Looking forward to 2010

Best moment of 2009? Not often so easy to identify , politically at least,
but it has to be Monday 22 June and the hundreds of contract workers walking off the
Stanlow site in solidarity with the workers sacked at Lindsay. See the June posting on this blog.



There have been other good moments, not least the freezing cold
morning, 18 December, on the UNITE picket line at Fujitsu with a good
number of pickets and supporters in excellent spirits, albeit a little
soft on the picket line.

Both are good omens for 2010. Add to this the victory of the Leeds
refuse workers. And the strong start to the jobs dispute at Leeds Uni.

On the down side has to be the failure to confront the judges in the
BA cabin crew dispute. Perhaps that will go right, second time around,
in the new year.

I anticipate something of a 'phoney war' from now to May and all hell
breaking loose afterwards but I could be wrong. Quite a lot will
depend on what happens at BA and perhaps at Leeds Uni.

There are bound to be comparisons with 1979 and Thatcher's victory.
The situation, though, could hardly be more different. Then Thatcher
was crusading in favour of the free market and deregulation, against
trade unions and had a good deal of popular support. Today, though
government and business still practise Thatcherism - renamed
neo-liberalism - and have no alternative to it, these ideas are in
crisis. The world has seen its biggest ever financial crash which
flowed from the ever more unrestrained practice of Thatcherism and
remains mired in economic crisis. The next government may try to
follow Thatcher's example and implement swingeing cuts - the figures
indicate they should be much tougher than they were in 79 and the
early 80s - but the reasoning 'the need to balance the budget' will
convince few.

The question will be how do those attacked respond? The ballot
results at Fujitsu and BA show that where the work is done properly,
the response is overwhelming even on a postal ballot. The lesson of
the Thatcher yars is of lions led by donkeys. In every major dispute
the leadership of our side failed. Thatcher understood that if she
picked her moment, avoiding going into battle too early I the Ridley
Plan - and, crucially, was willing to raise the stakes without limit,
then at some point the leadership of the other side would bottle it.
There was nothing novel in this. Lloyd George did this in 1919 as
described by George Smillie and Stanley Baldwin as well on the General
Strike of 1926.

The same is true today. The obvious differences are that there are 7
million trade unionists as against 12 million then and there were
fresh memories of significant victories. Today the long shadow of the
defeat of the miners has receded. The challenge in 2010 is whether a
new generation can get its act together hard enough and fast enough.
Gramsci's watchword 'Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will'
seems to fit these times.

Ghazal concert in Faisalabad

In the Arts Council building and its huge and mostly empty Nusrat Fateli Khan auditorium, a ghazal concert with voice, tabla (drums), harmonium. My guide in this is the 19 year old Dupree - his nickname, inspired by Owen Wilson whom he resembles a little. Dupree isn’t working or studying but describes himself, without a trace of hesitation, as a playboy.

I succeed in avoiding being a guest of honour. I am, nevertheless,introduced as a socialist and trade unionist and asked to shake hands with a couple of vice chancellors. The singer is a woman, sharp faced and looking strict, gorgeously dressed. She sings seated cross legged on an embroidered cushion. Many of her songs are love songs by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, poet, communist and trade unionist. The audience behaves as in eighteenth century Italian opera houses. Coming and going all the time, chatting with each other. They applaud their favorite ghazals enthusiastically and send request slips to the singer. Then the lights go up, the music stops and the artists pack up and leave. No encores, no special applause.

After the concert, Dupree drives me, the poet Anjum and Tahir to the very centre of Faisalabad where there is a Victorian clock tower surrounded by markets. There is a group of sleeping weavers who have organised a protest over the yarn shortage. We eat in the street, rice and spicy dall. Someone asks me if India or Pakistan is better. I reply they are both good and they should be united. ‘A good answer’ says a local businessman sitting next to me.

Speaking at LQM meeting

We drive out of the city for a couple of miles into the setting sun to the industrial suburb of Sudhar where there is a crisis because the weavers can’t get yarn as it is all being exported. The union has called a meeting about it and I’ve been asked to say a few words.

