BRITISH TROOPS only ended operations in Iraq at the end of May, and already a new conflict is underway in Libya. The new war has been a game-changer in a number of ways. Most obviously, it marked the “second wave” of the Arab Spring, the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt appearing smooth and rapid in comparison to the drawn out street battles in Bahrain, Syria and Yemen. But it also proved to be the point at which support for “humanitarian intervention” was once more acceptable after the Iraqi quagmire.

This time, the protests were so small as to barely warrant news coverage. There were no millions on the streets of London. “Anti-war” newspapers such as the Independent contained editorials pondering “the sensitive politics of humanitarian intervention” and urging the West to “win the propaganda war.” Where they once labelled the death of Dr David Kelly a “whitewash,” they are now only concerned “if civilian deaths are verified” because it “undermines the legitimacy of the mission.”

Those touting the “humanitarian” credentials of this war make the same mistake as those who supported entering Iraq because it meant getting rid of Saddam Hussein. They presume that states can act on an altruistic basis. But, as the US and EU’s initial opposition to a no-fly zone demonstrates, the only question of any merit is “national interest.” It was when Gaddafi became too much of a liability to play his former role for western oil interests - indeed, losing control of the Eastern oilfields to rebel forces - that all parties quickly turned against him. European refineries are heavily dependent on Libyan crude oil, which is cheaper to process than most other grades.

The same is true when Western powers turn a blind eye to Saudi intervention in Yemen and Bahrain, or side with Libyan rebels whilst supporting repressive regimes elsewhere. The only guiding principle of all world powers in their foreign policy is to serve the interests of the political and economic elites.

The result is another protracted conflict, with heavy casualties on both sides and an uncertain outcome. Despite any intentions towards democracy, Western intervention leaves Libyans caught between a dictatorship, so desperate to cling onto power that it is using rape as a weapon of war, and Western free market policies which increase misery, poverty and inequality in the name of profit. Lofty talk of humanitarian intent simply doesn’t match up to reality.

STRIKE ACTION at Puerto Lirquen, Chile has seen workers blockading the port with barricades made from burning tyres. Guillermo Ascuí, the treasurer of the workers’ union said the company was guilty of serious labour abuses which had motivated the strike. Around 300 workers attended a mass meeting and decided to continue the strike until the authorities intervened to force the company to negotiate. They have so far been refusing to meet with workers’ representatives to discuss their demands.

FOLLOWING WEEKS of rolling strike action in a dispute over ‘modernisation’, Canada Post locked out its 50,000 workers on the night of 14 June. The last time the union went on strike was in 1997 when the workers were off the job for two weeks before being forced back to work by federal legislation. Winnipeg postal worker Michelle Fidler explained “nobody ever got rich working at Canada Post in the position I’m in. I make ends meet. I don’t have a fancy car or a big house, and I work hard. And I don’t think the general public knows exactly how difficult that job is.”

A flashpoint in the dispute has been Edmonton. Tensions have been rising since widespread unofficial action in April was branded “illegal” by company bosses. The following is an account by an Edmonton striker. In June Canada Post declared a series of service cuts that reduced the Letter Carrier work week down to three days a week. On the first day of the service cuts there were several early morning actions where hundreds of Letter Carriers showed up for work and demanded to deliver mail that had piled up inside their depots. In Edmonton several depots took this one step farther by sitting down inside the depot and refusing to leave. Several other depots rallied outside and marched around outside their workplaces.

Following these actions the Canadian Union of Postal Workers held a demonstration where over 300 Postal Workers marched on Depot 9, one of the largest and most militant depots in the city. The workers staged an occupation, with management locking themselves in their office to hide from the angry mob. Workers with cameras photographed piles of mail stuffed into the depot, exposing Canada Post’s lie that there was no mail to be delivered.

As the workers filed out of the plant they noticed that about ten members of management were staying behind, many putting up tarps over the windows so no one could watch them operate mail equipment. Incensed, they turned around any trucks coming in and parked a 5-ton Canada Post vehicle in the truck gate and padlocked the mail inside.

Several hours later the management team started sending their people out to go home. The pickets locked arms and chanted “no one in, no one out”. Management was informed that the workers sincerely hoped management had brought pyjamas. When management finally left the building they were jeered and heckled.

The day was the high water mark in years of struggle for several militants in the Post Office and there is no doubt we will carry this story with us for the rest of our lives. But it is also just the beginning. Yesterday workers got a taste of their own power and made the first step towards taking back control over their own work. This won’t end with a new collective agreement and it will continue when we all walk back into the post office with our heads held high.

More: Recomposition blog.

ACCORDING TO the headlines, UK unemployment fell 88,000 in the three months to April this year to 2.43 million, the biggest drop since the summer of 2000. This was heralded as proof that the government’s policies are working, and that the private sector is creating more jobs than the 143,000 public sector positions slashed during the same period. But dig a little deeper and the spin unravels.

