ATOS healthcare are the private IT company tasked with kicking sick and disabled claimants off benefits by classifying them as fit to work using an automated program. The Brighton Benefits Campaign and Disabled People Against Cuts organised the local contribution to the national day of action against ATOS, which saw around 25 people assemble in Brighton, street theatre depicting the computerised 'fit for work' assessment and a short march to the nearby ATOS building.

On the evening of 29th September, a number of SolFed members trekked to the swanky West End of London to stand in solidarity with the Spanish working class.

We arrived, banners in hand, first to the Spanish Consulate and then to the Embassy. Our arrival coincided with a national day of action called by a coalition of radical Spanish unions, including SF's sister organisation, the CNT. With events planned all over Spain, these militant workers and militant workers' organisations are calling for a general strike to overcome the brutal austerity cuts the Spanish state is attempting to force on Spain's working class.

West Yorkshire Solidarity federation has been passed the following information which directly affects one of the locals members.

News has just come in that Scope (essentially a national non advice giving organisation) is going to shut down DIAL UK following an earlier merger.  This will affect disabled people’s advice services at a time when the need is greater.  Added to this experienced staff are being dumped.  Scope will claim that it has no option following cuts in funding, but they are still managing to pay their chief exec thousands.

We have been told the following:

“If – as seems likely now – none of the current staff get positions in the new structure the main sources of knowledge and intelligence about the network will be lost when it is most needed. Understanding the network and its operation and working on its behalf is the essential uniqueness of DIAL UK.

Present: Cantdo, Rob Ray, Jock, Jerome, Sharkfinn, Go, Butterflea, bill, W

Apologies: Gl, Fingers, Grizzle

1. Personal reports

Butterflea: Grievance hearing didn’t seem to get very far, ET has accepted claim, Strike end of October will be campus-wide, got hold of 1,000 QM leaflets and managed to get rid of a fair few, will be flyering again tomorrow at 12pm. Scale 4s tried to sort themselves out and made things worse, lots of people angry and saying we need to stick together.

Go: New job, no-one unhappy atm.

Bill: Still looking. Soon to be a kung fu genius.

Rob: Nowt much going on

Jock: Lacking drivers because of job cuts so people having to absorb extra vanload, job and finish is working against us. Can’t put in a proper grievance because it takes ages, union not of much use.

Today we heard that the trustees of Brighton's Community Base were meeting to push through privatisation plans and redundancies to the staff directly employed there (numbering two or three). Community Base is a charity providing a home for community and voluntary groups in Brighton and Hove and services to the local community. They use income from affordable services, including the provision of office space and the use of meeting rooms, to repay a mortgage on their centrally-located seven floor building.

North London Solidarity Federation have written a statement sending our solidarity to comrades in Brazil.

A secção do norte de Londres (Reino Unido) do sindicato Associação Internacional de Trabalhadores envia a sua solidariedade para com a luta dos seus companheiros pertencentes ao Sindicato de Artes e Ofícios Vários de Araxá em Minas Gerais, Brasil.

Estes trabalhadores tem sido sujeitos a várias situações inaceitáveis, inclusive baixos salários e demissões injustificadas praticados pelo seu empregador FF Comercial (marcas Lotto e Finta). Eles contam agora com o nosso total apoio para com a sua luta que passa também a ser a nossa luta.

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Ed Goddard's excellent pamphlet on student radicalism at Sussex. Ed Goddard is a former member of Brighton SF currently living in Italy, and an admin of the libcom.org website. Download as a pdf here.

Sussex University has a reputation for radicalism - and it’s a well-earned one. In this pamphlet former Sussex student Ed Goddard retrieves some of the lost history of this radical tradition. In one 5 year period from 1971 to 1975, Sussex saw protests, assessment boycots, and rent strikes, as well as a questioning of the role and purpose of education itself, and what a truly free education - free from the limitations of capitalist society - could look like. Today, with education oncemore on the front lines, it’s more important than ever to understand our own forgotten history of struggle.

Translation of a Spanish statement building for a general strike. See below for the original text.

Various union organisations and social movements release a schedule of joint mobilisations leading towards a general strike

Throughout summer, various union organisations across the federalist sphere – such as the CGT, CNT, COBAS, CSC and Solidaridad Obrera – have held various meetings in order to put into motion a mobilised response, based on the unity of action and class, towards the end of a General Strike against the cuts and loss of rights put in place by both the government and European institutions and upon the orders of the bosses and the markets.

An unbranded poster designed to promote the upcoming pension strikes.

A leaflet in support of Queen Mary staff and against the cuts there.  Designed to be given out to students and the public.