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Mapping the resistance: five years of Strike Map and the rise of the MegaPicket
From a lockdown digital project to a vital tool for class solidarity, ROBERT POOLE and HENRY FOWLER reflect on half-a-decade of struggle
HANDY: Strike Map Book
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LOOKING back over the past five years, it feels almost implausible that so much has happened. When Strike Map launched in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, we couldn’t have predicted the seismic shifts in British society that would occur.
We saw a worldwide readjustment in our attitude towards work. We witnessed the “Great Resignation” and the rise of “quiet quitting” as workers started to question their relationship with the means of production and capitalism as a whole.
Then came the inflation crisis and the “Summer of Discontent,” which saw waves of strikes ripple across the country.
Although action has subsided in some sectors, it hasn’t gone away. As we speak, the Birmingham bin strikers have been taking industrial action for nearly 300 days. They are now facing their first Christmas on the picket line.
Strike Map has evolved from a digital map created during the isolation of Covid into a project of solidarity mobilising thousands.
Our aim was always to document the level of strike action to encourage others, bringing those leading struggles together through a network.
We have been successful. Hundreds of thousands of workplaces have been mapped since 2020, and thousands of pounds have been raised for local strike funds through our regional Strike Clubs. A new collaboration this year with UnionMaps has integrated two vital datasets that will facilitate the labour movement in its analysis, planning and action.
One of our proudest moments came this May with our successful MegaPicket in Birmingham. The labour movement responded by shutting down the Lifford Lane scab depot. This led to a desperate anti-strike escalation: the government issued injunctions and even threatened to bring in the military.
We called, and you responded with MegaPicket II in July, closing all five sites across Birmingham and Coventry.
We see the MegaPicket as a new tool in the armoury of the working class. Mass pickets, sympathy strikes, and flying pickets are illegal for unions to organise — but, for now at least, protest is still legal.
Strike Map is an independent platform. It allows individuals to find and support workers across different industries, facilitating the very cross-sector solidarity that the law is designed to prevent.
2026 marks the 100-year anniversary of the General Strike. We should celebrate this by showing our solidarity wherever it is needed. That is why Strike Map is now organising Megapicket 3-D, targeting all sites. We hope to mobilise people from across the country — and most importantly across the West Midlands — to join us.
To celebrate half a decade of Strike Map, we have produced an A4 hardback photobook, The Story So Far. Get your copy here: bit.ly/SM5yearhardback.
Robert Poole and Henry Fowler are co-founders of Strike Map.
