Online archive of over 100 issues of Direct Action, a monthly paper produced by the Syndicalist Workers' Federation.

Material taken from the excellent collection at the Sparrow's Nest, the Spirit of Revolt archive and the personal archive of a Libcom user.
The paper began as the organ of the Anarchist Federation of Britain, which changed its title to the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation in 1950 and joined the International Working Men’s Association (the syndicalist international). Our archive of the AFB version of Direct Action is here.
This archive commences with volume 5 (1950, when the SWF was formed) through to volume 9 (1954). The numbering then seems to have restarted at volume 1 in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
Direct Action absorbed other SWF papers such as the weekly Workers Voice and the IWMA paper World Labour News.
It was published from 1950 until the late 1970s. After this, the Syndicalist Workers Federation transformed itself into the Direct Action Movement, which published its own paper also called Direct Action.
If you are able to assist with missing issues, please leave a comment.

The issue of Direct Action which marked the transformation of the Anarchist Federation of Britain into the Syndicalist Workers Federation.
Includes an account of the August 1950 special conference of the Anarchist Federation of Britain and the agreed aims and principles of the Syndicalist Workers Federation.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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The Syndicalist Workers Federation on: Govt increases conscription period to two years, North Thames gas strike, textile industry, Not Centralism but Federalism by Tom Brown, victory against Finland anti-strike legilsation.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Labour government prosecutes striking gas workers, Genoa anarchists freed at trial after anti-Franco actions, international competition, SWF debates CPGB on USSR, Tom Brown on economic federalism, on the futility of calling for state bans.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Lancashire Mill girls revolt, new IWMA section in Italy, weavers and spinners gain 10% wage increase, Gerry Williamson obituary, Tom Brown on abolishing the wage system.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on London dockworkers strike, Manchester dock workers lockout, IWMA congress in Toulouse, lorry drivers victory, Leggett report into stoppages at docks, textile union misorganisation, Rudolf Rocker not deported.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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The Syndicalist Workers Federation on: price increases/cost of living, Spanish Civil War and Franco's deal with the USA, electricians strike in Ireland, IWMA 7th Conference Resolutions, Syndicalism in Sweden, Syndicalism and the state, "socialist" MP George Strauss.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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1951 article on the cost of living crisis, price increases and the failure of the Labour Party and unions to do anything effective about them. From the Syndicalist Workers Federation's Direct Action newsletter.
“Never before”, declared a delegate to the recent A.E.U.1 annual conference “has a man had to work a week to buy a pair of boots”.
This apt comment of an engineering worker, crystallises in one sentence the feelings of the overwhelming majority of the population. Never before have price increases continued so relentlessly as during the past twelve months. Never before has so much talk been wasted on the subject of price controls – and so little done. There is no need to mention the innumerable items which have increased in price. It is sufficient to say that it now takes a week’s work to buy a blanket and eight years’ wages to buy a house – if you can live on air in the meanwhile.
Since the beginning of this year, official estimates admit that the cost of living has gone up by some nine per cent, or eleven shillings a week to the average worker. Still there is no sign of respite. Wholesale prices have, in the last six months, gone up by 30 per cent. This means that, by the end of the year, the average £6 a week worker will be 30s a week worse off. To offset this, the government would have us believe that we are, on average, receiving seven shillings a week more in the pay packet. This increase, of course, exists mainly on paper. The chief beneficiaries are such people as the higher-paid civil servants, who received, not long ago, pay increases of up to £15 a week. In view of the present size of the Civil Service, this represents a not inconsiderable factor – and a great strain – on what is now termed “the national economy”.
Smash and Grab
In answer to this fantastic situation, what, it may be asked, has the trade union movement done. Mr E.F. Fryer, Chairman of the T&GWU conference held at Whitley Bay a few weeks ago, gave the answer. He urged that a policy of wage restraint was still necessary and that union members – who include 95s a week railwaymen – should not adopt a policy of “smash and grab”. The only hope he could hold out was that they would not see union members suffer "in the general wages movement which is now taking place" The conference then went on to discuss workers who were abusing sickness benefit schemes and robbing the boss.
The record of the Labour Government, in this respect, is no better. Week in and week out, senior ministers appeal to the industrial workers, "not to use the present favourable employment situation as a lever to raise their wages." With the same monotonous regularity, the President of the Board of Trade meets the barons of industry to discuss general price increases.
We know, from our own experience, that talk of price controls is useless. Despite the fact that industrial production is nearly half as much again as before the war, and exports last month reached a record figure for all time, our standard of living is deteriorating. The armament economy of the entire world is absorbing the world's wealth. This, of course, quite apart from the fact that, whenever the workers' organisations fail, as they are doing at present, to conduct at active struggle for higher wages at the expense of profits, organised capital reaps even greater dividends at the expense of wages. A glance at any issue of the "Financial Times" will show that profits have never been better than at the present time,
Fighting Machines
The only successful struggles that have been waged during recent years have been unofficial. The trade unions, integrating themselves with the state machine, and bent on getting governmental positions for their leaders, have no time or use for the dangerous road of really fighting for wage increases. The unofficial movements and committees, operating very much on syndicalist lines, have replaced the trade unions as the fighting organisations of the industrial working class.
We believe that these movements should not regard themselves as temporary "pep groups" within the trade unions, but as the workers' organisations of the future. Not only as the fighting machines for the day-to-day struggles for improved wages and conditions, but as the means of ending the profit system and the rule by one class over another. Nobody who has vested interests, as the trade union leaders have, in maintaining the triangle of employers, government officials and trade union bureaucrats can accomplish that. Only the industrial workers, in whose interests it is to end the system, will do it.
- 1 Amalgamated Engineering Union
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: the limits of wage increase demands, mill workers reject reformist union, rep, lockout at South London engineering firm, dockworkers set up co-ops, Coal Board prosecutes striking miners, debate on tactical freedom of IWMA sections,
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: fighting the new Conservative government, Dagenham Cable workers win pay rise, settlement reached after South London engineers lockout, post-war re-armament, SWF National Congress in Moss Side, call for contributors.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: 10,000 anti-fascsists arrested in Barcelona, textile workers, against Nationalisation, conscientious objectors, German nazis on the move, IWW against both war blocs, etc.
NB: First printed/tabloid issue of Direct Action (see "Back again" on page 3).
PDF from Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: Euston railwaymen defy union bosses, Unions have taken the wrong road by Frank Rowe, stop turning refugees away, Tom Brown on road deaths - a class issue, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: tory attack on living standards, Cuban police frame syndicalist for murder, trade unions and the revolution by Max Baginski, mill work in Lancashire, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: TUC sell out on wages, Nazi Krupp is post-war industry magnate, Maximoff book review, Franco's prisons, NUJ dispute at Daily Worker, Park Royal drivers strike in London, Buenos Aires dockers strike, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: TUC wages policy is rubbish, Labour Party conference, striking dockers attacked by Buenos Aires police, Spanish Civil War - review of literature, 88 years of IWMA, unions banned in Africa, Rhodesia, conscientious objectors, George Cores' memoirs part one, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: Franco and UNESCO, British dockworkers, engineering workers fight wage claims, George Cores on Bloody Sunday, 3rd SWF conference, US elections, report from fascist Spain, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: rising unemployment, Stalinsts seize control of unions in Cuba, CNT militants on trial in Spain, Ambrose Barker obituary, Tom Brown on "the strike weapon", George Cores on the dockers strike of 1889, New York busmen strike, Tito and the Catholic Church, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: pay increase for American dockers, 250,000 strike in Brazil, D.C. Thomson strike in Glasgow, Tom Brown on why syndicalists support unofficial strikes, George Cores on the Sheffield Socialist Society and Yorkshire anarchists, South Africa colour bar, France, Japan, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: knighthoods for union leaders, IWMA supports victims of fascism, peace is bad for the stockmarket, Tom Brown on strike organisation, George Cores on the Walsall Anarchist bomb plot, huge pay rise for Law Chiefs, Central Africa, the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: engineers wages claim, Stalinist persecution of Bulgarian syndicalists, victory for unofficial strike at Twinings tea factory, "productivity" - what it means to us, IWMA Swedish congress report, Mau Mau uprising, report on 4th SWF congress in London, CNT militants persecuted in Spain, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Syndicalist Workers Federation on: IWMA against the state, repression round up in colonial countries, reflections on the H-bomb, fascist repression of Spanish trade unionists, socialist Sunday schools, Is McCarthy to be American Hitler?, Silvio Corio obituary, Mat Kavanagh obituary, productivity, conscription, rent increases, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest archive, Nottingham.
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Volume 2, Issue 3 of Direct Action, with articles on calls for a general strike against a wage freeze, Guyana's supposedly anticolonial rulers calling on British imperial support, apprenticeships, a review of a Solidarity pamphet, police attacks on a demonstration against the far-right OAS in France, and a Committee of 100 court case.
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Thanks for letting us know, if anyone would like to try and archive some more of Otter's writings the Sparrow's Nest has a few of them scanned:
https://thesparrowsnest.org.uk/search.php?query=laurens&logic=and&digital=0&digital=0
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/18/laurens-otter-obituary

Volume 2, Issue 4 of Direct Action, with articles on a rank and file movement in the National Union of Seamen, the use of military courts in Northern Ireland, a review of a pamphlet about strike strategy, the leader of the Liberal Party talking about syndicalism, another pamphlet by the "liberal new left" New Orbits group, and a letter from Socialism Reaffirmed/Solidarity.

Volume 2, Issue #5 of Direct Action, with articles on May Day, an advert for a Committee of 100 meeting featuring Alan Sillitoe among others, the rank and file vs the bureaucracy inside the National Union of Seamen, industrial news and Irish electricians striking against a "time and motion"-style work study scheme.

Including: Committee of 100 "Against all bombs" leaflet, direct action against fascism by Ken Hawkes, Pat Kelly on clampdown on unofficial strikes in Ireland, etc.

Jan 1963 issue of Direct Action, including: unemployment, CNT members jailed by Franco, SWF papers merge (Direct Action and World Labour News), CND, Italian anarchists freed, review of "Collective Bargaining in Sweden" by Johnston, Unwin and Allen), unemployment in Canada, showdown at Ford's, ship owners cut crews, pamphlet reviews - disarmament, Solidarity's one on homelessness, an SWF member writes on being remanded in custody, book review "The General Strike In the North East", Annika Bjorklund obituary.
Taken from Splits and Fusions archive.

For Workers Direct Control of Industry - paper of the International Working Men's Association
"Two Steps Forward -
THIS ISSUE of Direct Action is the second step in our drive for a monthly, printed SWF paper in 1963. Another issue will be published on March 1. We shall continue publishing alternate printed and duplicated issue until new premises are secured for our printing press in London, when a switch will be made to printed monthly."
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Paper of the International Working Men's Association
- Building Workers
- Canadian store clerks use new strike tactic
- Labour Party's anti-Color line up against MP
- Printworkers
- Cuban reality
- Committee of 100
- Open Letter to Labour's New Leader
- French Threat to Spanish anti-fascist refugees
- Russia & China: Two Empires clash
- Wage Freeze Bid in Ireland
- Pages of Labour History: East Berlin Workers Revolt
- Life in the effluent society
- Fords
- Trade Unions in Japan
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April 1963 issue of Direct Action, including: history of May Day, syndicalist youth paper suppressed in France, two SWF members visit Spain, Nicolas Stoinoff obituary, open letter to the Labour leader, French miners' strike, death of Patrice Lumumba - Prime Minister of the Congo, jailing of British journalists Brendan Mulholland and Reginald Foster, Seamen regroup.
Taken from Splits and Fusions archive.

