strikes over oil prices

I was gonna edit my post in that direction as it developed in my mind, but work got in the way.

So from that angle it does come down to whether we see them as petit-bourgeois or not.

I am not sure. I just didn't want to get into an argument in which I had no idea about the facts.

I don't think so, and I didn't suggest that.

Don't you think that the aim of this struggle is relevant?

Devrim

I would point out that the proletariat is often involved in equally populist rhetoric and actions, especially amongst traditional business union's. The tendency, or inclination to such, does not express anything intrinsic, other than the weakness of support for a class-based alternative. I think the same is true of owner-operators; the fact, as you and others have pointed out, that the current protests are populist in nature doesn't express some intrinsic fact of the truck-drivers owner-operators position.

I disagree that you can simply collapse the type and character of the loans and "capital" of the owner-operator and others pushed into the marginal areas.

My use of that term was a bit sloppy, and I'll agree with what you said. I'll agree with the petit-bourgeoisie definition as it is generally understood.

This is where I disagree, and its because I don't believe that there is a "crisis", outside of opposition to the conditions that the funny numbers and arbitrary policy dictates, supposedly, what we should have. If people would just roll over and take it, then there wouldn't be much of a "crisis"; people would just sadly take their lot. The fact there not is causing the voodoo math of the world's elites to fall by the wayside.

Oh, undoubtedly. But whereas the proletariat can, however difficult this process may be, develop its own autonomous struggle the petit-bourgeoisie cannot. The petit-bourgeoisie can only break outside of populist struggles because of the leadership of the proletariat.

I'm not sure I said that. On the contrary, I think the populist nature of the struggle (or at least the incapacity to break away from it) springs directly from their status as owner-operators. I think I said there was a way to push this onto a more proletarian footing but that this would be extremely difficult without leadership from the proletariat proper i.e. a developing strike movement in other sectors of the proletariat.

I disagree with this and would happily discuss this on another thread, but I think it'll derail this one if we get into that discussion here.

Lets try again?

Fair enough.

Bit lost, you don't think bike couriers are owner operators? You didn't suggest that and i did or i quoted the wrong poster.

Yes as it has a direct affect on what comes out of my pocket (price of fuel), as such i'm trying to get my head round it, hence the questions. And the conclusion that as a populist struggle in haulage terms it can't move any further (in a revolutionary sense) as it's aims are to maximise profits in that business, hence the support by a section of bosses, big and small.
However i don't think it's as simple as just a classification, as nothing ever is.

So the proletariat can only break out of populist struggles if it develops it's own autonomous struggle. And the petit-bourgeoisie can only break outside of populist struggles if the proletariat develops it's own autonomous struggle? I think we could possibly add that the proletariat can only negate itself if it's able to integrate large elements of the petit-bourgeoisie and other strata as part of that autonomous struggle - protests and blockades around prices or other issues not directly to do with production are likely to be a part of that.

Yes. The petit-bourgeoisie as a class is incapable of developing any autonomous struggle beyond impotent revolts. They may contribute to social instability but they can't offer the same kind of historical perspective that the proletariat can.

The first part of this I agree with. Of course the proletariat will have to pull other strata behind it, including the petit-bourgeoise (and the peasantry). But it can only provide this leadership once it has, itself, felt its own class power on its own terrain and eliminated petit-bourgeois ideologies from its own ranks.

With regard to blockades and price protests, no, I don't think they will play a significant part in struggles although they could prove a detonator for larger struggles as the example of the Russian Revolution showed earlier. But the proletarian response to the bread crisis in Russia wasn't blockades - it was the development of a mass strike dynamic organised through factory committees and soviets. In other words, the proletariat didn't simply respond as consumers (as the current movement does) but as producers, demonstrating that the immediate problem (rising cost of living) was linked directly to the crisis of the means of production. This was quickly coupled by a realisation that this problem couldn't be simply solved economically but politically i.e. the abolition first of the Tsarist state and then capitalism altogether. The future political struggle will undoubtedly involve confrontations on "issues not directly related to production" but this will be because the struggle itself demands the elmination of national, ethnic, sexual divisions as well as the abolition of the capitalist state and no doubt other issues we haven't even thought of yet.

I'm not condemning general struggles against living conditions, far from it. I'm saying this protest at this moment in time doesn't offer any perspective for advancement of the class struggle. But I think you're looking at the situation in a very abstract way, rather than looking at the balance of class forces, the nature of the different classes involved and their specific interests. I think this springs from a tendency often expressed on libcom to look at any revolt as positive rather than asking who is revolting, why and how.

