Oceania

The COVID-19 pandemic has left the entire working class living with a new level of uncertainty. There have now been cases reported on every continent after researchers and military personnel on Antarctica recently reported their first cases.

Petitions, public meetings, strikes, go-slows, violence and armed revolt. Nelson, New Zealand in 1843 was said to be 'in a state little short of anarchy'. In this paper, Jared Davidson argues that the self-activity of the Nelson labourers and their wives had a significant impact on the development of Nelson, drawing on traditions of popular protest, class power and the gendered labour of making shift. The agricultural backgrounds of many of the emigrants and the conflicts of the English countryside – including but not limited to the Swing Riots of 1830/31 – played a role in structuring the gang-men’s response to their situation.

‘The best antidote to ideology is detail,’ writes Paul Mason. And the detail that’s missing this Armistice Day is that working people, when they take power into their own hands, can end whatever catastrophe is imposed on them.

The Australian government has passed legislation, known as the ‘Pacific solution’, that will see asylum seekers transferred to offshore prisons on remote Pacific islands….Sorry, I meant, ‘immigration processing centres’.