Some argue that people should vote for the least worst option on the ballot paper to prevent a Tory victory or stop the neo-fascist BNP gaining ground.

Whether or not you decide to vote for a political party or candidate is ultimately your choice. However the real struggle must take place outside the ballot box, on the streets and picket lines, in our local communities and workplaces.

In the short-term, we must fight the growing wave of attacks being unleashed on us by the boss class and ruling elite. In the longer-term, we must organise to build a better world based on the principles of equality, individual liberty, mutual aid, solidarity and working-class self-management.

After the polling stations close today we will continue to promote the anarchist and libertarian wing of the working-class movement as an alternative to the party political gameshow.

Reject the rule of politicians, bosses and bureaucrats!

Whoever wins the election, we all lose!

Don’t vote and complain, get organised and fight back!

Image from Last Hours.

To make a real difference on a worldwide scale you need to speak to, and involve, the people in your street, as they are part of the world community too. Join forces with people who are actually self-organising already but maybe not aware of it. Because the MOST radical thing we can do is build strong communities that can think, decide and act for themselves.

Read the whole article here.

Click here to see a video of the egging.

Examples of other things you might want to have handy when a politician is next visiting your local area include…

Potato Waffles – because all they do is waffle on…

Rotten fruit – for a rotten gang of careerists, liars and criminals…

You get the idea…

Lyrics:

Now I don’t give a toss about the general election
Cos all my hopes and ideals lie in another direction
And I don’t see the point in putting an X in a box
Cos I know what it is, it’s the illusion of choice
But I’m not apathetic so don’t give us that shit
Cos I know how this works, the problem’s systematic
The range of choice is so narrow it might as well have been rigged
Cos whichever way you vote you’ll always get a Tory pig

Now there’s some things politicians never like to discuss
Like capitalism and the state and the damage it does
And not just to minorities but also to the masses
While the media frames debate to suit the ruling classes
Yeah there’s certain places politicians just won’t go
Cos they know their real role is to maintain the status quo
That’s why nothing will change despite the promises they make
They call this democracy, I call it fucking fake
Cos the reality in Britain is Have’s vs Haven’t's
And this system wouldn’t last if there was really free ballots
Agendas are set by the existing elite
Your opinion doesn’t mean shit if you’re just a man on the street
Cos you’ve got to have money to make your voice heard
Even when a million marched they never heard a single word
Though the will of the people was against their aims
They still had a free-hand to play their war games

So now you know why I’m not going to vote
Cos the whole system’s fucked, it’s nothing but a sick joke
I’m sick of compromise and I’m sick of their lies
To give them your vote is to legitimise their crimes
Fuck the Labour party and fuck the Tory scum
Thieving, murdering bastards, yeah, every single one
We’ve got to tear it down from foundation to steeple
Cos the key to real democracy is Power to the people

“…a party is an organization that aims to lead and control the working class … The workers should not blindly accept the slogans of others, nor of our own groups but must think, act, and decide for themselves.“

We believe that the working-class can and must assert itself politically without having to participate in elections and vote for the least worst option on the ballot paper.

At our disposal we have:

DIRECT ACTION – when people fight for their interests or against an injustice by taking matters into their own hands, rather than going through the ‘official’ political/bureaucratic channels. Examples include: wildcat strikes, boycotts, workplace occupations, mass pickets, autonomous protests.

SOLIDARITY – this is a not a just a word, it’s a weapon. By sticking together and actively supporting others, our chances of achieving victory in struggles are multiplied.
 
DIY DEMOCRACY – we don’t need political bosses or bureaucrats controlling us, calling the shots and using power on our behalf. Obviously there needs to be people who are delegated the responsibility of organising and administering things, but they should be constantly accountable to the rank-and-file and decision-making power must remain at the grassroots.

DON’T LEAVE POLITICS TO THE POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS!

We just discovered your website on internet.

We just wanted to inform you that we launched a similar project here in France

http://blog.jeveuxarreterdevoter.info/

jeveuxarreterde voter = i want to stop to vote

At the beggining our idea was to divert (hijack) the “no smoking campaign” into a “no voting campaign”, diverting their motto :

“elections lead to impotence and can kill your critical mind – never start !”

