Shutting down Athens Indymedia: state repression of the Greek anarchist movement

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Guest post by a Greek anarchist living in Scotland.

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Τhe last few years have been a time of global capitalist crisis, where the financial system has, after two decades of frantic over-accumulation and fake development, collapsed yet again. The neoliberal promises of continuous development reached an end and we are all facing the results of this collapse, depending on the country in which we are living. The purpose of this article is to make a brief report of the latest repressive practices of the Greek state against the anarchist movement and Greek society in general as a result of this systemic crisis of capitalism.

Crisis and state repression

One of the so-called first world countries, Greece experienced in the last 30 years, between 1974 after the fall of the junta until the Olympic games of 2004, frantic capitalist development camouflaged by the social democratic façade of its centralized state. Without wanting to analyse the means and ways it was achieved, the Greek capitalist deception was also fully promoted in the middle of the previous decade; concerned with creating a society that was based on the lower middle class, who had partial access to over-accumulated fake wealth, by being allowed to obtain the proposed consumerist lifestyle of the capitalists – the whole package of the house in the suburb, two cars, two children, access to high education etc.  The Greek society being hypnotized and ‘stoned’ by this capitalist lifestyle, seemed to be fully duped by its authoritarians and, as a result, social alienation became deeply established among the people. Competition, individualism and indifference were the basic means by which the elite gained leverage.  In 2005, the reality of Greek society was really disappointing, and the anarchist movement, with some hundreds of  comrades, was isolated.

athenspoliceThe collapse of this hollow financial development took from the ruling class their greatest propaganda tool which was the promise of consumerist and individualistic prosperity given in the previous years.  The first crucial point was on December of 2008, when state murderers (the police) executed the fifteen-year-old teenager, Alexandros Grigoropoulos, in cold blood in the centre of Athens.  This bullet sent shock waves through the whole oppressed society, that had already tasted in the previous three years the social war that the capitalists and the state have declared on them by the continuous cut of the social wage.

During this period the anarchist movement had for the first time the chance to approach the social base and by being at the forefront of the revolutionary actions that took place attracted a lot of disillusioned people, especially youth. Since then there has been a period of four years in which the state had shown its real cruel face by passing through an endless stream of anti-social laws, in order to fast track a neoliberal transformation by privatizing the whole public sector and creating working conditions of slavery. As a result, they have turned what was some years ago apparently a capitalist paradise to a centre of financial and social exploitation for the local and north European capitalists.

As a response to this social pauperization a many people throughout Greece  started questioning the current system in general and asking for a directly democratic and egalitarian society. A great number of groups were created organised along directly democratic lines and their actions were based in solidarity and social equality. The anarchist movement tried to support as much as possible these groups and their actions and tried to inspire as many people as possible to look critically at the previously dominant ideas of individualism and social competition in order to propagate a libertarian social attitude that could point towards a different society.

The financial surplus that would buy off the people, then, no longer existed and the state was failing to maintain control through propaganda.  So instead its mask slipped and it began using all of its violent repression methods against all rebellious social spaces. It was more than obvious that from this stage on any form of resistance would be made illegal and repressed.  The main receiver of the state’s violent repression was of course the anarchist movement, as an example of what would happen to anyone that was willing to question the established oppressive system. The incidents of the massive state repression against the anarchist movement in Greece are innumerable.

Current developments

The social war in Greece is now at its peak and the once ‘democratic’ state has stopped pretending and been transformed into a totalitarian regime that has as its only purpose to establish the regime necessary in neoliberal conditions for the local and foreign capitalist to exploit in the maximum possible level the social wealth and the people of Greece. A full analysis of the repressive violent attacks of the state to the movement would probably need a lot of pages starting from the new established legislation that label terrorist any form of political action that the authoritarians don’t like – even a political document that questions the capitalist structures can with the new legislation be considered as act of terrorism - to the countless attacks on squats and protests that have led to the imprisonment of hundreds comrades. Such an organised and massive attack towards a social movement hasn’t been seen before in a ‘democratic’ state, let us mention that only in the last few months the state has attacked more than ten anarchist squats and dozens of comrades have been imprisoned.

indymedia1The culmination of the state’s organized attacks have been the shutdown of the three biggest counter information media of the anarchist movement, Athens Indymedia, Radio 98FM and Radio Entasi. These actions are the most illustrative example of the social war that is raging and because of that an extensive analysis of these actions should be made in order to reveal all the means and ways that the authoritarians are using through the state in order to smash any form of reaction.

