Wednesday 27th Nov, 7pm, ULU, Malet St, London, Room 2A
A joint IWCEN/London Young Labour event
In the late 1880s, workers (often unskilled or semi-skilled, often migrants and often working in casualised and precarious environments) organised militant industrial unions to fight back against their bosses. Examples include the heroic 1888 Match Women’s Strike in Bow, commemorated this year by a one-day festival, and the Great Dock Strike of 1889 in east London. These struggles laid the basis for trade unionism as we know it today, and socialist activists like Eleanor Marx, Tom Mann and Will Thorne were crucial to the events. Faced with increasingly similar conditions today, can we build a New Unionism for the 21st century that transforms and revolutionises the modern labour movement? How can the labour movement resolve what the Labour Party leadership calls the “cost of living crisis” in Britain today? Speakers include Edd Mustill from the Independent Working Class Education Network and Liam McNulty from the London Young Labour committee. Venue: University of London Union (ULU), Malet St, WC1E 7HY, Room 2A. Contact Hannah Thompson (lhlthompson87@gmail.com or 07527064326) or Liam McNulty (liammcnulty24@hotmail.com