fire brigade?angry brigade?

local/regional news on the major broadcating institution in this country(the bbc,in brtain)tonight reported that a female fire-fighgter of over 4 years service faces more than the possibilty of discipline or dismissal from her job as a result of her appearing in the audience last year of a major and commonly respected discussion programme on the same network and shown nationally.

having seen the clip shown,she is seen and heard identifying herself as a firefighter but not specifically by name nor her emplloyer(fire services currently remain county based here at present).she then asked the question that whilst not wishing to strike,what other means were left in the context of public sector cuts.

this is not 1945 when the main means of public communication involved little or no television,and political meetings were more frequent and in public.the idealogical and media terrain has changed.televison has become one of the only ways to conduct pale reflections of what passes for public debate and accountability.

whilst i welcome the opportunities afforded by ne media,it is clear that nearly everything about them remains in the grip of those who rule over us and buy our labour.

the situation this woman has been placed in is becoming more frequent if not neccessarilly so public.it is also said of the uk that workers in britain work longer hours than elsewher in europe.i suspect that the pressure and stress at work in the uk might also be higher and that this includes increasing pressures on many of us that our behaviour and thinking at,around and after work is also under scrutiny.at the same time individual appraisal systems whillst sold to us as increased personal attention are actually about increasiung our individuation,and by implication our alienation.it also tries to micro manage every detail of our lives in the interests of productivity and profit.they use every means and half baked idea to bind us to their banal system.

this reflects my own experience where beyond the individual intent of individual managers,i like many feel under more detailed scrutiny,and they want me and my colleagues to be ambassadors for the service outside and beyond the actual hours and dimensions of the job.

they might purchase my labour but they shall notg command me beyond that.indeed,i hate even this compromise even more than in the past.enough is too mmuch and we should not tolerate it.


i find myself angry not just that my values as a revolutionary socialist are not theirs,but that they cannot make their own system work properly.and that it impinges on all our lives so badly.

i want at worst to work to live not live to work.we,the working class whose labour underpins their damned system across the world have better things to do with our time,our lives and our aspirations than this.

to heel with it all.lets rebuild something better.

lost,
24/03/2011

there are alternatives;to organise within and without unions to stick their crisis and their unnacceptable attitudes to them.i hope,though i am not optimisticv that the threat will be withdrawn from this woman worker who is also a legitimate fbu/fire brigades union official.failing that,and indeed even if the threat is withdrawn organising to strike and withdraw workers labour is the only starting point.

whilst i do not advocate terror,perhaps the firefighters can be a new form of angry brigade in rejecting their system and its imposition on us.

the time for them to feel the wight of an angry brigade as wide and wider than the class,organised,imaginative and innovative in expressing our anger that we can then turn to an engine to generate something a lot bettr than this.we should no longer accept therir crumbs,their rules nor their wsay of doing things.

the might and experience and knowledge of a united and international working class cannot possibly do any worse.