Monthly paper pf the International Working Men's Association
- Aldermaston, 1963: The Road was Ours
- Stay Out of Spain!
- Fords stewards under fire
- Irish union officials sabotage bus strike
- Survey on the Bomb
- Industrial Outlook: An Easy Answer
- Mounties' Witch Hunt
- Behind the Big rail Shutdown
- Libertarian Youth Camp
- An open letter to Labour's Leader
- Pages of Labour History: Eight Men of Jarrow
- The Root is Still Man
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For Workers' Direct Control of Industry
Paper of the International Working Men's Association
- Operation Marham
- Open Letter to Labour's Leaders
- Stop the Stopwatch
- Managing the managers
- Tourists -- Stay out of Spain!
- Home industrial round up
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July 1964 issue of Direct Action including: scabs in Swaziland and British Guiana, Franco threatens French anarchist with long sentences, class war theories are not "old fashioned", letters, SWF members report from Spain, community health clinics in Canada, call for tourist boycott of Franco's Spain, opposition to war in Japan, Tom Brown on the years after the General Strike, Brian Bamford on apprentice training, Industrial Notebook - news snippets.
PDF from Splits and Fusions archive.
An excellent personal account of the 1926 miners' lockout in County Durham
One way of writing history is to take a social group, in one place and at one time, leaving the broad drama of great events, and treating the subject as a microcosm, letting the minutiae of humble lives interpret the greater story. In thus taking one corner of the Durham Coalfield as my subject I might as well be writing of the coalminers of Scotland, South Wales, Yorkshire or almost anywhere.
When the General Strike of 1926 ended, I lost my job in Coventry. Four weeks after the Strike I decided to go North, but at Coventry station I was told: “We can issue a ticket to Derby only. The railways are so disorganised we cannot guarantee any travel beyond that distance.” So, with three tickets and four trains, I reached Newcastle (about 185 miles) in 18 hours. The Government had boasted of their skeleton blackleg service and this was the result, even four weeks later.
From Newcastle I went to live in the small mining town of Birtley, part of the urban district of Chester-le-Street in Durham, and found and made a home in Elizabethville (though not in the Congo). Here in 1914 about 600 temporary houses, a school, church and hospital had been built for Belgian refugees, hence the title. In 1919 the refugees went home and the government locked the empty buildings and – the village was surrounded by high spiked iron railings – the heavy iron gates and refused to allow homeless people to occupy the huts. Then, in the course of three days the place was taken over, mostly by ex-soldiers and the gates removed and dropped in a brook. The police were ordered to expel the squatters who promptly formed a defence force and posted round the clock sentries. After a few months, authority decided it was better to accept the fait accompli and charge their unwelcome tenants rent – 7s. 9d. a week.
When, on May 21 1926, the national lock-out of coal miners took place, Durham had already been out for two weeks on a county issue. That and a long series of single pit strikes had left the strike fund broken (at that time each mining county in England had a separate union, linked in the Miners Federation Of Great Britain). But Durham went, with the rest, solidly into the battle.
How, then, did the miners’ families live? There was a national miners relief fund which was big, though not nearly as big as the distress it was to relieve. Durham received its share but there were 120,000 men plus wives and children to feed, clothe and shelter and most of that had to be found at home. The Guardians gave relief to the strikers but soon that was drastically curtailed. The Boards were under the control of the Minister of Health who ordered all relief to single or married able-bodied men to cease. Relief, and not very much at that, was to be given only to the wives and children.
The County Council, with a majority of miners, gave free breakfast to schoolchildren over five years of age. The same body had formed clinics for children under three. Here a fortnightly medical check of the babies was made and a weekly allowance of one pound of full-cream dried milk and a bottle of codliver oil given for each baby. Children’s clothes were sold at cost price. The garments were almost half the price the mothers would have paid in the shops and the goods were certainly superior. Most of the work of these clinics was organised locally and done by volunteers.
Then someone discovered that an Education Act allowed the Council to institute primary schools for children between three and five but without supplying the money for such a venture. So it was put to the Council that they could pass a resolution to establish primary schools for the under fives without fixing a date, then give school meals to the primary scholars. This legal hocus-pocus was carried out and the kids got their free meal quite legally.
The local co-operative, with some backing from the CWS, [Co-operative Wholesale Society] was able to give some credit to the miners’ lodges – as always. And, always, such credit was repaid weekly, from the second week of the return to work, until the whole of the debt was paid. There is a strong traditional streak of puritanism in Durham and the repayment of such debts of honour was considered not only just, but sound business – there is always a next time.
The local co-op was small, nothing like the city giants, but like many small co-ops was efficient. It owned the only large store in town and the only cinema. It had meeting rooms and a hall, a barber’s shop, a billiards saloon, allotments, a farm producing fresh meat, milk and eggs, with cottages for its labourers.
Rent did not trouble the majority as long as the strike lasted. Many lived in coal companies’ houses and a rent strike was automatic. Any attempt at eviction would have been met by a thousand-strong picket. Coal was got by searching the waste heaps which, like young mountains, adorn the coalfield scene.
There was recreation, too. There were village fiestas, without the feasting. A procession led by at least one excellent brass band, a meeting, a sports day with athletic events for children and adults (first prize, a bar of chocolate) and, in the evening, an open-air dance or a concert. There were ladies’ football matches and comic football matches between teams of boisterous clowns and comic boxing shows – at times everything comic. But frequent meetings were important too, for they served the part of a Press.
Rival to the silver bands, some well known, were the bazooka bands, the “bazooka” [kazoo] being a sixpenny instrument one hummed into. About 40 of these, with drums made quite a noise. All the bands – there must have been a few hundred of them in the country, including children’s bands – were in costume, a condition being that the costume should not cost a great deal. Sometimes 20 bands would take part in a local carnival, tramping miles to the site. I recall one fat man who, dressed as a sultan in the remains of a bedspread, marched at the head of his “harem” of 40 women, a very proud sultan he looked, and the “Tramps”, each wearing a battered bowler and spats, who played their tune, then sang, “We’re on the road to anywhere” like a choir. There were bands of Zulu warriors, Red Indians, knights in tincan armour, battalions of Fred Karno’s Army, bands of mermaids (the most difficult of the lot) and of pirates (the easiest).
But as that long, warm summer began to fade into autumn, the struggle became grimmer. The first serious blow was made, against the Chester-le-Street Board of Guardians, who had refused to obey the Government’s order to cease relief to single men. The Tory Government deposed the elected Guardians, whose work was unpaid, and put in their place three highly-paid commissioners. The new regime stopped all relief to men, single or married, who might be able to work. The only relief was to wives, 8s. [shillings] a week, and children, 1s. a week. Thus a family of six received 12s. a week in the form of a food voucher, no money, compared to the dole of 29s. a week. This measure of economic terrorism was applied not only to strikers but to all unemployed “on relief”, miners and other workers, and was continued after the strike for a few years. Following the strike, these people without money were dunned for rent. The only ways to get money were to sell part of their meagre rations, or pick coal from the waste heaps and try to sell it. 4-5s. for a week’s hard work, less to the unlucky.
The police acted against the strikers picking coal from the heaps; the men went in larger groups, the police were reinforced. The miners begun prospecting for coal in the fields like gold diggers but this meant spreading out. Pressure increased with the coming of cold weather. A nearby wood of commercial fir, belonging to Lord Lambton, was completely felled and sawn up. A coalowner magistrate, whose large house on the North Road had three tall gateposts of 18in. square oak, found, one morning, that they had been sawn off six inches from the ground.
Then the Notts. Miners’ Association, led by Labour MP G. A. Spencer, broke away from the Federation and returned to work. Heavy police reinforcements appeared in Durham, the biggest, heaviest constables from distant counties; and attempts were made to re-open strikebound pits. Scarcely a miner, with the exception of a few in South Shields, could be found. The blackleg gangs were token forces of bankrupt shopkeepers and of professional layabouts from the town.
The pits were usually closed after three days. Sometimes after the first day, and the owners resorted to surprise but there was always a strong picket awaiting the scabs at the end of their morning shift. Scouts took to following on bicycles the truckloads of police: this in turn led to the police making dummy concentrations to lure the men to the wrong pits but there were always enough pickets to go round.
News travels fast in a mining area and even the sound of running feet and a shout would bring out men, boys and women in a mass picket – yes, women pickets, and punching ones, too! It was hard, bitter fighting: usually, before the scabs could be reached, the charge of six-foot-plus, 15-stone policemen swinging batons in arm-breaking, skull-cracking blows had to be met and broken.
The pattern was for the picket to gather early, to prevent a surprise getaway. The police would try to disperse them, but would soon gather about the pit yard. The scabs would wait at the pithead for 2, 3 or 4 hours, then the police would make their big charge and the main battle was on. A prisoner always went to jail for 6-12 months. The wounded were, if possible, carried off by their comrades.
I recall one such episode on the old North Road near Gateshead; where a colliery had “reopened”. The Birtley men gathered there. Two tramcars came to pick up the scabs, the police were pushed back, the trolleys pulled off, all windows broken, starting and steering handles removed; one tram derailed and the tramwaymen sent home, all in a few minutes. We hung about for three hours, then half a dozen scabs dashed from the back of the yard, down the hilly fields, towards the new North Road.
From the hedges sprang small, slim, youthful figures, who ran like hares after them and did nothing but trip them up, then pounding behind came heavier figures and in two minutes the scabs were unfit for work for a week or two. On the main road the fighting broke out again. At night some of the scabs who lived in Gateshead were visited in their homes; they did not return to the pit, which, in any case, closed after three days.
At another pit, which lasted only one day, a sergeant lifted his baton high to give the signal for a charge and was at once felled by a stone. At another a sergeant (the supers, like the Duke of Plaza Toro,1 led their armies from the rear) appeared to give an order to charge and rushed into the crowd, while his men stood still. I never found out where he went to.
One surprise nearly succeeded, but a few young fellows, very early in the morning, went to the “reopened” pit, to be charged by treble the number of police and sought refuge on the waste heap. These heaps of loose stone are tricky and one runs up them zigzag fashion. The police tried to run straight up and every man started his own avalanche. The men on top helped these, too, and pelted the constables, but they were marooned in a sea of blue serge. Then, after several hungry hours, they saw columns marching from every village for miles around. Lucknow was relieved.2
All this time hunger was growing. Over a nearby hill a miner’s wife was picking late blackberries. She was hungry, ate some without washing them and died of poisoning a few days later. Said the coroner: “There is no doubt that the poor woman was very hungry.”
In December, a national ballot of the miners favoured a return to work, except in Durham, which voted by a big majority to stay out. In the face of a national return, however, the E.C.[Executive Committee] had to disregard the vote. Out from mid-April to December, the miners went back, the strike was over, but not the fight. Their union was intact, their spirit unbroken.
Yet, apart from the social war, it was a peaceful community, more peaceful and ethical than London W.1, though the police were regarded as an occupying army. A woman or a child could walk alone in the dark, doors were left unlocked. A sociologist, speaking of this and the following period in Durham, said that the absence of crime was the most remarkable feature of the depression and attributed this to “steady living and the steadying influence of the Union.” ([Charles] Muir, Justice in a Depressed Area, p. 32-33 [1936]). Later, the Pilgrim Report said that there was here little self-pity, but a determination to fight the effects of poverty and unemployment. Yet, it said, 71 per cent had been out of work for 5 years or more, compared to Liverpool’s 23 per cent and Deptford’s 3 per cent. (Men Without Work, 1938).
It was a consciously working-class community, self-reliant and ready for spontaneous action, best when its leaders were in London. There was, of course, a deal of petty gossip and such in a “Coronation Street”3 way, but in struggle they were loyal to one another and in some local pit disasters – even unto death.
Thanks to 1, The Tyneside Anarchist Archive which posted the issue of Direct Action containing this article https://tynesideanarchistarchive.wordpress.com/2018/08/05/tom-brown-in-birtley/ and 2, the Tom Brown who put the typed or scanned text online.
From: Direct Action vol.4 no.7 (25) July 1963, page 6-7.
Footnotes by Kate Sharpley Library.
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For workers direct control of Industry
Paper of the International Workers Association
- Harold Wilson plans wage freeze
- Queen Fred's welcome
- South Africa - industrial action is the next step
- Operation Porton
- Castro, No! Yanquis, No! Cuba, SI!
- Rachman is dead
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Monthly Newspaper of the International Working Men's Association
- Franco Murders Anarchists
- Industrial Notebook
- Babbling Brooke's Bill Won't Hit Fascists
- An Open Letter to the Labour Leader
- Trade Unions in India
- Letters
- Bolivia - Indian or Peasant?
- Life in a Kibbutz
- The Negro Struggle
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For workers direct control of Industry
Paper of the International Workers Association
- CND Conference preview
- Austrian miners fight on
- Racketeer landlords
- Custodians of freedom?
- Franco claims two more victims
- Protest demos in Britain
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An account of a London slum landlord's retaliatory eviction of a tenant in 1963.
At 5am, Saturday, 24th August, 100 policemen and ten bailiffs brutally evicted Mr and Mrs, Cobb, and their children, from their crumbling basement flat. at 40, St Stephens Gardens, Paddington.
Mrs. Cobb has been a tenant in the basement flat since August 1957 (Just after the RENT ACT). As a tenant in a furnished flat she therefore had no security of tenure.
This building is owned by Glen Powis properties, one of over 40 companies specialising in slum houses which Mr Kaye and Mr Phillips control.
Why the eviction? It is claimed by Kaye that the Cobb family were in arrears with rent. Wereas in fact they were up to date apart from a disputed sum of £2.19.9d. which has been outstanding for some time.
The palatial mansion of 40 St. Stephens Gardens is occupied as follows, top floor flat occupied by a Miss Harker who has a twenty year old gentleman named Joseph Keana living with her. They pay £10 per week rent including water rate and rates. While the eviction of Mrs. Cobb was in progress she was in touch with Kaye by phone.
The next two floors down are empty, Kaye is asking anything from £150 to £300 for fittings (key money) depending no doubt, on what he can get. Ground floor previously occupied by Mr and Mrs. Ahtuam and five children. Mr. Ahtuam had a mortgage on the house; he became mentally ill and was taken into a mental home. The. property passed into the hands of the Official Receiver from whom Kaye obtained the mortgage. Mrs Ahtuam at this time was seriously ill in hospital in childbirth. Kaye evicted her while she was in hospital. She is now at Newington Lodge1 and her five children are in different homes. She is contacting her MP for assistance to retrie.re her furniture which is still at number 40. The ground floor is now occupied by a gentleman who has paid £150 (key money) for fittings, and pays £5.10s a week rent. He does his own decorating.
The basement is indisputably in a disgusting, condition occupied until the eviction by Mr and Mrs Cobb and children. Mrs Cobb had previously been the tenant of Mr Ahtuam. I understand from Mr Cobb that paid his rent religiously. The only outstanding rent was £2.19.9d. which Kaye refused to take.
It seems obvious that the Cobbs were an inconvenience to Kaye. In 1962 they had complained to the Health Department regarding the appalling condition of their flat, thus forcing Kaye to undertake repairs which according, to him were carried out.
To be perfectly frank Kaye is in business. for “Profit" NOT TO PROVIDE PEOPLE WITH HOME, and obviously he could get more rent for the flat therefore the Cobbs were in the way, and had to go.
Housing accommodation in the 'Never had it so good' society is a racket, Building Societies, estate agents, land and property owners are 'PONCING' on the homeless, the only action one can take is 'Direct Action' the law is on the side of the racketeers, one or two of the administrators of the law are sympathetic to the homeless, but in the final analysis they are bound by the LAW. Strong Tenants Associations are the only protection.
- 1A former workhousein South London that became a facility for homeless people. It was demolished in 1969 and the Aylesbury Estate was built on the site.
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For Workers' Direct Control of Industry
Paper of the International Working Men's Association
- Austrian Miners Tortured
- NE Seaman Fight Colour Bar
- Guy Aldred [death notice]
- New Ford Threat
- Towards Industrial Unions
- Syndicalist Congresses
- Martell & Co --- Strikebreakers Inc
- An Open Letter to the Labour Leader
- CND - Not Dead, But Very Sick
- Canadian Letter: The Big, Bad Boss
- Postbag
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For workers direct control of Industry
Paper of the International Workers Association
- Overtime Ban!
- Parents take direct action
- London busmen's claim
- The same old story
- SWF Conference
- How tourism helps Franco
- Snooper unlimited again
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Volume 5, Issue 1 of Direct Action, with articles on Committee of 100 members being imprisoned, a strike by construction workers at St. Paul's Cathedral, direct action against a dam in Italy, the right-wing anti-union Freedom Group, a review of a book about Franco's Spain, a review of an IWMA (now IWA) conference, the JFK assassination, the Lincoln myth, and the civil rights movement, Bolivian miners, housing direct action in Tunbridge Wells, a Goya exhibition, repression in Morocco, medical care in Alberta, industrial news including London bus drivers and more.
Contents
- Victimised by the State
- Solidarity Works
- Labour Problems, Mr. Martell
- Franco's Heir
- Bolivia
- Housing Direct Action
- Morocco, Alberta
- Industrial Notebook
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Volume 5, Issue 2 of Direct Action, with articles on a Labour-backed unemployment demo, construction disputes at St Paul's cathedral, direct action against an eviction in Kent, the Panama canal, an ITV documentary about Franco's Spain, the Bolivian miners, repression against Irish farmers, class definitions and "white collar" workers, a book on the historical Jesus, a call for women's liberation from exiled members of the Mujeres Libres, fascists in Southall, industrial news including a steel dispute in Port Talbot, the Post Office exploiting Christmas temps, the anti-union Freedom Group plotting to break bus strikes, and more.

March 1964 issue of Direct Action with articles on: slum landlords, Spanish Anarchists on hunger strike, CND, deaths of Paul Polgare and Salvador Gimeno, crackdowns on unofficial strikes and the closed shop, plea for funds, account meeting with Solidarity on Lenin and Workers Control, book reviews, painters strike in Tulse Hill, open letter to Harold Wilson, Canadian workers hit by automation.

