Edinburgh Anarchists

The Nato Welcoming Committee have tea and cakes ready for the arrival of the world’s least favourite military alliance. Sign up for text alerts (not with your everyday mobile, natch) to be informed of the meeting point and be there sharp at 11am.

Full message from NatoWC here.

For months the NATO Welcoming Committee has been calling on people to come to Edinburgh and take part in action against NATO and against militarism. We have now produced a map of the city centre of Edinburgh showing the location of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly and some other institutions which are linked to the militarist system. Our primary target remains the Edinburgh International Conference Centre, the location of the NATO meeting. However, if we cannot reach it, it is important to remember that there are many targets around the city of Edinburgh just as deserving of attention. To find the target maps and other maps visit http://natowc.noflag.org.uk/the-target

To make it as hard as possible for us to be contained and stopped from taking action the meeting place for the demonstration will not be announced until 10.30 am. People should be in the city centre in their affinity groups or with friends by this time. Once the location has been announced people should move to the meeting place and assemble at 11am sharp.

Surely the Evening News didn't just lift this picture off of Indymedia without attribution? They wouldn't be dumb enough to put it on the front page...

A recent article in the cash-strapped, poorly-written Evening News claimed that half of council manual workers are ready to give up their work-to-contract over pay cuts. EEN fact checkers failed to clock that a mass meeting of all those same workers were unanimous in their message: Not a penny off our pay. Here’s the press release in response to the transparent attempt to divide & rule.

Street cleaners have hit out at Council leaders’ claims that they are “set to give up their protest” in the long-running dispute over wages and conditions.

“It’s absolute nonsense.  There’s no truth in it at all,“ a Council street cleaner said.  “Everybody I spoke to today at work was of the same opinion.”

“The vast majority of manual workers will not be going back until the wages are re-paid to the binmen whose wages have been docked.”

The Council claimed that a “formal agreement” has been put to the street cleaners.  But a street cleaner stated: “The only letter we have had through the door from the Council is one stating that our wages are being cut to between £12,000 and £14,000.”

ACTION CONTINUES

Hundreds of Council manual workers agreed at a mass meeting on 9th October to continue their work-to-rule and overtime ban to oppose wage cuts and changes in conditions.  “Nothing’s changed,” a street cleaner told us, “This is Council PR.  They can’t give separate deals to different sections of workers.”

And a street cleaner slammed the Council’s “partial performance” policy of docking the wages of binmen who are working to rule.  “The binmen are the only people in the City of Edinburgh Council being hit by so-called “partial performance.”  It’s victimisation!” he insisted.

And a bin worker stated: “The management are using bullyboy tactics and harassment.  Our depot’s like a police state.”  He explained that several binmen signed off sick by their doctor are being refused sick pay by the Council.  “This is illegal,“ he declared.

“SUPPORT THE COUNCIL WORKERS”

The Council workers solidarity group, who have been blockading the private bin lorries, stated: “The Council manual workers are fighting the first battle against the Council’s plans for massive cuts and privatisation of many services.  We urge Edinburgh citizens to support the Council workers – this affects us all.”

Meanwhile a Council source revealed that Council bosses recently held a summit meeting to discuss how much longer they can continue paying “astronomical sums” to the private companies who are operating bin lorries during the dispute.  Council leaders are still refusing to comply with Freedom of Information requests to reveal the sums being paid to Assist, Shank Waste Management and other companies.

The Council’s claims that the street cleaners were about to end their industrial action were reported as if they were fact in the Edinburgh Evening News on 19th October.   It is believed that some supporters of the council workers are investigating a submission to the Press Complaints Commission.

GET INVOLVED
More info, and to get involved, contact Council workers solidarity group edinburghmuckraker@riseup.net
Organising meetings currently held weekly,  next meeting 6pm Tues 27 October at ACE, 17 West Montgomery Place, EH7 5HA  All interested very welcome.
The Edinburgh Muckraker news-sheet and stickers can be collected free from ACE, open Saturday 11-6, Tuesday 1-4pm, Thursday 6-8pm

From a first hand report. (Background to the dispute and an earlier action.)

Two WCR scab bin lorries were blockaded for an hour in Edinburgh’s Grassmarket on 25 September. This was the third successful blockade of the scab bin lorries operating in the Edinburgh Council Cleansing workers dispute.

