Narratives of division and class
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This session prepared by the Ella Baker School of Organising. �You are free to use the materials, and amend them to meet your needs, �but we do ask that when doing so, you acknowledge our input and inform people of where they can find out more about us: www.ellabakerorganising.org.uk
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I will always have more in common with a docker from India than I will ever have with an investment banker from the UK.��Micky Fenn�Rank and file dockers leader
As well as the masked thugs hurling missiles at the lines of riot police, there were families in England tops cheering them on. I saw mums and dads pushing babies in pushchairs; small children draped in the St George’s flag joining the march.
One woman advised her son who was throwing stones at riot police to make sure he didn’t hurt himself.
BBC news
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We asked ourselves: How was Mosley able to recruit Stepney workers? This, in spite of our propaganda exposing the fascists. If they saw in the fascists the answer to their problems, why? What were the problems? Did we, in our propaganda, offer a solution? Was propaganda itself sufficient? Was there more that ought to be done?”
Phil Pirratin 1940
There were good trade unionists on that demonstration who, a few years later, turned back. Because once we started arguing with them and explained to them what it was all about they changed their views. A lot of them after that demonstration felt really ashamed to be honest. I mean we were going back to work and saying, ‘why?’
Micky Fenn Dockers leader 1968
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Some of the people voting for Farage, and even some of those rioting are our people
What are the particular issues in your workplace/community that are exploited to make people feel that migrants, or other minorities are ‘the problem’?
Why are these narratives influencing our community?
Breakout
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‘Nobody in the world, nobody in history has ever gotten their freedom by appealing to the moral sense of those people who were oppressing them’
For centuries Britain’s democratic liberties have been won and upheld with the help of men and women who stood up for their beliefs and took the consequences. The right to worship freely, to organise trade unions, to vote—for men and women—in Britain were all won against powerful people who sought to maintain their privileges by stirring public fears whenever anyone challenged those privileges.
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A history of struggle
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The birth of new unionism
Miners’ supporters at�Saltley Gate
Pickets for the Pentonville five
Solidarity forever?
Breakout
What has happened to the spirit of solidarity that saw the whole union movement get behind the racialized minority, migrant, women at Grunwick and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community?
1978: Eric Hobsbawm
The development of the working class in the past generation has been such as to raise a number of very serious questions about its future and the future of its movement. What makes this all the more tragic is that we are today in a period of world crisis for capitalism,
There is no such thing as society
The brutal faces of neo-liberalism
By January 1982, three million workers,
one in eight of the workforce, were out of work.
18 June 1984, Orgreave�
Revenge
Privatisation
Sale of council housing
New realism and credit card unionism
Thatcher’s when asked what was her greatest achievement:
‘Tony Blair and New �Labour. We forced our opponents to change’
There are 3.9 million people working in the gig economy
The real cause of misery in our communities …
If wage share had remained constant between 1979 and 2023, then the average worker would be £10,000 per year better off��In 2022, incomes for the poorest 14 million people fell by 7.5%, whilst incomes for the richest fifth saw a 7.8% increase.
Prison population
Consider in your groups:
What next
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Other training in this series
Any final thoughts questions, or observations?
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