The Syndicalist Workers Federation on slum landlords in West London.
It is now 14 months since Rachman1 died. Thanks to Mandy Rice-Davies and the Ward trial2 , the press found they were on a good thing. There were a few months of seven-Sunday weeks, when everybody came to know of Rachman and his activities. News of the World reporters took rooms in St. Stephen's Gardens and reported "I Lived in a Slum"; Panorama moved into Westbourne Park Road. Then other stories took over the front pages and the small storm of public indignation died down.
The Milner Holland Committee has been appointed and the government has been forced to introduce its Housing Bill. But despite these supposed cure-alls, Rachman's ghost still looms over Paddington and North Kensington. Admittedly, when the story first broke there was something like panic among the closely-knit group of Paddington slum-landlords. Raymond Nash, of Venus Properties, sold all his Paddington houses by September (he has since re-acquired them) and the others hurriedly began repairing leaking pipes, renewing lightbulbs and bannisters and issuing rent books.
But that was six months ago and now that "Housing" is last year's news they feel safe to come into the open again; as this little incident shows. Capital and Suburban Properties Ltd. is registered at 84 Queensway, W.2, just round the corner from the old Peter Rachman Ltd. hang-out at 91 Westbourne Grove. It is only one of the many companies run by friends and associates of Rachman and using methods made famous by him, which specialise in West London slum property. Its managing director is Peter Alfonso Davis, one of Rachman's most successful managers and, possibly, the "experienced coloured man" referred to in the Commons debate.
Recently, Capital and Suburban bought 125 Gloucester Terrace, Bayswater, in the name of Davis' girlfriend, Hilda Ludlam from Hamburg. There were a number of controlled tenants in this house and Davis made it known that he wanted to get rid of them. Knowing his reputation, most accepted a cash statement. One tenant—a Miss Linscombe—however, refused to leave. She came home one night and found that her room had been entered and ransacked. All the furniture, including the bed, had been overturned and sheets, clothes and personal belongings scattered over the floor. This happened several times and, although nothing, not even her transistor radio, was ever taken, Miss Linscombe found it impossible to carry on living in that house.
So things have not changed much. Despite newspaper sensations and "official action," Paddington in February, 1964, is much the same as it was in February, 1962. With one notable exception, the old gang, Nash and Shabaini, Cyril Kaye and Peter Davis, is still in control. Now that no paper will touch the story the old conditions have returned. Peter Rachman with his Heavy Glove Gang was no isolated figure, but just one [????] in a huge network that is not only slum-landlordism but the whole of the property business.
And where do the authorities stand in all this? Paddington Borough Council seemed to be taken aback by the Rachman "disclosures." Although the people of Paddington had known about the housing situation since 1957, the majority of their elected representatives had to rely on the national press for their information. Paddington, with its millionaire mayor and some of the worst slums in London became an even dirtier word than it had been before.
A face-saving operation was needed and a house-to-house survey of the St. Stephens Gardens area was attempted. This was impossible to complete, because of the difficulty of tracing owners of particular properties (one house in St. Stephens Gardens itself changed hands six times between the 23rd and 30th of September). The result of this was that Closing Orders have been haphazardly placed on various houses in the western end of the Gardens and in adjoining parts of Ledbury, Shrewsbury and Westbourne Park Roads, as well as in some areas of Bayswater and North Paddington. The landlords have found it cheaper to evict tenants and do without the rent than to make the necessary repairs, so that the houses could be declared " fit for human habitation." For the tenants it has meant that a leaking roof is exchanged for no roof at all. "Ah well," said one of the council officers, " you have to be cruel to be kind to these people."
Neither is the LCC record too good. Although, theoretically, they have nothing to do with it, they must take at least some of the blame for the situation in Paddington. They have consistently refused, on density grounds, consent for housing development in the working-class districts. Last December, though, they granted it for the "high quality " development of St. George's Churchyard site (facing Hyde Park and two minutes from Marble Arch).
In October the LCC made a compulsory purchase of four large houses in Leinster Square and over a hundred tenants, including a number of old age pensioners, had to move. These houses are still empty and there is no sign of any work being carried out on them. Closing Orders have even had to be placed on one LCC property in Paddington (243 Gloucester Terrace). These authorities claim that their hands are tied. The Town Clerk of Fulham spoke for all Metropolitan Borough Councils when he said that a Council cannot probe too deeply into housing questions or it will "find itself footing substantial bills at the ratepayers' expense."
Yet Paddington, the most deeply involved of all the councils, finds nothing strange in spending £500 a week of the ratepayers' money on, of all things, time and motion study! And who are these ratepayers who must not be offended, anyhow? Of course—the landlords! So everything fits into place. The councils need the landlords and make no distinction between bad and "good" landlords. They are all bound up together, all part of a system. They won't go until the system does. And only then will Rachman's ghost be finally exorcised.
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April 1964 issue of Direct Action, including: Against All Bombs - SWF supports unilateralism, racketeer landlord baulked by picket, Spanish news, Rhodesian unrest, power station workers fight for 40 hour week, Lenin and workers control part 2 - Tom Brown, manifesto of Federation of Glasgow Anarchists, critical reivew of "Anarchism" by George Woodcock, May Day in Portugal.

May 1964 issue of Direct Action, including: scab firm Martell gears up for Post Office strike, decline of UK peace movement, electricy power dispute, formation of new Anarchist Federation of Britain, conditions in china-clay industry, construction industry in Canada, burglary of SWF printshop, Lenin and workers control, Rhodesian school strike, Brazil, Irish "tinkers" self-build a school in Dublin, round up of fascist groups in Britain.

Syndicalist Workers Federation report from 1964 on the Irish Traveller community in Cherry Orchard, Dublin, taking matters into their own hands to provide a school for their children.
Tinker is an archaic term for an itinerant tinsmith who mends household utensils. Traveller or Irish Traveller is now the preferred term. "Tinker" is included in the text below for historical accuracy.
The tinkers of Ireland (known officially as itinerants) have much in common with gypsies, principally their nomad-type of existence. To some people theirs seems a romantic, carefree life, while to others they are shiftless, lazy and dishonest. The falseness of both images was perfectly, demonstrated by the campaign recently waged in Dublin by the Itinerant Action Group, to secure for their children a decent education. It showed them in a truer light as loving parents and resourceful, responsible, citizens, and was a classical justification of the Syndicalist philosophy of direct action.
The difficulties encountered by nomadic or itinerant peoples, in the effort to live their type of life, arise from the enclosure of land and the development of large urban agglomerations, with their stifling bye-laws on the one hand, and the pressure towards conformity and integration by bureaucracies, which hate what they don't control, on the other.
In Ireland the problems became so acute that the State set up a commission to examine the tinkers' plight. For three years they waited anxiously to hear what would be done to educate their children. Towards the end of last year, the Report was published. The education situation, it said, was desperate and immediate action was essential. The sparks of hope were soon quenched. Official reaction to the official report—Nothing could be done for at least two years. The tinkers had waited years for the Commission, then three more while it gathered facts, but now another two (at least!) was just too much.
However, their innate instinct for self-reliance prevented despair. The Itinerant Action Group was formed and announced its intention of building a school on an unoccupied Corporation1 site. The result was an immediate and enthusiastic reaction from a dozen quarters—a contracting firm offered free materials, teachers offered their services on a rota basis, a soldier made a set of classroom furniture, two doctors offered a clinic service, subscriptions were sent to supply books and meals. Tinkers from all over Ireland converged on Dublin with their children.
On Monday, December 30, Peadar O'Donnell, one of Ireland's best-known writers and a veteran socialist, performed a simple opening ceremony. The ramshackle wooden building contained 50 eager children and there was an atmosphere of enthusiastic determination. However, the heavy hand of officialdom was soon to cast its shadow. Dublin Corporation served a week's notice of eviction, threatening prosecution for trespass, etc.
The dignified reaction of the tinkers and their determination earned them increasing public support and help. When the week was up the perplexed Corporation dithered uncertainly for another day, then sent along, a squad of workers, backed up by police and officials, to carry out the demolition of the little schoolhouse. The tinkers put a picket round the site, appealed to the workers not to pass it, and pledged that whatever happened they would not offer any violence or resistance. The workers refused to pass, but there was some doubt how long they could sustain this gesture without losing their jobs, so the tinkers announced they would move, but in their own time. Some hours later they withdrew in orderly fashion to another corporation site and. settled down again, stating, "We will stay here until we are moved on again. We will not resist, but we will camp in one site after another until the government do something about the Itinerants' Commission."
Throughout all this the school continued to function and the children showed an eagerness for knowledge. The Corporation alternated between indecision and dire threat. The tinkers staged protest demonstrations and when again evicted they marched their caravans across the centre of Dublin to a new site. Support was now pledged from the civil liberties organisation and student bodies.
At length the Action Group decided to bring matters to a climax by staying put and letting the Corporation carry out its plans to destroy their school. A contingent of 30 workmen was sent to do the dirty work. Almost half of them refused to obey their orders and were promised Union support. The rest found themselves obstructed by students and members of the public, who lay across their path in protest. Eventually, with the help of police reinforcements, they broke through the barricade of caravans and bodies and finished their task. By this time, however, the campaign had focussed public attention on the tinkers' position and won great sympathy for them.
One of the campaigners on behalf of the itinerants. 25 year-old pacifist Grattan Puxon2 , is now remanded on bail in the sum of £500, charged under Section 30 of the Offences against the State Act with possession of explosives—a trumped-up charge, in an effort to discredit the Itinerant Action Group.
A protest demonstration and march, in support of the itinerants and Grattan Puxon, organised by the Syndicalist Workers Federation, was held from Hyde Park to the Irish Embassy in London Sunday, April 26, supported by the Irish Socialist Republican League.
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June 1964 issue of Direct Action, including: military conscription adverts, Asturian miners strike, Norwegian power workers demand safety measures, Glasgow busmen dispute, paltry wages in Gibraltar, South Africa, Lenin and worker's control - Tom Brown, May Day, Eamon De Valera frames pacifist Grattan Puxon for explosives, open letter to the Labour Leader.

July 1964 issue of Direct Action including: reprisals against Remington Rand typewriters union rep in Glasgow, repression in Rhodesia, piecework - still the bosses; best foreman, union amalgamation in the building industry, Conscription? It's an all-party threat, unions in Franco's Spain, Tom McAlpine's "Factory for Peace" - a worker writes, electronic and automation exhibition at Olympia, Parliament - the seal of slavery, Canadian liberals.
PDF courtesy of the comrades at Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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Christie writes under a pseudonym in 1964 about his time as a worker at Tom McAlpine's utopian "Factory For Peace" in Glasgow and the conditions and undemocractic practices there.
Tom McAlpine1 , visionary—or waster? This has been a topic of conversation in libertarian circles. He has been lauded by the Christians, Social democrats and pacifists; but this is only to be expected, as it seems to them that if the Factory for Peace2 succeeds (as it will not) there will be no need for the revolution which they all fear. The left wing press have dedicated whole pages to this subject and there have been TV films made about this experiment below the co-operative sausage factory off Scotland Street, Glasgow.
I worked in the Factory for a month—enough for me to get an insight on its nature. I was paid £2 10s. for three days' work, the idea being that on alternate days we would sign on at the labour exchange, thus giving us added income.
The manager, according to the constitution of the factory, was supposed to be elected by a meeting of the workers, and so Tom became manager. A mystery exists here who elected Tom McAlpine? This question is comparable only to that of the Marie Celeste.
A foreman was elected (by Tom) and then part-time labour was introduced in order to begin production. This system of part-time labour worked well for a week, and then, when production had to be stepped up, the manager asked the other boy who was working part-time to come into his office. When he came out I was called in and asked whether I would be willing to work full time for a wage to be decided.
I had not been informed what the other boy had been offered and, as I had no knowledge of engineering, felt £7 would be enough. Later, when I talked to this other boy, I discovered McAlpine had offered him £10, but when McAlpine discovered I would work for far less, he reduced it to £8. This boy told the manager he was quite happy with the present state of affairs and would not work for less than £10 a week, as he was a fifth-year engineering apprentice and entitled to more.
This obviously annoyed McAlpine and at the Council Meeting the following Friday he proposed that the boy should be given a week's notice. As two other young, lads had started work that week, they voted with us and McAlpine's proposal was flung out of the window. He told the meeting he would bring this up the following week and, if it was rejected again, would take it to a higher authority. This higher authority is a Council which has nothing to do with the shop floor, but to make sure we don't make any H bombs, and who also decide the wages of the personnel.
The following week, just as we were going into the meeting. I was told by McAlpine that he was sorry, but he had forgotten to tell me that my friend and I were not allowed to vote. Seemingly it is in the constitution that only those who had worked for three months were allowed to vote. If that were the case no one would be allowed to vote as the factory had only been opened a fortnight previously. This friend of mine resigned after that; can you blame him?
Another boy whose work was exactly the same as mine was being paid a pound more, because he was 21 and I was not. I brought this up at a meeting and McAlpine said he was not willing to raise my wages, but would rather lower the other boy's. A shocked silence followed. A so-called socialist lowering wages already below subsistence level! I pointed out that I did not wish this boy's wages to be lowered, as I had already guessed that this would have been the answer, but the reason why I brought this up was because I wished to show the bourgeois elitist nature of the Factory for Peace.
A young socialist who worshipped McAlpine with naive sincerity had been working in the factory since its opening. This young socialist had no previous experience in sheet metal work, but because he paid homage to the Court of McAlpine he was paid according to needs. While fully-apprenticed tradesmen were getting less than £12, he was paid a salary of £56 per month. This caused quite a stir among the rank and file.
He defended his position by saying he had a family to support—a mother and dog, and his mother had a private income! Only two people were paid according to needs—McAlpine, £19 per week, and this young socialist. Needless to say they were the highest-paid members of the factory.
As I lived more than 14 miles away, almost beside Tom McAlpine, I arrived every morning, at nine o'clock precisely. He kept nagging at me about my late coming and eventually brought it up at a council meeting. When he had finished his diatribe I asked at what time he arrived in the morning. There was a hushed silence when he answered between 10.33 and 11 a.m. I just left it at that.
These points show only too clearly the fallacy in the idea of giving the workers control.
The workers had no impetus, they did not look upon the machines as theirs. One boy took a morning of the first week he was there to go and look for another job, which shows how effective is McAlpine's brand of industrial democracy.
Last of all, McAlpine himself told me that the factory was not under workers' control and never would be, unless the workers took it over themselves and, as far as he was concerned, it was just an industrial experiment.
- 1Tom McAlpine 1929-2006 was active in Scottish CND, the IONA Community and was Labour and Scottish National Party councillor. Obituary - https://www.scotsman.com/news/obituaries/tom-mcalpine-appreciation-2469561
- 2A postive account of the Factory For Peace by McAlpine appeared in Anarchy #26 in 1963 https://libcom.org/library/factory-peace
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This article appeared in Direct Action under the name of "Peter Piatkov" - the name most commonly attributed to Peter The Painter of the Siege of Sidney Street in 1911. Stuart Christie describes pretty much the exact same experience as "Peter" in "My Granny Made Me An Anarchist: The Christie File Pt 1 1946-1964" (Christie Books) p152 onwards.
Yeah, I just finished that book and marked the bit where he said he wrote about it for Direct Action and was going to look it up. Thanks Foz
Oh well that's good timing, then! An interesting case study of the different approaches of the Freedom group vs the SWF...
Oh dear! I was not going to contribute to this post, though I feel the account of Rowan Engineering in Direct Action, June 1964, should be taken with a pinch of salt.
I was acquainted with a number of young lads who worked there and they certainly had no time for Tom McAlpine. It should be noted that there was a running feud for a number of years between a number of ‘politicos’ regarding McAlpine and the factory – reaching well into the late sixties.
Libcom has a photo showing a number of those involved all marching behind an anarchist banner on May Day, 1964. It clearly shows Tom & Stuart.
I’ll stick to these comments regarding the article.
On February 1964, I started a five year sheet metal work apprenticeship in a firm in Hillington Industrial Estate, which was considered to have the best wages and conditions in the West of Scotland (Rolls Royce). I was paid the princely sum of three pounds ten shillings per week for my first year. We were on a forty-two hour week - Monday to Friday and Saturday morning. We needed to have clocked in and our overalls on by seven-thirty. I think if you were late more than fifteen minutes clocking in, the time-keepers would have removed all the cards from the board, and you would be sent out and only allowed to clock-in for the afternoon shift.
After reading the above article, I thought then, and now, it was a good piss-take.

