With the general election just days away, libertarian-leaning groups in Brighton are getting ready to resist what comes next — whoever’s in charge.

Organisers with Solidarity Federation, Plan C and the IWGB have jointly organised a Critical Mass bike ride for Friday June 9th to kick off their own manifesto: “Whatever the result, the daily organising continues!” The ride, which is open to all, will start 8pm at The Level, Brighton and aims to unite “workers, renters and students together fighting for a future beyond the Tories.”

Politically, the collaboration is an interesting one as it brings together anarcho-syndicalists, autonomist-inspired movement builders and a grassroots union originally linked to the IWW for an official joint project, something which until recent years would have been potentially difficult to organise.

The collaboration is just part of a broader uptick in Brighton’s radical circles, which have historically been influential in the city particularly in anti-war activism, student direct action and grassroots labour organising.

On June 18th, an Anti-Raids Revival meetup is being held at progressive hub the Cowley Club, on 12 London Road. The joint training and public discussion is aiming to reinvigorate an anti-raids network locally and will include talks by London’s anti-raids activists, who have been relatively successful in organising rapid responses to raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers.

And more broadly, there has been the founding of Left Hook, a radical sport and training group specialising in self-defence classes. The group said:

Over the past few decades we have seen sport become dominated by big money, with the soul sucked out of it. We want to reclaim it back for ourselves. We’ve seen a growing left-wing football scene with teams like Clapton FC, Whitehawk FC, Eastbourne Town FC etc. and we’ve taken inspiration from our comrades on the continent who run antifascist and anarchist boxing clubs, from Madrid to Warsaw.

As the political climate in Britain and across the world becomes more hostile, with an increase of racist attacks and the far-right becoming more confident, we see the need to organize ourselves not just politically but also physically.

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