Class Struggle on the Riverbank: £300 raised for Kill the Bill Prisoners’ Fund

Feminist Fightback’s radical history walking tour around Bermondsey on 19 September raised £300 for the Kill the Bill Prisoners‘ Fund.

The walk was organised by Feminist Fightback to raise money for the fund to support people facing imprisonment for participating in a demonstration against the Police, Crime Courts and Sentencing Bill in Bristol in March 2021. This authoritarian and racist Bill will criminalise dissent, including the kind of protests and picket lines that were crucial to the success of the Bermondsey Uprising and many other working-class and feminist struggles that we learnt about as we walked. It also introduces 10 year prison sentences for damaging statues of slave traders on the spurious basis of “respect” for history. History is not wholly determined by those in power – it’s also made from below. On the walk we remembered our own histories of resistance, and reconnected with the rebels of the past.

Many of the direct action tactics that made the historical strikes we learnt about on the walk so successful will be outlawed by the Police, Crime, Courts and Sentencing Bill. Now is our last chance for a massive public outcry against the threat to democracy posed by this authoritarian and racist piece of legislation. #KillTheBill