Website run by Steve Wallis: www.socialiststeve.me.uk, 07725 735255
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I, Steve Wallis, issued a call for a worldwide general strike at the time of the 2005 G8 summit, which took place from the 6th to the 8th of July in Gleneagles, Scotland. I did so via the internet (see “Other pages on this website” below), by distributing leaflets and by trying to persuade left-wing organisations in Manchester (where I was then living) to support the call, without success. I also set up a revolutionary socialist band called Galaxia and wrote two songs for it, “Do They Know It’s G8 Time?” to the tune of the Band Aid song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and “The Revolution Starts Now!”, both of which called for such strike action. I did not manage to put MP3 files containing recordings of those songs on-line until after the summit, but I did distribute the lyrics (including improved versions of them after doing the recordings to correct some political mistakes in the originals) beforehand.
Looking back, I think that the general strike call was a good strategy for the 2005 summit, because the issue of ‘third world’ poverty was highlighted in the media to a large extent (although undoubtedly more in the UK than in many other countries) in the run-up to the summit, with the Make Poverty History campaign and Live 8 concerts, and many working class people wanted to do something effective about it. If my call had been taken up by serious socialist or anti-capitalist organisations, the resulting movement could have had a big impact, perhaps even leading to a socialist revolution somewhere in the world, with the potential of threatening control of the planet by big business. However, most serious activists in Britain wanted to travel to the Edinburgh Make Poverty History demonstration on the 2nd of July and/or the demonstration at the Gleneagles summit itself on the 6th of July, rather than organise serious action in their localities, so my call wasn’t taken up. Additionally, the violence that occurred (and I tried to alleviate by joining protesters naked) at the Carnival For Full Enjoyment in Edinburgh on the 4th of July and terrorist acts in London on the 7th of July diverted attention from peaceful methods of achieving change.
However, a call that is correct at one point in time may not be correct at another. The issue of ‘third world’ poverty hardly featured in the media in 2006, and when it did the impression was that the problem has largely been solved. In my opinion, there is still a lot that needs to be done and socialism is essential to eradicate poverty and put an end to other problems such as wars and deaths from preventable diseases, but we should celebrate the fact that action by ordinary people forced significant changes like the writing off of some of the poorest countries’ debts. At the time of the 2006 summit, which took place in St Petersburg, Russia, in July, the main issue in the news was the invasion of Lebanon by the Israeli army – another issue for which socialism is the only solution but not one for which it would have been easy to mobilise people around to go on strike. I did put out a call for a worldwide general strike that year, mainly using the first edition of my Revolutionary Platform News newsletter, but my efforts to mobilise around that call including relaunching Galaxia were very much aborted due to me being locked up as a political prisoner on a psychiatric ward. When I did get on-line, I placed a Galaxia songbook on the website where the newsletter should have been, due to using the same filenames in different directories (folders). If I had not done this, a fair number of activists around the world could have printed off copies and distributed them, leading to more people accessing the website and doing likewise; I think that my subconscious deliberately caused me to upload the incorrect files due to it realising that a halfhearted strike would be counterproductive with the probable victimisation of those who had heeded the call. I put out a message shortly before the summit, pointing out that serious general strikes would be unlikely that year, partly because it was mainly taking place on a weekend; I think this further reduced the likelihood of workers heeding my call.
I did not think it a good idea to call for strike action at the time of the 2007 G8 summit in Germany. Once again, the issue of ‘third world’ poverty was rarely mentioned in the media, and there did not seem to be any other issue for which there is a groundswell of opinion to force the G8 leaders to take action. I considered it on the issue of climate change, but there needs to be a high profile campaign with clearly defined objectives, and I am now strongly inclined to believe that man-made global warming is a hoax (see my environment page), or at least less of a factor than natural cycles and events. Furthermore, there was not a strong level of support for socialism outside Latin America, and in that part of the world left-wing governments came to power anyway without the need for mass strike action – except in Bolivia where the 2005 mass movement of general strikes, occupations, blockades and demonstrations played a key role in the election victory of Evo Morales and his Movement Towards Socialism..
Soaring food and fuel prices put strike action back on the agenda
Food prices are rising rapidly, particularly for the staple diets relied on in poor countries. They soared 40% from June 2007 to February 2008, and then a further 20% in just three weeks, according to the World Food Programme (WFP), the United Nations agency responsible for distributing aid donated by governments around the world. Prices of some food items have doubled in a year. The WFP is demanding extra money from governments to avoid rationing aid. This has already triggered demonstrations and riots in many countries, and a strike wave in China.
