Labour Unions Quotes

...[G]reat progress was evident in the last Congress of the American 'Labour Union' in that among other things, it treated working women with complete equality. While in this respect the English, and still more the gallant French, are burdened with a spirit of narrow-mindedness. Anybody who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex (the ugly ones included).

Be a worthy worker and work will come.

No one knows any longer whether the reintroduction of the bear in Pyrenees, kolkhozes, aerosols, the Green Revolution, the anti-smallpox vaccine, Star Wars, the Muslim religion, partridge hunting, the French Revolution, service industries, labour unions, cold fusion, Bolshevism, relativity, Slovak nationalism, commercial sailboats, and so on, are outmoded, up to date, futuristic, atemporal, nonexistent, or permanent.

This business of petty inconvenience and indignity, of being kept waiting about, of having to do everything at other people’s convenience, is inherent in working-class life. A thousand influences constantly press a working man down into a passive role. He does not act, he is acted upon. He feels himself the slave of mysterious authority and has a firm conviction that ‘they’ will never allow him to do this, that, and the other. Once when I was hop-picking I asked the sweated pickers (they earn something under sixpence an hour) why they did not form a union. I was told immediately that ‘they’ would never allow it. Who were ‘they’? I asked. Nobody seemed to know, but evidently ‘they’ were omnipotent.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

One of the girls read somewhere that a red flag was the proper symbol for the oppressed workers, and so they mounted one, and paraded all about the yards, yelling with rage. A new union was the result of this outburst, but the impromptu strike went to pieces in three days, owing to the rush of new labour.

The pot that had simmered for fifty years boiled over. Colliers and miners, furnacemen and tram-road labourers were flooding down the valley to the Chartists' rendezvous: men from Dowlais under the Guests, Cyfartha under the Crawshays, Nantyglo under Bailey and a thousand forges and bloomeries in the hills: men of the farming Welsh, the Staffordshire specialists and the labouring Irish were taking to arms.

Imagine this struggle being repeated in every barracks of the city, the district, the whole front, all Russia. Imagine the sleepless Krylenkos, watching the regiments, hurrying from place to place, arguing, threatening, entreating. And then imaging the same in all the locals of every labour union, in the factories, the villages, on the battle-ships of the far-flung Russian fleets; think of the hundreds of thousands of Russian men staring up at speakers all over the vast country, workmen, peasants, soldiers, sailors, trying so hard to understand and to choose, thinking so intensely-and deciding so unanimously at the end. So was the Russian Revolution….

Why do the Fascists want violence?” Ethel asked rhetorically. “Those out there in Hills Road may be mere hooligans, but someone is directing them, and their tactics have a purpose. When there is fighting in the streets, they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are needed to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include banning democratic political parties such as Labour, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial—people such as us, peaceful men and women whose only crime is to disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, unlikely, something that could never happen? Well, they used exactly those tactics in Germany—and it worked.” She went on to talk about how Fascism

The Bolsheviks argued that only socialism could resolve the contradiction between work and family. Under socialism, household labor would be transferred to the public sphere: The tasks performed by millions of individual unpaid women in their homes would be taken over by paid workers in communal dining rooms, laundries, and childcare centers. Women would be freed to enter the public sphere on an equal basis with men, unhampered by the duties of the home. At last women would be equally educated, waged, and able to pursue their own individual goals and development. Under such circumstances, marriage would become superfluous. Men and women would come together and separate as they wished, apart from the deforming pressures of economic dependency and need. Free union would gradually replace marriage as the state ceased to interfere in the union between the sexes. Parents, regardless of their marital status, would care for their children with the help of the state; the very concept of illegitimacy would become obsolete. The family, stripped of its previous social functions, would gradually wither away, leaving in its place fully autonomous, equal individuals free to choose their partners on the basis of love and mutual respect.

In many instances, politics was the cover for personal vendetta and family feud. Most of the right-wing terror was directed against those who had influenced the violence against the priests and the factory owners back in 1934 - union leaders, prominent anti-clericals, several Republican mayors. And yet - mechanics, butchers, doctors, builders, labourers, barbers - they too were 'taken for a walk', as the phrase came to be known. And it wasn't just men. Certain women who had become teachers under the Republic were removed, as were known anarchists' wives. None of it was legal, of course, but there seemed no means of stopping it, when hate and power were in play.

Studs Terkel was waiting for a number 146 bus alongside two well-groomed business types. "This was before the term yuppie was used," he explains. "But that was what they were. He was in Brooks Brothers and Gucci shoes and carrying the Wall Street Journal under his arm. She was a looker. I mean stunning - Bloomingdales and Neiman Marcus and carrying Vanity Fair." Terkel, who is 95, has long been a Chicago icon, every bit as accessible and integral to the cultural life of the Windy City as Susan Sontag was to New York. He had shared the bus stop with this couple for several mornings but they had always failed to acknowledge him. "It hurts my ego," he quips. "But this morning the bus was late and I thought, this is my chance." The rest of the story is his. "I say, 'Labour Day is coming up.' Well, it was the wrong thing to say. He looks toward me with a look of such contempt it's like Noel Coward has just spotted a bug on his collar. He says, 'We despise unions.' I thought, oooooh. The bus is still late. I've got a winner here. Suddenly I'm the ancient mariner and I fix him with my glittering eye. 'How many hours a day do you work?' I ask. He says, 'Eight.' 'How comes you don't work 18 hours a day like your great-great-grandfather did? You know why? Because four guys got hanged in Chicago in 1886 fighting for the eight-hour day ... For you.

We’ve covered ourselves with everything we own, plus a snow blanket on top. It does provide warmth. The snow is everywhere - our pillows, our hair. You stick your head out, take a deal breath, slip under the covers again and breathe out. Feels warm. The snow on your hair melts, then turns to ice. A winter hat. Silence. Darkness... The only thing visible is the snow.

When the price of cattle, for example, rises so high that it is as profitable to cultivate land in order to raise food for them as in order to raise food for man, it cannot well go higher. If it did, more corn land would soon be turned into pasture. The extension of tillage, by diminishing the quantity of wild pasture, diminishes the quantity of butcher's meat which the country naturally produces without labour or cultivation, and by increasing the number of those who have either corn, or, what comes to the same thing, the price of corn, to give in exchange for it, increases the demand. The price of butcher's meat, therefore, and consequently of cattle, must gradually rise till it gets so high that it becomes as profitable to employ the most fertile and best cultivated lands in raising food for them as in raising corn. But it must always be late in the progress of improvement before tillage can be so far extended as to raise the price of cattle to this height; and till it has got to this height, if the country is advancing at all, their price must be continually rising. There are, perhaps, some parts of Europe in which the price of cattle has not yet got to this height. It had not got to this height in any part of Scotland before the union. Had the Scotch cattle been always confined to the market of Scotland, in a country in which the quantity of land which can be applied to no other purpose but the feeding of cattle is so great in proportion to what can be applied to other purposes, it is scarce possible, perhaps, that their price could ever have risen so high as to render it profitable to cultivate land for the sake of feeding them. In England, the price of cattle, it has already been observed, seems, in the neighbourhood of London, to have got to this height about the beginning of the last century; but it was much later probably before it got to it through the greater part of the remoter counties; in some of which, perhaps, it may scarce yet have got to it. Of all the different substances, however, which compose this second sort of rude produce, cattle is, perhaps, that of which the price, in the progress of improvement, first rises to this height.

