Social centres have proven their potential as a model of organising, writes the Aberdeen Social Centre Organising Group.
Within the pages of Scottish Left Review and similar publications over many years there have been calls to organise under the banner ‘Unite the Left’. These calls have come from socialists, Marxists, trade unionists and whatever left grouping was the flavour of the day. They tend to follow a template based on a mass movement of the working class, mobilising unions, led by a vanguard leadership, with an imagined revolution. Such calls often come at times of electoral disappointment, when ‘something must be done’. Many burn brightly for a very short time and end up as a disappointment.
These calls often overlook modes and methods of organising that do not fit the union led, mass mobilising, revolutionary model. Yet different models of organising exist. This article will look at the social centre, sometimes called the ‘autonomous centre’, that is a potential alternative model. Such centres have existed across in the UK since the early 1980s, with the first Scottish example being the Edinburgh Unemployment Centre, which later became the Autonomous Centre Edinburgh. Today a centre exists in Glasgow called the Glasgow Autonomous Space and, since 2018, Aberdeen has been home to the Aberdeen Social Centre.
Social centres are essentially hubs that share similarities with other more traditional spaces such as labour and trade union social clubs. Yet their origins are different as they stem from an anarchist tradition of self-organised squats in the 1970s/1980s, protest camps in the 1990s, and more recently the spaces created by global anti-capitalist movements. As well as having different origins there are differences in principles and values. These spaces are non-hierarchical, self-organised, intersectional, and based around consensus decision-making and mutual aid. They all support activist groups in their area, and some also provide a cafe, bike workshop, radical library, wholefood shop, arts space, and benefits advice and language classes. The purpose of these centres is not just planning for some imagined revolution, but doing stuff in the here and now, showing by example what is possible to realise. This differs from many traditions on the left where the focus is building the movement or party with the direct purpose of effecting leverage upon state power. This type of movement collapses when levers of state power fail to move. Activists and the public are routinely disappointed when little of substance is achieved. The promised revolution remains a dot on a vanishing horizon. The more social democratically inclined are ready to wait until a socialist version of the Labour Party wins at Westminster before anything changes, only to see it all rolled back after the next election. Social centres side-step these promises, and show what can be done by people in the here and now without waiting for capitalism to fall.
In this spirit, the Aberdeen Social Centre was founded in 2018. Activist groups in Aberdeen often struggled to find affordable, accessible, and safe meetings and event spaces. So a group of activists approached Aberdeen Trades Union Council with a view to renting a room and making use of their meeting space and kitchen. The group negotiated the terms of a solidarity rental, started an online crowd-funder, set up an organising group, drew up a constitution, agreed a Statement of Principles and Values, and signed up the first affiliated activist groups. As per the constitution the organising group is non-hierarchical (elected at the Annual General Meeting) and responsible for finances, liaison with the landlord, and promotion of the space. The founder groups were Aberdeen Anarchist Group and local branches of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Scottish Palestinian Solidarity Campaign. For an annual affiliation fee, the groups use the Centre how they want, and it is used daily for a multitude of uses such as meetings (public and private), events, talks and skill-shares. As well as using the space, groups have access to shared equipment such as a computer, printer, PA system, megaphones and a video conference account, as well as access to services such as a shared event calendar and promotion via the website and mailing list.
After a slow start that was hampered by Covid, the Centre has become a dynamic space for activists and groups, working to build a more effective campaigning community in north-east Scotland. The original aim was to build capacity and connections between grassroots community activism and help provide longer term stability and solidity to the activist scene. That has been achieved and the last couple of years has seen a huge development. The Centre now involves 28 groups, listed at the end of the article, which are more or less every activist group in the city. More importantly there is huge diversity in the groups, which include anarchists, communists, environmentalists, Marxists, trans activists and anti-fascists. The Centre has also become a conduit for national campaigns such as Climate Camps, Stop Rosebank, and Stop Trump campaigns. Most recently as part of the ongoing counter actions against anti-immigration protests, the Centre has been central to the re-formation of the Aberdeen Anti-Fascist Alliance.
