Q: First of all, can you tell us how the situation is on the ground now.

The consequences of the two earthquakes have left many missing people, many deceased people, and many without a home. There are many who don’t have the certainty to enter their homes, because structures have been damaged. All these people, who weren’t killed by the earthquake and its consequences, are still waiting in these shelter homes, or shelter parks, to be sent home or relocated. We are not sure the government has a plan yet for what to do with all these homeless people. In the past they’ve sheltered people until they can be relocated. This takes years. So the organisations, the militants, many people have organised to help this process be less rough.

Q: Can you give us some examples of political organisations who are working to help the people?

There is an organisation that I’m cooperating with which is an organisation of agro-ecological producers, it’s a Leftist organisation, and a very politically active organisation. The organisation is called Feria Conuquera Agroecológica. They started helping in some shelters and with some of the rescue actions, they went into some fallen buildings to help the professional rescuers.

They used the resources of the co-op, which is basically a three-tonne truck, to help transport whatever is needed: equipment, food. They recently brought rescuers, doctors, affected people, victims of the earthquake - sleeping mats (small ones that can be used provisionally).

This is a small organisation, which has some relationships with the bigger organisations which people outside Venezuela are more familiar with. Some of the communes in Venezuela have survived very well, despite all the misfortunes and the political situations. This organisation, Feria Conuquera Agroecológica, came together around twelve years ago. It organises in Caracas, and gathers produce from many of the agroecological producers around the city, with the aim of making a direct exchange between the producer and the consumer. Since then, some consumers have also started taking part in the organisation. They actively participate and help make decisions.

Q: Can you say more about the political role of the commune? What do its members see as their role in Venezuela?

The commune wants to take advantage of the resources that are closest to the city, and change the concept of the central market where you bring everything from outside the city (from the rural areas). It wants to challenge that centralist concept of the modern city. Many other organisations have adopted this concept, so many main cities in Venezuela have tried to do this, tried to have their own local markets, to make an alternative option to the agro-food system.

It’s been successful. In the past few years, for some people, the relationship between people in the city and the farms in Venezuela has changed. People can imagine what it is like to produce food. They want to know where the food comes from, and food producers want to avoid the middle speculators who devalue their work and overprice healthy food. People start to think about the working conditions of the food producers under the capitalist system, and I think that’s a consequence of this work. It’s part of a process of the people learning about each other and each others’ labour.

Q: How are the political conditions in Venezuela affecting earthquake relief?

We still don’t know the extent to which the US government is ruling and controlling everything, but we can imagine it, since they have a gun (many guns) pointed to our heads and stomachs. Of course this isn’t entirely new. Since 2016 we’ve been under economic sanctions, so all our funds have been frozen in the outside banks. Our gold was stolen. We have very limited capacity for sending oil to any country that isn’t the United States, and that of course has consequences - for example, not having money to be independent.

The blockade makes it hard for any Venezuelan government to manage aid and the recovery process. The consequence of this is that we are more vulnerable to silent or subtle invasion when armies or ‘volunteers’ come in. The Panamanian major sent food with electronic chips to track where the food went, into the houses of people. The government has no capacity to control all operations, to stop weird undercover operations that could make our population more vulnerable than they already are, because they’re busy trying to sort out the economic blockade, and attend to the main problem which is trying to take care of the survivors, and the people who were left homeless. And that’s why we think it is important to support local groups and organised comrades who know where actual help is needed and will not use it to facilitate others to hold foreign control against the Venezuelan people.

What could the Feria Conuquera Agroecológica do with more support?

This agro-ecolological group are not focusing only on food, they are helping with whatever is needed. They have a very interesting logistical capacity, they can organise quickly and well, and they have this truck that helps to carry things from one collection centre to another. And they co-ordinate with the authorities or with the heads of these places that have specific needs. They have the capacity to act less bureaucratically. Also, it’s a multidisciplinary group - you have biologists, psychologists, doctors, farmers, clowns, actors, dancers - anything you can imagine.

At the moment they are planning a way of approaching these shelters to bring activities, food, whatever is needed according to the necessity of the moment, because it changes every day. So they’re trying to make a plan to give attention for the people in the shelters, especially children.

Some of them have been cooking and giving food to the shelters as well. They are just helping now, attending the most urgent needs, but that is going to change at some point. The plan has to be redesigned according to the new conditions - as people are taken to shelters and relocated at home.

Please send any donations you can spare to this dedicated Wise account. We’ll then send the money directly to Feria Conuquera Agroecológica. Thank you.

Sheikh Imam was a blind singer, and Ahmed Fouad Negm was a poet. Together they formed a powerful duo, and their songs resonated beyond their native Egypt across the Arab world. Many of their songs were composed in prison from 1969 onwards:

“We were permitted to leave our cells only once a day. We had fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom. During those few minutes I’d feel my way over to Negm’s cell. He’d tell me the poetry he’d written the night before. I’d listen carefully until I’d memorized it. I’d go back to my cell and start composing a melody for it. Then the next day, I’d go back to Negm and sing it for him during that brief window of time. Sometimes, I’d sing these songs inside prison. I’d put my mouth up to the little opening of my cell and start singing. Then the whole prison would start to tremble from one end to the other. All the other prisoners would sing along with me. The security officers would get furious because of the racket we made when I sang.”