Perfect Joy (excerpts) Is there to be found on earth a fullness of joy, or is there no such thing? . . . What the world values is money, reputation, long life, achievement. What it counts as joy is health and comfort of body, good food, fine clothes, beautiful things to look at, pleasant music to listen to. What it condemns is lack of money, a low social rank, a reputation for being no good, and an early death. What it considers misfortune is bodily discomfort and labour, no chance to get your fill of good food, not having good clothes to wear, having no way to amuse or delight the eye, no pleasant music to listen to. If people find that they are deprived of these things, they go into a panic or fall into despair. They are so concerned for their life that their anxiety makes life unbearable, even when they have the things they think they want. Their very concern for enjoyment makes them unhappy. . . . I cannot tell if what the world considers "happiness" is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessed, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness. . . . My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it. My greatest happiness consists precisely in doing nothing whatever that is calculated to obtain happiness: and this, in the minds of most people, is the worst possible course. I will hold to the saying that:"Perfect Joy is to be without joy. Perfect praise is to be without praise." If you ask "what ought to be done" and "what ought not to be done" on earth in order to produce happiness, I answer that these questions do not have an answer. There is no way of determining such things. Yet at the same time, if I cease striving for happiness, the "right" and the "wrong" at once become apparent all by themselves. Contentment and well-being at once become possible the moment you cease to act with them in view, and if you practice non-doing (wu wei), you will have both happiness and well-being. Here is how I sum it up: Heaven does nothing: its non-doing is its serenity. Earth does nothing: its non-doing is its rest. From the union of these two non-doings All actions proceed, All things are made. How vast, how invisible This coming-to-be! All things come from nowhere! How vast, how invisible - No way to explain it! All beings in their perfection Are born of non-doing. Hence it is said: "Heaven and earth do nothing Yet there is nothing they do not do." Where is the man who can attain To this non-doing?

Those prisoners who were eventually liberated and returned to the Soviet Union - well over one and a half million - had to face extensive discrimination following an order issued by Stalin in August 1941 equating surrender with treason. Many of them were despatched to the labour camps of the Gulag after being screened by Soviet military counter-intelligence. Despite attempts after Stalin’s death by top military leader Marshal Georgi Zhukov to end discrimination against former prisoners of war, they were not formally rehabilitated until 1994.217

That shilling which Bunce paid weekly to the Union she regarded as being absolutely thrown away, — as much so as though he cast it weekly into the Thames. And she had told him so, over and over again, making heart-piercing allusions to the eight children and to the bit of meat. He would always endeavour to explain to her that there was no other way under the sun for keeping Labour from being sent to the wall; — but he would do so hopelessly and altogether ineffectually, and she had come to regard him as a lunatic to the extent of that one weekly shilling.

There was another reason why the dollar's hegemony grew: the intentional impoverishment of America's working class. A cynic will tell you quite accurately that large quantities of money are attracted to countries where the profit rate is higher. For Wall Street to exercise fully its magnetic powers over foreign capital, profit margins in the United States had to catch up with profit rates in Germany and Japan. A quick and dirty way to do this was to suppress American wages. Cheaper labour makes for lower costs, makes for larger margins. It is no coincidence that, to this day, American working class earnings languish below their 1974 level. It is also no coincidence that union-busting became a thing in the 1970s, culminating in Ronald Reagan's dismissal of every single unionised air traffic controller. A move emulated by Margaret Thatcher in Britain who pulverised whole industries in order to eliminate the trade unions that inhabited them. And faced with the Minotaur's sucking most of the world's capital into America, the European ruling classes reckoned that they had no alternative but to do the same. Reagan had set the pace. Thatcher had shown the way. But it was in Germany and later across continental Europe that the new class war - you might call it universal austerity - was waged most effectively.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. In all these movements they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time. Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries. The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!

The most disastrous obstacle to labor unity in the 1850s was the reaction of native workers to the arrival of several million impoverished Irish and German laborers who came in a flood after European crop failures of the 1840s. These new immigrants provided cheap labour power for the growth of New England factories as well as armies of raw muscle for railroad expansion and coalfields. They were met by the universal hostility of a native working class which rioted against them, evicted them from workplaces, refused them admission into trade unions, and tried to exclude them from the franchise. Partly rooted in economic rivalries in the labour market, the Yankee-versus-immigrant polarization in the working class also reflected a profound cultural antagonism that would hinder the efforts at labor unity for more than a century.

The competition for accumulation requires that the capitalists inflict a daily violence upon the working class in the work place. The intensity of that violence is not under individual capitalists' control, particularly if competition is unregulated. The restless search for relative surplus value raises the productivity of labour at the same time as it devalues and depreciates labour power, to say nothing of the loss of dignity, of sense of control over the work process of the perpetual harassment by overseers and the necessity to conform to the dictates of the machine. As individuals, workers are scarcely in a position to resist, most particularly since a rising productivity has the habit of 'freeing' a certain number of them into the ranks of the unemployed. Workers can develop the power to resist only by class action of some kind — either spontaneous acts of violence (the machine-breakings, burnings and mob fury of earlier eras, which have by no means disappeared) or the creation of organizations (such as the unions) capable of waging a collective class struggle. The capitalists' compulsion to capture ever more relative surplus value does not pass unchallenged. The battle is joined once more, and the main lines of class struggle form around questions such as the application of machinery, the speed and intensity of the labour process, the employment of women and children, the conditions of labour and the rights of the worker in the work place. The fact that struggles over such issues are a part of daily life in capitalist society attests to the fact that the quest for relative surplus value is omnipresent and that the necessary violence that that quest implies is bound to provoke some kind of class response on the part of the workers.

Conceive a world-society developed materially far beyond the wildest dreams of America. Unlimited power, derived partly from the artificial disintegration of atoms, partly from the actual annihilation of matter through the union of electrons and protons to form radiation, completely abolished the whole grotesque burden of drudgery which hitherto had seemed the inescapable price of civilization, nay of life itself. The vast economic routine of the world-community was carried on by the mere touching of appropriate buttons. Transport, mining, manufacture, and even agriculture were performed in this manner. And indeed in most cases the systematic co-ordination of these activities was itself the work of self-regulating machinery. Thus, not only was there no longer need for any human beings to spend their lives in unskilled monotonous labour, but further, much that earlier races would have regarded as highly skilled though stereotyped work, was now carried on by machinery. Only the pioneering of industry, the endless exhilarating research, invention, design and reorganization, which is incurred by an ever-changing society, still engaged the minds of men and women. And though this work was of course immense, it could not occupy the whole attention of a great world-community. Thus very much of the energy of the race was free to occupy itself with other no less difficult and exacting matters, or to seek recreation in its many admirable sports and arts. Materially every individual was a multi-millionaire, in that he had at his beck and call a great diversity of powerful mechanisms; but also he was a penniless friar, for he had no vestige of economic control over any other human being. He could fly through the upper air to the ends of the earth in an hour, or hang idle among the clouds all day long. His flying machine was no cumbersome aeroplane, but either a wingless aerial boat, or a mere suit of overalls in which he could disport himself with the freedom of a bird. Not only in the air, but in the sea also, he was free. He could stroll about the ocean bed, or gambol with the deep-sea fishes. And for habitation he could make his home, as he willed, either in a shack in the wilderness or in one of the great pylons which dwarfed the architecture even of the American age. He could possess this huge palace in loneliness and fill it with his possessions, to be automatically cared for without human service; or he could join with others and create a hive of social life. All these amenities he took for granted as the savage takes for granted the air which he breathes. And because they were as universally available as air, no one craved them in excess, and no one grudged another the use of them.

