Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 1

£2 www.freedompress.org.uk Vol 73 • SEPTEMBER 2012 ANARCHISTS DETAINED Counter-terrorist police arrest LENS CAP TOWER BRIDGE BANNER anarchists at Heathrow airport

For the past week, thousands of anarchists from across Europe have been converging in St Imier, Switzerland, to celebrate the 140th anniversary of the founding of the Anarchist international. The gathering (held from 8th to 12th August 2012) took the form of a festival and educa - tional, with music, films and entertainment as well as workshops and discussions. On returning from the St Imier gathering, two anarchists, one a member of the UK Anarchist Federation, were detained for nearly two hours at Heathrow b y SO15 (counter- terrorist) police. During the detention, the anarchists were told that their normal rights did not apply, and had their names, addresses, email addresses, DNA and fingerprints taken. The detained anarchists were also forced to sign forms – which may or may not be legal – waiving their rights to silence and a solicitor. Police also conducted a thorough search of personal possessions, photocopied literature and passports and took information from phones and cameras. During the detention, the police constantly Climate Siren activists scaled Tower Bridge to drop a massive banner above the Paralympic symbol accused the anarchists of lying about involve - which read ‘Climate Change our Next Challenge’. After the drop Tower Bridge was evacuated for ment in criminal activity and alleged that “safety reasons” and the activists later arrested. See http://climatesiren.wordpress.com/ page 38 WILDCAT WALKOUT WINS 8 Late July saw a brief and successful wildcat colleague and agreed to further negotiations INSIDE action by posties at Bridgwater delivery office on other issues, such as the medical appoint- Homeless action page 3 in Somerset. The strike was triggered when a ments policy. post worker with 25 years’ experience on the Dave Wilshire, Bristol Branch Secretary Fit for work? page 7 job was suspended for allegedly swearing for the Communications Workers’ Union, at another worker, despite the fact that the said: “Royal Mail can say what it likes but Massacre at Marikana page 9 second worker had asked for the case to the fact is they would not talk to us about be dropped. lifting this suspension until the strike went Svartfrosk page 16 In response, 100 Royal Mail staff walked into its second day: that’s a fact. out on Friday 20th July, claiming the “The tremendous solidarity shown once Punk’s dead page 21 suspension was part of a wider culture of again by 110 Bridgwater postal workers has, bullying and harassment by management, and we believe, forced Royal Mail to show some Arts pages 22 and 23 pointing to a number of other grievances, common sense: we hope this approach including a new policy that would take continues.” ISSN 0016-0504 away their right to paid time off for medical This swift victory won by the Bridgwater appointments. posties is an inspiring example of how They stayed out throughout the weekend, powerful industrial action can be when it’s only returning to work on the Monday after controlled directly by the workers themselves. 9 770016 050009 management reinstated their suspended Cautiously Pessimistic Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 2

2 Freedom • September 2012 NEWS FREEDOM STOCKISTS LENS CAP RECLAIM THE LIBRARY You can now pick up your monthly copy of Freedom at the following venues.

LONDON • Freedom Bookshop, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX, tel 020 7247 9249 email [email protected] http://www.freedompress.org.uk/ • 56A Infoshop, 56 Crampton Street, London SE17 3AE, email [email protected] http://www.56a.org.uk/ • Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, London N1 9DX, tel 020 7837 3447 email [email protected] http://www.housmans.com/ • London Action Resource Centre (LARC), 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES tel 020 7377 9088, http://www.londonarc.org/ • Newham Bookshop, 745-747 Barking Road, London E13 9ER, tel 020 8552 9993 email [email protected] http://www.newhambooks.co.uk/ BRIGHTON • Cowley Club Social Centre, 12 London Road, Brighton BN1 4JA, tel 01273 696104 email cowleyclub@ri seup.net http://cowleyclub.org.uk/ BIRMINGHAM On the 5th September, occupiers and members of the local community in North London reclaimed • Birmingham Bike Foundry, 1539 Pershore Road, Stirchley, Birmingham B30 2JH, tel: 0121 459 Friern Barnet Library after it had its doors closed in April by the council due to public spending cuts. 7276, email: [email protected] The squatted library has now reopened to the public. http://birminghambikefoundry.org BRISTOL • Hydra Books, 34 Old Market, Bristol BS2 0EZ tel: 0117 3297401 email [email protected] http://www.hydrabooks.org/ Freedom of your information • Kebele Social Centre, 14 Robertson Road, Bristol BS5 6JY, tel 0117 9513086, If you had in any doubt as to the extent of The police national database (PND) email [email protected] the state’s control freakery and paranoia, originated out of recommendations on record http://www.kebelecoop.org then you need not be any longer. keeping and data sharing from an inquiry A newly processed request under the into police handling of the Soham murders. NOTTINGHAM • Sumac Centre, 245 Gladstone Street, Freedom of Information Act has revealed Yet just like anti-terrorism legislation, the Nottingham NG7 6HX, tel 0115 960 8254, that the police national database (PND) has police will use it however and when ever they email [email protected] over 300 million intelligence records that see fit, and rarely for the purpose for which http://www.veggies.org.uk/sumac relate to around 15 million people. This it was created. means that the police hold records on one in The Metropolitan Police Authority website LIVERPOOL • News from Nowhere Bookshop, 96 Bold Street, four people in the UK. Many of the records describes much of the data held on the data - Liverpool L1 4HY, tel 0151 708 7270 relate to individuals who have never been base as, “capturing information while carrying email [email protected] convicted, charged with a crime, or any direct out one activity which is likely to prove http://www.newsfromnowhere.org.uk/ dealings with the police whatsoever. useful in a future policing activity.” The database contain over 40,000 images, It will come as no surprise to people to find EDINBURGH • AK Press online, AK Distri bution, PO Box 12766, information on people who have attended that tools such as ‘Crimint’ and the police Edinburgh, Scotland EH8 9YE demonstrations, un-convicted “persons of national database are being used against email [email protected] interest”, associates of criminals, and those activists. All footage gathered by FIT teams, deemed to be extreme left or right wing. information resulting from trawls of social net - http://www.akuk.com/ All new intelligence does not go directly working pages, and tit-bits from informants • Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (ACE) onto the police national database. It first has and the like, will feed into these databases. 17 West Montgomery Place, Edinburgh EH7 5HA to pass through a separate database run by The occurrence of activists being snatched tel 0131 557 6242 the Met, called ‘Crimint Plus’, which is said from their beds at dawn on the day of a email [email protected] to be the largest law enforcement intelligence protest, as was the case on the day of the http://www.autonomous.org.uk/ system in the world. ‘Crimint Plus’ was Royal wedding, will become the rule rather • Word Power Books, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, started in 1994 and has grown steadily in than the exception. Edinburgh EH8 9DB, tel 0131 662 9112 size since. Yet in the last five years alone, its The disproportionate growth of police data - email [email protected] contents have more than doubled. bases and the use of ‘big brother’ powers http://www.word-power.co.uk/ The records are allegedly only kept on the against activists, show that the government SOUTHAMPTON database for six years, and apart from a intend on attainting total control over people’s • October Books, 243 Portswood Road, smal l number of ‘highly sensitive’ hidden lives, movement, and communications, in Southampton SO17 2NG, tel 023 8058 1030 records, each item is accessible to all 40,000 order to stifle any opposition – militant or email [email protected] employees of the Met, and around 12,000 otherwise. others from forces around the country. Matthew Black Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 3

