A creche and kids play space during the TUC demo on Oct 20

:: a parent and volunteer run creative and fun space for kids of all ages – with painting, games, toys for younger kids and films and printing press workshops for older children. light and healthy snacks will be served throughout the day. please bring a packed lunch for your child ::

organised by plan c london
email: london@weareplanc.org for venue details, to volunteer to help out with childcare or to book a spot for your child

Plan C is about making plans – real, concrete and achievable plans – to improve the conditions of our lives and to make the strategy of austerity more difficult, costly and ultimately impossible to implement. These plans must include taking seriously the work of organising childcare. We don’t think organising childcare is just a job for Plan C. But in organising childcare for the TUC demo we are challenging the current status quo in the Left that fails to collectively support those with kids and having children in political spaces and events. More than this, we also think that the invisibility of the labour involved in childcare – the labour that enables many people to take part in ‘politics’ in the first place – needs to be challenged and made visible. While some of us are more than happy to take our kids to demos, others of us would prefer to organise childcare options that mean our kids are looked after away from the action. To overcome the divisions in our movement, we can’t simply demand that people ‘unite and fight’. Instead we have to do the work of addressing these rifts by organising and acting in ways that imagine and create a new and different social and political culture, ones that ultimately take us beyond forms of activism and politics that can only take place away from our families, dependents and obligations.