Build your palaces on top of farms
With our labour and the sweat of our hands
Build bars beside factories
And prisons instead of gardens
Unleash your dogs in the streets
And lock your cells on us
Steal our bed sleep
We’ve had our fill of rest
Load us down with pain

We have had our fill of suffering
And we know who’s injured us
And we know who we are.
And we have met one another
Workers, peasants, and students
Our hour has struck, and we have begun
To follow a road with no return
Victory is close to our eyes,
Victory is nearer than our hands.

Listen to Imam and Negm’s song ‘Shayed Koussourak’ شيد قصورك here.

This is our third newsletter. The Learning Co-op is committed to providing in-depth, rigorous analysis of the struggle, but this work requires resources to remain sustainable. Our full monthly round-ups will be available to our subscribers for £5 per month.

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July Round-Up

Here’s our round-up of writing on the Left in Britain, from the month of June. It’s a well-intentioned but entirely imperfect representation of the whole, and you can complain that we included this and not that, and that we’ve misunderstood the other, using this form.

Here goes!

War and AI

Alfredo Saad-Filho and Jack Taggart described how a massive increase in private investment in defence, especially defence procurement going to AI firms, is causing investors to hedge across US and Chinese military companies, is revealing weak-points in sourcing raw materials, and is creating a potential necessity for an AI bailout. Peter Geoghegan and Lucas Amin investigated how ‘the most overvalued firm of all time’, Palantir, won its huge contracts with NHS England and pivoted from defence to health data. Richard Norton-Taylor reported for Declassified on new data from the Afghanistan enquiry on the SAS’s actions.

Capital and Hyperpolitics

Jack Copley reviewed Timothy Mitchell’s The Alibi of Capital for the New Left Review. Mitchell claims that Capital is ‘a capture from the future’, often a projection of future monopoly, and gives a credit-driven account of Capital and finance; Copley thought that Mitchell’s rentier Capital argument was overextended. Fernando Rugitsky explained ‘food regimes’ theory and described how seed monopolies and dependency make food prices vulnerable to shocks.

If you’ve been hearing about Hyperpolitics, you can read Anton Jäger’s summary article, where he described a current politics of both the working class and the elites which is immediatist, not focused on physical infrastructure, and lacking mass political tools, so that political energy and enthusiasm are de-linked from political and material reality. This has been more widely reviewed in the US than in the UK, though there is a review from William Davies. Chris Nineham complained that the book didn’t give solutions to the problems it identified, and that it undervalued large movements such as the protests against the Iraq war. Nineham also thought that Jäger’s account of an era-shift was overstated.

The Party

Parts of the Left in Britain are enthusiastic about the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and its faction the Marxist Unity Group (MUG); last month this influence and its direction were brought out more explicitly. Matthew Campbell-

Nadezhda Krupskaya remembered her husband Lenin’s work with the people during their time in exile:

“Ilyich had yet another method of studying the village. On Sundays he gave free legal advice. His reputation as a lawyer rose high after he had helped a gold-mine worker, who had been given the sack, to win his suit against his employer. The news of this success spread quickly among the peasants, and men and women came to Ilyich with their troubles. He heard them out attentively, went deeply into the matter and then gave his advice. Once a peasant came twenty versts to ask how he could prosecute his brother-in-law for not having invited him to his wedding, at which everyone had had a good time. “Will your brother-in-law treat you to a drink if you go and see him now?” “Aye, that he will.” Vladimir Ilyich wasted an hour, trying to persuade the fellow to make it up with his brother-in-law. Sometimes you couldn’t make head or tail of what they were talking about, and so Vladimir Ilyich always asked them to bring him a copy of the various papers in the case. Once a bull belonging to a rich farmer gored a poor woman’s cow. The volost court ordered the owner to pay the woman ten rubles. The woman refused to accept the decision and demanded a “copy” of all the evidence in the case. “What do you want, a copy of a white cow?” the assessor said, laughing at her. The enraged woman came running to Vladimir Ilyich. Sometimes it was enough for the wronged party to threaten to take his complaint to Vladimir Ilyich to make the offender give in.”

Revolutionary work is patient work. Revolutionary work is work with the people. At TLC we’re talking with several organisations around the world to find out how we can help them develop learning and teaching. In the past, we’ve worked with CATU, Captain Support, UVW, and ACTA. Does your organisation want to become a comrade-organisation to the Learning Coop? Get in touch with us and we’ll talk about how we can support each other.

This is our second free newsletter. The Learning Coop is committed to providing in-depth, rigorous analysis of the struggles that matter, but this work requires resources to remain independent and sustainable. Starting next month, our full monthly round-ups will be available to our subscribers for £5 per month.