An article on automation and unemployment from the Syndicalist Workers Association in 1964.
Content warning - includes brief example of racist language, from an anti-fascist perspective.
The recent electronic and automation exhibition at Olympia is reported to have been a phenomenal success, both from the point of view of attendance and of business deals. A boom in automation isn't news these days, but it is of permanent interest to the potential victim—the industrial worker.
Why this must be so is effectively illustrated by an article in a special supplement issued by the Financial Times to coincide with the Exhibition. The head, “How to automate without being obvious," is itself provocative to make one sit up and take notice, but the contents are equally alarming.
The article is about Elliott-Automation's scheme for gradual conversion of industrial plant to total automation on a step-by-step basis—rather like a kid's brick-building or add-to Meccano set (Elliott, along with English-Electric Leo and ICI-Ferranti, is one of the big names in the British Electronics world.)
The article first of all points out as obstacles to the advance of automation the stupidity and hidebound conservatism which apparently typify our managerial executive class. It earmarks as a strong contributing factor towards this conservatism their fear of workers' reaction against the threat of redundancy. It is quite obvious from this that the Ferrantis and the Elliotts find that their ability to sell their products is strongly limited by the resistance of workers to any automation, which is concerned only with increasing capitalist profits, instead of benefitting all members of society equally.
Being profiteers and not social reformers, their answer to this problem is to a find a way of introducing automation under the unsuspecting worker's nose—and there's no reason why it shouldn't work if we're not very alert to the danger.
One can just see the picture: the Union man comes back from negotiations with good news - 2d. an hour more than we expected and the old crib about canteen facilities is settled . . . and, by the way, they're going to try out a new machine in the packing section, but nobody will lose his job. Joy all round—and the Monster is in. Six months later they "try out" another new machine; again nobody loses his job, but vacancies just aren't filled. A while later the O & M boys and the Operations Researchers are around with charts and statistics, to show the boss the benefits of his little bit of automation and estimates of the profits to be had by going the whole hog.
Dangle those extra profits in front of him long enough and he'll find courage to damn the workers and automate the lot, or he can be more subtle and just keep on adding little bits till everybody's inched out painlessly. As there is little about modern industry to inspire contentment in, or loyalty to a particular concern or firm, the odds are that very few people will have been in the factory long enough to have seen the whole thing happening. There'll just be a few hundred less people employed and nobody knowing why--except the Mosleys and Jordans, who can confidently point out that it is all the fault of the "Niggers and Jews." Obviously the crucial stage in the whole process is at that point when the union man comes to "sell" the deal to the "general body." What is needed is somebody with a nasty suspicious mind who will be prepared to rock the boat by asking awkward cantankerous questions about the "new machine." If he can back this up with a bit of knowledge about the sort of thing that's liable to happen (it doesn't matter how garbled or vague the "info" is) so much the better. This is a case where a little knowledge is a dangerous thing—for the other side.
The workers will benefit from automation only if they fight doggedly for their share of its products. In the long run this means achieving a totally new social system. But we must recognise that the society we want is very far from being achieved and the workers' day-to-day struggle must be waged on a bread-and-butter basis.
You can't have Anarchy next Friday, but you can have an extra 10s. in your pay packet; you can't have your fair share of the benefits of automation this year, but you can have a 40-hour week, or avoid redundancy and it's all moving in the right direction if we keep up the pressure long enough.
If you can't get your rights in full, then you've got to settle for whatever you can get, but there's a big difference between workers who have automation slipped in under their noses as part of a "good bargain" which they accept in ignorance --and workers who eventually accept it because they have to, but only after gouging every last concession out of the pockets of the capitalists or State. The moral is that workers must educate themselves to recognise a "pig in a poke," whether it's the boss or the union that tries to sell it to them —and from now on the fattest pigs in the biggest pokes are going to come in the shape of new machines.
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August 1964 issue of Direct Action, including: Postal workers deal insufficient, London syndicalist jailed for smashing window of Spanish State Airlines, Martell and scab workers, walk out at Fords, Trotskyists expelled from Labour's Young Socialists, Spain and the British Labour Party, Tom Brown on his early days at work, resistance to Rachmanism in Tunbridge Wells, review of Andy Anderson's "Hungary '56", Cyprus, Bulgarian anarchists arrested.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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An eyewitness account of the shop stewards' movement on Tyneside during the first world war.
One’s first day at work is an important day. In my case it was also a very long day. Hurrying along the damp, dark streets at 5.30 on a winters morning, with a tin tea can and a parcel of bread (there were few canteens at that time), I felt like a workman, though a very small one. The first world war was still raging and my first inside view of the factory was of rows of 60-pounder and 18-pounder field guns, anti-aircraft and mountain guns, tanks and anti-sub artillery, then lines of machines turning gun barrels or milling breech blocks.
It was noisy, bewildering and rather threatening, but youth is buoyant and I soon adapted myself to my new environment. I soon learned that some persons were jolly, some indifferent and some aggressive. Many of the latter wore bowler hats and thick watch chains, one was known as Simon Legree1 . The jolly men taught me that when you are pushed, you push back. I was an apt pupil. I was too small to do any actual heaving, but, like most of the lads, developed a form of public relations which appeared to be based on ju-jitsu.
But it wasn’t always like that. There was one foreman who claimed he remembered the days when his like were allowed to strike apprentices. One day he found six of his boys warming themselves in the smithy. Taking a hazel rod from a pickle tank, the proverbial “rod in pickle”, he crept up behind the boys and lashed out at them. Though taken by surprise, they quickly recovered and four of them held him down while two lashed him with the hazels, to the sound of his yells and the laughter of the smiths.
I soon realised that the new life I had entered was a kind of social war, the scene suitably furnished by the ever-present artillery. On the one side were the overseers, the lowest agents of the invisible but powerful enemy, the informers, the anti-unionists, the few who hankered after being scabs and who whispered, “Don’t trust unions and such like, keep your nose clean and you’ll get on”, and the management. Facing them, bold and contemptuous, were our people. I was learning sociology without books.
I soon went on to learn that there were issues in this conflict that a man or a small group could not win by themselves and men turned to “the Union.” This I thought I understood. I had seen the pictorial banners of Northumberland and Durham miners, the favourite picture showing a boy trying in vain to break a bundle of about a score of sticks and an old man breaking his sticks one at a time. The slogan beneath proclaimed “United we stand, divided we fall”, or “Unity is Strength”.
But while we had one enemy, the employer, backed by “the authorities”, and we were one in circumstance and purpose, “the Union” was really many unions. The craftsmen had their own unions, each craft at least one separate union, the engineers several unions for one craft, and the “semi-skilled” machinists their union. The “unskilled”, after generations of being shut out, were now in several general unions. But women, now nearly 50 per cent of the labour force, were not allowed to join any union and had to form one for themselves. Only some of the draughtsmen were members of a union and the clerks disdained to be organised, accepting a lower wage in return for an intangible “dignity”.
Even worse, the machinery of the trade unions, like the Labour Party, had become part of the war machine, giving away all hard-won rights. My school-bred and newspaper-fed patriotism was cracking at the edges, for the class enemy had not suspended his predation. What had happened to the banner and slogans of unity?
But “Union” was more than officers and organisation, it was an idea. Almost within living memory, men and women had died on the scaffold for that idea and still men knew that Union meant bread, human dignity and the hope of liberty. War or no war, the social struggle went on. I learnt two new terms, Syndicalism and Revolutionary Industrial Unionism. Soon they seemed to mean the same thing, though I was some time in understanding them. The first had a 1789 sound, I thought, like the Committee of Public Safety, but the latter seemed apt to engineering.
Later, when I became involved, I found that the new ideas stemmed from European Syndicalism and the IWW2 , the latter having small groups in Britain and support from Wobbly seamen from the US and Australia. The Socialist Labour Party also advocated industrial Industrial Unionism, having been affiliated to the IWW, which they left after having disagreed with the “without affiliation to a political party” clause. The Syndicalist, like the IWW groups, were small but the influence of all these groupings was enormously greater than their numbers would seem to justify. Little wonder that the Government and the employers imagined a vast and wealthy organisation, plotting against the powers that be. But a little leaven leaveneth the whole lump.
I recently read in Anarchy the pontifical statement, “it seems to me that Malatesta’s main contentions still hold good that those anarchists who are prepared to act in the industrial sphere should work within the existing unions rather than propagate the idea of a new union movement.” (Anarchy 40, p. 173)3 . Unfortunately, while many of us know of Tom Mann, James Connolly and Larkin, no one knew about Malatesta and his alleged advice. A man without a pope is apt to be a pragmatist, so these grimy workers just did the best they knew – and very effective it was.
Firstly, the trade unions, through their officials, had gone over completely to the side of the State at war, and were as much a part of the war machine as were the Brigade of Guards or the Royal Navy. With a stroke of the pen, all the rights won by a century of hard fighting were signed away. While rents and prices soared, there was to be no wage increase. Safety measures were swept away, a working week of more than 66½ hours was compulsory, industrial conscription was agreed to by the unions, with penal measures against the rebellious or weary. Military conscription reinforced this dictatorship. Even the Webbs had to admit, “the individual workman realised that the penalty for any failure of implicit obedience to the foreman might be instant relegation to the trenches”. (History of Trade Unionism, p. 639).
In return, the employers’ war profits were to be limited (to a certain, highly inflated, standard), but this “Munitions Levy” was never enforced and within a year was formally abolished.
On the Clyde, factory committees of syndicalist and IWW form were created and, because their ideas suited the needs of the hour, spread with rapidity to Tyneside, the Mersey, the Midlands and throughout the land. Life would not wait until the paralytic unions resumed business, “after the war”.
The “new union movement” overcame at one bound the hundredfold divisions of the workers. All crafts, the semi-skilled and unskilled, the boys and the women, were drawn together in frequent mass meetings. They elected and withdrew their delegates, now known as shop stewards, whenever necessary. They acted as one force. In the factory in which I worked were number of Belgian workers; they, too, joined in, as did a body of soldiers who, because of their skill, had been drafted to the works.
We were now powerful. We struck work, we demonstrated, we hoisted our wages and curbed the overseers. State and employers consulted our delegates, after threats of prison had failed. The impetus of this movement has lasted until this day. Now every worker knows the value of a workshop organisation to his daily bread. It remains for us to broaden the ideas of this valuable experience. Our factory movement may not have been pure enough for coffee-bar revolutionaries, but we answered the plain man’s question: “Does it work?”
Tom Brown
Thanks to The Tyneside Anarchist Archive for putting up the copy of Direct Action containing this article https://tynesideanarchistarchive.wordpress.com/2018/07/08/tom-brown/ (and to the person who typed it out).
From: Direct Action : monthly newspaper of the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation (IWMA), August 1964 (vol.5, no. 8 (38)) p5-6.
Taken from https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/612kss - footnotes below by Kate Sharpley Library.
- 1The name of a cruel slave driver in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
- 2Industrial Workers of the World: members are known as ‘Wobblies’
- 3‘Anarchism and Trade Unionism’ by Gaston Gerard. See: http://libcom.org/library/anarchism-trade-unionism and https://files.libcom.org/files/anarchy-40.pdf
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There is an exchange of views about this article in a subsequent issue: https://libcom.org/article/controversy-trade-unionism-or-syndicalism-tom-brown-and-peter-turner

September 1964 issue of Direct Action including: Stuart Christie arrested in Spain, Merseyside dockers, rich people in the Labour party, freedom and the law, seaside sweatshops, Muslim seamen in South Shields, struggle for civil rights for black people in America.
PDF from Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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September 1964 issue of Direct Action including: Stuart Christie and Fernando Cabballo sentenced to 20 and 30 years, no good choices in the election, dockers, strike action at Remington-Rand in Glasgow, unions the "brotherhood" of labour and capital?, parliament and the constitution, centenary of the First International, Portugal.

Novemer 1964 issue of Direct Action including: Shadow Minister of Labour Ray Gunter, Irish Travellers start their own workshop, boycott Spain, Christie-Carballo demonstrations, Dublin building workers, hire and fire at Remingon-Rand in Glasgow, debate: trade unionism or syndicalism?, minimum wage in Canada, victimisation at Collins publishers, Lancashire engineering apprentices organise, SWF industrial action sub-commitee formed.
An exchange of views in the pages of the Syndicalist Workers Federation paper Direct Action in 1964.
Typed up by Kate Sharpley Library.
Peter Turner writes…
Tom Brown, in his article “School for Syndicalism” (D.A., September) [Actually August - Libcom] claims the best of both worlds. The organisation he describes, which “overcame at one bound the hundredfold divisions of the workers. All crafts, semi-skilled, the boys and the women, were drawn together in frequent mass meetings. They elected and withdrew delegates, now know as shop stewards, whenever necessary.” This type of thing still goes on today and is part of the unofficial rank and file movement in industry which exists within the framework of the official trade unions.
They may be based on Syndicalist and IWW ideas, but I am sure only a very few workers involved in these movements realise this. These unofficial movements should be encouraged and anarchists in industry should play an active role. But these are not the “new union movement” as Tom Brown describes them. What Malatesta means by this is a movement based solely on syndicalist lines with the abolition of capitalism as its aim.
There seems to me to be nothing “pontifical” in the statement that
“Malatesta’s main contentions still hold, that those anarchists who are prepared to act in the industrial sphere should work within the existing unions rather than propagate the idea of a new union movement.”
These were Malatesta’s views and it is exactly what workers were doing during World War I.
Where are the syndicalist industrial unions? We just haven’t got them in this country and even where they have existed, there were often strong reformist tendencies. I think that, in this country, it is better to work within the existing trade unions, propagating not only syndicalist and IWW ideas, but anarchist ones as well.
The syndicalist method of organisation can and is used in industry today, but needs extending. To knock the ideas of a particular anarchist, when they are applicable today, is rather shortsighted and dogmatic and to describe him as a “coffee-bar revolutionary” is stupid. As Tom Brown writes, “It remains for us to broaden the ideas of the valuable experience!” Surely the experience and ideas of Malatesta, Mann, James Connolly and Larkin can help us with this and the lessons learned from the present day mixed-economy capitalism can help us spread our ideas amongst the industrial workers.
Tom Brown replies…
Twenty-five years ago I was asked, by my fellow editors of the Anarchist War Commentary, to write three articles on Syndicalism. When the articles were published, Ethel Mannin urged us to reprint them as a pamphlet. We did so and the pamphlet was at once a success, having to be re-set and reprinted three times.1 . It was reprinted, too, in the USA and translated and printed in Spanish by the exiled CNT in France, into Japanese by the Japanese Anarchist Federation and into Norwegian.
During that time I heard of no-one in the Anarchist movement in Britain who objected to the principles and practices outlined in the pamphlet; on the contrary, it was accepted as an outline of our principles.
I have never departed from those principles, for I have not found anything wrong in them and events have proved their efficacy.
Since the war, however, some have thought it necessary to attack Syndicalism, while retaining the name of Anarchism, and for many years have sought an alternative to fill the vacuum. Unable to think of anything better, they have fallen back on reactionary trade unionism. Where lies this degeneration to reformism?
Peter Turner says of the workers’ committees: “This type of thing still goes on today.” Of course it does. Nevertheless, it did start as the result of Syndicalist and IWW word and deed, as the historians of industrial history, friendly, inimical or neutral, testify. The committees exist and grow because workers need an alternative to the effete unions – and whence can it come but from Syndicalist thought and precept?
Yes, few workers realise the origin of the factory committee movement, but that does not destroy its efficacy. Tonight, millions of people in Britain will switch on their electric lights, few will give a thought to Joseph Swan, the inventor, but they will not, because of that, go back to tallow candles. Countless millions now alive and well would have perished long ago, but for the work of Dr. Jenner and the country folk who guided him. Except for monuments to the father of vaccine, mostly in Latin America, his work is unsung, but nobody wishes to go back to smallpox.
Of “this type of thing” Peter Turner says it “is part of the unofficial rank and file movement in industry which exists within the framework of the official trade unions.” Here we have two opposites existing in one body. This movement is “unofficial,” it also “exists within the framework of the official trade unions.” If that’s not making the best of both worlds, then pigs do fly. I would like to ask every anti-Syndicalist Anarchist, “Do you ever listen to yourself contradicting yourself?”
The movement away from reactionary unionism was the work of what has been called “New Unionism.” In shape and meaning, this is exactly what it was. Here is the heart of the matter – and its understanding will justify this controversy. It was not Trade Unionism. True, it was only one stage of the development of Revolutionary Industrial Unionism and there are other stages yet, but this one is now accepted by most workers who are interested in their own problems. But the factory committees have never been accepted by the unions, except by force majeure, and these unions have fought a constant, though losing battle to control, tame, and even brainwash the shop stewards.
Any steward who does his plain duty finds himself torn between his stewardship and the attempted domination of the union bureaucracy. Unless he understands the inherent irreconcilability of the two opposing principles, he becomes as a table-tennis ball between two bats. The workers, to accomplish even their own defence, must break the chains with which the trade unions seek to bind them and continue to develop their organisation, self-controlled, at their place of work.
What is the term most used in public discussion of workers’ committees and strike action? Unofficial! Pick up any newspaper any day. In one week in London, a one-day strike of dockers and the promise of more to come, three-day strike of a considerable section of the tube railmen, successful action by the workers of the big United Dairies and several other actions in factories, all unofficial, all from below. Wilson, on the eve of the Election, threatened “unofficial strikers”; his Minister of Labour, Ray Gunter, a trade union official, started his first day of office with a strong threat against a proposed unofficial strike of London dockers, who at once rounded on their own officials, “Whose side is he on?”
Even before the 1914-18 war, Syndicalists warned the workers that the trade unions would become increasingly part of the State machine (it was a Liberal government then). This has been proved true under Labour and Tory governments. Churchill described the trade unions as the “Fourth Estate” – the other three are the Commons, the Lords Temporal and the Lords Spiritual.
Perhaps the best recent example of the marriage of unions and State is in the autobiography of the Trades Union Congress’s most famous secretary, Lord Citrine (Men and Work, Hutchinson, 40s.). Reviewing it, H.D. Ziman writes:
“By the end of the book, it goes only to the outbreak of war in 1939, the reader realises that the close relations that exist between the TUC and the Cabinet (whatever the latter’s politics) were created early in Lord Citrine’s 20 years’ General Secretaryship, not in or after the Second World War. The frequent visits he paid to 10 Downing Street did not leak out, since he slipped along the corridor which led from the Treasury building. He seems to have enjoyed being behind the scenes.” Daily Telegraph, 3.9.64
Work in the unions – but don’t forget those secret passages!
- 1Trade unionism or syndicalism? Published by Freedom Press, PDF at https://libcom.org/files/Trade%20unionism%20or%20syndicalism_0.pdf, reprinted in Tom Brown’s syndicalism
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December 1964 issue of Direct Action including: automation, ballot rigging in Seaman's Union, apprentices strike, workplace struggles roundup, SWF conference, Spain's economics of hunger, US print workers strike.