We also published a pamphlet (in french sorry) to expose different arguments for voting abstention and direct action. If some of you understand french and want to read it :

 http://cnt.ait.caen.free.fr/cas/pour_l_abstention.pdf 

And to finish on our web site we tried to collects texts for abstention in non european languages (just to reply to those that claim that our position is only good for “westerners”) So there are some texts in kurdish, farsi, chinese, etc …

We will add a link to your web site on ours !

Yours for the revolution,

CNT AIT Paris members

All through the 1980s and 1990s the talk on picket lines (once the football was got out of the way) was how things would improve for the working class once a Labour Government replaced the Conservatives. Hadn’t our Trade Union General Secretaries Tom Jackson, Alan Tuffin and Alan Johnson repeatedly told us so in an endless stream of UPW/UCW/CWU literature?

There was quite a bit of hope in the air when the Labour Party won the 1997 General Election. After all, hadn’t we members of Trade Unions funded the victory? Surely the Labour Party would look after us?

Left: Postal workers on strike before the CWU leadership surrender.

Labour are now hoping for a fourth term in power and the workers paradise still hasn’t materialised.

Postal workers are as aware of this as any other workers. We’ve had Labour’s Peter Mandelson trying and failing to sell us off, Labour’s Allan Leighton running down services by making thousands of full-time jobs part-time and abolishing the second delivery and making the only delivery much later in the day, stopping Sunday collections, stopping morning collections from post boxes and, along with his accomplice Adam Crozier, allowing private firms to use Royal Mail staff to deliver their mail at a cost to the taxpayer and postal workers pension funds of at least two pence per item. None of these things could have happened without the blessing of the Labour Government. Why do the leadership of the CWU continue to fund the Labour Party? Why does Billy Hayes throw his toys out of his pram whenever someone suggests withholding donations to the Labour Party? “Arise Sir Billy”? Who knows?

The latest sell-out is the deal Royal Mail and their partners in the CWU want us to vote for. This includes even later start times, longer Saturday hours (but not for CWU leaders or Royal Mail bosses) no extra payment for unaddressed leaflets, which now stands at the magnificent sum of 1.67 pence per item (in 1980 it was 1 pence per item!) because the once guaranteed early start allowance has been used to fund the delivery of these unwanted and deeply unloved items of garbage through Britain’s letterboxes.

The deal goes much further than this. Royal Mail boast that the deal will help them push through change (and in Royal Mail, change is never progress) at a pace which suits them.

Just about everyone involved in the postal service, postmen, postwomen and customers agree that the service has gone to pot in the last five or six years. Just like public transport, education and the NHS in fact!

So the talk on many picket lines in 2007 and 2009 turned to how things could be improved for everyone concerned.

Right: CWU head bureaucrat Billy Hayes. Last year his salary was £97,647 - around five times the average salary of a postal worker.

Anyone who has worked for Royal Mail for any length of time can see how things could be improved. Royal Mail know this, and in the past, competitions were held to see who could come up with a more efficient way of doing the job. Anyone making a suggestion could win a biro! It was called ‘Brainwaves’ and it was a standing joke until Royal Mail pulled the plug on the thing!

Really, who should we make suggestions just so as some already overpaid office boy with the title of ‘manager’ can pocket another bonus? So we all stay nice and quiet and watch the them struggle and foam at the mouth as they try to bully staff into compliance. Of course the bullying often works! We have staff arriving for work half an hour early for no extra pay. We have staff using their own cars, for no extra petrol money while Royal Mail happily does away with van driving duties. But a growing number of staff refuse to play the Royal Mail game and carry out the job to the letter (literally!)

It can be different and it used to be different. Until quite recently, if a colleague had a wedding or a football match to get to one Saturday and could not get the day off, people would volunteer to help him or her with their delivery. They would take a street or two and deliver the mail so as their friend could get away early and not miss out on the big day. I’ve seen fans of the Reds help out fans of the Blues so as they would not miss an FA Cup tie. I’ve seen people take out part of a delivery so as someone could take their daughter to Alder Hey for an appointment. I’ve even seen a Jehovah’s Witness help a Baptist so as he could get to a friends funeral in Manchester

All this changed when the CWU called off the 2007 strikes, just as we Royal Mail on the ropes. For £400, (which was ours because we’d earned it!) Royal Mail and the CWU brought in ‘flexibility’. This now meant that anyone with a few minutes spare time on their hands would be forced to carry out deliveries to cover sick absence and annual leave.

