Dear friends,

Over recent weeks Croydon Solidarity 1, AngryWorkers and other comrades have started a debate about how to intensify our collaboration and make it open for others. 2 This debate was compounded by the Covid-19 crisis around us and encouraged us to pronounce more clearly our need for a new form of working class organisation. This article is written in the spirit of this organisation. It is not a pompous programatic proclamation, but a work schedule, a discussion paper for the next strategic steps.

Our efforts have to be based on a broadly shared understanding of how capitalism works and how to overcome it. We will discuss these general questions, but our organisation will primarily distinguish and thereby open itself to others by concrete work, mutual committment and research. The general spirit is not to grow the organisation for the sake of it. Instead we want to help to grow the ability of the working class to self-organise internationally and to demonstrate the potential for communism in the actual movements of the class and the crisis of capital. For the moment our common platform is summarised here:
angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/about/

The focus of our activities will be the setting up of local solidarity networks in strategically important working class areas, activities in and around bigger workplaces, and the circulation of a regular local working class publication. We want to discuss openly and self-critically the experiences of setting up such minimal structures and support each other. We invite existing local initiatives to join in and potentially expand their activities. We are aware that not everyone is able to participate on this level for various reasons, but encourage those comrades to help the effort, e.g. through their research work or by help running the organisational infrastructure. We see the last six years of AngryWorkers activities in west London not as a template, but as something that has to be critically reviewed, also according to specific local conditions:
classpower.net/intro/

We need more than just a federal structure of local collectives. We need a common discussion and decisions that can shape local practice. The second focus is therefore to meet regularly to discuss the local experiences against the background of both the UK and international developments of class struggle. We feel responsible to help international comrades understand the situation in the UK and to establish contacts to local workers if needed.

We are in the process of preparing for a constituting and planning conference for the end of 2020. In order to make all this more concrete we write down some preliminary ideas for a 1-year plan, based on the assumption that 20 to 30 people and 4 to 5 local collectives take part, who are willing and able to meet quarterly.

These are just the bare bones of organisation. We hope that a mutual focus and commitment towards the wider working class will mean that relations within the organisation will be supportive and constructive, without having to spend too much time on discussing ‘how we discuss’ or organise ‘how we organise ourselves’. The focus is outwards and patience is required. We know that class struggle is not gradual and we want to bear that in mind in our day-to-day organising. We want to prepare ourselves for the leaps of struggle that will inevitably come. These leaps will be contradictory, like the Yellow Vests in France or the recent protests and strikes in Bolivia. We want to prepare ourselves not in order to ‘capture the flag’ of these movements, but in order to detect and support the emancipatory tendencies within them theoretically and practically.

If you are interested in taking part in the preparatory process of the constituting meeting, please drop us an email.

letsgetrooted@protonmail.com

To reiterate, this meeting will not be an exciting happening (although it might be exciting, too), it will perhaps not feel like a hip and historical moment, but a moment of commitment to work together.

In solidarity
Comrades from Croydon Solidarity Network, AngryWorkers and others

1
croydonkickoff.wordpress.com

2
angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/2020/03…/
angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/2020/04…/
angryworkersworld.wordpress.com/2020/04…/