strikes Follow

Last month's ballot result for industrial action by British Airways cabin crews showed how widespread the fear and anger about management attacks was.

We have just been on all-out strike for three weeks. We struck to resist plans by Superdrug to attack our pay and conditions.

With postal workers taking to the picket lines last month, Mark Dolan, a prominent CWU activist, writes about strikes, rank and file organisation and 30 years working in the post office

At the time of writing, UCU members at Tower Hamlets College in East London have been on all-out strike for three weeks.

We have just concluded a 57 day strike. People have really sacrificed over that period. But it felt good to conclude it with a significant win and even over job security - where the company seemed intractable - we made gains.

As increasing numbers of workers take action over pay Charlie Kimber examines the political dimension of the strikes and looks at the lessons we can learn from the past.

I was an activist from a young age. As a student in Nigeria I was secretary of the national students' organisation in my university. I had a political background - I lived with a political uncle and he was my inspiration.

"The Shell drivers have driven a coach and horses through the Brown and Darling pay freeze," said Tony Woodley, joint general secretary of Unite, after the Shell tanker drivers won a 14 percent pay deal last month.

Many workers are gaining confidence to join the resistance to pay cuts and privatisation. Charlie Kimber assesses the pressure on Gordon Brown from below.

"...for the first time [it] awoke feeling and class-consciousness in millions upon millions as if by an electric shock... the proletarian mass... quite suddenly and sharply came to realise how intolerable was that social and economic existence which they had patiently endured for decades in the chains of capitalism. Thereupon there began a spontaneous general shaking of and tugging at these chains."

Some 45,000 Further and Adult Education lecturers in the University College Union (UCU) are being balloted for strike action over pay alongside teachers on 24 April.

Striking screenwriter Howard Rodman spoke to Socialist Review about challenging the studios over royalties from the "new media".