Both the server of Athens Indymedia and the antennas of the radio stations were hosted at the National Technical University in Athens (NTUA).   In previous years there have been attempts to sabotage them, by some right wing MP that were constantly raising questions in parliament about the location of the server and of the antennas and also by the university itself.  For whole weekends the electricity was shut down inside across the university or even before some big protests so that there could be no effective coordination of the people through the use of Athens Indymedia and the radio stations. Until now, however, all these attempts were unsuccessful because of the asylum that existed in universities and Greek universities are autonomous institutions where the state cannot directly implement its policies.

Both the autonomy and asylum offered by the universities, however, are now in the process of being shut down, as the state repressive and neoliberal agenda wants to create universities in the standards of other capitalist economies where the universities are just an industry of financial research and nothing more. A new law about the universities was voted by the government last year that restricts the public and liberated form of the universities and pushes them towards the process of privatization. Nonetheless, because the reaction of the university students and teachers was on a massive scale and quite radical the current law so far has only been voted in the parliament and is not fully implemented (in the sense that,  for example, the asylum may not exist anymore but still in most of the cases the police are not allowed to enter the universities).

Under these very fragile and explosive social conditions the state was determined to implement its repression of the movement and shut down the alternative media.  They want to show that from now on there won’t be any free space of expression left, except from the main authoritarian propaganda of the mass media.  On the other hand, the state realized the explosive nature of the situation and didn’t want to escalate things either.  Universities are a very delicate social issue in Greece and so here at least it wants to present itself as democratic.  This goes back to 1973 when the last Greek junta had suppressed a huge university occupation with the use of the army and from then on, the universities became a symbol of resistance in society and any direct repressive action against them will be directly considered as very undemocratic. Because of that they had to use all of their legal mechanisms that would present their actions as legal and ethical as possible and so it would not take it upon themselves to actually shut down the server and the antennas.

A whole legal show has been concocted, in which all the needed ridiculous charges against the radio stations and Athens Indymedia were established. The Hellenic Telecommunications and Post Commission (E.E.T.T.) reported to the dean of NTUA on 18th March 2011 the operation and broadcast without permission of an antenna system with the name Radio 98FM inside the university, the university’s first response was to appeal to the complaint of E.E.T.T. on 5th January 2012. The appeal was finally declined on 9th April 2013 and to the previous charges it was also added the interference of THE radio station of SKAI (a large radio and TV station that broadcasts state propaganda) from a second radio station inside the university with the name Radio Entasi. As a result the NTUA was asked to undertake the necessary steps in order to shut down the radio stations, otherwise the university would have to face a penalty that may be as much as 3,000,000 Euros. 

As for the makeup of the legal accusations regarding Athens Indymedia, this story goes even more back in the past, as the university has been receiving charges from the prosecuting authorities regarding the existence of the Indymedia server inside the university for years. We are presenting some of the main accusations that were made against Athens Indymedia, just to show how ridiculous and dangerous their legal system is. Athens Indymedia is accused by the state of the forming of criminal organization, terrorist actions, explosions that may cause danger of human lives, creation and possession of explosive materials, destruction of private property, defamation and the ridiculous list goes on.

policeuniversityThe university, in order to face this huge terrorist threat, came out with the following plan: it was decided that internet providing would be given to any student union only after the compilation of an application form and after that the application should be approved by the president of the corresponding department. This procedure had to be made to providing internet for any computer not already registered, and the implementation of the above process was gradual and the deadline for completion of the procedures ended 11th April 2013 (until the end of the deadline there hasn’t been a single application filed by anyone in the NTUA). So on 11th April, after the state had taken all the proper legal steps in order to present their repressive actions as a matter of national defence against terrorists, proceeded through their stooge, dean of NTUA, Simos Simopoulos, to shutdown the above mentioned alternative media.

