Thread by @libcomorg

You can put this in the context of massive coal strikes in the US, France and Germany, all around 1948.

https://twitter.com/papa_rosh/status/1218750479418740737

The US strike was 1949-50, there's an account from a participant and member of the Johnson-Forest tendency.

libcom.org/library/coal-m…

In US-occupied Japan, workers seized control of production between about 1946-1949 in response to massive shortages and in face of both the Japanese Zaibatsu and US occupying forces. This was accompanied by miners strikes.

libcom.org/history/produc…

Notes on the French miners strike of 1948 are here. Not aware of much else written on this one.

libcom.org/blog/french-mi…

The 1948 steel and coal strike in Germany is barely documented online at all. Found this for some background though.

marxists.org/history/etol/n…

Then in Nigeria 1949 there was the Iva Valley coal strike, where 21 miners were shot dead at a British state-owned Enugu coal mine.

libcom.org/history/iva-va…

The coal strike in France was itself part of a wider strike wave across the country in that period, including the Renault plant in Paris.

libcom.org/library/social…

Also the OP's 'weaken unions' is true, but it needs to be put in the context of active complicity from union leadership in undermining working class strength in return for a partnership role with capital. See the role of the British TUC in Kenya post war.

libcom.org/library/jomo-k…

Kenya had multiple mass strikes between 1946 and 1950, part of a transcontinental strike wave after the war.

libcom.org/blog/post-war-…

This was an international post-war strike wave, but has been massively overlooked compared to other periods like 1917 or 1968. Instead people mostly go on about 'post-war social democracy' divorced from class struggle. libcom.org/library/labour…

The class struggle aspect is often erased from the post-war African anti-colonial movements too, focusing either on pro-independence politicians like Nkrumah, or on armed struggle in Algeria and Kenya. libcom.org/library/intern…

The guerilla warfare of the Kenya Land and Freedom Army became the *only* option available after 1952, when the British put tens of thousands of workers from both the cities and plantations into concentration camps and many more into 'new villages', leaving only the forests.

So you have the 'post-war consensus' in the UK, where the unions were integrated into the management of capital under both Labour and Tory governments until the '80s. Massive repression and/or neo-colonial 'independence' deals in the colonies.