demonstrations

Around 500 people turned out in the rain yesterday to show their dislike of Hackney Council's propsed service losses, as it struggles with some of the heaviest austerity cuts to its budget of any local authority in Britain.

North London Solfed members joined the rally, which was organised by Hackney Alliance Against Cuts, as it marched from Stoke Newington on a two hour route through to the centre of the borough to highlight the potential impact of a 8.9 per cent drop in funding.

Council estimates suggest around 800 jobs would go on the back of the losses, which would drain money and jobs out of some of the most impoverished areas of the country.

The march represented a significant rise on the numbers seen late last year - around 200 people demonstrated on the town hall steps in October when the scale of government withdrawal of funds from the borough first became clear.

Where are the St Thomas' disappeared?

Where are our workmates?

Last month 72 workers disappeared from Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. They were part of the hospitals’ ancillary staff. They are migrants. Where did they disappear to? The economic crisis means their cheap labour is not as useful anymore – at least for the moment. So the UK Border Agency was called in to get rid of them. The NHS trust complied. The workers were either arrested or deported.

The workers who clean the hospital and feed the patients earn around the minimum wage. And due to the UKBA the workers are not even always paid for their hard work. Isn’t this slavery?

As hospital users, as workers, as trade unionists, as migrants’ rights activists we cannot stay silent in the face of this brutality. Exactly when cuts and privatisation are threatening our public health service the exploitation of migrant labour increases. This is an attack on all workers.

On Saturday 29th January, at least a dozen SolFedders from London and the surrounding area joined thousands of students, trade unionists, and workers to march in opposition to cuts to services, job losses, and increases in fees.  A similar demonstration was held Manchester where Aaron Porter, the sellout head of the NUS, had to be escorted away by police as he was taunted and chased by angry demonstrators.  Needless to say, SFers in both cities applaud the Manchester crowd in recognizing that sometimes our class enemies try to speak in our name.

On Saturday 15th January around 50 people, including members of the fledgling Thames Valley local, marched across Reading from the Royal Berkshire Hospital to the Civic Centre to register their opposition to the government’s cuts in public services.

Leafleting the public along the way the turnout was double the number that attended the previous protest and culminated in a series of speeches outside the civic centre. Spokespeople from the Reading Save Our Services group, Unison, the Reading Trades Council, a Labour Party councillor and a councillor for the Green Party all took part. All made clear how the proposed cuts, both locally and nationally, would impact hardest on the poorest and most vulnerable members of the community, from cuts in services for children to the loss of up to 600 jobs at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.

On Sunday 9th Solidarity Federation members joined the march in Witney, Oxfordshire, constituency of Prime Minister David Cameron. The march, against postal privatisation and austerity cuts, was organised by the CWU (Communication Worker's Union) Eastern Branch. Solidarity Federation members from the new Thames Valley local as well as from Liverpool and London handed out leaflets arguing for anarcho-syndicalist methods in struggle and introductory leaflets about the Solidarity Federation which were well received by marchers.

On Saturday (23rd October) members of Brighton Solidarity Federation joined the Radical Workers Bloc on a march to demand an end to the cuts being imposed on the working class in the ‘austerity budget’ – the greatest attack on the working class in decades.

We join the fight against the cuts now because they will bring immediate and real hardship and suffering to working people. But the answer does not really lie in a readjustment of the government’s budget.

The real answer lies in a fundamental change in the way we organise our society and economy. The fight over cuts is symptomatic of the fight between the wealthy, the capitalists, and the workers. It concerns how the wealth generated in society is distributed: but a slight shift one way or the other is not enough.

Today members of Brighton SolFed delivered letters of protest to two Brighton stores. This was part of an international day of action called by workers in Peru and supported by the International Workers Asscociation (IWA), in response to the sacking of 35 trade unionists. The union members were working in a factory for ‘Topy Top’, one of the major suppliers to high street store Zara, and also a supplier for Gap. Both Zara and Gap stores were visited and letters of protest delivered to local management.

Topy Top is a profitable firm and the largest of Peru’s textile exporters. According to a 2008 report by the Fair Labor Association, in the factory 60+ hour weeks are common, there are no health and safety measures and bullying and “brutal harassment” is routine. Workers have been forming unions to improve these conditions, Topy Top responded by sacking all known union members. This is an unacceptable attack on workers organisation and freedom of association.

On Saturday 23rd October 2010 a number of trade unions have called for a march in London to lobby the TUC to fight the cuts. This is the same day as the annual London Anarchist Bookfair and a day when a large number of anarchists are in the city. We are calling on all anarchists and militant workers to join us in forming a 'Radical Worker's Bloc' on the demonstration, not to beg the trade union bureaucrats to take action, but to argue that we fight the cuts based on the principles of solidarity, direct action, and control of our own struggles.