IWCA

saii reposts some articles to news: http://libcom.org/tags/freedom-0 - I think not having a better web presence is due to lack of time and resources.

I think it depends whether you see local party politics happening in isolation from the national level.

yep, which is the point i've been making to cantdo, and the point of using freedom as a counter example is freedom is generally run by people who have much more tendency to both naturally embrace the internet as a tool for communication and to look at things very much at the global/national levels - and even then we can't get freedom on the internet

does it? if one does then clearly the libelious activities of the deputy leader of oxford city council shows that the iwca are clearly considered a threat at the local level, and if one doesn't, then it clearly shows the libelious activities of the deputy leader of oxford city council shows that the iwca are clearly considered a threat at both the local, and potentially national, level, so i'm not sure what point it is you're trying to make here

Well a threat can mean 'embarrassing' or it can mean 'likely to take the council within two years'. - embarrassing is probably enough to warrant a slagging off and extra effort during elections. But what I don't understand is why so much importance is placed on the opinions of New Labour.

I think saii's mentioned before that he doesn't see much point for Freedom having a newspaper-style site (with online editions etc.) given libcom.org/news exists - so he feeds articles from /news in to Freedom, and articles from Freedom into /news - saving a lot of duplication of effort. This is a fairly specific situation and one that's completely different to the IWCA's online presence so I'm not sure there's much of a comparison.

Hackney Independent always posted newsletters up as PDFs at the same time as doing door to door distribution (and it wasn't me doing it before you ask). I know for a fact that more than a couple of people got involved having first read about HI on the internet because I was one of them. I lived in Hackney, but the opposite corner to their main distribution area so despite being 'local' would probably never have seen a newsletter otherwise, either through my door or elsewhere. Uploading a PDF every couple of months takes a few minutes once you've got it set up, doing door to door distribution across the whole of Hackney would've meant 24 hour distributions for weeks at a time and costing thousands of pounds.

sorry one other thing i meant to say in response to cantdo, the iwca is not totally oblivious to workplace organising and issues, in fact they were behind an attempt to make oxford icity council the only council in the uk to officially support the recent national postal strike

http://www.oxfordmail.net/display.var.1589337.0.councillors_asked_to_back_postal_strike.php

now obviously a council motion expressing support for a strike doesn't really do, or mean much in itself (although it could be argued that it would have given striking posties a bit of a boost confidence wise if they were to start seeing this kind of thing happen), but it does go somewhat against the line being pushed that the iwca don't give a fuck about workplace issues and organising

that's as maybe but i'm not getting the connection between this and your original point about local & national politics which was my original question

whose placing any importance on the opinions of new labour, it's the actions of those in power that's what's being highlighted here (new labour are in government if you hadn't noticed), the fact that they feel the respond in the manner that they have done does beg a few questions

well there is a comparison in that both organisations feel that their (severly limited) time & resources could be spent more productively in other areas

yep i agree, and i think that's where people involved in the iwca who don't have an active branch locally (and let's face it that's a lot of areas!) could be more involved in helping out with this kind of thing

OK I'll try again. Having a couple of outspoken independent councillors is embarrassing to the deputy leader of a council and is likely to involve both a slagging off and some reinforcements on election day - it doesn't however put the position of the deputy leader at risk in any serious way - the most you might do is tip the balance on a council hung between two of the three major parties - which they'd both exploit to gain extra votes for each other.

To take the analogy further, getting a majority on a council would be embarrassing for the parliamentary labour party, but it wouldn't put their position at risk, or be anywhere near threatening majorities in other councils. When Ken Livingston was an independent mayor this wasn't particularly notable, nor was it when he was Labour, neither do I think that Boris Johnson constitutes a sea change towards the Tories. fwiw I think lots of people massively overemphasise the success of the BNP using this kind of criteria as well.

This goes back to my point about some anarchists probably thinking heavy handed policing makes them a threat - doesn't mean they are. And again I don't think what happens in town halls has much relevance in the day-to-day class struggle - councillors have very few powers anyway, and any council that was taken over could very quickly have funding dried up and measures taken against individual councillors.