I awoke to the fraud that had been committed in socialism’s name, and felt an immediate obligation to do something about it. All those laws formulated by the British Labour Party, which set out to organize society for the greater good of everyone, by controlling, marginalizing or forbidding some natural human activity, took on another meaning for me. I was suddenly struck by the impertinence of a political party that sets out to confiscate whole industries from those who had created them, to abolish the grammar schools to which I owed my education, to force schools to amalgamate, to control relations in the workplace, to regulate hours of work, to compel workers to join a union, to ban hunting, to take property from a landlord and bestow it on his tenant, to compel businesses to sell themselves to the government at a dictated price, to police all our activities through quangos designed to check us for political correctness. And I saw that this desire to control society in the name of equality expresses exactly the contempt for human freedom that I encountered in Eastern Europe.

My dear Michael, I have given you my heart. I have said that I loved you, and I have pledged myself to be your wife. I am as much yours through all changes of good and evil as if we had been married on the day when such words passed between us. I know you well, and know that if we should be separated and our union broken off, your whole life would be shadowed, and all that might, even now, be stronger in your character for the conflict with the world would then be weakened to the shadow of what it is!” “God help me, Christiana!” said I. “You speak the truth.” “Michael!” said she, putting her hand in mine, in all maidenly devotion, “let us keep apart no longer. It is but for me to say that I can live contented upon such means as you have, and I well know you are happy. I say so from my heart. Strive no more alone; let us strive together. My dear Michael, it is not right that I should keep secret from you what you do not suspect, but what distresses my whole life. My mother: without considering that what you have lost, you have lost for me, and on the assurance of my faith: sets her heart on riches, and urges another suit upon me, to my misery. I cannot bear this, for to bear it is to be untrue to you. I would rather share your struggles than look on. I want no better home than you can give me. I know that you will aspire and labour with a higher courage if I am wholly yours, and let it be so when you will!” I was blest indeed, that day, and a new world opened to me. We were married in a very little while, and I took my wife to our happy home.

A confidential report delivered in June 1965 by Abel Aganbegyan, director of the Novobirsk Institute of Economics, highlighted the difficulties. Aganbegyan noted that the growth rate of the Soviet economy was beginning to decline, just as the rival US economy seemed particularly buoyant; at the same time, some sectors of the Soviet economy - housing, agriculture, services, retail trade - remained very backward, and were failing to develop at an adequate rate. The root causes of this poor performance he saw in the enormous commitment of resources to defense (in human terms, 30-40 million people out of a working population of 100 million, he reckoned), and the 'extreme centralism and lack of democracy in economic matters' which had survived from the past. In a complex modern society, he argued, not everything could be planned, since it was impossible to foresee all possible contingencies and their potential effects. So the plan amounted to central command, and even that could not be properly implemented for lack of information and of modern data-processing equipment. 'The Central Statistical Administration ... does not have a single computer, and is not planning to acquire any,' he commented acidly. Economic administration was also impeded by excessive secrecy: 'We obtain many figures... from American journals sooner than they are released by the Central Statistical Administration.' Hence the economy suffered from inbuilt distortions: the hoarding of goods and labour to provide for unforeseen contingencies, the production of shoddy goods to fulfill planning targets expressed in crude quantitative terms, the accumulation of unused money by a public reluctant to buy substandard products, with resultant inflation and a flourishing black market.

The present system is a capitalist system. This means that the world is divided up into two antagonistic camps, the camp of a small handful of capitalists and the camp of the majority - the proletarians. The proletarians work day and night, nevertheless they remain poor. The capitalists do not work, nevertheless they are rich. This takes place not because the proletarians are unintelligent and the capitalists are geniuses, but because the capitalists appropriate the fruit of the labour of the proletarians, because the capitalists exploit the proletarians. Why is the fruit of the labour of the proletarians appropriated by the capitalists and not by the proletarians? Why do the capitalists exploit the proletarians and not vice versa? Because the capitalist system is based on commodity production: here everything assumes the form of a commodity, everywhere the principle of buying and selling prevails. Here you can buy not only articles of consumption, not only food products, but also the labour power of men, their blood and their consciousness. The capitalists know all of this and purchase the labour power of the proletarians, they hire them. This means the capitalists become the owners of the labour power they buy. The proletarians, however, lose their right to the labour power which they have sold. That is to say, what is produced by that labour power no longer belongs to the proletarians, it belongs only to the capitalists and goes into their pockets. The labour power which you have sold may produce in the course of a day, goods to the value of 100 rubles, but that is not your business, those goods do not belong to you, it is the business only of the capitalists, and the goods belong to them - all that you must receive is your daily wage which, perhaps, may be sufficient to satisfy your essential needs if, of course, you live frugally.

Patronising women is another manoeuvre, an infamous example being then British prime minister David Cameron’s ‘Calm down, dear’ to Labour MP Angela Eagle in 2011.48 In the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s (IPU) 2016 global study on sexism, violence and harassment against female politicians, one MP from a European parliament said ‘if a woman speaks loudly in parliament she is “shushed” with a finger to the lips, as one does with children. That never happens when a man speaks loudly’.49 Another noted that she is ‘constantly asked – even by male colleagues in my own party – if what I want to say is very important, if I could refrain from taking the floor.’ Some tactics are more brazen. Afghan MP Fawzia Koofi told the Guardian that male colleagues use intimidation to frighten female MPs into silence – and when that fails, ‘The leadership cuts our microphones off’.50 Highlighting the hidden gender angle of having a single person (most often a man) in charge of speaking time in parliament, one MP from a country in sub-Saharan Africa (the report only specified regions so the women could remain anonymous) told the IPU that the Speaker had pressured one of her female colleagues for sex. Following her refusal, ‘he had never again given her the floor in parliament’. It doesn’t necessarily even take a sexual snub for a Speaker to refuse women the floor: ‘During my first term in parliament, parliamentary authorities always referred to statements by men and gave priority to men when giving the floor to speakers,’ explained one MP from a country in Asia. The IPU report concluded that sexism, harassment and violence against female politicians was a ‘phenomenon that knew no boundaries and exists to different degrees in every country’. The report found that 66% of female parliamentarians were regularly subjected to misogynistic remarks from their male colleagues, ranging from the degrading (‘you would be even better in a porn movie’) to the threatening (‘she needs to be raped so that she knows what foreigners do’).

