IWW meeting at parliament

Respectfully, I have no wish to get into an ideological debate here. That's not my intent or interest.

I guess folks were being critical of the IWW for something they may not agree. OK, fair play. As a non-participant, I was trying to get a handle as to why a tactic or opportunity chosen or taken in this instance.But the history is there to simply say, this has been done before. Even at the height of industrial strength and application of mass engagement, appearing before legislative bodies have happened. Well, surely here in the US. Perhaps not in the UK, and my bad for not understanding UK labour history.

Edited by syndicalist

Syndicalist - it'll be the new auto anti spam blocking, not anything personal!

tbh nobody really knows the facts here. this could well just be one wobbly invited to speak who hastily knocked up a flyer without giving it a second thought. so there's no grounds to be leaping to conclusions that the IWW is adopting a strategy of Early Day Motions and lobbying the Labour Left. On the other hand, a meeting in the House of Commons does seem to jar with the spirit of the preamble, so I think people are entitled to ask questions too.

As far as i'm concerned what the IWW does is the IWW's business, but as a member of a comradely organisation who has recently supported IWW struggles and been supported in ours by them, it's helpful to know how they see themselves and what direction they're trying to move in. I'm certainly not interested in point scoring bollocks which benefits nobody, though criticism - if the facts merit it - isn't the same as point scoring. I'd expect the same from others if any of you thought SolFed was making a mistake, whether I agreed or not.

Indeed, Personally speaking i would generally disagree with involving MP's in workplace struggles because i think that real power lies in direct action.
That said i think jumping to conclusions here is a bad idea, also I would say it would be better if anarchos contacted the branch or talked to people involved, Rather than just coming on here and muttering about it like this was twitter or summat. .
Other than that i'd agree with jasons points earlier in the thread. And as always would like to see less talk and more action.

For the IWW to have "dropped the anarcho from anarcho-syndicalism", one would have to assume that they had been "anarcho" to begin with. However, the IWW has held the same "non-political" stand from the beginning. "Non-political" here refers to electoral and party politics, and the IWW has never claimed to be without politics.

The "One Big Union" idea refers to the idea that all workers should be in the same union regardless of the type of work they are doing, their employment status, their nationallity, their political party affiliation, etc. This is an idea that was traditionally shared by anarcho-syndicalist organizations.

I don't know why you think this is a big departure from the "IWW of old". The IWW in its heyday frequently solicited help from Socialist Party politicians. The most famous example of this was from the Lawrence strike in 1912:

From The American Socialist Movement 1897-1912 by Ira Kipnis:

Also during the Lawrence stike:

(New York Times, February 27, 1912)

No, it doesn't assume they had to be anarcho to begin with. It assumes they are a syndicalist (which the IWW strives to be in practice, if not in name) organisation that is not explicitly anarchist. In other words, it simply posits the IWW in relation to syndicalist unions that have a higher political requirement for membership.

Regarding the OBU, I think that's one interpretation of it--and one that assumes members do accept the anti-capitalist premise of the union. However, if that was the case, members wouldn't accept a lot of the stuff done in the name of the IWW (no strike and mgmt rights clauses, state registration/use of the NLRB). Outside of revolutionary times (see below) OBUism allows non-revolutionary workers to join the organisation.* If that's the case, the internal democracy of the IWW (certainly a good thing!), means that workers undertake reformist/collaborationist within the union.

(FWIW, I think this OBUism has some currency in pre-revolutionary times when workers assume the class only needs a little push to bring about revolutionary activity. In such a situation, revolutionary workers will come to you on the basis of revolutionary platform, even if you don't express a particular ideology. The same can't be said in low points of class struggle and I think this is where a lot of the complications of the current IWW come in...)

Finally, as I alluded to in another post, requesting a government investigation is a long way off from assuming that government motions and politicians are the way to forward your cause and so hosting/participating in parliamentary meetings.

*In terms of anacho-syndicalist unions, while we have a political requirement to join, our goal is to see A/S methods dispersed as widely as possible across the class and will of course organise with non-A/S workers, just not have them join our organisation.

This comment is not meant to be generalisable, but I want to describe a certain error I think I see in the way some people address the UK IWW. The UK IWW is a mix between a militant direct democratic union and a network of militant workplace activists. In other words, it combines two elements of old school 'apolitical' syndicalism. However, some people like to criticise it as if it were a political organisation with a concrete program and ideology, which it manifestly is not. The UK IWW is not a straight forward continuation of the 20s IWW in the US, nor is it some alternative syndicalist group to SolFed. It is a small class struggle labour initiative based around federalism and direct action. This means that the role of anarchists in the IWW is not to endorse it wholesale but -to use an unfashionable term- to bore from within, and to make progress in turning a genuinely working class fighting organisation towards a revolutionary practice. Obviously this goal can only be comprehensively achieved during upsurges in the movement. None the less, and despite the small size of the organization, anarchist communists taking part in the IWW can promote all sorts of concrete class struggle practices and advocate in real situations of struggle anarchist strategies. The same cannot be said of any other long lasting group in the UK, though it certainly can be said of groups like Sparks or the Workmates.

Make that "militant democratic trade union" and I agree with you.

However, much of the leadership and large sections of the union want the UK to explicitly endorse the three Rs of trade unionism: recognition, registrations, and representations. I mean, these are the people who specifically down play the preamble and focus instead on democracy and militancy (which, of course, are part and parcel of the preamble, but there's a lot more there, too). The network only exists where the IWW can't secure recognition, but recognition and representation is always the final goal.

That's fine (the IWW is the organisation its members want it to be), but the problem with such a situation is that those functions create both structural and legal hurdles to both democracy and militancy. Not to mention leading to reformist behaviour.