From the first moment the reflexes of the movement and all the people that were in solidarity with the anarchists were immediate, all the student unions of NTUA demanded that the dean revoke his decisions and they denounced the censorship which the state and the dean imposed on Athens Indymedia and the anarchist radio stations. The next day, on 12th April 2013, a protest was called against the dean that took place in NTUA and was supported by a lot of people. Under the weight of the protests the dean literately hid himself by putting into command the deputy dean, who finally refused to comply. The actions of resistance were even more intensive the next week and on Monday, 15th April,  the building of the dean was occupied by many comrades.  

During the occupation the radio stations went on air again and just before Athens Indymedia would go on internet again, the same repressive mechanisms shut down the internet in the whole university. Still the state wanted to fight back and became even more repressive in order to show that any form of resistance will be smashed.  On 24th April, during one more action of solidarity with Athens Indymedia and the anarchist radio stations, in which comrades put a huge banner against the state repression in front of the building of the dean, the state showed its eagerness to crack down on protest by taking 69 comrades to the central police department and finally arresting 6 of them.  In this case, as well, the state made the same old justifications for its actions, repeated by the mass media that this protest – to stop the censorship of free speech and the alternative media – was a police operation against vicious terrorists who had brought down the Greek flag in front of the dean’s building and raised the anarchist flag instead.

All the above mentioned incidents show the depth of the social war that is raging inside Greek society, which is a result of the continuous attempt of the authoritarians for domination and the maximum possible exploitation of the people. They set the base for the next capitalist era, in which all the previous social conquests that came as a result of the new deal and the capitalist promise of a fair society (at least in the countries of the first-world) are negated. Within these social transformations a harsh social repression is essential for the establishment of new social attitudes that imply a society that endures and passively accepts all new exploitative practices.

greekanarchistsThese examples of repression may seem a bit distant from the social reality of the UK (although in fact the forms of control here are already very well imposed and established in my view), but it is incredibly important to be aware of what’s happening elsewhere.  We need to show our solidarity with comrades in every corner of the planet, where they are facing the system’s repression and oppression, but don’t be fooled that this does not concern you.  Capitalism is, after all, a globalized system of exploitation, in which power is generated at both local and international level and repression of working class people in one place is bad news for working class people everywhere.  People here need to start being more concerned about these developments, to analyze them and learn from them.

Similar stories: Solidarity with the squatters of Villa Amalia and AFed Scotland’s solidarity statement.  Check out Occupied London for the latest on what’s happening in Greece.

Sexism, Power and the Left

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Trigger warning: general discussion of rape and sexual abuse in socialist organisations. | Written in a personal capacity.

saints of socialism

I’ve always thought the story of John MacLean was inspirational, despite the fact that he was never a libertarian communist.*  But, a cult was created around him which didn’t so much critically draw out the good things he stood for but turned him into something else.  MacLean became The Great Leader, and an image of the type of working class man who’s meant to save us and dies trying.  This idea of socialism as a very male, patriarchal, top-down movement, embodied in one man, has been repeated so many times it’s farcical.

Of course, I don’t mean to simply equate MacLean or James Connolly, who I have some time for, with other such icons as Che Guevara, who was a complete authoritarian, or more recent examples like Hugo Chavez, a successful political manager who passed reforms and also fought autonomous working class organisation and indigenous communities.  But wherever there’s a tendency to canonize these figures, it reinforces our enthralment to the past and its ideas, freezing them rather than moving beyond them, and it raises up representatives of real living, messy, anonymous class struggle, all to be conveniently used for present day attempts to impose statist, hierarchical solutions for change led by, almost always, Great Men.

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Start printing the T-shirts: Nicolás Maduro set to replace Chavez.

Cults like these are a reflection of, and end up propagating both hierarchical forms of organisation and patriarchy.

Struggles in the Left

It was a long time in coming but at the anti-Bedroom Tax demonstration in Glasgow an important division in the Left in Scotland clearly came out into the open.  I’m talking about the heckling of Dave Sherry, one of the speakers at the end, by people from different political groups or none who all see themselves as feminists or pro-feminists.  Sherry, as a member not just of the SWP but also that party’s Dispute Committee, was directly involved in covering up the rape by a senior party figure of a younger member.  What happened and its background is explained in full here.