O happy age, which our first parents called the age of gold! Not because of gold, so much adored in this iron age, was then easily purchased, but because those two fatal words mine and thine, were distinctions unknown to the people of those fortunate times; for all things were in common in that holy age: men, for their sustenance, needed only lift their hands and take it from the sturdy oak, whose spreading arms liberally invited them to gather the wholesome savoury fruit; while the clear springs, and silver rivulets, with luxuriant plenty, ordered them their pure refreshing water. In hollow trees, and in the clefts of rocks, the laboring and industrious bees erected their little commonwealths, that men might reap with pleasure and with ease the the sweet and fertile harvest of their toils. The tough and strenuous cork-trees did of themselves, and without other art than their native liberality, dismiss and impart their broad light bark, which served to cover these lowly huts, propped up with rough-hewn stakes, that were first built as a shelter against the inclemencies of air. All then was union, all peace, all love and friendship in the world; as yet no rude plough-share with violence to pry into the pious bowels of our mother earth, for she, without compulsion, kindly yielded from every part of her fruitful and spacious bosom, whatever might at once satisfy, sustain, and indulge her frugal children. Then was the when innocent, beautiful young sheperdesses went tripping over the hills and vales; their lovely hairs sometimes plaited, sometimes loose and flowing, clad in no other vestment but what was necessary to cover decently what modesty would always have concealed. The Tyrian dye and the rich glossy hue of silk, martyred and dissembled into every color, which are now esteemed so fine and magnificent, were unknown to the innocent plainness of that age; arrayed in the most magnificent garbs, and all the most sumptous adornings which idleness and luxury have taught succeeding pride: lovers then expressed the passion of their souls in the unaffected language of the heart, with the native plainness and sincerity in which they were conceived, and divested of all that artificial contexture, which enervates what it labours to enforce: imposture, deceit and malice had not yet crept in and imposed themselves unbribed upon mankind in the disguise of truth and simplicity: justice, unbiased either by favour or interest, which now so fatally pervert it, was equally and impartially dispensed; nor was the judge's fancy law, for then there were neither judges nor causes to be judged: the modest maid might walk wherever she pleased alone, free from the attacks of lewd, lascivious importuners. But, in this degenerate age, fraud and a legion of ills infecting the world, no virtue can be safe, no honour be secure; while wanton desires, diffused into the hearts of men, corrupt the strictest watches, and the closest retreats; which, though as intricate and unknown as the labyrinth of Crete, are no security for chastity. Thus that primitive innocence being vanished, the opression daily prevailing, there was a necessity to oppose the torrent of violence: for which reason the order of knight-hood-errant was instituted to defend the honour of virgins, protect widows, relieve orphans, and assist all the distressed in general. Now I myself am one of this order, honest friends; and though all people are obliged by the law of nature to be kind to persons of my order; yet, since you, without knowing anything of this obligation, have so generously entertained me, I ought to pay you my utmost acknowledgment; and, accordingly, return you my most hearty thanks for the same.

In all these battles the Labour right has enormous reserves of political power. The Parliamentary Labour Party is overwhelmingly hostile to Jeremy Corbyn. Of the 232 Labour MPs no more than 20 can be relied on to back him. Back bench revolts, leaks, and public attacks by MPs opposed to the leadership are likely to be frequent. Some Labour left wingers hope that the patronage that comes with the leader’s position will appeal to the careerism of the right and centre MPs to provide Jeremy with the support he lacks. No doubt this will have some effect, but it will be limited. For a start it’s a mistake to think that all right wingers are venal. Some are. But some believe in their ideas as sincerely as left wingers believe in theirs. More importantly, the leading figures of the Labour right should not be seen as simply part of the Labour movement. They are also, and this is where their loyalty lies, embedded in the British political establishment. Commentators often talk as if the sociological dividing line in British politics lies between the establishment (the heads of corporations, military, police, civil service, the media, Tory and Liberal parties, etc, etc) on the one hand, and the Labour Party as a whole, the unions and the left on the other. But this is not the case. The dividing line actually runs through the middle of the Labour Party, between its right wing leaders and the left and the bulk of the working class members. From Ramsey MacDonald (who started on the left of the party) splitting Labour and joining the Tory government in 1931, to the Labour ‘Gang of Four’ splitting the party to form the SDP in 1981, to Neil Kinnock’s refusal to support the 1984-85 Miners Strike, to Blair and Mandelson’s neo-conservative foreign policy and neoliberal economic policy, the main figures of the Labour right have always put their establishment loyalties first and their Labour Party membership second. They do not need Jeremy Corbyn to prefer Cabinet places on them because they will be rewarded with company directorships and places in the Lords by the establishment. Corbyn is seen as a threat to the establishment and the Labour right will react, as they have always done, to eliminate this threat. And because the Labour right are part of the establishment they will not be acting alone. Even if they were a minority in the PLP, as the SDP founders were, their power would be enormously amplified by the rest of the establishment. In fact the Labour right today is much more powerful than the SDP, and so the amplified dissonance from the right will be even greater. This is why the argument that a Corbyn leadership must compromise with the right in the name of unity is so mistaken. The Labour right are only interested in unity on their terms. If they can’t get it they will fight until they win. If they can’t win they would rather split the party than unite with the left on the left’s terms. When Leon Trotsky analysed the defeat of the 1926 General Strike it was the operation of this kind of ‘unity’ which he saw as critical in giving the right the ability to disorganise the left. The collapse of the strike came, argued Trotsky, when the government put pressure on the right wing of the Labour movement, who put pressure on the left wing of the movement, who put pressure on the Minority Movement (an alliance of the Labour left and the Communist Party). And the Minority Movement put pressure on the CP…and thus the whole movement collapsed. To this day this is the way in which the establishment transmits pressure through the labour movement. The only effective antidote is political and organisational independence on the far left so that it is capable of mobilising beyond the ranks of the Labour Party and trade union bureaucracy. This then provides a counter-power pushing in the opposite direction that can be more powerful than the pressure from the right.

