Debate on Industrial & Community Organising & Strategy

Debate on Industrial & Community Organising & Strategy

Anarchist Organising & Failure
A loss through Anarchist organising is worth moer in terms of experience gained than winning through methods that take power out of your hands. For example, organising as equals in a housing block/workplace, forming an open assembly or network that then takes action to win a demand and which creates ongoing dialogue, counter-culture and relationships of solidarity, is worth much more -even if it fails- than calling up the Residential Tenancy Authority or tackling things as individuals through lawyers or appealing to an Ombudsman. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t do the latter (even if in our experience they don’t often get results anyway and in a lot of cases backfire) but rather that even these things should be done collectively as much as possible.

Reflecting on an example of my own is an organising drive I was involved in kick-starting through Brisbane Solidarity Network back in 2012. Basically there was a 2 month process of meeting with a tenant who had made contact with BSN over a slumlord’s antics. To set the scene, this place was a boarding house that marketed to people in vulnerable situations (eg: homelessness, sickness etc). They charged an insane $180 per week for a single room with no windows, the shared bathroom and kitchen were decrepit and tenants were monitored via a surprisingly advanced camera surveillance system. There was a rule board full of ridiculous rules, for example you were not allowed to openly discuss sex, gates were locked at 9pm so if you came home late you had to climb a fence (a previous tenant had told us he was given the boot for this reason) etc.

This particular tenant that contacted us had left the tenancy but the slumlord kept the bond, stating that because the tenant had raised the bond money through a charity she shouldn’t be able to have it back. Upon meeting with her a couple of times over coffee and sharing landlord stories (a discussion which became political very quickly) we arranged to go suss the place out. Three BSN’ers met with her at the boarding house and straight off the bat the slumlord barked at the tenant about not really being happy with visitors coming and started questioning what we were doing there. We talked with a few other tenants at the back about what we were about and suddenly 6 people had surrounded us and were eager to share stories of how the landlord was continually screwing them over. This was in itself a really good experience and BSN still has connection with one of these tenants, who was to some extent politicised by the process. Also worth noting – BSN had a discussion day about this issue in Queen’s Park, and we met someone who overheard us walking past that used to live in the boarding house – he was stoked and started chatting about his experience there.

Anyway, we gradually got more tenants on side with the idea of supporting the tenant in question to do a delivery demand to get the bond money back (basically this involves getting as many people as possible as a show of strength & solidarity to support the tenant in collectively delivering to the landlord a letter listing the grievance, the demand and when action will be escalated if not resolved). The process of writing & refining the letter collectively in itself was a useful process, and a politicizing one at that, as through the process we discussed the nature of the landlord/tenant relationship, moving to the idea that even though this landlord in particular happened to be someone with an abusive personality and enjoyed dominating the tenants and overtly breaking tenancy law, the issue isn’t the landlords personality – it’s their existence as a class. Bigger political questions like private property, the development of landlordism, hierarchy, State power etc also inevitably came up, and I feel the discussion added further clarity to everyone’s ideas. Also useful politically was the idea that law and rights don’t exist just because they are decreed from above on a piece of paper – they were won through struggle and have to be maintained through struggle and a nourishing, resistant culture that doesn’t let authority take an inch back. ‘Laws are iron chains for the poor but cobwebs for the rich.’

We agreed that it was time to strike the iron, the day came for action, we had heaps of supporters show up and.. the tenant didn’t show up. We heard later that she had a hectic personal situation come up (which happens all the time when you’re already marginalized, living in poverty and in crisis mode). Because of this she bailed interstate and moved into a friend’s place and the organising drive ended. Now from one angle this organising drive was a loss; the demand wasn’t ceded, but on the other hand the organising process led by the tenant was an empowering one, a form of collective education where people learnt a new way to deal with grievances rather than roll over and take it. Most importantly the tenant herself was thankful and reduced to tears that people would take the time and extend themselves to make her issue their own (solidarity).
Obviously this could have gone further if the demand had been won, as the aim is to show people that direct action and solidarity, organising together collectively through assemblies rather than top down hierarchies, unaccountable representatives and bureaucracy not only can win demands, but facilitates a process that has the potential to grow into a culture of working class resistance and forms of self-organisation that can’t be demobilised from above (and ultimately which can assert itself to take more and more control back over life).

