Lesser known IWA Groups

A new website KRAS makes is www.aitrus.info

It has lots of good information on it about the IWA.

You can also try this blog and click the tags on the groups to see some things from recent months: http://www.internationalworkersassociation.blogspot.com/

People from PA and KRAS sometimes read Libcom, so they can answer themselves. About PA activity: http://internationalworkersassociation.blogspot.com/2010/09/sprava-o-cinnosti-priamej-akcie-map.html COB just had a Congress and sent out some info - I can ask them what info could be public and I can ask somebody from SP to answer here.

In terms of the Friends of the IWA groups, I think they are not very active.

PA has an English section http://www.priamaakcia.sk/kategoria/english/ of its website which is occassionaly updated.

For a long time I thought AIT-SP (Portuguese section) was dormant but it seems that they've become very active recently, especially in Porto. They have a newsletter every two months (although it's on number 36, so I guess that's been going on awhile), and last year they produced their own magazine as well as a joint magazine with the CNT of Galicia, a region of Spain north of Portugal where the local language is very similar to Portuguese (or a dialect, depending on who you ask). This last magazine was quite good (there's an article I've been meaning to translate), and also seems to be a good step to reach out to what is supposedly a large community of Portuguese immigrant workers in Spain.

I don't know what kind of relation they have to class struggles in Portugal, though.

Their magazine and newsletter are really nice. Maybe a comrade from SP can say something about your question.

As far as I know, COB in Brazil are technically a banned organisation, which has impeded much of their activity.

The group in Colombia are practically non-existent as far as i can see. Unfortunately, radical ideas in Colombia are dominated by foquistas and neo-platformists who defend Chavez. That said, apparently there are some newish "anarchist" groups emerging...

I thought the ASF split and aren't technically in the IWA right now?

ASF is a friend.

I think a couple of the semi-regular Melbourne posters on LibCom are ASF members - no doubt they could tell us more.

Hmmm..... this may have been true some 20 odd years ago, but today? I remember when the COB started to reorganize. We all supporeted their work. They faced some repression with their work on the rails. I always recall the same group of COBistas being openly active.

Maybe there is something still "on the books", but as far as I can tell, they have been open, above ground and active for many, many years..

It appeared to a problem when they hosted the IWA Congress last year and were unable to term it such in their prop. It does appear to be applied unevenly though, with some locals operating openly.

Interesting, didn't know that. But, then again, its been a long while since we've really had any functional knowledge or contact with the COB.

I'm curious then, is the Brasilian CP also banned? I ask casue it was also a pre-dictatorship organization, as was the COB.

I think this could also have to do with Brazilian labor laws, which haven't changed since the Vargas dictatorship. There is a 'union tax', where workers in a certain industry automatically have a certain amount removed from their pay to give to the union. Unions outside of this regime face a lot of problems. At least this is what I understood from a conversation with a COBista.

I've just translated their article "Unid@s e auto-organizad@s nós damos-lhes “a crise”!!!" "United and Self Organised: We'll give them a crisis!"

I've sent it to them to check/agree before posting.

The NSF is the IWA Secretariat.

In days of old. (see:http://libcom.org/library/iwa-today-south-london-dam-1985, scroll down to NSF) Aside from the IWA Secretariat, not sure what they do these days.

Good point Syndicalist. The NSF, in existence since 1977, and a major player on the IWA ideological front, has no website, no publications and no locals. Does anyone know anything about this group who are the IWA Secretariat for the second time in a relatively short time? Are they skint, should we send some money to them to start up a website or put out a paper?

You can find a two year old article in english about the activities of AIT- Portuguese section and situation in Portugal at our website: http://iwa-portuguese-section.blogspot.com/2009/12/social-situation-in-portugal-and.html

The main evolution since then was the growth of the Porto local group and increase in activities mainly in the propaganda field. There was also solidarity activity against recent trials of anarchists and social activists, like the trial of the Lisbon 11 (concerning an antifascist/anticapitalist demonstration in 2007) and the trial of the Porto 4 accused of defamation of the Portuguese foreign service (SEF).

Recently AIT-SP organized some very successful anarcho-syndicalist public debates both in Lisbon and Porto.

AIT-SP is a very small but increasingly active organization. It is of course quite limited by the loss of almost all anarcho-syndicalist and anarchist tradition in Portugal and by the absence of any visible social conflict beyond the orchestrations of the two big official trade unions and left parties.

For the next 24th November a joint general strike has been called by the two big official unions (CGTP and UGT) against the austerity measures. AIT-SP will of course be active in this.