By subscribing, you are directly funding our capacity to provide educational resources, and organisational support to our comrades. If you value this curation and our work on the ground, please join us as a subscriber.

Subscribe now

June Round-Up

Here’s our round-up of writing on the Left in Britain, from the month of June. It’s a well-intentioned but entirely imperfect representation of the whole, and you can complain that we included this and not that, and that we’ve misunderstood the other, using this form.

Here goes!

On Palestine:

Linda Pentz Gunter interviewed Mustafa Barghouti for the Morning Star on the role of Palestinian struggle in global struggle, on Palestinian hostages, Israeli attacks on Palestine’s medical system, and BDS. Rachel Spence wrote an account for Red Pepper of recent trade union solidarity actions in the UK. Hannah Dahwa and Gerrard Vannar set out RS21’s 7-step strategy against Palantir in the NHS. RS21 interviewed Arms Embargo from Below who described the future of direct action and the roles of activity inside and outside the workplace.

Farah, Calico, and Noah gave an in-depth account of current Zionist land grabbing for Red Pepper. Brendan Ciarán Browne reflected on how his time living in Palestine challenged his understanding of human rights, legal frameworks, and sectarian violence in Ireland.

Declassified detailed arms trade deals between the UK and Israel, finding that imports of military products from Israel by the UK increased by ten thousand per cent during the Gaza war. Alex wrote about the allegiances and contradictions visible in the statements of Britain’s officer class. Jody McIntyre documented Andy Burnham’s links with Israel. The Ferret revealed the information they have been fighting to obtain for two years, on Angus Robertson’s meeting with an Israeli diplomat. Florence Open and Martin Ralph mapped how states have mounted legal repression against those supporting Palestine.

On Workers’ Struggle:

Peter Hunter outlined the progress of the sectoral bargaining framework for care workers in Scotland, arguing that the Scottish Fair Work model guarantees workers the right to elect, instruct and remove representatives for authentic collective bargaining, contrasting sharply with the UK Employment Rights Act which risks leaving English workers with a weaker, top-down mechanism resembling a pay review body. Dan Holland of EIS-FELA called on Scottish trade unions not to allow the Community Wealth Building agenda they have fought for to be co-opted by UK government proposals to establish Defence Technical Excellence colleges. George White advanced a Lancashire Unite Area Activist Committee strategy based on the M65 Corridor Zone, calling for cross-union collaboration with local lay activists to systematically unionize all workers junction-by-junction. Steven Ribble of RS21 called for the NEU’s strike proposal to go beyond funding and pay awards, and to fight for an end to austerity in England’s schools. Elaine Graham-Leigh questioned Unite’s commitment to a worker-led just transition.

Notes From Below released a full issue on Workers’ Inquiry. Their editorial argued that the process of completing a workers inquiry allows the subjective recomposition of the working class as an autonomous force which can undertake genuine mass self-organisation (as opposed to what Hal Draper called ‘substitutionism’) and organise work according to its technical knowledge. The editors described how to do a workers’ inquiry: examining the technical composition of a workplace (how labour is organised), the social composition (how labour is organised outside the workplace) and the political composition (how the working class is organised in struggle). Jamie Woodcock wrote about class composition theory, describing the three parts (technical, social and political) in terms of fixed and variable capital and reproduction, and gesturing towards Notes from Below’s view of the unpredictable ‘leap’ from technical/social composition to political composition. George Briley, Matthew, and Dante Philp provided historical examples of inquiry in England in Race Today, the Brixton Black Women’s Group and other women’s liberation groups, and Big Flame. Roberto Mozzachiodi addressed the role of ideology in workers’ inquiry, drawing on letters between Althusser and Maria Macchiocchi which suggested how a militant outside a workplace and a worker inside it might co-construct an understanding of what is happening.

On The Far Right:

Chris Bambery wrote about the link between the far right and Loyalism in the north of Ireland, central Scotland, and Merseyside. Richard Seymour saw more links to white ethnonationalism than loyalism in the Belfast and associated riots. Stathis Kouvelakis argued that the rise of the radical right has been driven by the authoritarian decay of neoliberalism and the left’s abandonment of the working class, and that our response should be a mass politics that learns from the success of La France Insoumise, Zohran Mamdani, and to some degree the Greens: avoiding the sectarian isolation of the ‘Third Period’, harnessing the working-class solidarity of the United Front, and rejecting the fatal moderate compromises of the Popular Front. Paul Demarty wrote for the Weekly Worker that the response to Henry Nowak’s murder indicated that the left was in a defensive mode, having failed to maintain an explicit revolutionary distrust of the state. The Morning Star encouraged people in England to get involved in housing campaigns, since catastrophic housing policy will provide the next issue for the far right to mobilise around. Raman Mundair and Deviji RM Jaan wrote that the widespread labelling of the Edinburgh attacks as ‘Islamophobic’ was a way to avoid reckoning with racial structures, and by extension the elements of empire, migration, national identity, and ideas of belonging that are at the root of the rise of the right. Lotte and Dan outlined the very initial stages of a process of area-based inquiry they undertook in Great Yarmouth, hypothesising that finding shared material concerns at the points of production and reproduction might build class-based affinities which could resist the far right.

