Why is the call for a 24 hour general strike important? a reply to Brian Bamford

The mass strike - of which the general strike, called by the trade union leaders is one form - is essential for workers to develop their confidence as a class, capable of ruling society, abolishing exploitation and oppression and, eventually, abolishing class society itself.

Through the mass strike the repressive nature of the state, its police and military becomes clear and with that the need to destroy these institutions and replace them with institutions that workers control.

At the moment, workers' confidence to use the strike weapon is very low. At the same time the £81 billion of cuts announced by Osborne is a bigger attack than any of us have faced in our life times. We will not defeat this attack without mass strike action. We need to start that argument now. As Brian says it won't happen by simply issuing the call. It will need arguing in every trade union branch every stewards committee and, more importantly, it will require building confidence. Through mobilising in every way we can for protests and strikes, small, medium and large

Brian was right that the numbers on the streets on the day of the CSR, 20 October were nowhere more than the low thousands but on Saturday 23 Oct. we saw 25,000 march in Edinburgh and 15,000 march in Belfast. These are impressive figures and shows how when there is a call from the official movementan much can be done.

Of course, the picture is very uneven. In Manchester, the Right to Work organised 1,000. A very spirited demonstration and rally but we clearly have much more to do.

But who is going to do it if not us and when are we going to do it if not now?

I'm not saying Brian is wrong to point out the danger that the TUC's mobilisations will not lead towards strike action but away from it. That was the experience in the 1980s and Dave Douglass is wrong to tell you to 'keep ya gob shut'. But as the TUC has already set 27? March as the date for a national demonstration, we must be arguing now that getting hundreds of thousands to march is excelelnt but it isn't enough to stop the Tories. It shows the potential for a successful general strike and that can only happen with powerful organisation at the rank and file level.

On this, it's worth repeating that the general strike in Spain was a step forwards. For millions it showed in practice that unity in action is possible, that workers have huge power as a class and for those who hwlped occupy a bank in Barcelona is showed it's possoble to start challenging the power of the property of the bosses while those who witnessed police firings live rounds learnt a lesson in how far our rulers are willing to go to defend that property.

Myth of General Strike?

Brian’s opposition to the call from SWP members for 'a 24-hour general strike' argues that it is premature and that members are not ready for it. He wants “less political drama, demos & street theatre & more concentration on grassroots development on the shop floor & in the workplace.”

Most of us would see this as a strange ‘either-or’. Generally, grassroots activity in the workplace and public protest go together. The thousands who turned out in the rain in Birmingham, carrying over a hundred union banners and including over two hundred from Manchester, talked afterwards about going home to build the grassroots and mobilise them in support of both local campaigns like that launched by the South Manchester Law Centre and the street activity on 20 and 23 October, following the Comprehensive Spending Review. When has any serious movement from below not brought people together on the streets?

Equally strange is Brian’s quoting the New York Times on the general strike in Spain on 29 September, as an elaborate ritual manipulating workers. http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2010/10/myth-of-general-strike.html Of course, Spain’s union leaderships have been pushing conciliation and ‘social partnership’ with their equivalent of a Labour government and they have much delayed calling this strike. The significance of the strike is precisely that it has been pressure from the rank and file that has forced the union leaders to call it and it has been the activity of the rank and file that has made it a success, with 16,000 shop stewards meeting in Madrid to prepare it, local assemblies in the bigger cities, postering and leafleting everywhere. On the day, millions struck, electricity use fell to Sunday levels, many thousands picketed, police attacked pickets, in one instance with warning shots using live ammunition. Well over a million demonstrated on the afternoon of the strike, with slogans such as “Let the capitalists pay for the crisis.” Such mass action is a step forward. It strengthens workers’ confidence and weakens the government and the bosses. If we are to defeat Cameron & Co, we need action like this. A 24-hour general strike would be a huge step forward for us too. We need to start now to argue for it. If not now, then when? If not us, then who?