Let me be clear comrades, the NSF may be doing stuff that they report only internally to the IWA Section's. So on that basis I wouldn't know. I can only speak to as I knew them as a section. I figured I add what I knew since no one else commented on them.

Well we sent some solidarity faxes for a work conflict they were involved in and we heard more at the IWA conference. But I don't know if this is for external information. Personally I think this represents a generational thing that they don't use computer technology so much or perhaps they think such work is better carried out in a more covert way. I don't know. I think in this day and age it is important to use the potential of the internet, although for some it is not so easy.

We have some sites but our official one is not the best. On the other hand, we know some groups in the world that are smaller than us who have really good sites. I think a lot depends simply on who your members are and if anybody has an inclination towards this.

What is true is that the situation and possibilities to do things vary greatly from country to country and the legacy of past movements also play a role. Now, when we see in some countries new anarchosyndicalist groups popping up where there were none for years, we know that it will start out small and take time to build. No getting around that.

So cheers and solidarity to our sister organizations that are trying to do more, spread the word and get more involved in some concrete struggles.

there was even a small section in Svalbard during the 1920ies with 280 members, the Spitzbergens Syndikalistisk Federation (SSF): http://klassenkampf.uuuq.com/264.pdf (in German), the Swedish SAC had 170 members there (in total, there were around 1300 workers on Svalbard in this period)

Hello everybody from this forum.

i am member of IWA and my section is AIT-SP.
you can find all the information you want about the Portuguese Section of IWA in our blog (this one: http://ait-sp.blogspot.com/ in Portuguese, and there is also thing's in english, that is this adress: http://iwa-portuguese-section.blogspot.com/search/label/English ) further we will do one text about our section to be published in internet, in english and other languages. but for now you can see this.

Saúde e Anarquia

The class struggle and the "social contestation" in Portugal, is sleeping under the influence and control of the "left parties"...

this don't answer your question; but first you have to see that you are asking thing's about one Section and not personal view's. and secound, where are you come from? in your land does REALLY exist "class struggle"??? if you are from a "private capitalist" land, you for sure will see that the "working class" is more and more divide, and the people, with all the alienation and "american individualism" (in the way that Emma Gol'dman used this expression), are more and more unconscient and don't even know wich one is their class anymore...
so this question, have to be made in diferent way, for example:
what is the relationship of us, with the worker's?(or: how strong is our influences in the working class? (working class as we, anarcho-sindicalist's understand this therme)
than, there is in Portugal "social contestation"?
and, if there is, (now yes, you should ask) what kind of relation we have in the "class struggle" and what is our "papper" in this struggle?

and even with this question's, you can not get one answer of the Portuguese section of IWA itself, but yes, personal opinion and view's. to now the opinion of AIT-SP about any question, you have to contact the organization itself, by the "oficial" e-mail.

I guess I was trying to figure outr why the COB was banned. Was it based on all organizations that were banned under the dictatorship or something particular to anarchists and, specifically, anarcho-syndicalists. I definately was not trying to make any political connections between the COB and anyone else. Just looking to see if there was historical precende or something.

What sems to be the "real" reason then?

That's why I was asking what you meant by "banned". I really didn't understand.

As far as I know, the COB are "banned" only in the meaning that they don't have legal existance. That's because the organization of "Centrais" and unions is regulated by the State, because of Union tax and all of that. Other than that, they have a site, blogs and publications. If they were banned in Brasil, all of those things would likely have led to their prisons and such.

Of course, in my country violent repression is all too often, and mysterious deaths of people involved in political movements isn't really all that rare, so people take care.

They're banned on the books, allowed to function, but if they function too well they will be repressed both by the legal banning and other methods. Got it.

Hey, fellows, I'm from COB. I'm new at the organization and I'm still learning it's functioning and history, but I'll try to pass ahead some of the info I picked up until now. I don't speak for COB, these are my personal impressions.

After slavery was officially abolished in Brazil (1888), the Brazilian government started bringing immigrant workers instead of employing the former slaves. Among the immigrants who came to work in Brazil, there was a lot of anarcho-syndicalists who started agitating among their fellow workers and managed to build organizations. Before COB, there was in Rio de Janeiro the Federação Operária Regional Brasileira (inspired by FORA), which became the Federação Operária do Rio de Janeiro after the first Brazilian Workers Congress, COB's foundational congress, in 1906. In less than 3 decades, COB conquered a lot of impressive stuff, so the dominant classes got really scared. They started persecuting syndicalists, and the workers were either imprisoned, killed or sent to concentration camps, and a huge number of the immigrants (the most militant workers) was deported. But even with this repression, the movement kept going. COB's struggle implemented the 8-hour work day, increased salaries, equated female and male wages, fought against children's work, started partial and general strikes and the Rio de Janeiro government almost was taken down by an anarchist insurrection planned by members of FORJ. COB also founded rational schools and anticlerical leagues, published newspapers, magazines and books, engaged in antimilitarism and antifascism and acted in international solidarity with Ferrer i Guàrdia and Sacco and Vanzetti.