The two lorries were spotted by the roving band of Scab Stoppers as the scabs went to pick up rubbish bins in the Grassmarket. The crowd of around 25 quickly surrounded the lorries, which were then abandoned by the dispute breakers for the next 40 minutes or so. Eventually they returned, but were unable to drive off due to protesters being present at the front and back of both lorries – though one scab supervisor was heard to urge the driver to just reverse into the path of the demonstrators.

IWW union placards proclaimed NO WAGE CUTS , NO MORE CUTS, BIN THE SCABS and SOLIDARITY WITH COUNCIL BIN WORKERS. Copies of the new EDINBURGH MUCKRAKER news-sheet, telling the truth about the Council’s efforts to cut its workers wages, were distributed. The scab lorries were covered with bin solidarity stickers. When the police eventually turned up the crowd melted into the closes of Edinburgh’s Old Town, no arrests and everyone free to renew the direct action solidarity in the near future.

This action followed successful half-hour long blockades at Hunter Square/ Blair Street on 18 September and at Spittal Street/ Bread Street on 21 September. The blockades were highlighted on the front page of the Edinburgh Evening News on 22 September.

BIN SOLIDARITY organising meeting – 7.30pm Tues 29 Sept at ACE, 17 W Montgomery Place EH7 5HA

Info edinburghmuckraker [at] riseup.net

Next week sees a cluster of events under the banner of Edinburgh Feminist Freeschool. See the full schedule here. Most of the events are on the 17th – 19th, and some (those on the Saturday) are women / trans only.

Topics include Self defense, massage, women & the middle east, home schooling, poetry, polyamoury and bike maintenance.

Website here.

Cover of Chris Carlsson's new book "Nowtopia"

Chris Carlsson, the author of Critical Mass: Bicycling’s Defiant Celebration is in Edinburgh to talk about his new book, Nowtopia and related topics. He’s going to be at Word Power (Nicholson Street) on Wednesday 15th April from 6pm, and so should you be.

After the book talk, there’s a social at the Forest from 9pm, featuring music from Orkestra Nowtopia.

Here’s what “they” say about his latest book:

Outlaw bicycling, urban permaculture, biofuels, free software, and even the Burning Man festival are windows into a scarcely visible social transformation that is redefining politics as we know it. As capitalism continues to corral every square inch of the globe into its logic of money and markets, new practices are emerging through which people are taking back their time and technological know-how. In small, under-the-radar ways, they are making life better right now, simultaneously building the foundation – technically and socially – for a genuine movement of liberation from market life.
Nowtopia uncovers the resistance of a slowly recomposing working class in America. Rarely defining themselves by what they do for a living, people from all walks of life are doing incredible amounts of labor in their “non-work” time, creating immediate practical improvements in daily life. The social networks they create, and the practical experience of cooperating outside of economic regulation, become a breeding ground for new strategies to confront the commodification to which capitalism reduces us all.
The practices outlined in Nowtopia embody a deep challenge to the basic underpinnings of modern life, as a new ecologically-driven politics emerges from below, reshaping our assumptions about science, technology, and human potential.
With historical grounding, a toolbox drawing from multiple schools of anti-capitalist thought and theory, and a refreshingly pragmatic approach, Carlsson opens our eyes to the revolutions of everyday life.
Chris Carlsson, executive director of the multimedia history project “Shaping San Francisco,” is a writer, publisher, editor, and community organizer. He has edited four collections of political and historical essays. He helped launch the monthly bike-ins known as Critical Mass, and was long-time editor of Processed World magazine.

What I say is: it’s damned good and inspiring stuff in its stories of what regular folks are co-operating in day-to-day, whether that’s guerrilla gardening or bike repair co-ops. I’m not convinced that this necessarily leads to a “breeding ground for new strategies to confront the commodification,” as these kind of projects regularly get assimiliated into a status quo, but that just makes a jumping-off point for interesting debate. Exactly what book tours are for!

Our friendly local anarchist publisher, AK Press has one of these blog things as well.

It’s been going for a while now, but this recent post features the Edinburgh peeps, so that’s all the prompting we need to flag it up for your attention. Go read, subscribe to the feed, etc.