Solidarity

Solidarity is a weekly socialist newspaper published in London by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL), a Trotskyist organisation in Britain. Covering labour movement news, strikes and industrial disputes, political debate and campaigns against oppression, it is the principal publication of one of the British left's most distinctive currents. Published weekly since January 2011, with roots stretching back to the mid-1990s, it has produced more than 700 issues and maintains a full online archive of its recent history.

Origins in the Welfare State Network

Solidarity began life in the mid-1990s as a monthly paper called Action for Health and Welfare, produced by the Welfare State Network (WSN), a campaign supported by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, the International Socialist Group and others. The network brought together activists concerned with defending public services and the welfare state, and its paper gave them a shared platform for news, argument and coordination.

As the paper developed it became increasingly identified with the AWL. Its name was changed to Action for Solidarity and it moved to fortnightly publication, reflecting its growing role as the paper of the organisation rather than of the broader network. The name was subsequently shortened to Solidarity, the title under which it has been published ever since.

The paper takes its current form

According to the Workers' Liberty archive, Solidarity in its current form started in February 2002, developing out of Action for Solidarity, which had itself grown out of the Welfare State Network. It was initially published fortnightly. From issue number 188, dated January 2011, the paper went weekly — a significant step up in tempo that reflected the organisation's ambition to intervene in fast-moving industrial and political struggles.

The archive of the paper starts at issue 17, and there have been over 700 issues to date, making Solidarity one of the most continuously published papers of the British far left. Back issues are available online through the Workers' Liberty website, and a physical archive of the organisation's publications is held at the library of the London School of Economics, with copies of its newspapers also held by the British Library.

The publisher: Alliance for Workers' Liberty

Solidarity is published by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, also known as Workers' Liberty, a Trotskyist group in Britain (with a presence in Australia) founded in 1966. The organisation's history is a complex one: it began as Workers' Fight, a group that split from the Revolutionary Socialist League; it was a faction within the International Socialists between 1968 and 1971; it merged with Workers Power in 1975 to form the International-Communist League; and after further fusions and splits — including a period fused with the Workers' Socialist League and a period as the Socialist Organiser Alliance — it was founded in its current form as the AWL in 1992, after its predecessor was proscribed and expelled from the Labour Party in 1990.

The group has been identified with the theorist Sean Matgamna throughout its history. Its politics evolved from orthodox Trotskyism in the 1966–1980s period toward what is described as "third camp" Trotskyism from the 1980s onward — a position that refuses support to both Western imperialism and Stalinist or authoritarian states, siding instead with independent working-class movements. The AWL is a small organisation — its membership was estimated at around 140 in 2016 — but it has maintained a consistent publishing and campaigning presence for decades.

Political outlook

Solidarity's politics are those of the AWL: revolutionary socialism, workers' democracy and unremitting hostility to capitalism. The paper argues that against the accumulated wealth and power of the capitalists, the working class has one weapon — solidarity — and that the labour movement must break with "social partnership" and assert working-class interests militantly against the bosses.

The AWL aims, in the paper's own formulation, to build solidarity through struggle so that the working class can overthrow capitalism, winning collective ownership of industry and services, workers' control, and a democracy fuller than the present system, with elected representatives recallable at any time and an end to bureaucrats' and managers' privileges. The paper's front-page slogans have included calls for a workers' government and for the social ownership of the banks and industry.

Content and campaigns

Each issue of Solidarity combines news reporting with political argument. Typical contents include reports from strikes and picket lines — with activists travelling to talk to workers in dispute, as in the paper's coverage of industrial action on the Isle of Grain — alongside analysis of government policy, debates on the left, and coverage of campaigns for women's rights, LGBT equality and anti-racism. Past front pages have highlighted solidarity against anti-LGBT drives in Russia and worldwide, women's fightback campaigns, and international crises such as the Syrian refugee emergency.

The paper gives considerable space to internal debate and theoretical discussion, including long-running series on the history and politics of the workers' movement. It has published extensive material explaining what the Alliance for Workers' Liberty stands for, aimed at new readers encountering the organisation through its campaigns. Its tone is serious and didactic, reflecting the AWL's emphasis on political education and theoretical clarity.

Editor and production

Solidarity is currently edited by Martin Thomas, a long-standing member of the AWL and one of its leading writers. The paper is produced in London, where the organisation is headquartered, and is sold by AWL members and supporters at workplaces, campuses, demonstrations and public meetings, as well as by subscription and through the Workers' Liberty website at workersliberty.org.

Like other papers of the far-left press, Solidarity is produced on a shoestring by activist labour rather than by a commercial newsroom. Its design is functional rather than glossy, prioritising the density of political content over visual flair. The paper's price has traditionally been kept low to maximise its circulation among workers and young activists.

The archive project

One of Solidarity's notable features is the care the AWL takes with its own history. The Workers' Liberty website hosts an extensive archive of the paper — described as "Newspaper, 2002 onwards" — alongside archives of the organisation's magazines, books and pamphlets published since 1998. The organisation has said it will complete and expand the archive over time, and invites readers who hold old copies of its publications, in paper or electronic form, to help fill the gaps.

This archival consciousness reflects the AWL's view of itself as a current within the workers' movement with a history worth preserving and studying. The deposit of its records, including runs of its predecessor paper Socialist Organiser, with the Modern Records Centre at the University of Warwick and the library of the London School of Economics gives researchers access to the organisation's publishing history.

Place on the British left

Solidarity occupies a distinctive position among Britain's socialist papers. Where papers such as Socialist Worker speak for larger organisations with a mass-party orientation, Solidarity speaks for a smaller, more theoretically defined current — one known for its emphasis on workers' democracy, its "third camp" internationalism, and its willingness to engage in sharp polemical debate with other left groups, including its series examining misunderstandings and misrepresentations of the AWL's politics.

The paper's endurance — from a monthly campaign bulletin in the mid-1990s to a weekly newspaper with more than 700 issues — testifies to the persistence of its publishing project. In a media environment where even large commercial titles struggle, the continued weekly appearance of Solidarity represents a remarkable commitment of activist resources to the printed word.

Reading Solidarity today

Solidarity continues to be published weekly in London by the Alliance for Workers' Liberty, with new issues and an extensive archive available at workersliberty.org. For readers interested in the debates of the British far left — on strikes, on the Labour Party, on international conflicts and on the strategy for socialist change — it remains an essential, if partisan, source.

From its origins as Action for Health and Welfare to its present incarnation as a weekly paper of revolutionary socialism, Solidarity has carried a consistent message across three decades: that the working class, organised and politically conscious, can transform society — and that building that consciousness, week by week, is the task of a socialist newspaper.