Approaching the centre along a narrow road crowded with traffic, vendors, cows and goats till we get to the meeting organised in the street. A dozen police are there to protect us. Or so I’ve been told. We get out of our minibus and walk towards the meeting, around four hundred, all men. Suddenly I’m garlanded with roses and hoisted up and carried to the platform amid cheers. The speeches are all very declaratory and I struggle to match the style. So I keep it short. And not much later, for reasons of security, we set off back into town.

A rarity in Faisalabad

Photos: Outside the National hotel - see below


There is a real problem being such a rarity, that is, a white person in Faisalabad. At breakfast with my colleague Tariq, as we discuss Obama’s insistence he won’t rule out using drones on targets in Quetta, capital of Balochistan (which is sort of equivalent to saying he might target IRA safe houses in Belfast) not only did someone in the restaurant come over from another table and ask if he could comment on what we were saying but another man came over to comment on what we had been saying at breakfast yesterday!

As we get to the hotel where our course is, Tariq goes to an ATM in front of a bank. I stand by the road, taking photos of the street life. In less than two minutes one of the managers is out asking me who I was and what I’m doing, soon joined by two colleagues. A mixture of curiosity and paranoia. Much of this is fuelled by the press which sees spies everywhere.

National Student Federation /IS Pak meeting, Faisalabad

At seven I’m driven to the National Student Federation / IS Pak meeting organised by Ali Sajjad, Twenty five of us there, three women. Mostly young and serious. I’ve been asked to talk about imperialism and working class revolution. As we start load shedding again but candlelight is fine. The discussion is sharp and lively. From Che Guevara to permanent revolution to state capitalism to the nature of socialist transition to women’s liberation which I raise after it is suggested that the women comrades make the tea. I spend the tea break talking to the women. Someone else has made the tea.

Some one raises post modernism which we reasonably quickly agree is rubbish. More importantly, someone argues that workers can't grasp the essentials of Marxism. It isn't too hard to challenge this but there is a need for these students to talk to workers.

It’s gone ten before we finish. Arif, an older worker, member of the reformist National Workers Party, takes me home on the back of his motorbike. A coldish 15 minutes. Arif lends me his scarf to wrap around my face, just to be on the safe side.

Hum Khayal meeting

Photo: Nabila and Um-e-Maria

Late afternoon I’m invited to a meeting of Hum Khayal - ‘We think together’ in Urdu. I’m welcomed by Rana Wajid, founder director of Hum Khayal. It’s a group of writers, musicians and thesps. Also a religious scholar, a professor of law, a lawyer, a business man. Twenty of us sit squashed round the walls of a small room. Nabila, Shakila and Um-e-Maria are three of the four women. There is a discussion about social activism with a lot of input by Zulfiqar Shah. At the end, a couple of short, rhythmic poems, greeted with ‘Wah’.

LQM course in Faisalabad

Winter has arrived here. Suddenly it’s cold and grey. It’s chilly in the rickshaw as we travel across town to the National Hotel, vast, empty concrete affair where an impressive group of over two dozen Labour Qaumi Movement activists slowly appear.

The LQM is a general union with thousands of members; mainly power loom workers here in Faisalabad, perhaps the most successful example of organising workers in recent years in Pakistan. Five women, two of whom were on yesterday’s course. The students give sharp clear reports on their history of fighting on wages, to get health care, to protest the price of flour, to support the lawyers’ movement and much else.
Our room overlooks a main road with endless horns of everything kind, blaring.

We have just started when the room is plunged into near darkness. Load shedding, that is, power cuts. I appear to be the only person who is upset. The students, by contrast, carry on introducing each other unruffled. I have to laugh or I would cry when after twenty minutes - I was promised five- the emergency generator starts up and as the lights come on, the noise of the generator makes it near impossible for anyone to hear. Again, no one is fazed by this except me. Luckily within half an hour the power returns.