Syndicalist Workers Federation article from 1964 contrasting the spectre of automation vs the reality of shopfloor "efficiencies" via time and motion studies.
The Hidden Hand of Cousins1
Remember the election posters of two months ago, with the slogan "Let's Go With Labour"? When one says “Let's go", an object usually follows— "Let's go and see Chelsea"—but here was a journey without destination, just "Let's go ".
From the speeches and press statements of Labour Party spokesmen, we find Wilson is to lead us into a brave new world of mechanical men, with much vague talk of "the space age", "jet age", and "age of automation" and some cloudy references to science. None of it such good reading as Jules Verne and not nearly so precise.
Automagic
We are to expect wonders from the Merlins of automation, a word made so popular by repetition that it is fast losing any meaning. Every machine, even laborious hand work, is now being called automation, just as every self-service grocery shop, however small, has become a "supermarket". What is automation? After the war a new industrial method developed in the American automobile industry, sufficiently distinct to need a new name, so in Detroit someone dubbed it automation. Some, including Sir Leon Bagrit, head of Elliott Automation, prefer the formidable term Cybernetics, the study of communication and control, animal or mechanical. It is not just mechanisation. Machines first took over functions of human beings, acting as third hands or extensions of the fingers, but they were hand or foot driven, like the spinning wheel. Next came power, such as the steam engine, making an industrial revolution. The combination of machine and power gave us mechanisation.
Automation is distinct. Ordinary machines, including automatics, will, so long as power and material are fed to them, go on working; but if the wrong material is fed, or the tool is displaced, they will continue, mistakes and all, or smash themselves.
The Robots
The cybernetic machine, however, will slow itself down when material is delayed, correct itself if it begins to cut too much or too little from the material and, once it is fed with its instruction punch-card, will "think for itself". But there is little automation in Britain, or in Europe, and its future development, outside the USA, is likely to be slow, though it will still serve the writers of politicians’ speeches and authors of science fiction—perhaps the same persons. What we ought to be more concerned with is a much older industrial development, mechanisation and "time and motion work study.
An offensive against wages by the wage-cut wars of 1921-23, 1925-26 and the early 1930's, is, at the moment, impossible. Instead, Britain's employing class seek to reduce their labour force by faster, more complicated machines and: by pernicious "work study”
Gum Shoes and Stopwatches
Work study, in contrast with automation which seeks to give the machine certain attributes of humans—aims at the mechanisation of men. The soft shoe gang creep about the factory, timing men with a stopwatch, noting all their movements and adding and subtracting them until the sum is the greatest amount of productivity of which a man is capable, if he is treated not as a temperamental human being, but a machine.
This is the offensive of the employers against the wage workers, which so far has had very limited success. It seeks to get more work, without a corresponding increase in its wage bill; to get the same or greater production- from fewer workers. As a by-product, it will ultimately increase the wage-competing ranks of the unemployed.
Let Them Eat Bigger Cakes
While sections of the employing class, such as professional politicians, may dislike some of the Labour Party’s regime, it has much to offer them. During the election campaign no fear of the “October Revolution" was shown in the capitalist press, which at times has a distinctly favourable leaning towards that party, quite apart from the "Labour papers" owned by millionaires.
In addition, the Economist advised its capitalist readers to "Vote Labour". The Trotskyist Newsletter front-paged an appeal by super-grocer Lord Sainsbury to “Vote Labour” and alongside it printed the Trotskyist appeal to “Vote Labour"
Capitalism's best chance of inflicting its more-work-for-less-money campaign on the workers is the Labour government, though they may have to suffer a little from its bureaucratic nonsense.
Already the Wilson Cabinet are on the job with their hangman's propaganda; "just try this on for size”. With a touch of Marie Antoinette, Gunter2
says “I want to make the cake bigger". We have known times when we got a smaller slice from a bigger cake.
The “Labour" Daily Mirror tells readers stop-watching, is good for them, while Gunter threatens workers with an attack on "restrictive practices". Harold Wilson, TV broadcast of October 27, spoke of talks with union leaders and employers, adding, with regard to higher incomes, "When I say incomes, I mean not only wages but PROFITS. DIVIDENDS AND RENTS”.
He also promised a war against "overmanning of jobs", “demarcation" and “wild-cat strikes”.
This is the meaning of Cousins’ appointment to the Wilson-created Ministry of Technology... not to lead us to a brave new scientific world, but to lead the attack on industrial workers — and office workers, too – for will they not accept from a trade-union leader what they reject from a Dr Beeching3 ? Surely workers will submit to Labour measures, which if imposed by Tories, would cause a revolt?
So runs their reasoning. Fortunately, they reckon without the bete noire of their nightmares – the unofficial strike.
- 1This was originally the title of this article. Frank Cousins (1904-1986) was a British trade union leader and Labour politician. Cousins played a significant role in helping Harold Wilson become leader of the Labour Party and served in Wilson's cabinet as Minister of Technology from October 1964 until his resignation on 11 June 1966 to protest against a Government-backed law freezing incomes and prices.
- 2Raymond Gunter (1909–1977) was a British Labour Party politician and trade unionist. He was appointed Minister of Labour by Harold Wilson in 1964.
- 3Richard Beeching (1913–1985), was chairman of British Railways. He became a household name in Britain in the early 1960s for his report The Reshaping of British Railways, which led to over 4,000 route miles (6,400 kilometres) being removed from the system on cost and efficiency grounds. A further 2,000 miles (3,200 km) were lost by the end of the 1960s, while other lines were reduced to freight use only
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January 1965 issue of Direct Action, including: Labour govt freezes wages, workplace agitation updates, tenants struggles in Kent, International Monetary Fund, 1913 Dublin lock out book review, an exchange between P Turner and Tom Brown, North East coast seamen.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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February 1965 issue of Direct Action, including: Concord and aviation industry, dockers, South Africa, CCTV in Liverpool, USA United Auto Workers union, abolition of the wages system by Tom Brown, reply to Tom Brown's article on automation in a previous issue.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive in Nottingham.
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A short article on the wages system and the life of factory workers in 1965 by Tom Brown of the Syndicalist Workers Federation.
"You were saying, sir", returned the Secretary, "that you considered the time had come for fixing my salary."
"Don't be above calling it wages, man", said Mr. Boffin testily, "What the deuce! I never talked of my salary when I was in service".
"My wages", said the Secretary.
- Our Mutual Friend, Dickens.
What, more than all else, distinguishes capitalism from previous social systems? Not just exploitation of labour or class society; feudalism and slave society had such characteristics. Production for sale, instead of production for use, as the primary intent applied to all goods and ser-vices, is the special trait of capitalism. Primitive society was entirely for direct use; in slave and feudal society most goods were produced for use, only the surplus being exchanged. In capitalist society all goods (with the exception of a few vegetables grown in back gardens, or model ships in bottles made in back kitchens) are made to sell.
I recall a boyhood experience. I was sitting in a work-men's cafe, when a man near me ordered a pot of tea and a meat pie. He accepted the tea, but looked doubtfully at the pie. "Do you make these pies to eat?" he asked the man behind the bar. "No", came the prompt reply. "We make them to sell. We don't care what you do with. it. You've paid".
This incident first set me thinking about the nature of the market society. Everyone is trying to sell something, selling to live. But while some have land, oil, shares or machines to sell in shopping streets or stock markets, millions, the great majority, are launched into life without patrimony. Without gold or land, what do they sell? They can sell only their power to labour, they can but look for a buyer of labour power and to him offer their commodity for sale at so much a piece or, more often, by the hour, day or week.
That time which they have sold belongs to another, part of their life has been exchanged for the means to live. The day's work done, life begins again. At the dinner table, in the pub, before the telly, in bed, the wage worker lives for a while his own life.
Of course, having sold his time along with his labour power, the worker will try by craftiness to pinch back a little of what he was forced to sell. So, any factory or office may shelter secret eaters, underground gamblers and disguised readers. What appears to be a hive of industry may be in a condition of being gnawed from within, as a log cabin is gnawed by termites. All sorts of pleasures, from crosswords to making love, are attempted.
In case anyone may think this sounds like the exploitation of capital by labour, I most quickly add that the underground have a very limited success, in some cases none at all. But when all else fails, men's thoughts tend to wander from their tasks to more personal interests. Some will think of holidays, some, like the exile, forever think of home, but one cannot tell what thoughts, sacred or profane, are passing behind the mask. I asked a Communist docker I worked beside what he thought of. “Leninism", he answered. That was all. A machinist said, "Women". "You always say that", remarked his mate, "Don't you think of anything else?" "Is there something else to think about?" replied the first man, relapsing into thought.
The social situation in which the worker sells his labour power has been named the Labour Market, I can recall even when the cobbled yards at shipyard and dock were called "The Market". In a market, what is the final deciding factor in determining the price of a commodity? Supply and de-mand, of course. Few goods, many buyers, up go prices. This social arrangement makes man kin, not to the angels, but to beer and books, caps and carrots, pots and pullovers.
Often sections of workers try to restrict new entries to their work, so that wages may be kept up. Artisans limit apprentices, dockers and market porters control new entries, journalists, doctors and lawyers do the same. Manufacturers practise "price maintenance". Whoever seeks to abolish "restrictive practices" under capitalism is going to be very busy.
From all this it follows that any social system which is not capitalist cannot have production for sale and a wages sys-tern as its major principles. What of Communism, what of Socialism? It is true that Russian economy is based on these same principles. Because of this and other capitalist attributes, we speak of the Bolshevik economy as being neither Communism nor Socialism. but State Capitalism. - As to the Labour Party and the varieties of Socialists and Communists who support it, far from abolishing capitalism and the wages system, they are pledged to support them, doing so with vague election promises of higher wages. Yet once what was called the "Movement", Socialist to Syndicalist, was against these things. Marx in his pamphlet Value, Price and Profit, said:
"Instead of the Conservative motto 'A fair day's pay for a fair day's work', the unions ought to inscribe upon their banners the revolutionary watch-word, 'Abolition of the Wages System'”
Now it seems the Syndicalists are alone and what the Marxists want is Marxism without Karl.
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March 1965 issue of Direct Action, including: "Racialism must be fought now" - noting the racism of the press, government and thousands of votes polled in local elections by the far right British National Party, workplace disupte updates, victory for Tilbury power station builders, military service in Australia, boycotts of Franco's Spain, Steel bosses vs the Labour Party, book review "Who Owns Property in Britain?", IWW in the USA, Tom Brown on why increases to wages is not enough, Canada.

April 1965 issue of Direct Action, including: Labour Party loves nuclear bombs, Seamen's union, Edinburgh biscuit factory workers, trade unionist protest in Franco's Spain, Rising Hill libertarian school in Kings Cross, workers must oppose Vietnam war, Tom Brown on "A Plan For Steel" pamphlet, workplace disputes round up, Krupps and Auschwitz, London hanged buried in Ireland, United Nations and napalm.

May 1965 issue of Direct Action, including: opposition to Labour government's wages freeze, demonstrations in Franco's Spain, USA civil rights movement, UK racism and the Race Relations Bill, a soldier's subversion in Yemen, CND, struggle for contraception in Canada, repression of Kodak workers.

June 1965 issue of Direct Action, includig: Labour Party doesn't nationalise steel industry, uprising in Dominica, workplace struggles round up, landlords and evictions, May Day rallys round up, Tom Brown on "Trades Councils" in the early 20th Century, Malatesta book review, Laurens Otter on co-ops in India, National Assistance (unemployment benefits).

July 1965 issue of Direct Action, including: militant protests by Bolivian miners, CND Learns Nothing, Vietnam, lessons from London airport porters' stoppage, CNTU in Canada, Tom Brown on Trades Councils part two, immigrant workers strike in Preston.

