Red Cap Terror and Other Tales from the Samosa Line
In this report from the shop floor, Greenford-based group Workers Wild West write about West London’s immense warehousing sector. Concentrating on Bakkavor’s Cumberland, Elveden, Abbeydale, Harrow and Premier Park sites, they take an in-depth look at conditions and explain how the scandal of Sports Direct is just everyday practice for bosses.
We all heard about the scandal at the Sports Direct warehouse. The newspapers were outraged… Continue reading
Students are suffering — rent strikes are the solution
If you thought that the student mental health “crisis” was something of an exaggeration, let us start off with some fun statistics. According to recent research by the National Union of Students, 78% of students have experienced mental health problems in the last year. Around half of those who have experienced problems with mental health said they have difficulty completing daily tasks.
Overall, the number of students in need of… Continue reading
Frack the system: The UK’s hydrocarbon threat
With the fracking industry poised to attempt its largest assault on communities across the country to date, and what would be its most significant advance in this country since 2011 if not resisted, it seems an appropriate time to take a look back at what has led to this threat we are facing and examine what we are fighting for.
The Fracking Threat
The last decade has seen an explosion… Continue reading
Case study: Wage theft at a Liverpool hotel
At the end of last month anarcho-syndicalist group Liverpool SolFed helped a worker on a precarious contract to force a prestigious Liverpool hotel to pay her wages they’d stolen. Her testimony below talks about the problems being faced by migrants in Britain today facing, alongside unscrupulous employers, a system of checks on everything from references to getting a bank account that work to undermine people’s will and ability to… Continue reading
Interview: Anarchists talk about Den Haag and the 2015 riots
Den Haag in the Netherlands has gone through some of the deepest upheavals in the country, including riots in 2015 over the police killing of Mitch Henriquez, arrested on suspicion of carrying a weapon and then throttled, dying in police custody the next day. In this conversation with two anarchist comrades from the city, anarchist journal Avalanche draws out an overview of the context, struggle and projects of… Continue reading
All for the sisterhood: Sisters Uncut
This summer Sisters Uncut opened up an empty flat on an estate in East London as part of their ongoing campaign against cuts in domestic violence services. The flat stayed open for months and was full of activity and people, and the action resulted in some serious changes to Hackney official policy — not least getting a kid’s playground reopened.
Sisters Uncut started in response to massive cuts to women’s… Continue reading
Mexico: 50 anarchist groups “at war” with State and capital
This translated article by investigative magazine Contralinea, originally submitted to US anarchist site It’s Going Down, looks at the rise of insurrectionist anarchism in Mexico over the last few years. All footnotes by the translator.
In Mexico there is an ongoing anarchist insurrection with 50 groups and cells at war with the State and capital. The seriousness of the “black threat” has caused the National Risk… Continue reading
Sowing seeds of hope
In this article written for the new issue of Peace News, peace activist Andrea Needham reflects on her experiences on the road this year talking to peace activists about Seeds of Hope, the group she was part of which in 1996 broke onto a military base and destroyed a Hawk Jet to stop it from being exported to commit atrocities in East Timor. The story of the action and… Continue reading
New guides to a smarter activism
Several new guides to help activists be safer, more effective (and just know your stuff) have been released recently, so below is a brief roundup:
Squatting (Britain)
The Advisory Service for Squatters’ new handbook, brought out over the weekend, which is the first new release since the government made squatting empty residential buildings illegal. The guide is already available from Freedom Bookshop (it will be more widely available soon)… Continue reading
Hamburg G20: Stop them crawling back to the city
There is more than one way to resist the industrial capitalist system.
One is to stay put where you are and ferociously defend its onslaught.
Another way, which can of course be combined with local resistance, is to take the fight to the system itself and to come together to attack the symbols of its authority.
July 7th-8th in Hamburg presents an excellent opportunity to put this second option… Continue reading →