On Party:

‘Les. P. Litts’ complained in Prometheus that Very Online activists leaving Your Party are putting forward written proposals for ideal party forms, while failing to consider how to engage the broader Left, particularly those who already left Your Party. Carla Roberts outlined in the Weekly Worker some ongoing problems with democracy in Your Party.

Mike MacNair wrote for the Weekly Worker against the Trotskyist elevation of political line, instead calling on the left to refocus on the democratic procedures of decision-making, which are necessary to realise the proletarian drive to collective activity. In the second part of the same series, MacNair fought against those who make overstated claims of the necessity for urgency or seizing the moment, which stand in the way of those democratic and educational processes which allow sufficient time for collective deliberation and decisions.

In Geese Magazine, Ewan Tilley argued against substituting political form for material analysis - critiquing Jodi Dean’s voluntarism, Mike MacNair’s programmatic idealism, and strategic moralism - and instead advocated using class composition analysis to build a party form that reflects the actual stratification and existing organization of the working class. L. Luria criticized Tilley’s overly broad conception of the working class, saying that the logistical-distributive sector is currently the only faction represented by communism in the UK - a status derived from its control over capitalist chokepoints, reflecting the positional leverage central to the Operaismo tradition that Tilley briefly referenced. In a follow-up, Luria fleshed out the economic theory behind this claim, arguing that logistics has positional leverage since it is the actual point at which domestic labour qualitatively interfaces with the circuit of valorisation. Lyra S argued for unapologetic true vanguard leadership, and the Party as a product of the real unity of the class-for-itself rather than a force instrumentalised to unify the class-in-itself.

On History and the Present:

Beauty Dhlamini reflected on the meaning of the Soweto uprising for young South Africans today, and the necessity to live up to the legacy of the Soweto militants in pan-African struggle against nativism and xenophobia. Mike Arnott reminded us to celebrate the role played by the men and women who fought fascism in Spain, many of whom had already fought the Blackshirts on their own streets. Tony Fox echoed these sentiments and investigated this connection in the Morning Star. Cailean Gallagher wrote about Dick Gaughan’s thoughts on timing, the head, and the heart in radical folk music. Gemma Smith wrote wide-ranging reflections on people’s alienation from their culture and history, based on Jim Hunter’s The Making of the Crofting Community. Ian McNiff recorded the after-effects of the Calton Weavers’ Massacre on the Calton and on his own life.

The Sports Section:

Carl Collins explored the contradictions of the working-class culture of football and its capitalist appropriations, and in a later article the geopolitical elements of football. For Tribune magazine, Richard Heller and Peter Oborne unearthed the history of radicalism in cricket.

Also in the Month of June:

• Thomas Glasman interviewed Danièle Obono of La France Insoumise for Tribune, covering LFI’s increasingly fractured relationship with the New Popular Front, and their strategy to combine anti-racism with social and economic demands.

• Christophe Domec interviewed La France Insoumise MP Jerome Legarve for the Morning Star, about LFI plans to resist increased military spending in France.

• Talal Hangari argued that the Left should take a critical view towards wealth tax proposals.

• The Full Marx Group at the Marx Memorial Library argued against Universal Basic Income and in favour of Universal Basic Services.

• Jonathan Shafi wrote that the demise of Starmer shows the absence of a galvanising thesis and a unifying strategy for the future of British capitalism.

• Lyra S hoped that the ruthless forces of global capital will completely obliterate Britain’s traditional working class to forge a new proletariat which is capable of true revolution.

• Mike MacNair argued that Tony Blair’s plans to revive the British economy through substantial downward pressure on the wage share will at most result in a temporary increase in profitability.

• Lyra S’s polemic on gender dismantled a current debate on masculinity in the pages of Geese Magazine, arguing that gender is a material relation of Capital which should be wholly abolished.

• Jukka Seppälä challenged the Scottish nationalist tendency to describe Finland and the other Nordic nations using a classless discourse with no explanatory power, which ignores the rightward turn in these nations to neoliberalism, austerity, and Atlanticism.

And that’s a wrap!

Culture is the engine of our movement. In a recent book on Political Education, the Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes described mística as “a cultural expression of collective feelings. This energy, they wrote, is transformative, agitational, and mobilising. It is, therefore, at the level of the battle of ideas and emotions. This far-reaching, transformative energy is closely linked to behaviour and ethics and can make a decisive contribution to human development and revolutionary action.”

Grenadian Young Pioneers perform at the Conference for Intellectual Workers, 1984.

