Free shipping on all items to the UK. Carefully packed and prompt delivery.             

THE DEEPER MEANING OF THE STRUGGLE: An Outline History of the International Shop Stewards Movement and Socialism

Price: £3.00
Number of pages: 
64
First published: 
2009
This edition: 
2009
Contents: 

  1. Note to Readers
  2. Introductory Outline
  3. Origins
  4. Development
  5. The Alternative Emerges
  6. (Work) Shop Stewards in Charge
  7. The Revolutionary Dimension
  8. Disaster in Russia
  9. Workers councils in Germany and elsewhere
10. Retrenchment
11. Revival in, and after, World War Two
12. In a More Stable Economy -- the US
13. Shop Stewards in the UK
14. Women's Liberation - An additional element
15. France and Italy
16. Workplace Organisation
17. The Leadership of the Shop Stewards Movement
18. Insurrections in the East
19. The General Situation Outside Europe
20. Modern Society - the decline of the movement
21. Future Perspectives
22. Conclusions
23. Appendix One: Workplace and parliamentary procedures compared
24. Appendix Two: Contrasting approaches to opposition, and to future perspectives
25. Appendix Three: Libertarian Socialists - As We See It Now (This is an updated version of the old Solidarity booklet)
                                 Our Capitalist Society
                                 Exploitation
                                 Resistance
                                 Sustainable World
                                 The Alternative
                                 Councils
                                 Action
                                 Part of the Problem not Solutions
                                 The Marxist Diversion
                                 Anarchism
                                 Direct Action not Parliament
                                 The Political Core
26. Reading references: [13 pages listed alphabetically with short notes]

Back page:

      The Gospel According to the Rule by E. Morse
      "Working to Rule", reprinted from Solidarity for Workers' Power, Vol. 2, No. 1]

Biographical note(s): 

Alan Woodward was born in 1939 into a London working class family, failed the 11+ exam, had a successful secondary modern education nonetheless and did national service in the R.A.F.. After training and working for a while as a teacher, he began a heroic career as an agitator in North london factories. Victimised out 5 years later, he resumed education and then spent three decades in running and taking shop stewards courses. He worked in the Midlands, London, in colleges and universities and WEA, for several union organisations and rank ad file bodies. He was always active in workplace and union.

politically he was active in the Labour Party Young Socialists, against the bomb in CND, and then in the newly formed International Socialists. Events move on and after two decades battling against increasingly sectarian marxist organisation, he is now active in the libertarian movement. This is much pleasanter and more rewarding. He attends demos and marches - from the rather grand Aldermaston to the lowly patients pickets against insurance-run polyclinics. He was recently involved in the Ford Visteon occupation in Enfield and wrote up his experience in a booklet. Every participating worker got a copy. At 70, he has retired technically but still reads widely, thinks in a hurry and writes obsessively. A new career, encouraging girls football for grandchildren, takes much of his time, as does the Radical History Network. He hopes to live long enough to see the workers in the East and South resuming sucessfully the struggle against capitalism.

Publications include:

Ford Visteon Enfield Workers Occupation: An eyewitness account and first thoughts
Party Over Class: How Leninism subverted workers councils organisation
A Short Guide to Workers Council Socialists
Readers Guide to Workers Council Socialism
A Political Economy of Workers Socialism
A Guide to the Health, Safety and Welfare at Work
Going to Meetings
... and several booklets on strikes

Also as editor:

Fragments: Episodes in local workers history, Vols. 1, 2 and 3
The NHS is 60

Unpublished texts include:

Red Reading for Socialists