On the other hand I was once involved in an organising drive where the tenant decided to go through the RTA to try and resolve an issue where the boarding-house landlord had out of the blue claimed that she owed a whole bunch of money (which she didn’t) – simply because the landlord wanted to kick her out and move a close friend of his in. The RTA was automatically on the side of the landlord and signed the tenant up to an unsustainable payment plan which eventually made her homeless- basically these organisations turn social-justice issues into business as usual, prescriptive solutions, ignoring the huge differences in power in the landlord-tenant relationship.

I’ll give one more example where the struggle was won, but at the expense of the experience of ongoing collective organising (just because it’s a good story).
BSN were involved in organising a restaurant in the Brisbane CBD. The owner of this restaurant hired foreigners without working visas, knowing full well that their situation meant that it would be easier to control and exploit them. There were many issues, but things reached boiling point when some money went missing from the till and the boss made every worker pay back the same equal amount of money from their wages. We were contacted by two workers, who after discussing options and strategy said that they would meet with other workmates and get back to us on their decision. A week passed and I contacted one of the workers via txt to get an update and see if their was still an organising drive. The reply I got back was unexpected – ‘Thanks for sorting it out’ it said. I wrote back that we hadn’t done anything and asked what happened. ‘We got the money back. Someone put on a high pitched voice and threatened to hurt him (the boss) if he didn’t give back the wages’.

I think it’s important to share stories like this, because despite how small they are, successful organising counters the social memory of defeat so many of us have. It also shows basic nuts and bolts class-based organising in practice, something that doesn’t come natural to many people that do want to change the world.
We aren’t trying to build victories per say, though our methods should lead to victories, we are ultimately trying to build a culture of resistance and dual power, a culture where people are empowered to run society and take control of their lives, a culture where top-down organisations that take power out of the peoples hands cannot use grass roots struggles as springboards into political careers, electioneering and party politics that demobilise/disempower people from above and sell them out down the river due to the necessity of compromise and mediation that it creates.
By Kuro Thanks to Libcom

Reply
Your organising drives illustrate a classic case of a leftist grouping squandering limited resources and personnel in strategically irrelevant and peripheral sectors. While you are oblivious of the need to focus on one sector of strategic importance which can change the situation on a major scale re tackling the employer offensive, neo liberal push, environmental crisis and war drive. This action would take the form of facilitating the launching of a strike/direct action wave movement across industry. Changing radically the climate in the workers' movement toward adoption of direct action. In this context major syndicalist oriented splits from the corporate unions could occur leading to transitional steps toward a syndicalist oriented mass union confederation. The NSW Sparks and associated networks played a significant role in helping get the early phases of such a movement going in March 2004 associated with Drivers for Affirmative Action Group involving 600 drivers waging a “work to rule” campaign in the NSW railways. While in such contexts, major potential syndicalist oriented splits have occurred in the Corporate unions and massive growth in anarcho-syndicalist unions, such as the 1947 and 1968 strike waves in France and the strike wave in Spain following the collapse of the Franco Regime in the late 1970's. (1)

