Thus the ‘freedom’ handed out by capitalist society is more often than not the opposite of freedom. Yet the idea of freedom still prevails, because the prevailing ideas of any society are the ideas of the class which runs it.
So the people who fight against these ideas – whether in strikes, demonstrations, popular protests or just in argument – are always, or almost always, swimming against the stream. They are the minority. But this minority, unlike the passive majority, can involve other people far outside their immediate orbit. And once involved in struggle against the old society, people’s ideas can change decisively. Paul Foot, The Case for Socialism chapter 6
The simple fact remains that in a divided society which is based on the exploitation of working people, the main battleground is at the point of production. That is where the wealth is produced. That is where the workers can most effectively hit back. It is where our collective strength and common interest combine most effectively. It is also, incidentally, the area where the Tories and employers behave most true to type, relentlessly and viciously, and where they can expect their behaviour to be studiously ignored by all the press and television.
... All of this was, in every case, countered by the quite extraordinary change which came over the workers involved. They grew ten feet tall, unimaginably more able and more resolute than they were in normal working conditions. Often the worst reactionaries on the shop floor became the mainstream of the pickets. Above all, when usually under our influence, the strikers moved out of their isolated dispute and sought help in the broader movement, they started to learn for the first time what being a trade unionist meant. The slogans ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ or ‘knowledge is power’ or ‘arise ye workers’, which they had seen before only on trade union banners, suddenly came to life. Paul Foot, 3 Letters to a Bennite, 12th January 1982
We socialists are always saying that workers change in struggle – but what a joy and a relief it is when we can test the theory in flesh and blood. When I drew back the curtains in Tayport at 6.30 a.m. on Thursday 20 May, the sun streamed in – it was a glorious spring morning. Half an hour later, across the river and through the city of Dundee, the picket line at Timex was revelling in the sunshine. There were 60 to 70 people there, their numbers alone a great shout of mockery at the Tory anti-union laws’ insistence on six pickets. There was laughter and anger in equal measure – laughter among the pickets themselves, anger as the scabs’ lorries came up the hill and turned into the gate. Inside the lorries, and inside the private cars of the supervisors, strike breakers cowered, some of them hiding their face in balaclavas, others making a pathetic show of defiance, especially after they passed the gates. Each vehicle was greeted with a great roar of rage ...
A former president of the engineering union, Hugh Scanlon, once said in a famous TUC speech that every scratch on the trade union movement can lead to gangrene. The sweetheart approach of his successors led to gangrene soon enough. Every concession by the unions was greeted by the employers with cries for more. In Dundee like everywhere else the employers, led on this occasion by the Engineering Employers Federation, started to yearn for the day when they would not have to deal with unions at all. True, the unions were a pushover. But how much more of a pushover would the workers be, how much more clear profit was there to be made, if the unions were utterly broken once and for all? ...
Shortly before Christmas last year, he announced lay-offs. On 5 January the workers all got letters – some ‘thick’ (the sack), others ‘thin’ (not the sack). They refused to accept the letters, and occupied the canteen. Hall promised negotiations. The workers went back to work, effectively accepting the principle of lay-offs, though they balloted (92 per cent) for a strike. From 8 to 29 January they worked rotating shifts to cover for their laid off workmates, and waited for the negotiations which never came. There was no whisper of negotiation from Hall. A plea to go to ACAS was vigorously snubbed. On 29 January, frustrated by the constant prevarication, the workers came out on strike. On 17 February they reported en masse for work. They were told they could return only if they accepted a 10 per cent cut in wages and other humiliations, including pension reductions. When they refused, they were locked out, and have been ever since.
... These men and women are out to win. They deserve to win and they need to win. Above all they can win. The entire resources – human and financial – of the labour movement should be put at their disposal. Paul Foot, article June 1993, ‘Seize the Time’
The vast demonstration against Bush on 20 November once again opened wide the increasingly intolerable contradiction on the British left. These demonstrations in 2003 were far greater than anything in the 1960s or indeed at any other time before or since, yet when the crowds have dispersed, there is so little sign of any political result. Paul Foot, Left Alternative: Beyond the Crossroads
Free societies ... are societies in motion, and with motion comes tension, dissent, friction. Free people strike sparks, and those sparks are the best evidence of freedom’s existence. Salman Rushdie
The state can’t give you freedom, and the state can’t take it away. You’re born with it, like your eyes, like your ears. Freedom is something you assume, then you wait for someone to try to take it away. The degree to which you resist is the degree to which you are free. Utah Phillips
I wore black because I liked it. I still do, and wearing it still means something to me. It’s still my symbol of rebellion - against a stagnant status quo, against our hypocritical houses of God, against people whose minds are closed to others’ ideas. Johnny Cash
We can’t forget what happened on May 4th, 1970, when four students gave up their lives because they had the American constitutional right of peaceful protest. They gave up their lives. And to sing that song in that spot on that anniversary was very emotional for us. Graham Nash
Colombo would stand up for rights of ordinary Italian Americans ... picketing the very heart of law enforcement in New York. The crowds grew, and media attention followed. Colombo revelled in it ... It was in marked contrast to his silence at the Grand Jury years before. Mafia’s Greatest Hits: Joe Colombo: The Maverick Mobster, 2012
In 1970 Colombo shifted his protest movement up a gear – he created the Italian American Civil Rights League. ibid.
1947: shortly after the close of World War II 23 nations signed a general agreement on tariffs and trade: GATT. Battle in Seattle 2007 starring Woody Harrelson & Andre Benjamin & Jennifer Carpenter & Martin Henderson & Ray Liotta & Connie Nielsen & Michelle Rodriguez & Channing Tatum & Charlize Theron et al, director Stuart Townsend
‘It has very little to do with trade and it is certainly not free.’ ibid. protester
Of course we’re going to get hurt. What do you think this is? Protests get me excited and depressed at the same time. ibid. her to him
I am watching a completely unprovoked attack by police here in downtown Seattle. ibid. Jean
The Battle in Seattle turns into a war. ibid.
How do they keep putting themselves on the line like that, for a cause they can’t win? ibid. Jean
Isn’t it time that people mattered more than profit? ibid. Medicine sans Frontiers guy
People are protesting with us in thirty cities across the world. ibid. protester
Thanks WTO It’s Been A Riot. ibid. cinema sign
2003: As the WTO floods local markets with imports, 40,000 Indian farmers commit suicide to escape their debt. ibid. caption
The Justice Department and the elite Delta Force pushed for Seattle crackdown against WTO protesters. Seattle News online article Rick Anderson 23rd December 1999
We have thrown away the most valuable asset we had – the individual's right to oppose both flag and country when he believed them to be in the wrong. We have thrown it away; and with it, all that was really respectable about that grotesque and laughable word, Patriotism. Howard Zinn
Protest beyond the law is not a departure from democracy; it is absolutely essential to it. Howard Zinn
America’s campuses began to buzz with activism ... One hundred thousand people rallied in Washington. Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States VII: Johnson, Nixon and Vietnam: Reversal of Fortune, Showtime 2012
The baby boomers want an end to the Vietnam War and they take their protest to the streets. America: The Story of the US: Millennium, History 2010
1970: there’s been thousands of anti-Vietnam war protests. Kent State University, Ohio: the National Guard are ordered in to control five hundred protesting students. Television is here watching. Four students are shot dead. ibid.
After tens of protesters were killed and many more were arrested the regime succeeded in putting down the uprising. Frontline: Saudi Arabia Uncovered, PBS 2017