But after the Russian Revolution, some former anarcho-syndicalists became bolsheviks and started persecuting anarcho-syndicalists. Marxist historians call the 1920's the beginning of "the overcoming of anarchism", which at that time was by far the main political philosophy guiding the labour movement because of COB's strength. The Brazilian bolsheviks founded the Brazilian Workers Party (PCB) and went on a hunting season. They did everything they could to try to destroy anarchism, even planning on murdering respected anarcho-syndicalists (at a gathering, the anarchists Antonino Dominguez and Damião da Silva were shot by PCB members who had José Oiticica and Fábio Luz as their main targets).

The other major blow to COB was in the 1930's with the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas. His government prohibited free unions, pushing COB to illegality, and implemented the corporatist unions, based on Mussolini's Carta del Lavoro, a model which is held by the government up to this day, designed to control the workers and to not allow them to organize in any way close to COB's way, revolutionary syndicalism. The Law of Unionization also obligated every worker to join a state union. Unions in this model are attached to the state, participate in elections, have centralized bodies, receive subsidies from the government and today are integrated with political parties, every single one of them. In illegality, COB's members engaged in the struggle against fascism while trying to keep the organization alive in the face of extreme repression.

Vargas ruled from 1930 until 1945, and from 1951 until 1954, when he shot himself. This fascist is idolized in Brazil almost like Perón is on Argentina because he turned in laws worker rights which were already widespread because of COB's struggle. During this time, the movement went really underground and became smaller and smaller, but it kept going, always waiting for the moment to reemerge. In 1964, another dictatorship took the government in Brazil. In the 1970's anarcho-syndicalists got excited when workers started talking about building a national union, but this turned out to be Central Única dos Trabalhadores, which was taken over by trotskyites. In 1977, anarchists from all over Brazil founded the paper "O Inimigo do Rei" (The Enemy of the King) to fight dictatorship. Militaries were in power until 1985. In 1986 the groups around O Inimigo do Rei, from 13 states, held a national congress and launched the project for the reconstruction of COB, also starting relations with the IWA. But this time the groups were sabotaged from the inside - a guy named Leonardo Morelli became secretary and started stealing money from the IWA and traveling to create groups against COB. After that, FORGS was the only section of COB until 2000, when pro-FOSP was started. Three more federations were accepted in this year of 2010.

Today COB has four Sindivários in Rio Grande do Sul, three in São Paulo, two in Minas Gerais and one in both Goiás and Sergipe. There is a pro-COB group in Bahia and I heard there is individuals in Piauí, Espírito Santo, Paraná and Amazonas trying to form groups.

So, the situation today is the result of decades of repression against revolutionary syndicalism in Brazil. Because of left and right totalitarianism, the movement went on several hiatus and became weakened. The Vargas/Mussolini union model is today embraced by everyone except us. Technically, COB is not illegal, but unions which are not attached to the state are not recognized and become suppressed. Marxist, fascist and even "anarchist" repression keeps on going against COB, often with physical aggression.

The best source for COB's history are Edgar Rodrigues' writings. Next year I'll have more time, so I'll try to translate some of his articles.

I guess there is noone from the NSF writing here or on another international forum. The last labour conflict I remember the NSF was involved in as a supporter, was at a SAS hotel in Oslo some twenty years ago. When I was to Oslo in the midth of the decade, a comrade from NSF I happened to meet there told me, that they are a very small group and that the administrative tasks for the IWA consume most of there activities. But this was a couple of years ago. So hopefully things have changed since. I guess you will get more accurate information, if you just ask the comrades directly.

Dano, that's one of the most interesting posts I've read for a while! Cheers for the info! And yeah, if you fancied translating some articles into English for us then it would be very much appreciated..

Thanks!

Another good source for COB info is the Centro de Estudos e Pesquisas Sociais, from FORGS. It issues a weekly bulletin, the Boletim Operário, with historical and up to date news. Its blog is: http://cepsait.blogspot.com/

If someone needs a translation of a particular COB material you may ask me. If it's short I'll try to do it as soon as possible, if it's long you'll have to wait until april.