|
Liberty and solidarity
|
|
Liberty and Solidarity is a British class struggle political organisation, established in 2008, which aims to build workplace and community democracy through direct action. It has produced various public strategies, detailing it's planned involvement in Industrial and Community struggles. Two major focuses of these strategies are it's participation and support for the National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) and the Industrial Workers of the World(IWW) as well as local community residents and tenants associations, which it hopes to see grow in membership and militancy. It is currently one of the UKs biggest Anarchist Organisations, after the Anarchist Federation and the Solidarity Federation. Politics Despite not referring to any political ideology on either it's website or in any of it's various articles or strategies; it has at various times contributed to the Anarkismo.net website, and has also signed up to the Anarkismo Editorial Statement, which requires it's participants to adhere to the Platformist Anarchist tradition. In Anarchist circles, Liberty and Solidarity is generally considered a Platformist or Neo-Platformist organisation. It takes many traditional Anarchist positions including opposition to Capitalism and the state; "If we want to decide our own future, we must organise with our fellow workers both against our bosses and against the state which seeks to protect them. We must build our own forms of organisation, to govern our movement and to replace the existing order. We oppose all forms of discrimination that divide us from our fellow workers." Unlike many other Anarchist Organisations, it supports participation in mainstream unions, in their Industrial Strategy, they explain; Liberty & Solidarity believes in a shop steward approach. The shop stewards movement of the past was hugely catalytic of a fighting unionism. Shop steward organisation, and building fighting union branches in general, helps to prefigure the kind of fighting union of the base that we would anticipate would prefigure future workers, or stewards councils. At present in many workplaces there is already a trade union presence, or collective bargaining in place. To that end in British workplaces it makes sense to utilise the pre-existing structures of trade and craft unions to build powerful union branches, and to construct a kind of base unionism, built around developing a stewards movement and engaging the rank and file within the structures of their local union branch, irrespective of the position of the official union bureaucracy for whatever union maintains a collective bargaining agreement. * Liberty & Solidarity therefore encourages all members to become shop stewards. * Liberty & Solidarity therefore encourages all members to build their local trade union branches, should there be a collective bargaining agreement in place</ref> To date they are the only UK Anarchist organisation that has nationally binding strategy documents, though the Anarchist Federation and Solidarity Federation have since produced similar documents. Activity Liberty and Solidarity emphasises it's activity within existing organisations, including the London Coalition Against Poverty, The Industrial Workers of the World, and various Residents associations. It has active membership in London, Reading, Glasgow, Birmingham, Cardiff, and other towns in the UK (excluding Northern Ireland). In 2009 It's members took an active role in supporting the Visteon Factory Occupations and later the pickets. A benefit event organised by L&S at Freedom Bookshop raised over £200 not long before the dispute came to an end. ---- See Also
|
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
Main Menu
| Home |
| Articles |
| Search |
| Submit Article |
| Contact Us |
| Donate to Wikibin |