Well I don't see this as particularly positive, I'm not sure where I said it was such a great development.

However some elements of the 2000 strike do appear to have gone in an interesting direction (at least going by the two wildcat articles - I wasn't in the UK when it happened and haven't read much else about it). More importantly, I think simply complaining about what it's not - not a strike over wages, not a strike by TESCO truckers - runs a very real risk of missing any developments that might occur later on. It also deserves to be looked at in the international context of inflationary pressure and financial crisis - the aforementioned food riots, factory strikes in Vietnam etc. etc. - since oil prices show no signs of going down, and given retail price stickiness will almost certainly go up in the next couple of months even if there's a drop in crude prices, then, again, it's worth looking at this seriously as opposed to dismissing it - neither cheerleading nor dismissal (and I've not seen any elements of the dismissal which go much beyond those quoted by RTS to be honest).

We should ask ourselves why this isn't incorporating other logistics workers, why we're not seeing strikes over wages in the public or private sector on any scale - regurgitating stuff about 'owner-operators' doesn't make any inroads into this.

I think that owner-drivers are a minority among lorry drivers. I've been taking bulk tanker deliveries of chemicals and fuels from over a dozen leading suppliers for over twenty years and only come across one owner-driver. Made him a cup of tea as the code requires and had a chat with him - nice fella.

After the 78 strike the bourgeoisie particularly targetted lorry drivers and their national agreements. Unions aqiesced and assisted in this attack. The 78 strike and the solidarity it aroused shows part of the role of lorry drivers in the productive process and, still today, the important connections that they make between different industries.
As I remember, the Thatcher government encouraged individual drivers with grants to buy their rigs and made sure that they got certain government contracts, some of them involving strikebreaking.

Many owner-drivers are employers of several other drivers. If there are working alone, they are definitely being squeezed by the crisis and will be even more so, just like other elements on the edge of the class. Their situation is difficult and their future lies in rallying behind the proletariat or becoming part of it. Only the class struggle offers them a way out in the longer term.

There are a lot of building working directly employed (big lay-offs have already started) but there are also a lot of builders who work for themselves alone, or there's a couple, or several, owning their own tools, own transport and driving longer and longer distances. They are in a similar situation to owner-drivers but also a similar situation to the working class (the individualisation of their wages is a growing tendency throughout industry). In Britain, and on the continent, these sub-contracting builders and craftsmen have begun strikes themselves or have supported struggles of other workers and directly employed workers have supported them, joining in their fight. Self-employed builders have tended towards the working class, self-employed owner-drivers have tended towards the scabbing end of the spectrum.

Local authority home care workers, mostly women, have to provide their own cars for work in exchange for a pittance in mileage. Workers (probably the great majority) who have to travel to work by car are also being hit by high fuel costs. Does their future lie with lining up behind or alongside owner-driver fuel protests with their "special case" and subsidy demands, or of joining and enlarging the struggle of the workers?

I remain unconvinced by the food riots. They definitely are a response to the crisis, but as to whether they are a proletarian response (which is the crucial question for me) I remain doubtful. Having said that, I don't know enough about these to give a definitive answer and I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility of a positive direction for them for precisely that reason.

On the face of things, the factory strikes in Vietnam seem more positive and able to provide a more positive starting point for a more generalised struggle over living standards.

As for crude prices, there's been a lot of speculation in the financial pages that the current oil spike is actually just another bubble and one that could be about to burst. There's certainly a lot of speculation in oil at the moment and I think this and political issues (Iraq, Iran, etc) are driving the instability far more than fundamental issues like China's consumption, even if the latter is also an issue. But the jury's still out, I think.

I agree that any decline in crude is unlikely to have any immediate benefit for the proletariat and I also think, generally, inflation is here to stay. I don't think the bourgeoisie are consciously trying to return to an inflationary strategy - it's more the byproduct of their efforts to prevent a total collapse and they're worried about it getting out of control. But they're definitely using it to put more pressure on the working class.

The first teacher strike in what, 20 years, was only last month and was specifically orientated around pay vs the rising cost of living! This was combined with a long-running dispute in the public sector, not to mention all the postal strikes that there were last year. So I think it's a bit odd to say there's nothing happening on any scale. But it's obvious that this is nowhere near the level needed to successfully push back these attacks, let alone provide a revolutionary perspective.

