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 independantly of itself.

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 website, and has also signed up to the Anarkismo 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 documents of a similar style.

What We Stand For

"What we stand for" is a loose political statement made by L&S as a brief introduction to their political world outlook. Their constitution is also viewable via the website.

"The problems which face us, from unaffordable housing to the destruction of the planet's environment are due to the fact we have little to no control over the running of our lives. The reason for this is the class system, where we work for a wage while a tiny group of bosses live off the profit we create. This simple truth is more important than any single politician or ruler, and if we want to change things we have to accept it and fight along class lines. Changing sets of rulers without changing the system is like cleaning the windows of a burning house.

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.

We do not believe the defeat of these forces will be an easy task, it will require hard work and dedication. The state will not simply give up when we become sufficiently powerful, but will attempt to fight us by all means and we believe we must be prepared to respond.

We want a serious approach, combining theory and practice, where we set targets and assess our progress at regular intervals, and come up with new ideas based on our experiences. Our approach is based on what works.

We believe in making pragmatic and tactical decisions, and not working to unbending principles. We come to agreement through open discussions, and once we have voted on a particular direction we work towards it together.

We believe that the only way ordinary people successfully can govern themselves is through democratic institutions built from the bottom up.
We are very interested in involving anyone who agrees with these principles and is committed to seeing our side win"

This bares many obvious resemblances to the Aims and Principalsof the now defunct Scottish Platformist group, Praxis who are thought to have been instrumental in the founding of Liberty and Solidarity. All of the Scottish members of L&S are former Praxis members.

Activities

Liberty and Solidarity were active supporters of the Sacked Visteon Workers, having had members directly involved in support work, who took part in the legal occupation and picketing of the site. writing various reports. The Organisation hosted a benefit event which they claim raised over £200

• Promotional Leaflet produced by L&S in 2009.
  Promotional Leaflet produced by L&S in 2009.

Membership

Liberty and Solidarity has active Membership in England, Scotland, and Wales.

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http://libertyandsolidarity.org/

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