Mike Harman
Mike Harman is a communist IT worker and member of the libcom collective. His claim to fame is that he used to be the milky bar kid.
Notes on working at a sixth form college library, London 2005-2007
Between 2005-2007 a member of the libcom group worked term-time in the library at a Sixth Form College in London. This article/interview documents his attempts to organise his workplace and touches on some wider issues around working in education in the UK.
So where did you work? What was it like?
Since some of my friends are still working there, and I hope there is still some organising going on, I won't identify the college directly, but some background information would be useful.
1918: Rice riots and strikes in Japan
From July-September 1918, Japan was swept with a wave of riots from rural fishing villages to major industrial centres and coal fields, in what was the largest upheaval in Japan to date, and the widest ranging popular disturbances since the unrest during the Meiji restoration of 1868.
1905-1918 in Japan was called the Era of Popular Violence (民衆騒擾期, minshû sôjô ki). This began with the Hibiya Incendiary Incident (日比谷焼討事件, Hibiya Yakiuchi Jiken) - a citywide riot in Tokyo that started with a banned protest in Hibiya park; against the terms of the Portsmouth Treaty which ended the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.
1932: The Vichuga uprising
In April 1932 at Vichuga, Ivanovo Industrial Region (IPO), USSR, 16,000 textile workers struck at several factories and temporarily took control of the town until the uprising was crushed by both heavy repression and promises of reform from central Soviet command.
Part of a wave of unrest which hit the USSR in the IPO, Lower Volga region, the Urals, Western Siberia, Ukraine and Belorussia, the strike was one of the most significant of the 1930s, winning reforms nationally as a result of the threat it posed to the Soviet authority.
1950-today: Corporate and state intervention in the arts
A look at involvement of governments and corporations attempting to push their interests in the world of art and culture since the middle of the last century.
The Cultural Cold War
