Who We Are
Solidarity Federation (SolFed) was formed in March 1994. It is a federation of groups and individuals across England, Scotland & Wales. Everyone involved is helping to build a non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian solidarity movement. The basic foundation used for doing this is the Local group.
The Aims of the Solidarity Federation:
The Solidarity Federation is an organisation of workers which seeks to destroy capitalism and the state. Capitalism because it exploits, oppresses and kills working people and wrecks the environment for profit worldwide. The state because it can only maintain hierarchy and privilege for the classes who control it and their servants; it cannot be used to fight the oppression and exploitation that are the consequences of hierarchy and the source of privilege. In their place we want a society based on workers' self-management, solidarity, mutual aid and libertarian communism.
That society can only be achieved by working class organisations based on the same principles - revolutionary unions. These are not Trades Unions only concerned with “bread and butter” issues like pay and conditions. Revolutionary unions are means for working people to organise and fight all the issues - both in the workplace and outside - which arise from our oppression. We recognise that not all oppression is economic, but can be based on gender, race, sexuality, or anything our rulers find useful. Unless we organise in this way, politicians - some claiming to be revolutionary - will be able to exploit us for their own ends.
The Solidarity Federation consists of Locals which support the formation of future revolutionary unions and are centres for working class struggle on a local level. Our activities are based on Direct Action - action by workers ourselves, not through intermediaries like politicians and union officials; our decisions are made through participation of the membership. We welcome all working people who agree with our Aims and Principles, and who will spread propaganda for social revolution and revolutionary unions. We recognise that the class struggle is worldwide, and are affiliated to the International Workers' Association, whose Principles of Revolutionary Unionism we have adopted.
What is Anarchosyndicalism?
Anarchism is a revolutionary political current that declares "freedom without socialism is privilege and injustice and socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality."
Syndicalism is the workers’ movement. Deriving from the French word for Trade Unionism (Syndicalisme), it seeks to unite workers on an economic basis to fight for their interests.
Anarcho-syndicalism is anarchism applied to the workers’ movement. From small educational groups to mass revolutionary unions, libertarian organisation grows and is controlled from the bottom up.
"Anarcho-syndicalism unites the political and the economic
and opposes representation in favour of self-organisation"
Anarcho-syndicalists seek to organise with other militant workers who agree with their revolutionary aims and principles. Initially, this takes the form of local groups and industrial networks, but as these grow in size and influence they can begin to take on union functions such as advising fellow workers and initiating direct action like work-to-rules, strikes and occupations.
The role of anarcho-syndicalist networks and unions is not to try and recruit every worker, but to advocate and organise mass meetings of all workers involved in each struggle so that the workers involved retain control. Within these mass meetings anarcho-syndicalists argue for the principles of solidarity, direct action and self-organisation.
In this way anarcho-syndicalism is completely different to Trade Unionism, which seeks to represent workers on an economic basis, and the so-called ‘Workers Parties’ which seek to represent workers on a political basis. Instead, anarcho-syndicalism unites the political and the economic and opposes representation in favour of self-organisation.
By organising this way, workers learn to act for themselves, exercising their power without being led by union officials or political vanguards, calling into question the way society is organised and prefiguring the world we want to create, without bosses or rulers: libertarian communism.
"The history of political parties and trade union bureaucracy
is a history of sell-outs and betrayal"Anarcho-syndicalist aims and principles
Anarcho-syndicalists aim to promote solidarity in our workplaces and outside them, encouraging workers to organise independently of government, bosses and bureaucrats to fight for our own interests as a class. Our ultimate goal is a stateless, classless society based on the principle of 'from each according to ability, to each according to need' – a system of free councils made up of recallable delegates from workplaces and communities. This is libertarian communism.
We see such a society based on our needs being created out of working class struggles to assert our needs in the here and now. Our activity is therefore aimed at promoting, assisting and developing such class struggles locally and internationally, which both benefits us now and brings us closer to the society we want to create. We do this according to the following three principles:
- Solidarity. As individuals we are relatively powerless in the face of bosses, bureaucrats and the state, but when we act collectively the tables are turned.
- Direct action. We do not make appeals to political or economic representatives to act on our behalf, but organise to get the things we want for ourselves.
- Self-organisation. Workers should control their own struggles through mass meetings, both learning how to act without bosses or leaders and ensuring they can't be sold out or demobilised from above.
What do anarcho-syndicalists do?
Anarcho-syndicalists are engaged in a wide range of workplace and community struggles, some very immediate and others more long term. These include:
- Workplace organising – on issues from pay to working hours to working practices and conditions.
- Community organising – from public services to housing to the environment.
- Strike and occupation solidarity – staffing picket lines, raising funds and bringing in supplies.
- Worker support – organising demonstrations, pickets and direct action in support of individual victimised workers.
- Networking with other militant workers – for example through the National Shop Stewards Network and the Education Workers’ Network.
- Organising public meetings – on the economy, war, climate change and other issues that affect the working class.
- Producing and distributing propaganda – from regular free-sheets and magazines to one-off leaflets, spreading the ideas of solidarity, direct action and self-organisation.
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The text on this web page was pinched from Brighton Solidarity Federation, a fellow local group of the UK Solidarity Federation, which is itself a member of the International Workers Association (IWA), with affiliates and contacts across five continents.
