My big initiative at the moment is to call for a
worldwide general strike at the time of the G8 summit.
I have had a great response handing out leaflets, but
many who have seen my call on a leaflet or the
internet will think: How could one person's call
possibly reach enough people around the world for it
to be taken seriously?

Well, I naturally send messages as important as that
to all discussion groups (about 230) that I am on, and
my initiative in taking up US businessman Malcolm
Glazer's takeover of Manchester United is paying
dividends. [No pun intended.]

At any ordinary time, one of the most popular searches
in a search engine must obviously be "Manchester
United" since they are the most popular football club
in the world. During the run-up to and aftermath of
the takeover of Man United by US businessman Malcolm
Glazer, the search is obviously even more popular -
and for discussion group websites (particularly
http://groups.google.com and http://groups.yahoo.com),
it could even be Number 1!

Believe it or not, I managed to set up a group of mine
so that it comes top when searching at
http://groups.yahoo.com for "Manchester United"!!!

How did I do it?

Quite simple! I called it 'manchester-united-fans',
gave it the title "Manchester United Football Club
fans", put it in the Man Utd section of the
hierarchical structure used to organise groups (called
the Directory) and mentioned "Manchester United" in
the group's description.

In case you are not convinced that people are really
concerned about Man Utd, ponder this: Glazer's
opponents have called for fans to boycott Man Utd's
sponsors and so many people have cancelled Vodafone
contracts that they are considering cancelling their
sponsorship of the club!!!

Vodafone's niche in the mobile phone market, in the UK
at least, is to charge the highest prices of any of
the networks and rely on their sponsorship of Man Utd
to get people to pay their rip-off prices. Their
sponsorship even extended to them getting a Vodafone
advert in the middle of the attrocious rip-off
DVD/video "Beyond the Promised Land" (I happened to
see a copy in one of several boxes of £3 CDs without
cases at the left-wing CD/DVD/book store FOPP
yesterday - and used the opportunity to talk about it
and plug the discussion group to whichever customers
and staff were listening; I don't restrict talking
politics to meetings or when I come across somebody I
know, and shops are great places to make long
political speeches!)

Therefore, Vodafone are in a Catch-22 situation.
Whatever they do, they are in massive trouble, and
with the massive sums spent in the satellite auction
for "third generation" mobile phones, they will
probably go bankrupt as a rather nice side-effect of
the Glazer saga. How sad!!!

Fans are also making big progress in the setting up of
an alternative club in Manchester, called FC United. I
have set up a disussion group, called 'fc-united'
(also in the Man Utd part of the Directory so that it
can be found easily) for that club. I will forward a
newspaper article about developments in that direction
to both groups (and some other football ones that I am
on) after sending this message.

I've included below the descriptions of both groups.


Firstly here is the description (minus hypertext
links) of the "manchester-united-fans" group
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manchester-united-fans):

This is a discussion group for fans of Manchester
United football club around the world.

You are of course welcome to talk about team matters,
such as which former or present players you
particularly like, but I (the psuedo-moderator of this
group, Steve Wallis) am a socialist so I particularly
welcome political discussions on this group. I operate
a liberal moderation policy, so only deliberate and
persistent spammers will be banned.

Some suggestions of items for discussion here:
• Opposition to US businessman Malcolm Glazer's
takeover of the club.
• The setting up of a new club by Glazer's opponents,
called FC United (for which I have set up a discussion
group).
• Fans' groups organising against the commercial
interests threatening to ruin the club and football in
general - in particular, the Independent Manchester
United Supporters Association (which has moderated and
unmoderated discussion groups), Shareholders United
and the Not for Sale Coalition.
• Opposing racism, fascism and sectarianism in
football and society in general (see the discussion
group of Show Racism the Red Card).
• Campaigning against increasing ticket prices,
transfer fees and players' wages, and the massive cuts
taken by agents.
• Campaigning for a return of football to its working
class roots, and for democratic control of clubs by
their fans, players and other staff.


And here is the description of the "fc-united" group
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fc-united):

Opponents of the takeover of Manchester United
football club by Malcolm Glazer have set up a new
club, called FC United, which they intend to make
fully functional in time for the 2005-6 season.

This is a discussion group to support the development
of FC United, and to encourage it to act as a role
model for all clubs - owned and democratically
controlled by its supporters (and preferably also
players and other staff at the club).

Discussion of developments at Manchester United,
especially concerning trying to overthrow Glazer,
would be very welcome on this group.

I, Steve Wallis, have set up a sister discussion
group, manchester-united-fans, which is also intended
for discussion of the politics surrounding Manchester
United and FC United.

I am a revolutionary socialist, so I see the
development of democratic football clubs such as FC
United as part of the struggle for taking control of
all institutions in society out of the hands of a tiny
number of big businessmen and women, and running them
democratically from below by ordinary people - and
believe that ultimately this can only occur via a
world socialist revolution.


--
Steve Wallis (http://www.socialiststeve.me.uk).
Manchester International Socialist Mailing List
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/manchesterism).
Launch a general strike at the time of the G8 summit in July
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/g8-summit-worldwide-general-strike).

Proposer of Revolutionary Platform of the Democratic Socialist Alliance
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-democratic-socialist-al\
liance).
Member of Glasgow Shettleston branch of the Scottish Socialist Party
(http://www.scottishsocialistparty.org) and initiator of the Revolutionary
Platform of the SSP (http://www.revolutionaryplatformofthessp.org,
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/revolutionary-platform-of-the-ssp).

Initiator of the Campaign for Democracy in the UK
(http://www.democracycampaign.org.uk;
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/campaign-for-democracy-in-the-uk) and Campaign for
Sanity in the NHS (http://www.health-service-sanity.org).