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The Social Forum consists of a diverse range of individuals and groups with interests spanning social justice to the environment. To get involved sign up to this site and come along to the next meeting (see Events for more details).

Draft Aims of Leicester Social Forum

This document was created in March 2004 and is left draft as to allow for future changes in the organisation

  • 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.
  • The Forum believes 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 identifies with and seeks to support refugees and asylum seekers
  • 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.
  • The Forum promotes a process of globalisation based on the principles of equality, solidarity, social justice and sustainable development.
  • 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 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