CURRENT EVENTS

CONTACT DETAILS

Haringey Solidarity Group's address is
Haringey Solidarity Group,
PO Box 2474,
London N8
The phone number is 0845 2235270 and the email address is now info@haringey.org.uk

HARINGEY INDEPENDENT CINEMA
PRESS NOTICE

Haringey Independent Cinema,

West Green Learning Centre,
West Green Road, N15
Click for directions

The next HIC presentation will be:

Thursday 6th March 7pm
LIBERTARIAS
(Vicente Aranda, 1996)

Spain, 19 July 1936. The revolution has begun in a city near Barcelona. María, an innocent young nun, flees her convent when revolutionaries invade the area and finds refuge in a brothel. Here she meets a group of "Libertarias," anarchist militia women who are fighting not only Franco, but also the conservative attitudes toward women that prevail as well in the revolutionary ranks. The group is led by hard-liner Pilar, whose seconds-in-command are the clairvoyent Floren and the big-hearted prostitute Concha. Pilar quickly feels a strange fascination for this young nun whose father is a fascist. On their way to the front, the group runs into a defrocked priest who joins up with them and falls in love with María. There are three main locations: the vicinity of Barcelona, the trenches, and Saragossa. Aranda describes the daily existence of these anarchist freedom fighters, not without a touch of humor, as in the scene when Floren does an imitation of Linda Blair in The Exorcist. When the protagonists arrive in Saragossa, the streets are strewn with bodies and weeping women. María catches her first glimpse of the face of war and her sympathies, despite her background, go out to the freedom fighters. The defrocked priest arrive with the strange news that the anarchist leader Durutti has forbidden women to go to the front: the militarisation of politics has won out over utopian ideals.


Thursday 27th March 7pm
PAN'S LABYRYNTH
(Guillermo del Toro, 2006)

We're often so entranced by the wonder of fairy tales that we overlook their horror. Even old folk tales that have been cleaned up and reworked over the ages still harbor relics from the days when we thought it was a good idea to rule kids by fear: Parents and stepparents with sinister hidden personalities; children who get baked into pies; winged or scaled creatures who demand impossible tasks of a hero, for reasons that are sometimes murky.

Fairy tales have their roots in very old, very deep human fears, fears that Guillermo del Toro teases out mercilessly in his ambitious, glorious and harrowing adult fairy tale Pan's Labyrinth.

This is a sombre, lovely picture, set in Franco's Spain a few years after that country's civil war. It's rich both in metaphorical terms and in literal ones. Del Toro's imagery is so vivid and concrete that it's likely to change the color of your sleep: A writhing, cooing root that's "almost" a human baby; a faceless creature with pale wrinkly skin draped over its willowy bones, its eyes located in the palms of its hands instead of in its head. Those far-side-of-sleep images (and the movie contains many others) can be read as symbols and stand-ins for other things -- a nascent country that might have been; so-called leadership that's howlingly blind -- but del Toro isn't playing a game of allegorical one-to-one matching here. The movie's meanings emerge from its visuals instead of being driven by them. Del Toro has mastered the delicate, difficult feat of using pure sensation to make us think.

Saturday 26th April
All day Film Festival as part of
Haringey Independence Day

£3 waged/£2 low and unwaged

More information can be found at:
http://www.haringey.org.uk/hic/

Notes

1. The cinema is on the last Thursday of each month and presently at the West Green Learning Centre in West Green Road, N15. Doors open 7pm, film starts at 7.15. Tickets are £3/£2 (low or unwaged). We will be going to KKMcCool's pub afterwards to chat about the films, socialise and have a drink.

2. Haringey Independent Cinema is organised by local residents and supported by Haringey Trades Union Council, Woodlands Park Residents’ Association, Chestnuts Northside Residents Association and Haringey Solidarity Group.

ABOUT US

Haringey Solidarity Group (HSG) started life as the old Anti-Poll Tax group in Haringey. Once the Poll Tax was defeated most of the Anti-Poll Tax groups around the country split up. But in Haringey we decided there were other things to fight against which were just as important as the poll tax, so we stayed together and change our name to Haringey Solidarity Group. We are a group of local people who feel things need changing and we don't have much faith in politicians and other "so called" leaders to do it for us.

Things will only get better for ordinary people when we decide what is best for us. It is not for some boss or so-called leader to decide what they think we need. We believe in doing things for ourselves wherever possible and we try to encourage others to do likewise. We also feel that when ordinary people fight back against the system (be that your boss, the local council or some multi-national company) they need to be supported.