Monthly Paper of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (IWMA)
Contents
- When the CP Supported the US Bomb
- Railways
- Direct actionists assert [Romanies] camping rights
- Draughts men's leaflet call for direct action
- Law & Worker
- Dock union
- Wages & Prioces
- Call to Young Workers
- Help Spanish Tourist Boycott
- Unemployment' dole?
- IWW Organises Migratory Workers
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Monthly Paper of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (IWMA)
- Stand by the Dockers!
- Beside the fascist seaside
- Railmen
- 100 % Labour: 40% rent rises!
- Syndicalists in the Warsaw Rising
- IWW: Shorter Week
- Rose-tinted vodka glasses
- Labour's Racialist Policy
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Monthly Paper of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (IWMA)
- Defend the Right to Strike!
- Bolivian Miners
- Seamen Need a National Policy
- Calling all building workers
- Hands of the Shop Stewards!
- The True Tale of Ned Ludd
- The new treason
- Misplaced 'Militancy'
- CIA Fand Kashmir Flames
- Release Iberian Prisoners
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Monthly Paper of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (IWMA)
- Car Workers Face Crisis
- Three Libertarians Freed in Spain
- Industrial Militants Get Together
- Building Workers Win Key Struggle
- No Africans Need Apply
- Joe Hill
- Glasgow Barmen
- Tyne Dockers
- Industrial Unions
- Industrial Youth Organise
- Syndicalism in Poland
- Rank & File Seamen Prepare for Conference
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Monthly paper of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation (IWMA)
- Solidarity with Will Grunter
- Swedish Syndicalists and the CNT of Spain
- Kent Homeless Take Direct Action
- SWF 7th Conference
- Parliament is a Confidence Trick
- Letter
- Telephonists Show the way
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Monthly Paper of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (IWMA)
- Wage Freeze
- Manchester Vietnam demo attacked
- CNT Militants Denounce 'Criminal Manoeuvre"
- Lest Ye Be Judged
- An 'Experience' We Can well do Without
- Young Teachers form Action Committee
- General Strike Threat Is Winner
- Union bureaucrats fall out on Tyneside
- Steelmen Get pay Cut
- Matter of LIfe & Death
- Industrial News
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Monthly Paper of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (IWMA)
- Busmen need joint action
- Lesson in Solidarity at Southall
- Law & Disorder
- Open Letter to the Labour Leader
- The Voice of What?
- Workers Forum
- Help Spanish Boycott
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Monthly Paper of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (IWMA)
- British Investments and the "East of the Suez" policy
- London busmen
- Rail strike that never was
- Easter Rising 50th Anniversary
- Miners
- Beyond the Strike
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April 1966 of Direct Action including: how we can end war, workplace struggles round up, Belgian miners shot, Glasgow rank and file workers meeting, after the election - let's get down to some real struggle, Labour government against trade unions, women workers in the North East, Glasgow busmen, Scottish workers against Polaris missiles.

May 1966 issue of Direct Action, including: wage negotiations in Sweden and the UK, 40 years since the General Strike, Canadian co-ops critiqued, Scottish new towns, Enoch Powell and the Vietnam war, CND Easter march, Trotskyists and the General Strike by Tom Brown, homeless rebellion in Kent, Ireland, dispute at Vickers in the North East.

Direct Action from June 1966 including: UK Seamen strike, Spanish CNT members stage kidnapping in protest against Franco, North East Notes, Sir William Carrion (president of AEU), Labour Govt's reactionary budget, poverty in Britain, May Day reports, Tom Brown on the aftermath of the General Strike, Irish farmers protest.

Direct Action July 1966 issue including: UK Seamen strike, USDAW sell out shop workers, book reviews (the American lockout, incomes policy guide for shop stewards), North East Notes, electricians in Ireland, and anti-strike law.

Direct Action from August 1966 including: Labour government wage freeze, Blacklist of Seamen exposed, strikebreaking in the North East, Ireland, Harold Wilson and the Vietnam war, Bolivia, Spain, AEU member replies to article in previous issue, Canada trade union congress, Tom Brown on Labour politician Frank Cousins, victory for Hebburn white collar workers.

Direct Action from September 1966 including: call for industrial action to defeat Labour wage freeze, second anniversary of Stuart Christie being imprisoned in Spain, Mark Hendy on unemployment under Harold Wilson, South Africa, workplace disuptes update, BBC on 30 years after the Spanish Civil War, anti-war rally in Japan, syndicalists in the Russian Revolution by a participant, Tom Brown on Harold Wilson's sell out to Franco.

Direct Action from October 1966 including: TUC weak on Wilson's wage freeze - Tom Brown, South Africa, workplace disputes roundup, police corruption, Irish state attacks trade unions, Help Stuart Christie, letters, Syndicalists in the Russian Revolution part 2 by "S.N.J.", Technicians Unions fail to oppose wage freeze.

Direct Action from November 1966, including: wage freeze 1966 contrasted with resistance to the 1919 wage freeze, boycott of Spain and support for Stuart Christie, The Wind of Inflation by Tom Brown, restructuring at an engineering firm in Willesden, industrial relations at British Motor Corporation, right wing blacklist firms and corporate spies, Hungary, a critical look at Andrew Cunningham of the NUGMW union, Labour Party conference.

Direct Action from December 1966 including: cost of living increases and wage freezes under Labour government, Harold Wilson, North East notes, Aberfan disaster, SWF 8th conference in Manchester, wage freezes in 1351 under Edward III, FIJL members arrested in Spain, Seamen's strike pamphlet overview, Economic League (blacklisters), CND supporters are the first charged under the new Race Relations Act (for obstruction), Ireland.

The Syndicalist Workers Federation on the 1966 Aberfan disaster in Wales, in which 144 people died - 116 of them school children.
The miners of Durham still sing an old song with the grim, true refrain: "There is blood, blood on the coal." In Aberfan it is the blood of children. Massive disaster has produced the same effects as other communal tragedies, widespread human sympathy and a temporary awakening of social conscience.
But this disaster has also produced a new effect, a ukase1 (literal) of the Labour Government forbidding, with threat of imprisonment and other penalties, discussion of this event. No one can remember any other government applying such a ukase to any mining or other disaster. Keep your mouth shut or it will be forcibly stopped. The months will pass by before the complete report of the inquiry is made. Time will complete the work of enforced silence, and Aberfan and the children's mass grave will be forgotten.
At the inquest, "I ask you to return a verdict of death by being buried alive by the National Coal Board." said one man who had lost his wife and two children. He and others spoke with the simple eloquence of the oppressed, but who will listen? Could the black avalanche of death have been averted? The known facts cry Yes! The facts must be silenced. Long live the NCB.
Aware of the danger
People who live in mining areas know miners, often old men, who are respected by their fellows because of their great knowledge, sometimes unlettered, of geology, who know the strata, streams and hidden places of their nether world, and even the effect of topographical features upon it. They know their land as an inshore fisherman knows his waters. But even those local people who knew not the character of the hidden earth or nature of topography were aware of the danger. Why then were the children sent to school? The Law says you must send your children to school or go to jail, and most, if not all, education authorities insist that you send them to one of their choice.
A woman councillor protested the danger at a meeting of the Merthyr Planning Committee, nearly three years ago:
"The dangers: Councillor Mrs. G. I. Williams said there were dangers arising from surface tipping. We had a lot of trouble from slurry causing flooding at Merthyr Vale. If the tip moved it could threaten the whole school'." (Merthyr Express 11.1.64).
Councillor Williams's plea was rejected by the Planning Committee and the Councils and the NCB were permitted to extend their coal tip. Councillor Williams died a few weeks before the disaster.
On October 23, 1966, the Sunday Mirror published a picture of two mothers, Mrs. Karen Symonds and Mrs. Marjorie England, handing a petition to the headmistress of the school, Miss Ann Jennings. The petition, signed by 36 parents, gave warning of danger.
"The petition complained that the children had to wade thigh high through slimy flood water from the mountain tip to get home from school."
Nothing happened
Miss Jennings gave the petition to the Director of Education; it was passed to the Merthyr Borough Council. That was in January, 1965. "Nothing happened." But on that fateful day in October. 1966 each of these mothers lost a child in the Aberfan school and Miss Jennings died trying to protect her young charges.
As long ago as December 23. 1958. the Borough Council received a letter complaining of the tip, Minute No. 2074, but nothing was done. Stephen Davies, Merthyr's Labour MP, said on October 22, 1966:
"We've been warning the NCB for years about what could happen, but they took no action. They continued to pile up slag, making the tip even higher. Now the disaster we warned could happen has happened."
"Mr. Davies says he does not want to put the Coal Board on trial," (Sunday Mirror, 23.10.66).
In addition to local lore official surveys gave sufficient warning of the dangerous practice of the previous coal owners and the present NCB, especially in respect to the water danger. On the evening of Sunday. October 23, Lord Roberts, head of the NCB appeared on TV and said they had, a few hours ago, discovered that the tip had been built upon and buried two streams. These streams were known to local miners, one of whom told the judge that he had bathed there when a boy.
Central truth
On the same Sunday morning the Sunday Times told of these streams part of which are still visible. The Ordnance Survey of 1914 shows the streams without the tip; the survey of 1957 shows the tip built over one-third of the length of the streams. In any case, everyone knows that, where there is a hill there is water at the bottom of it, at any rate in this climate.
The central truth common to all such calamities is that the workers, the local people know of the dangers. even know their remedy, but Authority claims the sole right of taking or not taking action. Authority claims to know what is best and demands obedience. When disaster falls, then Authority, large or small, disclaims responsibility or know-ledge, and complains of the apathy of the public.
So long as we do not intervene in the things that concern us, so long as we delay taking over, more and more, our own affairs. whether they be our work, our neighbourhood or the greater general issues on which our lives depend, then this condition will continue and War and Aberfan will be our lot.
IT COULDN'T HAPPEN TO THE RICH.
GEORDIE
- 1a decree with the force of law, in tsarist Russia
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January 1967 issue of Direct Action with features on the Labour goverment wage freeze, printworkers, Rhodesia, Ireland, updates on workplace struggles, etc.

February 1967 of Direct Action including: Labour Party and the political levy, Guinness workers, China's workers against Mao, against tourism in Spain, etc.

March 1967 issue of Direct Action including articles on the Vietnam War, CND, workplace disputes.

April 1967 issue of Direct Action including Roberts-Arundel strike, TUC, LSE students rebel, workplace disputes.

May 1967 issue of Direct Action, including: resistance to government wage freeze, drugs, anti trade union law in Ireland, workers against fascism in Spain.

June 1967 issue of Direct Action including: workplace disputes updates, Greek fascism and the Labour government, workers' control and syndicalism, May Day in London.

July 1967 issue of Direct Action including: new National Steel Corporation, London railwaymen, middle east, Tom Brown on control of industry, Greek Embassy "rioters" in court.

August 1967 issue of Direct Action, including: London transport strike, French strikes, Vietnam, 3 years anniversary of Stuart Christie's imprisonment.

September 1967 issue of Direct Action including: Aberfan Inquiry, Vietnam, IWW strikers broke colour bar, Fidel Castro, anti-war protests in Japan.

Syndicalist Tom Brown on the official Inquiry into the 1966 Aberfan Disaster.
It is often said that a man is best judged by his behaviour in crisis or adversity. This might also be said of groups of men and social institutions. Judged by such a standard the ruling class, new and old, and its power cliques and institutions, in the disaster of Aberfan are not only guilty, but also petty, cowardly and lying.
The Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry, however, though deliberately restrained, unearths the ghastly truth of laziness, incompetence, callousness and lying as the attribution of the governors concerned. All political societies—slave, feudal, capitalist, Socialist, Bolshevik and Fascist—are like a huge pyramid, or a series of pyramids of varying volume, where power is concentrated at the top and is delegated downwards controlling the huge human base beneath. From the top, we are told, "Not only is this the best, it is the only possible form of society. They at the top know best, they select the best officials in descending order. The social base cannot be trusted, is ignorant and irresponsible."
In contrast to political society, Syndicalism works towards a society that, while not resembling the ever-present pyramid, is controlled from below, that responsibility and familiar control that in its most important social task, is known as Workers' Control.
Let us put on trial the system of the boss class. The Report proves that the disaster was foreseeable, was indeed foreseen for many years. The National Coal Board, that much boasted massive pyramid that quashed the numerous smaller pyramids of pre-nationalised coal, is condemned for foolishness, ignorance, bungling ineptitude and blindness in the face of warning signs writ large. The warnings were passed, say the Tribunal, "into the limbo of forgotten things. A terrifying tale."
As to knowledge of their subject and control of that which they were highly paid to control, the Report condemns Lord Robens, the Top Brass of the NCB, and the management at each descending layer of power. "They were like moles being asked about the habits of birds" (in spite of Robens's private NCB airplane).
“The report which follows tells not of wickedness but of ignorance, ineptitude and a failure of communications."
The exact opposite of just those things that all politicians boast of.
Hollow propaganda
Even after the disaster, while public opinion was still warm, the Coal Board were still too tired to take the first obvious step. Not till the 55th day of the inquiry did they announce their intention to build a culvert to take water directly from the Mountain to the River Taft at the modest cost of £20,000.
The much-promised good relations between the boards of nationalised industries and Labour-controlled local councils is exposed as hollow propaganda, the Tribunal saying:
"We do not claim to understand even today why the (Merthyr Tydfil) Borough Council and the National Coal Board were unable to reach an amicable settlement of what appears to be a simple drainage problem and so avoid a great deal of misery in the village over many ears."
“The former can no more be acquitted of lack of vigilance than the latter can be absolved from grave failure to face up to their substantial responsibility in relation to what was for decades undoubtedly a scandalous state of affairs."
Those who seek immense power, political and economic, lay claim to almost superhuman measures of character and intellect, but they do so in fine weather. Come bad weather they deny responsibility. They demand power but they will not have responsibility. It seems we are not alone in this observation: the Daily Telegraph (4.8.67) said
"The Tribunal was very displeased at the fact that it was not till the 74th day of the inquiry that counsel for the National Coal Board admitted the Board's responsibility for the disaster. By that time, one after another of the officers of the Board had given evidence, all more or less following one pattern.”
"They started by denying knowledge or responsibility but were steadily driven by relentless cross-examination into admitting some knowledge or other and agreeing that by some act of commission or omission—usually the latter they had contributed to the state of affairs which ended in disaster. “
"The Tribunal endorses the view of counsel for the Aberfan residents that much time would have been saved ‘if the National Coal Board had not stubbornly resisted every attempt to lay the blame where it so clearly must rest—at their door'."
Robens himself gave the lead for this stubborn defence of the indefensible. At the time of the disaster he appeared on TV and said that the fact that the tip had been built and extended upon a stream was unknown until that day. That must stand as one of the greatest untruths of politics—an occupation not known for veracity. In his evidence to the Tribunal Robens still held, to the annoyance of all, to this obviously false statement.
Robens Resign?
"Nor did we accept it for one moment," says the Report, So bad was Robens's evidence that the counsel for the NCB was forced to repudiate the whole of his long evidence and asked the Tribunal to say that the position was as if Robens had not given any evidence at all.
As to the technical knowledge he claimed and disclaimed from having, and knowledge of the general problem, the Report says:
"But as Lord Robens himself knew nothing beyond what he was told by others in the calamitous circum-stances then prevailing, it was unwise of him to imply at Aberfan that he had knowledge, and it is understandable that his statement was bitterly resented by the residents who possessed the intimate local knowledge which he lacked."
Of course every worker knows that every day in industry and commerce, ignorance, bluff and picking others' brains by top management are the warp and weave of the game. Everyone expected that after this self-exposure and the rest of the Report Robens would resign. Indeed the Press had already published, some in giant type, the coming resignation. Then the political machine got to work. They learned from Nasser who after his terrific defeat and exposure of bluff staged a well-advertised "resignation", then allowed his stage managers to work up demonstrations and phoney appeals : "Nasser please stay"—and "in response to enormous public request" he stayed on. The Labour Party knows that Aberfan has exposed the rottenness of the whole political set-up in general and the false promises of nationalisation in particular.
Easy, then, to get here a union committee, there a union boss or there a capitalist Labour MP, as Woodrow Wyatt, to say, "We the miners of Britain implore you Lord Robens to stay and carry on with the good work you are doing."
What good work? Robens, then a union-sponsored Labour MP from a mining constituency, was appointed by a Tory government and is now supported by a Labour one, to slash the coal industry as Beeching slashed the railways. But we are told that Robens has eased the rundown of the industry. Where is the evidence of the Board's clemency to pitmen communities? That evidence is as thin as the evidence given by its chairman at Aberfan.
Labour Party and coal
Wilson, too, a few weeks ago at the Durham Miners' Gala, said that the Labour Government was helping the coal industry to beat oil with coal; at the same time his outfit had just ordered a nuclear power station for Durham. The truth is that the coal industry was mortally wounded when its fight with oil began and that, early in 1946, by the Labour Government in which Wilson was a junior minister. Then the Government created a big department which sent hoards of men about every kind of industry to persuade those enterprises to switch from coal, which we had, to oil, which was in other hands. A leading member of the Labour Government was Hartley Shawcross, QC, whose interest in oil swiftly Ied him to be legal adviser to BP Shell and afterwards one of its directors. What sympathy could they have with the pitmen?
To the Aberfan Tribunal, S.O. Davies, Labour MP for Merthyr Tydfil, said that he had been prevented from taking action on the tip's stability because the miners feared the closure of the pit and unemployment. Here is a long-established Labour MP who got into Parliament by telling the miners that Labour would bring full employment and nationalisation and would give them security, safety from danger, and a full life!
Start at the roots
Why, even the officials of the National Mineworkers' Union were charmed by their party's oil propaganda and in their new London head offices, built just after the war, they said, "No coal or cone here. We'll have oil for central heating," and they went ahead until public shame caused them to switch back. The so-called big men at the top of the pyramid are intellectual dwarfs and moral midgets. They have not the gifts they pretend to. We can better manage our own affairs. Pull down the Pharaohs and their monuments of slavery. Start at the roots to grow and build again.
Comments
Depressing parallels with Grenfell here - a working class community warns of a potential disaster, which then happens - killing dozens of working class people.
The inquiry then prevaricates and evidence is extracted at a snail's pace from those with the power to have prevented the tragedy.
In fact here you go:
“For 5 years we’ve had to endure a justice system that protects the powerful.
A system that prevents justice.
Whilst this system exists, we face the same unachievable battle as the many before us. From Aberfan, to Hillsborough, justice has been denied & #Grenfell is no different”
Grenfell United on Twitter 14/6/22.