As well as providing the core function of providing a meeting, event and storage space for groups, the Centre organises social events such as the weekly drop-in Radical Café, monthly film nights, and reading groups where people learn together. These social gatherings may seem a very simple thing to organise, yet a shared space has been created where activists can plan joint actions, exchange information and build up affinity groups. As a result, the number of people using the space is constantly growing, more young people are becoming involved, and there is cross-fertilisation of groups occurring. As well as social events the Centre is an outlet for group literature, and new books are now stocked, which has been well received, especially given there are no radical bookshops north of Edinburgh. The Centre has organised numerous workshops on legal rights and political education, some in conjunction with external organisations such as the Scottish Community and Activist Legal Project.
Our major event is the annual Activist Fair: your alternative freshers’ fair which is now in its fourth iteration. The core of the event is each campaign group taking a stall to hand out information, talk to attendees and hopefully recruit members. This event has continued to grow and on November 22nd2025 it was the biggest yet with the addition of activities such as printmaking and a free dinner and social. This year also saw for the first time the involvement of businesses such as a designer and bookseller who came to sell their ‘political wares’. A schedule of talks, discussion and workshops ran throughout the day, such as: The Experience of Refugees and the Far Right, How to Crip Your World View by Disabled People Against Cuts, Campaigning 101 by Young Friends of the Earth Scotland, Radical Co-operative Spaces by Mara Co-op, and Digital OpSec For Activists. The longer-term plan for the fair is securing a larger and more central location and perhaps expanding it to the wider community with stalls from the third sector and trade unions.
It is clear that this model of organising remains under the radar of the wider left movement because it comes from the anarchist movement and doesn’t fit the ‘template’ outlined earlier. This network of centres, though somewhat on the fringes, has been successfully doing their own thing for decades now, centred on community building and direct action.
So the social centre, largely ignored and misunderstood by the wider left, is a potential model for wider grassroots organising. Critics may complain that centres advance no grand theory of social change, have no leadership, and sustain no relationship with a political party or programme. Are these weaknesses? Many involved in centres would say that these are strengths. Social centres have proven that they can be active for many years as they evade top-down approaches which inevitably lead to splits and very brief existences. When these hubs are created, they attract existing groups to join, energise people to form new campaigns, and encourage groups to work together. The diversity of groups working together under one roof comes from understanding that there is more that unites us than divides us, and from an appreciation that Aberdeen is a relatively small city where everyone must work together. The Aberdeen Centre has also shown, uniquely in the UK, that activist groups can collaborate with the trade union movement in mutually beneficial relationships.
We end this article with our own call-out to the wider left movement: social centres have proven they are crucial parts in the global grass-roots movement for change and a model for unity and organising. Recognise these spaces and give the groups that affiliate to them your solidarity and support. They have much to offer and they can be a central part of campaigns against austerity, cuts, the housing crisis, gentrification, and poverty, working with an alliance of co-operatives, tenants’ groups, trade unions and charities. If this call-out is heard, we will see you at the barricades.
For more information about the Aberdeen Social Centre, visit aberdeensocialcentre.org or contact the Centre at aberdeensocialcentre@riseup.net.
List of affiliated groups:
Aberdeen Anarchists, Aberdeen Anti-Fascist Alliance, Aberdeen Butch Club, Aberdeen City Arts Board, Aberdeen Climate Action, Aberdeen & Aberdeenshire Greens, Anti-Raids Group, Black Cat Co-Op (Krakatoa), Campaign for Socialism, Climate Justice Coalition, Communist Party Britain, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Disabled People Against Cuts North-East, Food Not Bombs, Fossil Free Pride Aberdeen, Friends of St Fittick’s Park, Grampian Communist League, Living Rent, Mara Housing Co-op., Marxist Caucus, Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Socialist Workers Party, Trans Grampian, Transfiction Film Club, Trans Kids Deserve Better, University of Aberdeen Palestine Solidarity Society, XR Aberdeen, and the 15th International Brigade Commemorative Committee (Aberdeen).
Aberdeen Social Centre is a support and networking space building the capacity of and the connections between grassroots community activism.