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Liverpool Solidarity Federation believes that it is important working class people and communities organise themselves against attacks by the ruling class. That is why we welcome the idea of an all-Liverpool anti-cuts campaign, uniting communities, workplaces, the employed and unemployed, students and pensioners to challenge the most savage attacks our class has ever faced.

But we do not believe that this should be stage-managed from above. We believe such a campaign should be open, democratic and based on direct action. We argue for a movement built from below, where working class people take control of our own struggles as a precursor to taking control of our own lives, our own communities and our own workplaces.

It is vital that the current attacks are met with resistance. It is just as vital that this resistance is based upon mass participation and mass action. We urge those who agree with us to attend the meeting, where we will be taking part in the debate as well as circulating our proposal for the shape such a campaign should take.

See the Solidarity Federation event page here. The Trades Council also advertise the event here.

JOE Anderson [the leader of Liverpool city council] says he has no choice but to enforce spending cuts due to reductions in the government grant. David Cameron says he has no choice but to enforce spending cuts due to the budget deficit left by the last government.

All over the world, governments of both the left and right are inflicting austerity measures on the working-class and making us pay for a crisis we didn’t create.

With local elections approaching, it’s increasingly clear that the only worthwhile thing to do on polling day is to reject all politicians by actively abstaining and building popular resistance outside the ballot box.

Ethel MacDonald, Liverpool Solidarity Federation

As part of this week of action, Liverpool Solidarity Federation are calling for all those who stand in support of disabled people to join us in a picket of their offices in Liverpool the same day.

Assemble in The Plaza, Old Hall Street, at 11.30am on Monday 9th May. Bring flags, banners, and placards.

Atos origin is being paid £300 million by the government to carry out ‘work capability assessments’. The assessments are supposedly aimed at finding out if people receiving sickness benefits are fit to work. The real purpose is to strip benefits from as many people as possible and save the government money.

This testing system has already led to people with terminal illnesses and severe medical conditions being declared fit for work and having benefits cut. GP’s are ignored in favour of decisions made by Atos Origin’s computer. Over two years, the company wrongly refused benefits to almost 30,000 people. Those people had to fight for a year to have the decision overturned.

Liverpool Solidarity Federation are disgusted that in a time when people are losing their jobs and being forced to live on benefits, poverty pimps like ATOS Origin are cashing in on the misery of others. Join us in our picket to stand in solidarity with the Black Triangle Anti-Defamation Campaign in Defence of Disabilty Rights and Disabled People Against Cuts and show them that these injustices will not stand!

You can RSVP to this event on Facebook here.

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the so-called Alternative Vote. People-particularly middle class liberals- seem to take great pride about their stand on it. Ed Milliband assured us that it is “a vote for hope over fear”-he must be using Obama’s speechwriter again. But really, should we honestly care?

We live in an extremely revolutionary period, one where the students have completely changed the game, showing the banality of party politics and kick starting a new movement in the process. And what’s the raging debate on the political scene at the moment? In the middle of insurrection in Greece, in the Arab World, in Spain, what’s the liberal response? Asking whether or not we should tinker with the voting system so we can carry on electing these parasites.  AV is a frivolous distraction and a sickening one at that. To see Vince Cable- who is responsible for locking many young people out of higher education- breaking bread with Ed Milliband- who spoke at the Anti-Cuts Rally last month- simply shows the emptiness of parliamentary democracy. Not one of these men has any principles and all have shown they are quite happy to play ball with the so-called opposition if it means a few more votes.

What’s the Alternative? Take your pick! Every area has an anti-cuts group so get involved. Start a newsletter; start a blog; occupy a shop; open a social centre, but what ever you don’t vote in this little game our leaders are playing. There’s no alternative for direct action.

This article is reprinted from a member of Liverpool Solidarity Federations blog which can be found here http://freedominthe21st.blogspot.com/

We were there to raise awareness of the role being played by ATOS in the government’s war against disabled people.

The company is being paid £300 million by the government to carry out ‘work capability assessments’. The assessments are supposedly aimed at finding out if people receiving sickness benefits are fit to work. The real purpose is to strip benefits from as many people as possible and save the government money.

This testing system has already led to people with terminal illnesses and severe medical conditions being declared fit for work and having benefits cut. GP’s are ignored in favour of decisions made by Atos Origin’s computer. Over two years, the company wrongly refused benefits to almost 30,000 people. Those people had to fight for a year to have the decision overturned.

The response from the public was overwhelmingly a positive one. We had more than a few people approaching us who were either directly affected by ATOS’s actions or who knew people that had suffered at their hands, and they wished us well in our picket.

Liverpool Solidarity Federation are disgusted that in a time when people are losing their jobs and being forced to live on benefits, poverty pimps like ATOS Origin are cashing in on the misery of others. We stand in solidarity with the Black Triangle Anti-Defamation Campaign in Defence of Disabilty Rights and Disabled People Against Cuts.

You can download a PDF version of the leaflet we distributed at the picket here.

See some more photos from the picket here.

The occupation took place at 2.30pm, when over a dozen people entered the building and announced that they were staging a sit-in. The protesters announced that they were protesting against “the appalling coverage” of UK Uncut actions in London on March 26th and would show “how civilised the UK Uncut occupations are by having a lovely tea party.”

