After Vladimir Mayakovsky.

This poem has been presented as a series of images in order to preserve its structure on all devices. Alt-text has been provided for each image.

I’d tear through bureaucracy like a wolf or maybe just a rabid dog. I have no respect for any kind of thing that worsens the daily slog. Nothing good has ever come from systems working top-down And any leader, whatever the label, wears authority like a crown. But a worker has to deal with what there is, however hard.
So I have many contradictory thoughts when looking at my membership card. That piece of plastic; orange, purple, red (or is that vermillion?) Is nothing special on the surface, just one card of six million. Yet it represents a force that can stop an industry in its tracks That shows what happens, when it withdraws, when labour decides to lapse.
That is: capital’s collapse. At least that’s what they say in songs
and it’d be nice to leave it there But a song does not a future make, and solidarity’s much more rare than they say. We’re no longer those horny handed sons of toil, no flatcaps here, we’re all precarious. But try to tell the movement that they’ll treat you like you’re plain delirious.
As if there was ever some kind of bar to being one of the proletariat. Trade Unions are one of the few narrowing public avenues for workers to try and create, to realise a common wealth. Yet Unions Gen Secs can’t help but baulk when workers organise themselves.
For Union bosses like to talk in terms of slow reform and increments. But in doing so they forget about the most important part: the human element. For workers and small unions, in recognition deals, there’s not much room at all. Is this really the peak of the labour movement? To be recognised by Capital? The bigger unions
despite their numbers seem Useless Seven Days A Week. Too busy with radio talks and shitting on comrades to understand why they’re going under. The TUC, whatever the heat, will do nothing and then duly wait. To take their paychecks, and manage defeat, letting workers be crushed by the carceral state. Not the types for grounding conversations, let alone a ‘most radical rupture’
The labour bosses are just trying to clamber up the nation’s social structure. Listen, if you’re incredulous, and find it hard to believe me, Just take a look at the last gen sec, and her brand new barony. I have to say it’s a literal interpretation of ‘labour aristocracy’.
The congress, with its salaried suits, so obsessed with being rational Has forgotten that once upon a time, workers at least tried to be international. Solidarity, when we let it loose, is a power that reaches across oceans. What’s the state
of that power today? Tweets and posts and conference motions. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to say solidarity is a competition. But workers in the past, probably more racist than we, still fought for slavery abolition. Those lads and men, in Lanc and Manc, backed the embargo of slave picked cotton A sterling example, yet 160 years on, the movement still hasn’t caught on.
And yet, despite all the glaring flaws it’s hard to reject in full. I’ve seen joy fill the eyes of a picketing worker, as they break out of their lull I’ve seen the fire on a picket line, putting into action their iron will. I’ve heard them sing stanzas of past workers and martyrs, and felt history stand still.
Not to be a shill, but I live for each time workers put forth their demands. And yes, the movement is diminished, but an ebbing fire can still burn a hand. 2 centuries now of bitter struggle, and still the movement persists because it’s not
for nothing trade unionists find their way onto pig blacklists. There’s a standout reason why the state apparatus wants to break us into tiny shards. It’s because in my hands, gripped tightly, I hold a coloured acrylic card. I’d tear through bureaucracy like a wolf or maybe just a rabid dog.
I have no respect for any kind of thing that worsens the daily slog. But I pull out this card to show the world I’m a proud member of this collective. Orange, red, purple, vermillion one of six million other perspectives,
I say to the bosses, the police, the union barons: the time to reckon with you all comes soon, then. But for now: read it and weep, you fuckers! I’m a member of a workers union.

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