Some local resistance, we need more

It’s still true - and has been for quite a long time - that “There is far too little strike action in Britain.” The big question is “When will this change?”

Brendan Barber was right when on ‘Any Questions’ last night he described the situation at the moment as “a phoney war”. The battles are going to come, mainly but not exclusively, after Osborne’s ‘Comprehensive Spending Review’ on 20 October. The problem is that the TUC isn’t getting ready for the battle that Barber is telling us will come. We must give them credit for getting the propaganda out. Today’s Guardian leads with the TUC report that that the proposed Tory cuts will hit the poorest ten times harder than the richest:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/sep/10/coalition-cuts-poor-tuc

But this isn’t enough. There is a danger that the attacks will find many on our side like the proverbial rabbit in the headlights. So there is a need to be there where the action is. This week’s Socialist Worker features two excellent examples, both local, the angry 400 strong lobby against local authority cuts at Bolton Town Hall and the protest in Buile Hill Park, Salford, against the closure of Hope Maternity Unit. We need lots more of these and I’m sure we will get them but I’m not sure they will be organised on the scale and at the speed necessary. We need to get the message across that there is organised resistance so no one feels isolated and abandoned.

This is why the demo outside the Tory party conference is so important. It’s true that some are much easier to organise than others but we have to get it across that our enemies aren’t as confident as they like to portray themselves. Compared to Thatcher, they aren’t starting off against the background of the biggest global economic crisis since the 1930s, they aren’t able to portray the unions as the enemy and people no longer see privatisation as preferable to nationalisation. Rather, as in any battle, the enemy will look for weakness. It’s clear from the battles in the 1970s that those who resisted often succeeded. Those who didn’t went to the wall.

We mustn’t forget how vicious this government is. Lib Dem MP Bob Russell, the MP for Colchester, make the point, if in absurdly polite way when he tells the Today programme: "Yes, let's deal with the welfare cheats. But the notion that they are responsible for all the ills of the nation is in fact a smokescreen and it's not very ethical."

Tomorrow, Sunday’s, lobby of the TUC, calling on it to organise a national demonstration now, focuses on how the TUC is so far failing to give a lead. A brief glance at our history shows how this is no surprise. The nine months notice given by the Conservative government in summer 1925 was used by government and employers to build up coal stocks and a scabbing organisation, the Organisation for the Maintenance of Supplies. The TUC did precisely nothing. And that was a TUC with much bigger left than today’s TUC. They didn’t invite Stanley Baldwin to address them as the current general council Cameron to address the congress.

The lobby of the Lib Dem conference in Liverpool in a week’s time is a step in the right direction but when union leaderships leave it to branches to organise transport, the limitations of organising from the top down become clear.

Reflections from February: "far too little strike action in Britain at the moment"

There is far too little strike action in Britain at the moment given the pay freezes, the job losses and, above all, the anger and in the last year we have seen the return of both the all out strike - Superdrug and the Leeds bin strike - and occupations. So in taking action and doing it in such a lively and determined way, the UNITE Fujitsu workers are a beacon and they certainly shone at the Right to Work conference a week ago.

This week I've been in the WCML reading about the Automat dispute 1976/1977, and the row about the Engineers Charter pamphlet which was temporarily withdrawn at the request of the strikers because they didn't feel confident enough to support an open challenge to Mather the local right wing official. The Automat workers weren't strong enough to occupy - they tried, though not in sufficient numbers - but they had amazing tenacity, the strike lasted a year and as the mass pickets were established, the employer finally crumbled. I suspect because of pressure from other employers, unhappy that the mass pickets, in mobilising the rank and file, were creating a strength that they, the extremely class conscious EEF, could see as a real threat. Looking back on it, it looks like a Pyrrhic victory: we won but at a cost which weakened the confidence of our side and boosted that of the employers. It will be worth looking at the actions of Winston Churchill Junior, MP for Stretford, and involved in the dispute, not least because he wanted to “get JT”, as revealed in a leaked letter, JT being John Tocher. 1976 is the year that Thatcher gets elected a Tory leader and the hard right in the Tory Party, inspired by the free market idea of the Institute of Economic Affairs, is busy planning their revenge for the defeats under Heath.

