In Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy, Rinku Sen describes the important political and economic trends that need to be taken into account when doing community organising. She explains that: "If we are to shift power, our organizing has to be grounded in a clear and common understanding of how the world … Continue reading Context of struggle →

This post lists 9 Revolutionary moments and periods in Britain since 1381. This is a broad overview so I will look at the details and patterns of these moments and periods in future posts. Following on from the previous post about learning from history, there has been a long tradition of the working class struggling … Continue reading Revolutionary moments and periods in Britain →

George Lawson writes in Anatomies of Revolution about two common but unhelpful ways that revolutions are viewed. Either as everywhere – on the streets in the Middle East, to describe new technology, in films and also to describe political leaders. The second is that they are minor disturbances and "irrelevant to a world in which … Continue reading What are revolutions? →

Social movements are important because when collective action spreads across an entire society it leads to a cycle of struggle or contention. When such a cycle is organised around opposed or multiple classes or interest groups then this can lead to revolutions [1]. This is simplistic as there are many causes and factors that lead … Continue reading What are social movements? →

Writing about history is important for this project, but why is that? I took for granted how important learning from history is without really thinking about why. When I read How Change Happens by Duncan Green, he clarified things. This got me thinking about wanting to understand learning from history better to then write about … Continue reading Learning from history →

I'm going to use Jane McAlevey’s definition for organising as described in a previous post: "organizing places the agency for success with a continually expanding base of ordinary people, a mass of people never previously involved, who don't consider themselves activists at all – that's the point of organizing." In this post, I've included activism … Continue reading What to organise around? →

This post will describe the differences between mobilising and organising following on from a previous post that describes Jane McAlevey's three options for change: advocacy, mobilising and organising. McAlevey describes pure forms of these options for change, which is useful for understanding and analysis but clearly on the ground nothing will be this clear cut. … Continue reading Mobilising and Organising →