Frustrato, Doug tentò un’altra strada. “Ascolta, supponiamo che la maggioranza voti per la Brexit e noi...” “Scusami se ti interrompo,” disse Nigel. “Supponiamo che la maggioranza voti per cosa?” “Brexit.” Nigel lo guardò sbalordito. “Come mai salti fuori con questa parola?” “Non è così che la chiamano tutti?” “Credevo che si dicesse Brixit.” “Cosa? Brixit?” “Noi diciamo così.” “Noi... chi?” “Dave e tutto il gruppo.” “Tutti dicono Brexit. Da dove viene Brixit?” “Non lo so. Pensavo che si dicesse così.” Di nuovo prese un appunto sul taccuino. “Brexit? Sei sicuro?” “Sicurissimo. È una parola composta. British exit.” “British exit... Allora dovrebbe essere Brixit?” “Be’, i greci l’hanno chiamata Grexit.” “I greci? Non sono usciti dall’Unione europea.” “No, ma hanno valutato la possibilità di farlo.” “Noi non siamo i greci. Dovremmo avere una parola che sia unicamente nostra?” “Ce l’abbiamo. Brexit.” “Ma noi continuiamo a dire Brixit.” Scuotendo la testa, Nigel continuò a scrivere. “Sarà una notizia bomba nel prossimo consiglio dei ministri. Spero che non tocchi a me comunicarlo.” “A che ti serve avere una definizione se sei sicuro che la cosa non succederà?” gli domandò Doug. Nigel sorrise felice. “Naturale... hai ragione da vendere. Non succederà e quindi non ci serve definirla.” “Ecco, vedi.” “Dopotutto, tra un anno, nessuno si ricorderà più di questa stupida faccenda.” “Esattamente.” “Nessuno si ricorderà che qualcuno voleva la Brixit.” “Proprio così. Però, sai, alcuni di loro...” Si chiese come dovesse metterla. “Sono personaggi da prendere sul serio, no? Boris Johnson, per esempio. Un vero peso massimo.” “Non infierire sul suo aspetto fisico,” disse Nigel. “Anche se Dave è molto arrabbiato con lui.” “Non si aspettava che si pronunciasse a favore dell’uscita?” “No, non se l’aspettava.” “Gira voce che la sera prima che il ‘Telegraph’ andasse in stampa, Boris avesse preparato due articoli – uno in cui sosteneva l’uscita e l’altro in cui si dichiarava favorevole a restare nell’Unione europea.” “Non ci credo per niente,” disse Nigel. “Boris avrebbe preparato tre articoli: uno per uscire, l’altro per restare e il terzo perché non riusciva a decidere. Gli piace essere sempre pronto.”“E poi c’è Michael Gove. Un altro attaccante che si è pronunciato a favore dell’uscita.” “Lo so. Dave è arrabbiatissimo con Michael. Per fortuna rimangono molti conservatori leali e di buon senso che apprezzano i benefici di restare membri della UE. Credo che tu vada a letto con una di loro. Ma prova a immaginare cosa pensa Dave di Michael e di alcuni altri. Insomma, è andato a Bruxelles, è tornato con un accordo assai vantaggioso, e questi non sono ancora contenti.” “Semplice: a molti non va giù la UE,” disse Doug. “Pensano che non sia democratica.” “Sì, ma uscirne sarebbe un male per l’economia.” “Pensano che la Germania comandi a bacchetta su tutti.” “Sì, ma uscirne sarebbe un male per l’economia.” “Pensano che dalla Polonia e dalla Romania siano arrivati troppi immigrati che spingono i salari al ribasso.” “Sì, ma uscirne sarebbe un male per l’economia.” “D’accordo,” disse Doug. “Credo di avere appena capito quali saranno i tre punti strategici della campagna di Dave.” Adesso era il suo turno di prendere appunti. “E come la mettiamo con Jeremy Corbyn?” Nigel inspirò con un lungo sibilo e sobbalzò visibilmente. “Jeremy Corbyn?” “Se il quadro è questo, lui dove si colloca?” “Preferisco non parlarne.” “Perché no?” “Perché no? Perché è un marxista. Marxista, leninista, trotzkista, comunista. Maoista, bolscevico, anarchico, di sinistra. Un socialista fondamentalista, anticapitalista, antimonarchico, pro-terrorismo.” “Ma è anche uno che vuole rimanere nella UE.” “Davvero?” “Così dice.” “Allora, naturalmente, saremo felici di averlo a bordo. Ma non credo che Dave sarebbe pronto a condividere alcunché sul piano politico.” “Non sarà necessario. È Jeremy il primo a respingere un accordo di questo tipo.” “Bene.

There has been much controversy about the numbers of those imprisoned and killed at various times in the Stalin years, but the opening of the archives has led to some convergence towards a middle (but still horrific) figure, some millions fewer than the earlier highest estimates and some millions more than the estimates of those who downplayed the scale of Stalin’s terror. Ronald Suny, the editor of a recent major volume on twentieth-century Russian history, suggests that the ‘total number of lives destroyed by the Stalinist regime in the 1930s is closer to 10–11 million than the 20–30 million estimated earlier’.68 Anne Applebaum, the author of a detailed study of political prisoners in the Soviet Union, arrives at a figure of 28.7 million forced labourers over the whole Soviet period. She includes in that number the ‘special exiles’, such as ‘kulaks’ and particular nationalities, among them the Tatars and Volga Germans, who were deported during World War Two. Applebaum notes that a figure of around 786,000 political executions between 1934 and 1953 is now quite widely accepted, although her own view is that the true figure is probably significantly higher than that number.69 The Russian non-governmental organization Memorial, dedicated to investigating the cases of repression in the Soviet period, more recently came up with the figure of 1.7 million people arrested in 1937–38 alone, of whom, they say, at least 818,000 were shot.70

The most important trade union work is typically quite dull. The best trade union leaders are also, by extension, interested in the boring stuff – the length of the toilet breaks, the rules governing agency workers, the quantity of the paid breaks a worker is entitled to, and so on and so forth. These are the things that matter when you work in a job at the bottom end of the labour market, not the rigid dogmas and slogans summoning a radiant utopian future, nor a new set of superiors booming at you in impenetrable jargon.

Without any legal limit on working hours or minimum wages, the working day lasted for sixteen hours and the pay sufficed for only the most meagre existence. Trade unions began to form, but they could do little as long as labour was unskilled and each worker immediately replaceable by another.

their emergence was married to industrial successes in the two important districts of Alleppey and Shertallai in north Travancore, which also boasted the first trade union in the state, the Travancore Labour Association. By now it had transformed itself into the Coir Factory Workers’ Union, and with 7,400 fee-paying members, this was perhaps the biggest of fifty unions in the state; Shertallai alone had eleven with 15,000 out of 20,000 local workers registered.16 All of them, it became clear, were prepared to stand up to the Dewan and scotch his latest flirtations with the State Congress.

The separation between the Man of Labour and the Instruments of Labout once established, such a state of things will maintain itself and reproduce itself upon a constantly increasing scale, until a new and fundamental revolution in the mode of production should again overturn it, and restore the original union in a new historical form.

Yet the interests of the international statesman may not always align with the ‘national interest’, particularly if the statesman is now also a member of some international organization that provides him with a whole bunch of new incentives.21 At that point, the statesman’s role is in danger of becoming disturbingly ambiguous. Does the new international club provide a convenient scapegoat for the delivery of unpopular measures at home, as happened with the imposition of austerity measures in Southern European countries during the Eurozone crisis that began in 2010? Does the homogeneity of view associated with club membership – for example, adherence to the Washington Consensus or acceptance of inflation-targeting conventions – undermine otherwise legitimate protests at home? Does the new club limit the powers of domestic government through the growth of, for example, a supranational legal authority? And what happens if the views of the international statesman – and the new club he has now joined – are rejected by the nation he is supposed to represent? None of these issues is new. The scale of the problem is, however, bigger than ever before. Even as markets – in trade, capital and labour – have become ever more globalized, the institutions able to govern those markets have become ever more fragmented. In 1945, when the United Nations was founded, there were 51 member nations. In 2011, the year in which South Sudan joined, there were 193. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is no longer a binary choice between what might loosely be described as US-style free-market capitalism and Moscow-inspired communism.

The most disastrous obstacle to labor unity in the 1850s was the reaction of native workers to the arrival of several million impoverished Irish and German laborers who came in a flood after European crop failures of the 1840s. These new immigrants provided cheap labour-power for the growth of New England factories as well as armies of raw muscle for railroad expansion and coalfields. They were met by the universal hostility of a native working class which rioted against them, evicted them from workplaces, refused them admission into trade unions, and tried to exclude them from the franchise. Partly rooted in economic rivalries in the labour market, the Yankee-versus-immigrant polarization in the working class also reflected a profound cultural antagonism that would hinder the efforts at labor unity for more than a century.

Page 48-49: In 1952, the government ordered the dissolution of the Central Labour Union, on the ground that the CLU was dominated by Chinese and run by Communists, and therefore could not adequately represent the interests of Thai labour. As noted above, the Central Labour Union was suspected of being dominated by Communists, but the latter did not show any unwillingness to co-operate fully with Chinese business interests.