Direct Action from October 1967, including: London builders, Bolivian miners, CAV factories, Stuart Christie freed.

November 1967 issue of Direct Action including: print workers, railways, Socialist Labour League, 50 Years of Betrayal (Russian revolution), CAV factory workers.

December 1967 Direct Action with: Lord Robens vs the miners, life on the dole, Tom Brown - what to do with the pitheads, sparks sold out by ETU.

1967 Syndicalist Workers Federation article on reclaiming the land used for mining.
Pit heaps and landscape gardening —are the two compatible? Landscape gardening now means a small lawn, a dozen daffodils and a shrub each side of the door of a semi-detached in Hendon. But in its golden age during the 18th and early 19th centuries it meant gardening on the vast scale of the landscape. English landowners turned away from the Italian gardeners and their ideal of a flat rectangle covered by geometrical pattern, and engaged English workers who followed nature's pattern and gave us the many beautiful landscapes we think are the sole work of nature.
The greatest of these gardeners, Capability Brown, faced with a flat landscape, relieved it by undulations doubtless inspired by the rolling hills of his native North country. Why then should not the ugly, threatening waste heaps of mining be made friendly by trees and covered by nature's green mantle?
The Waste Lands
Mining desolates every land it touches. A couple or so generations pull from the earth the better part of its wealth then the land is left spoiled, marred, shunned. Yet farming can go on for a thousand years and make the land richer. This is a small island with little natural wealth and a rapidly increasing population, therefore all scourged acres should be returned to purposes of human wealth and happiness.
Other industries have added to mining's crime against the land; sand pits, quarries, chemical wastes and abandoned factories add to the nightmare landscape. Yet it need not be so. The economics of capitalism, including State capitalism, declares it "uneconomic" to extract all the mineral wealth or restore to mankind the countryside it spoiled. Social economics would declare it most uneconomic to destroy in a few years what should be useful to mankind for long ages.
I have seen a few. attempts to make pleasant the pit heaps, some less than half-hearted, some very well done. But I offer you a better reference than my observation. In 1963 Mr. Keith Joseph had issued from the Ministry of Local Government a large pamphlet, well illustrated, on New Life for Dead Lands (HMSO, 4s.) giving seven examples of such pod work, two of which I have visited.
At Wallbrook, Staffordshire, the Coseley Urban District Council, short of building land, acquired for £5,520 18 acres of derelict pit land. For £5,160, a local contractor cleared and levelled the pit waste. Drainage, a problem aggravated by extensive building, was cheaply solved by directing the surface water into one of the disused pit shafts. "The soak. away was so successful that there are regrets that so many old shafts have been filled in."
At Ince (Lancs) some frightfully derelict land was taken over by the urban and county councils. Coal had been mined there for 100 years until 1908, since when it has become an eyesore and a menace to health. Pit heaps and shafts, chemical waste, concrete foundations, stagnant water, a canal branch and basin scarred the landscape, and sulphur stank.
The Cost Of A Banquet
The owner donated the land, a civil engineering firm was engaged to tip the concrete and old buildings into the canal. 48,000 cubic yards of pit shale were excavated and used to level up low-lying land. Burnt red shale was spread a foot deep on a housing site as an extra foundation, sift from the canal was spread as soil. This work cost £10,520, little more than the cost of a municipal banquet
Eighty houses were built, 32 acres were turned into playing fields, giving, a track up. to AAA standards, three football pitches, a cricket ground, a bowling green, a mini-golf course, and four tennis courts.
The .32 acres were landscaped for £1.340, grass established and trees and shrubs hid the old shafts and lined the whole area.
At Wombwell (Yorks) Mitchell Main closed in 1955, leaving deserted the usual pit heaps to fill the eyes with dust and tee soul with despair. The NCB sold the 44 acres of tips to the county council for the "glad-to-be-rid-of-it" price of £5.
Three sharply pointed hills stubbed upwards on the skyline. The tops of these were removed by heavy earth-moving machinery, the hollows between partly filled, a more reasonable gradient established and a maximum height of 80 feet established. The land was ditched and fenced. For all this work £9,000 was paid. It was feared that the hidden fire of the heap would burst out. This fear was proven false.
Fertilizer and lime were spread and the area sown with grass seed. This cost £1,230: the area was then prepared for planting trees. Afterwards cattle grazed and now trees are growing over a pleasant landscape.
Croxdale tip, near Durham city, can be seen from the North Road and the main-line railway, but no one will recognise it as a tip. In the mid-1950s the Durham County Council took over this tip and successfully changed the contour, sowed grass and planted pine, birch and alder trees over the whole area, straight into the shale; no soil or fertiliser was used. Now the one-time eyesore is a green and pleasant ridge, 120 feet high, roiling down to sweet pasture land.
It's Up To You
Much has been learned from such experiments as these. The cost is a fraction of what was feared, it is possible to grow grass, trees, flowers, even oats on pit waste heaps. Ugliness, dirt, danger to health, the massacre of innocents are not the inevitable price of "Progress".
Previous governments have made it easy for county, borough and district councils to do something about the lost lands, but the councils, even when deprived of these chief excuses, "It's impossible" and "It would cost millions", are apathetic. But there is a cure for municipal apathy; the council is not a faceless Whitehall or a faraway Government. It is known and, like the waste land and the spoil heap, is near your doorstep. Demonstrations to the council chamber and the homes of councillors, if sufficiently strong and often, get the council, and the tip, moving.
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January 1968 Direct Action including: year long strike at Roberts Arundel, productivity deals, print workers, apartheid, TUC - sixty years of betrayal, Wobblies book review, John Anderson obituary, miners, seamen.

Direct Action from February 1968, including: "backing Britain" govt campaign, Stuart Christie on 18 years in prison, anti-war protests in Japan, Story of the SWF by Tom Brown, busmen, Wilson's crisis.

Tom Brown's 1968 description of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation, a UK based organization that was affiliated to the International Workers Association and was the predecessor to the Direct Action Movement and by extension, Solidarity Federation.
When, in 1939, Fascism triumphed in Spain, the Libertarian movement was downcast, many gave up hope and departed. The social climate, too, was gloomy, for Spain had been, not only the last, but the only hope of defeating World Fascism. And in spite of those who murmured, “Now for peace, I always said they should not have resisted Fascism,” the world knew that in the same year war would again sere the earth and tens of millions would die in the rubble of civilisation. That, all knew, was the beginning; none could know the end.
There were Syndicalists before and during the 1914-1918 war. They were not many, but their work in the social struggle was so earnest, so great and so apt to the workers’ needs that the class enemy numbered them as hundreds of thousands. They were the proverbial “little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump.” But, they were men of action, men of the deed, few of them had the time to write. Syndicalism was the opposite of the parties, which seem to consist entirely of writers and policy merchants. So, when men say, “Show me the Books of Syndicalism,” there is little to show. Its lasting work is the living flesh of the workshop committee idea, with is shop stewardship, which has grown till nearly every worker, be his collar dirty blue or dirty white, knows its efficacy.
If you ask, “What became of all that work of the Syndicalists?” we would say, “When you see the grassroots organisation of the workers in action, bending employers, union bosses and the State to its will, think of the St. Paul’s tablet so Christopher Wren, ‘If you seek his monument, look around you’.” The only thing of value remaining out of this century’s struggles and work of the Left is the shop steward and workshop committee movement. The parliamentarians and “Parties of the Working Class” have nothing to show but Wilson and Ramsay Mac.
By 1936 there was no identifiable Syndicalist movement in Britain, though the idea was still operated and individual Syndicalists practised their skills in factories, mines and on railroads. Anarchism, too, fared badly; indeed every grouping that could be called by the vague term Left had suffered at the hands of the Communist Party and the wealth of Russian money that was dedicated to smash all Left movements to make way for the sole proprietors, the party of Lenin. The big British Socialist Party was swallowed, then digested, the Socialist Labour Party destroyed, the numerous lively local Socialist groups hammered one by one. Only the ILP remained, later to fall a prey to Parliamentarism and Communist intrigue.
Summer, 1936, all that remained of Anarchism was the old Freedom Group of London and the Jewish “Worker’s Friend” Group. Freedom Group was a very old organisation and all its members were elderly, too, having spent most of their lives in the cause of Anarchism; some had known William Morris and been in Trafalgar Square on Bloody Sunday. These good people worked with handset type and a treadle machine to publish their paper, Freedom, monthly.1
When Spanish Fascism made civil war and was answered by Social Revolution, the group ended the paper Freedom to concentrate on the CNT-initiated English paper, Spain and the World (later Revolt) and wound up the group to merge with all others who gathered to aid the Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists in their life-and-death struggle. They never republished their paper, Freedom, one by one they passed away and the world was poorer for their going.
The comrades, mostly fairly young, who remained after the end of the Spanish struggle, reassembled; at first only three persons, who made anti-war posters and pasted them in prominent parts of London, then enough to form a group and link with groups in Scotland; the Anarchist Federation of Britain was formed.
Serious discussion produced unanimity on the kind of organisation we wanted. Everyone was sickened by the coffee-bar Anarchists, who specialised in “the Ego”, individualism, hating the working class, being “anti-organisation” and forming organisations to propagate that idea, or had a new theory of society every few months. Such persons had created a bad image of Anarchism.
We all wanted a sincere, responsible organisation. We wanted Anarchism to influence society, to be revolutionary, bring about change, not to be just a permanent grouse. We all insisted on Syndicalism and Internationalism, we were all anti-war.
As the war developed, others joined us and we billposted, printed and published and held public meetings, indoors and, mainly, open air. Members of industry, mostly in Lanarkshire, on Clydeside and in London, took the anti-war struggle into their workplaces and unions, opposing the State, the union bosses, the employers and their Communist stooges. We stood with others, PPU and ILP, in a mutual witness against war. Direct Action was one of the very first papers to be anti-A Bomb, while the CP supported it and many others were silent.
Early in 1944, the AFB resolved that when the war ended we would appeal to all Anarchist Federations abroad to meet and form a viable, militant Anarchist International. Late in 1945, the French Anarchist Federation sent out such a call to meet in Paris and form the International. In February 1946 the meeting was held, a delegate of the AFB attending.
The times were right; Europe was in the melting-pot, between war and peace. Anything could happen, men’s minds were open and eager, the peoples of Europe were anti-Fascist, eager to end Franco and Salazar in the last, Iberian fortress of Fascism. People were ready for a new society, but the politicians had no answer.
With hope and eagerness, the AFB delegate reached Paris, to be astounded at the well-organised opposition to the mooted International; opposition within the Anarchist ranks. The Internationalists were defeated. The majority were against the International in any case, but added the excuse, “The time is not yet ripe.” Curiously, it hadn’t been 50 years earlier.
Later, the Anarchist Federation of Britain changed its title to the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation and joined the Syndicalist International, the International Working Men’s Association, of which it now is the British Section.
The term Syndicalism is more acceptable to the British worker than is the theological-sounding mouthful, Anarcho-Syndicalism, and the Syndicalist ethos is to workers, and even historians, a good ethos in Britain.
Some complain that the SWF has not changed its principles. That, in a world where Socialist politicians change their principles far more often than their raincoats, ought to be welcome. But the principles of capitalism have not changed: we live in a society which is still founded on rich and poor, war and class war still go on, men’s lives are still governed by property relations. What has happened to all those fabulous developments which made Syndicalism and Revolution “irrelevant” – the H-Bomb, Affluent Society, Automation?
The old problems are still with us. Capitalism has no answer. The case for Syndicalism remains unanswered. It is no answer to go looking for a new butterfly to chase.
From: Direct Action February 1968, vol 9 no 2.
Taken from The Kate Sharpley Library
Comments
added a photo of a Syndicalist Workers Federation banner at a demonstration from around the time of this article
First English language syndicalist pamphlets I ever read
That and their National Rank & File Movement pamphlets
Tom Browns pamphlets read "old" and from a by gone day.
But so did so much other stuff at that time as well.
While we only exchanged a few letters with the late Peter Turner,
I am forever indebted to him and the few old timers who lived to pass the torch
and their patience with us youngins'

March 1968 Direct Action, including: safety and conditions of Hull fishermen, racism of Labour govt, Vietnam war, Castro's death camps, TUC on booze with Royal parasite,

Direct Action April 1968, including: workers and the Common Market by Henri Simon, upsurge in Eastern Europe, South Shields dustmen strike, etc.

May 1968 Direct Action including: Enoch Powell, racism in US and UK, Labour's wage freeze, Ireland, AEI strikes.

