AWL discussion meetings

Is the Left Anti-Semitic?

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Date: 
27 March, 2012 - 18:00 - 20:00
Location: 

The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, L1 9HB Liverpool, United Kingdom

Description: 

The question of Israel-Palestine conflict is one of the most prominent in current world events. Nowhere more so, it seems, than on the far left, where action and stance taken on this issue often takes centre stage in the activity and political education of many a young militant.

The question of anti-Semitism and indeed of ‘left’ anti-Semitism is far older than the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel;

When capitalism and imperialism were first developing many confused and backward reactions to the new power of big finance conflated a stunt...ed and reactionary form of ‘anti-capitalism’ with older anti-Semitic mythology. Indeed the first Immigration controls in Britain, the 1904 Aliens Act, specifically targeted against Jews fleeing persecution is Eastern Europe, was supported by the large portion of the British labour movement.

Merseyside Workers’ Liberty are hosting a discussion to explore whether this kind of ideology has seeped into those whose entirely correct instincts are to to side with the Palestinians against the brutal Israeli occupation of West Bank and Gaza and their historic displacement since 1948, and discussing the influence of British imperialism, the Stalinist bloc, and Islamism and what we mean by ‘Zionism’ and ‘anti-Zionism’. Most importantly, we will discuss how we can practically fight for a viable and equitable settlement.

Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/events/336096039764286/?context=create

Long Live International Women's Day!

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Date: 
13 March, 2012 - 18:00 - 20:00
Location: 

The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, L1 9HB Liverpool

Description: 

We are often told that the fight for gender equality is largely won, and the women's struggle is over, but when examining the economic and social conditions of a large number of women across the world, can we say this true? And if not, what kind of women's movement do we need to continue the fight? Marking the upcoming Internation Women's Day, Workers Liberty host a debate arguing for Socialist and class struggle feminism as opposed to the radical or liberal alternatives.

Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/229938037094865/?context=create

What is Fascism and how do we fight it?

Submitted on

Date: 
28 February, 2012 - 18:00 - 20:00
Location: 

The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, L1 9HB Liverpool, United Kingdom

Description: 

The history of Fascism in Europe is taught in school as if it was some kind of one-off, an aberration of mystical, unspeakable evil that will never be repeated.

Hundreds of hours of TV and in classrooms is spent pouring over details; the horrors of the Second World War, ...the concentration camps, and the Holocaust. However in terms of any real explanation for how these events came to happen in a modern, literate, industrialised society, we get little which goes beyond superficial study of the personalities; everything from the childhoods to the sex lives of the leading individuals.

Marxists seek to understand the world and the actions of people in it scientifically. Fascism grew out of a specific historical context: The aftermath of the First World War and the greatest crisis of capitalism in the 20th century.

Join Merseyside Workers’ Liberty for a discussion of how Fascism developed in war-exhausted and crisis-ridden Italy and Germany, how the powerful workers’ movements in those countries were politically disorientated and smashed, and what lessons our movement can draw from that experience in order to fight the likes of the BNP and EDL today...

Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/354771374543818/

What is Independent Working Class Education?

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Date: 
14 February, 2012 - 18:00 - 20:00
Location: 

The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, Liverpool, Merseyside, L1 9HB

Description: 

Education under capitalism is organised for one purpose – to prepare the next generation of workers for a life of exploitation and to ‘update the skills’ of the current ones according to the needs of the labour market. We are conditioned to absorb information and not question it or the world around us.

Colin Waugh has worked in adult education for more than 25 years and will be talking about his recently published account of the Plebs League – the founding movement inspired by the notion that the working classes should produce their own thinkers and organisers!

The Plebs League eventually became a national movement, providing what was called independent working-class education (IWCE). Later it was called the National Council of Labour Colleges. Through this movement, which was still functioning in 1964, tens of thousands of working-class people both taught and learnt.

The basic aim behind IWCE was that the working class should produce its own thinkers and organisers. The autobiographies and reminiscences of many labour movement leaders in the 1930s, 40s and 50s refer to the Plebs League and the Ruskin strike. In contrast, few academic historians have paid attention to these initiatives. Most histories of adult education, for example, assume that what counts is the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). They either ignore IWCE altogether or see it as an obstacle that briefly hampered the WEA.

Facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/events/371959769497170/

Merseyside AWL - Long live the Paris Commune!

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Date: 
8 June, 2011 - 20:30 - 22:30
Description: 

In 1871, the workers and poor people of Paris organised to take power and create the world’s first workers’ government – the Paris Commune. The result was an explosion of democracy, freedom and human creativity unparalleled in history up to that point.
Although the Commune lasted less than three months and was drowned in blood by the French ruling class, its example has inspired workers in revolutionary struggle across the world ever since.