An evening at Tahir's house

Tariq takes me by rickshaw to Tahir’s house in a working class part of the city. Here we walk the last hundred yards down a narrow, ill-lit street past two large sheep, bikes and motorcycles. I’m welcomed into a large space with a three piece suite and low table, no carpet, in the front part of the house, all for coolness in summer, though now it is beginning to be cold.

I’m introduced to the family, three generations, Tahir’s 6 month old daughter, Toula-iman, which means ‘messenger of God’, his sister course today and two other women from today’s course, Shakila and Nabila. All very bright sparks. They see themselves as being an activist household. The grandmother has been campaigning on getting school places and getting the streets cleaned - not least because of the lack of proper sanitation. Soup is followed later by biriyani and aloo methi where methi is similar to spinach. Maria who is still a teenager is thinking of becoming a beautician. Nabila works as a receptionist at an insurance company. Just 8000 rupees a month - £60 - half of which goes on rickshaws because the transport situation for women is so bad. This was one of the problems raised on the course. When I suggest that anyone harassing a woman on a bus should be reported to the driver or conductor and thrown off the bus, the class laughs. The drivers and conductors are the worst offenders.

Home based worker course, Faisalabad

Photos: 1. Nabila writing a report 2. Anjum reciting a poem 3. group work

It’s hard to do justice to the thirty home based workers, all women, stitchers, glove makers, packers, shuttle winders together with local activists who make up today’s course for home based workers. . Most of them come in a large group an hour after the official start time, one sits down wearing a veil but takes it off a little later.

It’s a one day course and it looks very difficult to get enough done in the time we have but we set off at a good pace following the same programme as in Lahore and with the usual hesitancy getting used to being active in class it goes according to plan. Problems are presented and then investigated. Plans made to tackle them, a role play of recruiting people to join and we just manage to do a short session on reasons women should be active. The language barrier is a problem for me. I can’t follow the detail of what is said. But the lively body language is clear enough. Right at the end, Anjum, a well known local poet, one of a small group of actors and writers, recites one of his poems, about how people treat each other. Applause here is expressed saying “Wah”.

The only place that belongs to a woman in Pakistan is her own grave

Saturday. Things take off nicely with people making posters and role playing recruiting new members and finally in ‘Involving women’ there are a whole number of really lively responses to me and Tariq role playing the male chauvinists. A woman, Tafira, makes an impressive speech pointing out that women don’t even have rights in their own home. ‘The only place that belongs to a woman in Pakistan is her own grave’

Activists course in Lahore

Photos: 1)Near the hotel, a labourlawyer's office 2) three lady health workers on the course 3) a poster

A mostly new and inexperienced group of activists, a real mix. A handful of trade unionists, one woman from a bonded labour organisation, two lady health workers, half a dozen from labour rights centres, a couple of activists working with peasants and a couple of students. A good half of them are women. Some of them arrive wearing the abaya with veil but they take it off and I can’t tell who does and who doesn’t once the course gets going.

The initial nervousness slowly disappears and by this afternoon things are going well. Not helped though by the maulvi from a nearby mosque giving his Friday sermon at full volume through his speakers. We all try our best to ignore him. Nevertheless, almost all the men disappear a little later to go for Friday prayers.

The Mall in Lahore, perhaps the finest street in the world,

Photos: Lahore High Court, Zam Zam, Lahore Museum

Sun shining, not yet warm, the day starts with a short walk down the Mall, grand by any standard, one of the world’s finest roads . First the High Court, then the GPO and finally the Lahore Museum, all very large brick buildings surrounded with green with much in between. The street sellers are setting up their stands selling tea or nuts or, near the GPO, pens and stationery. In the middle of the road, opposite the museum, is the big brass cannon, known as Zam Zam. This is the spot where Kipling chooses to start ‘Kim’, where the young boy meets the guru. I ask a traffic cop to take my photo. On my way back, a man asks me if I like Pakistan. When I answer yes, he beams and tells me I have taken Islamic values to my heart. A good example, I think, of Muslim who is profoundly religious but whose Islam is completely unrecognised by those who go on about Islamic extremism.