It was absolutely right that Sherry was openly challenged when given a public platform.  It was also really encouraging that socialists, anarchists and others were united in shouting him down.  I’m only sorry I missed my chance of heckling him because I was at the other side of George Square when it happened.  But I’m sure there will be other opportunities of opposing SWP speakers in the future.

This wasn’t an isolated incident, however, but part of wider developments where both misogyny and hierarchy have been closely linked.

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Tommy exploiting the Cult of John MacLean in his own attempt to be the next Great Man.

The old authoritarian Left, after having lost much of its credibility, recognises the importance of the anti-Bedroom Tax campaign and has been trying as usual to put itself in a position of leadership in order to control it and regain political influence and power.  Tommy Sheridan, out of prison for perjury, is back in the media spotlight as the face of the anti-Bedroom Tax campaign and, after everything he’s done, still manages to muster enthusiastic support from his fan club.  He briefly got himself elected secretary of the interim committee of the West of Scotland Anti-Bedroom Tax Federation, before being forced to resign because of his divisive role.  But don’t count him out just yet.

Sherry was allowed to speak because those involved in the SWP, Solidarity party, and CWI Scotland  engineered it, and they quickly closed ranks in defending him and his actions from the hecklers.  Likewise, Tommy Sheridan, Great Leader of Solidarity, is supported in turn by the SWP and the CWI and they are all keen to give him a prominent place in public talks and  the media.

These parties are parasites on already-existing struggles, and it’s no coincidence that they have all been actively involved  in giving a place to misogyny in some form or another.

The problem that won’t go away

I agree with many of the points Mhairi McAlpine made in her article on the constant re-occurrence of sexism and sexual abuse in socialist organisations from Gerry Healy to George Galloway.  Why does it keep happening?  We live in a patriarchal society where misogyny is prevalent, men who gain influence in a party are able to manipulate lovers for their own ends and then marginalise and intimidate them, all men benefit from patriarchy and defend those, often in a position of power, who are called out.

But I think that we should also explore the structure of these organisations: the fact that they were all hierarchical parties.

Tommy Sheridan is in the position he is, as a socialist celebrity, because he was given power.  From his days in Militant he was made the figurehead and spokesman of the anti-Poll Tax campaign – apparently speaking on behalf of all the grassroots groups who fought the Poll Tax, whether they liked it or not  – and then in the SSP was at the centre of the party’s electoral strategy.  He was good in the media, he got votes and was encouraged to get as much publicity as he could. In other words, he was undoubtedly given a status and influence above ordinary members.  There were and are a lot of good comrades in the SSP, but the criticisms people are making about Tommy now were already around long before the party was split over his scandal and lying.  Those women and men who opposed him afterwards were absolutely in the right, but now that he’s trying to make a comeback maybe it’s time to look again at the context of his rise to influence.

Is it really surprising that manipulative, egoistic men are most successful in power politics?

Whether it’s in electoralism or controlling a small top-down party like the SWP, men not only find their way to the top and stay there but patriarchy shapes the operation of power and influence, just as it does in wider society.  Sure, there are prominent female leaders too, but they often end up doing just as much to defend male leaders, as happened in the SWP or with Solidarity.

What’s the answer?  I’d obviously disagree with those who argue that the aim should be another electoral, hierarchical party that replaces misogynist male leaders with pro-feminist leaders.

Patriarchy is one form of power over others, of hierarchy.  We want to get rid of it altogether just like we want to get rid of ableism, white supremacy, heteronormativity and capitalism itself.**  As anarchists we’d see this as being interconnected and that the organisations we build and the struggles we’re involved in need to be concerned with all these things.  Those most directly affected by an oppression, should be the ones to lead the struggle against it, and organise separately whenever they see fit, but those not directly oppressed should be just as much concerned with, for example, pro-feminism and educating themselves about it, and not just leave (pro-)feminism to self-identifying women.

In all cases, though, we shouldn’t pass on responsibility for challenging oppressions or exploitation to representatives to do it on our behalf but through structures that we ourselves build and control.  It’s entirely self-defeating to fight against people having power over us through means that contribute to people having power over us!