The perceptive in the City could see that their long run of ever more perfect freedom, beginning with Margaret Thatcher’s big bang and advancing, to their pleasant surprise, under Tony Blair’s New Labour, was facing a prolonged interruption when the masses worked out that they had been left with the bill for the incipient crisis. The new moneymen of the former Soviet Union shared with the libertarians of the City a loathing for the state. They had done splendid business together, the industrial triumphs of the proletariat laid out in lavish stock market prospectuses.

And now that mulch of dead imaginings beneath the feet of Temperance ladies, union-affiliated Vaudevillians and maimed men home from Europe has contaminated the groundwater of the upstart country's nightmares. Immigrants in their illimitable difference come to seem a separate species, taciturn and fish-eyed as though risen from the ocean waves that bore them in their transport, monstrous in their self-contained communities with bitter scents and indecipherable ululations, names, unsettlingly unpronounceable ensconced at isolated farms where beaten track is naught save idle rumour stagnant families nurse grievance, dreadful secrets and deformity in solitude; pools of declined humanity entirely unconnected to society by any tributary where ancestral prejudice or misconception may become the plaint of generations. Fabled and forbidden works of Arab alchemy are handed down across years cruel and volatile, trafficked between austere and colonial homes by charitable fellowships with ancient affectations or conveyed by fevered sea-captains, fugitive Huguenots or elderly hysterics formally accused of witchcraft. Young America, a sapling power grown suddenly so tall upon its diet of nickelodeons and motorcars, has sunk unwitting roots into an underworld of grotesque notions and archaic creeds, their feaful pull discernible below the weed-cracked sidewalk. Buried and forgotten, ominous philosophies await their day with hideous patience. Well! I think that's pretty darned good for a first attempt. A little over-wrought, perhaps, and I'm not sure about the style - I can't decide if its too modern of it's too old fashioned, but perhaps that's a good sign. Of course, I guess I'll have to introduce a plot and characters at some point, but I'll wrestle with that minor nuisance when I get to it. Perhaps I could contrive to have some hobo, maybe literally a hoe-boy or travelling itinerant farm labourer who's wandering from place to place around New England in the search for work; somebody who might reasonably become involved with all the various characters I'm hoping to investigate. Being a labourer, while it would lend a feasibility to any action or exertion that I wanted in the story, wouldn't mean that my protagonist was lacking in intelligence of education: this is often economically a far from certain country for a lot of people, and there's plenty of smart fellows - maybe even an aspiring writer like myself - who've found themselves leaving their homes and families to mooch around from farm to farm in hope of some hay-baling or fruit-picking that's unlikely to materialise. Perhaps a character like that, a rugged man who is sufficiently well read to justifiably allow me a few literary flourishes (and I can't help thinking that I'll probably end up casting some imagined variant of Tom Malone) would be the kind of of sympathetic hero and the kind of voice I'm looking for. Meanwhile I yawned a moment or two back, and while I'm not yet quite exhausted to the point where I can guarantee a deep and dreamless sleep, perhaps another six or seven vague ideas for stories might just do the soporific job.

Despite Project Genesis being part-funded by a grant from the European Union, 55 per cent of North West Durham voted for Brexit in the 2016 referendum.8

Labour is yesterday’s operation – all about unions, all about strikes. Lanchester is not about that, it’s about people who look after people. We don’t need any union on our side.

Creagh also blamed much of what happened in 2019 and Brexit on her former Islington comrade Jeremy Corbyn. The day after the election, she confronted Corbyn in Portcullis House in the Palace of Westminster, enraged to see him taking selfies with young supporters after she and dozens of other Labour MPs had lost their seats. ‘I don’t think Jeremy did the cause any favours, he went to EU rallies without mentioning the European Union. He was lost in his own self-righteousness. The whole kind of movement and the momentum around his own personal political project, which I think, in retrospect, is probably not the same political project of the Labour Party’s historic mission, which is to get people elected to Parliament. I think Jeremy kind of lost sight of that.

Going to Moscow was a dream for us,' Ilich said years later. He and his younger brother started the course within weeks of Soviet tanks rolling into Czechoslovakia to crush the heady 'Prague Spring'. But they soon found that discipline at the cosmopolitan university, whose 6000 students were all selected through the Communist Party of their country of origin, was as stifling as its modernist architecture. Drab grey concrete blocks squatted around a charmless artificial pond. The only dash of colour was a map of the world painted on to the façade of one block in a valiant attempt to symbolise the ideals of the university: from an open book, symbol of learning, a torch emerges, issuing multicoloured flames that spread like waves across the planisphere. Perhaps Ilich drew some comfort from glancing up at the mural as, huddled against the rigours of the Russian winter and wearing a black beret in tribute to Che Guevara who had died riddled by bullets in October of the previous year, he trudged across the bleak square on his way to lectures. Coincidentally, the base of the flame is very close to Venezuela. Rules and regulations governed virtually every aspect of Ilich's life from the moment he started the first year's induction course, which was designed to flesh out his knowledge of the Russian language and introduce him to the delights of Marxist society before he launched into his chosen subjects, languages and chemistry. Like father, like son. Ilich rebelled against the rules, preferring to spend his time chasing girls. He would often crawl back to his room drunk. His professors at the university, some of them children of Spanish Civil War veterans who had sought refuge in Moscow, were unimpressed by his academic performance. 'His name alone, Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, was so strange that people were curious about him,' relates Kirill Privalov, a journalist on the newspaper Druzhba (Friendship) which was printed at the small university press, and an acquaintance of Ilich. The Venezuelan's escapades, wildly excessive by the standards of the university, only fanned people's interest. 'llich was not at all the typical student sent by his country's Communist Party, nothing to do with the good little soldier of Mao who laboured in the fields every summer. He was a handsome young man although his cheeks looked swollen, and he was a great bon viveur. Flush with cash sent by his parents, Ilich could afford to spend lavishly on whisky and champagne in the special stores that only accepted payment in hard currencies and which were off-limits to most people. More Russian than the Russians, the privileged student and his friends would throw over their shoulders not only empty glasses but bottles as well. The university authorities, frustrated in their attempts to impose discipline on Ilich, reasoned that his freedom of action would be drastically limited if the allowance that his father sent him were reduced. But when they asked Ramírez Navas to be less generous, the father, piqued, retorted that his son had never wanted for anything. 'The university had a sort of vice squad, and at night students were supposed either to study or sleep,' recounts Privalov. "One night the patrol entered Ilich's room and saw empty bottles of alcohol and glasses on the table, but he was apparently alone. The squad opened the cupboard door and a girl who was completely drunk fell out. She was naked and was clutching her clothes in her hands. They asked her what she was doing there and she answered: 'I feel pity for the oppressed.' She was obviously a prostitute. Another time, and with another girl, Ilich didn't bother to hide her in the cupboard. He threw her out of the window. This one was fully dressed and landed in two metres of snow a foor or two below. She got up unhurt and shouted abuse at him.

