AWL education and discussion schools

Workers' Liberty dayschool: New Unionism: how workers can fight back

Submitted on

Date: 
18 February, 2012 - 11:30 - 17:30
Location: 

Highgate Newtown Community Centre, 25 Bertram Street, London N19 5DQ (Archway tube)

Description: 

Click here to download leaflet.

Registration: £15 waged, £8 low-waged/ student, £4 unwaged. To register online, click here, and enter the details of the amount you're paying and the registration you require when paying online.

In the late 1880s, workers (often unskilled or semi-skilled, often migrants and often working in casualised and precarious environments) organised militant industrial unions to fight back against their bosses. Socialist activists like Eleanor Marx, Tom Mann and Will Thorne were crucial to the struggles.

Faced with increasingly similar conditions today, can we build a New Unionism for the 21st century that transforms and revolutionises the modern labour movement?

Agenda

11:30-11:45 – Registration

11:45-1:15 – Workshops

* How the socialists organised: the life and times of Tom Mann (Cathy Nugent and Charlie MacDonald)
* The movement for working-class self-education (Colin Waugh, further education activist, author of Plebs, the Lost Legacy of Independent Working-Class Education)
* Finding a political voice: from New Unionism to Labour representation (Martin Thomas and Sam Greenwood)
* Organising the unorganised: (Mick Duncan, Unite p.c; Ruth Cashman, Lambeth Unison p.c.)

1:15-2:00 – Lunch

2:00-4:00 – Workshops

* From the Matchworkers to the Chainmakers – how women organised (Jill Mountford and Louise Raw, author of Striking a Light, The Bryant and May Matchwomen and their Place in History)
* What came next – The Great Unrest 1911-1914 (Edd Mustill)
* Organising at work today: using the ‘Troublemakers’ Handbook’ (Kim Moody, founder of Labor Notes magazine, academic, author — most recently US Labor in Trouble and Transition — and activist)

4:00-4:15 – Break

4:15-5:30 – Closing plenary: New Unionism 2012? How can we reinvigorate the labour movement? Speakers include Eamonn Lynch (Bakerloo Line driver tube driver victimised for his union activity and reinstated following an RMT campaign), speaker from IWW London Cleaners' branch and Jean Lane (Workers' Liberty and Tower Hamlets Unison)

Tickets: £15 (waged), £8 (low-waged), £4 (unwaged)

Creche, cheap food and bookstalls

National demonstration for education - stop privatisation, stop the White Paper

Submitted on

Date: 
9 November, 2011 - 12:00 - 17:00
Location: 

Malet Street, Central London

Description: 

The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts has called a demonstration, backed by the NUS, to protest against the government's privatisation and cuts agenda for Higher Education. We demand free education, funded by taxing the rich; and the withdrawal of the HE White Paper, which is a charter for profiteering in education.

The demonstration will leave from ULU on Malet Street at 12pm on Wednesday November 9 and march to Trafalgar Square and then on to Moorgate. Be there!

Facebook event here

More details on the NCAFC website

There will be a national demonstration of electricians working in the construction industry, as part of an ongoing dispute against an across-the-board attack on conditions including a 35% pay cut for electricians working for the biggest national contractors.

Electricians will rally at the Pinnacle construction site at 22-24 Bishopsgate near Liverpool Street at 7am, then at the Shard at London Bridge at 11:30am before marching to Blackfriars at 1pm.

See an interview with construction industry activist Mick Dooley here

When workers fought for the vote: Isle of Wight study group on British working-class history (1)

Submitted on

Date: 
18 October, 2009 - 13:30 - 15:00
Location: 

The Wheatsheaf, 16 St Thomas Square, Newport, Isle of Wight

Description: 

For explanation and details of the whole course, see here.

We will look at the Chartists, Britain's first mass working-class movement, whose campaign for everyone to have the vote created a social crisis; and at the movement associated with Robert Owen, which pursued a different strategy for overcoming capitalism.

Reading: GDH Cole and Raymond Postgate's book, The Common People, chapters 22-25.

"Waking from forty years sleep": Isle of Wight study group on British working-class history (3)

Submitted on

Date: 
15 November, 2009 - 11:30 - 13:00
Location: 

The Wheatsheaf, 16 St Thomas Square, Newport, Isle of Wight

Description: 

For explanation and details of the whole course, see here.

Looking at the revival of socialist ideas, the development of working-class political representation and, from the late 1880s, the huge struggles which created the "new unionism" organising precarious and unskilled workers.

Reading: The Common People, chapters 34, 35, 37, 38.

Sheffield AWL dayschool. Revolutionary Socialism 101: A Beginners' Guide To Winning The Class War...

Submitted on

Date: 
17 May, 2009 - 14:00 - 19:00
Location: 

University of Sheffield Students' Union (Exact room TBA)

Description: 

Join your friendly neighborhood Trotskyists for a discussion of some of the basic ideas of revolutionary socialism; why the working class, why a revolution, and what is socialism? We'll be discussing these ideas in the context of activism that's taken place recently on campus.

No prior political experience is necessary - just a healthy contempt for the rich...

More: skillz_999@hotmail.com or 07961040618

Capitalist crisis, workers' response: AWL trade union and youth dayschool

Submitted on

Date: 
21 March, 2009 - 11:00 - 17:30
Location: 

School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H

Description: 

Download leaflet as pdf: see "attachment", below.

A day of discussion and organising hosted by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty

Facebook event here.

As capitalism's crisis spreads and deepens, the bosses are seeking to make the working class bear the costs. Come and discuss why this crisis is happening, what it means for workers and the oppressed getting organised to fight back - and the possibilities for socialism.

11am Registration

11.30am Opening plenary: how can the working class respond to the capitalists' crisis?

12.30pm Workshops
a) Why capitalism creates crises and what they mean for class struggle: an introduction
b) The fight against unemployment and for jobs for all, including the experience of the recent construction industry walk outs
c) Crisis and climate change, with Workers' Climate Action activist Louise Gold

1.45pm Lunch

2.15pm Workshops
a) Migrant workers organising
b) Class struggle in Iraq: report from the 13-14 March trade union conference in Iraqi Kurdistan, with Unison activist Ruth Cashman
c) How US workers used the crisis of the 1930s to fight and win

3.30pm Workshops
a) Student struggles across Europe, with Koos Couvee of Education Not for Sale and a student activist from France's New Anti-capitalist Party
b) Women's liberation in the crisis, with Feminist Fightback activist Rebecca Galbraith
c) Building rank-and-file movements in the unions: the experience of Labor Notes in the US, with former Labor Notes director Kim Moody

4.40pm Closing plenary

5.10pm Close

Followed by a social with bands Revolutionary Discipline and the Ruby Kid (Facebook event here).

For more information email awl@workersliberty.org or ring 07796 690 874