STATEMENT BY NIC-ICTU ON KILLINGS IN SOUTH AFRICA August 22, 2012
Posted by WorldbyStorm in The Left.trackback
Tuesday 21 August 2012
We join here today to commemorate 34 workers killed last week at the Lonmin platinum mine in Marikana, South Africa.
We are not here to judge who is more at fault for these deaths.
However, we have a duty to stand with the families and workmates and comrades of the striking miners and unite with them in this simple statement.
No worker should be intimidated, threatened or beaten at work.
All workers have the right to strike.
No worker should ever die defending the right to go on strike.
No worker should ever face death or injury during a strike.
That includes police officers, who should not face death while policing strikes.
Workers only ever advance when they go forward with a strong, single voice.
Only then, can they face down the intransigence of their employers.
The mine owners, Lonmin, were once called Lonrho –the London & Rhodesian Mining Company famously described by Tory Prime Minister Ted Heath as “the unpleasant and unacceptable face of capitalism.”
Now, they threaten their mourning workers that they will be sacked if they do not return to work immediately.
This is what happens when workers are split. The most militant voices do not prevail. Instead the most reactionary win.
This is as true in Northern Ireland as it is in South Africa
The unacceptable face of capitalism becomes the undisputed champion when workers fight each other. That is the tragic lesson from Marikana.
All we can do now is extend our sorrow and solidarity to our comrades in the South African trade union movement.
We stood with them in the past and they have stood with us in return.
We have many friends and comrades there, and we think of them and their grief now, with this brief silence…
“This is what happens when workers are split. The most militant voices do not prevail. Instead the most reactionary win.”
given that the only stance to take is that you’re either for the strikers or you’re for the bosses I take it then that the NIC-ICTU is also stalinist scum in the eyes of eamonncork and mark p, no?
The statement does make an interesting point, though:
“This is as true in Northern Ireland as it is in South Africa”
which is what I was saying during the week – the social and cultural tensions which act against class consciousness – and got labelled a troll for my efforts.
The tensions at play in South Africa cannot be boiled down to those who are scum and those who are not.
Must be only only us trolls and scum that see it that way, though.
You created two fake names, personally attacked everyone who disagreed with your ludicrous position and then, in the most pathetic display I’ve ever witnessed, started accusing commenters of threatening you when you found yourself backed into a corner.
I’m not saying that makes you a troll though.
Actually yeah, that does make you a troll.
ND I didn’t call you either ‘scum’ or a ‘troll,’ and I wouldn’t regard you as either. I’m not sure anyone used those terms in relation to you.
I did feel that if your arguments weren’t an attempt to justify the murders they at the very least appeared to show a sneaking regard for the actions of the police. Perhaps I was wrong. However, your ire seemed to be disproportionately aimed at those who disagreed with the Daily Worker line as opposed to those who shot the strikers.
I find it mind boggling that you’d reckon this motion is some kind of clinching argument in favour of your position on the murders. It’s the ICTU for God’s sake, the organisation headed by that arch radical David Begg, most recently seen sitting ingloriously on the fence during the austerity referendum. Even if they do agree with your position, something which requires a certain amount of creative reading, that proves absolutely nothing.
There’s actually something quite sickening about the way this statement invokes the Lonrho connection while not mentioning the police who fired the shots at all except in terms of the danger they faced on the picket line. It’s a piece of classic ICTU bluster to make a brave stand against the behaviour of Tiny Rowland in the sixties. In fact there seems to be more solicitude for the police than the strikers. If this is the best they can do, the ICTU should have just left it. And it’s a new one on me that policemen deployed to suppress a strike are equal in the eyes of the trade union movement to the workers who they are attacking. I can see perfectly well why you think this statement justifies the murders.
ND, You’re perfectly free to disagree with me and anyone else who takes the opposite view to the one you hold. But there’s no point getting all self-pitying, ‘they called me scum and troll and spat upon my Stalinist greatcoat,’ just because someone disagrees with you. I still think you’re wrong just as you still think I am. And it will be a cold day in Hell before I think the murder of 34 strikers is justifiable.
Well said, Eamonn.
An actual ICTU statement about something happening somewhere in the world outside of their little corporatist bubble of networkers!!! That is the amazing thing as far as I am concerned.
ICTU, dominated by its three pillars – SIPTU, IMPACT & the INTO has effectively walked off the stage. It has manouvered itself into irrelevance. It neither barks nor bites.
As for the details of the statement, I agree fully with eamoncork.
From an Irish point view that line about militancy only leading to the triumph of reaction reeks of the nonsensical suggestion made by Jack O’Connor a while back that Irish trade unions would have to continue along the path of extreme caution for fear of provoking a backlash by a hidden force of right wing Poujadiste bogeymen who are both (A) very sinister and (B) completely non-existent.
Even when they’re ostensibly talking about somewhere else, they’re talking about themselves.
Interesting report from members of the Democratic Socialist Movement in Rustenberg (CWI in South Africa) -
Apparently -
1. workers were not promised a 300% pay increase by the AMCU
2. Police and company goons started the violence
3. workers were not ‘annointed’ by medicine men prior to the massacre.
4. Workers have been tortured by the police since the massacre
5. Some workers have been forced back to work by the police
6. The NUM is now held in contempt by all workers at Lonmin
7. The strike has now spread to other platinum mines in the Rustenberg region
8. The mine workers have established workers committees outside the structures of the NUM and AMCU to organise the strike action and the response of the miners.
http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5901