Tuesday 26 February 2013

Thousands of coffee workers stage walkout

Colombian coffee growers have launched an open-ended strike demanding better prices for their product and policies that benefit the people.
Thousands of workers, as well as farmers from small and medium-sized plantations, have joined swelling industrial unrest in the Latin American country.
In the western Tolima province activists clashed with police on Monday when officers tried to prevent a demonstration going ahead.
Protesters insisted that they would camp out in provincial capital Ibague until at least tomorrow to press their demands.
Telesur journalist Milton Henao said peasant demonstrators had been marching peacefully when police attacked them.
He stressed that the farmers remained unintimidated.
Growers have been hit hard by falling global prices in coffee beans, pointing to a 55 per cent drop in the price of arabica beans since a 30-year high in 2011.
Farmers are now paid around £190 for a load, or 125 kilos, of beans, but production costs them more than £230 per load.
The growers are calling for an increase to their £20-a-load government subsidy.
Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos branded the strike "inconvenient and unnecessary" and he was backed up by National Coffee Growers Federation president Luis Genaro Munoz.
Mr Munoz supported the setting up of a new government commission for the industry and rejected the use of roadblocks to press demands.
But Tolima leader Danilo Lopez said that the federation needed to be democratised to serve small and medium farmers.
He said the protests were the "awakening of the Colombian people against capitalist exploitation" and claimed the fight was a political one against bosses and the anti-popular policies of the government.
Mr Lopez added: "What we want is a minimum support price of 800,000 pesos (£290) per load for coffee and to curb the cost of inputs.
"We continue to negotiate other aspects of agrarian and peasant security."
Elsewhere negotiations to end a strike at one of the world's largest open-cast mines in northern Colombia kicked off today.
Directors from Cerrejon coal and representatives of union Sintracarbon agreed a draft agreement to end the 19-day strike.
Workers are calling for health and safety improvements and wage rises.
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Monday 11 February 2013

Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger's Life and Legacy

Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger's Life and Legacy
by John Gurney (Pluto Press, £11.50)
Sunday 10 February 2013 by Alan Lloyd Printable Email
The latest addition to Pluto's Revolutionary Lives series, this is an eminently readable and very welcome biography of the Digger's leader Gerrard Winstanley.
A revolutionary intellectual rated so highly by the Bolsheviks that his name was one of just 19 such figures carved in 1918 on the memorial obelisk in Moscow's Alexander Gardens, Winstanley is little known or lauded in his own country.
His recorded writings and actions took place over a brief period from 1648 to 1652 around the time of the English revolution, and they are as worthy of debate and consideration now as they were nearly 500 years ago.
Winstanley's publication The New Law Of Righteousness argued that there is enough land in England for all and, by ensuring that the "earth is a common treasury," no-one need ever go hungry.
His central tenet was that we should "abandon private property and embrace community." Along with a group of like-minded Diggers, he set one up on the common land of Saint George's Hill in Walton-on-Thames.
His actions encouraged other settlements in places such as Wellingborough, Cobham and Iver, which sadly lasted little over a year
Their success alarmed the vested interests of the ruling class, particularly the local landowners who eventually destroyed the communities and drove the Diggers off the land.
This led Winstanley to pen The Law Of Freedom, described by political theoretician Eduard Bernstein as outlining a "communist utopia."
It also prompted a continuing debate as to whether his practical experience as a Digger changed Winstanley's outlook from libertarian to authoritarian.
This debate, along with one on the differences between the Diggers and the Levellers, are cleverly outlined by the author without slowing the pace of the book.
In an age when the difference between rich and poor continues to widen and the need for decent homes for working people becomes ever more urgent, so Winstanley's ideas retain their relevance and perhaps continue to suggest solutions.
This well referenced book is an excellent starting point for anyone wishing to learn about this remarkably far-sighted radical.