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Winning the argument, or winning the fight?

There’s been a lot of talk in the anti-cuts movement about the importance of ‘winning the argument’. This strategy holds that the best way to go about fighting attacks on wages, living conditions and services is to point out the flaws in the pro-cuts arguments and suggest alternative policies which would avoid the need for cuts.

Some even seem to think that if the argument is won, the government will see the error of its ways, stop the planned cuts and everyone can go home happy.

It isn’t hard to see where this strategy falls down. It certainly isn’t the weakness of the anti-cuts arguments; it’s been convincingly shown that these cuts aren’t ‘necessary’ at all.

Solidarity with striking lecturers and teachers!

On Tuesday March 22nd and Thursday March 24th, the University & Colleges Union (UCU) are going out on strike over pay, job security and pensions.

There will be strikes and picket lines at Knowsley Community College, St Helen’s College, Hugh Baird College (Bootle), Southport College, Wirral Met, Liverpool Community College, Edgehill University, John Moores University, Hope University, and the University of Liverpool.

Liverpool Solidarity Federation expresses its solidarity with the strike and urges students to support it by joining and refusing to cross picket lines.

Organising in the Workplace with SolFed

This past weekend saw a number of members of the North London Local of the Solidarity Federation travel to lovely Brighton to attend a day-long SolFed workplace organiser training hosted by the Brighton Solidarity Federation.  The training, which focuses heavily on the practicalities of organising at work, not only gave us the chance to network with other SolFedders and interested workplace militants, but to have strategic conversations about establishing an organising committee in each of our workplaces.  We look forward to keeping in touch and putting the training to good use.  Bosses beware!

If you're interested in getting trained up, please send an email to training (at) solfed.org.uk

International Women's Day centenary march report

Liverpool Solidarity Federation members attended yesterday's International Women's Day centenary march organised by Merseyside Women's Movement.

A lively crowd of several hundred people met on St George's Plateau to listen to a range of female speakers share their thoughts on the struggles women continue to face on a daily basis.

Wildcat! #5

The Spring 2011 issue of our local newsletter can be downloaded here.

Contents:

- Councillor Joe Anderson is no ally of the working class!

- Name and shame blacklist collaborators

- Ruling-class cuts hit Chester

- Liverpool SolFed out & about

- SolFed weekend school

All feedback appreciated.

Radical Workers' Bloc on the March For the Alternative

On Saturday 26th March the Trades Union Congress has called for a march against the cuts, and there is going to be a South London feeder march starting at Kennington Park which we will be joining. South London is one of the areas to be hardest hit by the cuts and has seen some of the most inspiring resistance to their implementation with the storming and occupying of town halls, the occupying of libraries and university buildings along with large demonstrations and regular small actions.

Working-class history: Anarcho-syndicalism on Merseyside

We are very grateful to a comrade from Manchester Solidarity Federation for lending us a book entitled 'Building the Union: Studies on the growth of the workers' movement: Merseyside, 1756-1967'. Below we publish several extracts from the book specifically about anarcho-syndicalism locally in the early part of the 20th century. The essay is by Bob Holton.

Protests and disruption at Liverpool Town Hall

Members of Liverpool Solidarity Federation were amongst the crowd of 300 people who gathered outside Liverpool Town Hall to protest as the council set its austerity budget. With £91m of cuts on the table, local people and community campaigns - including the Park View Project to rehabilitate alcoholics and the Whitechapel Centre for the homeless as well as more than a few nurseries and SureStart centres - joined activists and campaigners to make the council hear their message.

At first, people huddled on the pavement on both sides of the road. Spirits were high and there was a lot of shouting and chanting, but it wasn't until one woman walked into the road with a banner and everybody else joined in that things really kicked off. This buoyed everybody's spirits even further and there was a mood of defiance in the air.

Drumming on the doors at Hackney cuts protest

After a slow start, protesters at a March 2nd demonstration in Hackney against Labour council budget cuts made their voices heard with a drive for the doors which temporarily saw panic in police lines amid chants of "let us in" and "it's your jobs next."

The night had started off slowly, with barely 50 people hitting the pavement outside the council's Mare Street headquarters as the cuts discussion and vote, widely seen as a rubber-stamping of government funding plans, went through.

But numbers grew as the evening got colder until around 200 people were stood outside the heavily-fortified building. Police picketed every door with at least three full riot vans on standby and barriers adorned the main entrance in a nod to events which saw Camden and Lewisham councils browbeaten by their subjects late last month.

Victory in campaign to save Levenshulme Baths

On 8 February Labour-run Manchester City Council was the first to announce its budget cuts - £109 million worth. Among community amenities being axed were several libraries, some advice centres and half a dozen fitness and leisure centres. The south Manchester neighbourhood of Levenshulme – ethnically and economically mixed with some pockets of severe deprivation was the worst affected – facing the loss of its leisure centre, Sure Start scheme and its historic swimming pools.

The baths were a contentious choice to cut by the council, which had spent more than £200,000 in 2010 upgrading the facilities  but was insisting full refurbishment was too expensive at more than £300,000 and the only viable option was to close it.

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