A-Infos (en) Britain, THE FARGATE SPEAKER #10 - Sept/Oct - Local bulletin of Anarchist Federation (Sheffield) -

Freedom · Equality · Solidarity ---- Let's dance. ---- In This Issue: New Social Centre , 
Continuing anti-Tesco Campaign, Round-up of Community Projects, Across Sheffield, Part 2 
of Sheffield's radical history and more .... The Fightback Starts Here ---- Despite over 
twenty years of attacks on the lives of working people by both Conservative and Labour 
governments, workers across Sheffield are standing up to fight the fallout from the 
economic recession. ---- First bus drivers were amongst the first to take a stand with 
1,400 taking strike action in July over drivers' pay and changes to working conditions. 
First group made £122 million in profit last year yet claims it cannot afford a pay-rise 
due to the recession.The company has been successful in mounting legal challenges to 
future strike action.

However, the dispute is by no means resolved and likely to escalate in the near future.

   Unions representing 13,500 council
workers are considering industrial
action after final talks with Sheffield
Council failed to deliver a last-
minute agreement on pay. The coun-
cil is attempting to slash the salaries
of over 2,500 staff including those
on the lowest pay brackets such as
the city's street cleaners.
  In the education sector Sheffield
University is pushing pay freezes and
"voluntary" redundancies across the
workforce. The University and College Union has
already put forward a national ballot
for industrial action. Students and
campus workers are also pushing for
action against the cuts.
  Activists from across Yorkshire
also formed a neighbourhood in the
national camp for climate action to
highlight the environmental damage
caused by the capitalist system. The
current crisis not only threatens our
jobs, or our ability to get a job, but
the very future of our planet.
   It is clear that we have the seeds of
a wider fightback against the current
crisis. There is a gowing feeling that
we will not have our pay cut or our
jobs threatened just so the bosses can
continue to line their pockets.

-------------------------------------

  Is there a local issue you feel deserves coverage? Would you like Fargate to cover your 
event? Do you have an opinion on any of the issues dealt with in this issue? We welcome 
letters and submissions from readers and will always aim to publish as much as we can. 
Contact us! - thefargatespeaker@gmail.com
-------------------------------------------

Fargate Calling!- a brief look at Sheffield's hidden radical history Broom Hall Burning

   The last Fargate Speaker featured a
look at some of the neglected corners
of Sheffield's history, like Samuel
Holberry's attempted insurrection,
and the proud tradition of the first
Sheffield Anarchist group. This article
aims to cover a bit more ground, and
help keep alive the memory of a few
more stories from Sheffield's unruly
past.

  One of the first major disturbances
in modern Sheffield history came in
1791, when the enclosure of 6,000
acres of common land with no
compensation prompted an angry
reaction, leading to Broom Hall, the
home of local vicar and magistrate
James Wilkinson, being set on fire.
The riots, accompanied by chants
such as "no king, no taxes", lasted
three days, and the situation was only
calmed down when dragoons arrived
from Nottingham, and troops were
stationed in the city for a few years
afterwards, not to protect the city
from invasion but simply to keep the
population under control.
                                         i
  The next few decades saw the
growth of the Chartist movement in
Sheffield, and Paradise Square became
a popular place for mass meetings.
The French revolution of 1848 was
greeted by a large assembly in Para-
dise Square, who composed A Com-
munistic Address to the French
People, which was then
delivered to France by Isaac
Ironside, another prominent
Sheffield radical.

  While most of the names
mentioned here are male,
agitation and disorder in
Sheffield was never just
boys' fun. The Sheffield
Female Political Asso-
ciation, founded in 1851
by female Chartists, was
the first women's suffrage
group in the UK. Its found-
ers included the magnifi-
cient Anne Knight, who'd
been an active anti-slavery
campaigner (so much so
that the village of Knights-
ville in Jamaica was named
after her), then moved to
France to take part in the
1848 insurrection there, and
still had the energy to fight for women's
rights when she returned to Sheffield. By
the start of the 20th century, campaign-
ing for women's suffrage had really taken
off in the city, so when the prominent
Liberal politician Reginald McKenna
spoke at Cutlers' Hall in 1908, he needed
a police cordon to protect the event from
disruption. More extreme tactics were
used by the suffragist and socialist Molly
Morris, who bombed post boxes to draw
attention to the cause. She later went on
to marry J.T. Murphy, a militant trade
unionist who'd been involved
with the Sheffield Workers' Committee in
World War One and the national Shop
Stewards' Movement.