The Office for National Statistics is open that the fall “was mainly due to an increase of 80,000 in the number of students not active in the labour market.” This seems to have been due to them simply being reclassified, rather than them all suddenly finding jobs. So that leaves just 8,000 jobs ‘created’.

Here too the picture is not so rosy. The number of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance (JSA) increased to 1.49 million. This was partly due to people being forced off other benefits such as Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), by the use of a computer program to reclassify seriously ill people – including those with suicidal depression and lost limbs – as ‘fit for work’.

Meanwhile, the number of people working part-time because they could not find a full-time job increased to 1.21 million, the highest figure since records began in 1992. Here the reality becomes clear. Seriously ill and disabled people are being forced to sign on to JSA and look for work, while those on JSA are forced onto workfare programmes to work for their dole money – for less than £1.70 an hour – or to take part-time jobs they can’t afford to live on.

These casual, low-paid jobs, including the rise of ‘zero hours’ contracts where someone is technically employed but with no guaranteed hours, have grown to record levels, whilst hundreds of thousands of relatively stable public sector jobs are being axed. Behind the headlines of falling unemployment is rising insecurity for all of us, whether in work or not.

1888 - The Matchgirls Strike: Successful strike against poor working conditions in a match factory, including 14-hour work days, poor pay, excessive fines, and the severe health complications of working with white phosphorus.

1901 - Taff Vale dispute: Strikers employ sabotage tactics to prevent scabs working, and the company sues the union for damages - and wins. This would lead to the formation of the Labour Party.

1910-1914 - The Great Unrest: A wave of strikes including  miners, railwaymen, dockers and others across the country, often as unofficial sympathy action. Including the 1911 Liverpool General Transport Strike:  The working class in Liverpool brings the country to its knees. A warship sails up the Mersey, the army is on the streets (though Liverpool regiments are confined to barracks as the government doesn't trust their loyalties) and running battles are fought with the police through the summer.

The “general strike” was actually a series of separate disputes which started with a seaman's strike and soon escalated in a wave. As each group of striking workers won their battles, they vowed to stay out until others had won. This show of solidarity saw the reinstatement of the railwaymen who had been sacked for joining in the action. It also terrified the ruling class, and it is often said that this was the closest Britain has ever come to revolution.

What we mustn't forget is that this struggle was defined by the rank-and-file. The city's labour movement had a strong anarcho-syndicalist current, whilst the ship workers had been heavily influenced by the radical IWW. The government ultimately called in national union leaders to negotiate an end to the strike, but the dispute occurred entirely beyond their control.

1915-1920 - Red Clydeside: A series of actions including a 1919 strike of 100,000 for a 40-hour week which is savagely attacked by the police on what became known as Bloody Friday.

1918 & 1919 - Police strikes: Successful strikes prompt the government to crush their union and ban them from union membership, fearing they are losing control of their protectors.

1926 - The General Strike: In response to mine owners' attempts to cut wages, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) organises a General Strike under the slogan of “Not a penny off the pay, not a minute on the day”. However, the TUC quickly realise the danger it has unleashed with this display of working class power, and works with the government and Labour Party to undermine the strike. The ruling class united in terror at the power of workers organisation, with Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin stating “the general strike is a challenge to the parliament and is the road to anarchy”. Hundreds of thousands of workers took part in the strike, and there were pitched battles against government forces, scabs and fascist militias. After 9 days, the TUC attempted to call off the strike with no agreement. Yet the tenth day saw more people on strike than before. However,  the perceived TUC betrayal killed the strike momentum and
left working class organisation in disarray for years to come.

1931 - The Invergordon Mutiny: A thousand sailors in the British Atlantic Fleet are in open mutiny for two days over pay cuts of up to 25%, in one of the few industrial actions in British military history.

1943 - Glasgow Rolls Royce strike: Women at the Rolls Royce factory in Glasgow went on strike for equal pay, which was being denied in the name of wartime patriotism.

1972 & 1974 - Miners strikes: Two massive victories for miners as their actions nearly paralyse the country and garner huge wage increases – in 1974 directly bringing down Ted Heath's Tory government.

1976-78 - Grunwick dispute: The largely Asian and female workforce at the Grunwick photo processing plant go on prolonged strike demanding improved conditions and union recognition.

1978-79 - The Winter of Discontent: In response to government wage restraint, inflation and IMF austerity measures, a massive wave of industrial unrest spreads across Britain.

1984-85 - The Miners’ Strike: In a turning point of British labour relations, the Thatcher government announces a massive programme of pit closures. The miners having long been amongst the most militant section of the British workers movement, the government was obsessed with smashing their power. Workers from the pits affected sent out flying pickets to nearby pits, and quickly spread the dispute to a national level. The dispute lasted a year, before the miners were eventually starved back to work. This set the tone for over 25 years of working class defeat in Britain.

1986-87 - Wapping: Rupert Murdoch's News International launch a massive assault on conditions of 6,000 print workers. Supported by the scab EETPU union, a new plant is secretly equiped and put into operation in Wapping. A sometimes violent ongoing protest is launched in opposition to the move.