Freedom isn't an organisation.

christ you havn't half turned into a pedantic fuckwit of late, all through this thread the bulk of your argument has centred upon picking up on semantics and pedantry, so your saying that freedom is produced magically out of thin air and in no way has a team of people who are specifically involved in putting the thing together, who do not act and think in terms of an organisation in relation to the publication of freedom, who don't have regular meetings to discuss all relevant issues to the publication and ongoing strategy of the newspaper, who don't face the same difficulties that any group of people do when they combine together, with limited resources & skills, to carry out a particular task or tasks

as for your first point it still bears no connection to your original point about this seperation of local & national politics that you seem to hold so central in determining whether labour are riled at the success of the iwca

and as for your other point you completely miss the point (again) - do you honestly think that the reaction against the iwca is only at the level of town hall politics and not in terms of the wider activities, whether elecotral or non-electoral, that reaction is aimed at breaking down any kind of inertia that develops where communities get together to confront problems faced by that community, that movement undermines the role of both local government and the police (as can be seen from the newton link at the start of this thread) and as such it's reacted heavily against, how you can compare this to the policing of a toy town anarchist demonstration is beyond me

Charming. How's those windows doing?

No, I made plenty of arguments earlier which had nothing to do with pedantry, and you refused to answer any of them, remember? Feel free to start doing so rather than throwing meaningless insults around.

No. I'm saying the IWCA is a political organisation, and Freedom is a newspaper (I'm not sure if two editors is enough to call it an editorial collective, although there's at least one other person who does layout etc. and regular writers). Same as libcom.org isn't an organisation. I just don't think it's a meaningful comparison, same as I wouldn't compare Freedom and the AF. Nothing to do with pedantry at all.

Either way, the most recent article online from freedom is from this month, and the news page on the IWCA's national site is a broken link with ads for window cleaners: http://www.iwca.info/cgi-bin/iwcanews.pl - might be worth getting that fixed.

I'll never understand the hard on for the IWCA amongst some people, they're like a really shit militant for the 'post ideological' consensus.

yawn

as did i, although according to you i had only one liners, insults and unsupported assertions to offer on this thread, so don't get the hump when you get that shit thrown back at you

are you seriously trying hard to be thick, the comparison is with a group of people who have pooled their limited skills & resources together to carry out a particular task - it doesn't matter what said organisations (or groups of people trying to do something in case that throws you into another pedant attack) are or aren't, the point is that said group of people are usually most effective when they choose wisely and realistically how to best expend those limited resources that they have control over in order to achieve their agreed objectives - this is a generic point which has fairly universal applicablity, your trying to get round this fairly generic point by drawing pedantic lines of differentiation between things which are meaningless for the general point being made, i mean are you saying that this principle doesn't apply to either AF or the group who does freedom, or indeed libcom (you've made the same point yourself about how you can make better use of your time by concentrating on the site library and the like rather than spending your time moderating discussions on the boards), if not then why differentiate? if not for pedantry then what?

actually apologies for snapping back there (and the previous one) just some other stuff at the moment that's put me on a short fuse

here's your argument why local govt represents the interests of the ruling class:

this is what happens when you try to manage capital in workers' interests: you just can't. workers on a grassroots level can fight for things like a living wage, but politicians of whatever level are useless - whether they're well-intentioned or not.

i presume we've moved on from the pedantry of what constitutes an organisation (just to be clear in my mind it's any group of people who organises to achieve something)

i just wanted to add that your point about reinforcements on election day, indeed they were in the run up, in no less form than the prime minister who when visiting oxford made three visits to various parts of oxford, blackbird leys (sitting councilor - iwca's lee cole who lost his seat to the wife of labour MP andrew smith), churchill (sitting councilor - iwca's claire kent who lost her seat to labour ) and oxford bus company (the workplace of stuart craft, the iwca councilor of northfield brook ward)

probably just coincidence eh

I saw Gary O'Shea, a leading member of the IWCA speak at Projectile this Saturday, in Newcastle, most of what he said was excellent - spot on, and I can't imagine many sensible class struggle anarchists disagreeing with 95% of it.

This would be the same leading member of the IWCA who spent about two years talking shit about 'sensible class struggle anarchists' on the Urban75 right?