Who we are, what we stand for and why you should join us

Counterfire is a socialist organisation committed to change from below. We believe socialists’ first job is to harness the anger of millions against the government and its attacks on working people. We support every protest, every strike and every picket. We try to build the biggest possible movements against austerity, the spiralling cost of living and the attacks on civil liberties, and to help bring together all the different campaigns.

While pushing for the widest possible resistance, we are also committed to creating revolutionary organisation at the heart of the movement. The system is simply no longer delivering for the majority of people. The boomtime for billionaires is a result of millions being forced into poverty. Unchecked corporate greed threatens climate catastrophe. Our governments respond to international competition by threatening military action. They use racism, sexism and other forms of oppression to try and divide us. 

It will take massive struggles of working people and clear, radical politics to tackle these systemic problems. Socialist organisation is necessary to build solidarity and campaign to bring together all the different strikes and struggles of working people. 

There is no automatic unity amongst oppressed. Socialists must defend all the oppressed, actively try and overcome differences and insist that the fight against oppression involves tackling the system that creates them. 

We need revolutionary Marxist ideas to counter the ideas of the ruling class, to expose the fact that capitalism always tends to crisis, always risks war, always promotes oppression and is failing to provide basic necessities for billions of people around the world. 

We have Counterfire groups around the country creating hubs of resistance, solidarity and socialist ideas. As well as publishing a monthly free paper our website brings together reports, analysis, and Marxist theory. We hold regular, popular events on and offline to discuss and analyse a more and more unstable situation and to help the movement get organised.

Looking around the world today the need for socialist ideas and organisation could hardly be more urgent. The growing number of strikes and protests shows anger is on the increase.  Join us and help make change happen.