Sunday, August 14, 2005
Asian & white workers together
Solidarity is a beautiful thing. A catering company at London's Heathrow airport sacked 500 workers; baggage handlers and ground crew went on strike in solidarity. The entire British Airways network shut down as a result. More proof, if any were needed, that workers' collective action is the most powerful thing in the world. If we stop working, everything stops.
As an addendum, apparently the media is trying to play up 'family ties' as the reason for solidarity action. The catering workers are Asian and made their communities strike to support them (so the story goes.)
Family ties operate in all workplaces. People form bonds when they work together every day. They inter-marry, their kids get hired on. This is inevitable, and a good thing; it strengthens the ties between workers. To claim that, without these ties, the Asian Heathrow workers would've gone home quietly, is racist and besides the point. Their strike action got results, and that's a lesson every worker, black or white, can learn from.
In this case, the family ties assumption is false: the ground & baggage crews are mainly white. There are lessons to be learned from that, too. It was class ties that caused the solidarity strike.
The working class, in all its colours and genders, is still with us. Let the bosses tremble and the postmodernists scratch their heads in confusion. Asians and whites can join together in common cause. In fact, white workers - the very people so many academics denounce as racist, sexist, irredemiably reactionary - followed their brown sisters' & brothers' lead. Non-activist, non-political workers, lunch-box and overall types, downed tools because they understood the basic principle of labour solidarity: an injury to one is an injury to all. Even to those 'fundamentally different' brown folk.
I'd like to hear identity politics explain that. When I talk about 'white activists taking up too much space', let's be clear that white 'non-activists' can do more to stop capitalism in its tracks than most politicos. The Heathrow workers showed, once again, why socialism is possible and necessary. Why it's not a utopia, but a potential in the here & now.
As an addendum, apparently the media is trying to play up 'family ties' as the reason for solidarity action. The catering workers are Asian and made their communities strike to support them (so the story goes.)
Family ties operate in all workplaces. People form bonds when they work together every day. They inter-marry, their kids get hired on. This is inevitable, and a good thing; it strengthens the ties between workers. To claim that, without these ties, the Asian Heathrow workers would've gone home quietly, is racist and besides the point. Their strike action got results, and that's a lesson every worker, black or white, can learn from.
In this case, the family ties assumption is false: the ground & baggage crews are mainly white. There are lessons to be learned from that, too. It was class ties that caused the solidarity strike.
The working class, in all its colours and genders, is still with us. Let the bosses tremble and the postmodernists scratch their heads in confusion. Asians and whites can join together in common cause. In fact, white workers - the very people so many academics denounce as racist, sexist, irredemiably reactionary - followed their brown sisters' & brothers' lead. Non-activist, non-political workers, lunch-box and overall types, downed tools because they understood the basic principle of labour solidarity: an injury to one is an injury to all. Even to those 'fundamentally different' brown folk.
I'd like to hear identity politics explain that. When I talk about 'white activists taking up too much space', let's be clear that white 'non-activists' can do more to stop capitalism in its tracks than most politicos. The Heathrow workers showed, once again, why socialism is possible and necessary. Why it's not a utopia, but a potential in the here & now.
