For our sixth reading group we are changing venue. From now on we will be meeting at Freedom Bookshop, 84b Whitechapel High St, London E1 7QX. We will still be holding a reading group on the last Tuesday of the month (28th of January) at 7pm until 9pm.
Arranging a new venue has meant that the call out for this reading group is going out later than usual, so we have decided to read a much shorter work than usual; What is Social Ecology? by Murray Bookchin. Bookchin’s ideas have been influential on the ongoing revolution in Northern Syria, and are increasingly relevant in a world that is facing a climate catastrophe.
A free version of What is Social Ecology? can by found on the anarchist library here and even if you have not finished the essay, feel welcome to come and get involved in the discussion.
Category: Events
Open Meeting on the 25th of January
We will be holding an open meeting at the London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES on Saturday the 25th of January. This meeting will be from 4pm to 6pm, and is open who wants to build an independent and anti-authoritarian union in the workplace or community to resist state and capital.
Open Meeting on the 23rd of November
Do you want to organise in your workplace? Do you want help others organise? Do you want to form a solidarity network to fight dodgy landlords and grasping bosses? Do you want to do some grenade organising and flyer random workplaces or blocks of flats just to see what happens? Do you want to do all that along anarchist principals and not get bogged down in union bureaucracy or derailed by party political wrangling?
Well, North London Solidarity Federation wants to do those things to, and we will be holding an open meeting at London Action Resource Centre, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES, from 2pm to 4pm, on Saturday the 23rd of November, with the aim of getting some of those projects going in London.
While we have some ideas on what we want to do, ultimately the desires of whoever shows up at the meeting will dictate what comes out of the meeting. If someone shows up with workplace they want help organising in, and everyone else wants to help, then we will do that. If everyone shows up and want to focus on building a solidarity network in a particular borough, then we will do that. So come along, bring the problems you have at work, bring your ideas, and together we can bring anarcho-syndicalism back to London.
Reading Group 05 – Anarchism and The Black Revolution
For our fifth reading group we will be reading Anarchism and The Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. Ervin was a Vietnam war conscript who became an anti-war activist, went on to join the Black Panthers, and became an anarchist while in prison for high-jacking an aircraft to escape to Cuba after being alleged in an attempt to kill a Ku Klux Klan leader. Anarchism and The Black Revolution, written in prison and first published in 1979, is not only a classic work of late 20th century anarchism, but brings a black perspective to anarchism that has often been missing in a movement dominated by the ideas of white European thinkers.
This book places its critique of both capitalism and racism firmly at the centre of the text, discussing capitalism and white supremacy, the differences between anarchism and Marxism, the anarchist critique of the state, police violence, the threat of fascism, and, as the title suggests, anarchism and the black revolution.
Free versions of Anarchism and The Black Revolution can be found on the Anarchist Library here and our friends at Freedom Press here have offered a 10% discount on physical copies for the reading group. Just quote “London SolFed Reading Group” or pop into Freedom for your general radical book buying needs.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 26h of November, 19:00, at Well Space, Hackney, 241 Well Street, E9 6RG. You are welcome to come and join in the discussion even if you have not finished the book, and if you have the money, please bring a donation for the space.
October 26th – Fight for Worker’s Rights! Fight Fascism!
There will be two linked actions happening on the 26th of October. First, there is a call-out to all workers in the London and surrounding areas to help extend solidarity with members of the UVW during upcoming strike. Over 70, mainly migrant, security guards who are UVW members and employed by Wilson James across the Natural History and Science Museums have returned an overwhelming vote (96%) in favour of strike action following a recent ballot. Support their picket at 10am on Saturday 26 October, London SW7.
This picket will then march to Central London to join the second action; an anti-fascist demonstration against the far right hate preacher Tommy Robinson and his supporters. Robinson uses his huge social media platform to call for mass deportations of immigrants, post racist and anti-muslim content, conspiracy theories and fake news, and is a vocal supporter of the violent zionist regime of Israel and its genocide against the people of Gaza. This counter demonstration will be meeting at 12 noon at Piccadilly Circus.
Support the strike, fight fascism, and spread this to anyone who might be interested!
London Anarchist Bookfair
The London Anarchist Bookfair will be taking place on October 12th and Solidarity Federation will be running a stall, so come along and say hi and grab some literature. The stalls will be at Rich Mix, 35-47 Bethnal Green Road E1 6LA, with the venue opening to the public from 10am.
A member of the federation will also be giving a talk for the bookfair; Does the Union Make us Strong?
“In modern Britain radical organisation and action in the workplace is at a low ebb. In reaction to this, some anarchists have given up on the workplace as arena of struggle, seeing it as no longer relevant. Others have tried to address this weakness by encouraging participation in the mainstream trade union movement. This talk will be about how we got where we are, the potential of workplace movements, the pitfalls of both ignoring workplace struggles and relying on the trade union movement, and possible ways forward.”