As to why the struggle is lagging, given the seriousness of the attacks, there are several factors both contingent and long-term. The most obvious is that the proletariat is still recovering from the long and deep reflux of the 90s and is still in the very earlier stages of reappropriating its methods of struggle. This is why many struggles are orientated around the question of solidarity. Another dampening factor, paradoxically, is the very depth of the crisis - it's obvious, even if only unconsciously, just how little room for manouvre the bourgeoisie has and thus limited capacity to fulfill demands. The threat of unemployment is also very difficult to strike against in the current climate.

Without a political perspective that provides an alternative to the current system, its difficult for the proletariat to move forward - this is being partially answered by the growth of politicised minorities (of which libcom is a part), but it has yet to generalise enough in the class a whole to have a visible effect. And the bourgeoisie is also an active factor, hampering the process - especially in Britain, the grip of unionism is very strong and it will take a series of bitter confrontations with them before workers begin to break outside of their framework.

Having said that, when the proletariat does begin to move, I think there's potential for a rapid development of massive struggles. When this does happen, some of the factors which are currently having a negative effect (the obvious severity of the crisis, the threat of mass unemployment) will have a radicalising effect because they will also reveal the complete bankruptcy of the system. This will also push forward political reflection, thus breaking another hold over the proletariat while the struggles themselves will see increasing confrontation with union structures.

'On any scale' wasn't really what I meant. We've had the initially encouraging but eventually depressing post strikes, and some numerically large one-dayers, and a few ongoing disputes with multiple strike days which didn't spread much or make any links. Of these, I'd say the post was probably the most interesting, but I'd not included it since it was before the recent fuel price hikes (given this thread is about protests specifically in response to those).

BTW there could be a Shell tanker drivers strike - definitely not owner-operators in this case, and definitely not an employers' strike. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1024076/Tanker-drivers-close-hundreds-petrol-forecourts-series-strikes.html

edit: and Bulgarian bus drivers (although this does look like an employers' 'strike'):
http://www.sofiaecho.com/article/bus-drivers-protest-against-high-fuel-prices/id_29504/catid_66

I'm not sure I see the reason for your pessimism. I went to a local union meeting on the day of the teachers' strike and it was quite interesting how much talk there was of "joint action" between the different unions and across sectors. There were speakers from the NUT, a health workers union (Unison if I remember rightly) and a guy from the FBU.

Obviously, the aim of the unions in spouting this verbiage are suspect, but the fact they're being essentially forced to talk this kind of language shows there's an appetite within the class for this. For the moment, of course, this will be smothered by union actions which still retain a very strong grip, but the potential is there.

The postal strikes demonstrated the willingness to resist a whole series of attacks on workers and the increasing use of wildcat strikes shows a determination to get around all the union obstacles, even if there isn't anything like a conscious rejection of the unions yet. Just as importantly, these strikes also pushed small minorities into organising themselves to try and spread the strike. Dispatch was a very important and positive step forward in that arena, however embryonic.

The point is that there is a clear development of an underlying positive dynamic at both the level of the mass struggle and also the activity of the most conscious parts of the class.

I think joint action is less likely this year than last - see Steven.'s post here: http://libcom.org/news/council-workers-vote-action-22052008 - yes there are definitely some encouraging signs, and in the UK as well as internationally - and it probably wouldn't take much to have me feeling optimistic again.

For a start if the tankers strike goes ahead then it's going to have a big impact, be about wages, and will either force some unity with the owner-drivers or show them up as scabs (since the Mail is already painting this as a move to push up prices further).
Couple more articles:
http://ukpress.google.com/article/ALeqM5j4Hp4K1mm5oJ402w__j6pIdqpQTg
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2080478/Petrol-crisis-looms-as-Shell-faces-drivers-strike.html

Looks like talks have collapsed: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/talks+with+tanker+union+breaks+down/2272882

I have no doubt that the unions will do everything in their power to prevent any joint action. Nonetheless, an appetite for it remains in the class however confused this may be at present. This doesn't mean that we'll see any immediate movement on this - it'll take some time before the inevitable questioning of union policies manifests in anything like an explicit rejection. We should also bear in mind that many of these sectors are inexperienced in struggle.

