Events

AWL: Ideas for Freedom

Saturday 28th November 2009 to Sunday 29th November 2009
12:00pm to 7:00pm

For more and to book online see http://www.workersliberty.org/ideas

A weekend of political education, discussion and debate for workers, young people and activists, hosted by Workers’ Liberty.

As the bosses’ attempts to make the working class pay for their crisis intensify, struggles like the Vestas wind turbine occupation show both the tremendous power of workers’ action and the irreplaceable role of organised socialists and clear socialist ideas. If you want to use the capitalist crisis to put an end to capitalism, you cannot afford to miss this event.

Saturday 28 and Sunday 29 November, central London

Sessions will include:
* Occupy! Lessons from Vestas, Visteon, Thomas Cook and the occupations of the 1970s
* When workers almost brought down Thatcher: 25 years since the miners’ strike
* Dick Bryan, Costas Lapavitsas, Simon Mohun: Marxist economists debate the crisis
* How can the left and the labour movement move forward? With speakers including RMT general secretary Bob Crow and bakers’ union general secretary Joe Marino
* Socialists and local government: Janine Booth on the Poplar council struggle, John McDonnell on how Ken Livingstone’s GLC sold out
* What’s should we say about coal? A debate between climate movement activists
* Verity Burgmann, author of “Green Bans, Red Unions”, on how Australian building workers made the environment a working-class cause
* What happened to the anti-capitalist movement? With former Reclaim the Streets activists
* Reel News on film-making against capitalism
* Peter Thomas on the ideas of Antonio Gramsci
* 1989: revolutions against Stalinism
* Leo Panitch, editor of Socialist Register, on imperialism today
* The Iraqi left’s battle against Maliki and the Islamists, with Muayyad Ahmed of the Worker-communist Party of Iraq
* Marxism and anarchosyndicalism - debating differences, sharing similarities: debate with Andy Littlechild (Solidarity Federation and RMT activist, pc)
* The fight for LGBT liberation today, with Peter Tatchell, Maria Exall (LGBT rep on the TUC general council) and Alan Bailey (NUS LGBT campaign)
* Is France’s New Anticapitalist Party a model?
* Marxism and film theory
* Jairus Banaji and Rohini Hensman discuss democracy, capitalism and the left in India
* “Is class struggle out of date?” - debate with the Institute of Ideas
* Debate with Meghnad Desai on the future of capitalism
* What does Trotskyism mean today?

Weekend tickets £18 waged, £10 low-waged and students, £6 unwaged and school students if bought in advance. Day tickets also available.

Cheap food, accommodation and creche available.

Saturday night benefit gig for the postal workers’ strike with hip hop from Black Jacobins feat. the Ruby Kid; spoken word poet Captain of the Rant; folk-hop artist Clayton Blizzard; and others tbc. Facebook event here - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=178304763880&ref=nf