Direct Action June 1968 including: Mark Hendy on Paris May 1968, 24 hour engineering shutdown, Newcastle busmen strike, Enoch Powell by Laurens Otter, Aberdeen news, May Day in London and Buenos Aires.
Libcom note: Perhaps the last issue produced in this series? Direct Action seems to have restarted in the mid-1970s.
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An issue of Direct Action from early 1974 including: May Day, North West textile workers, Norton-Villiers-Triumph, the lump and the union, etc.
Probably the first issue of the restarted Direct Action newsletter from the 1970s. (Previous issue may have been June 1968?).
PDF from Spirit of Revolt archive. Possibly an incomplete scan? (Last page article refers to it being continued on page 8, which is not included).
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1974 issue of Direct Action including: review of "The Lump" by Dave Lamb, homelessness, British Leyland, nature/family/sex, arms trade, Dublin anarchists arrested, etc.

Direct Action from 1974 including: bus workers challenge racism, health, letters on review of Dave Lamb's pamplet "The Lump" in the previous issue.

Direct Action from 1974 including: Fisher-Bendix dispute, Shrewsbury two, housing, nationalisation, letters.

Including: NHS consultants pay bargaining, Intex Yarns strike, local government reorganisation, Arthur Moyse on mining, independence but not freedom in Africa, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
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1975 issue of Direct Action including: Ulster, Tameside refuse workers, letter from Dave Douglass on miners.

Direct Action from 1975 including: London docks strike, May Day, London Rubber Company sues rivals, review of Socialist Union publication on women's oppression, GLC caretakers, etc.

An issue of Direct Action from 1975 including: European Common Market, pollution & toxic waste, review of Colin Ward's "Tenants Take Over", Manchester protests against visit of Minister for the Environment Anthony Crossland.

Direct Action from 1975 including: 2 million unemployed, workers occupy Villiers Norton in Wolverhampton, Workers Solidarity organising in Denmark, Free Ralph Stein, etc.

An issue of anarcho-syndicalist magazine Direct Action from 1975 including: Leyland shopstewards power grab, labour relations in Russia, taxation, Bolton anti-fascists, Save Pedro Astudillo, Health & Safety at Work Act, etc.

An issue of Direct Action including: Government blames workers for unemployment, Marxism and unions, review of Liz Willis' pamphlet on women in the Spanish Civil War, criminal trespass law, review of The Industrial Syndicalist - collection of newsletters 1910-11.

Including: multinational corporations, labour struggles in Japan, unions in the building industry, child labour in Cheshire, syndicalism and the unemployed, NHS cuts, Ralf Stein trial in Germany, IWA-AIT congress, etc.
PDF courtesy of Sparrows Nest Archive, Nottingham.
Possibly the last issue published before the Syndicalist Workers Federation transformed into the Direct Action Movement in 1979?
Comments
Looks like we had two pages
Looks like we had two pages for this journal? I have moved the ones that were here:
https://libcom.org/library/direct-action-world-labour-news-1960s
to this page.
I've left copies of the early 1960s World Labour News publications there.
Possibly there is an argument for them all being on one page, I am not sure?
I think I started this one,
I think I started this one, then belatedly realised the other one existed, then got too confused trying to work out how to merge them and gave up. If anyone has the time, the Sparrow's Nest still have a load of scans that aren't here yet, although trying to work out the numbering is a bit of a nightmare - for instance, there's a Direct Action (SWF), vol 5 no 7 (no 45) from November 1950, as well as a Direct Action: For workers' direct control of industry, vol 5 no 7 (no 37) from July 1964. It would be nice if someone has the time to get them archived all the way up to issue 84, cos that's from June 1968, so has some quite historic events to report on. And also has a beautifully unexpected letter from a Canadian cancelling their subscription and advising British workers "to bend every effort to pull your country together - take a voluntary pay cut, work extra hours for no pay..."
Thanks R Totale. I'm a bit
Thanks R Totale.
I'm a bit confused about the relationship between the Anarchist Federation, the SWF and the International Working Mens Association.
vol 4 #7 (number 39) from 1949 is the organ of the Anarchist Federation
http://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/4429.pdf
But vol 5 #7 (number 45) from 1950 is from the SWF incorporating the IWMA.
http://www.thesparrowsnest.org.uk/collections/public_archive/4436.pdf
Then by 1960 World Labour News is an IWMA thing but not SWF:
https://libcom.org/library/direct-action-world-labour-news-1960s
Oh right here goes: "Later,
Oh right here goes:
"Later, the Anarchist Federation of Britain changed its title to the Syndicalist Workers’ Federation and joined the Syndicalist International, the International Working Men’s Association, of which it now is the British Section."
Story of the Syndicalist Workers' Federation: Born in Struggle - Tom Brown
https://www.katesharpleylibrary.net/wdbt17
Every day is a school day, etc.
Yeah, so the Anarchist
Yeah, so the Anarchist Federation of Britain (not to be confused with the Anarchist Federation!) started producing Direct Action in the 1940s, and then at some point between number 44/July 1950 and number 52/July 1951, changed their name to the SWF, but carried on using the same numbering, and that series, which has been partially archived by the Sparrow's Nest, runs up to at least number 61/December 1952. Then they started a new run, also called Direct Action with new numbering, of which the March 1962 issue seems to be the earliest surviving issue, going up to number 84/June 1968, as above.
And then of course after that the SWF became the Direct Action Movement, who produced Direct Action from 1981-1990, before becoming SolFed, who produced 47 issues of Direct Action running up to 2009. Simple, really.
Looking around at a wayback
Looking around at a wayback machine version of the old Direct Action (Solfed era) site, it turns out that until fairly recently someone in Solfed had the url "af-britain.org.uk" registered giving a brief overview of the 1945-50 AFB.
Righty ho, apologies for
Righty ho, apologies for flooding the forum - have tided up the titles for consistency now.
I largely made copies of
I largely made copies of stuff I had and posted them a few summers ago here. Done as an individual project. No one has before or since reached out to me. As long as the time consuming work I put into scanning etc doesn't get lost or wasted, I am fine with making things as tidy and organized as can be.
syndicalist wrote: I largely
syndicalist
Thanks for doing that, Syndicalist. I actually ended up tidying because I found an article about an eviction I was reading about in one of the issues, so your work is much appreciated generally :)
Plus this has expanded my and R Totale’s knowledge of mid 20th Century orgs, which is also good.
Yeah, Syndicalist's work is
Yeah, Syndicalist's work is definitely appreciated, any other context you can provide would also be welcome!
Great stuff everyone, thanks
Great stuff everyone, thanks
Thanks, Syndicalist, Fozzie,
Thanks, Syndicalist, Fozzie, and RT!
On the birth of the SWF:
(from the chronology of The Split http://katesharpleylibrary.pbworks.com/w/page/139511268/The%201945%20split%20in%20British%20anarchism )
Excellent stuff, Barry.
Excellent stuff, Barry. Thanks Fozzie, and RT.
Parallel with the SWF would be the National Rank and File Movement, of which the SWF became the most significant player. I thought I might have scanned some of their stuff as well, about the same time I scanned "DA" and "WLN". I'll have to check.
Thanks for that - I didn't
Thanks for that - I didn't realise the archives went that far back, but I learned from the split article that the Sparrow's Nest have scanned a copy of the very first AFB/SWF Direct Action from 1945. And interesting to learn that Meltzer was on the Freedom side of the Freedom/AFB split, shows how complex these things are I suppose.
I need to come back to the
I need to come back to the question of Meltzer and Freedom and the formation of the SWF.
In Chapter 6 of his autobiography, "“I Couldn’t Paint Golden Angels”, Meltzer wrote:
"Since the split of 1944 I had been somewhat a lone wolf even in the few soi-disant anarchist groups. True, the majority of the remaining anarchists took the same position that I did, which was that neither of the two factions involved in the personality clash were viable groupings. ....
"A part of the majority section of the Anarchist Federation had become the Syndicalist Workers Federation and was fairly alive to industrial action. It was obstinacy on my part that I could not be reconciled with them owing to their domination by the Spanish exile group which supported the Toulouse centred organisation and opposed the Resistance, with which I felt personal ties.
On the other hand, the Freedom Press Group, which I never joined because of their lack of interest in class struggle and increasing fixation with academia...."
Meltzer writes elsewhere in "Angels" his rather critical and almost stand-offish position towards the SWF.
Some good background stuff here on Meltzer's independent "The Syndicalist" publish project.
With excellent KSL links.
"Passing without a ripple- the Anarcho-Syndicalist Committee": https://splitsandfusions.wordpress.com/2022/01/02/passing-without-a-ripple-the-anarcho-syndicalist-committee/
Spirit of Revolt has scans of
Spirit of Revolt has scans of SWF Direct Action from the 1970s:
https://spiritofrevolt.info/direct-action-collection/
So that means:
1945-1949: Direct Action (Anarchist Federation of Britain)
1950-1970s: Direct Action (Syndicalist Workers Federation) - this page
1980-1992: Direct Acton (Direct Action Movment) (80 issues?)
1994-2008: Direct Action (Solidarity Federation) 47 issues:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120304101910/http://direct-action.org.uk/
Almost, although just to be
Almost, although just to be fully pedantic/confuse things even further, I think it looks like:
1945-1949 - DA AFB
1949-1952? DA produced by SWF but carrying on with the numbering from before
Early 1960s-1968? - SWF start DA again with a new numbering system
1973? - SWF relaunch DA yet again with a new issue 1
Before we get to the relatively straightforward DAM and SolFed DAs. In other news, bet you can't guess what the Irish IWW have decided to call their new paper.
Lol, no I was hoping for some
Lol, no I was hoping for some pedantry, so that’s good!
I’d say there is an argument for having all the SWF DA’s together, with a diff page for the AFoB issues as that represents a slightly different set of politics?
R Totale wrote: ] 1973? - SWF
R Totale
I guess this is about when "we" started to develop connections with SWF. Maybe a tad before, because I remember the old yellowing penny pamphlets first. Cool memory lane
Fozzie wrote: Lol, no I was
Fozzie
FWIW, I could go either way, depending on the page headings. I think its cool to have one link, makes it easier for someone researching, say, SWF or AFB or DAM or Solfed to see the historical linkages. Of course, that may be very cumbersome to have on one page
I mean, I don't really have
I mean, I don't really have any time/energy to put into the archiving project at the moment, so feel free to use whatever system works best for you? For me, hypothetically speaking, it feels like the 1950 SWF-DAs would fit with the 1949 AFB-DAs more than the 1960s ones, and differentiating between DA(SWF) Issue 1 (1960s) and DA(SWF) Issue 1 (1970s) within a single page seems like it'd be a bit of a headache, but as I say it's probably not going to be me uploading them so feel free to ignore my backseat driving there.
Ok! Thanks both, I will see
Ok! Thanks both, I will see how I get on, but it will be little and often I think.
Thank you both for your
Thank you both for your respective efforts on this seemingly thankless task. I appreciate the efforts. And it adds to the top rate ability to quickly research stuff. Thanks again. Solidarity!
Since we are discussing the
Since we are discussing the SWF and Direct Action, what can people tell me about the Workers Voice weekly paper of the SWF in 1961?
I know this started life in mid-1960 as the bulletin of Brian Behan's Workers Party and continued as such on a weekly basis from v1 no1 until at least v1 no23 (either late 1960 or early 1961)
In Feb 1961 the Workers Party group fused with the SWF but Workers Voice continued as a SWF paper.
However, and this is the strange bit, it started again with a v1 no1 numbering. The editor of both papers was Bill Christopher.
I would be interested to know how long WV continued (the latest I have seen is SWF v1 no13 probably September 1961...) in parallel with other SWF papers such as DA and World Labour News...
You know more than I do
You know more than I do there, at first I was squinting at it going "huh, I never knew yer man who wrote The Quare Fellow was in SWF?" Was this Workers' Voice entirely unrelated from and separate to the Liverpool council communist Workers' Voice that went into the CWO? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_Workers%27_Organisation_(UK) FWIW, that wikipedia page links to this dissertation on Solidarity: http://archivesautonomies.org/IMG/pdf/nonfrenchpublications/english/solidarity60-77/solidarity-history.pdf which you may have seen before, but does seem to mention Behan as well as the WV/CWO?
Yes, so Brian Behan left the
Yes, so Brian Behan left the Socialist Labour League (Healyites) in 1960 - (not long before the separate split which gave rise to Socialism Reaffirned / Solidarity).
It is strange that the split was about the need to build an open party (rather than an entrist group in the Labour Party) but very rapidly- a little over six months- joined the SWF.
Behan's autobiography "With Breast Expanded" glosses over the whole thing in a few sentences and I don't think he was long in the SWF.
Not related at all to the Merseyside Workers Voice ten years later.
https://splitsandfusions.wordpress.com/2018/04/03/brian-behan-and-the-workers-party-workers-voice/
Splits and Fusions - The
Splits and Fusions - The first I learned of Brian Behan was in the article you linked to. I'm in the US and both SWF and London Solidarity were influencial in my development back in the early 1970s. But not once do I recall hearing about him or his fascinating story back then. That said, all these years later these little snippets seem to be coming up. I mean, I never really knew the particulars about some of the early SWF people Albert Meltzer went on to criticize (and his general criticism of the SWF people in the pocket of the Tolouse CNT exiles). And even why he chose to do his own thing for many a year outside the SWF. I'll see what, if anything, I may have on this, I tend to think not. Fascinating though.
PS: If anyone, perhaps Barry P./ KSL might have some clues.
On the SWF: Di Parkin's
On the SWF: Di Parkin's account:
https://www.brh.org.uk/site/events/running-down-whitehall/
Workers Voice:
There are letters about the group in Rom's Archive (Sparrow's Nest)
https://thesparrowsnest.org.uk/search.php?query=workers%27+voice
See also, Alan Woodward's Life and Times of Joe Thomas
[and R. Totale, you might be getting your Behan brothers mixed up]
OK so that is 99 issues and…
OK so that is 99 issues and is a collection of all the copies I have found online. There are some gaps, which is understandable given how long ago these were published.
I'd be interested to know what was going on with the SWF between 1954 and 1962 and whether DA issues were published then - it seemed to be going quite well in 1954....
Great stuff. Thanks for…
Great stuff. Thanks for posting
I read somewhere some years…
I read somewhere some years back that the SWF was involved around this period in organising amongst apprentices presumably at Techs - but it didn't seem to lead anywhere later on perhaps due to the predominance of the Marxist Leninist groups - Communist Party and then Trot groups to the left of the British Labour Party on the industrial front. (1) This aspect of their activity would be certainly worth looking into .
Also the SWF claimed to have achieved a large membership in comparison to other left groups in these years -a peak of 500 members - but this 'membership' gain was not connected to their industrial activity success but their involvement in the Peace Movement/Ban the Bomb. Presumably this would involve mostly student/middle class leftists involved in the Peace Movement being drawn in due a 'radical phase' they were going through, lack of much understanding of syndicalism and wanting to join a non -Stalinist 'organisation'. With the SWF being drawn into a leftist sect orientation away from the industrial front. Also you would have to take account of a lack of education of these elements about syndicalism and the absence of an appropriate syndicalist strategy for the UK by the SWF and the predominance of the M-L groups on the industrial front to the Left of the Labour Party . This ballooning of 'members' didn't seem to lead anywhere re what the SWF was supposed to be doing - helping achieve mass syndicalist industrial unionism and the transitional steps toward it in the UK.
Notes
(1) See Ken Weller's memoir of 1956 re the predominance of the British CP on the industrial front in these years on libcom.org
Great stuff, nice one Fozzie
Great stuff, nice one Fozzie