1995-98 - Liverpool Dockers dispute: Liverpool dockers are fired after refusing to cross a picket line set up by workers employed by a different company. They then fought a high profile campaign for reinstatement for over 3 years, with support from around the world.

2002 - Firefighters strike: Over 30,000 firefighters vote overwhelmingly for prolonged strike action demanding a wage increase of nearly 40% to make up for years of inadequate pay settlements. Scab cover was provided by the armed forces. After several days of action, despite high levels of support and morale, union leadership accept a three year deal which provided wage increases barely above inflation.

2011 - June 30th co-ordinated strikes: Up to a million teachers, civil servants and other workers take part in co-ordinated one-day strike action. Small fry compared to some of the big disputes of the past, but are we seeing a return of strike action to combat rising inequality?

Len, a postie from the South Coast writes about the effect of ‘modernisation’ in the Royal Mail, which looks bad for workers’ health and safety and bad for the service - all run by what a computer deems ‘optimal’.

A programme of revisions has been divided into three phases. In our medium sized delivery office we are now in week five of our revision using the “new delivery methods” (NDM).

These new delivery methods are high capacity trolleys (HCTs) with one postie pushing up to 105 KGs, and shared vans (2 posties in a van taking all the mail with them and using golf type and sized trolleys to deliver on foot in a loop from the back of a van). All bikes will be scrapped - even if they are more efficient, cost effective or better for the health of the workers.

The revisions are based on computer programs used to ‘optimise production’. The “Indoor Work Tool” works out how much work you can achieve indoors on any given day. It is primarily based on traffic figures which management get by using what is called a ‘model week’. Management then base work for the rest of the year on that week. Obviously, a light week is often chosen.

This means that every second of your time indoors is worked out but takes no account of any problems that might happen during a working day. Things like having to find and collect your own mail before sorting, going to the toilet, badly addressed mail, return to sender mail that has to be marked up and returned, late mail because of weather or broken down wagons and many other problems that happen in a normal working day. This means they can (and do) cut hours from the office and we know nothing about it. We have not as a Union agreed to this - and yet we lose thousands of jobs!

The outdoor element is done with Pegasus Georoute to plan walks in much the same way. A model week is used again (often a light one) and the program tracks a walk (going at about 6km an hour), calculating how many drop points you can deliver to in the given time, how many face-to-face meetings you have with the public for oversized packets and how often you sign for letters and packets. This has three terrain settings that are used to judge garden size and other relevant information that increase or decrease the amount of calls a postie can make. So again settings that allow more calls mean more hours lost from the office.

As we all know, at the sharp end, “optimising production” is about culling our jobs. In our office they ran these tools and came back with a cut of over a 30 jobs for the workforce of around 110. Since we had no choice but to work with these tools as ordered by HQ, our rep began feeding the programs information that resulted in a more realistic level of work. Yet we still ended up with seven temp workers being given redundancy notices even though we always needed those workers in the past.

When bikes have been used instead of high capacity trolleys, or when only one postie was available for the shared vans, the outdoor element has nearly worked. Yet we’ll no longer be able to use bikes under the new programme! Aside from the astronomical costs involved in the NDM and the overcomplication of a relatively simple job, if Royal Mail is ever flogged off the first thing a private company will do is put many posties back on bikes. The impact of these NDM duties will have major health issues in the coming years with many leg and back joints suffering strain and permanent damage.

I believe there is a place for NDM. Say in the winter, if a Postie has to cycle for 3 or 4 miles, then of course it would be safer and more effective to have a couple of posties working from a van. Though we have had them for years, HCTs have never been used properly by Royal Mail.

In the past when we had large loads, say over Christmas, we were kept on bikes. Instead we should be able to look at the workload and decide what would be best for us to deliver, be it HCT or bike. We could make those decisions if allowed and effectively serve our customers and owners, the public. If we could just get rid of the parasites that make a fortune off our backs, the idiots who screw up, put their foot down and say you will do as you’re told. That is how it is going to be instead of being smart and “flexible”, a term they love so much to beat us with.

APRIL'S RIOT in Bristol’s Stokes Croft is fast fading from memory,  but for residents in the area the underlying issues have not been resolved. The flashpoint Tesco Express store  - opposed by many residents as out of character for the area - has reopened, although campaigners have been granted the right to a Judicial Review. But the resentment towards the police remains, as does the background tension of austerity measures.

As Colin, a nurse and Stokes Croft resident says, “even now it seems difficult to fully understand what led to the riots.”

“Would you really risk ten years in jail for violent disorder to ensure the area’s distinctive character survives? The anger was aimed at easily identifiable agents of the state, a state that is enforcing austerity on us all.”

While the battle over Tesco looks set to rumble on through the courts, more than the fate of a single store is at stake. “I believe the media overplayed the whole Tesco thing.   There is so much more to be angry about than a poxy little supermarket. The ‘coolness’ of Stokes Croft is also overstated. The graffiti covers of the cracks of neglect.”