THERE were just two of us when we began knocking on doors in December 2013 to build what became Acorn UK — “Association of Community Organisations for Reform Now.” That February we were joined by another organiser and one or two founding members. We’ll celebrate our fifth birthday in May, with a membership in the thousands.

The idea was to build a mass membership, dues-paying organisation in the community that would use direct action to actively address the key issues felt locally. We wanted to work directly on bread and butter issues, that required no political education other than the experience of living in austerity Britain. Housing, jobs, transport costs, cuts to services and so on. When we started in Bristol, the quality and cost of private sector rented housing was clearly the number one issue. With that in mind, beyond the creation of the organisation itself, the initial aim was to organise the local community to improve housing standards in inner city Bristol.

We had varying degrees of trade union experience; from members to organising staff. Of our three initial organisers one had previously worked for a major trade union and both myself and our other colleague had been TUC union members. In addition to that, two of us had held elected organising positions in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) syndicalist trade union.