Freedom • September 2012 3 NEWS picture from Indymedia from picture

Empty house seized

resident to stay. If this fails we will peacefully The Birmingham Food not Bombs group, A homeless action group in resist any bailiffs should they be sent to evict who distribute food to the homeless, recently the resident.” noticed a dramatic drop in people attending Birmingham challenges the city Birmingham has a massive homeless their weekly food distribution by around population that has risen by 25% in just three 75%. It then came to light that the police council years. Despite so many families being without had been following around individuals they a home, the council refuse to use their powers suspected of being homeless, and arresting A group calling themselves the ‘Birmingham to seize empty properties and make them them. The action was part on an on-going Tenants and Homeless Action Group’, available for those that need them. There are operation against begging in the city centre. frustrated at the council’s lack of action currently 11,000 empty properties in The council do not seem to grasp the fact regarding Birmingham’s massive homeless Birmingham, which equates to 2.8% of the that reducing funding to homeless groups by population, have seized an empty house. entire housing stock. 29% may have a direct correlation to the In a statement they say that, “We have taken An activist involved in the Birmingham homeless population rising by 25%. Their over this abandoned council-owned house Tenants and Homeless Action Group, said only response to the deepening crisis is to which we wish to become the first in a new that, “Homelessness is on the rise and the use the police to either arrest and imprison stock of homes in Birmingham. We plan on council is effectively doing nothing – worse, people, or to intimidate them out of city making this property liveable and handing it homeless charities have been cut by 29%. centre areas. on to a homeless victim of the government’s Birmingham already has the highest rate of As of the first of September, a new law and council’s uncaring incompetence. We will homelessness in the UK and with the incoming comes into force (S144 LASPO 2012) that then defend this property and its resident; we housing benefit cuts; even more people are makes it illegal to squat in residential will take the council to court if they apply for going to be at risk of becoming homeless.” properties. The new law has been condemned eviction. In court we will demand that the Not being content with just ignoring the by the group as. “Targeting and marginalising council take over operation of the house, add problem of homelessness, the authorities in society’s most vulnerable”. it to their council housing stock and allow its Birmingham are actively targeting the homeless. Matthew Black

Anarchists detained

7page 1 they would be conducting follow-up police The counteerroristr t officers either didn’t information aboutanarchists local (http://www. action against one of the detained anarchists. know or chose to ignore that, during the guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jul/31/westminster- In addition to this, SO15 officers asked a first day of the gathering, the International police-anarchist-whistleblower-advice), number of inflammatory, irrelevant and of Anarchist Federations (of which the UK anarchists suffered harassment for their offensive questions, including ‘what would Anarchist Federation is a member) had issued political viewpoint. you do if someone raped your mother?’, evidentlya statement rejecting all terrorist tactics as a As class-struggle anarchists, we believe that in an attempt to cause emotional upset and means of achieving an anarchist society. the state does little except serve the interests elicit angry or violent responses. One member In contrast to the actions of the UK security of the rich and powerful at the expense of (28) who did not want to be named for fear forces, the local press and residents in St Imier ordinary people. This is seen clearly when of reprisals frheom police, t said “We were reported very npositively the anarchist o people who hold views critical of the state are treated like criminals. I told them I went to gathering. treated as criminals and terrorists. We seek to the congress as I am an amateur journalist With this incident, we are seeing a further create a classless society, based on freedom, and I write articles about activism. They saw slide towards political policing and the equality and co-operation. We believe in the my notebook, camera and Dictaphone but criminalisation of political ideologies. The capacity of ordinary people to run society they said I was lying. One officer said ‘You two detained anarchists have not had any themselves, without the interference of bosses said you are an anarchist, I’ve seen anarchists involvement in any illegal or violent activity, or politicians. This incident was not in response on the news, they are violent, throw molotov or any activity that would concern the counter- to any crime and constitutes repression and cocktails and disrupt people’s lives not write terrorist police. As in the past, when Metro - criminalisation of a political ideology. articles’.” politan police called on people to give Anarchist Federation Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 4

4 Freedom • September 2012 THE BIG PICTURE Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 5

Freedom • September 2012 5 NEWS It’s not just the tuition fees…

dividends to shareholders, higher education Outsourcing and privatisation will suffer a similar fate. We can expect years of under-investment, in higher education asset stripping, and then when the inevitable financial difficulties arise , they will beg the This week, London Metropolitan University state for a hand-out. announced that it would be hawking off Higher education will suffer services such as IT and libraries to the private immeasurably through privatisation, but sector. A bidding war will now take place what will the changes actually look like for between various companies that are salivating students and staff? at the prospect of getting their grubby hands Well, courses that are not deemed to be on such a lucrative cash cow. ‘necessary’, i.e. profitable, will be scrapped, Against the backdrop of the Health and student to staff ratios will increase, and Social Care Bill and creep ing privatisation in there will be the dumbing down of academic the NHS, the potential privatisation and standards, and to staff qualifications and dismantling of our universities has, in the experience. main, passed the general public by. Ask Academic staff will see teaching hours people what they think the single biggest rise, and time for research and scholarly issue facing higher education is, and they are activity shrink, and pastoral support will likely to tell you it is tuition fees. However only exist ‘on paper’. in the not too distant future that may Administration staff will be slashed, reduced, professional development will change. which will lead to teaching staff undertaking disappear and pensions will be attacked Whether we like it or not, tuition fees are extra responsibilities. Competition between even further. here to stay. Although university applications universities will lead to ‘creative’ As in the health service, the largest are down by around 10%, on the whole expense in Higher Education is that of staff. people are accepting the fees. In a similar Therefore the obvious way that a private way to gas, electric and petrol, as long as company will reduce its expenses is to sack people continue to put their hands in their staff, and to attack the terms and conditions pockets, the ruling elite will continue to of the staff that remain. increase prices. The government of the day will care little The timescale of the wholesale privatisation for the issues highlighted. They do not of the university system may be impeded or measure the success of privatisation by such interrupted by changes in government, but trivial indicators. David Willetts, or whoever ultimately it will happen. Whilst not clinging follows him will only be interested in to the ridiculous and outdated notion that whether higher education is off the nationalised industries are some kind of government books, and if the new owners panacea, as many of the dinosaur left do, I are making a profit. would agree that whilst all state run services We can expect those individuals from are far from ideal, they should be left to the government who worked on the mercy of the ‘market’. privatisation project to j oin the University You only need to look at the complete Chancellors and Deans who so welcomed it, failure of the privatisation experiment that into new highly paid consultancy roles and was conducted on the railways, water, gas, directorships within the upper echelons of and electric, to see what lies a head should presentation of results, and ‘cooking of the the new private owners. No doubt a peerage the ‘market’ get hold of higher education. books’, in order to entice new students. or two will follow. Just as the water companies have failed to Buildings and land deemed to be The management at London Metropolitan upgrade a Victorian pipeline network in superfluous or that are in premium locations University have refrained from using terms over twenty years of private ownership, in will be sold, and any monies will be such as, ‘outsourcing’ or ‘privatisation’. order to cream off profits and pay large creamed off rather than being re-invested. Instead, they talk of, ‘shared ownership’, This will lead to fewer buildings, and long- ‘shared service models’, and ‘partnership’,n i term problems such as overcrowding, and a laughably transparent attempt to mask the facilities that are no longer fit for purpose. real agenda. Libraries will close or downsize, and will Privatisation will mean that many rarely stock new books. Halls of residence universities will cease to exist. This in turn will be sold by the new owners to another will mean the cost of going to university will set of pro fiteers, who will increase capacity rise, as students will have to travel further by making conditions even more cramped, or even move away from home in order to whilst at the same time increasing already study. Coupled with the massive hike in extortionate prices. tuition fees, it will mean that a university Student support services, counselling, and education will once more be the preserve fo subsidies to various student run initiatives the rich and privileged such as newspapers, elections and student You may hear from time to time the unions will disappear, and support for ruling elite talking about the need for students with extra needs will be stripped increased social mobility. The truth of the back to a token level. matter is that they want nothing of the sort. Staffing levels across the board wille b After all, there is only room for so many reduced, pay will be slashed, hours pigs at the trough. increased, holidays reduced, sick pay Matthew Black Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 6

