great stuff, good to see 'bread and butter issues rising up the agenda, hope to see such groups springing up all over the country. One concern though, although it is a very broad based campaign, it looks like the usual suspects are involved in this, thats ok, but if they try to take it over,asthey did the STWC, then it would be very very sad.

Agree with the last commentator, if only the usual suspects, Socialists etc would stop organising all these high-profile, relevant, effective campaigns... then all attention would focus on half-a-dozen anarchists occupying a cupboard in Lewisham, and capitalism would fall!

just a reply to a nonny mouse re. her/his claim that socialists are actually helping all this stuff.

i am not an anarchist, i am not a socialist but i have been active in the 'movement' (if you can really use a singular term for the mess it's in at the moment) for quite a long time for a 21 year old (about 6 years). during that time i've had experience of activism in Liverpool, Manchester and London, and by far the most loving, positive and thoughtful people i have ever met were anarchists.

This is not to say that the tactics anarchists use are necessarily the best in all respects, but socialism in britain is essentially a game of catch-up. it is a reactionary grouping of people who methodically apply extremely basic assumptions to complex situations and then act upon them, invariably culminating in an 'a to b' march or a rally if you're lucky and if the police are nice and agree to it.

I know it is different in liverpool, but the london anarchists are usually the only people who are prepared to take on community issues and help others, alongside maintaining their ideals. note, they do not try and dominate the proceedings or turn things into an anarchist only party and they certainly do not do it to try and get more members to sell their shitty rags.

My experience of liverpool is of a socialism that is strong but alas ideologically stuck in the 1970s but without the militancy of that era. The crushing of any popular radical trade union movement has left liverpool, once a sturdy left wing city, with a few stragglers who have not let go, and some youngsters who have been brainwashed into thinking Trotskyism is anything but red fascism, just like any USSR style of governance is.

i regret to say that this has all meant that socialism is effectively reactionary (not helped by the SWP and Respect i admit, and i must add that i do not assume that everyone is a member of those two infamous groups).

I am completely in support of the campaign mentioned but this form of politics cannot be perpetuated and is already running out of steam. By suggesting that anarchists are worse, i completely disagree. Perhaps tactically their methods are less obvious, but they respect the fact that actions aren't just about getting people to go on demos, they are about creating pockets of resistance (legal if possible, illegal if necessary) that can use spaces as a form of creating new possibilities rather than narrowing down possibilities for fear of not gaining members.

resistance is not about membership, nor is it about the perpetual cycle of 'government does something, we resist it, government does something, we resist it'- no it is about trying to break that cycle by doing creative, unexpected things. things that might just show a glint of a possible - and better - future.

In Liverpool it was the same old SWP/Respect bandwagon who can't seem allow any campaigns to be organised unless they jump on board and take the leadership and control positions. Hardly a grassroots campaign, it's a tops down (possibly even from the state itself) approach as usual. Jane (SWP/Respect) chairing the meeting and all the other speakers from the audience were so obviously prearranged SWP/Respect members a very typical stage managed piece of political theatre of SWP and Liverpool Trot' tradition. I saw the first person to put their hand up to speak and she, who I knew not to be a SWPer, was one of the last to be allowed to speak after all the SWP/Respect members spoke, at the end while hands were still up, who were probably not SWP/Respect members, the chair said no more speakers, then allowed another selected speaker to sum up without that person having even put her hand up.

All the speakers hand picked to speak were keen to tell us they were either Respect or Labour Party and that included the top table speakers. We had Alex Scott Samuel, claimed to be a socialist but is also a Labour Party member. So he can simultaneously subscribe to the party (and pay annual membership fees to) which is actively privatising the NHS while actually opposing it. Someone else claimed they were a NHS senior executive and didn't want to adversely affect their job promotion prospects by coming out against the NHS privatisation moves. We were due to be preached at by Peter Kilfoyle but he didn't turn up.

Yes this is going to be about as radical as all the previous SWP front organisations (DCH, StWC, Globalise Resistance) that always end up damping down radical forms of action. It ends up leading members of the public who genuinely join up down dead ends of political action from which they end up being demoralised and drop out of politics usually.

Sadly it was the same old StWC, SWP, Respect crowd, they must be overloaded with all the campaigns they're monopolising just here on Merseyside while also running a political party and a social democracy coalition.