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Royal Festival Hall, Southbank (meet outside poetry library on fifth floor)
Submitted on
Royal Festival Hall, Southbank (meet outside poetry library on fifth floor)
The Olympics will lead to more than just transport nightmares and hiked up rents this summer. Sensationalised government claims that sporting events lead to increased trafficking means anti-trafficking policies and policing targeting sex workers. "Clean up efforts" are already underway - raids and closures, harassment and arbitrary arrests are creating fear among sex workers.
Sex work remains a contentious issue for feminists - join us to discuss what socialist feminists say about sex work and how we can best make solidarity with sex workers this summer. We welcome open discussion and debate at this Women's Fightback discussion open to all self-defining women.
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Royal Festival Hall, Southbank (meet outside poetry library on fifth floor)
Why are we hearing more from fundamentalist religious groups in social and political life? Do they represent a real threat to a woman's right to choose? If so how do we combat that threat?
What do we mean by, and what do we want from, secularism? Can secularism be compatible with freedom of religious expression? Why are democratic rights important to feminists, socialists and all anti-capitalist activists?
Come, engage with and take part in the discussion, open to all self-defining women.
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The Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, London WC1X 8JR
Is a "Marxist" attitude to art possible? Can works of art be judged according to political theory, or do they have to be related to and understood on their own terms? Is art only valuable if it serves a political purpose? How have Marxists and other revolutionaries debated these issues in the past?
Filmmaker and screenwriter Clive Bradley, whose work includes the feature film 'WAZ' and the Channel 4 drama 'City of Vice', and Daniel Randall (aka hip-hop artist and spoken-word poet The Ruby Kid) lead a discussion of the issues.
Facebook event here. Click attachment below for leaflet.
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The Lucas Arms, 245a Grays Inn Road, Kings Cross, London
A meeting organised by London Workers' Liberty, with speakers from the Iranian Revolutionary Marxist Tendency, the Worker-communist Party of Iran (Hekmatist) and the International Alliance in Support of Workers in Iran (tbc).
As the threat of an Israeli strike on Iran grows, Workers' Liberty is organising this forum with Iranian socialist activists to discuss the issues facing socialists and the labour movement internationally. Should we take sides in the conflict? What is our attitude to Iran acquiring nuclear weapons? What should we say about economic sanctions? What should we say about Israel? What about the claims made by some on the British left that sharp criticism of the Iranian regime only strengthens the drive to war?
All welcome. Plenty of time for debate and discussion
Leaflet for meeting downloadable below.
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St Vincent Community Centre, Talma Road, Brixton SW2 1AS
Janine Booth, author of Guilty and Proud of It: Poplar's Rebel Councillors tells the story of how after World War 1 a Labour council led the working-class movement of Poplar, in East London, to victory over the last Tory-Liberal coalition government. We will discuss the lessons for our fight against cuts to jobs and services today. (For a summary of the story, see here.)
Chair: Ruth Cashman, Lambeth Unison and Save Our Service (pc)
Followed from 7.30pm by placard-making and planning for the Lambeth SOS anti-cuts demo the next day (see here).
For more information ring 07930 845 495 or email ruthycashman@yahoo.co.uk
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The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, L1 9HB Liverpool, United Kingdom
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 stunted 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 and even the Marxist Left.
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
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The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, L1 9HB Liverpool
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
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The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, L1 9HB Liverpool, United Kingdom
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/
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The Pilgrim Pub, 34 Pilgrim Street, Liverpool, Merseyside, L1 9HB
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/