6 Freedom • September 2012 ANALYSIS The politics behind the London IWW split

There can be no doubt that the gains potential of rank-and-file organising to a for, he de clined to answer further, citing achieved by the London cleaners branch of new generation. As Chris Ford’s IWGB concerns over spreading “hysteria”. However, the Industrial Workers of the World (re)founding statement declared with the IWW were more forthcoming, and (IWW) – together with those won by the justifiable pride: several members offered their help. Sparks rank-and-file electricians – have been “Over the last year, starting with the One individual in particular, who does not a beacon of light in a year of otherwise wildcat actions at Guildhall in August 2011 wish to be named, told me that: “We think deepening austerity gloom. But in mid- up to the sem inal strikes of cleaners at John it is a personal project of Chris Ford (CF). I August, the branch announced it was Lewis – the IWW Cleaning & Allied Industries think CF reckons we are not worthy of him. breaking away from the IWW, to re-launch London Branch have co-ordinated with bus- At a special conference we held in the under the long-forgotten name of the drivers, TfL [Transport for London] workers spring, CF attended and failed to have his Industrial Workers of Great Britain (IWGB). and others in the London Regional Committee submission accepted. He misjudged the Initial statements from both sides hinted at in an organising campaign. We have engaged meeting. I think he hoped to be met with little more than personality clashes, but I in disputes, which have resulted in major gains acclaim, but the dominant current in the can now reveal the political schism which by workers in defeating cuts, and securing membership was anarchist and he failed to has fed into this split. significant pay rises. These achievements are allow for it. I think at that point he realised As many will know, the IWW is an inter- not minor – they are almost unheard of in we were not going to adopt his national, grassroots-controlled organisation the current period of austerity.” programme.” aiming for ‘one big union’ of all workers, But the document went on: “… we have According to IWW documents, Chris Ford which will – so the theory goes – be able to found ourselves in one conflict after another proposed the establishment of an “Executive abolish the wage system. Whereas corporate with elements inside our own union. Through Committee” within the union, which would unions have w ell-heeled bureaucracies which our own self-organisation, we have sought have been a radical break with its long- negotiate with the bosses and eventually sell to overcome this hindrance. However, the established federal structure. Though the out their memberships, the IWW operates conduct of a small number of members in Executive would be recallable, it would have on the basis of recallable delegates, and all and around the London General Members powers to convene an “extraordinary decisions are taken by the membership as a Branch, and some bodies outside the IWW, delegate conference”, as well as elect a whole. The Wobblies, as they are often during the recent dispute at John Lewis was “Disputes Committee” and three “National known for reasons lost in the mists of time, the straw that broke that camel’s back.” Organisers” representing English, Scottish and have an extremely colourful history and at There were also claims of “deeper political Welsh members. There would also be “a their 1920s peak could boast 100,000 disagreements”, although few details were dedicated worker on a part-time/full-time basis members. Although many members identify given, beyond references to “hubristic to be employed by the union to administer as anarchists, this is not a condition of anarchists” contributing to the original membership”. membership. IWW-IWGB split over a century ago. When So it appears there was a springtime dispute Nowadays the membership figures are far he initially agreed to an interview, I asked over organisational structure between Chris smaller, but the successes of the London Chris Ford a series of questions via email. Ford – who describes himself as a cleaners were beginning to demonstrate the After asking what publication the article was communist – and the majority of IWW delegates, who saw his proposals as tending towards the introduction of a hierarchy within the union. Over the past few months this dispute has become personalised, to the extent that my IWW correspondent described Ford as having “messianic tendencies”, and Ford made that “hubristic anarchists” jibe. Furthermore, if Ford is to be believed – and there doesn’t seem to be any reason to doubt his word on this – the rancour has impacted on the effectiveness of the cleaners’ campaigns. So where does all this leave us and, perhaps more importantly, the cleaners? Well, the IWGB exists, at least in name, though the IWW are concerned that “many of the ‘members’ of the IWGB do not realise that there is no IWGB union registered. So they are not able to benefit from the meagre advantages that a registered union has”. The IWGB is organising protests, including against the Société Générale bank for cutting hours and making contradictory statements on the London Living Wage. And the IWGB has a website, which bizarrely claims that someone with the name of a prominent Glasgow member from its original incarnation in the run-up to World War One is “Asst. General Secretary”. Much about the IWGB is still a mystery, but time will tell just what sort of organisation it is. Adam Ford Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 7

Freedom • September 2012 7 COMMENT

Picture the scene… You are a government minister and you have spent the last two Fit for work? and a half years imposing vicious cuts and austerity measures on a country whilst simultaneously bombing and running military Atos and Remploy: all roads main office, while 30 people also invaded operations in three others. Unemployment the headquarters of the Department for Work and Pensions and blockaded the entrance, in is rising, homelessness is rising, poverty is lead to the dole queue recognition of the fact that the huge contracts rising, and disabled people are being labelled awarded to private companies like Atos are as scroungers and having their benefits The welfare system is currently going through just by-products of the attacks on claimants cruelly snatched away. some major changes, which are designed to promoted by both Labour and Tory poli - Despite alleged bankruptcy, you have no force as many people as possible into work, ticians. They were only driven out by serious problem in finding money for vanity projects or at least into competing for jobs. This is police violence, which led to one protester such as the Queens Diamond Jubilee hitting a lot of people hard, but it’s having being hospitalised with a fractured shoulder, celebrations, the Royal Wedding and the particularly harsh effects on those who are and another being tipped out of their Olympics. physically or mentally unable to hold down wheelchair. With all those issues considered, imagine a job, since anyone without a paid job is in At the same time as disabled people are receiving an invite to present medals at the danger of being classified as ‘workshy’ and being forced off benefits and into the work - Paralympics. The medals you are to present punished. force, one of the only routes available for have been produced by exploited Rio Tinto Groups such as Black Triangle and Disabled them to actually find work is disappearing, People Against Cuts have been formed to as Remploy, a government-owned company miners, and the games themselves are being oppose these attacks on the disabled, and which provides an accessible environment for sponsored by the gangsters and government the end of August saw a big burst of activity disabled people to work in, has just closed hired death squads at ATOS. to coincide with the Paralympic Games. 25 of its 54 factories, and the future looks Immediately before handing out the Controversially, the Paralympics have been bleak for the remaining ones. medals you are introduced to an 80,000- sponsored by Atos, the company which Remploy workers weren’t willing to take strong crowd. As soon as your name is heard carries out tests to classify people as being this lying down, and took two days of strike each and every person in the stadium boos ‘f it for work’, and so no longer eligible for action against the closures in July, but a third and jeers. disability benefits. planned strike was called off by the GMB What would your response be? Would Outraged at the hypocrisy of Atos trying and Unite unions in favour of lobbying, you all of a sudden start to develop a to promote its brand by sponsoring disabled which the unions claimed would have more modicum of insight into what you and your athletes while pushing disabled people into effect. Remploy workers and union reps also policies are having on ordinary working poverty and misery, disabled people and occupied the company’s head offices, but left people? Would you walk off in embarrass- other claimants and workers targeted the after a few hours when more talks were company with a week of action, including promised. ment? Or would you hang your head in protests in 20 different cities, a phone, fax It remains to be seen whether Remploy shame, make the best of a bad job and and email blockade, a vigil for the many workers at the remaining sites will be able to present the medals in as dignified a manner people who’ve died or committed suicide take any more effective action, or whether as you could? after being found fit for work, and a mass they’ll also soon have to face the maze of Well, this is the situation that George ‘die-in’ blocking a road in Cardiff. Atos tests and workfare schemes that make Osborne recently found himself in – and The week of action climaxed with the up the modern benefits system. yes, you guessed it, he chose none of the Closing Atos Ceremony, a protest at Atos’s Cautiously Pessimistic above. Instead, he decided to let out a huge belly laugh as if you had just heard the world’s funniest joke. Boos for the minister tasked with the creation of a police state, Theresa May, soon followed, as did they did for the man recently chosen to dismantle the NHS, Jeremy Hunt. Whilst not replicating Osborne’s imbecilic laughter, these creatures could not resist a typical tory toff sneer. A bizarre twist followed as Gordon Brown was introduced to a packed crowd at the Paralympic swimming. Expecting to receive similar treatment to Osborne and co., Brown was astounded (as was I) that he received a standing ovation from those attending… Whatever next? CORRECTION In the history article on Clara Gilbert Cole featured in our August issue we mistakenly included a picture of Sylvia Pankhurst by Herbert Cole. We’d like to apologise to Nick Heath for this error, and also for not mentioning that he originally wrote the article for Libcom (see http://libcom.org/ history/cole-clara-gilbert-1868-1956). Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 8