A note on social security in Pakistan

At lunch Sharafat Ali, head of advocacy at PILER and Mir Mouledad, assistant librarian, explain the national lottery which awards some tens of thousands of rupees (up to a thousand pounds sterling) to 750 people a month to enable a fresh start in life. I object to the randomness of this. It turns out it is connected to a much bigger project – one of its authors is Kaiser Bengali, a close collaborator with PILER - which distributes smaller sums via local committees. Originally it was planned to help a million families. It’s now 3.2 million and this is set to double. Mouledad is on one of the local committees distributing the funds which come out of indirect taxes. He’s also on the local Zakat committee distributing the 2.5% which is annually levied on bank accounts.

Sharafat tells me about the Ismaili sect, which has built up its wealth through a 10% tithe that is used for the community including its health, welfare and, not least, security, most important given the level of hostility and violence towards non orthodox sects here.

The suspension of labour inspections in Peshawar

Today’s papers have an article on the suspension of labour inspections in Peshawar, NWFP capital. The minister has decided quote “the shopkeepers and local business men need relief in the prevailing uncertain circumstances. Inspector[s] violating this instruction would be liable to suspension from service”. The inspectors check minimum wage and weekly holidays as well as health and safety. Labour inspections were suspended in the Punjab, Pakistan’s biggest province some time ago. Nothing I’ve read has made me as angry as this. How blinded by narrow class interest does a minister have to be to do this?

An evening of solidarity with the haris

An evening of solidarity with the haris, enslaved by permanent debt to the landowners, generation after generation. It is the “Annual Peasant Conference” in Hyderabad. 400 seats, all full, “notables” in the front row, men on one side, and women on the other, many of them haris. All colourful, some obviously with money, some obviously not. Music with drums and tabla. Then an impressionist, a real performer - he does skits and sound effects and, most realistically, a storm. Together with colleagues from PILER and the Fisher folk and a bank manager, I’m welcomed by the compere.

A woman lawyer is presented with a statuette for her work defending the haris. It’s an Oscar sized cast metal woman with a clenched fist. A poem is read. More awards of statuettes. The Sindhi scarf is also awarded. A speech at top volume with references to Islam. It goes on. Then more music. A double pipe player with splendid orange pointed moustache and beard and castanet bells player join the troupe. Far too soon we get another speech from a TV director talking about landlord mafia. Applause. Now a singer, like the others an older man, with a hard, worn face joins the band only to be followed by the chief manager of the State Bank here in Hyderabad who presents a statuette. He’s an “influential” I’m told. He looks humourless.

Then without warning I’m summoned to the platform. I think it is the tradition of welcoming strangers. I’m presented with a Sindhi scarf. Cursing those colleagues who didn’t prepare me, I nevertheless resist the temptation to give the speech of a life time and confine myself to declaring solidarity with all those fighting with the haris against the landlord mafia. Now a comic act by our impressionist and then a Sindhi break dancer, not the youngest one could add.

A lawyer, recently kidnapped for 34 days, is given a statuette. Then Mian Qayyum, the Faisalabad textile workers leader, speaks at length, powerfully.

We leave with a group of young girls among them dressed in the brightest, cheapest clothes imaginable. Huge smiles on their faces as they say ‘Goodbye’ to me in English and disappear towards their buses to go home. Our minibus gets to PILER after two.