Teachers, for example, haven't been on strike for 20 years. I was at school in the 80s during the last one and there's a whole generation of teachers in schools today who might only just remember that. However, these younger teachers are also feeling the violence of the crisis most severely and this is what is pushing them forward. Young teachers were the most vocal non-platform speakers at the meeting I went to. More and more, I think people are beginning to think they have nothing to lose.

I think the role of minorities is going to be crucial in the coming period. It's going to be up to them to explicitly challenge the union shackles, point to alternative methods of struggles and spread the lessons of each individual struggle as widely as possible. This why its important for those minorities to organise themselves in order to intervene but also to develop a real culture of discussion both amongst themselves and within the working class as a whole. This is the only way the proletariat can develop its consciousness of the real stakes in the situation and raise its struggle to the level required to meet them.

There have been local teachers strikes in the past twenty years, afaik the recent one was the first national strike in 20 years.

You're probably right, but I'd still be surprised if anything like a majority have had experience of it, especially recently. Though it does remind me that the FE lecturers who came out with the teachers were on strike a few years ago and that was national.

Anyway, I think we need to look at the development of future struggles as a process. I think most of the strikes in the immediate future are going to pose questions rather than answer them. But hopefully we'll see the slow reappropriation of lessons which will reappear in the struggles that occur in the medium term.

Owner-driverss are victims of the crisis of capitalism, a crisis that is only going to get worse. But their demands, and similar demands from similar sectors: "special case", "dispensations", "exemptions", "subsidies for our sector", go in the opposite direction to that the working class needs to take. These sectors are small minorities (who work alone) that need to begin to join the struggles of the working class, even if, and particularly if, the latter are not providing a decisive lead. The fairly recent struggles of self-employed builders, craftsmen and sub-contractors gives the example: forging links, unity, solidarity.

Truck drivers - all truck drivers - have an enormous and almost natural respect within the working class. They are a physical link, a face to face connection across the country, across industry and integral to the production process. In however small steps, these links should be built upon in a positive fashion.

According to the BBC, owner-driver protesters blockaded a Shell refinery in Stanlow, Chester yesterday. A "number" of directly employed Shell tanker drivers (I suspect against their union's instructions) refused to cross their picket line and stayed in the depot. The picket line was largely imaginary as it was kept well back by a strong police presence.

I haven't yet read the links above but 500 directly employed tanker drivers under Shell have rejected a six per cent pay offer and want their minimum wage increased by two grand a year.

SOME NOTES CONCERNING FUTURE PROLETARIAN INSURGENCY

Part one: The Dynamics of “Protest” Seen in the Recent Petrol Blockades in Britain

Below are some brief notes regarding the recent petrol blockades in Britain (September and November 2000). What hooks our attention in these events is not the “consciousness” of the protesters, whether the protesters were “reactionary” or “petty bourgeois/middle class”, but the dynamic of the struggle; the truisms it laid bare; the potential for utilising some of the tactics employed, and lessons that might be learned, in the future struggles of wage labour.

September 2000, an outbreak of effective popular spontaneity occurs, i.e., a non-formal organisation takes the State unawares, the police back off, approaches are made to identify leaders so as to enter into a condition of negotiation and thus out of crisis.

The size of public support takes everyone by surprise. The left condemn the fuel protesters as fascists because the protesters reveal no apparent ideological consciousness, and are often petit bourgeois/middle class, even being employers themselves.

Many people comment on the pleasurable quietness of the world, people start talking to each other - the privations generate a sense of pleasurable solidarity. “Social dislocation” is not as unpleasant as the media try to make us believe.

Objectively, the blockades bite very quickly into the reserves of the ‘Just in Time’ economy - the State seems paralysed, unable to strike out in all directions at once, its counter insurgency measures appear to simply rely on information gathering. But as there is no intelligence (i.e., there is no overt, formal leadership as yet: everyone is involved), it sits and does nothing.

Protesters call off the blockades, formalise a pressure group, set timescales and make demands.

A propaganda offensive is begun by the State particularly through progressive and green journalists.

Leaders are identified and very quickly are divided into moderates and extremists, debates are set up between them, on Channel Four News etc., in order to establish rivalries.

The formalisation of the protesters organisation places it within the State’s discourse. What matters now is not the statement of feral power on the roads but of having opened up a direct route of negotiation with the State (a Trojan horse in reverse, the State allowed such an opportunity precisely because it could neutralise that kind of organisation).