8 Freedom • September 2012 INTERNATIONAL NEWS IN BRIEF LENS CAP GULABI GANG BRAZIL: Faced with 1,840 redundancies, GM workers in Brazil, not happy with the union’s feeble response, organised a wildcat strike. They then occupied and blockaded a stretch of the busiest and most important highway in the country, causing a 15 mile long tailback. The bosses subsequently caved in and scrapped the redundancy plans. CHILE: A year-long campaign by students for educational reform has led to violent clashes. Several schools in the capital, Santiago, have been occupied by both school- children and university students. The govern ment and security forces are taking a hard-line against any dissent, utilising water cannons, rubber bullets and tear-gas. The Gulabi Gang is an extraordinary women’s movement formed in 2006 by Sampat Pal Devi in the Students claim their campaign will continue Banda District of Uttar Pradesh in Northern India, one of the poorest districts in the country. The area until their demands have been met. has a deeply patriarchal culture, rigid caste divisions, female illiteracy, domestic violence and many other issues. Popularly known as Gulabi or ‘Pink’ Gang because the members wear bright pink saris and COLOMBIA: Over 11,000 prisoners have gone on hunger strik e, demanding an end wield bamboo sticks, the group was initially intended to punish oppressive husbands, fathers and to overcrowding, appalling and unsanitary brothers, combat domestic violence and desertion, although increasingly they now challenge not only conditions, and that the government declare male authority over women but all human rights abuses inflicted on the weak. a state of emergency across the prison system. Prisoners are expected to defecate in plastic bags, only have access to running water for 20 minutes a day and are given food unfit for human consumption. Political prisoners Spanish supermarket sweep are often kept in solitary confinement, prevented from receiving letters or visits Hundreds of workers from Andalusian were then given to the poor and to local and are given regular beatings by prison staff. Union of Workers (SAT) walked into two charities to distribute. supermarkets in Andalucía, filled up their Several of those involved have been FRANCE: The new, supposedly ‘socialist’ government has escalated the previous ‘right- trollies, and left without paying. arrested and charged with robbery, violence, wing’ government’s agenda of targeting Juan Manuel Sanchez Gordillo, one of the and public disorder. and deporting members of the traveller instigators of the action, said that, “At this Typically, the action has led to main - community. Travellers in Paris and Lyon have moment of crisis, when the town is being stream Spanish politicians making reference been forcibly removed from their homes and expropriated, we want to expropriate the to, “The rule of law”, and to “Common the camps subsequently destroyed and expropriators, the landlords, banks, and the criminals”, displaying little or no appreciation flattened. The travellers have then been put big supermarkets who are earning money in or analysis of the underlying causes. onto ‘one-way’ flights to Bucharest. the middle of an economic crisis.” Regar dless of the attitudes displayed by The police and security attempted to block the political classes, polls suggest that over SUDAN: Over the last month a leaderless exits, but they managed to leave with around 50% of Spaniards agree with and support and decentralised protest movement has twenty trollies of produce. the actions of the Andalusian workers. emerged in Sudan. Crippling austerity Prior to the action, participants had Unemployment in the region is now over measures have seen salaries slashed, electricity agreed that there would be no damage to 40%, and close to 60% for those between prices tripled, and gas prices doubled. The property, and they would not take items the ages of 18–65. Poverty levels are rising final straw has been the scrapping of fuel such as chocolate, yoghurt or desserts. They fast – there are over 300,000 households subsidies which has led to a doubling of the would only take essential items such as with no income and many families who price of petrol. Students and workers have pasta, sugar, oil, bread and milk. literally cannot afford to eat. taken to the streets in a series of protests All items ‘liberated’ from the supermarkets Matthew Black around the cou ntry. To try and avoid a repeat of the uprisings that have spread through- out the Arab world, the state has attempted to peacefully contain the protests. However, within the last week, security forces have used Notes from the US live rounds and tear gas against protestors, killing many people, including children. Police are finally facing allegations of murder Freedom has reported before on the same and brutality after they shot dead two Latino authority’s project to spy on Moslems in USA: Following a bitter dispute with bosses from some of the biggest companies in the men over one weekend in July, then they fired New York and New Jersey, which of course world, janitors in Houston have achieved a rubber bullets at crowds of protesters. they denied. An audiotape which was significant victory. They have won a pay First, 24-year-old Manuel Diaz apparently recently made public – after the NYPD settlement that is double what the bosses tried to run away from a group of officers fought to block its disclosure – contains the who confronted him in the street; he was dialogue of a telephone call to the offered and have secured ‘health’ and other unarmed. The very next day Joel Acevedo emergency services: benefits that were set to be snatched away. was shot dead by police in the same area. Despite scores of arrests, the janitors pushed On the other side of the country, video Caller: “Came across an apartment where on with a campaign of direct action and civil footage emerged in July of a New York City there’s some suspicious activity.” disobedience to achieve their aims. Janitors police officer assaulting a young man after Dispatcher: “What’s suspicious?” in San Francisco have taken inspiration stopping and searching him on a subway Caller: “Suspicious in the sense that the from Houston and now engaged in a platform. The policeman first accosts the apartment has about… has no furniture similar campaign of direct action. young man then slams him to the ground. page 98 Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 9

Freedom • September 2012 9 INTERNATIONAL Massacre at Marikana The fight continues in South Africa

Mineworkers of the Marikana diamond mine in South Africa are continuing their strike. Their perseverence comes after violent police efforts to suppress the strike, efforts culminating in a horrendous bloodbath on 16th August, when police machine-gunned protesting miners, killing 34 and arresting at least 250 of them. On 10th August, 3,000 of the 28,000 Marikana miners went on strike to support a wage demand. The strikers belonged to a category of very low-paid miners doing arduous, and risky work. The National Union of Miners (NUM), belonging to the mainstream union federation COSATU, neglected these workers and their needs. Another union, the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) took a more militant pose and tried to make itself into the voice of the an gry miners. Soon the strike was accompanied by violence between strikers on the one hand, police, security, and NUM supporters being attacked by strikers on the other. However, it would be wrong to blame it weap ons, killing 34 miners in the most to these so-called leftists than defending all on ‘inter-union rivalry’. The AMCU ferocious repression against protesting workers in struggle. appear more militant and are more in touch. workers in post-apartheid South Africa. It Different reactions are coming from poor Yet the battle line is not AMCU versus NUM; reminded people of the violence the people in struggle against the authorities, as the frontline is angry workers pressing a apartheid regime meted out against protests, a solidarity declaration of a slum dwellers wage demand against management that for instance in Sharpeville, 1961, and organisation shows. Meanwhile, Lomnin, refuses. A violent impasse followed. Then, Soweto, 1976. The skin colour of the state- the mine owning company, tried to force the police – encouraged by NUM and COSATU funded murderers had changed, but not miners back to work with an ultimatum that – moved into action. much more. they later softened. However, at the moment They attacked the strikers who had Since the massacre, government-linked of writing, the strike is still continuing, while assembled on a nearby hill, some of them progressives like the South African reports of arrested workers having been armed with knives. They encircled them and Commun ist Party (SACP) have supported mistreated by police are now surfacing. tried to disperse them with teargas. A group the police repression, calling the event “not The angry miners have not been defeated of strikers refused to move and, according to a massacre” but “a battle” and the police by the massacre. There is more resistance the police version of events, attacked their operation “admirable”. Defending capital, to come. attackers. Police opened fire with automatic the state and the police is more important Peter Storm Notes from the US