Left: Unite joint general secretary Derek Simpson, the workers’ fat cat and stooge of the gutter press.

Needless to say, being forced to do something is completely different from volunteering. Even the British Army understand this! So, when the Bully Boy in charge patrols the office telling people they have time to get back and ‘cover’ a duty, that time evaporates! Instead of rushing through the job to help a mate, the job gets done by the book and the ‘manager’ ends up having to deliver the mail himself. There’s no happier sight these days than a ‘manager’ arriving back in a delivery office soaked to the skin and exhausted, his feet aching and with a pile of undelivered adverts which he couldn’t find the addresses for!

But here’s the difference! In one instance, we’re working for ourselves. We help each other because we’re happy to do so. We make each other a cup of tea. We give to collections to help those less fortunate. We tell strangers they have left their headlights on. We bring back wheelie bins for elderly neighbours. We lift prams off busses. It’s the most natural thing in the world to help others!

Most of us do these things with no thought of reward, but it would all become different if we were ordered and bullied to do them, but such is the nature of work under capitalism. Things which are necessary for life to function become a chore when, if society was based upon cooperation, they would become more pleasurable.

One of the main topics of conversation on picket lines and internet message boards was how much better the job could be run if there were no managers getting in the way. The old saying “Bosses need workers – workers don’t need bosses” is very true.

What is the function of trade union leaders in these disputes? The answer is to keep the present system running by entering into cozy deals with management. The 2007 Agreement which encouraged bullying and harassment by low level managers sowed the seeds of the 2009 dispute. With Christmas looming, the CWU bosses, not wishing to upset their friends in Government, called off the strikes.

It should be borne in mind that the national strikes of 2007 and 2009 were forced onto the CWU leadership by countless small, local disputes, mainly due to the policy of Royal Mail in giving local managers a free hand to re-write any agreements they had with the CWU and to use whatever bully-boy tactics they thought fit against staff.

Because the leaders of the CWU are so remote from the daily lives of the people they’re supposed to represent, it is only natural that they feel at home sitting around the table with top level managers. The massive salaries and expenses these Wimbledon based hacks receive for allegedly looking after the interests of the membership means they have very little in common with us. No wonder the propaganda about the latest deal from both managers and the CWU is so alike!

Left: A picket by members of the CNT-AIT, the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union.

How much better it would be to have a union run along democratic lines, where representatives work alongside members and carry out the same job, had to stand for re-election on an annual basis and received the same pay levels. How much better it would be if there were no links between the union and any political party which only exist to ensure the vested interests of a political elite instead of the best interests of the members. A union based on solidarity, mutual aid and direct action has to be better than the farcical situation the TUC unions find themselves in which is to be flunkeys of the bosses.

Download the 4-page document in PDF format here.

They also have a variety of related sticker and poster designs.

Sticker designs:

http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_all_stickers_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_sticker_1_v2_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_sticker_3_v2_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_sticker_5_v2_6s.pdf

Poster designs:

http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_poster_1_A3_v2_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_poster_3_A3_v2_6s.pdf
http://www.afed.org.uk/pdfs/afed_election_2010_poster_5_A3_v2_6s.pdf

For those in the Bristol area, there will also be a public meeting hosted by the Bristol Radical History group. Steve Mills and Ian Bone relate their experiences of contemporary interventions into the electoral process including The Alarm the Swansea based forerunner of The Bristolian, the legendary anarchist tabloid Class War and the Vote Nobody campaign of 2001. These two renowned local troublemakers will also provide their own searing critique of the upcoming General Election.

Date: Monday 12th April 2010
Venue: The Stag & Hounds, 74 Old Market Street, BS2 0EJ
Time: 7:30pm
Price: Donation
Speakers: Steve Mills, Ian Bone.