Joe Hill Film Show

Tuesday evening, January 24th, at the Electron Club, Centre
 for Contemporary Arts, Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, the Clydeside General
Membership Brach will be showing the 1998 US documentary 'Joe Hill',
dir. Ken Verdoia. It's an 87-minute feature on the life, trial and
death of Joe Hill/Joel Emmanuel Hägglund (1879-1915), Swedish Wobbly
songwriter (one of the best-loved contributors to the Little Red
Songbook) and cartoonist, shot by firing squad in Salt Lake City on a
highly questionable (to put it mildly) murder charge.

Discussion to continue in the café downstairs afterwards, including
an update on the case, since new evidence was published only last
year re: Joe's alibi, the mystery girlfriend, and on the career of
the real chief suspect, Magnus Olson, aka Frank Z Wilson (and at
least a dozen other aliases).
best wishes for the OBU,
Marianne

On the Pensions Dispute: A Message from the Trade Union Leadership to their members

Comrades, colleagues, suckers. We have negotiated hard for you over the past 6 months, consuming endless free dinners and sharing personal anecdotes with the representatives of the employers’ side. The negotiations have been difficult… intransigent management… evil Tory government… difficult economic climate… bad weather in Suffolk… train delay outside Crewe….

But we have gained significant ground. Under the new proposals, your pensions will only be cut by a quarter rather than 25%, and those due to retire between 28th February and 1st March 2013 will not have to work the additional decade, before gaining their reduced pension. Higher grade team members, such as bankers, chief executives and Union leaders will also be unaffected.

I know this is not what we promised you or what you wanted. But we recommend acceptance of this new improved offer. It is, of course up to you to decide… but if you vote against our recommendation, we’ll do nothing to help you… and seek to undermine you anyway we can…. labeling you extremists, deluded or sinister. Plus we control all the union resources.

Thanks again for all your support

<fill in your standard Trade Union Leaders Name here>

 

From Dumfries Trades Council

Dumfries TUC OPEN MEETING: Monday, January 16th, 7.30pm at D & G Multicultural Association Building, Old Assembly Close, Dumfries (opposite the back entrance to Marks & Spencer).

Subject:  “The Way Forward in the Fight Against the Cuts.”

Speaker: James Foley – Glasgow Coalition of Resistance

All welcome

IWW Clydeside Meeting

The Clydeside group of the IWW will be meeting on Tuesday 17th January  at Wetherspoon’s, 107 Bothwell Street, Glasgow at 7.30pm, Dumfries  and Galloway (Solway) Wobs are invited along.

In the teeth of a coincidence

Three friends met up this week in Dumfries. All had visited in the last couple of a months the same dental practice in Dumfries for a check up for the first time (two had recently registered). All had no serious prior dental problems, nor expected any problems, yet all three were diagnosed as needing fillings. Is this an incredible coincidence or is there another explanation?

Dumfries Degree Closure Scandal Rumbles On

We reported the campaign to save jobs and course options at the Dumfries Campus of the University of Glasgow. The jobs were saved (at least temporarily), but the courses were cut. It leaves Dumfries as a joke ‘University Town’- as the campus is  without any of  the degree options of any mainstream university (no Arts, Humanities, Literature, History, etc.).  How did the University of Glasgow get away with this?

Well, the student representative, Stuart Richie, from the Glasgow Campus whose job was to represent Dumfries students, has been found to be cahoots with the University management. He failed to stand up for the students he claimed he would support on all sorts of matters, so its no surprise many suspect he failed to stand up for the Dumfries students too. Doubts that seems to have grown, with reports in Glasgow Guardian that Mr Richie was given a pay off worth several thousand of pounds (£3,804 to be precise) authorised by senior University figures in order to ‘protect the organisation’ (their words). Management know how to protect their own.

Mr Richie is unlikely to entirely disaapear. In 20 years tike, expect him, like other shamed Glasgow University figures, such as Liam Fox, to have a well-paid ignoble political careers.

 

Pensions Campaign Falters

There are  inherent problems in the co-ordinated trade union action over the pensions. They are 1) the union bureacuracy; 2) separate competing unions.

The governments is pursuing  classic tactic of divide-and-rule. Offering a few unions slightly better (though still appalling) deals. Most of the union bureaucrats  would like to settle, leaving their membership in perilous conditions on retirement, whenever that would be. It only needs a few unions to settle to give the impression that the strike wave is faltering.

The IWW by contrast unites everyone in the same union, and has no permanent paid leadership.  Because the IWW – though growing – is still tiny – most members are also members of other mainstream unions. But our democratic, direct action orientated alternative is causing  some  unions to adopt IWW tactics, whilst other union bureaucrats  are scared, running dishonest and  scare-mongering  against the IWW, like this (now removed, but cached) web-blog from Bristol UNISON.

One Law for Us – One Law For Them

It’s certainly a risky business to stand up for the rioters, and to propose that urban uprisings are not excusable but legitimate. As young people laughing about the riots on Facebook have been given massive prison sentences:

* Shawn Divin, 16, and Jordan McGinley, 18 of Dundee, were administrators of a Facebook page called “Riot in the toon” and sentenced to four years – there was no riot in Dundee.

* Danny Cook of Kidderminister was sentence to 22 Months for creating a Facebook group page called “Letz start a riot”. It was viewed by dozens, no riot took place

* Jordan Blackshaw, 21 and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, of Cheshire were sentenced for four years for suggesting a riot for Nantwich (there was no riot there), were sentenced to four years each.

Meanwhile:

* Millionaire friend of David Cameron, Jeremy Clarkson goes on national TV an in front of millions proposes shooting strikers. The Prime Minister defends him calling the comments ‘humorous’. Clarkson’s previous humorous  comments inspired Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik (Clarkson was quoted approvingly in Breivik’s manifesto). You’d think Mr Clarkson might be a little more careful, and his ‘friends’ a little more critical, of what he says.  Unlike the Facebook posters, there is no suggestion that multi-millionaire Clarkson should stand on trial

* One member of the 1% elite group did however get a prison sentence. Duncan McAlpine, whose father runs Painshill Farm Stables in Cranleigh, Surrey, deliberately drove a transit van at some drinkers standing out a pub, because he considered them he regarded as ‘nasty working men’. For this attempt at mass murder McAlpine received 18 months. Considerably less than any of the rioters or indeed the working class jokers on Facebook.

The law is their law.

 

Glasgow Fair Report

The Glasgow Fare was full of interest with well-stocked stalls of books, DVDs and magazines as well as free information, film shows and talks. On the downside some of the speakers cancelled at the last moment because of ill-health and attendance was a little lower than expected, maybe for the same reason (these radicals must be a sickly lot). However there was still well over four dozen, about three times the amount they had at the very first London Anarchist Fare, which now attracts thousands.

On the positives, good contacts were made, with some people travelling from the Highlands, the English Midlands and London.  Lots of interest in Wob material; Plus the threatened attack by the SDL (Scottish Defence League) did not materialise.

Hopefully, there’ll be another  Glasgow Radical Fare soon.

Wob Info: Saturday 10th December, Glasgow,

Members of Clydeside and Dumfries IWW will be at the Glasgow Anarchist Fair on Saturday 10th December, Kinning Park Complex, 43 Cornwall Street, next to Kinning Park Underground Station. Fair starts at 10.30am and goes on until 11.00pm

Amongst the free stalls, talks, films, there’ll be info from the IWW. members will also be manning some of the stalls.

More info of the event at http://www.facebook.com/events/189939324421329/