7page 8 except two beds, has no clothing, has New raided in Portland, Oregon; and grand jury Youth Alliance) apparently infiltrated a York City Police Department radios.” subpoenas handed out in Seattle and detention facility in Broward, Florida, last Olympia (Washington) to activists involved month; they a llowed themselves to be placed Caller: “There’s computers in there.” with the Occupy movement, and members in deportation proceedings in order to Dispatcher: “There’s what?” of anarchist groups. organise with detainees at the Broward Caller: “There’s computer hardware, software, A spokesperson for the ‘Committee Detention Center. you know, just laying around. There’s Against Political Repression’, Tabatha There they found dozens of immigrants pictures of terrorists. There’s pictures of our Millican, said, “People are being targeted who qualify for release under the Obama neighbouring buildings that they have.” based on their political beliefs. …[s]pecifically administration’s own policies. There were at Dispatcher: “In New Brunswick?” in the search warrants they’re listing least 60 detainees who had neither criminal Caller: “Yes.” anarchist literature, black clothes and records nor deportations against them. Some, computers.” for instance, were detained as passengers in Alongside such official racism, the FBI is Just being an immigrant, of course, is vehicles. Others should have received vital also being accused of targeting political enough to get you into trouble: a group of medical care; but had not… blood clot in activists in the north west of the United undocumented immigrant activists (seven the leg, bullet in the spine. States. At least three homes have now been organisers with the National Immigrant Louis Further Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 10

10 Freedom • September 2012 ECONOMICS What’s wrong with Libor? Donald Rooum looks at the background of the Libor rate, something most people had never heard of until recently

Near the end of June 2012, it was reported that Barclays Bank had been fined £2,000 for manipulating the Libor rate. The scandal dominated the British media for several weeks, until it was shoved out by the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympic Games, and now looks set to return. But before June, most people had never heard of Libor. This is an attempt to understand the background. Libor deals are intended to arrange massive bank loans for projects like railways, airports and hydro-electric dams, for which massive capital is needed upfront. Libor is an acronym for London Interbank Offer Rate, which is defined as “The rate at which an individual Contributor Panel bank cou ld borrow funds, were it to do so by accepting inter-bank offers of reasonable market size, just prior to 11am London time”. Every morning at 11am, Contributor Panel banks report to the British Banking Associa- tion (BBA), how much interest they charge on loans for fifteen different repayment periods, overnight, one week, one month, services may be roughly valued at about the BBA, and so falsifying the Libor rates. and so on up to fifty-years, on ten different seven trillion US dollars ($7,000,000,000,000). The percentages may be very small, such as currencies. From these repo rts, actuaries at Average daily trade in the Libor market is reporting a rate of 0.512346% when the BBA calculate 150 Libor rates every day. three hundred and fifty trillion US dollars real rate is only 0.512345%, but the amounts Shortly after 11.45 they are all published on ($350,000,000,000,000), which is fifty times are so large that pickings are at least big the World Wide Web, and anybody with the trade in discernible value if our guess is enough for traders to buy each other bottles access to the internet can read them. right. If you think our guess is wrong, work of Bollinger. The basic bank rate in Britain currently out another total for yourself; the ratio of Anarchists, striving to get a close as possible stands at 0.5%, which means that if you Libor trade to real trade is huge by anybody’s to a gift economy, may think that making deposit £100 in your bank account (i.e. lend guess. money by dealing in money is dishonest the bank £100) and leave it there for a year, Large loans need not be on large capital anyway. But even money-bags disapprove of the bank pays you interest of 50 pence, and projects. Small loans may be bought up and jiggery-pokery outside of the rules. Barclays lends your £100 on to a borrower, at a higher accumulated. The world recession, currently Bank has been fined a total of £2,900 million rate. For a small borrower, such as a mortgagee causing so much world poverty, resulted by British and American regulators ($2,000m or a small business loan, the interest charge from a huge accumulation of ‘sub-prime by the Commodity Trading Commission, is whatever the bank can get away with. If mortgages’, loans made to people who did $150m by the Department of Justice, and the loan is very large, the ‘investment arm’ of not have the means to repay them, or even £59.5m by the Financial Services Authority). the bank invests it at the Libor rate, which is keep up the interest payments. Banks, which Royal Bank of Scotland, one of the banks only a little more than the basic bank rate. If were incompetent enough to invest in such which went bankrupt a nd was bailed out, it is 0.51000%, for instance, after the bank junk, have gone bankrupt, and governments has been fined a total of £150m. has paid you 50p a year for your £100, its have bought them out of bankruptcy, using The Prime Minister and the Governor of own cut is only one penny per year on every wealth collected from taxpayers. the Bank of England have denounced the £100. But if the investment is a ‘reasonable The recession has caused a decline in falsification of Libor as “criminal dishonesty”. market size’ hundred million pounds, the investment banking, but not in the other Bob Diamond, Chief Executive Officer of annual return, a hundred million pence, is Libor activity, ‘casino banking’, in which Barclays Bank until the fiddling came to light not inconsiderable. traders buy, sell and swap loans in the hope and he lost his job, says it is “reprehensible” The money involved in Libor trading may of making profits for their employers and and makes him “physically ill”. Four traders be contrasted with the value of ordinary bonuses for themselves. of Royal Bank of Scotland have been sacked trading. Most adults are involved in trade, If everybody plays by the rules, most banks (with at least one of them suing for unfair one way or another – exchanging a day’s make a steady profit, in the way that bookies, dismissal). The Financial Services Authority work for a day’s pay, selling useful fragments insurance companies, and roulette-wheel has no power to bring prosecutions, so it picked from a rubbish dump, giving alms, operators make a steady profit. Punters has called on the Serious Fraud Office, and buying groceries – at a rough guess, perhaps consent because they know what is happening; the government has promised to pay for the to the value of a thousand dollars per person the system is ‘transparent’. But it seems fairly SFO investigation. per day. The world population is seven easy to break the rules, increasing profits A storm in a teacup, no doubt, but it might billion, so the total daily trade in goods and and bonuses by submitting false reports to be fun to watch. Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 11

Freedom • September 2012 11 HISTORY The Rand rebellion The Marikana mine massacre in South Africa is one awful incident in a history of vicious repression of striking miners in the country