The Corporate Unions Phenomena

In your account you totally ignore the role of these “corporate unions” aligned with the ALP octopus and interwoven with the corporate sector by innumerable threads. These corporate unions via their entanglement with “enterprise bargaining” and the industrial relations racket and their associated role in “smoke and mirrors” performances, often involving industrial campaigns set to up to fail and fake community picket lines involving various leftist groups particularly from the Trotskyist heritage but also those who wave red and black flags. This manipulation and sleight of hand of the corporate union officials with the aid of the corporate media play a crucial role in undermining the morale of workers in strategic sectors and elite groups which could assist via direct action workers in peripheral sectors and small workplaces and those in the community facing spiraling rents,consumer goods costs, environmental havoc, etc. An important example of this type of direct action and collaboration of a syndicalist influenced union and workers in peripheral areas and community groups was the NSW BLF in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Particularly with the BLF's famous “Green Bans.” (2)
An interesting historical example involving an explicit anarcho-syndicalist union, the Spanish CNT (National Confederation of Labour) was during the Barcelona mass rent strike of 1931 involving 100,000's. A key factor in the CNT's growth in the 20's and 30's was the role of its transport union in taking direct action where necessary to help organise innumerable small and large workplaces in the Barcelona entertainment and retail industries which became the union's key strongholds. In regard to the Rent strike, the local CNT organisation worked with local anarchist influenced community associations to wage successful rent strikes on a massive scale to fight spiralling rents and prices. (3)

Industrial Court Monkey Business

Let's assume if you had been more successful in your organising drives. You may be seen by workers in small workplaces and the community as acting as activoids and on a micro scale like the corporate union officials. They occasionally do help a few of their members out with issues via lobbying and community pickets. Certainly getting grass roots discussion and breaking through atomisation is positive, but not sufficient. If your work did lead to something big on the work place or community levels you would likely face the full weight of the State in the shape of police and Court attacks and isolation on the industrial front by the corporate union bosses. Heading off industrial solidarity critical to winning the struggle. Leading inevitably to disaster. Particularly on the industrial front the workers' industrial action you helped get going, would likely to be determined by the un-Fair Work Court as “illegal” in breach of enterprise bargaining or something. The workers you were assisting could face large fines. The Court, the Govt. and the Corporate union bosses may decide to make an example of these workers to deter others. A case like that occurred with some 100 or so construction workers who were CFMEU members in WA some years back. The imposing of fines by the Industrial Court is not automatic and is based on the balance of class forces and the machinations of the ALP Octopus which many of the Judges and the legal fraternity are entangled. An interesting example of how the set up works in practice is in Sept. 1999 when the NSW State Secretary of the now RTBU called an “illegal” NSW wide one day lightning rail strike to out manoeuver militants assisted by the ASN who were initially successful in getting moves for a grass roots controlled campaign going to fight privatisation. In this case, the industrial court imposed no fines on the union despite the massive disruption caused by the strike and its “illegality”. The sabotage and isolation tactics of the corporate union bosses have played a key role in the defeat of key workers' struggles such as the SEQEB strike of 1995 in Qld, the Patrick's Lockout of 1998, the Melbourne Tramways lockout of 1990, etc.
In previous years BSN had been approached to get involved in the NSW based Sparks ASN transport workers paper and work to develop a Qld section, but you were not interested. This work would have made tremendous strategic sense and a much more appropriate focus with your limited resources and personnel. Particularly your members and periphery could have played an invaluable and long term sustainable role in the paper's distribution and doing interviews with workers. As such activity could have been conducted during people's daily routines. Avoiding the mistake made by the Angry Workers World group in its organising drive in factories and warehouses in West London, some years back. They burnt out their periphery of helpers/supporters in unsustainable distribution of their magazine and flyers at factory gates early in the mornings.
In conclusion, this strategic industrial organising proposed, utilising the available tools such as the NSW based Sparks would be a much more appropriate way forward for groups like yourselves to tackle the corporate set up. It would play an important role in helping catalyse the processes leading to the establishment of self managed workers economic combative organisations necessary to facilitate the over throw of the capitalist set up and realise an anarchist society. M.

Notes
1. See “From Corporate Bureaucratic Unionism to Grass Roots controlled Direct Action Unionism: Activity &Perspectives for Australia Today” From RW
Vol.41 No.3 (235) Dec. 2023 – Jan. 2024 www.rebelworker.org and Libcom.org
2. See “Debate on the BLF” in RW Sept.-Oct. 2023 Vol.41 No.2(234) & “Green Bans, Red Union” by Meredith & Verity Burgmann.
3. See “The Barcelona Rent Strike of 1931” in “For Anarchism” edited by David Goodway.