events and reports

The Solidarity Federation will be at the London Anarchist Bookfair again this year. It will be the first place you can get your hands on our new pamphlet 'Fighting for ourselves: anarcho-syndicalism and the class struggle'. Our other publications will also be available alongside books, posters and tshirts. 

This year the Solidarity Federation will be presenting the following talks:

Nobody Expects The Solidarity Federation! - Room 318, 11-12

Our members in Hastings are launching a new Local. Tuesday, 9 October 2012 at 19:00, venue tbc. There is a Facebook event here.

If you're interesting in joining the Solidarity Federation, or you're just curious what we're about, please come along.

The Solidarity Federation ('SolFed') is a revolutionary union initiative: a working class organisation which seeks the abolition of capitalism and the state. If you’re a worker (employed, unemployed, disabled, retired...) and think that this life doesn’t give you everything you deserve and that your work does not let you develop yourself, if you want a world without capitalism and hierarchy, then there are good reasons to join the Solidarity Federation.

You can also get in touch with SolFed members in Hastings via the site contact form.

Members of Solent local of the Solidarity Federation picketed Domino’s pizza in Bitterne Southampton as part of the International Day of Action in support of Australian delivery drivers of  the General Transport Workers Association. Some interesting conversations were had with staff and public (hello Eddie!)

A communications blockade will follow on Monday 17th.

Report from our comrades in Caen, France

Last week, at SF's national delegate council two new locals were recognised, we are pleased to announce we now have locals in Croydon and Newcastle. Both locals provided encouraging reports and were founded by members of existing locals, South London and West Yorkshire respectively.

We hope to add more locals in the months and years ahead and have members across the country working on starting new locals, notably across the south coast in Portsmouth, Southampton, Bournemouth, and Hastings.

Our Scottish members based in Edinburgh and Glasgow will hopefully be launching locals at some point in the future and back down south we have members in Cambridge looking to start a local.

Manchester Solidarity Federation, aided and abetted by comrades from West Yorkshire Solidarity Federation as well as Anarchist Federation and other libertarian comrades from the Manchester area, picketed a Domino’s branch in the university area of the city on Saturday September 15th.
This was part of the international day of action called by the General Transport Workers Association whose members, pizza delivery drivers in Brisbane Australia, have had their wages slashed by 19%
On the day, our presence and the information leaflet we were handing out soon got up the nose of the manager who arrogantly thought he could order us off the public pavement outside the premises. No such joy for him, and after a brief argument, we told him in no uncertain terms that if he was so upset by us standing there he should call the cops. He did.

We are living in times of unprecedented attacks on our living conditions on all fronts, of rising social tension and sometimes violent eruptions of class conflict. And yet if anything, the surprise is not that there have been riots and the odd strike, but that there have been so few. How are we to make sense of this? How are we to fight back, to take the initiative? Against capitalism, what do we want to put in its place? The 20th century discredited state socialism, and rightly so. But with it, a whole history of international class struggle, of revolutions and counter-revolutions, victories and defeats, spontaneous uprisings and vast workers’ organisation has been eclipsed too. This pamphlet aims to recover some of that lost history, in order to set out a revolutionary strategy for the present conditions.

On Saturday 12th May the Solidarity Federation with help from members of Brighton Benefits Campaign held a third picket outside Holland and Barrett’s main North Street store.

We experienced the usual response from the public with about a fifty-fifty split between those continuing to shop there and those who respected the boycott.  Some potential customers who went into the shop came out after reading the leaflet to say they had changed their minds.  Many passers by offered encouragement to the picketers and others were shocked to discover that an ‘ethical business’ would use unpaid labour.

Whether it's at work, at home, or at the job centre, bosses, landlords and the state are always trying to get more from us for less, or give us less for more. It might be work not giving you your breaks, or a landlord not making repairs, or the job centre forcing you onto a 'voluntary' scheme for your dole money. Forcing them to play by their own rules can be an important first step in turning the tables, and shifting the balance of power in our favour. To do that, you've got to know your rights!

Yesterday, anti-choice campaign group Society for the Protection of Unborn Children held “kerbside vigils” across the UK, to commemorate the 44th anniversary of the Abortion Act 1967. Liverpool was, unfortunately, one of the cities to be blessed with a vigil and so Liverpool feminist group Angry Women of Liverpool (AWOL) organised a counter-protest just a week in advance.

On Saturday members of Brighton SolFed and Brighton Benefits Campaign picketed the North Street branch of Holland & Barrett. This was the second action in an on-going national campaign against the retailer’s continued use of unpaid workfare placements to reduce staff costs. The picket successfully turned away a large number of potential customers and we engaged many members of the public in discussion of the issues, the majority of whom were sympathetic to our message.