Germany exported its problem of a lack of competitiveness to other member states. Since 1999 this country has followed a tight policy of wage moderation while the rest of the euro zone maintained more or less constant wage increases of around 3 per cent per year. Thus, each year Germany tended to improve its competitive position vis-à-vis the rest of the euro zone – a trend partly explained by the fact that the power of German labour unions has declined significantly, more so than in other euro zone countries. Other countries with particularly close economic ties to Germany are forced to intensify their policies of wage moderation, inducing the leading country again to restrict wage increases. A vicious circle may result when everybody attempts to improve its competitiveness at the expense of the others. As in the case of the so-called race to the bottom in environmental policy, the final outcome is that these countries will not have improved their relative position, but will have adopted wage policies that do not correspond to the preferences of their citizens. At the same time, the distance between the leading group and the other member states keeps growing.

I went to this party for Francis Wheen’s book [on Marx]. I went and sat on a chair—at these places I can’t stand up and so I sat there and a woman came up to me—I gather from the Telegraph. It was just the day before Princess Margaret had died ... The woman said something like, “What do you think about [Princess Margaret’s death] and I said, “I don’t give a bugger about such things. I’m not giving any interview to you and she printed it. I should have been more careful. But there’s some truth in that. The bloody Sunday Times reprinted it. But Jill was very shocked by Princess Margaret—when we went down to Windsor for a weekend when they had a do [when Callaghan’s government fell]. Jack Jones was there and Princess Margaret came out and said, “Who is Jack Jones?” He was the most prominent labour union leader in the country. She didn’t say, “Can you tell me who is Jack Jones?” Dreadful, you see. But I shouldn’t have said that.

Why do the Fascists want violence?” Ethel asked rhetorically. “Those out there in Hills Road may be mere hooligans, but someone is directing them, and their tactics have a purpose. When there is fighting in the streets, they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are needed to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include banning democratic political parties such as Labour, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial—people such as us, peaceful men and women whose only crime is to disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, unlikely, something that could never happen? Well, they used exactly those tactics in Germany—and it worked.

The purchaser therefore calculated not upon the value of the labour of his slave only, but, if a female, he regarded her as "the fruitful mother of an hundred more:" and many of these unfortunate people have there been in this state, whose descendants even in the compass of two or three generations have gone near to realize the calculation.—The great increase of slavery in the southern, in proportion to the northern states in the union, is therefore not attributable, solely, to the effect of sentiment, but to natural causes; as well as those considerations of profit, which

People talk of "class selfishness". Well, I know something of history, and I never heard of any tyrant, aristocrat, capitalist, slave-holder, buccaneer, middle-class shopkeeper - so absolutely and exclusively governed by selfishness as Trades Union "labour".

The Union, now being in alliance with the ship-owners, could not very well see eye to eye with the average wants and desires of boys. The boys remained boys all their lives and for ever. They accepted a black mark upon the brow, their eyes became black too, their hands, rather than those of children, which many of them were, resembled those of farm labourers.

The new political integration might well have doomed Scotland to the status of an English economic satellite: a supplier of foods, raw materials and cheap labour for the more sophisticated southern economy but with little possibility of achieving manufacturing growth and diversification in her own right...Union could well have been the political prelude to 'the development of underdevelopment' rather than the catalyst for a new age or progress and prosperity.

This table only counts physical health effects due to disruptions that took place in the Illusion of Control phase. It considers both short-run and long-run effects. Each of the claimed effects is based on a published study about that effect. First on the list is the disruption to vaccination programs for measles, diphtheria, cholera, and polio, which were either cancelled or reduced in scope in some 70 countries. That disruption was caused by travel restrictions. Western experts could not travel, and within many poor countries travel and general activity were also halted in the early days of the Illusion of Control phase. This depressive effect on vaccination programs for the poor is expected to lead to large loss of life in the coming years. The poor countries paying this cost are most countries in Africa, the poorer nations in Asia, such as India, Indonesia and Myanmar, and the poorer countries in Latin America. The second listed effect in the table relates to schooling. An estimated 90% of the world’s children have had their schooling disrupted, often for months, which reduces their lifetime opportunities and social development through numerous direct and indirect pathways. The UN children’s organisation, UNICEF, has released several reports on just how bad the consequences of this will be in the coming decades.116 The third element in Joffe’s table refers to reports of economic and social primitivisation in poor countries. Primitivisation, also seen after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, is just what it sounds like: a regression away from specialisation, trade and economic advancement through markets to more isolated and ‘primitive’ choices, including attempted economic self-sufficiency and higher fertility. Due to diminished labour market prospects, curtailed educational activities and decreased access to reproductive health services, populations in the Illusion of Control phase began reverting to having more children precisely in those countries where there is already huge pressure on resources. The fourth and fifth elements listed in the table reflect the biggest disaster of this period, namely the increase in extreme poverty and expected famines in poor countries. Over the 20 years leading up to 2020, gradual improvements in economic conditions around the world had significantly eased poverty and famines. Now, international organisations are signalling rapid deterioration in both. The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) now expects the world to have approximately an additional 100 million extremely poor people facing starvation as a result of Covid policies. That will translate into civil wars, waves of refugees and huge loss of life. The last two items in Joffe’s table relate to the effect of lower perinatal and infant care and impoverishment. Millions of preventable deaths are now expected due to infections and weakness in new mothers and young infants, and neglect of other health problems like malaria and tuberculosis that affect people in all walks of life. The whole of the poor world has suffered fewer than one million deaths from Covid. The price to be paid in human losses in these countries through hunger and health neglect caused by lockdowns and other restrictions is much, much larger. All in the name of stopping Covid.

The second essay was in response to a letter from a student on how to overcome caste and communal distinctions. ‘I do not believe in caste in the modern sense,’ remarked Gandhi. ‘It is an excrescence and a handicap on progress. Nor do I believe in inequalities between human beings... Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. Thus caste, in so far it connotes distinctions in status, is an evil.’ That said, Gandhi continued to believe in varna in sofar as it defined and marked ‘four universal occupations—imparting knowledge, defending the defenceless, carrying on agriculture and commerce and performing service through physical labour. These occupations are common to all mankind, but Hinduism, having recognized them as the law of our being, has made use of it inregulating social relations and conduct.’ This system, believed Gandhi, had been corrupted over the years, resulting in ‘unnecessary and harmful restrictions’ on inter-dining and intermarriage. But as Gandhi understood it, the ‘law of varna has nothing to do with these restrictions. People of different varnas may intermarry and interdine.... [A] Brahmin who marries a Sudra girl or vice versa commits no offence against the law of varna.’ This was Gandhi’s first statement of support for inter-caste marriages, a considerable advance on his earlier position. However, he wasn’t prepared to go so far as to prescribe marriage between a Hindu and a Muslim. He saw ‘no moral objection to such unions’; yet, in the present atmosphere, he did not believe that ‘these unions can bring peace. They may follow peace. I see nothing but disaster following any attempt to advocate Hindu–Muslim unions so long as the relations between the two remain strained. That such unions may be happy in exceptional circumstances can be no reason for their general advocacy'.