When it was publicly perceived that this was not a peasants revolt but just a bunch of petty capitalists trying to get a little bit extra then public support very quickly dwindled. What they had liked was the “aggro”, the sight of workers confidently taking on the state, when that proved to be not really the case, they lost interest, “the public” has no interest in issues (consciousness) only in power and counter power. p>

Of course the enticement of negotiation was a lie, the state will exact a revenge on the individuals involved. Melville writes in Billy Budd of a system of power whereby the ship’s master-at-arms has means at his disposal for punishing individuals who may not have broken any rules but have become subversive of the ship’s spirit. It is described as being down on you, Billy Budd finds that he encounters all sorts of inexplicable bad things happening to him, petty things but annoying all the same. And all the while the master-at-arms, who orchestrates Budd’s perplexity, smiles at him.

The build up to the proposed actions planned for November are portrayed in the media as indecisive, weak and confused. The protesters, in a classic tactical error, but under immense pressure and no doubt destabilisation strategies, decide in favour of adopting a policy of gaining State recognition (and respectability) and forget the blockading lessons of their earlier efforts. One ‘leader’ publicly declares that if any unruly drivers picket a fuel depot he will personally go to them and demand they stop. There has developed within the drivers leadership an aversion to the tactic of the blockades, a vertigo at the prospect of so much instant power, a terror of what they have done.

In general terms we should see this stage not so much as a crisis of consciousness but a forgetting of the nature of power in the rush to be heard and to be accepted by the State. The impulse to act within the law, to appear respectable and within the pale is very strong - most protest groups see the adoption of a rational, media acceptable face as the only way of getting things done. But the public were not interested in the ‘issue’ what they admired was the actualisation of power created by the blockaders, power attracts support – from this we can infer that a large section of the populace will become pro-revolutionary almost immediately in any similar crisis initiated by a proper working class intervention, and they will do so not because of the issue at hand but because they sense their direct access to power.

Police anti-convoy tactics. Splitting up convoys, individual harassment, setting routes and no-go zones (firstly they just want to negotiate, open up channels, they then use these ‘channels’ as a means for dictating terms to the protesters). Changing of plans, abandoning agreements without notice. Provocation and intimidation, including videoing (in one incident a driver demanded that a TV camera crew observe the blatant police surveillance he was suffering, the camera didn’t move). Given that the September blockades had conveyed a sense of power, solidarity and strength, the harmonised work of the police and media was now to generate images and actions of weakness and division. We saw hysterical, frustrated drivers, the derisory ‘convoy’ of a few lorries and the protesters represented (as are all non-establishment political entities) as a minority divided from the normal and neutral population as a whole.

The informational forces of the State had, by November, plenty of time to gear up, the State shepherded the ‘convoy’ down to London like it was droving sheep for market day. The despair of the drivers in the convoy became apparent as they realised they’d been had. “Now it’s gloves off,” snarled one of them to the TV news, impotently. The lorry drivers suddenly became another squealing TV protest group like the Greenham Women. The shrillness of tone in itself indicates powerlessness and interrupts any potential solidarity or support.

It seems therefore that making demands on the back of popular revolt is automatically a disaster because revolt cannot be called back, also it cannot be called for in advance, there is an alchemy to it, a mystery, it just happens, it cannot be made into a political entity. The Situationists had it right: the only call to revolt is to say to it, “Call that a revolt, that’s nothing! Take courage you pussyfooters, one more step.” Revolt is a blind bull feeling for a way out of the field and into a different arena, what it lacks is not consciousness but tools that are applicable to the job.

It seems the move to symbolic action (as opposed to real action) is a disaster and everyone who had previously pricked up their ears lost interest.

Local negotiation with the police is a disaster as they will use any agreement as a lever.

Announcing in advance what you are going to do is a disaster because the State will stop you, there should always be alternatives and contingencies including absolute silence and doing nothing.

What we have learnt:

When revolts of this nature occur we tend to begin to speculate about ways that we (as radicals) might have related to such an event, or how we might relate to a similar one in the future, especially if the revolt in question had a proletarian character. We can see how the methods used in this revolt might be taken up by proletarian insurgents; therefore it is useful to think about how we might react to such future possibilities.

The petrol blockades show the apparent importance of using “anti-informational techniques”. Most (repressive, dividing, and controlling) State activity works by identifying individuals and relating them through organisational structures, all membership organisations, therefore, are built with flaws present from the outset which the State is able to exploit, usually to the detriment of the whole “movement”. (Look at the film, The Battle of Algiers.)

