Keith Hodgson, long time activist in the Liverpool anarchist scene, died on Saturday 23rd February 2013, aged 50. Keith, like many of his generation, was radicalised by the re-vitalised Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and by the Thatcher onslaught against working class rights and freedoms in the 1980s. As a young anarchist and CND activist, Keith rapidly moved to the direct action wing of the anti-militarist movement and also worked voluntarily in the CND Merseyside offices. This combination of organisational work and street activism was typical of Keith over the years.
This dispute arose after the Ardbride strike, and once again was initially publicised by Edinburgh DAM. It also reached a successful conclusion, unlike the one we’d put so much effort into supporting over the previous year.
In September 1987, Tricia Jennings, a worker at Burton’s in Edinburgh, became pregnant and a few days later was rushed to hospital with a threatened miscarriage. She informed her employer about her situation and at first they seemed sympathetic. Tricia spent the next 6 weeks fighting to save her baby, but when she returned to work on 9th November she found she’d been sacked. Everyone else in the ship knew 2 weeks before Tricia did. No reason was given, though subsequently Burton’s tried to claim she was sacked for “absenteeism” or because her work was “below standard”. However, Tricia had had a certificate for the absence and had passed her six month probation.
The Direct Action Movement's 1991 pamphlet on strategy, setting out a vision of networks of militant workers seeking to create explicitly revolutionary workplace and community based groups capable of initiating collective direct action - revolutionary unions. The DAM became Solidarity Federation in 1994.
Throwing down the gauntlet
The phoney war
Class mobilisation
On the offensive
A call to arms
"One must try to increase as much as possible the theoretical content of all our activities, but without the 'dry and shriveled doctrinalism' which could destroy in part the great constructive action which our comrades are carrying forward in the relentless fight between the haves and the have nots. Our people stand for action on the march. It is while going forward that we overtake. Don't hold them back, even to teach them `the most beautiful theories' ..."
This short pamphlet is not intended to be the definitive information on the Poll Tax as this is impossible as the government is still amending its rules and regulations concerning the implementation of the Poll Tax. [1]
Anarchism is the philosophy of a new social order based on liberty, and unrestricted by man-made laws; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.
