AWL education and discussion schools

A weekend of class-struggle socialist discussion and debate for students and young people, organised by Workers’ Liberty

Click here to download pdf leaflet.

Tickets £6 waged, £4 low-waged/uni students, £2 unwaged/school and college students if bought in advance; £7, £5, £3 on the day.

Book online here.

Saturday at Highgate Newtown Community Centre, 25 Bertram St, London N19 5DQ; Sunday in south east London (call 07775 763 750 for details).

Sessions will include:

• What is capitalism? How do we get rid of it?
• Career prospects to change the world: what left-wing students should do when they leave uni
• Palestine and Israel: eye-witness report backs
• Debate: should we boycott Israel?
• Students and class
• Iran: nuclear weapons, war and solidarity
• The left, religion and secularism
• Fighting racism and fascism
• The origins of today’s student left, 1982-2012: launch of a new pamphlet
• What's coming up for the left at NUS conference (24-26 April)
• Discussion on developing the Charter for Women in Education
• Activist training on public speaking

Followed by a social with spoken word, theatre and music @ the Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross.

If you need accommodation, that’s no problem. For more information or to book a place email students@workersliberty.org or ring 07775 763 750.

Facebook event here

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

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.