The 1922 rebellion in the Rand was defined for years by the infamous photograph of a banner reading, ‘Workers of the world unite for a white South Africa’ and by the very real and vicious attacks on black workers that denoted the early stages of the strike. More recently diverse voices from the ANC to Zablaza (the south African anarchist organisation) have chosen to take a different view of the rebellion – in turn aided by Jeremy Krikler’s excellent White Rising: The 1922 insurrection and racial killing in South Africa and research by Lucien Van der Walt and others. In 1922 white workers in the goldmines around Johannesburg went on strike against fell to the rebels, establishing well fortified road, which he had followed without eff orts by the mine owners to replace white trenches to resist counter attack. After a halting or turning, ran straight to class war, workers with black workers on far lower week the rebels were triumphant across the to the furious rising of 10th March, to his wages. A struggle that began with racial Rand. Krikler muses that if their strategy commanding role at rebel HQ in Fordsburg killings – albeit a stage that quickly ended – had been bolder and they had pushed on to and to the end of his short life. Many other developed into all out syndicalist insurrection take the government buildings in Pretoria, brave miners went to the gallows shouting against the South African state. Krikler writes: then victory could have been won. But, after ‘workers of the world unite’. “I realised that the white working class winning control of the Rand, the rebels The state exacted heavy retribution – communities of the Witwatersrand in 1922 rested on their laurels and did not press executing many of the strikers and did not look very different from the black home their advantage. The text book imprisoning thousands. working class communities that fought syndicalist insurrectionary general strike had The strike by AMCU in the platinum mines apartheid in the 1980s.” won but the question of seizing power owned by Lonmin is similarly heroic. Over The strike leader was Percy Fisher, an remained unanswered and in the vacuum the forty miners shot dead in an ambush and still Englishman from County Durham who had state was able to recover its nerve. AMCU fights on against the ANC, COSATU fled to South Africa in 1915 to avoid At this point – new in the suppression of and the NUM. Ninety years earlier Fisher and conscription. Very little is known of Fisher an uprising – the availability of air power to thousands of miners wage a similar struggle. before he arrived in South Africa, but he is the government proved crucial. The newly This time AMCU may win. certainly the only Englishman in the last formed South African air force was able to The platinum miners are some of the century to have led a working class army. A bomb rebel positions with impunity – and poorest people in the world, working in miner and syndicalist, Fisher had been jailed did so, regardless of the k illing of women horrific conditions – even the best paid rock several times for leading st rikes and by the and children. The lull in fighting enabled the drillers get only £400 per month. Many live end of the Rand rebellion he and his fellow army to bring up its heavy artillery weapons in shacks with no water or electricity. Many strike leader were dead by their own hands and they shelled rebel positions from a safe are too poor even to work. One man told a in a shoot-out with the army – keeping true distance. The whole of the Rand looked like South African TV crew “we are not to the suicide notes they wrote sat the onset a First World War scene with trenches, workers, we are too poor to work, and we of the strike. shelling and air attacks. It had become a war have no food or clothes”. For months strike commando units had of attrition which only the army could win. AMCU is led by the charismatic Joseph been blowing up mines and derailing trains. It was as if Churchill had bombed the Mathinjwa, a Salvation Army trumpet Strikers had started organising on military miners during the general strike or Guernica player who is like a Desmond Tutu with an lines – including many veterans of the First h ad happened in 1922. armed wing. The Salvation Army motto is World War. During the early parts of 1922 Town by town, planes bombed rebel ‘Blood and Fire’, and the miners are these commandos formed the basis of a positions and 15,000 troops were brought accompanied into struggle by magic doctors. workers army across the Rand. Many of the into action. The miners fought heroically It’s not the model of revolutionary struggle commando units were over 1,000 strong with the limited firepower they had. we are used to, but AMCU is truly reflective and, on 10th March 1922, they launched a Eventually Fisher, and his comrade of its membership of ordinary miners – we full-on insurrection. Spendiff, were surrounded in Fordsburg must support them in any and every way we Police stations across the Rand were market hall. With pistols in hand they can. A victory for the proletariat in South attacked by armed commandos on horseback. fought like a scene from Butch Cassidy and Africa would embolden workers throughout The strike leaders were committed to the the Sundance Kid, before retreating to an the continent and Percy Fisher would smile violent overthrow of the South African state, inner room, and blowing their brains out. again. or to die in the attempt. Town after town Krikler writes of Percy Fisher that his Ian Bone Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 12

12 Freedom • September 2012 FEATURE HOUSING AND A As chaos and confusion dominate the transition The new delivery model Information gleaned from meetings and to the new G4S asylum accommodation correspondence with government and private contracts in Yorkshire and the Humber, John agencies suggests that the new contracts include inferior ‘space’ standards in accommo - Grayson from the South Yorkshire Migration dation. For example: and Asylum Action Group (SYMAAG) explains 1) A lone women with children can be housed together with other lone women how the new delivery model works (or doesn’t), with children. This ‘hostel view’ of the drawing on recent cases from the region housing needs of lone women and children could be extremely damaging Private accommodation shortage and stressful, particularly where different We already know that G4S and its sub - languages, nationalities and religious contractors cannot simply find enough practices are involved. There is indeed Pri vate Rented Sector accommodation in evidence of the effects on the well-being West and South Yorkshire to place families of children exposed to the stress and moved from council housing and council- distress of mothers going through the contracted housing. This desperate search for asylum process. In hostel conditions, the PRS accommodation means some appalling situation for children and parents is properties are being brought into service to obviously worse. fulfil the new contracts. 2) A relatively large number of young All dispersals are now being made to the children can be accommodated in one North East via Clare House in Huddersfield. bedroom with parents in another The latest information suggests that single bedroom in a two-bedroomed terrace. people may be moved under the new A recent case of four children aged COMPASS contracts to Halifax (Calderdale) between six months and seven years, and the North East. All ‘social cohesion’ who were threatened to be moved to requirements on concentration of accommodat - a two-bedroomed house with their ion and risks of racial harassment and hate parents, was described by one worker crime seem to have been ignored. The Barnsley as “probably just within the UKBA asylum team, whose contract runs out on space standards”. the 12th November, are now suggesting that The new delivery model, with various tiers moving families with school-age children of subcontracting and an even more compli- may well be postponed to the October half- cated chain of contractors, further under mines term holidays. the housing standards and dramatically reduces accountability. In a recent case in Barnsley, a landlord contracted by United Property Management (UPM) under the Target contracts had Transition chaos provided flats for asylum seeking families. A Sheffield case last week exposed major The flats were spacious and of reasonable failings in the way G4S and its private land - quality but none of the families had been lords (in this case Live Management) approach supplied with washing machines (a UKBA the transition to the new contracts and the contract requirement). After campaigners moving of asylum seeking families with raised the issue, the landlord provided, children to new accommodation. within a few days, a washing machine to The family with four children aged one of the families who had been in their between six m onths to seven years were flat without one since their arrival in given a two weeks’ notice to move to December 2011. He had previously another property on 6th August. The family suggested September as the earliest date had been moved from the South Coast only for doing so, when Live Manage ment took on 7th June this year, to a poor-quality, over the property from UPM. three-bedroomed terrace house. The house The Barnsley landlord also claimed that was filthy and extremely damp, with dirty his flats were subcontracted from UPM / carpets and mattresses and dangerous Live Managem ent, with a three months’ electrical wiring. Even the family’s UKBA notice clause, so that he could “get rid” of case worker in the South intervened to get a “unsatisfactory asylum seeker tenants”. few improvements. Thus, in Barnsley at least, there are four The parents spent months cleaning and tiers of subcontracting for the privatised making the house habitable, though major asylum housing falling under the G4S problems remained. In an email dated 18th contracts, building in permanent problems August 2012, the father wrote to supporters: in ensuring decent accommodation for “I hope they come and change the carpets asylum seekers, and permanent uncertainty and do all other work on the property. about being constantly moved. These tiers There are slug trails on the carpets and there are: the UK B order Agency, G4S, Live is also something that keeps stinging you Management, and small private landlords from the carpet as well, do not know what with three months notice clauses. it is.” Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 13

Freedom • September 2012 13 FEATURE ASYLUM It also emerged that an appeal to the UKBA and G4S, as per the ‘rights’ given to asylum seekers, were dismissed out of hand, without any checks whatsoever of the claim of Live Mana gement to have provided a four-bedroomed property in good condition. The Sheffield case also demonstrates the total inaccuracy of the claim in the Stake - holders’ FAQ’s that the UKBA is involved and fully informed of private contractors’ actions and the dire effects they are having on the well-being of children and families.

