Workers' Liberty

Ideas for Freedom is an annual weekend of socialist debate and discussion hosted by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty.

After a long period of capitalist triumphalism, the economic crisis has left capitalism massively discredited. Every week thousands lose their jobs or homes, while millions of workers have taken real-term wage cuts, as the bosses attempt to make us pay for their crisis. We are also seeing the first shoots of working-class resistance, including workplace occupations to stop closures and major strikes in education, in engineering construction, on the post and on London Underground - not to mention huge class struggle in countries including France, Ireland and Greece.

And yet despite growing anti-capitalist sentiments among workers and young people, the socialist left remains weak, and the far right is growing - as witnessed in the shocking results of the European elections. How can we give positive form and direction to the widespread feeling of disgust with the capitalist system? How can we challenge the totally inadequate response of most of our union leaders to the crisis, and mobilise our labour movement for class struggle? What kind of ideas does the left need to do all this?

This is an essential event for workers and activists who want to answer those questions.

For the Facebook event, see here. For downloadable pdf posters, here. For a copyable leaflet, see below.

7.30pm, Friday 10 July: evening film showing and social at the Bread & Roses, 68 Clapham Manor Street, London SW4 (Clapham Common tube). Fundraiser for the Visteon workers
We will be showing With Babies and Banners, the story of women workers’ and activists’ role in the great sit-down strike against General Motors at Flint in 1936, a struggle that inspired millions of workers to fight in the midst of the Depression and helped launch the modern US labour movement.
Visteon worker Debra Narey will speak about the experience of their occupation.
Facebook event here.

Saturday 11 July
School of Oriental and African Studies, Thornhaugh Street, London WC1H (Euston, Russell Square or Goodge Street tube)

11.30am Registration

12 noon
Opening plenary: the capitalist crisis, class struggle and the fight for socialism (in Institute of Education, next to bar)
Speakers include Sean Matgamna (Workers' Liberty); Becky Crocker (RMT rep and Tube striker); Alberto Durango (victimised Unite cleaner activist)

1pm Lunch
Lunch break includes "Introducing Marxism": The economics of the crisis. Facilitator: Martin Thomas

2.10pm
a) What is happening in Iran? How can we make solidarity? What are the lessons for the left? With Iranian socialist activists
b) Can we win free education? Where is the student movement going? Daniel Randall (National Union of Students trustee and Education Not for Sale) debates Wes Streeting (NUS President)
Facebook event here.
c) The left, community struggles and working-class representation: Janine Booth introduces her new book Guilty and Proud: Poplar's Rebel Councillors and Guardians 1919-25

3.40pm
a) 50 years since the Cuban revolution: is Cuba socialist? Paul Hampton (Workers' Liberty) debates Helen Yaffe (Revolutionary Communist Group/Rock Around the Blockade)
Facebook event here.
b) Northern Ireland 1969: could there have been a revolution? Sean Matgamna (Workers' Liberty) debates John Palmer (formerly leading member of the International Socialists, contributor to Red Pepper)
c) "Introducing Marxism": reform and revolution; what is a 'transitional demand'? Facilitator: Rosie Woods

5pm
a) Socialists and the national question: comparing Israel-Palestine and Sri Lanka
b) Why climate change is a class issue. With Workers' Climate Action activists including Louise Gold, and Pat Rolfe on the fight against the closure of Vesta turbines on the Isle of Wight
c) Workers' fight against the army and Taliban in Pakistan. Speakers: Faryal Velmi (Workers' Liberty) and Farooq Tariq (Labour Party Pakistan general secretary, via phone link-up)

6.20pm Dinner

7pm (in the Institute of Education)
a) How can the left unite? Speakers from Workers' Liberty, Workers Power, Permanent Revolution and the Alliance for Green Socialism
b) "Introducing Marxism": is Workers' Liberty a revolutionary party?

8.30pm Close

Followed by a social at the Grafton Arms, 72 Grafton Way, London W1T

Sunday 12 July
SOAS

11am
a) Women and the crisis: feminism and fighting cuts, past, present and future. Speaker: Cathy Nugent
b) France's new workers' party. Speaker: Ameline Shah, activist in the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste
c) Should the unions disaffiliate from Labour? A debate between Workers' Liberty activists

12.10pm Lunch
Lunch break includes "Introducing Marxism": our critique of anarchism

1.20pm
a) How do we stop the rise of the BNP? Tom Unterrainer (Workers' Liberty and Notts Stop the BNP) debates Sam Tarry (Searchlight)
b) Why you should read Marx's Capital, and how to do it! Facilitators: Bob Sutton and Stuart Jordan
c) The unions and the crisis, with speakers including Pat Murphy (NUT executive), Steve Hedley (RMT London Transport Convenor); and a Visteon occupier

2.40pm
a) The politics of social work and child protection. Speakers: Lynne Moffat (social worker in Islington) and Pauline Bradley (social worker in Dumbarton, formerly in Haringey)
b) Migrant workers' struggles and the politics of immigration control. Speakers include Clara Osagiede (RMT London Underground cleaners' grade)
c) The great miners' strike of 1984-5. Speaker: Jill Mountford

4pm Closing rally

4.30pm Close

Cheap rates for bookings in advance: £20 waged, £13 low-waged/students, £8 unwaged/school students for the weekend. (Day tickets are also available.) £25/£18/£13 if bought on the day.

Book online here (or email awl@workersliberty.org):

• Click on the "donate" button below; or

• Send a cheque payable to AWL to P O Box 823, London SE15 4NA; or
• Do an Internet bank transfer to AWL, account 20047674 at Unity Trust Bank, 08-60-01.