This talk will be held at Whitechapel Gallery, 77-82 Whitechapel High Street, London, GB E1 7QX, from 11am to 12pm.
You can find more details about the bookfair here. The bookfair collective are currently looking for volunteers to help run the event, so please get in touch with them if you would be interested in helping out.
Reading Group 04 – Palestine, Mon Amour
After an initial run of Anarcho-Syndicalist theory and practice, we are going to change things up and read something from a different perspective for Octobers’s reading group. From this point on we will alternate from month to month between more syndicalist/workplace focussed books and more general anarchist and radical books, both to add some variety and to provoke debate.
We will be reading at Palestine, Mon Amour, by Alfredo M. Bonanno, aiming to discuss what has changed since it was written, and what has remained the same. Description from Active Distribution here:
“A large collection of short writings on the ever topical, and thorny topic of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination. Originally published from 1988-1995, they are more mediations on the likes of Jewish identity, the role of the Kibbutz, and the need for an overall Israeli-Palestinian insurrection, than commentary on current events.”
A free versions of Palestine, Mon Amour is available from the Anarchist Library here, and although we are not sure if this pamphlet is currently in print, Freedom Press have offered a 10% discount on physical copies of books for the reading group, so we will still them a shout out just for being cool. Go get books from them here.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 29th of October, 19:00, at Well Space, Hackney, 241 Well Street, E9 6RG. If you have the money, please bring a donation for the space.
Reading Group 03 – Practical Pamphlets
For our third reading group we will be moving away from history and theory and looking at modern forms of anarcho-syndicalist practice, and instead of reading a single book we will be reading three pamphlets that cover different struggles, with the aim of discussing what kind of tactics are needed to build a truly radical working class movement.
We will be looking at both of Solidarity Federation’s Theory and Practice pamphlets; Workmates, which describes building a parallel organisation alongside a traditional union on the London underground, and Anarcho-Syndicalism in Puerto Real, which describes how a workplace dispute led to broader community organising. We will also be looking at Seattle Solidarity Network’s The Seattle Solidarity Network: A New Kind of Working Class Social Movement, which describes forms of working class resistance that do not rely on a strong workplace presence.
Free versions of the Theory and Practice pamphlets can be found on the Anarchist Library here and here, and our friends at Freedom Press here have offered a 10% discount on physical copies for the reading group. Just quote “London SolFed Reading Group” or pop into Freedom for your general radical book buying needs. A New Kind of Working Class Social Movement is only available online, and can be found a LibCom here.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 24th of September, 19:00, at Well Space, Hackney, 241 Well Street, E9 6RG. If you have the money, please bring a donation for the space.
Reading Group 02 – Fighting for Ourselves
For our second reading group we will be reading Fighting for Ourselves. Written by members of SolFed, this book looks at different currents within the workers movement, what went wrong during the 20th century, what we can learn from those failures, and chart a possible way forward in the 21st century. From the back cover:
“We are living in times of unprecedented attacks on our living conditions on all fronts, of rising social tensions 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, and 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.”
A free version of the book can be found on the Anarchist Library here, and our friends at Freedom Press here have offered a 10% discount on books for the reading group. Just quote “London SolFed Reading Group” or pop into Freedom for your general radical book buying needs.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 27th of August, 19:00, at Well Space, Hackney, 241 Well Street, E9 6RG. If you can spare the money, please bring a donation for the space.
Reading Group 01 – Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and Practice
We are starting a new reading group, and for our first book we will be reading Anarcho-syndicalism: Theory and Practice by Rudolf Rocker. Written during the Spanish Civil War, this book is a short explanation of classic anarcho-syndicalism at its height, and is a good introduction to the general tradition of politics that the Solidarity Federation comes out of. From the back cover:
“In 1937, at the behest of Emma Goldman, Rudolf Rocker (1873-1958) penned this political and philosophical masterpiece as an introduction to the ideals fueling the Spanish social revolution and resistance to capitalism the world over. Within, he offers an introduction to anarchist ideas, a history of the international workers movement and an outline of the strategies and tactics embraced at the time (internationalism, federalism, anti-militarism, direction action, sabotage and the General Strike). “
A free version of the book can be found on the Anarchist Library here, and our friends at Freedom Press here have offered a 10% discount on books for the reading group. Just quote “London SolFed Reading Group” or pop into Freedom for your general radical book buying needs.
The reading group will be meeting on Tuesday the 30th of July, 19:00, at Well Space, Hackney, 241 Well Street, E9 6RG. If you can spare the money, please bring a donation for the space.