Photographs: South Yorkshire Migration and Asylum Action Group http://www.symaag.org.uk/ Group Action Asylum and Migration Yorkshire South Photographs: The FAQ’s state: “UKBA will be working with current accommodation providers to identify any special requirements that service users may have and will be sharing this informa tion with new providers so that the most appropriate accommodation can be pro vided. UKBA will oversee the current providers’ Exit Plans and new providers’ Transition Plans to ensure that the provision of services is seamless during the transition period.” As campaigners have previously argued, there are no procedures or proper considera- tion given to “identify any special requirements of service users” (that is, asylum seekers and their children), prior to moves carried out by the UKBA or G4S under COMPASS transition. The Sheffield case is further evidence of this. The Sheffield case also casts doubt on whether the UKBA is actually involved in ensuring contract compliance. On 1st August, Anita Bell, UKBA Project Manager for COMPASS Transition, stated: “UKBA are working closely with G4S to ensure properties utilised for transition purposes are contractually compliant and Soon after the family were told they were it was in poor condition externally and will take appropriate steps to ensure any to be moved to another terraced house by “certainly looked like a two-bedroom properties not meeting the required standard G4S. The father went to look at the outside terrace.” These facts were confirmed by an are either brought up to standard within the of the property and all he saw an overgrown, internet property search, where the property required time frame or taken off line. rubbish-strewn back yard. Neighbours said it was described on www.mouseprice.com as We are working closely with G4S to ensure had been empty for a long time and had only having two bedrooms. On the same street: that the majority of people will continue two bedrooms. The family feared an exact “Some of these properties are relatively living in their current properties. Where repeat of their appalling housing experience old, as at least 10 of them were built 112 people do need to move, proper consideration of the past three months. In addition, after years ago in 1900. The average value of the will be given to any special requirements to touring local schools, they had just found a properties … is £53,220, which makes it one ensure minimum disruption.” school for their two school-age children for of the least expensive places to live in … The Sheffield case suggests that is is September, three miles away from their house. Sheffield.” simply not true. SYMAAG has said all along They feared the move would put the school When Live Management was contacted in that the appeal procedure is inadequate. The places in jeopardy. Leicester early on the 17th, they said their group is now advising asylum seekers to And so they appealed to UKBA and G4S, ‘area manager’ would be urgently contacted. challenge appeal decisions and seek legal who rejected their appeal, and were told the Later that morning, all the parties involved action via SYMAAG and Public Interest property was a four-bedroomed property (the UKBA, G4S and Live Management) Lawyers. The group has produced an advice and would be thoroughly cleaned by Live confirmed with the family that the move had leaflet about this, which can be found on its Management before their move. been cancelled, and urgent replacement website (www.symaag.org.uk). The family contacted SYMAAG on 10th carpets and improvements would be made to The threat of legal action against both Au gust by email. SYMAAG raised the issues their existing accommodation. G4S and Live Management on 17th August about the move with G4S, Live Management in the Sheffield family’s case seemed to and the Council. As late as Friday 17th Some lessons for campaigners resolve the matter incredibly quickly. August, with the move scheduled for 20th When SYMAAG contacted the G4S ‘help However, the conditions of the family’s August, the G4S management was saying the line’ number, the response was very existing accommodation, with four young new address was a four-bedroomed property professional and friendly. But it later emerged children living there, is still a major concern. “according to Live Management.” that G4S was simply passing on totally A SYMAAG volunteer had seen the property inaccurate information from its subcontractors [This article originally appeared at http://www. on Wednesday the 16th and confirmed that without checking its accuracy. corporatewatch.org/?lid=4494] Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 14

14 Freedom • September 2012 INTERVIEW Visiting modern anarchism’s birthplace Rob Ray talks to two AF members about St Imier, Switzerland, which recently hosted the biggest anarchist conference of recent times – 140 years after the same town hosted the founding of the first anarchist international.

How did the conference get put together? French anarchists were instrumental in setting up the St Imier event and organised the International of Anarchist Federations conference ) (IFA 1 at the same time with the idea of integrating it with the wider anarchist movement.

What was the level of organisation like? The French AF are big on showing anarchism in practice. The people who did food to IFA also did it for the St Imier event and did a great job providing breakfast, lunch and dinner for 4,000 people – they even had their own baker! People did their own washing up and it was actuall y very a good example of self- organisation. The main problem for us at the conference was that the French didn’t know how stretched they were going to be. They were really stressed particularly when it Worthat ofs people attended? What were We got a new Slovenian Section, and a came to translation – in the wider St Imier your impressions from the event? grouping from Latin America who had a events I did wonder how much of the talk It seems the movement is on the up and special meeting there, there’s talk of groups was being translated. growing. There was a previous anniversary in the Balkans and Australia forming. In the end we had different tables with meet in 1972 which barely pulled in a I think St Imillier be w remembered as a different languages and informal translations hundred people, compared to 4,000 this major event about the beginning of the going on, whichs i difficult because it’s time and that’s a barometer of how we’re resurgence of organised anarchism. actually terribly hard to translate if you’re doing. not trained. What we now call the “social anarchist” There was some talk about a public The standard of debate was quite high, tendency in particular seems to be growing – statement released for the event, what but some people didn’t have any easy way to the main group was made up of people from happened there? express themselves. When we had a round IFA afyndicalistsfiliates, s and platformist Various groups wanted to make a public table for example there wasn’t much time groups – particularly around Anarkismo. 2 statement, which was complicated when for the audience to debate, which would be We did a meeting on platformism, trade Organisation Social Libertarie, which is the usual place for unaligned individuals to unionism, centralism etc and thought there connected to the platformist tendency, have their say. For some people not having a would be about 10 people but we ended up produced a four-page summary for the end mandate sidelined them to aertain c extent. sitting in this basement in the St Imier of the conference – wheyhich presented t The social experience was excellent, we anarchist centre Espace Noire, talking to at five days before it actually happened! went to a concert by Serge Rayo and and least 80 people who were really thirsting for Everyone was very dubious about this and concerts were going on every night. There ideas and making interesting comments. we had to translate it, bring it back – and was exhibition space for old anarchist More than that, in one well-attende d the Germans and Italians both threw their posters and a bookfair held in a huge hall meeting with Croatian comrades we ended hands up at it. In the end an AF member which is actually for ice hockey. up with Slovenians and Macedonians getting wrote an entire new document and got that together to talk for the first time, in translated instead. We eventually came to What was the local reception? Switzerland! the conclusion that there would be a It was wonderful over there and really couldn’t We made a lot of progress breaking down statement for the event, but how do we sum be under better circumstances. St Imier is at barriers, that was part of why we did it, it up an event like St nImier one idocument? the end of a long, wide green v ull alley of f was a shame there weren’t many IWA In the end it was a plurality of voices and sunshine and the locals were very welcoming, members in that sense, as it would have it was better that this was the case. keeping things open for us – for many of reinforced the social anarchist tendency. them, their grandparents were probably Also a lot of good things happened outside 1 The IAF is the international grouping which the anarchists. They were actually quite pleased of the St Imier event. The I FAconference Anarchist Federation in Britain belongs to and to find they were the founding town of an paid for people to come out and that meant incorporates anarchist-communist groups across international! we had a much wider range of people there. Europe. One article in the local paper reckoned We had comrades from North America, 2 Anarkismo is a relatively broad international that God must be on the side of the anarchists South America and Japanese people who collaboration of groups which identify or agree because the weather was so nice – generally talked about Fukushima, which prompted with the editorial line of platformist website the press was very positive about us. their version of Occupy. anarkismo.net. Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 15

