Organizations - Political Organizations

Who We Are.

Leicester Social Forum was founded in 2004 and is part of the World Social Forum movement. We act as an umbrella organisation for campaign groups, trades unions, political parties and individual activists in Leicester and beyond. If you're interested in getting active locally, have a campaign that you'd like help with, if you're a member of another SF, or if you're interested in setting up a Social Forum please get in touch.

To get on our e-mail lists search for LeicesterSocialForum and LSFdiscussion at yahoogroups.

LSF meets on the last Thursday of every month, 7:30pm, at Unit 3b, Pilot House, King St, Leicester. All welcome!

Leicester Social Forum – Its Origins.

In January 2001, as a direct response to the meeting of the World Economic Forum in Brazil, the first World Social Forum (WSF) was convened in Porto Allegre, Brazil. The WSF deliberately counterposed itself to the process of globalization promoted by the World Trade Organisation, the World Bank the G8 and the other institutions of multi national big business. The WSF has met each year since then, most recently in Mumbai in India in January 2004.

In November 2003, conscious of the need to open the Social Forum movement to the widest number of participants possible, the first European Social Forum (ESF) was held in Florence, Italy, attracting over 50,000 people. A second ESF was held last November in St Denis, Paris, again attracting over 50,000 enthusiastic participants. The next ESF will be held at Alexandra Palace in London between October 14th and 17th.

Leicester Social Forum is our local response to this important development. It is an attempt to apply the aims of the Social Forum movement to the local situation with a view to bringing together all those who in various ways have concerns about the current drive towards a globalisation that is not in the interests of the majority of the people or the planet.

Organising Principles of Leicester Social Forum

• The Social Forum is a coming together of all those who are opposed in various ways to the process of globalisation being carried out by the richest nations in the interests of big business and corporate capital. It is modelled on the World Social Forum and the European Social Forum.

• The Forum provides an opportunity for democratic debate of ideas, sharing of information, formulation of proposals and for co-ordination of action and campaigning.

Draft Guiding Principles of Leicester Social Forum

• The Forum promotes a process of globalisation based on the principles of equality, solidarity, social justice and sustainable development.

• The Forum recognises that all people, whatever their nationality, ethnicity, gender, faith or sexual orientation are equal and are entitled to enjoy fundamental, basic Human Right, free from fear, poverty and oppression. It believes in the right of everyone to travel and live where they wish and identifies with and seeks to support refugees and asylum seekers.’

• The Forum seeks to combat the social exclusion and social inequality which are the products of the current process of capitalist globalization which is based on the rule of the ‘market’, and is racist, sexist and environmentally destructive in its content.


• The Forum recognises that access to free health care, education and social welfare provision are human rights and is opposed to the current drive of government and big business to privatise and commercialise public services for the purpose of profit by private enterprise.

• The Forum upholds respect for Human and Civil Rights for all and for real participatory democracy and is opposed to all forms of imperialism, colonialism, domination or subjection of people, whether as part of a collective, or as individuals.

• The Forum is opposed to the use of torture, violence and inhuman treatment by the state as a method of social control, whether it is used to suppress minorities, such as with the Kurds in Turkey and Iraq, or to crush and silence opposition groups, as in Burma.

• The Forum supports the right of all peoples to self-determination and opposes any occupation of another people’s homeland. It opposes any self-determination or state that is based on racism, ethnic or religious superiority or national exclusiveness or any attempt by a state to exclude others on the grounds of race or religion.”

• The Forum believes that the current irresponsible plundering of the earth’s environment in the interest of profit places all peoples at risk and is unsustainable. Global warming, pollution and the rapid exhaustion of natural resources increasingly threaten the welfare of the planet and those who live on it.

• The Forum seeks a world that rests on democratic, international systems and institutions which operate for the benefit of all and within which no nation can choose to unilaterally act outside of the rule of law.

• The Forum rejects the notion of ‘pre-emptive’ war as unlawful and opposes the attempts of governments to subvert international law by inventing new categories of forced detention, as at Guantanamo Bay.

NB – These Guiding Principles are identified as a ‘Draft’ because we do not see them as fixtures, or as a list to subscribe to. Rather, they are an evolving summary of concerns about how the world should be, given that ‘Another World is Possible’. They derive from the founding statement of the World Social Forum. They are subject to regular re-evaluation, amendment and discussion. We regard that as being the spirit of the Social Forum movement.

c/o Unit 3b, Pilot House, King St, Leicester. LE1 6RN