At 12pm on Sunday 15th July, SolFed members dragged themselves out of bed to join forces with local AFed and IWW activists to extend the anti-workfare campaign to the Costa coffee chain. A cup of coffee from the independent coffee shop next door helped us get ready for the picket. We managed to hand out around 150 leaflets, and, as before, we felt that people were generally very sympathetic to our action (apart perhaps a traditional Catholic, (French) National Front voter).
After about 1 hour we swiftly moved to our next target: John Lewis. SF members attended the rally on Oxford St in London yesterday in support of the store’s cleaners striking to secure the London Living Wage. Responding to the IWW call, we organised a picket at our local store in solidarity with their strike. John Lewis workers were leafleted for a good 20 minutes inside whilst outside people were made aware of the strike for 45 minutes. Again, lots of sympathy for the strike and 200 leaflets handed out, especially due to the impressive work done by our young activist!