A special edition of ‘Brighton & Hove Solidarity’ – the bulletin of Brighton Solidarity Federation is now available to download, to coincide with the announcement of the emergency austerity budget today. You can download a pdf here. Contents includes: Class war budget, strikes off and redundancies on at Sussex Uni, a local teacher’s view on academy schools, local council cuts and an article on the hidden side of the World Cup – workers’ exploitation and resistance.

Wednesday June 16th marks the first National Day of Action against the Flexible New Deal called by the No to Welfare Abolition network. All over the country groups who are campaigning against recent welfare reforms will be taking action against the companies who are involved in running welfare-to-work. Here in Brighton we will meet at the Clocktower, outside Boots, at 11am on Wedneday 16th June.

What is the Flexible New Deal?

News from our comrades in Berlin, who had been dragged into the courts by the bosses of the Cinema Babylon.

About 50 people gathered in the biggest hall of Berlin’s Higher Court on the morning of June 10th. They were waiting for the decision on the FAU Berlin’s appeal on whether they could call themselves a union. Only 15 minutes into the trial, the judge delivered the verdict. The injunction is overturned; the ban is repealed; the crowd goes wild.

THIS Saturday (29th May), 12pm – 6pm in Brighton. Join the Facebook event. Venue to be confirmed very soon here and on Facebook.

As a new government is getting ready to attack the living conditions of ordinary people, students and education workers have already had experiences with cuts – and how we can stop them. We will try to draw the lessons from the strikes, occupations and other forms of direct action taken in HE and FE over the last months. How can we build effective alliances between students and workers? How can we act in solidarity across education establishments? How can we organise from below to defend education?

National conference with talks and workshops, open to students and education workers.

After the failure at the polls, much attention from socialists and trade unionists has fallen upon the possibilities of working class political representation. While some talk of ‘reclaiming’ the Labour Party for the workers movement, others feel this party has had it’s day, and a replacement is needed. The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) can in many ways be seen as the springboard for the latest such attempt  – coming on the heels of past attempts, such as Arthur Scargil’s Socialist Labour Party.

In early to mid 2010, members of North London SolFed organised text readings and discussions open to other anarchists and members of the public, under the name of the Radical Reading Collective.

Texts discussed included 'Give Up Activism', 'The Tyranny of Structurelessness', 'Hierarchy, Structure and Consensus within Activist Groups', a public talk on Rudolf Rocker with a speaker from the Radical History Network of North East London, Rocker's 'Anarcho-syndicalism', Marx's 'Value, Price & Profit', Mason's 'Live Working or Die Fighting', 'The Organisational Platform of Libertarian Communism', and a film showing of Vivr La Utopia.