This past weekend saw much of North London Solidarity Federation take to the streets of London in celebration of May Day. Six others of us, however, took the opportunity to hop the train to Brighton to attend SolFed's national conference. Reflecting the fact that SolFed is an active and growing organisation we were joined at conference by approximately a third of the national organisation. We were also lucky to have two observers from the Swedish Syndicalist Youth Organisation, the SUF, who brought not only greetings from our Swedish comrades but were keen to participate and exchange ideas and experiences.

Mayday weekend saw the Solidarity Federation's National Conference come to Brighton. The annual conference is the most important decision-making event in the SolFed calendar, serving to make federation-wide decisions, mandate and hear reports from national officers and commissions and to share ideas and tactics. Delegates from Brighton, Liverpool, Manchester, Northampton, North London, South London, Thames Valley and West Yorkshire locals attended, with only Bristol not represented due to their delegate being ill. This year saw an unprecedented number of motions, reflecting increased activity and membership over the past 12-18 months.

Members of SolFed who live and work in Waltham Forest attended the Workers Memorial Day rally at Walthamstow Town Hall, the council's administration centre of a borough that saw two deaths last year.

Workers Memorial Day is a day of global action held every April 28th to remember those killed, disabled, injured or made unwell by their work. Waltham Forest Trades Council and Unison Waltham Forest organised two events to mark Workers Memorial Day this year.

Police raids on anarchist and progressive social centres in Brighton and London ahead of the royal wedding amount to little more than the force giving the media a good yarn while attacking political activists, according to anarchist union group the north London Solidarity Federation. 

"The Met is well enough informed and funded to be fully aware of what anarchists have planned for tomorrow - which mostly amounts to taking a nice day off and avoiding the telly. Even people who think of anarchists as just thugs must surely realise that no-one's going to be stupid enough to seriously kick off in the middle of a crowd of tens of thousands of monarchists supported by thousands of police?

Members of Northampton Solidarity Federation today picketed the local office of Office Angels in connection with the current dispute over non payment of wages.

We talked to many passers by about the bad practice and heard several stories of mistreatment at the hands of employment agencies, particularly of underpayment and summary dismissals. One worker in particular related instances where she had worked for long periods of time for agencies only to be laid off for one day's illness.

Since March, the South London local of the Solidarity Federation (SF) has been involved in supporting a victimised former Office Angels temporary worker. Dan worked for Office Angels for three days in December of last year. He was assured by the company that the lack of a time-sheet would 'not be a problem'. However, Office Angels are refusing to pay him the wages he is owed - falsely claiming he only worked for one day, despite them having called him at work on his third day. After completely ripping him off, they had the nerve to harass him for seeking advice on an internet discussion forum.

Last week, the following letter from Liverpool Solidarity Federation was published in the Liverpool Echo. We wrote the letter to try and counter the idea that the anti-working-class agenda of the ruling elite can be defeated through the ballot box simply by voting against the Tories and their Lib Dem coalition allies. As anarcho-syndicalists we reject party politics and all collaboration with legislative bodies. Exploitation, wage slavery and social injustice will never be voted out of existence. They can only be defeated, once and for all, through militant solidarity, direct action and working-class self-organisation.

Members of WYSF (along with AF) picketed Office Angels in Leeds and handed out over 200 hundred leaflets.  We had a very positive response including one person who wanted more information and is going to look at the National website to see what we do.  We also spoke to someone who was posting her CV to Office Angels who was very interested in the leaflet and the information it contained.