At TLC, we are learning to take more seriously our role in helping the movement to produce culture. To run classes on playwriting, songwriting, and design, and to bring together international comrades to share their experiences, we are officially launching our paid subscription tiers today. You can read our full strategy here.

Put simply, we want to equip you with the tools to make our movement fierce.

What you get by upgrading for £5/month today:

• The Monthly Round-Up: Comprehensive curation of Left writing in Britain. (This May edition and next month’s June edition are free to all readers, but starting in August, these will be strictly for paid subscribers).

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May Round-Up

Here’s our round-up of writing on the Left in Britain from the month of May - we’ll give you May and June for free, but future round-ups will be for paid tiers. It’s a well-intentioned and imperfect representation of the whole, and you can complain that we included this and not that, and that we’ve misunderstood the other, using this form.

Here goes!

On the Far-Right and Fascism:

The Morning Star published a sober editorial after the election, calling on unions to force the Labour party to nationalise water and energy, cut bills, and build council houses, and urging them to resource trades councils and link community campaigns to workplaces. Bill Greenshields outlined the Together Alliance’s strategy against the far right: demonstrations, an anti-racist cultural sphere, workplace and community mobilising committees, training and education, and the building of movement infrastructure. Glyn Robbins described how Together on Cable Street is organising public meetings, history walks, cultural events and school activities to challenge racism.

Adam C. Jones wrote for Prometheus about Engels’ concept of ‘social murder’, arguing that fascist politics is a libidinised practice of cruelty, which responds to and delights in capitalist violence. While praising aspects of Jones’s analysis, David Renton noted that non-fascist reactionary movements also commit social murder, and argued that comparing our present moment to the interwar era is more useful for understanding broad dynamics of rightward radicalization than for comparing individual leaders. Richard Hames reported for Novara Media on a Tommy Robinson march, finding a heterogeneity of political beliefs among the participants. Richard Seymour analysed ecofascism. Tom Gann investigated how concepts of productive and unproductive classes are used by Left and Right populists, particularly in relation to housing, and how housing problems might become polarised to the right.

May 2026 saw more thoughts about The Party, whichever party you think that might be:

Fight for a Future blamed the Greens’ tepid reformism and its left wing’s avoidance of internal struggles and self-criticism on a desperate desire for electoral victory following years of Labour infighting and defeats. Elaine Graham-Leigh wrote for Counterfire that the Green Party is fundamentally tied through the class interests it represents to a pro-Nato position and a distrust of the masses, and is likely to compromise on its principles to gain parliamentary power. In the Weekly Worker, Carla Roberts was frustrated that the Greens bowed to pressure on alleged anti-Semitism. Joe Todd wrote for Novara that Polanski should follow Mamdani’s method of countering accusations of anti-Semitism. Richard Seymour thought Polanski should instead follow Mélenchon’s method. David Renton reflected on the experience of an Islington campaign team in their local elections, and their frustration with Your Party and the Greens.

In the Weekly Worker, in a contribution covering muckle historical and theoretical ground, Mike MacNair scrieved that those standing against ‘factionalism’ in Your Party and outside it are incorrectly avoiding explicit socialist or communist politics, in favour of labour or broad-left coalitions that will inevitably succumb to either liberalism or what he calls patriarchalist nationalism. Macnair finished his three-part series on factionalism with a criticism of Mandelite projects of new broad Left parties and an expressed desire for marxists to unite around a political programme which invites open and long-lasting factions and debates. Carla Roberts called for branches in Your Party to be allowed to take political initiative, against a backdrop of a lack of branch democracy. Roberts criticised the treatment of dual membership in Your Party and the official optimism coming from the leadership. Roberts also slated YP for failing to take on the May elections.

Ewan Tilley praised Mike Macnair and the CPGB-PCC for defending ‘Partyism’ (a position in favour of a broad, open, democratic Marxist party), but claimed they arrived at their organisational form and programme through theoretical models rather than historical materialist analysis, and advocated a thorough analysis of the class composition of the working class in Britain as a necessary precursor to the proposal of party forms and programmes. In a separate article covering similar ground, Tilley advanced a number of criticisms of existing Left organisations, claiming they fail to respond to or even analyse the real conditions of the working class. Daniel Moir built on Tilley’s work by considering the possibility of a mass strategy, and how it might be formed by a democratic multi-tendency organisation.

Learning new lessons from the 1926 General Strike:

Drawing on James Klugman’s historical account, Philip English wrote for Challenge Magazine that current workers’ movements can learn from 1926 about the correct relationship to the capitalist state, how to make strategic alliances, and the necessity of communist leadership. Aslef’s general secretary Dave Calfe wrote for the Morning Star about rail workers’ role in the strike. Dylan Murphy argued in the Morning Star that the 1926 general strike demonstrated the revolutionary potential of the working class but exposed a lack of rank-and-file power in the movement, opening the doors to betrayal. For Red Pepper Magazine, Joe Redmayne told stories of on-the-ground organising in 1926.

