Workers Solidarity Movement

2010 marks the 100th anniversary of the National Confederation of Labour (CNT), a militant anarchist union in Spain.

When General Franco led his fascist revolt in 1936 workers rose up throughout the country, Where anarchist ideas were popular (as in Catalonia and Aragon) a social revolution occurred, showing that society could indeed function along anarchist lines. In hospitals, factories, mills, bus & train services, water & electricity, the workers of the CNT reorganised and administered production, distribution, and public services without bosses, managers, or the authority of the state.

 Thirty years on from the end of the dictatorship many people who suffered repression are still afraid to speak.  And that in part is because repression became a taboo subject for many families.  This of course is what the dictatorship wanted.

Police in Darwin in Australia have ended a seven hour protest by refugees being incarcerated in a detention centre. Over ninety refugees from Afghanistan escaped the detention centre in the northern territory in over a 30 degree- temperatures to the nearby Stuart Highway holding placards demanding to be processed and treated like human beings. 

Perth public transport system in Western Australia was brought to a standstill last Friday after 97 drivers rang in sick.  Commuters suffered long delays and the much anticipated football match between Freemantle Dockers and Brisbane was disrupted by the action.

Hundreds of Roma have been deported today by the French government as part of their attacks on Roma camps. To date, over 8,000 Roma have been deported from France since the start of the year, out of a population of 15,000 in the county. There are between 10-12 million Roma in Europe.

In July 1914, the Shanghai Association of Anarchist Communist Comrades published its statement of principles, concluding with the resolution that, "the implementation of anarchist communism depends on the strength of our party. If we wish to increase our party's strength, uniting as a whole body and advancing together is our most important task today. Wherever they are, all our comrades should unite with those who share the same purposes and establish groups in free association.” The key member of this group was a Chinese anarchist known as Shifu who was to die a mere nine months later. Although the group carried on after his death, the core concept of this paragraph was never to be implemented.

Radio, television and newspaper reports of the recent devastating floods in Pakistan are at last beginning to refer to the sheer scale of the problems faced by the victims.  Figures for the number of people affected vary widely.  According to the Irish Minister of State for Overseas Development Peter Power, reported in today’s (Tuesday) Irish Times, “the United Nations estimated that 40 million people had been left homeless; that eight million of those were in urgent need of immediate food and shelter; and that the combination of rising water and humidity had made a cholera epidemic a real danger”.  RTE’s website says “Aid agencies are saying that the world does not fully understand the scale of the flooding disaster ….. One fifth of the country has been hit by severe flooding, with more than 20m people affected…..The UN believes up to 3.5m children are now at risk of contracting water-borne diseases….”.

One of the best known French anarchists, Georges Fontenis, died on August 9th at the age of 90.

Our comrades of Alternative Libertaire described him as “an untiring fighter for libertarian communism, a supporter of the Algerian independence fighters, a trade unionist, one of the leading figures of May 1968 in Tours and a pillar of the Freethought movement”.   Until the very end he was also a member of Alternative Libertaire.

At the urging of our comrades in  the Colombian anarchist organisation Red Libertaria Popular Mateo Kramer the WSM has signed this international statement.  Red Libertaria Popular Mateo Kramer describe the current political reality in Colombia as follows. "As repression assumes fearful proportions in Colombia, sheer violence is the mechanism to impose a terrorist mafia regime, an enclave subservient to US imperialist interests in the region. The current regime represents the political expression of the harshest class violence against workers in the region. This is not shameful for the Colombian people but it represents a menace to all of the Latin American people. Those libertarian organisations who have signed this statement do so in order to show solidarity with the libertarian movement in Colombia which, along with the rest of the people’s movement, knows no quarter in its struggle against State Terrorism and Imperialism."

The ‘Manifesto of Libertarian Communism’ was written in 1953 by Georges Fontenis for the Federation Communiste Libertaire of France. It is one of the key texts of the anarchist-communist current. It was preceded by the best work of Bakunin, Guillaume, Malatesta, Berneri, the Organisational Platform of the Libertarian Communists written by Makhno, Arshinov and Matt, which sprang from the defeats of the Russian Revolution, and the statements of the Friends of Durruti, also a result of another defeat, that of the Spanish Revolution.