The price of oil, and with it other fuels, is also soaring due to demand outstripping supply. Food and fuel price rises are due to the action of speculators, probably to a very large extent. With share prices of many other companies (particularly financial ones) collapsing, investors looking for somewhere more secure for their assets are turning to these lucrative commodities.
Another major factor in the food crisis is the escalating production of biofuels, with big government subsidies and using up a lot of the best land that could be used to feed people and which hardly if at all reduces global warming – which I strongly suspect is not mainly caused by mankind. There has even been an item in the New Scientist magazine predicting that global temperatures will reduce in the next decade. See the Global Warming board on my Revolutionary Platform Network Forum for my views on this subject.
The food crisis is also affected by the consumption of more meat, due to rising living standards for the growing middle class in countries like China and India – although claims by some analysts that China will catch up in prosperity with the West are ridiculous, due to the fact that their booming economy is mainly based on cheap labour.
The New Labour government in the UK is trying to restrict public sector pay rises to just above 2% (with the official rate of inflation 3.3% and real inflation much higher), and is trying to get three year pay deals since it knows inflation is likely to soar even more. It will be necessary for workers here and in other Western countries to go on strike in order to maintain living standards.
Banks and building societies are increasing interest rates to borrowers so we pay for their crisis and to discourage us from paying more. In the USA, most mortgages are fixed rate for their entire term, so big rises in inflation will cause a massive crisis for banks, and the problem is far worse than just with “subprime” mortgages sold to people with poor credit records. Read my document The food crisis and financial meltdown, an edited version of which was published on the letters page of The Herald (one of the two Scottish broadsheet newspapers) on the 29th of March 2008, for my analysis of these crises and suggestions of what can be done about them - including strike action before or at the time of the then forthcoming G8 summit.
The July 2008 summit in Japan: the left two weak to mobilise for strike action
In June 2008, I wrote and distributed a document on the way forward for the left after the NO vote in the Irish referendum on Europe, which included a call for coordinated strike action at the time of the summit the following month. However, the left (including the Weekly Worker newspaper I submitted it to) failed to take up my call. When I later searched the internet for “G8 strike”, two of my pages came top and a Scotsman article on a possible police strike at the time of the 2005 Gleneagles summit came third. Since nobody else was putting forward that call, I abandoned my attempt to mbolise for the summit.
Strike action over pay, due to soaring food and fuel prices, is taking place all the time, and it is of course possible that some strikes in some parts of the world were timed to occur when the G8 summit was on. [This may have happened in 2005 too, of course, without me finding out about it.] The left is too weak for such a bold step, it seems, and we may not agree on what form of society should replace capitalism.
Perhaps coordinated strike action will be feasible around some future event, such as another G8 summit. There will be much strike action, at different times by different groups of workers in different countries, due to the necessity for pay rises in these difficult economic times. Maybe this is a more realistic means by which societies around the world can be transformed, but I will keep maintaining this website in case strike action around a forthcoming summit becomes a realistic prospect.
What sort of society do we want strike action to lead to?
I have set up the Ethical Capitalism Network to promote a more ethical form of capitalism where the rich are forced to pay their fair share of tax. Maybe ethical capitalist societies could introduce rationing of meat and dairy products to ensure that the world can be fed. Bill Gates, until recently the richest person in the world due to the extortionate prices of Micro$oft software, has recently announced that he will give away his entire fortune! If some other members of the super-rich follow suit (and Warren Buffet has already donated sizeable amounts of money to Gates’ foundation), capitalists may ease the problems of world poverty enough to keep the system intact.
However, I am a revolutionary socialist and strongly believe that the scale of the food crisis necessitates a socialist solution. I have established a virtual organisation called the Foundation for PR-based Socialism, which advocates a form of socialism based on proportional representation (PR) by single transferable vote (STV), with everyone in control of society not just the working class (as Marxists argue should be the case).
You can discuss these issues on the following forums at: http://groups.yahoo.com: g8-summit-worldwide-general-strike (the most important), g8-summit-worldwide-school-students-strike, g8-summit-worldwide-college-students-strike and g8-summit-worldwide-university-students-strike