Live Working Or Die Fighting

Just Published!

Live Working or Die Fighting is a book by BBC Newsnight journalist Paul Mason, covering the rise and fall of the global labour movement. To buy it on Amazon click here. To see a 60 second video about the book go here. It starts with the Peterloo Massacre and ends with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising rediscovering along the way the voices of ordinary people who set out to change their lives and society at the same time. And it sets these stories from the past alongside stories from today: Bolivian tin-miners, Iraqi oil workers, migrant cleaners in London's Canary Wharf. The book is published by Harvill Secker, price £12.99.

Join me in Manchester, May 5th at FMH

For May Day this year I am discussing the book, and my recent trip to China to meet workers organising in the Pearl River Delta. The meeting is in the Friends Meeting House, Manchester at 1400 hra on 5 May 2008. As this is the scene of some of the fighting at Peterloo I may, weather permitting, lead a small impromtu tour of the Peterloo Massacre site if there is time afterwards. Parliaments Annual! Suffrage Universal! etc etc. See you there if you are in the rainy city on that day.

Bookshop Barnie, tonight, LSE Waterstones

I am appearing in a Bookshop Barnie tonight at 18.45 in Waterstone's Economist Bookshop, Portugal Street London (ie the LSE). It's invite only but I am sure if you really want to blag your way in you will. Apparently I speak for five minutes and then there is a bit of a "barnie" with everyone pitching in, followed by signing and white wine etc. Hopefully it will not lead to actual violence! The paperback is out imminently (ie the small paperback aimed at the paperback market). See you there? Paul Mason

Coming next... the paperback!

Having been named one of Terry Eagleton's books of the year in TLS, Live Working or Die Fighting is now on its way to a paperback edition. Out in February with a brand new cover - order it now. And a Happy Christmas, Eid, Diwali, Channukah and Winterfest to everybody who's bought, read or otherwise supported the book.

Longlisted!

The book has been longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. Read about it and nine other brilliant contenders here. Win them all by answering this question.

No Sweat Scotland reviews the book

Review by NoSweat Scotland. Read it here. It comments: "A distinctive feature of the book is the way Mason tells stories of collective action through the lives of those who led them. Thus we learn about Samuel Bamford’s role in worker organising - including military-style drilling - building a movement during the infancy of the English working class. The Peterloo massacre is also commemorated by Shelley’s poem, which urged workers to “rise like lions” because “Ye are many - they are few”.

Paul at the Edinburgh Book Festival

I will be reading from Live Working or Die Fighting, and talking about it, at the Edinburgh Book Festival this Friday 17 August at 11am in the Peppers Theatre. It's a joint session with Phillipe Legrain, author of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them.

Peterloo memorial call

This Thursday sees the launch of a campaign for a memorial to the Peterloo Massacre. See this Guardian article for details. And read my "fresh as new paint" (Socialist Review) account of the massacre in the book. Also my one man re-enactment of the massacre was on Radio Four, 20 June.

Tolpuddle Meeting, Marxism 2007

I did a short session about the book at the Tolpuddle Martyrs festival last Saturday. It was about "organising vulnerable workers", and on the platform as well as myself were Kalayaan who organise domestic workers who've, in some cases, been effectively made slaves inside the homes they're working in. We also heard about the challenge of organising migrant agricultural workers in the South West of England - ironic given the Tolpuddle Martyrs were trying to do exactly the same thing (and then became unwilling migrants themselves!). The festival itself is well worth visiting - I had never been before. One week prior to this I did a Q&A about the book at Marxism 2007, alongside Martin Smith and Billy Hayes discussing the shape of the working class (global and local). Thanks to all those at both events who bought the book and attended signings. And thanks to Bookmarks for organising this.

The book reviewed by Spiked Online

Neil Davenport has reviewed the book on Spiked Online. Read it here. He writes: "Mason is a graceful and evocative writer and he manages to bring to life the exhilaration and turbulence, the triumphs and despair of working-class struggle over a 150-year period. But, while it is particularly enjoyable to read accounts of the once-mighty German workers’ movement in the 1920s, it’s difficult to share Mason’s belief that a new international workers’ movement is being born. "

There follows an essay on the book which I will sum up here for those who don't have time to read Spiked Online:

1) The working class "has no political existence" since the collapse of Stalinism, and the new workforce of the world is not really a "working class" because it does not have a conscious understanding of its own historic role.

2) "Mason’s brand of ‘internationalism’ in Live Working or Die Fighting might seem radical and outward-looking, but it actually means he doesn’t have to bother challenging controversial issues in the UK - whether it is health panics, free speech bans, restrictions on liberties or even Celebrity Big Brother."

3) The post-Seattle anti-globalisation movement is "a force for reaction, not progress". Since it is anti-growth and anti-productivist. Ditto environmentalism.

Then the reviewer discovers a chapter in the book I did not write, namely a part which urges NGOs to do something about China, and which seems to decry China's breakneck economic growth. I was puzzled by this until I realised it was a necessary construction to support the author's main point:

4) "To suggest that NGOs should have a greater role in China’s internal affairs is to call for that nation to be chained to Western control once more. In this context, then, we should be wary of outraged reports about the exploitation of the Chinese working class. ...we should recognise that such reports about exploited Chinese workers are now used as a weapon against development in China, and thus against the people of China themselves."

5) "As for identifying yourself today as ‘working-class’, or liberal commentators making low wages and poor working conditions a big issue, these rehearsed totems of the left are part of the culture of complaint against modernity and modern life."

This is a very interesting world view and one I recognise from early Manchester liberalism, which also thought complaints about the working conditions in Lancashire factories were "anti-modern" and stood in the way of national progress.

I recommend this essay as a very complete 180 antidote for those who have been swept away by the romantic optimism and workerism of Live Working or Die Fighting.

Compass Conference - look out for readings & signings

Paul will be reading from Live Working or Die Fighting at a session at the think tank Compass' conference on Saturday 9 June 2007  in London. There will be a smaller events organised by think tanks IPPR on 15 June and, Civitas, on 29 June.