THERE is a lot talked about the need to show solidarity. Social media timelines are rightly full of expressions of solidarity for workers taking strike action. Rarely, though, is there much discussion about other ways of demonstrating solidarity in the workplace or beyond.

In these soaring cost-of-living times where households throughout the country are struggling to put bread on the table and to keep a roof over their heads, I think we also need to think about how we can extend solidarity to our communities.

Some years ago there was a fashion for community organising. Even trade unions, such as the one I used to work for, employed staff who were tasked with building union links with the communities.

Looking back, employing community organisers to come into communities to build power is a big ask. Much better, in my view, to support local organising initiatives, not just by pumping money into the area, but by linking union members with people trying to build power for their local communities.

I know that unions in Leicester, for example, are working together to help to build community power in the garment industry where employers are arguably some of the most difficult to organise and certainly often extremely aggressive to their workers.

There are other examples of where people are not just waiting for some ideas for building solidarity to be handed down from on high or, as is often the case, stolen from activities that may be taking place — usually in the US.

Rarely have I seen organising initiatives from the global South being touted as something we could learn from in Britain. Startling in many ways but in other ways unsurprising given that this is also the case in trade union organising.

I’m really looking forward with anticipation to a book by the great union organiser Nigel Flanagan, who will be tackling some of these issues about the global North bias on organising ideas.

The Ron Todd Foundation, named after the great TGWU general secretary — for which, in the interest of full disclosure, I confess to being a board member — is not just waiting for the cost-of-living crisis to take hold before doing something. 

It decided to build solidarity between neighbours in their local community.

Predictions of 18 per cent inflation next year allied to wages falling behind the cost of living by record amounts is frightening for many people — even those with relatively well-paying jobs.

This is not to say that the state does not have a responsibility to do something to support. Of course it does. But in the end it is working-class action and solidarity that will force the ruling class — regardless of which of the major parties they are in — to do something.

RTF leaders, Bianca Todd and Stephen Clark, began conversations with their neighbours where they live in Northampton aiming to build solidarity. 

During those conversations they asked their neighbours whether they would be prepared to have a neighbour round their house if they could not afford to turn on the gas and electric. Just offering a hot drink and some friendship to a neighbour could make a massive difference to someone being able to survive.

Perhaps they could make space for a neighbour at their table for an extra person to eat. 

Everyone was reportedly very keen to be part of an offer which meant that they could help and be helped if needed. All their neighbours were worried about soaring energy costs. 

Everyone — to a household — signed up to help their neighbours. We obviously can’t pay each other’s energy bills and we can’t forget the politics behind what’s happening. 

That’s not the point. But we can make sure no-one is alone, no-one sits cold or hungry. We can share a solidarity that is rooted in community.

Incidentally, the RTF is also looking at using the time on the ever-growing number of picket lines even more effectively.

It is trying to find ways to build on the support that the current round of strikes already enjoy by picket lines not just accepting solidarity but by picket lines extending solidarity out into the community.

They have produced a series of “purposeful picketing kits” which picket lines can use to show solidarity to working-class people in their area. 

Far more likely that strikers, who after all are all members of communities themselves, often in the area where they work, will receive solidarity if they extend solidarity themselves.

The purposeful picketing kits contain materials to create hope and build resources for the entire community, such as winter warmers, a pot and candle structure to give out to families so they can heat a room in their home to stay warm this winter and beyond; a street doll, which can be given to hospitals and families. 

If we are to move beyond the echo chamber where we talk to ourselves on the picket lines, if we want more than a toot from a passing motorist, then we can use the strikes as a time to be collectively creative, to provide real practical solutions which connect with people and will provide a route for them to join our movement. 

We can use the strikes as a time to connect with the communities that have been disenfranchised by politics, and who often can’t afford to become trade union members or, indeed, are not in work themselves.

While you can buy purposeful picketing kits via www.solidaritea52.com you can’t buy solidarity. We all have to work hard to build that together  and remember this is not just for workplaces it is something we can do every day — for everyone.

Roger McKenzie is a journalist and general secretary of anti-colonialism movement Liberation (liberationorg.co.uk).