In the Weekly Worker, Jack Conrad questioned the meaning of the 1926 defeat, going on to analyse the conditions of the internal debate within the CPBG at the time, refuting the argument that the CPGB’s strategy was dictated by Stalin, and the argument that the Communist movement should have broken with the trade union movement. He ended the series by asking what the Communist Party should have done in 1926.

For RS21, Sylvia M found in Harry Wicks’ first-hand account evidence of an enthusiastic working class betrayed by its leaders, and Andrew Stone criticised the treachery of the TUC, describing a massive potential in the strike, and a defeat we should learn from.

Also in the month of May:

▪️Jonathan Shafi analysed the aftermath of the Holyrood 2026 election to argue that Scotland is experiencing a profound democratic recession, illustrating how austerity and the decline of collective life have produced a corporate-managerial politics. Shafi further reflected on how the Murrell embezzlement scandal obscures a much more serious theft by the SNP political class, of the working class political agency that was built up through the Yes movement.

▪️Jon Cink wrote from prison about being charged with terrorism, for Electronic Intifada

▪️John McEvoy wrote for Declassified UK on new documents showing the British secret service’s operations against anti-colonial organising during the Cold War.

▪️ Tim Llewellyn reviewed Killing Corbynism: Zionism’s War on Socialism by Rebecca Gordon-Nesbitt, for Electronic Intifada. Jody McIntyre laid out the history of Starmer’s ties to Israel.

▪️Fred Bayer argued that the STUC’s cuts to its congress cycle are inconsistent with its politics, and that the affiliates should step up their funding to retain an annual congress and the equalities congresses.

▪️Nigel Flanagan took a sceptical look at a reported increase in trade-union density, pointing out the overwhelming concentration in the public sector and in the older workforce. He argued that a coming period of mass unemployment and legal restrictions can only be bad for the unions, which as of yet have no political plan.

▪️Ewan Tilley criticised Modern Monetary Theory.

▪️Eddie Ford made a searing attack on the CPB.

▪️David Renton wrote articles around the subject of his recent book on Revolutionary Forgiveness, on Marx and ethics, Arkadi Kremer, Friedrich Adler, György Lukács, and an overview of the book itself.

▪️Theryn Arnold wrote about how to understand China; Ewan Tilley wrote a response, so did Lyra S.

▪️Prometheus published a roundtable on the war on Iran.

▪️Louis Boyd-Madsen and Paul Dobson investigated who makes money from Scotland’s wind farms.

And that’s a wrap!

@ Pelican House

Films4Freedom and The Learning Co‑op invites you to a screening of “The Battle of Chile, Part One: The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie”. Directed by Patrizio Guzman in the months leading up to Salvador Allende’s assassination, this masterclass of cinema verité transports us directly onto the political frontlines of 1973 Chile.

"Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again where free men will walk to build a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.”
– Salvador Allende, , 11 September 1973

Socialist Allendes final words reminds us that the dark clouds formed by capitalism over the global workers heads, will too pass through continued principled action, education and organisation.

To understand this fight, we must also understand the language of the land. The Learning Co-op is proud to host both group and 1-1 Spanish classes for beginners, a form of resistance through education.
Learn more and book on our website.

Join us together with Films4Freedom and The Learning Co-op to understand the reactionary coup and to dissect the parallels with the movements in britain today, applying these lessons to dismantle the facists of today.

Date: Thursday 21st May 2026
Time: Doors open at 6:30pm
Location: 144 Cambridge Heath Rd, Bethnal Green, London, E1 5QJ, United Kingdom
🎟️: Tickets available here

This is a ticketed event, we are selling merchandise and accepting further donations on the night, with 50% of funds going going to GMAC and the rest to expanding the learning Co-op's Anti-zionist and radical teaching programs✨
🔻🔻🔻

New Irish Course:

Online group course starting the 26th of May

Join us this term to bring your Irish—whether it's cúpla focal or Gaeilge briste—back to life 💬

We’ll also explore the historical decline of the language and what it means for us today.

Because beatha teanga í a labhairt.
Bígí linn ✨

🎟️ Band pricing available – check our website for spots.
📅 Tuesdays at 7pm BST, starting May 26th

🔗 Book now: thelearningcoop.squarespace.com

1-1 courses also available. Email us for more info: londonlearningcoop@gmail.com

Support radical learning. 🇮🇪

Build international solidarity!

Don’t forget we have 1-1 availability for the following languages: Irish, Urdu, Spanish, Arabic, Italian, Yiddish! Email us for more info: londonlearningcoop@gmail.com

Language is power. And we believe that power should be in the hands of the people.

That’s why we’re taking language learning into the sphere of solidarity.

🤝 Here’s what we are building:

• Learning rooted in real-world values.

• A digital space that respects BDS guidelines—we’ve moved to a new platform, and it’s live now.

• 💚 A community that believes in access for all.

Ready to find your people?
Book your favorite courses, grab your spot on our website or check out what’s happening in London IRL: Check out our in-person London events coming up in march.

