By Praveen Kolluguri

On 6th December UK-based activists who want to support India’s working class, labour movement and oppressed peoples met for the launch of India Labour Solidarity (ILS).

The campaign is now holding an online organising meeting every fortnight on Sunday evenings (next one 4th February): for more details email indialaboursolidarity@gmail.com

ILS began organising in the summer, with its first activity leafleting and gathering support at Labour conference in September.

It has already established links and organised some practical solidarity with several workers’ organisations in India, and sought cooperation with other groups campaigning around India in the UK.

ILS’s initial founders are Indian and Indian-background socialists active in the UK labour movement and left. This article on Labour List explains the project.

The audience at the 6th December meeting was a mix of trade unionists, left-wing political activists including from Labour and the Green Party, students and human rights campaigners – with many from an Indian background.

The meeting heard from two labour movement activists in India – Nodeep Kaur of the Mazdoor Adhikar Sangathan union in Haryana, and Bilal Khan from the Kamgar Sanrakshan Samaan Sangh union in Mumbai – and two in the UK – TUC President Maria Exall and Nottingham East MP Nadia Whittome, who is also from an Indian background. The discussion was chaired and introduced by Praveen Kolluguri, a CWU member who is BAME Officer of Kingston and Surbiton CLP.

As well as workers’ struggles specifically, the meeting obviously discussed the alarming situation facing comrades in Indian under the far-right Hindu nationalist regime of Narendra Modi. The organisers, speakers and many others emphasised issues of oppression intersecting with class exploitation, including the caste system and the situation of India’s Muslims.

ILS is planning campaigns in support of particularly unions and workers’ struggles and around the potential UK-India “Free Trade Agreement”; while seeking to raise the issues and awareness in the UK labour movement through motions to trade union branches, Labour Parties and other organisations. It has also launched a statement of solidarity with migrant workers in Qatar, many of whom are of south Asian origin.

There is a particular importance in Labour members promoting the campaign – given our mass membership’s potential for solidarity; the impact of a Labour government in UK-India relations; but also the concerning influence of Indian government-apologists, and even outright supporters of Modi and the Hindu right in our Party.

Praveen Kolluguri is a CWU member and BAME Officer of Kingston and Surbiton CLP.

Image: India map. Source: Transferred from ml.wikipedia to Commons. Author: Rajeshodayanchal at Malayalam Wikipedia.,  licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.