IRCC Updates Guidance on Intra-Company Transferees Amid Canadian Immigration Changes: ESSE India Insights On October 3, Immigration, Citizenship, and Refugees Canada (IRCC) introduced updated guidelines concerning Intra-Company Transferees (ICTs) under Canada's International Mobility Program. These updates are especially relevant for foreign nationals looking to transfer within multinational corporations to Canadian branches, as they clarify the criteria for eligibility and the assessment of specialized knowledge. For individuals pursuing, including those engaging in work programs like the Global Talent Stream Canada, these changes have significant implications. These updates align with IRCC’s broader objective to decrease the proportion of temporary residents in Canada over the next three years. This is particularly important for those seeking assistance from Canada immigration consultants, especially those based in India, who are providing services for Canada PR consultancy. Key Changes to the Intra-Company Transferee Program The IRCC has refined the ICT program under section R205(a) of Canadian Interests – Significant Benefit. Transfers must now originate from an established foreign enterprise of a multinational corporation (MNC). The updates also clarify the definition of “specialized knowledge,” which is crucial for foreign workers applying for such roles. Furthermore, all ICT instructions have been consolidated onto a single page, streamlining the process for applicants and immigration consultants alike. These changes don’t just affect ICT applicants but also extend to broader implications for those navigating the Canada PR process, including individuals using Canada immigration consultants in India or from other locations. Those applying through programs such as bcpnp, provincial nomination, or even looking to work and study in Canada for free should take these updates into consideration. Free Trade Agreements and the International Mobility Program The updates also encompass free trade agreements related to ICTs, including the Canada–United States–Mexico Agreement, Canada–Korea Free Trade Agreement, and Canada–European Union: Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement. These agreements simplify the Canada PR procedure for skilled workers, often allowing them to bypass the requirement for a Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA), which can be time-consuming. This simplification is beneficial for businesses and foreign nationals navigating the Canadian immigration system. For those considering PR in Australia or Germany through the Global Talent Stream Australia or Global Talent Stream Germany, understanding the differences in immigration policies between countries is vital. As Canada refines its ICT program, both Australia PR and Germany PR processes have their own unique requirements, which can be managed with the help of Australia immigration consultants or Germany immigration consultants. Impacts on Temporary Resident Programs and the Canadian Labour Market In conjunction with the ICT updates, Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP), which involves LMIA-based work permits, is undergoing significant reforms. IRCC’s new measures aim to reduce temporary residents in Canada from 6.5% to 5% of the total population by 2026. These changes will be especially relevant for foreign nationals seeking permanent residency in Canada and for those applying for Canada Visa Consultancy Services, such as spouse visa consultants or tourist visa ETA applications. Long-Term Outlook for Canadian Immigration Looking ahead, IRCC’s reforms signify a strategic shift in Canada’s immigration framework. Key programs such as the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP), study permits, and post-graduation work permits (PGWPs) will be affected by these changes. For immigrants relying on Canada immigration consultants, staying informed about these updates is essential for making well-informed decisions.

The Labour Party was unable to impose industrial order because its paymasters in the industrial unions preferred nineteenth-century style confrontations on the shop floor—which they stood a good chance of winning—to negotiated contracts signed in Downing Street that would bind their hands for years ahead.

And now that mulch of dead imaginings beneath the feet of Temperance ladies, union-affiliated Vaudevillians and maimed men home from Europe has contaminated the groundwater of the upstart country's nightmares. Immigrants in their illimitable difference come to seem a separate species, taciturn and fish-eyed as though risen from the ocean waves that bore them in their transport, monstrous in their self-contained communities with bitter scents and indecipherable ululations, names, unsettlingly unpronounceable ensconced at isolated farms where beaten track is naught save idle rumour stagnant families nurse grievance, dreadful secrets and deformity in solitude; pools of declined humanity entirely unconnected to society by any tributary where ancestral prejudice or misconception may become the plaint of generations. Fabled and forbidden works of Arab alchemy are handed down across years cruel and volatile, trafficked between austere and colonial homes by charitable fellowships with ancient affectations or conveyed by fevered sea-captains, fugitive Huguenots or elderly hysterics formally accused of witchcraft. Young America, a sapling power grown suddenly so tall upon its diet of nickelodeons and motorcars, has sunk unwitting roots into an underworld of grotesque notions and archaic creeds, their feaful pull discernible below the weed-cracked sidewalk. Buried and forgotten, ominous philosophies await their day with hideous patience. Well! I think that's pretty darned good for a first attempt. A little over-wrought, perhaps, and I'm not sure about the style - I can't decide if its too modern of it's too old-fashioned, but perhaps that's a good sign. Of course, I guess I'll have to introduce a plot and characters at some point, but I'll wrestle with that minor nuisance when I get to it. Perhaps I could contrive to have some hobo, maybe literally a hoe-boy or travelling itinerant farm labourer who's wandering from place to place around New England in the search for work; somebody who might reasonably become involved with all the various characters I'm hoping to investigate. Being a labourer, while it would lend a feasibility to any action or exertion that I wanted in the story, wouldn't mean that my protagonist was lacking in intelligence or education: this is often economically a far from certain country for a lot of people, and there's plenty of smart fellows - maybe even an aspiring writer like myself - who've found themselves leaving their homes and families to mooch around from farm to farm in hope of some hay-baling or fruit-picking that's unlikely to materialise. Perhaps a character like that, a rugged man who is sufficiently well read to justifiably allow me a few literary flourishes (and I can't help thinking that I'll probably end up casting some imagined variant of Tom Malone) would be the kind of of sympathetic hero and the kind of voice I'm looking for. Meanwhile I yawned a moment or two back, and while I'm not yet quite exhausted to the point where I can guarantee a deep and dreamless sleep, perhaps another six or seven vague ideas for stories might just do the soporific job.

Every worker deserves a good wage.

the Communists undertook a spirited defence of the small and medium proprietor and tenant farmer against the collectivizing drive of the rural wage-workers, against the policy of the labour unions prohibiting the farmer from holding more land than he could cultivate with his own hands, and against the practices of revolutionary committees, which requisitioned harvests, interfered with private trade, and collected rents from tenant farmers.

leading members could plan concerted drives to increase prices by threatening to withdraw their labour. Such ‘combinations’ – the early form of trade unions – were anathema to the authorities. Trade unions were not decriminalized until 1867.

no one believed more strongly than she that knowledge is only for those who have the will to labour earnestly for it; it cannot be freely given by anyone.

Atlas Shrugged also brought into focus the many inefficiencies of the unionized labour system. I had a union job on the pipeline—which was exactly why I had so much time to read. But there were times in Alaska when I saw a simple task being performed by three people because the union required one guy to drive a machine, a different guy to flip a switch, and a third guy to make sure the machine didn’t run out of gas.

In the late 1970s, growth in Western economies began to slow down and returns on capital began to decline. Governments came under pressure to do something about it – to create a ‘fix’ for capital. So they attacked unions and gutted labour laws in order to drive the cost of wages down, and they privatised public assets that had previously been off limits to capital – mines, railways, energy, water, healthcare, telecommunications and so on – creating lucrative opportunities for private investors.

When we arrived in government, Labour party members both inside and outside the trade union movement were as ecstatic as everyone else. We could have captured and built on that feeling much more if the style had been more inclusive from the beginning. Being seen to do more to listen would have made us stronger, and helped us to move forward.

they can claim that public order has broken down, and drastic measures are needed to restore the rule of law. Those emergency measures will include banning democratic political parties such as Labour, prohibiting trade union action, and jailing people without trial—people such as us, peaceful men and women whose only crime is to disagree with the government. Does this sound fantastic to you, unlikely, something that could never happen? Well, they used exactly those tactics in Germany—and it worked.