The Occupy movement might be pointed out as an example of how non-hierarchical organising doesn’t necessarily lead to pro-feminist spaces.  It’s debatable to what extent Occupy was actually non-hierarchical, since it was started and maintained by a small number of activists who had the time and were able to live out in camps in the city centre, and who would tend to have control.  AFed members that I’m aware of were never involved in Occupy in Scotland because of the many problems we saw with it, from its unclear demands and means to bring them about, to being dominated by liberal not anti-capitalist ideas as well as a toxic mixture of conspiracy theories.  At the very least, though, Occupy was an attempt at non-hierarchical or grassroots organising that led to the creation of incredibly unsafe spaces where sexual abuse was widely reported both in the US and here in Britain.  The nature of Occupy camps meant they were likely to be places where people were at risk anyway, but importantly the movement had no concern for adopting clear safer spaces policies and pro-feminism was conspicuous by its absence.

I don’t think there’s an easy solution to genuinely challenge something like patriarchy but I would definitely argue that it requires non-hierarchical modes of organising – by which I don’t mean ‘jazz hands’ and endless hours of consensus, but decision-making that’s directly democratic and effective – along with safer spaces policies, those directly affected having their own spaces and platforms, and a clearly pro-feminist stance adopted by everyone.  The structures we need don’t come ready-made but are developed through experimentation.

But, to be clear, sexism and misogyny is something that affects all organisations even those that actively try to challenge it and have structures that aim to ensure that control isn’t given to a minority.  It’s something we have to constantly try to deal with and that we all need to get better at.

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Lastly, I wanted to point out a new Scottish feminist and queer blog, A Thousand Flowers, and I think it’s awesome.  I might not agree with absolutely every point or article but it’s an interesting and vibrant site and the fact that it exists is really positive for anyone in the pro-feminist, non-authoritarian Left today.

*Check out Nan Milton’s biography which gives an excellent insight into radical Scottish history. Anarchist Guy Aldred, who worked with MacLean, was also one of the first people to write about him.  My argument isn’t that we should stop commemorating figures like MacLean,  but to be highly critical of how he is used and to what ends in the present.   I would say the exact same about libertarian communist figures like Emma Goldman, Durruti and so on.  In many other cases, though, I think icons of the past or present need to be ditched altogether.

** There’s an excellent introduction to privilege theory and intersectionality written by AFed’s Women Caucus:  A Class Struggle Anarchist Analysis of Privilege Theory.

Rhetoric of disempowerment

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Last week, the date for the Scottish independence referendum was announced with at least an attempt at a fanfare.  To mark this historic occasion, we revisit some of the arguments made earlier and look at the rhetoric both sides of the debate are using.

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In representative democracies, those involved in or attempting to manage political power tend to divide themselves into two main camps.  One is more forthright and barefaced in representing business interests, the other provides more of a progressive narrative and promise of reforms, but is ultimately just as committed to ‘economic growth’ – the endless pursuit of profit.  The camps alternate all the time, and the nature of their division changes, but it’s remarkable how effective this semblance of debate is in maintaining passive support for the smooth running of capitalism and the confusion of any genuine opposition to it.

This is a pretty basic socialist argument.  As Chomsky puts it, “The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum [...]”.

In Scotland, the spectrum of debate is articulated not in the usual parliamentary competition between parties but between the Yes and No coalitions in the Independence debate.  Gathering support for their respective positions, the arguments they use are coded with the rhetoric of disempowerment:  most importantly for us, discouraging and demobilising autonomous working class organising, the one thing that actually challenges capitalism.

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It doesn’t take much effort to show this in the Unionists’ propaganda – for years they have succeeded in making sure that a large proportion of working class people are entirely disengaged not only from power politics but apathetic about the possibility of any change.  Their strategy is to keep up an ongoing negative assault on the SNP government and its referendum plans, but also on any vision for a different, hopefully better, future.   Taking it in turns, ConDem ministers and faceless Labour bureaucrats churn out press releases which the mainstream media gladly lap up and put on the front page.  Scotland will be a nation of benefit claimants dependent on a trickle of oil.  Plans for defence are a fantasy.  You’ll lose aw yer pensions!  As Iain MacWhirter puts it, ‘The Unionists are expert at feeding the fear that Scots have of “getting above themselves”’.  And this, the message of ‘Who do you think you are, you lowly Scotch prole?’ is coupled with ‘If you think it’s bad now, you’ve seen nothing yet!’.