   While it took various different
forms over the years (such as a major
rent strike in the 1960s), militancy in
Sheffield never really died out, so that by
the 80s it gained the nickname of "the
Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire",
famous for cheap buses (how times have
changed!) and the red flag flying over
Sheffield Town Hall. Of course, South
Yorkshire was also central to the great
miners' strike, meaning that Thatcher
had to be protected by 1,000 cops when
she spoke in Sheffield. Meanwhile, the
Sheffield Anarchists were reviving a
tradition of more grassroots activity, get-
ting involved in supporting strikes and
confronting fascists directly. Sheffield
was also solid against the poll tax.
This tradition of dissent has been car-
ried on to the present day, with the big
protests in 2005 against the G8 Justice
Ministers meeting in Sheffield, and
more recently the activities of Sheffield
Activist Network and the university oc-
cupations over Gaza helping to keep the
flames of dissent alive. We just hope that
we can play a small role in honouring
the spirit of Sheffield rebels like Samuel
Holberry, James Montgomery and Molly
Morris.
--------------------------------------------

New Social Centre

  On the 1st October 2009, local anar-
chists and other activists will be opening
a new radical social centre in Sheffield,
following in the tradition of social
centres such as Matilda, which was also
in Sheffield, and Ramparts, which is still
open in London today.
  What makes this social centre `radical'?
The principles on which it will operate
make it different from a typical com-
munity centre. The space is being set up
as a non-hierarchical and anti-capitalist
space. The non-hierarchical aspect
essentially means that there will be no
closed central committee or leadership
structures in place. If you agree with the
principles of the centre, then you have
the same rights to get involved in the
activities and decision making processes
of the centre as anyone else, on a com-
pletely equal basis.
  The way the space is anti-capitalist is
perhaps most obvious in the fact that
it will be a squatted social centre, at-
tempting to avoid the pressure to hold
money-making events to pay rent There
are so many empty properties in and
around Sheffield that could be put to
so many great uses for the communities
here. Instead, the buildings are left to
rot, because it is seen by the capitalists
as unprofitable to do something socially
useful with them. So if it's empty, and
slowly going to waste, why not take it
ourselves and do something genuinely
exciting with it? What exactly the space
will be used for has not been entirely de-
cided yet. That's because what happens
in the space is up to you, and anyone else
who wants to become involved. What do
you want to see the space become? Get
involved, and let's decide together!
-------------------------------------

Scabs are Rubbish

  Leeds anarchists have been supporting
local bin workers who began an indefi-
nite strike on the 7th September over
looming pay cuts which the unions say
will cost their members £6000 a year.
  Leeds city council say that some work-
ers had reported for work but the unions
say that over 500 of its members were
on strike and morale was high. They also
claimed that the council could well be
using agency staff illegally. The unions
say that they will consult with their law-
yers to see if the law regarding the use of
agency workers in industrial disputes is
being broken or not. Bin workers in Ed-
inburgh and Liverpool are also currently
in dispute.

-------------------------------------------
Every little helps?

  Tesco have been humiliated once
again in Sheffield. After applying to
build a new store in the Commonside
area in 2007, and being defeated by
massive community opposition, they
went away, had a think, and came back
with...exactly the same proposal. Once
again, the plan encountered a wave of
resistance from local residents eager to
stop their area being turned into
another clone high street filled with
the same massive corporate chains.
  The campaign was genuinely grass-
roots and quickly attracted the support
of The Fargate Speaker. We produced
a special edition highlighting Tesco's
poor record on workers' rights and
environmental issues, and publicising
ways people could fight back against
the proposal. Over 2,000 local people
signed a petition opposing the plans,
and Tesco was beaten once again.
  On Saturday 8th August Sheffield
Anarchists hosted a free community
barbecue celebrating the victory
over Tesco.
The event had a good turn-out and a
welcoming, family-friendly atmosphere,
with some local residents making
cakes and biscuits to bring along. Many
people were enthusiastic about the
possibilities of turning the space into a
genuinely useful facility such as
a community garden or allotment, and
discussions are ongoing about what the
next step should be.
  While this victory may be a minor one,
and we're sure Tesco will be back
sooner or later, it does show that genu-
ine community solidarity does still
exist, and that massive companies like
Tesco aren't as invincible as they
might appear.

-------------------------------------------
There's power in a community!

   Too often, newspapers just focus on a few rich
and powerful individuals, like politicians and
celebrities, and have little or nothing about
ordinary people, unless we're getting stabbed,
shot, or otherwise abused. The Fargate Speaker
is dedicated to opposing this and running the
kind of stories that often get overlooked, as well
as trying to find positive stories that show how
powerful we can be, instead of just spreading
fear or whining about how rubbish everything
is. So in that spirit, here's a brief celebration of
community power:

Tesco trashed again!

