Syndicalism is a current in the labor movement to establish local, worker-based organizations and advance the demands and rights of workers through strikes. Major syndicalist organizations include the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), the General Confederation of Labor in France, the National Confederation of Labour in Spain, the Italian Syndicalist Union, the Free Workers' Union of Germany, and the Argentine Regional Workers' Federation. A number of syndicalist organizations were and still are to this day linked in the International Workers' Association.
Syndicalists advocate direct action, including working to rule, passive resistance, sabotage, and strikes, particularly
… Read more the general strike, as tactics in the class struggle, as opposed to indirect action such as electoral politics. The final step towards revolution, according to syndicalists, would be a general strike. Labor unions were seen as being the embryo of a new society in addition to being the means of struggle within the old. Syndicalists generally agreed that in a free society production would be managed by workers. The state apparatus would be replaced by the rule of workers' organizations. In such a society individuals would be liberated, both in the economic sphere but also in their private and social lives.
Skinheads who stand up against racists include traditional skinheads, trojan skinheads, typically known as Skinheads Against Racial Prejudices (SHARP)
Rude Boy (or rudie) is a slang term that originated in 1960s Jamaican street culture, and that is still used today. In the late 1970s, there was a revival in England of the terms rude boy and rude girl, among other variations, being used to describe fans of two-tone ska. The use of these terms moved into the more contemporary ska-punk movement as well. In the UK, the terms rude boy and rude girl are used in a way similar to gangsta, yardie, or badman. In the 1960s, the Jamaican diaspora introduced rude boy music and fashion to the UK, which influenced the mod and skinhead subcultures. In the late 1970s, the term rude boy and rude boy fashions came back into use after the ska band The
… Read more Specials and their record label 2 Tone Records instigated a brief but influential ska revival. In this spirit, The Clash contributed "Rudie Can't Fail" on their 1979 album, London Calling.
In Jamaica, the rude boys and rude girls were young Jamaican thugs from the ghettos, fallen into delinquency and sowing terror, some being real gangsters. In rage against the institutions, the economic fatality, they spit out their resentment of unemployment, injustices, and the immobility of capitalist society. Quite the opposite of teddy boys. They regularly go to sound systems where they sometimes play for a living.
In Great Britain, the rough boys listen mainly to ska music, which is characterized by groups like Madness or The Specials, which cover certain famous tracks of Prince Buster, recorded with Two-Tone Records, the "revival" of Jamaican ska, after the wave of the punk movement which saw the resurgence of former Jamaican artists, like Laurel Aitken, nicknamed the godfather of ska. They mingled with English mods in the 1960s, which gave birth to skinheads. the skinhead movement is, therefore, in its origins and in its traditions, a mixed and multicultural movement; it is not uncommon to see black skinheads in 1969 although many white skinheads will become politicized on the far right thereafter.