I’ve also gone back to the chapter on the Manchester occupations in ‘Glorious Summer’. There is a marked contrast here with the chapters on the miners and the building workers and the dockers where the strikers won a clear victory. The attitude of the strike leaders to the rank and file is the key here. In fact, the contradictions of John Tocher’s politics seem to sum it up.

Here was a man who mobilised the rank and file to win a decisive victory at Roberts Arundel in the late 1960s. This happened under the control of his leadership in a purely industrial dispute. It did not create any tensions with the CP and its relations with left officials, the heart of their industrial strategy.

By 1972, under a Heath government with the AUEW the key union in the resistance to the IR Act, Scanlon’s leadership was seen as tactically skilful. In fact, the right remained a very powerful force in the union and the overall CP strategy of an alliance with left Labour MPs, a parliamentary road to socialism, meant that the emphasis was on the election of left officials, getting the vote out at geographical branch meetings, not on the organisation of the rank and file. Thus the election campaign of AUEW president involved having transport ready to get people to go from work to the branch to vote. In the event, Scanlon’s majority in the Manchester area was greater than his majority nationally.

It is also worth noting the mobilisation of the Birmingham engineers, under right wing leadership to Saltley in March 1972 and their absence during the fight against the EEF that followed soon after. Only Manchester and to a much smaller extent Sheffield fought.


I’ve heard that Tocher many years afterwards, said it had been our International Socialist bulletins – the Greater Manchester Engineer – that had worried him during the dispute. The chapter in Glorious Summer certainly keeps referring to them for the argument on how the dispute was progressing.

It is a complicated story at one level. Large numbers of workers on one side, ranged against a large number of employers. In the context of 1972 it was perhaps the biggest battle

The title refers to Richard III – the original quote was ‘the winter of discontent’. There is a curious reversal however in the timing. Glorious summer in the original succeeds winter. Here it precedes it. It leaves open the question ‘Why?’

Colin Barker argued with me the question was easy to answer and Adam Rose put it simply in a recent meeting -. It was he said ‘A lack of politics’. More of this anon.

Coming back to the RtW conference, and how the discussion in the pub the day before with UNITE strikers: they've certainly developed a clear understanding of the position of their officials but that isn't the same as an overall view of the relation between rank and file and bureaucracy

All history is the history of class struggle. Easy to say, harder to spell out. The struggle is ‘sometimes open, sometimes hidden’. Rather more hidden at the moment.

Building for the Right to Work protest on 22 June

Saturday afternoon in Market Street, working for half an hour or so on the RtW stall with Andy and Tom. It’s quite hard work to engage with people - perhaps something to do with football - but we do get a response. Sometimes it’s about the big picture as with the woman doing market research. She is angry; in particular as the little guys are being asked to pay as the fat cats get fatter. Sometimes it is people worried about what is going to happen to the services they are delivering. A volunteer in a hospital trust speaking at length about excessive dependence on volunteers. And then going on to talk about PFI and the financial burden it imposes. And there is a civil servant who when I said 'Ah! Your union is backing protests on the 22nd’ replied 'Well, no, I’m in the FDA (First Division Association, organising the top 18,000 civil servants) but I will be with you in spirit’

The Emergency Budget won't be all the cuts; there'll be more in the comprehensive spending review in the autumn. But they will be savage (as promised by Clegg) so the friendly image being cultivated by the government will be damaged. Cameron's offer of more dosh to soldiers on active service and limiting of the war aims to 'national security' (**) may help him at home for the moment but will the image last beyond Tuesday 22 June?

** Cameron, of course, does nothing to clarify, how this is going to be achieved, nothing about how NATO can avoid defeat in Afghanistan.

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.