Support us by booking, donating, sharing and coming to our in-person events in London.

Let’s build this thing together.

"Resistance and strategy" the third installment of the TLC's condensed intro to zionism and resistance course.

Together we will examine the theory of resistance framed through Frantz Fanon's Revolutionary lens in Göran Olsson's film "Concerning Violence". This film confronts colonialism's brutal legacy while honouring the unbreakable resolve of those who have fought for freedom.

"Decolonization is always a violent phenomenon." Fanon's words anchor this mosaic of resistance, amplifying righteously defiant voices often silenced by history. Join us to dissect the anatomy of liberation and reflect on the echoes of these struggles so we may apply these strategies in today's fight for justice.

Date: Thursday 22nd January 2026
Time: Doors open at 6:30pm
Location: 144 Cambridge Heath Rd, Bethnal Green, London, E1 5QJ, United Kingdom

Tickets are donation based

See you there!

The Learning Co-op invites you to join us for “Settler colonial roots: Documentaries and films on European Christian zionism”, the first session of the TLC’s condensed Intro to zionism and resistance course, a three part course that will cover the history of zionism from its inception through accurate, accessible and educational documentaries and films.

Join us together with Films4Freedom, IJAN and Riverway Law to understand the roots of white supremacist European Christian settler zionism in Learning Co-op’s first in person event!

Date: Saturday 11th October 2025
Time: Doors open at 5:30pm
Location: 144 Cambridge Heath Rd, Bethnal Green, London, E1 5QJ, United Kingdom
This is a ticketed event we will be selling merchandise with 50% of all proceeds going to to GMAC 🕊️

Buy your ticket here: https://wegottickets.com/event/677965/

Customised Online Group Language Courses for Unions, Collectives, and Communities.

At the London Learning Co-op, we know that language is more than vocabulary—it’s a tool for organising, for building bridges, and for preserving culture. That’s why we offer learning rooted in community and shared purpose.

How It Works:

• You Form the Group: Gather your union members, your activist comrades, or your close friends. You only need a minimum of 3 students.

• We Build the Course: Tell us your goals, level, and schedule. We design an ad-hoc, 10-week online course tailored specifically for your group.

• You Learn Together: Study in a comfortable, familiar environment where you can support each other’s progress.

Why Learn With Us?

• Strength in Numbers: Learning with people you trust leads to better results and more confidence.

• Relevant Curriculum: Discuss topics that matter to your group. Practice dialogues you’ll actually use.

• Solidarity Pricing: We are committed to making education accessible. We offer sliding scale or discounted rates for registered political groups, unions, and non-profits.

• Expert, Community-Minded Tutors: Our teachers are not only native or fluent speakers but are also aligned with cooperative and solidarity principles.

Our Languages of Solidarity & Culture:
We currently offer courses in:

• Levantine Arabic

• Kurmanji

• Urdu

• Farsi

• Irish

• Yiddish

• Italian

• Spanish

Take Action Together.

Ready to empower your community with a new language? Email us at londonlearningcoop@gmail.com to discuss your group’s needs and get a quote.

Let’s learn together.

As a cooperative, we have always pursued coherence between our principles and our actions.
In line with this commitment, we have ended our relationship with our previous website administrator Wix (on the BDS list) and have successfully migrated our entire site to another website provider.

Check our new website here:

https://thelearningcoop.squarespace.com/

We hope you will find the new site easier to navigate, especially when booking your courses! Do not worry our tutors, our courses, and our unwavering commitment to your education remain exactly the same—high quality, supportive, and politically aware.

We’ve also added a new "Support Us" section on our website where you can learn about and contribute to our side projects and collaborations.

🇵🇸Free Palestine!

OUR AUTUMN TERM IS STARTING!

Learn a new language with us!

10 week online courses for beginners: check our offer and book on our website. You will pay according to your income.

Send us an email for more info: londonlearningcoop@gmail.com

You are receiving this message because your email is on our list of students and supporters with which we would like to keep in touch. If you do not wish to keep receiving our newsletter, please let us know or click on the “unsubscribe” option at the top of this message.

Sign up for our free/PWCA taster sessions here

Book our group courses here

We are now on Blue Sky!

Follow us here

Learn Yiddish, Urdu and Sindhi with TLC

Learn while building linguistic solidarity!
We invite you to discover the social, political and cultural contexts of the languages we teach.
By taking individual lessons you will find flexibility with times and dates for your lessons and a special focus on your interests and linguistic needs.

• Pay what you can afford

• Choose your preferred times and dates

• Learn at your own pace with a native speaker

Check our courses description and band prices on our website www.londonlearningcoop.com

Irish tutor recruitment extended!

Are you our next Irish tutor?

We’re looking for a part-time Irish language tutor to co-design and deliver group and 1-to-1 Irish language tuition via Zoom.

Apply by clicking here

• There is no need for a cover letter.

• Deadline for applications is extended to midday (12pm) on Thursday 12th March 2025.
  
