![]() ![]() He joined Solidarity for workers' power and was active in writing reports of industrial events. After brief contact with trotskyists he also turned to a more radical alternative, libertarian marxism. Eventually he left manufacturing and began work at the Post Office at Mount Pleasant. Joe had always been critical of the CPGB policy of concentration on the official trade union structure, favouring building up the working class organisation at the workplace. He fell out again with the Communist Party, too much thinking for himself, and moved towards less authoritarian politics. After returning to his work in the clothing trade, Joe was as active as ever in the workplace and led a strike/occupation at a factory in Warren Street. He did war service and did a spell in the nick after a clash with an officer. In the following years Joe played a less public role but was active right up to his death. His comrades did stop the fascists from marching through the East End, but at great personal risk. In 1936, Joe had defied the CPGB and mobilised dissident communists organising against the fascists of Oswald Mosley. The events of his life, outlined below, should be put into these two contexts. Hence Joe's life and times are hugely significant especially for socialist libertarians who identify themselves as being in this broad category. His relations with E&M were terminated by his early death in 1977. Joe had made contact with the Echanges et Mouvement group, effectively a council communists off-shoot, that is sitting outside both the marxist and main anarchist movements. Here he participated in full and worked in both an industrial and political context - he was an ace reporter and writer.Įven so, Joe found himself increasingly in conflict with the organisation and through his contact with more libertarian politics eventually was expelled here as well. Secondly Joe did not just hide himself away and pack in political activity but joined what was by far the best example of a libertarian marxist group, Solidarity, sometimes called Solidarity-for-workers'-power. His example could be written tens of thousands of times in the CPGB's long decline into political conventionality and disintegration. Yet within a few years, the CPGB had lost the leadership of many of this group and in Joe's case had expelled him twice, simply over their Stalinist politics and practices. The first was that he was one of the best examples of a political working class activist who automatically associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain at its peak. Joe Jacobs' life was important for two reasons. ![]() (The WGSC is 100 yards up the hill just up from the tube station, cross the gardens and there we are, opposite the Civic Centre) At the Wood Green Social Club, Stuart Crescent, N 22. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |