twitter.com/xtalkproject http://twitter.com/sexworkhive http://twitter.com/ukdecrimnow Stacey’s book is available to preorder here: https://unbound.com/books/the-ethical-stripper/

This mini episode consists of a talk our co-host Daniel gave at the Southampton Transformed event on 8 June. He spoke on a panel entitled “how can the labour movement organise in a way that includes everyone?”, alongside Sofia from Brighton Acorn, Si Cotton from Unite, and Callum Cant from Notes from Below. Daniel’s talk discusses the meaning of a rank-and-file approach to union organising, picking up themes discussed in our recent episode on this topic. Southampton Transformed was a local event co-sponsored by The World Transformed, a festival of political education launched by Momentum. For more info, see @twtsouthampton on Twitter.

This month we discuss the 1941 Disney animators' strike before looking at workers' organisation in the contemporary video games industry. Our guests were Jamie Woodcock (@Jamie_Woodcock on Twitter) of Notes from Below (https://notesfrombelow.org/), whose new book 'Marx At The Arcade' looks at games workers' struggles, and Marijam Didžgalvytė (@marijamdid on Twitter), games worker, writer, and activist, who hosts the online show 'Left Left Up', and is involved in Games Workers, an internarional games workers’ platform. Check out Marijam's website here (https://www.marijamdid.com), and buy Jamie's book direct from the publishers (https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1319-marx-at-the-arcade) Information about the Organising at Work game “jam” Jamie mentions, co-hosted by Games Workers UK and Notes from Below, is online here: https://www.gwu-uk.org/2019/05/10/workers-game-jam/ Special thanks this time to our resident researcher Holly Smith for the presentation about the Disney animators' strike. Holly used th

In the midst of the First World War, engineering workers in Sheffield built a shopfloor organisation that confronted the bosses, the state, and the conservatism of their own union leaders. We discuss how and why. For the background to this episode, check out Edd’s pamphlet, available to buy here: https://spokesmanbookshop.com/epages/36621f87-f6e8-411d-b941-d46fe29be74c.mobile/en_GB/?ObjectPath=/Shops/36621f87-f6e8-411d-b941-d46fe29be74c/Products/Mustill1&Locale=en_GB Also, JT Murphy’s ‘The Workers' Committee: An Outline of its Principles and Structure’ is pretty seminal: https://www.marxists.org/archive/murphy-jt/1917/xx/workers_committee.htm We apologise for the sound quality of this episode, which was recorded without our producer Liam’s oversight and was therefore always likely to be an aural disaster.

Trade union activists, particularly those on the left, will almost certainly be familiar with the terms “bureaucracy” and “rank and file”. But what do they mean? In this episode, with Ellie sadly absent, Edd gives us a historical sketch of the development of trade union officialdom, and talks about some Marxist approaches to understanding it. Daniel worries that he might himself have become a bureaucrat. Finally, we talk to Rhian Keyse, an activist in the University and College Union, about the embryonic rank-and-file revolt in that union around the 2018 strikes against pension cuts. The new rank-and-file initiatives she refers to, UCU Rank-and-File and the Branch Solidarity Network, are online here: https://twitter.com/ucu_rankfile Hmmm https://ucubranchsolidaritynetwork.wordpress.com/ In the course of the episode, various historical organisations/episodes are mentioned fleetingly, so here’s some suggested further reading: The Local Associations National Action Campaign, an attempt to form a rank-and-

In our first seasonal special, we tell the inspiring story of the Union of Christmas Island Workers (UCIW), a trade union on the Australian territory of Christmas Island, so named by an East India Company explorer who arrived there on Christmas Day, 1643. The UCIW’s story is one of inspiring working-class internationalism against racism, and we feel it contains a lot of important messages for many issues facing us today. Thanks to our researcher Holly for researching and writing this episode. Here’s some references and suggested further reading from Holly: Les Waters – The Union of Christmas Island Workers Michelle Dimasi – Australia’s Asylum Seeker Policy and Christmas Island (unpublished thesis) Michelle Dimasi, Linda Briskman – ‘Let Them Land: Christmas Islander Responses to Tampa’ in the Journal of Refugee Studies 2010 https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/16/world/asia/16australia.html?src=mv https://www.fwc.gov.au/registered-organisations/find-registered-organisations/union-christmas-island-workers-uci

In excerpts from panels at The World Transformed and the Ella Baker School of Transformative organising, we bring you Colin Waugh talking about the history of Ruskin College and the Plebs' League; Ian Manborde talking about contemporary trade union education; and a bit from Daniel on education programmes in the the International Ladies' Garment Workers Union (ILGWU) in the early 20th century, mainly cribbed from Daniel Katz's 2011 book 'All Together Different'. There's also a brief appearance from Rida Vaquas of Clarion magazine. Liam McNulty also makes a rare appearance on the other side of his desk to make a very insightful comment about Daniel De Leon (who we're all quite big fans of), so watch out for that. Background reading for this episode is Colin Waugh's pamphlet on the Plebs' League, which is online here: http://www.ifyoucan.org.uk/PSE/Home_files/PSE%20Plebs%20pamphlet.pdf.

Returning to our secret North London bunker-studio following last month’s live cast, we turn our attention to the recent walkouts of teachers and other school workers in Republican-voting states in the USA such as Kentucky, West Virginia, and elsewhere. We were very lucky to have the opportunity to talk to Lois Weiner, an American socialist and trade union activist and author of the book ‘The Future of Our Schools: Teacher Unions and Social Justice’ (2012, Haymarket), a member of the editorial board of the socialist journal New Politics who’s been extensively involved in rank-and-file teacher organising. The interview in the episode is abridged, but there’s a fuller transcript online here: https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2018-07-15/how-teacher-walkouts-can-revive-us-labour-movement. You can also read more by Lois on the topic here: http://newpol.org/node/2088 Also mentioned in the episode was the New Economics Foundation’s “Winning At Work” conference, which Daniel was involved in co-organising, which

This is our very first live podcast, recorded at Ideas for Freedom, a weekend of socialist debate and discussion hosted by Workers’ Liberty, on 23 June. We were joined by Tom Kelly, a striking workers from the East Dulwich Picturehouse cinema, to discuss “a new New Unionism?”, looking at whether burgeoning low-paid workers’ struggles can lead to a revival and recomposition of the labour movement in the same way that the “New Unionism” of the 1880s did. Ellie was on compering/chairing duties, Edd gave us the historical lowdown, and Daniel asked Tom the questions. Thanks to Tom for joining us and thanks to everyone who attended the recording, particularly those who contributed to the discussion. Follow @EDPHLivingWage on Twitter for more on Tom and his colleagues’ dispute.

What attitude should the labour movement take to the police? Does the way strikes have been policed in the past give us some clues about the police’s fundamental role? With the Labour Party adopting an explicitly pro-cop position, distributing leaflets shaped like police helmets calling for 20,000 more police on the streets, we argue for the labour movement to take a more cautious, and ultimately hostile, to the role of the police, who we believe ultimately exist to defend the power of capital. Most of this episode is taken up with an interview with Kevin Horne, a striking miner in the 1984/5 strike andparticipant in the “Battle of Orgreave”, and Barbara Jackson, who struck in 84/85 as part of the National Union of Mineworkers’ white collar section, and later founded the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign (OTJC). Find out more about the OTJC here: https://otjc.org.uk/ This episode also includes a special one-off feature, “Four Ways to Make the Next TUC Demo Better”. Send us your suggestions for additio