In general terms spontaneity is one anti-informational technique, another is the absence of significant individuals. In particular (as radicals who desire the overthrow of capitalism), we can also draw the lesson that “the revolution” is not the (“revolutionary”) organisations’ preserve. Still another anti-informational stance is group openness, explicitness and coherence (not openness to the State but to comrades: no fronts; no issues; no hidden agendas). Nothing can be found out that is not hidden. Structurally, genuinely radical “political” groups will never be more than pro-revolutionary, so if they are neutralised then it will make no decisive difference because the action is going on elsewhere (this is only a rationalisation of what is already true). The role of organised groups is very specific, they are not a vanguard but can have a decisive role, they are never revolutionary, they are pro-revolutionary and as such can bring things as a kind of service provider to workers engaged in direct struggle. Therefore, in a similar situation to the fuel blockades, the pro-revolutionary group will agitate to clarify what is going on, to maintain the situation, to further the sense of power and progress by interventions on small ‘second fronts’ (in their localities or at work, for example), to provide communication and information. When nothing is happening these organisations should do nothing more than maintain networks at a minimal level.

The most important lesson of the blockades, and their subsequent translation into symbolic protest, is to do nothing unless you have the power to do it successfully (give the State no chance to practice its techniques) and then do nothing that feels like a retreat or a crossing over into a terrain described by the State (i.e. don’t let them set the terms, it would have been better if the fuel protesters had done nothing after September, that way the threat would have remained).

What is certain is that most of the radical movement will instantly pass over onto the terrain of the State in the event of any crisis but this may be just a short term thing (most of the left supported both the action of the State against the blockaders and the bombing of Serbia) when they have regained their nerve they may return to their radical democratic (and thus, still anti-proletarian) positions. It is quite plain that these radicals are a miserable shower.

Red Robbie, Proletarian Gob, Nov. 2000

I've just read the first Wildcat link above and one point I agree with is how truck drivers were forced into becoming owner-drivers within the bourgeoisie's counter-attack of the early 80s in Britain. It was the bourgeoisie that engineered this counter-offensive and that's an important point. Also I have no truck with anyone that has no truck with truckers - it's mentioned a couple of times above how leftism has labelled them "fascists".

When, in the early 70s, working in the main production and distribution centre of a beer industry, we attempted to spread our strike to outlying depots, it was the drivers that spread the word. Face to face information and discussions about decisions supported by the majority countered the disinformation of the management and other shop stewards. Artic drivers were particularly successful in spreading the strike over a 300 mile radius, as if the size of the vehicle gave weight to their mandate.

The lorry driver's strike of 78 was a magnificent push forward in struggle by this sector of the working class and their example led not only to the extension of solidarity but the extension of other wildcats, not least thousands of steel workers on the streets in 79.

The particular revenge of the bourgeosie on the drivers was terrible; it was if they brought a curse of biblical proportions down on their heads. They turned this sector of the class, or the image of this sector of the class, into its anti-thesis, into greedy scabs. Mostly manipulation and ideology and the directly employed majority of drivers were also tainted - which is what the bourgeoisie wanted. And this ideology contained an element of truth as the miners' strike was to prove later (though, as the Wildcat piece above says, the real scab was the NUM).

I haven't heard any more about what happened at the Shell depot at Chesire on Saturday, but news this morning is that tens of thousands of Spanish truckers are involved in some sort of protests?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7443257.stm

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080609/ts_afp/europeinflationprotestenergytransport;_ylt=AmKoMKafJmgo9arVl60_f7as0NUE

Report (in Spanish) of a CGT backed demo with a hundred or so lorries in Barcelona - http://www.rojoynegro.info/2004/spip.php?article22670
More reports from around Spain - http://www.alasbarricadas.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=35979

The Shell drivers' strike is on: http://www.google.co.uk/news?hl=en&ned=uk&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1220947814

I thought it'd get called off after all the hype. Of course David Davis resigning has dropped it off the front pages.

Panic buying everywhere and I heard from a tanker driver today that the picket lines were being respected by other drivers (he heard it on the radio).

On the assumption it continues past today, I've started a new thread for the Shell strike here: http://libcom.org/forums/news/shell-drivers-strike-13062008

Article (in Spanish) from Rojo y Negro about the situation of owner drivers in Spain - http://www.rojoynegro.info/2004/spip.php?article22753

Reasonably interesting WSWS article with the usual caveats: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/shel-j20.shtml