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is a political organisation aiming to build workplace and community democracy through direct action and struggling with all those fighting for change.
We stand for the power of workers and local people against the bosses and politicians in order to bring about radical social change, to build a society based on freedom, democracy and cooperation.
15 IWW members and supporters in Edinburgh turned out today to support victimised cleaner Alberto Durango and his fellow workers who have faced cuts in their pay by their employer, Lancaster. Alberto was fired by Lancaster for daring to organise cleaners and fight for better treatment for them. Lancaster are contracted by Swiss bank UBS for cleaning in London where these workers are facing attacks and intimidation from management.
You’re in the centre of Reading. You walk south, past the shops, the chain pubs, the empty office blocks. You reach the Oracle, a plastic, steel and glass cathedral built to praise the gods of shopping. You cross the IDR – a massive dual carriageway built through the centre of the town as part of the most ill thought out experiment in traffic management – and enter London Street. You walk past Reading International Solidarity Centre, the various solicitors, employment agencies and English as a foreign language schools. You reach the cross roads. To your right is a Tesco’s, topped by student flats. To your left are empty Tudor style houses. Opposite is a six storey block of flats designed to be the ‘model of luxury urban living’; in reality a collection of rabbit hutch size apartments which will fall apart in a couple of years. Opposite and to the right there is a rubble-strewn waste-ground. The site of one of the most successful and militant direct-action campaigns in Reading for a long time.
For some in the anarchist movement “marketing” and “branding” are dangerous words, however even those of us more pragmatic in our outlook have often failed to critically evaluate the anarchist brand identity. Clearly marketing and branding are useful tools for our movement, to abandon them on idealogical grounds would be to deny ourselves an important weapon in the battle against capitalism. So what exactly is a brand identity?
The first meeting was called by SSP members, and was fairly widely publicised, and included lots of leftists from many different organisations. The position of the group was decided at the very first meeting and was not discussed for very long, because it was uncontroversial: everyone present wanted to confront the SDL. The name Edinburgh Anti-Fascist Alliance was chosen for continuity.
Let us start with the value of people. For the wider socialist movement, people are like blood cells - essential components, not just in themselves, but vital transmitters of the minerals of ideas and practice. But like blood, the people of the socialist movement can also transmit disease.
