Liverpool

For the third year, Liverpool-SolFed will be at Liverpool Anarchist Bookfair. This Saturday, the 13th of April.

We will be having our stall for anarcho-syndicalist literature, information about our campaigns and activity and materials for collective resistance and struggle.

We will also be running a workshop presented by a comrade from Manchester-SolFed.

Liverpool Solidarity Federation concluded its dispute with Secure Lettings. The dispute ended positively with the three tenants involved receiving the whole deposit back and a compensation due to the damp and mold issues during the tenancy.

Liverpool SolFed is organising a campaign against bad working conditions in the hospitality sector. The hospitality industry, which includes workplaces like pubs, restaurants, hotels, canteens, etc. has an important presence in the city and is well known for abuses and exploitation. Our aim is to get willing workers of the sector together to fight back against abuses and for better conditions.

Although Liverpool-SolFed is still a small a very recent group, we were present in the May Day demonstration in Liverpool. A few comrades join the parade from Toxteth Library to St. Georges Hall alongside with different unions and groups active in the area. 

On 23rd November 2016, the Treasury announced in the Autumn Statement that they “will ban fees to tenants as soon as possible”. So, right now fees are still legal in England & Wales, and it is not very clear when they will be outlawed.

Keith Hodgson, long time activist in the Liverpool anarchist scene, died on Saturday 23rd February 2013, aged 50. Keith, like many of his generation, was radicalised by the re-vitalised Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and by the Thatcher onslaught against working class rights and freedoms in the 1980s. As a young anarchist and CND activist, Keith rapidly moved to the direct action wing of the anti-militarist movement and also worked voluntarily in the CND Merseyside offices. This combination of organisational work and street activism was typical of Keith over the years.

A meeting of the Merseyside Blacklist Support Group took place last Saturday (February 23rd). The event was attended by numerous blacklisted construction workers and addressed by a panel of speakers including Steve Acheson, a blacklisted electrician from Manchester who has been picketing the Fiddler’s Ferry power station for the last 5 years to highlight the injustice inflicted on him.

Steve spoke about the collusion between trade union officials and construction companies that led to him and countless others being denied employment due to their trade union activities (often simply raising health and safety concerns on sites). Steve said he had only three terms of employment over a nine-year period and had been removed from all of them as a result of being blacklisted.