A MULTIPLE STRIKE

How the organized immigrants hit the system
in different places at the same time

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"Through the creation of the self-organized movement of migrants and refugees we struggle to entirely abolish the injustice which we face and to take back the rights which have been taken away from us. On a long-term basis we fight for a model of society which replaces capitalism and hierarchical relationships with freedom, justice and solidarity: a society with dignity and free from borders, racism, patriarchy and oppression"

(from PLATAFORMA, the paper of immigrants' network)

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Don't forget about the immigrants

Focusing on different forms of contemporary free associations and collective networks one should not forget about immigrants who are also organizing themselves. The challenges they take and the social processes involeved in these attempts are specific and interesting at the same time. I could start from the analysis of the structure I am involved myself, I mean the AbolishingBB collective as the collective is still based on anarchist immigrants. It might be quite an interesting material but forgive me, I will not do it in our own publication! Those who are interested I can just send to our website where some of the specifics can be found in the text "A short history of the anarchist collective from Berlin" as well as in some parts of the interview we gave 2 years ago for some Slovenian anarchist magazine ("Interview with anarchist collective ABB"). In this article I would like to take a closer look on the very interesting processes going on among the community which will probably come to the history under the name "Ireland Exodus". This is about the 1,5 or 2 million of Polish immigrants who have moved to Ireland and the Great Britain in last few years.

Ireland Exodus - rather good or bad news for the Polish and Irish ruling classes?

Just to remind some facts: the processes of economical liberalisation, the robbery politics of the entire Polish political class aimed against the population (mostly against the workers and the young generation) ended up in massive unemployment, pauperisation, lack of hope and frustration. Millions of people were forced to leave the country. About two millions headed to Ireland and England after their local labour market opened its borders for cheap labour force. Two millions of cheap workers moving to the local industry was in this case much cheaper option for the capital as moving the industry to the places of cheap labour market - especially when the labour forces defraid the costs of their relocation themselves. The Polish government was encouraged to proudly announce the amazing results of its politics - decreasing unemployment, poverty and criminality in the country but forgetting to add that it had been gained by the massive (partly desperate) exodus from the country and by drastic increase of the repressive apparatus of the polish state.

We can observe the first interesting effects of the decrease of unemployment in Poland - the growing power of those workers who remained (in misery) in this country. Strikes and protests have suddenly got a different dimension when there is no cheap labour on the spot to scary with. This used to be the common tactic of the recent Polish governments to stop any resistance before it is born. The strikes of the last months show that the elites are showing less and less arrogant face. From the anarchist perspective it doesn't seem to be spectacular news but on the other hand it might also change the face of the working class - for the more arrogant one, what in turn would be optimistic news for everyone wishing to bring this system into the revolutionary disaster. Together with the interesting tendency of growing interaction between workers and anarchist structures in Poland one could ask if the ruling class did not announce its victory too early (not having mentioned its international isolation and minor electoral support…).

Trouble makers and criminals - working immigrants organizing themselves

"Ireland Exodus" seems to be a sword cutting off two heads at once - using the martial arts terminology we would call it a multiple strike. One year ago some of the conservative British media started an infamous debate about "Poland exporting its criminals and trouble makers to Ireland in order to solve its internal problems" spreading the theory that the rate of crimes is falling in Poland while growing in Great Britain and Ireland. The local leftist reacted with "this is racists' insinuation without any reasonable arguments, the Polish workers are very polite and they are saving Irish economy so stop blaming them!" Well, as an anarchist I would like to congratulate both of them - the rightwing for his/her smart observation and the leftwing for his/her smart reaction, however,all of this is a bullshit.

Let me explain this in this way - the right was right: the trouble makers and "barbarians" have recently landed in the "Irish" and "British" neighbourhoods! And the wave of crime in fact has risen … The first acts of crime hit the TESCO company. Some Polish workers provoked quite an intensive unrest in the factory when they refused to work under condition of the permanent intensification of their work. Many Irish workers spontaneously supported the protest what in turn awaked even some Irish unionist structures. Everything ended up in an international campaign against the company. This was just the beginning of the wave of crime. In 2006 the Polish immigrant workers, among them some of the "trouble makers from TESCO" founded in Dublin their section of Independent Workers Union (IWU). This section gathered mostly the Polish but also other immigrant workers around in the struggle against the precarious system of temporal contracts for workers. Already the founding declaration of this Polish criminal section of the IWU is as interesting as sympathetic. You will find there the words saying "We want to stress that we are independent! It means in practice that we do not have absolutely any links with government or any worker-unions linked to the government (it does not matter what government is in power, we are against it)". What is also interesting is the fact that according to my researches such a radical position towards the state you will not find on the pages of the English/Irish version of IWU declaration. Just a little criminal contribution into the ways of workers organizing. This criminal association was born out of the wild unrest in the TESCO managed to bring some Irish bosses into troubles and it gathered more and more members of a different origin (international criminal plot against law and order?). In January 2007 they brought they own bulletin called "Kiszona Kapusta" - "Sauerkraut". Criminals stress there the need of the self-initiative and self-determination in the workers' resistance, while they as the association are ready to offer the workshops on organizing the strikes and harassing the bosses. "Who doesn't fight - doesn't win" is the Sauerkraut-motto. Some of these criminals were known from their radical attitudes already in Poland so one could think that the Polish elites might be extra glad of having them out of the region. Well, not really, the first international contacts which criminals made was the one with the polish anarcho-syndicalistic union IP (Workers Initiative) and except for that activities of the Polish workers in Ireland echo in their homeland providing a sort of inspiration for the local workers. This is how the sword transformed into a wild boomerang.

Trouble makers and criminals - anarchist immigrants organizing

Watch out - the second wave is coming - the real trouble makers are getting organised in the neighbourhoods of the Irish and British cities. Among the hundreds of thousands of the Polish immigrants there must be many anarchists, too. Already 2 years ago there was some rumour about an anarchist group in London communicating in a Slavic dialect of cockney and taking the Polish Embassy as their favourite aim of actions. Recently the wave has reached Dublin. On the last Poland-wide meeting of the FA (Anarchist Federation) in Szczecin (short report from this event you will find in this issue) among a few new local sections which have joined the federation structure, the FA-Dublin was announced and welcomed. FA-Dublin, a group of the Polish anarchists living in Dublin, cooperates closely with the Irish anarchists of WSM (Workers Solidarity Movement) and already translates many texts written by this group into Polish and distributes it together with its own materials among the Polish communities in Ireland. In the beginning on March they actively participated in the annual Anarchist Bookfair in Dublin. What sort of troubles will come out of this spectrum and how far this imported wave of criminals and trouble makers will infect the Irish society the future will show. One seems to be obvious already now: in the long term perspective not the best news for both the Polish and the Irish elites.

Migration is anarchism in progress

Migration, together with the natural instinct of human being to freely move around, is nowadays the result of capitalistic relations conducted with the help of the state structures. However, this forced migration is also a multiple strike against this system and a wave that puts some unexpected processes in motion - thousands of migrants taking streets of Genua 2001, burning cars on the suburbs of Paris, migrant kids attacking the police during the Mayday riots on the streets of Berlin, storm on the European Fortress, tensions around hundreds of refugee and deportation centres, unrests in the Irish factories started by immigrant workers, the growing international solidarity against any state oppression … east European anarchists printing anarchist magazines in Germany …

Immigrants - organize, your determination brings hope to the world!

Anarchists - support and join the immigrant structures!

If migration is a struggle against structural oppression and anarchism is a struggle for society of free and self-determined people, than migration is anarchism in progress!

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Veronika
February 2007