  We can’t wait to hear from you!

News of our collaboration with Captain Support UK (@captainsupportuk).

We have started the first of what will be a series of online activities to involve our students and public in general in Captain Support’s activities.

We will be periodically organizing online solidarity letter writing sessions!

The learning coop invites all our current and previous students, in particular Arabic speakers, to offer their language skills to captain support activities in order to facilitate their communication with non-english speakers detained in uk prisons.

1st Session on the 8th April

Get in touch for more information: londonlearningcoop@gmail.com

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👉 Arabic for Beginners

👉 Arabic alphabet

🔥Buy one on our website and send us an email to use the 50% promotion on the second one.

Learn more in our taster sessions:

• Arabic Beginners: Thursday 16th at 6pm GMT

Sign up for our free taster sessions here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/the-learning-co-operative-30484886832

Courses starting the following week:

👉 Arabic alphabet: Monday 20th @ 17:30 GMT

👉 Arabic for Beginners: Thursday 23rd @ 18:00 GMT

Book on our website: www.londonlearningcoop.com

Or email us for more info: londonlearningcoop@gmail.com

French and Italian taster sessions happening this week!

French for beginners

Taster: Tue. 14th January 6pm GMT

Group course: every Tuesday at 6pm GMT, first class 21st January.

Italian for beginners

Taster: Wed. 15th January 6pm GMT

Group course: Every Wednesday at 6pm GMT, first class 22nd January .

Build international solidarity while learning!

This term, learn Kurmanji, Urdu, Spanish and Yiddish. Join our taster sessions next week. Courses starting the week after.

_________________________________________________

Sign up for all of our free taster sessions here:

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/the-learning-co-operative-30484886832

Book your courses here:

www.londonlearningcoop.com

Looking for a good gift for a friend or relative in this time of the year?

Join our 1-1 courses!

Book here: https://www.londonlearningcoop.com/tuition or email us to londonlearningcoop@gmail.com for a special 5 classes purchase.

See you next Gregorian year and stay tuned for our 2025 group courses calendar.

• Learn about our new collaboration with Captain Suport UK @captainsupportuk

  • Captain Support UK is a solidarity collective which organises around the criminalisation of the freedom of movement by encouraging letter writing and visits in solidarity with people who are criminalised.

  • If you are an Arabic language learner or speaker, you can participate by joining Captain Support’s writing letter sessions.

  • Learn more about prison guided visits organized by Captain Support, to encourage speaking practice with prisoners.

  • Stay tuned for calls or email us for more info.

Are you looking to help in the preservation of endangered languages like Irish, Kurmanji or Yiddish?

Do you want to start learning a language from a decolonial perspective?

You can do both at TLC!

This end of term we have many language classes available. If one on one learning is what you are looking for, check the list of available courses for this term on our website.

• Plan your lessons, times and dates with your tutor

• If you are an organisation or collective looking for exclusive courses you can contact us directly at our email: londonlearningcoop@gmail.com.

All our courses are priced on a pay what you can afford basis, find more info on our website!

SIGN UP HERE!

This term we will offer many language group courses for beginners (Kurmanji, Arabic, Arabic alphabet and Spanish) and two new courses: Radical Poetry and Cinematic Art!

• If one on one learning is more what you are looking for, you can also check the list of available courses for this term on our website.

• If collective learning is your thing, we are including a 2x1 discount this term. Sign up with one friend in the same course and get your place for free. All you need to do is to add your 2 emails to the comments window when subscribing.

• If you are an organisation or collective looking for exclusive courses you can contact us directly at our email: londonlearningcoop@gmail.com.

• If you are reading this message one week after the course started, don’t worry, you can still sign up until the second session.

All our courses are priced on a pay what you can afford basis, find more info on our website!

SIGN UP HERE!

TLC is looking for partner organisations!

We have been sketching a lot of plans in the spirit of building international solidarity and contribute to the worldwide anti capitalist, anti imperialist and anti zionist movements, in defence of peace and self determination of all peoples of the world, specially Palestine.

TLC has been working closely to other learning organisations in order to co- design and co-develop special courses shaped by radical pedagogy. In this search we have found other partner organisations with which to imagine and build a common future.

TLC’s learning collaborations:

Red Clinic (UK)

Catu (Ireland)

SOMQ (US)

AMC School (Venezuela)

Neu (UK)

Currently we are looking to co-designing an anti zionism museum project that we would love to share and build with you. We imagine it to be a collective effort for spanning multiple geographical and linguistic contexts, educate ourselves about the nature of the problems posed by Zionism, with a view to contributing to the Palestinian struggle for freedom and liberation.

Is your organisation one of our future collaborators? Let’s have a talk and work together!

Join our taster sessions and start learning!

This September the Learning Coop is launching many courses: join one of our many language courses for beginners or try our new courses about radical poetry and cinematic art!

All our courses are priced on a pay what you can afford basis, find more info on our website!

Sign up for taster session here

tLC Website