CNT – Observations and Misunderstandings

This might end up being one of those pieces which becomes a few random thoughts that aren’t related but I feel are worth mentioning. To begin with I’m having a nightmare trying to cook split peas. I was hoping to make a nice soup with sweet potato and carrot but these bloody peas just won’t cook. I soaked them for over twenty-four hours and have now had them boiling away for at least an hour to no avail. I enjoy cooking. I also enjoy eating and this enjoyment of eating and of having no money over the years means I’m not a bad cook. I don’t make enough soups though. A split pea soup sounds just lovely.

I’m a total romantic. I’m listening to Spanish Civil War music and dreaming of what could have been. It was such a glorious and horrific time. We like to imagine antifa and the antifascist as some new phenomenon but it’s been going as long as the fascist gave themselves such a name. I have mentioned this particular war a few times but it really is another example of the people being screwed over by power. Not just power in Spain but through the neutrality of countries like the UK. Franco had Hitler’s Germans and Mussolini’s Italians, the Republic ended up having no choice but relying on the Soviets who took over as best they could and did more damage than help. France may have been a Republic but it was never built on the ideals of decentralisation and the anarcho-collectives. The European powers as ever showed their true colours, for old powers like the British, Fascism was infinitely more palatable than people having true power. These things are contagious, they must be quashed.

The Twentieth Century was just a long list of outside interference with vested interests. Allende, Chile and Pinochet is always an easy one to bring up but let’s not forget Cambodia and Margaret Thatcher’s refusal to recognise the new communist government that replaced the genocidal maniac Pol Pot. She was also a bit of a fan of apartheid South Africa. Let’s not forget the British influence upon the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Iran that wanted to nationalise oil production, the dictatorship of the new Shah, a western puppet, more agreeable. General Suharto in Indonesia who killed a quarter of the population but who provided the Australians, as well as the US and Brits, with cheap access to natural minerals. Yugoslavia, the last Socialist country in Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union was never allowed to exist. It is always easier to control smaller broken up and angry states than one larger one.

Talking of apartheid, Palestine is another obvious one. Obvious because it is still going on not because it is ever really talked about. You wouldn’t know it if you just watched western media but Israel have been bombing the shit out of the Gaza Strip for eight straight days now. Apparently Hamas fired two homemade rockets out and the Israeli’s felt the need to obliterate them in return. Eight days and not a peep.

Anyway my split peas have burnt. I got carried away and forgot to check on them. I give up.

I had an interesting revelation last night in the pub. It involved tipping. Now different countries have different rules towards tips or cultural approaches shall we say. The American version probably more well known than most. The Yankee gods of capitalism have created a system in which you are guilted into paying half the waiters wage on top of the meal or drink you’ve just ordered as you know they’ll be paid nothing otherwise. In parts of Asia tips are not part of the culture, I’ll never forget the two Canadian guys throwing tips around in Burma despite it being culturally not a done thing and then wondering why they were being over charged for other things. Mediterranean cultures vary but usually you leave a few coins as you feel. In Spain during the Civil War the anarchist trade union the CNT banned the use of tips and I never fully grasped the significance behind that until last night.

The barman in this little village pub was probably in his fifties, went about his job without any fuss and certainly without flair in line arguably with the pub itself. Happy hour had finished fifteen minutes earlier but he decided anyway to give me the happy prices for the two pints, which he didn’t need to but went out of his way to do anyway. From the coins I gave him I was due fifty pence back in change but I found this issue of whether I should let him keep it as thanks for the prices a difficult one. He was a man and I was a man, but it was more that we were two blokes, by tipping him it would demean him, and there seemed to just be something unspoken that this would be an affront to his dignity. Certainly the village pub atmosphere played a part, but I may have given a woman or younger man the change in that situation. It is also possible that it was purely this guy in particular and the energy that he gave off but it allowed for an experience and understanding that was original and unique for me.

There is something about the word undignified that makes me uneasy, it seems somehow snobbish and pretencious, but there is something about being tip hungry that seems fitting for such a word. Of course anyone, including myself, who has worked in hospitality will have at some point sniffed out a tip. As I said though I don’t care much for dignity, I’ve never lacked the version that without would dehumanise and subjugate, and have never allowed pride to prevent me acting as I feel, unless I’m too proud to admit it now of course. In Republican Barcelona people were achieving self-determination breaking the bonds of a previous life without dignity. To accept tips would have been to accept your position as a second class citizens in a hierarchical society again. The village pub in northumberland is not anarchist antifascist civil war Spain and this isn’t about proud dignity either. Times have moved on from then but that doesn’t mean we can’t learn a little from the past and see how it can relate to the present; man to man et al.

Tag: CNT

Split Peas & Split People

An Undignified Tip