London Wobblies Celebrate and Plan

x344543 — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 03:54:00 +0000

By Dan Jakopovich, London - Industrial Worker, December 2005

The recently established London IWW group, which seems to have given a new lease of life to Wobblies in the British Isles, held an IWW centenary celebration at the RampART squatted social centre in East London on 5 November. It was our first public event where the core group, which was established a few months ago, had a general presentation of its ideals, goals and methods.

The high point of the evening was a discussion on building autonomous workers' resistance in London. This was largely centred around trying to draw on previous experiences, such as the Gate Gourmet dispute (See for instance my article "Gate Gourmet: 'not over yet,'" Freedom, 15 October), that have confirmed the importance of militant rank-and-file unionism as the only promising means for annulling the present laws against solidarity strikes. The grassroots democratic model of the Workmates Collective of West London tube workers was also mentioned.

Industrial Workers of the World - London GMB

London Wobblies Celebrate and Plan