But disempowerment is as much a part of the arguments of the Yes camp.  This isn’t to say that Independence doesn’t represent the more ‘progressive’ option in the debate.  It offers reforms when their opponents don’t even pretend to (although they might have to, in the end) and this is also its ideological role.  Of course, many on the left have excellent reasons for being involved in the Yes campaign and  the Radical Independence Conference (RIC):  demands for an end to inequality, the fight for feminism and for a sustainable society.  An independent Scotland is more likely to grant some reforms in these areas than Westminster, but these will be always be most limited, threatened by erosion and contradicted by the the real power of the economy.

A few things crop up repeatedly in the pro-Independence narrative:

1)        Deferring the future.

The referendum will be the ‘most important decision you are going to make in your lifetime’, as one Yes commentator argues.  I don’t know about you, but I think we can make more important decisions.  History is meant to bend towards this date.  Our present struggles are tied to it, and emptied of their threat.  Change will happen, if it’s going to, more than eighteen months from now.  ’Wait until we get rid of Westminster’.  In the meantime this is the time of preparation and ‘making the case’ for the big day.

The independence-supporting left will be actively involved in grassroots campaigns.  But whereas we see organising in these campaigns as being a source of resistance in general, with the potential to spread and grow, they see it as secondary to the constitutional process and  part of its propaganda war.  In some cases, were independence to be successful, it could remove specific Tory-style injustices, but it couldn’t remove the class antagonism which throws up the need for these campaigns.  In an independent Scotland there will be new campaigns and new injustices.  We should fight where we stand and make history now.

2)        The use of ‘We’.

Here’s what Alex Salmond had to say in Paliament:

On the 18th September 2014  the people will decide Scotland’s future.  We take responsibility for our own country, when we’re able to speak with our own voice, choose our own direction and contribute in our own distinct way.  The day we stand on our own two feet to claim a future.

Without this ‘we’ the whole independence movement would fall apart.  It is the collective, civic national ‘we’, constructed to paper over class differences. In fact, it’s exactly the same as the Tories’ ‘we’re all in this together’ rhetoric, but in a Scottish context.  This ‘we’ includes Scottish bosses, managers, politicians, millionaires and their lackies who are and will always fight for their own interests and against ours.  But what would it mean for the working class to ‘speak with our own voice, choose our own direction and … stand on our own two feet to claim a future’?  Well, for a start it would recognize that we are a class and the struggle between classes, our exploitation and need to resist it, happens whether we want to believe it or not.  But we’d be a lot more bloody successful if we did believe it, rejected  all cross-class ‘social partnership’ and organised for ourselves.  Why wait to do this?

3)        Social Democratic Realism

For those on the left the choice now seems to be ‘Social Democracy or Barbarism’.  Opt for an independent capitalist country with a commitment to state security, reasonably progressive taxation etc. or accept an ever worsening Tory austerity hellhole. The differences between the mainstream Yes Campaign and the left-wing pro-independence campaign aren’t great, but a difference of degree:  more social democracy, and not so much reduced corporation tax.  RIC supporters share platforms with politicians and endorse similar vague language of ‘democracy’ and ‘equality’, ‘self-determination’ and in their case ‘radicalism’ itself.  In asserting this choice, all other options are shut down and deemed unrealistic. Social partnership is now the only thing left.  If it’s seen as only a step towards socialism, like all stagism it will only ever manage to create another stage and try to justify why we don’t actually organise directly against capitalism now.

If you think that I’m creating a false choice of my own, and that we can work for independence as a progressive step forward and for a future based on social needs without private profit, how is this possible whilst also promoting a national rather than class-based perspective, giving prominence to a future point of change rather than our class struggles here and now, and  by accepting the language and ideology of  social partnership?

Werner Bonefeld on austerity

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Open Marxist, Werner Bonefeld, spoke in Glasgow earlier this month. We’re really grateful to him for letting us record and share the talk.Image

‘From humanity to nationality to bestiality: A polemic on alternatives without conclusion’

Listen to the talk.

