welcome to our temp website v2.solfed.org.uk - we are updating and working on our website, so the link will change back to solfed.org.uk when it is relaunched
Come to the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 61 Fieldgate Street E1 1ES, for the a monthly social and fundraiser. From 8pm until midnight you can meet up with other anarchists for a chill time to chat, gripe, and possibly even plot.
The Red and Black Club is the last Friday of the month, which will be Friday the 30th of October this month. We do not have an alcohol license so none will be sold in LARC, but feel free to bring your own booze. Suggested donation of £5-10 on the door, but no one will be turned away for lack of money. Half of this will go to LARC to keep the space running and half will got a new zine called Anarchy which we hope to distribute for free.
This week is the International Week Against Unpaid Wages.
The system of wage labour is exploitative by definition, and workers’ legal rights regarding pay are pitiful – but even this low bar is frequently ignored by employers. For many workers, then, demanding the bare minimum that this society allows is an important first step to taking control of their workplaces and their lives.
Here are just a few examples of what unpaid wages can look like...
Wage theft is when an employer takes money that rightfully belongs to the worker.
Wage theft is often illegal, but sometimes your boss can steal your pay without breaking any laws.
We believe that all wage theft is wrong, whether it's legal or illegal. Just because your boss isn’t breaking the law, doesn't mean you should put up with how they are treating you.
What is wage theft? | I’m worried about wage theft. What should I do? | How does wage theft happen? | Unpaid trial shifts | Non-payment of travel time | What if you work in social care? | What does this have to do with anarchism? | Deductions for uniforms, clothing and equipment | “Punitive” deductions | Other deductions | Non-payment of the National Minimum Wage | Unpaid overtime | Sources
For our twenty-sixth reading group we will finish In The Crossfire by Ngô Văn. From the blurb:
Although the Vietnam War is still well known, few people are aware of the decades of struggles against the French colonial regime that preceded it, many of which had no connection with the Stalinists (Ho Chi Minh’s Communist Party). The Stalinists were ultimately victorious, but only after they systematically destroyed all the other oppositional currents. This book is the story of those other movements and revolts, caught in the crossfire between the French and the Stalinists, told by one of the few survivors.
This month we will be reading chapter 6 to the end of the book. A free online version of the book can be found on the Anarchist Library here.
Our friends at Freedom Press here host the reading group for free, so please support them by using them for your supply of radical books and zines.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 27th of October, 19:00, at Freedom Bookshop, 84b Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX. You are welcome to come and join in the discussion even if you have not finished the reading.
Need advice about an issue with your boss or landlord? Want support organising in your workplace or community? Want to talk about anarchism or syndicalism? Want to meet members of the group and find out how SolFed works? Just want to say hi? Then come see us at one of these drop in sessions.
The next session will be on Thursday, October 15th, 19:00 – 20:00, at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, E1 1ES. We will be in the upstairs rooms. If you can, please bring a donation for the space.
There will be an anarchist bloc at the upcoming October 4th march to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Cable Street. During this battle, people from all over London came together to drive the British Union of Fascists and the police that protected them out of the east end. This was made possible by decades of previous organising in workplaces and the community that built working class solidarity, including between migrant Jewish garment workers and migrant Irish dock workers.
It’s bookfair time again! This Friday the 25th of September we will have a stall (our stall at this year's London Anarchist Bookfair it number 13 in The Studio on Floor 4 at Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road, London, E1 6LA), so come find us to pick up some flyers and chat about organising in the workplace. We will be on floor 4 at Rich Mix from 10pm. For more detail about the bookfair see here. Also remember that the Red and Black club will be running as usual the night before, more info here.
Capitalism is shit, oppression is shit - but what can we at SolFed do about it?
We need to change the world we live in - a world where exploitation at work and home, state violence, oppression and inequality run rampant.
We can’t do this as individuals - only mass collective action from across the breadth of the working class can achieve this. This doesn’t need to be controlled by a small handful of self-appointed leaders - but if we want to build a movement that challenges capital, the state and all forms of oppression, we need to get organised.
If you are reading this, you have probably noticed that we have a new website with Network23. Our old Noblogs site has not been updated since the end of August and will likely go down in the near future. We have ported over a lot of our old site, but for the time being many links and files on ported pages and posts will refer to the old Noblogs site and it will take us a while to work through them all and correct them. The reason for this change-over is that the provider of Noblogs, the Italian Autistici/Inventati (A/I) collective, has been forced to shut down by US sanctions. From there own announcement at the time here: