accounts
Archive of accounts with radicals and working class activists on libcom.org.
Up against the odds - The JJ Foods strike, 1995
An account of the JJ fast food worker's strike in Tottenham, 1995-6, and its lessons for workers today.
This pamphlet looks at the problems the JJ workers faced: of working within the current union structures, of police and State harassment, the bureaucracy of industrial tribunals and the participation of the organised left. It also attempts to draw some positive lessons as to how workers can improve things for the better through direct action and working class organisation.
The Third Wave, 1967, an account - Ron Jones
Schoolteacher Ron Jones's personal account of his experiment which created a proto-fascist movement amongst his high school pupils in Palo Alto, California, which in 2008 was subject of the award-winning film The Wave.
THE THIRD WAVE
Ron Jones (1972)
For years I kept a strange secret. I shared this silence with two hundred students. Yesterday I ran into one of those students. For a brief moment it all rushed back.
Strike in the docks of Constanta
Account of the recent strike at DP World Container Port in Romania.
DP World - Europe's Eastern gateway blocked:
Strike in the docks of Constanta
Resistance from the other South Africa
Neha Nimmagudda, a student from NYC, spent a few months working as a full time volunteer with the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement in South Africa. In this essay she reflects one of the movement's quarterly all night meetings in which critical issues are discussed.
The topic of this particular meeting was 'leadership'. While Abahlali has never stated that it is an anarchist movement many have drawn parallels between 'Abahlalism' and 'anarchism'. Certainly the movement considers both the state and the vanguardist left to be oppressors.
Neha Nimmagudda (2008-07-17)
Democracy in my experience
Philani Zungu offers a brief but powerful account of the lived experience of life as a shack dweller under democracy in South Africa.
People have different definitions of democracy.
Some people say that democracy means freeing everyone to do whatever they want, regardless of rule or controls, with no instructions or boundaries, no importance to whether what is done is wrong or right.
Lernia Correctional Facility: a story from a Swedish unemployment programme
A short 'militant investigation' about struggles at a Swedish unemployment programme. by Kim Müller, Kämpa tillsammans!
I have spent about two years in different unemployment programmes in a mid-size Swedish town and this is my story about that experience. For most of the time I was training to become a cook in the Lernia programme (nicknamed "Lernia Correctional Facility" by its inmates).
1942: General strike against military conscription in German-occupied Luxembourg
An account of the walk out in the central post office during the general strike in Luxembourg, 1942.
George Kieffer was born in 1950, the son of Michel Kieffer, a technician of the Telephone Department of the Luxembourg Post Office, who was active with his wife in the Resistance during the Second World War. Following the death of his father, George, who now lives in England, transferred the former's collection of papers, documents and medals to the Second World War Experience Centre.
Comments on the recent summer postal strike - by a striker, 2007
A postman looks at recent developments and future implications in the recently suspended strike.
Why was the strike called off?
The obvious answer is that the union called the strikes off because Royal Mail (RM) was willing to negotiate. Dave Ward publicly offered for the union that if RM would enter "meaningful" negotiations they were willing to call off the pending action.
The Anarchist Revolution in Spain - New Statesman
Account by Cyril Connolly in the New Statesman or 21st November 1936 of the anarchist revolution during the Spanish Civil War
"It is in Barcelona that the full force of the anarchist revolution becomes apparent. Their initials, CNT and FAI, are everywhere. They have taken over all the hotels, restaurants, cafes, trains, taxis, and means of communication, as well as all theatres, cinemas, and places of amusement.
The Battle of Cable St, 1936 - Joe Jacobs
Joe Jacobs was in 1936 a local Communist Party activist in London's East End. This is his account of his involvement in the famous defence of the East End against an attempted march by Mosley's fascists.
Joe describes events leading up to the march, including the changes in the CP leadership's tactics as they finally realised their calls for a peaceful demonstration elsewhere would be ignored. His account corrects false impressions later created by official Communist versions of the events.