State of Pakistan and reasons to be cheerful

Despite Pakistan being in a state of chaos, fortunately, you could even say amazingly, Karachi is about as far from the epicentre of the main troubles as you can get, the least violent of all four provincial capitals, touch wood. This is despite stories such as that carried in yesterday’s papers of a shoot out between gangsters and police, real Hollywood stuff, with the police failing to catch the baddies in their hide-out. But it isn’t too difficult to avoid the gangsters’ hideouts. The main thing is that, unlike in the 1990s, the two biggest parties in Karachi have decided not to fall out with each other. They are the MQM, party of the mohajirs, the Urdu-speakers, often middle class, who migrated here after independence, mainly to take up government jobs, which they haven’t been successful in keeping in recent years, and the People’s Party, party of the Bhutto’s, with a strong base in the Sindhi population. Instead they try to divide the spoils; they have much to lose if they go back to settling their scores using guns of which there is a very large number in the city. It’s interesting that people talk of these parties with the same kind of contemptuous despair as they do in Britain. No one likes them but hardly anyone has any idea how they are to be replaced. With the exception of the MQM which operates differently, as a mafia constructing a state within a state, their corruption is beyond dispute, starting with the president, Zardari, Benazir’s husband and known as ‘Mr 10%’. It isn’t just him. Almost the entire elite have been listed as accused of one corrupt practice or another.

And then, of course, there is the Pakistan army committing unspeakable atrocities in its frontier provinces causing vast numbers of refugees and the Taliban matching these atrocities in Peshawar, Islamabad and Rawalpindi, wherever it sees the army and thinks it sees the CIA, not to mention the American drones which kill a hundred people for every targeted Taliban leader they manage to hit.
So it is important to be able to report that there is some good news. The best is probably the movement led by the lawyers earlier in the year which over two years of weekly demonstrations, often baton charged by the police, had protested, again and again, over the dismissal of the Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry by President Musharraf. His ‘crime’ was to tell the army top brass he would have them arrested if they did not produce before him - habeas corpus - people whom the secret service had made ‘disappear’. He went on to insist the privatisation of the state steel company be reversed as it amounted to little more than theft given the ridiculously low price it was sold for. When the Chief Justice drove from Lahore to Islamabad, a million people, mobilised by no one but themselves, came out to greet him. And eventually the protesters won and the Chief Justice was reinstated. So disorganised as people are here, they can show their strength.

When they begin to organise, as with this wonderful class of students from the informal sector, textile and garment workers and workers from brick kilns, typically working for £1.50 a day without permanent contracts or any kind of welfare system, you can see the potential for change. We’ve spent the last two days with them discussing the problems, planning to deal with them, role playing recruiting new members of the organisation and talking to the media and more. They can do anything.

Sexual harassment at work in Pakistan

One of the topics we covered was sexual harassment and at the end of the morning session one of the class came up with a fellow class member to tell the story of a woman in her factory who had been raped at work but because of the shame felt unable to report it. She wept a little as she told the story. In the afternoon we did an activity on involving women and she felt able to raise the story and a discussion followed. Such shocking stories are all too frequent and fit with the picture of misery painted by the collection of short stories by Pakistani women writers we have at home, ‘Neither night nor Day’, edited Rakhshanda Jalil, New Delhi 2007.

A writers' meeting

A writers' meeting in the Pakistani Medical Association, one of the tiny numbers of places available for meetings in this vast city. I arrive a little late and enter a dimly lit room with a large table and twenty people sitting round it, mostly older men. Four women, the youngest of whom is reading a love poem. This is followed by a courteous discussion. Then another woman reads short story about the fate of a married woman in a loveless marriage. Again there is a polite discussion about marriage and its compromises which reflects a depressingly backward attitude towards women. One of the comments, from a woman, about the need of the wife to accept the man’s view could have come from my mother’s generation.

The awfulness of caste prejudice in Pakistan

To illustrate the awfulness of caste prejudice, Karamat tells a story from 1972 when he was joint secretary of the union in a big textile factory. The other joint secretary was a Christian. He constantly struggles to be accepted by the Pashtun majority workforce. He also seems to have a wife he wants to divorce but can’t as he’s Catholic. He decides to convert to Islam only to find that he is told by his Pashtun colleagues they won’t accept without being circumcised. He has himself chopped and by way of celebration is carried on the shoulders of his colleagues who now welcome him. Only to find that when he says he wants to marry a Pashto girl they say ‘No, you can’t have one of our girls. You are a ‘jeura’, you are low caste ‘. So he converts back to Christianity to be in a community that accepts him as an equal.