SF members who are unwaged will group together under the Unwaged Workers Network. As we move towards forming this network, we first need to find out which members fall into this cateogry, and what are the primary issues we face.

We encourage all unwaged members to contribute to the discussion on our forum if you have online access. This includes unemployed, non-working students, retired, living on benefits, volunteeers and those on work experience placements.

First, we will look towards the production of material along the lines of the Know Your Rights series, and an eventual industrial bulletin. Members should also contribute to online articles that will appear on this section of the SF website.

Any industrial network is only as strong as its members are active, so get stuck in and help the network grow and gain influence!

SolFed's long-running workers rights leaflet has been updated, and is also now available in Polish. Due to requests, there are two different cover designs - the content is the same for both. Download here: Eng 1 | Eng 2 | Pol 1 | Pol 2

We are very pleased to announce the formation of a new Local - Oxford and Reading!

Founded by a group of class struggle Anarchists and Anarcho-Syndicalists, the new Local will look to jointly cover both cities as a constituent part of the larger Federation. We will be looking to promote the messages of direct democracy, direct action and worker self-organisation in Oxford, Reading and the surrounding area.

We are due to have our inaugural meeting in the coming weeks, and shall be looking to complete our official afilliation with the Solidarity Federation very soon. If you are interested in Anarcho-Syndicalism and live or work nearby, get in touch with us! We can be contacted through the contact form here on the website.

In Solidarity,

Oxford & Reading SolFed

Statement by German anarcho-syndicalist group FAU on the situation of temporary employment in Germany and recent developments between unions and employers' organisations.

During the late 1950s and 60s the Situationist International (SI) developed arguably the most profound and far reaching critique of modern society for many decades. Although it now seems the height of hipness for arty intellectuals to make passing reference to situationism, few genuinely appreciate the distinctly revolutionary overtones of the SI’s ideas. Often criticised for specialised language and abstract concepts (with some justification), these ideas nevertheless hold tremendous relevance today, perhaps more so than ever.

anarcho-syndicalism

Situationism has influenced, and been influenced by, anarcho-syndicalism. Larry Law, in one of the excellent Spectacular Times pamphlets, noted: “The remedies offered by the SI were taken from the history of autonomous workers’ uprisings and, despite their protestations to the contrary, looted from the theories and experience of anarcho-syndicalists”.

The turn of the year saw the 85th anniversary of the IWA’s founding in Berlin in December 1922 and January 1923. Here, we look at the struggle to establish an (anarcho-)syndicalist International in the 50 years between the demise of the 1st International and the events in Berlin

Many basic tenets of anarcho-syndicalism developed within the 1st International. After the split between anarchists and Marxists in 1872 the anarchist wing of the International, with a membership of 150,000, still had influence beyond its numbers. Throughout the 1870s, it assisted the development of anarcho-syndicalism.

In his 1992 book, What Uncle Sam Really Wants, Noam Chomsky attributed the role of the US administration in its interventions in places like El Salvador, Chile and Nicaragua in part to the desire to negate the ‘threat of a good example’.

He argued that these countries were showing their neighbours that ownership of the means of production could be retained within the country rather than handed over to US multinationals, and that it was possible to run a country reasonably successfully without it being a de facto colony of the US. Such ‘good examples’ had to be crushed as soon as possible, lest the lesson should spread. Various methods have been used in pursuit of this purpose over the years, from ‘agent orange’ in chemical weapons used in Vietnam to the backing of violent coups by US henchmen such as Pinochet and the bloodthirsty Nicaraguan ‘Contras’. They have, by and large, been successful.

Among working class people there exists a healthy level of mistrust in and disrespect for career politicians. One visible sign of this is the declining interest in the whole electoral process in recent years. Even so, and despite the seemingly never ending string of reports about MPs’ and ministers’ wrongdoings, you don’t yet get the impression that parliament is going to be swept aside any time soon.

The recent (and not so recent) revelations have come so thick and fast that a mere quarterly magazine like Direct Action cannot hope to comment on every case. But behind each instance of lost data and dodgy funding, behind every passport scandal and failed or vastly over-budget project, there lurk the lies, deceit, arrogance and downright incompetence of one of those chinless wonders who’s managed to con enough people to vote them into Westminster.