Between March 18, the day the Commune began, and 28 May, the day it fell, Working men and women of Paris instituted radical democracy, abolished the police and the army and workers took control of their work places.
63 years before women in France won the vote, during the 72-day reign of the Commune, women organised, argued, theorised and fought alongside men to defend and develop the revolution. Paule Mink, Louise Michel & Nathalie LeMel and many other women organised societies, published papers demanding equal rights, the abolition of marriage and the organisation of women workers both inside and outside the home.

Elaine Jones from Workers Liberty will talk about this pivitol moment in the history of the world workers movement and the role of women in the Commune. We will also discuss what the Commune teaches us about the kind of workers government we fight for.

facebook event here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=143337145725886

directions: http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&tab=wl

The other history of American Trotskyism

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Date: 
3 February, 2011 - 19:30
Description: 

February Study Series from North East London Workers' Liberty

We live in a class society. Throughout history, economic and social crises have created huge clashes between the classes. We are living in such a time now, when the ruling class and the working class will lock horns and fight over the future of society. The big struggles of the past pose the big political questions for the movement of today.

The principal political question facing the working-class movement today is the problem of Stalinism. How did the Russian Revolution, the biggest expression of working-class democracy and solidarity in history, end in prison camps and tyranny? What is Stalinism and what does it mean for the workers movement today and the hope of a socialist future?

The only adequate answers to these questions have been the answers of the Trotskyist movement. This movement of working-class revolutionaries fought both capitalism and Stalinism to their deaths. In this educational series, we will look back on the debates of the early Trotskyist movement and what they mean for us today.

Download pdf for details

Liverpool AWL: An introduction to Marxism

Submitted on

Date: 
21 October, 2010 - 21:30 - 23:00
Location: 

Training Room, Liverpool Guild of Students, 160 Mount Pleasant L3 5TR

Description: 

A basic introduction to the history and the ideas of the socialist movement. You may well of heard of Karl Marx - he was one of the most significant thinkers in human history. Marx’s life work was to pull together a scientific theory of how society works, how it had developed and how all this was shaped by the conflict between different classes. These ideas, Marxism, is the basic framework and understanding with which revolutionary socialists look at the world and look to change it.

Search 'ideas for freedom liverpool' for Facebook event.

Liverpool AWL: our remembrance - a working-class history of war

Submitted on

Date: 
28 October, 2010 - 22:00 - 23:30
Location: 

The Hub, Liverpool Guild of Students, 160 Mount Pleasant, L3 5TR

Description: 

The 20th century saw two world wars and countless others in which millions of people were sent to die. The beginning of the 21st suggests not a lot has changed. What do socialist say about war?

Search 'ideas for freedom liverpool' for Facebook event.

What is socialism?

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Date: 
22 July, 2010 - 21:00 - 23:00
Location: 

The White Horse pub, Peckham Rye, SE15 4JR (ten minutes from Peckham Rye station)

Description: 

* Is it possible?
* How do we win it?
* What does the working class have to do with it?

A discussion meeting organised by South London Workers’ Liberty

Is capitalism, with huge riches for a tiny minority and low wages, cuts and misery for the majority, the only way of organising society?

What does "socialism" mean? How would it be different from capitalism? Would it be like Cuba or the old Soviet Union?

In the context of a Tory government of millionaires making huge cuts, there are likely to be big strikes and struggles by working-class people to fight back. What does this have to do with the goal of socialism?

Workers’ Liberty uses “socialism” to mean a system of democratic cooperation which provides for people’s needs and not for the profits of the rich – a system which can only be won by the struggles and self-liberation of the working class.

Before the discussion, we will also be showing a short film about the miners’ strike of 1984-5, which almost defeated and brought down Margaret Thatcher’s government.

Whether or not socialist politics is new to you, whether or not you’ve been to a meeting like this before, come and join the discussion. All welcome.

For more info: email markosborn61@gmail.com or ring Jill on 07904 944 771

AWL Glasgow meeting: after the election - organising against the Tories and fascists

Submitted on

Date: 
22 May, 2010 - 14:30 - 17:30
Location: 

Room 2, Woodside Halls, Glenfarg Street, Glasgow

Description: 

An Alliance for Workers' Liberty discussion forum

12:30-2:00: Organising against the Tory-Lib Dem coalition

With the Tories back in power, backed up by their junior partners in the Lib Dems, how can the labour movement fight back? Does the continuing affiliation of most big unions to the Labour Party mean that workers can exert pressure on Labour? Or should socialists push for the creation of a new party? In Scotland, should the left focus on pursuing an alliance with the nationalists and a fight for independence?

2:15-3:30: Organising against the far-right

The BNP did badly at the elections, but they still exist as a force with a significant following that could pose a real threat. Could their electoral defeats signal a turn towards the street-level style of organising we've already seen from the English, Scottish and Welsh "Defence Leagues"? How can we build a working-class anti-fascist movement that organises to physically confront fascist organisation as well as campaigning around the issues that fascists exploit in order to grow?

Facebook event here.