So we agreed from the birth of HSG onwards that, where possible, we would work with and support local campaigns and try to get them to support us. By this we don't mean taking over a campaign. We mean sharing skills, giving each other confidence to do things and learning from each other's successes and failures. People need to feel confident before they can even think of starting to fight back themselves. We know this may be a slow process but it is far better than starting something up and TELLING people what they MUST do. We do not want to just become the new set of leaders!

LONDON CALLING

For Solidarity Groups and
Networks across London

Haringey Solidarity Group has been organising locally with relative success for nearly 15 years. But we want to be more than just an example of what community activists can achieve. We want to encourage and enable other people to get active on a community level all over London.

As anarchists and anti-authoritarians, we often see our ideas as being different from the rest of society's, yet on every street there are people who despise authority, are sick of their shit working conditions and tired of watching their area turn into a yuppie playground or a neglected wasteland.

Groups from the far left and right are trying to move into the vacuum left by the main political parties but they have little to offer local communities. They seek power for themselves rather than encouraging people to take control of their own lives. It is up to us to dismantle the isolated existence of modern capitalism and build on our common dreams. We know we can't change society on our own nor should we want to. Any movement for real social change must come from people organising in every neighbourhood. We need to develop community-based and workplace groups, linked together to improve our lives, and work towards bringing about the total transformation of society. There are already many inspiring examples of activities throughout London and around the country (see box overleaf), whether working in local residents' associations, organising social centres and events, supporting workers' struggles, forming claimants' groups or producing local newsletters. But there could be so much more.

Getting our hands dirty

If you live in London and these words strike a chord with you, but you are not involved in a local group, isn't it about time you were? The worse that can happen is you get to meet like-minded people in your area.

There are already groups in Haringey, Walthamstow and Hackney. Individuals in other areas are thinking of forming groups.

Where there are local community-based groups, we can put you in touch with them. Where there isn't a group, there may be one or two (or dozens of) individuals who are thinking there should be.
If you don't feel confident in starting a group by yourself, we are happy to act as a contact point for you to give us your details. When we have details of people from the same area, we will put you in contact with them. Once a couple of you have taken the plunge and decided to form a group, there will be things like contacting others in your area, writing & distributing leaflets/posters, organising a meeting, etc. If you need practical support and encouragement to get started, HSG is willing to try and provide it.

We know setting up a local group can be daunting - most of us have been through it - but, if we really want to change society what's the alternative?

If you want to get involved please get in touch.

Kick-starting the process

London Calling, HSG's push for solidarity groups and networks across London, will be kick-started at this year’s Anarchist Bookfair.
If you want to get involved in preparation work and publicity in advance, please get in touch.

We are inviting other groups who are already organising locally to join up with us to form a space at the Bookfair where community activists can get together.

We will be involved in running the following workshops/meetings:
    Debate: Residents' Groups - reformist, reactionary, revolutionary or just realistic?
    A debate about contradictions involved in resident-based organising, introduced by an HSG member who will propose that residents' groups are a pre-condition for social revolution.

    Why anarchists should organise locally
    A brief intro by HSG and another local group, followed by a discussion and contributions from others about the different ways in which groups have successfully organised.

    Setting up London solidarity groups
    A practical workshop for people living in London who want to set up or strengthen groups in their area.

Examples in Practice

    In Edinburgh there has been an organised claimants' group for the last 20 years. In addition, activists have developed links with local groups, including stopping a landfill site being built in a residential area. They are involved in workers' struggles and gave practical support for last year's G8 protests.

    When developers tried to close a café in Broadway Market in east London, local activists joined together to occupy the building. When the developers evicted them and smashed the place up, locals re-occupied and repaired the damage. Frequent meetings were held, the café ran regularly and a community spirit is being built on.

    SchNEWS was born as a local newsletter in a squatted courthouse in Brighton in 1994. 12 years later they are still printing! Schnews comes out every week and has a circulation of 2,000 paper copies and 11,000 email members.

    The 1 in 12 Club in Bradford started life in 1986. Over a three-year period hundreds of Club members worked voluntarily to reconvert the four storey mill into a social club Their original objectives were to develop and spread the anarchist values of self-management, co-operation and mutual aid. Through gigs, books, records and direct action, they have sought to extend the influence of these ideas throughout Bradford and beyond. It is still going strong in 2006 - 20 years later!

    Haringey Solidarity Group started life in 1990. In 1995 we supported fast food distribution workers in unionising their workplace. We mail out regular monthly information with local, national and international news to our local contacts (from 120 to over 300). Many of us are active in local residents’ associations.