Whilst the occupiers sat down to eat cakes and drink tea and coffee, a contingent of 8 police officers arrived. They could do little more than stand around, awkwardly. When asking who was in charge, replies of “we all are” and “we operate on consensus” were met with blank looks.

A member of Liverpool SolFed said, “on March 26th, UK Uncut felt the blunt end of state repression. Together with the roaming blockade formed by the Radical Workers’ Bloc, they caused significant economic damage. Attacking the economy and making the country ungovernable, is the only way to defeat austerity. That 138 of the 141 arrested were UK Uncut activists only underlines that.

“We don’t think that you can ‘win the argument’ with the state or bankers, as they do. But we recognise the value of their tactics in inflicting exactly the kind of economic damage that we advocate.”

Members of Liverpool SolFed were amongst those who signed a letter to UK Uncut which stated that “the whole idea of dividing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ protest serves only to legitimise police violence and repression” and “those of us fighting the cuts are all in this together.”

This is not the first time that Liverpool SolFed have engaged in practical solidarity at Radio Merseyside. Previously, members had joined the NUJ picket lines in support of the staff pensions dispute.

A video of the event, and an interview with a UK Uncut activist at the occupation, can be seen here.

Arriving in London, members of the Liverpool Solidarity Federation headed to Kennington Park. We met up with other SolFed members, as well as members of the Anarchist Federation and other class struggle anarchists to form the Radical Workers Bloc on the South London feeder march.

After we set off, the march passed largely without incident until the police tried to direct us away from the route which would take us over Westminister Bridge and allow us to feed in to the main march. There were several moments of confusion, until a group decisively broke through and brought the rest of the march along with us. This led to a rather proud moment where a line of police blocking the bridge stepped aside for a mass of several hundred people, the Liverpool Solidarity Federation’s banner at its head.

Crossing the bridge, we could see the TUC-organised “march for the alternative” snaking far ahead and far behind the point that we entered it. It was enormous, and densely packed, yet we couldn’t see either the front or the back. The TUC states that they stopped counting at 250,000 people, and the media’s most generous estimate is 500,000, but there had to be at least a million people protesting in London that day. If not more.

The result of this was that the march moved extremely slowly. It was so densely populated that holding a banner aloft was difficult at best.

We shuffled past the fortress that Westminister had become, lines of police staring stone-faced at us from behind crash barricades. The pace picked up as we went beyond Downing Street, where protesters engaged in pantomime by hurling a chorus of boos at the abode of a Prime Minister who was very far away from the protests against his government.

As we travelled down the route, we kept seeing the green bibs of Liberty, operating under the pretence of “legal observers.” All had their backs to the police, watching the protesters. Later reports from other comrades suggest that they were pointing out people to the intelligence gatherers of FIT, and even taking photographs themselves. None of them handed out bust cards, as the genuinely independent legal observers of the Green and Black Cross were doing. They were part of the police operation and not there for our protection.

At Trafalgar Square, up to a hundred people were congregating around the base of Nelson’s column, with a couple sitting on the backs of the lion statues. Further back, a huge banner had been unfurled that stated: “we demand regime change!” The occupation of the square was due to begin at 5pm.

When the Radical Workers’ Bloc reached the square, its participants stepped out of the march. Copies of the booklet No Comment: The defendant’s guide to arrest (PDF) were handed out. The bloc then reassembled itself to march through Trafalgar Square, separate to the main march, and on towards Oxford Street.

The breakaway march was good natured and lively from the offset. North and South London SolFed’s banners were at its head, with Liverpool’s not far behind. Chants rang out: “1-2-3-4! This way to class war! 5-6-7-8! Organise and smash the state!” At this point, there were roughly 300 people marching.

When we reached Oxford Street, UK Uncut activists were already there to engage in actions against Topshop, Vodaphone, and other tax dodgers. However, as soon as the Radical Workers Bloc turned on to the street, the police started to draw together. It quickly became apparent that their intention was to kettle, and we turned off down another street to avoid them.

Marching around the streets behind Oxford Circus, the bloc held together impressively. Directions and information were relayed from the front to the back and vice versa through megaphones. We were able to respond rapidly to police movements, whilst not being reckless enough to rush cut differet sections of the bloc off from one another. The only question now was how long we could continue to lead this chase and exactly what the end goal was. At this point, nobody was entirely sure.

We managed to push back onto Oxford Street, and surged up the road, passing the UK Uncut demonstrators once again. Chants of “who’s streets? Our streets!” rang out. Any police we passed were met with cries of “your jobs next!” Though not much sympathy for that fact. As we moved along, we passed several riot vans – all of them full and sat waiting.

When the march went past past HSBC, smoke bombs were set off. Red smoke rose into the air, followed shortly after by green smoke. Some people charged at the doors of the bank, attacking them with boots and flagpoles.

When the door fell in, the move to occupy it fell back at the shout of “here’s the riot police.” A significant section of the crowd surged backwards. Police in full riot gear moved to protect the entrace, shoving away anybody who was too close. This use of force in defence of property was met with a hail of paint balloons, sticks from placards, and bottles.

