As the year draws to a close and in the run up to our national conference on January 26, we are asking all our supporters and contributors to take out full membership with Counterfire

The movement is back

The movement has bounced back in the second half of 2012. More than two hundred thousand marched against austerity on Oct 20th. A month later 15,000 protested in London against Israel’s attack on Gaza and on the same day 10,000 marched in Lewisham against a hospital closure, proving the potential for resistance.

In the meantime the European movement organised its first day of action against austerity on November 14th. The day was celebrated here with a march and rally in central London organised by the Coalition of Resistance.

Facing the problems

But there are big challenges. The student movement is still reeling from its defeat in 2010, and the anti-austerity movement lacks co-ordination and strategy. Polls show millions oppose all cuts, but they don’t have an obvious way to express their anger.

Counterfire members have played an important part in mobilising against austerity and war. We have helped organise rallies against the cuts, protests over Palestine, actions to get the troops out of Afghanistan and events against racism and Islamophobia, always working with as many others as possible. Our website and broadsheets have reported and analysed all this, and consistently put the case for co-ordinated resistance.

We have also helped chart a way forward for the movement. As part of the Coalition of Resistance we have promoted the idea of a Peoples’ Assembly, scheduled for the first half of next year. We are working with many others in the Stop the War Coalition to turn next February’s international anti-war conference into an event  significant enough to generate mass opposition to new war in the Middle East.

Organise and analyse

In a situation this serious, abstract slogans or ideological purity aren’t adequate. Socialists’ first job is to organise the broadest possible opposition to the disasters of austerity.

But it’s also important to come together to analyse the situation – so clearly a product of a profound crisis of capitalism – and discuss how to link immediate struggles with the wider project of changing society. This demands looking afresh at the world and trying new ways of communicating and organising.

We feel that we have contributed to this through our debates, the Counterfire broadsheet, our meetings, website and other publications. Firebox, our new centre in London, has been a hit, providing an attractive political and cultural space to discuss these issues in depth.

We need more people to write, film and report for Counterfire, more people to organise events, co-ordinate campaigns and set up local groups. We also need to increase our regular income fast to make the most of the situation.

If you want radical resistance to the government – resistance on the broadest possible basis – then please join us now and help make it happen.

You can join here with our improved online facility or phone 07436 072545.