   We previously reported on how mass
grassroots opposition had defeated
Tesco's plans to open up a new store in
Commonside. Now, residents in Ec-
clesall have defeated Tesco again, as a
proposal to build a new Tesco Express
on the site of a former garage on Ecclesall
Road South was thrown out after over
400 locals signed a petition against the
development. As more and more places
get taken over by identikit corporate
chains, it's good to see that people are
still willing to defend the uniqueness
of their neighbourhoods against huge
businesses like Tesco, fighting back
against the mentality that sees profits
as all-important and everything else as
secondary. It's easy to feel like there's
nothing we can do to change the world
around us, but these examples show that
if we're willing to make a stand, whether
it's in defence of our communities or our
rights at work, even massive opponents
like Tesco can be surprisingly easy to
beat.

An unsung hero

   The media's focus on celebrities tends
to mean that many impressive lives never
even get discussed. One life that deserves
to be remembered is that of Tom Moor-
house, a Sheffield grandfather who died
in August at the age of 87 after spending
over 25 years fighting for his neighbours.
He was a founding member of Galswor-
thy Tenants and Residents Association
(TARA) in Herries, as well as helping set
up other TARAs, and was given a Shef-
field Homes lifetime achievement award
three years ago in recognition of his com-
mitment to winning tenants' rights. If it
weren't for the quiet, dedicated efforts of
Tom Moorhouse and thousands of other
little-known community champions like
him, we would all be a lot worse off.

Good times in Greenhill

   A new Sheffield community fair drew
a healthy crowd, a welcome alternative
to the huge money-making events that
dominate the summer calendar. The
Greenhill and Lowedges Festival, organ-
ised by Greenhill and Bradway Tenants'
Association, saw appearances from the
Sheffield Steelers, the Eagles, and the
Tigers Speedway team. It also featured
a mini fun fair and a wide range of other
entertainments, in a healthy display of
neighbourhood spirit and the natural
urge to celebrate. We wish them all the
best for next year, and hope to see more
independent, not-for-profit events like
this continue to spread across Sheffield.

------------------------------------------

Organising at work: 1. the basics

  The first in a series on why we should
organise at work, and a few tips on
how to get started.
  Almost everyone in this society is
underpaid and over-worked. Many
temps, contract and casual workers have
very few rights, and permanent work-
ers are still always under the threat of
redundancy. Many people are massively
exploited and ill-treated, and in Britain
over 20,000 people are killed at or
by their work each year. Millions
more suffer stress, depression,
anxiety and are injured.
   The indignity of working for a liv-
ing is well-known to anyone who
ever has. Democracy, the great
principle on which our society is
supposedly founded, is thrown out
the window as soon as we punch
the time clock at work. With no
say over what we produce, or how
that production is organised, and
with only a small portion of that
product's value finding its way
into our wages, we have every
right to be pissed off at our bosses.
   At work in a capitalist society, we
are forced to labour in return for a
wage. Employers hire workers, and
pay us less than the value of work
we do. The surplus amount is taken from
us and turned into capital - profit for
shareholders and corporate expansion.
Thus all workers are exploited. Conse-
quently, we all have a shared interest
in getting a bigger share of the fruits of
our labour, as well as in winning better
working conditions and shorter working
hours.
   We can do this by organising at work.
We also believe that by organising to
fight, we build the seeds of a new world
- not based on capitalist exploitation,
but on co-operation between workplace
collectives production would be
democratically controlled by worker/
consumer councils and working hours
would be slashed. Harmful or useless in-
dustries, such as arms manufacturing, or
the banking and insurance industrikes,
could be eliminated.
   The real essentials, like food, shelter,
and clothing, could be produced by
everyone working just a few hours each
week. Environmentally destructive
industries purely concerned with profit,
such as fossil fuel power plants could be
converted to use clean, renewable energy
sources.
   We think that building this better
world, and counteracting the day to day
drudgery of contemporary wage-slavery,
can best be done using direct action in
the workplace. Direct action is any form
of action that cripples the boss's ability
to make a profit and makes them cave in
to the workers' demands.
Next issue: 2. Getting started
Libcom.org

  We think that building this better
world, and counteracting the day to day
drudgery of contemporary wage-slavery,
can best be done using direct action in
the workplace. Direct action is any form
of action that cripples the boss's ability
to make a profit and makes them cave in
to the workers' demands.
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
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