Though this has already been written up as “attacks” on the police, none of these things had the potential for any serious injury, and the bottles were plastic – most likely the ones people had been drinking from during the march. This was not “violence” but a legitimate expression of class anger. Property damage will be an inevitable part of any campaign which seeks to halt the cuts by inflicting damage upon the economy through direct action such as blockades and occupations.

The police responded by attacking the crowd and there were fights as the bloc struggled to get away from this and move on.

Members of Liverpool SolFed found it necessary to break away at this point and regroup elsewhere. By the time we had, the march had moved on and found a number of other targets before finally rallying outside of and joining the UK Uncut occupation of Fortnum and Mason.

There, again, the police sought to use violence in defence of property, kettling those who had already left the sit-in of their own accord.

But if you wanted to witness police brutality (and media bias) at its height, you had to watch the coverage of the Trafalgar Square occupation. Those who took over the space were not, even if you accepted the mainstream definitions of violence and direct action, thugs or hooligans. They were revellers, building fires and setting up campsites in order to make a stand for 24 hours.

This, after being made a fool of by anarchists earlier in the day, was more than the police could tolerate. Reports from those in the area came, via Twitter, of journalists being forcibly removed before the protesters were kettled and attacked. But, if we challenge established power, we should expect nothing less from those who enforce the state’s monopoly of violence. The question is whether we have the mechanisms in place to provide support and solidarity to those who fall victim to them, as both the Green and Black Cross and the Legal Defence Monitoring Group are trying to build. Today’s solidarity demonstration for those jailed was also an important part of this.

More broadly, it needs to be recognised that whilst the aim of local protests is to draw people in to a movement as something to build from, national protests need to be built to. The sheer weight of effort required to build up numbers that means something needs to come out of them other than a passive march from A to B and some speeches at the end. Break-away marches and direct action as an expression of class anger are more than justified in that respect.

But even so, they mean and accomplish nothing if that is the end of it. If anarchists went to London for a riot and that’s that, there was no point. However, if we are able to push the momentum of the direct action into a broader movement of active resistance, then it becomes a genuinely pivotal event.

What has to follow next is to build from attacks upon the economy in the middle of London to attacks upon the economy as a whole. We are already active on the picket lines of striking workers, fighting our own bosses and showing solidarity with the struggles of others. There have also been occupations of closing services, and moderate examples of economic blockades which could be far more effective if fired with militancy.

The point now is to turn them from outstanding events into the norm, not as part of an “argument,” but as a tactic. If we want the government to back down, the cuts must become the more expensive option. We have to make the country ungovernable.

Whereas Tuesday’s strike had been over attacks on pensions, today’s was in protest at the threats to members’ jobs. An 80% cut in teaching budgets from the government means that 40,000 jobs are at risk. This represents not only an attack on jobs but also on the education sector as a whole, as pickets were keen to stress when they handed leaflets to students urging them not to attend lectures.

One picket on Brownlow Hill told us that the area was a lot quieter than it would normally be first thing in the morning. There had been good support from UCU members, however by the same token the density of non-union members amongst the staff meant that there were still people going in to teach.

There was almost a disappointed resignation to this fact, and to the broader number of students not respecting picket lines, in some places. Combined with the sheer volume of university entrances, this meant that there were a lot of tiny picket lines spread across a large area, with individual strikers handing out leaflets – one aimed at staff, one aimed at students. At some entrances it was students from the Merseyside Network Against Fees and Cuts who were the picket line.

When 10 o’clock arrived, we found ourselves by a lecture theatre that had no picket line in front of it. With students due to attend lectures at this time, we put practical solidarity into action and formed the picket ourselves. This allowed us to engage with the students and to ask them to show support by refusing to attend lectures. We were able to turn several small groups and individuals away, though far more people crossed when in large masses. Nonetheless, it brought home the message that this was not a normal day and hopefully has encouraged people to think hard about the attacks we’re facing as a class at present and the need to stand together.

Liverpool SF's ad hoc lecture hall picket

Particularly gratifying was seeing one large number who refused to honour the picket line have to walk back out again because their lecturer was on strike anyway.

After this, we visited several other picket lines to express our support and offer solidarity, before heading to the rally at University Square. There, the message was the same – we are facing attacks as a class, and workers from all sectors and students need to stand together against them. There were no calls for militant direct action, but there is certainly a growing realisation amongst rank-and-file workers that we need to make the cuts the more expensive option if we want the government to back down.

Liverpool Solidarity Federation will continue to support workers in struggle on the streets, in occupations, and on the picket lines. To defeat the attacks by the government, we need working class unity and the will to make the cuts impossible to implement.

Click here to download the issue as a PDF file(2.25 MB). You can also get in touch with us to get paper copies : catalyst@solfed.org.uk.

In this issue

Winning the argument or winning the fight: where next after March 26?

Austerity Britain: centrefold feature on austerity and the resistance.

Levenshulme Baths saved: 20-day campaign gets results.

North African revolts: calls for ‘bread and freedom’ spread.

Know your rights: basic rights at work.

Comment: crisis in care.