In Spring 2021 a number of us involved in anarchist politics here over the years got together (online) to talk about the current state of libertarian socialist ideas. In part we were interested in a wider discussion with like-minded people. Our objective has not been to launch anything new but to begin a discussion process which will hopefully lead to the forging of new links and the development of ideas.

We decided to write a number of articles to explore a libertarian/anarchist perspective on some current issues. And, fairly obviously, the response to the Covid pandemic jumped out as the first area to explore. Rather than using the traditional way of getting one or two people to go away and write an article/articles we decided to hold a number of conversations with a wider group of activists known to us, and to try to write the articles based on the outcome of those conversations.

We want to say a huge thank you to the comrades who joined in those conversations and to apologise for the fact that it has taken so long for us to actually write up the articles. This was due to a combination of our being busy with other things and the difficulties caused by the ongoing pandemic.

We have now reached the point where a couple of articles have been written and which we will publish over the next couple of weeks. We hope they will be of interest and that they might provide a starting point for further discussions. We know that there are plenty of activists contributing hugely to the growth and development of ideas and campaigns from an anarchist/libertarian perspective, we look forward to your feedback on these articles and we hope that over the coming period new opportunities for further discussions and development of ideas will emerge.

Finally, in the process of forming this collective we drew up some basic points of agreement, which we add here for reference.