Here, he discusses the fight against austerity and its opposition. He criticises those on the left who argue for managing capital in the interests of working people and looks at the directions resistance could take, particularly in Europe.

“The struggle against austerity is a struggle for the basic provision of human needs: housing, food, heating, clothing, and also for the time of affection and love. It is a struggle for existence. This struggle can be expressed in all sorts of different forms, including communism and socialism, and also nationalism and barbarism.” 

Read more about Open Marxist ideas.

Ro-ràdh an IWW | Gaelic IWW Preamble

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Às leth Luchd-obrach Gnìomhachail an t-Saoghail (IWW) dha bheil sinn gu math càirdeil seo agaibh a’ chiad tionndadh Gàidhlig air an Ro-ràdh ainmeil aca a chaidh a dhèanamh le aon de na buill againn. Crìoch don t-siostam-thuarastail! |  On behalf of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a union we’re friendly with, here’s the first ever Gaelic translation of their famous Preamble (which you can read in English here) written by one of our members. Abolition of the wage system!

Faigh a-mach tuilleadh mun IWW ann an Alba an seo. | Click here to find out about the IWW in Scotland.

An Ro-ràdh do Bhun-reachd an IWW

Chan eil nì ann an cumantas eadar an clas-obrach agus an clas-fastaidh. Chan urrainn sìth a bhith ann cho fad ’s a tha acras agus dìth rin lorg air na milleanan de luchd-obrach agus ’s ann aig a’ chlas-fhastaidh a tha gach rud math ann am beatha.

Cha bhi ach strì eadar an dà chlas seo gus an eagraich luchd-obrach an t-saoghail ri chèile mar chlas, a’ gabhail thairis air na dòighean-dèanaimh, a’ cur às don t-siostam-thurastail, agus a bhith beò ann an co-chòrdachd leis an Talamh.

Aithnichidh sinn gu bheil stiùireadh nan gnìomhachasan aig àireamh de dhaoine a tha a’ sìor fhàs nas lugha agus nach tèid aig aonaidhean-ciùird air dèiligeadh ri cumhachd a’ chlas-fhastaidh is e a’ sìor fhàs nas motha.  Tha na h-aonaidhean-ciùird a’ cruthachadh suidheachadh far am bi pàirt den luchd-obrach a’ sabaid an aghaidh pàirt eile den luchd-obrach anns an aon ghnìomhachas, a’ dèanamh cinnteach gun caill a dhà dhiubh ann an cogaidhean tuarastail.  Gu dearbh, tha na h-aonaidhean-ciùird a’ cuideachadh a’ chlas-fhastaidh gus an luchd-obrach a mhealladh gu bheil ùidhean aig a’ chlas-obrach ann an cumantas len luchd-fhastaidh.

Chan urrainnear an càradh seo atharrachadh agus math an luchd-obrach a sheasamh ach le eagrachadh a tha air a dhèanamh air dòigh ’s gu bheil a h-uile ball a tha aige ann an gnìomhachas àraid, no anns a h-uile gnìomhachas ma tha e deatamach, a’ sgur a dh’obair uair sam bith a thachras stailc no às-ghlasadh ann an roinn sam bith den ghnìomhachas, a’ ciallachadh gur e leòn aoin leòn na h-uile.

An àite na h-abairt shàbhailte, “Pàigheadh latha cothromach airson obair latha chothromach” ’s e a dh’fheumas sinn sgrìobhadh air ar bratach ach an sluagh-ghairm rèabhlaideach  “Crìoch don t-siostam-thuarastail”.  ’S e dleastanas eachdraidheil a’ chlas-obrach a bhith a’ cur às do chalpachas.  Feumaidh airm an dèanaimh a bhith eagraichte, chan ann a-mhàin airson na strì làitheil ri calpairean, ach cuideachd gus dèanamh a chumail a’ dol às dèidh do chalpachas a bhith air a thilgeil sìos.  Le a bhith ag eagrachadh gu gnìomhachail tha sinn a’ cruthachadh structar a’ chomainn-shòisealta ùir ann an slige an t-seann chomainn-shòisealta.