But oddly, the anarchists that are doing this aren't tying to make it more anarchist but less, insisting it becomes as broad and big as possible. There are two arguments for this: the L&S lot who are just plain self-described 'pragmatic' reformists and some AFers, who i think are only in the IWW because its broad based and so wouldn't want to 'anarchise' it (although there doesnt seem to be an agreed strategy, on the frontline suggests they want it to be a broad-based network that fails to become a union). (a third argument is some anarchists I've spoken to who think it already is anarcho-syndicalist, on the grounds that it's syndicalist and they're anarchist, but I don't know how widespread that is). This is precisely how organisations which eschew a politics of their own create a vacuum for different groups to vie for control. But thankfully SF aren't 'boring from within' to get into a power struggle and change the nature of the organisation, we're just getting on with our thing and letting them get on with theirs, while supporting workers in struggle.

But for all the solidarity you might offer, effectively you're working alongside people making it harder for you to promote pure class-based politics. I really don't want to shit-stir but take L&S for example.. and no doubt some L&S person is going to go off on one, but that's pretty much exactly what I believe to be true, they are no good and quite frankly, the IWW as a monolithic whole could do with disassociating from organisations such as that as gracefully as possible, it's not quite that simple obviously.. but still...

I think that confused left-communists/anarcho-communists and syndicalists are all safe bets really I wouldnt for example include green anarchists or platformists in there, of course it depends on their very own politics but I hope you get my gist. The point is that there are definite boundaries and I think that it can be very clear what these are, but perhaps I am being too simplistic.

And seeing people mention Sparks or Workmates, those organisations make a huge amount of sense really and I think internally struggling for power (not for personal gain, not for ideological gain) against reactionary forces in those would be absolutely 110% worthwhile.

That's great, and whilst I'm much more in line with SF than the IWW politically I also live in the real world and can't just get together with people with basically the exact same ideas as me to change the world. I have to operate in the conditions I live in. For me that means taking part in the IWW because it's an actual network of (admitidly only a few) militants where I live, and SolFed is a thing no one has heard of where I live and which almost no one would be interested in (based on experience of talking about it).

I dunno if you have a problem with anarchists/lib-coms vying for 'control' of organisations in the sense of winning people round to our way of thinking and operating. I certainly don't. That book Black Flame has lots of good accounts of exactly this. In fact I can't think of a serious anarchist militant in an actually broad based movement who hasn't spent time and energy 'boring from within' in not explicitly anarchist and communist organisations outside of revolutionary periods. Even the 30s CNT was the product of anarchists 'winning' the labour movement in Spain over the their ideas (though not that comprehensively as it turned out). Obviously unions are a fairly shit place to do this today. But the IWW is a weird one in that it is amenable to anarchists edging it towards being a functioning lib-com organisation. I also do stuff with my local anti-cuts group and my local student group. And I take the same attitude there. And yes there are power struggles which you really have to engage with. Because the SWP want to have big rallies where they can sell their papers. And I (and others) want to try and be effective on our terms. I mean, I could be the local branch of SF all by myself and operate under conditions of ideological purity. But I tend to favour engaging with the rest of the world at least a bit.

As for the people you talk about doing wacky shit in the organisation, fine, they might have stupid ideas and be Bad Anarchists. But the fact that people are engaging in shoddy ways with the IWW in no way at all means that people can't or shouldn't engage in productive ways with it. Also I think the way in which people evaluate the IWW as a national organisation is very misguided. Local groups have a huge amount of autonomy, and the fact L&S are playing power games in London and Edinburgh, or wherever, has basically fuck all effect on the provinces in many ways. In fact, in the Birmingham/west midlands branch, probably the second biggest and most active in the country, I'd be surprised if many of them knew L&S exists. Even in London, most of the shit that is actually happening is being done by people who don't give a toss about L&S even if they know about it, which they likely don't.

Edit: to give background, I should say that I tried to get people interested in setting up a SolFed local, but there were people who were much more interested in resuscitating the moribund local IWW branch so I went along with that instead. In some ways I'm pleased this is how things went because there is not the base for a SolFed local that I could muster, where as the IWW local is growing at an encouraging pace.

Just to point out that the West Midlands "Regional Organiser" is L&S. I agree their influence is over stated, but just because members don't know the names of L&S members, it doesn't mean that their ideas and strategies don't get implemented.

Interesting post tho, I want to come back to it later.

Just quickly, this isn't what SF do. Virtually all of our organising is aimed outwards at non-members. Just because we don't sign everyone up as a precondition of organising doesn't mean we just talk amongst ourselves! We just don't think there's any point recruiting people who don't share our aims, or they'd just become paper members or drop out again. But even then it's not a tight party line political agreement, it's a practical agreement whilst abiding by the A&Ps/constitution (i.e. you don't need to agree with every word but you need to act within it). We emphatically don't demand tight political agreement before organising with workmates or others with grievances.

I know, and that's all totally fine and I am in favour of SolFed's approach. What I was trying to say is that I personally as an individual couldn't get people interested in setting up a SolFed local, and I see no merit in being part of a group where there is no one else local (again, this is me speaking as a particular individual). So I put my energy into reforming the IWW local, which a few people were enthusiastic about and a few more showed an interest in. SolFed only slightly appealed to the very few people I know who have basically the exact same ideas as me. That's the concrete situation as opposed to the intention of SolFed as an organisation, which I am not criticising.

The main point being that even if SolFed is better on paper, somtimes other organisations are better in practice for turning energy into action from the point of view of particular people. And probably there are even more ideologically sound organisations than SolFed who have even better intentions when it comes to organising, but if I can't do organising effectively under their banner I'll leave them to the side for the moment too.

edit: also my previous post had a fairly agressive tone for which I apologise, not least because it obscured my meaning a fair bit.