Freedom • September 2012 15 PRISON NEWS NEWS IN BRIEF • Nine prisoners at Georgia’s massive Diagnostic and Classification prison began Social impact bonds a hunger strike on 11th June demanding medical care, more nutritional food, an However, the notion of ‘social impact immediate end to solitary confinement, There’s money in them thar bonds’ is barely out of its nappies and torture and other basic human rights. The the first ‘social impact bond’, a £5m six- nine were among the 37 singled out by prisons year pilot covering 3,000 prisoners, was corrections officials in late 2010 and early only officially launched as recentlys a 2011 after the peaceful strike by Georgia Or at least investment banking giant Goldman September 2010. prisoners of December 2010. Th ey were Sachs appears to think. It’s a no-brainer Based on the idea that existing voluntary rounded up, many severely beaten, and really, to coin an American phrase; the sector organisations already involved in transferred to close confinement and Coalition’s ‘payment by results’ model for working with prisoners, plus the inevitable constant lockdown at Jackson, where they “cutting offending behaviour” (sic) is largely social entrepreneurs who see a good have remained ever since. designed to be a massive money spinner for opportunity to create a well-paid job for the private sector first and foremost, themselves and begin their climb up the greasy • A 20-day prison rebellion in Venezuela at irrespective of the propaganda surround the pole of capitalism, will use the private-sector the Cepra penitentiary in Merida state ended cutting of recidivism, costs to the economy financing to operate not-for-profit schemes on 21at July following extensive negotia- of crime and savings to the tax bill. where all the profits will be returned to their tions. The protest was sparked when the And so assured of this, as well as a decent financiers. authorities announced the forced transfer return on their money, are Goldman that the Yet because of the relative novelty of ‘sib’ of prisoners to other already grossly over - Americans have made an investment floan o schemes, no one has the slightest idea if they crowded prisons, many holding three times around $9.6m to finance a four-year “social will succeed in any meaningful sense, let their original capacity, around the country. impact bond” for 16 to 18-year-old prisoners alone if ‘payment by results’ will generate The revolt left at least 22 inmates dead in held in the notorious New York prison on any of the estimated £8m potential profit for a country notorious for the brutality of its Rikers Island. investors. But that’s the murky world of high prison system – 560 prisoners were killed If the scheme manages to cut the recidivism finance for you. and nearly 1,500 injured as a result of rate by 10% or more, which is currently Interestingly, the modus operandi of the violent activity within detention facilities running at 50% reconvicted within a year, ‘sib’ is an interesting mixture of the mirror in Venezuela in 2011, up 17.6% on the they will earn a healthy return of $2.1m. image of ‘nanny state’, what they like to term previous year. Anything less than 10% could cost them up ‘tough love’, allied to a sort of personalised to $2.4m and make them regret that New programme of 24-hour human CCTVs cum • Prisoners all over Colombia have been York mayor and billionaire hobby politician tags – people employed to constantly be on on hunger strike since the second week of Michael Bloomberg talked them into financing the newly released prisoner’s case, some of August in protest against the all-pervasive the scheme in the first place. whom are ex-cons themselves, whose job it overcrowding and unbearable conditions The latest neo-Liberal economic panacea, is to make it so bloody difficult for someone in the country’s prisons. Initially started by the ‘social impact bond’, is catching on across to escape post-release scrutiny that it will be inmates in Bogota’s Buen Pastor and La the globe, especially where the Prison Industrial that much more problematic for the ex- Modelo prisons, enraged by overcrowding, Complex has already made inroads such as prisoners to find the time and space to commit increasingly poor conditions and inadequate Australia and in ripe virgin territories like crime (let alone get away with it). access to basics such as healthcare and Canada which has a new Conservative And this is why the model is being expanded water, the protests, which include refusing government displaying a scary evangelical zeal into areas other than crime, taking on the to allow head counts and to be locked in for the sort of failed bang ’em up prison- ‘problems’ of rough sleeping and those in cells, have spread to most of the other expansionist policies that the US and UK foster care – basically trying to keep the prisons across Colombia. governments are already trying to turn their poor in their place and stop them from backs upon as they have proved too much of being a problem for the nice middle class- • Tripoli’s al-Fornaj prison witnessed the a drain on State finances. voting share-owning public. third prison disturbance in as many months on 10th August, which just happens to be Prison Solidarity Day, when an armed assault managed to free eight prisoners, leaving at least one prisoner dead, two other prisoners and three guards wounded. Parts of the prison, which like much of Libya itself has different armed factions controlling different sectors, were also set on fire. Guards trying to put out the flames were pelted with rocks and some had their weapons stolen by inmates.

• In Syria opposition fighters have launched three separate and unsuccessful attacks on the main prison in the west of Allepo, trying to free prisoners, since they took over much of the eastern half of the city. This follows a ser ies of prison riots across the country including the Alepo and Homs central prison. The authorities have responded by cutting off water, food and electricity supplies and attempting to re-take the prisons using tear-gas and live rounds. Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 16

16 Freedom • September 2012 COMMENT ABOUT FREEDOM ANGEL ALLEY A sideways look by SVARTFROSK September dawns bright and sunny over Angel Alley. We are still awaiting the re - As I write, the Olympics have thrown up an shoot a big hole in this idea of getting kids flooring of the alley which was planned for argument over school sports as part of the to do sport as legacy. Gove took PE out of mid August, but hopefully by the time you legacy to the 2012 games. The original bid the curriculum because he wants to allow get this we will have a shiny new easy to included a big chunk of infrastructure his pet “free schools” to concentrate on clean and not so easy to trip over surface investment, a portion of gentrification and academic subjects and thus justify the extra outside the shop. On the old Alley surface the cherry of “legacy”, both in terms of new dosh he’s giving to his mates to run them. I we had a very successful William Blake sports facilities and getting people to be think all sides miss the point of education in based evening and the annual post Bookfair more active and participate in sport. The general and sports in particular – it’s surely party w ille the b christening for the latter ought to be a no-brainer as th ere are about making rounded people. Sport can upgraded pavement clear health benefits, hence savings for the play its part in that, particularly if we get As reported elsewhere, the new law on NHS and so on, as well as being linked to away from the idea that there are only four squatting came into force on 1st September. sport, which is what the Olympics are sports which is all I can remember from Our comrades at the Advisory Service for supposedly about under all the marketing. school (and I hated almost all of them). Squatters have been rushed off their feet The facilities do look pretty good, though Some kids are going to excel at sport and preparing for this. Check their website for how West Ham are going to feel in a half- should be encouraged and supported. Others all the latest info. empty athletics stadium is another matter: are going to just make up the numbers and This will be our last issue before the it’s almost as if it was planned by a Millwall its important that what they are doing is London Anarchist Bookfair, so here’s a fan. Nor are there other serious bids to take enjoyable, which means widening the range reminder that we will be having a meeting over the stadium. of sports, to include things like dance and on the future f the o newspaper. Thanks to But the other side of the legacy has indoor racquet sports, that can be easily everybody who’s come forward with offers translated into a spat between the continued after leaving school. Or swimming, of help, and if donations continue at the government and Labour over who has sold which is also relatively easy as long as your current rate we should have enough to off the most playing fields. It is interesting local council aren’t shutting the pool. guarantee the paper for another year. that it was Lord Moynihan, Minister for The golden age of school sports that older However there has been less response on Sport under Thatcher, who was intensely folk look back to was before league tables the key issue of selling the paper, on which relaxed about selling playing fields in 1988, and Ofsted and targets and ridiculous its long term future depends. See you at the who led the charge about legacy. He also workloads for teachers. I remember non-PE meeting – check the bookfair website or the said it was unacceptable that so many teachers doing sports training at school programme for time and room number. British medallists at Beijing had been because they enjoyed it. They wouldn’t get a Finally congratulations to Grace who to educ ated at public school. Well, I guess even look in now as the pressures are so different. the surprise of all didn’t end up in jail, yay! ex-Tory ministers can change their mind. Which means sports can only function in Cameron has argued that it requires a more schools with the help of coaches brought in “competitive ethos.” Which, as usual, misses to do just that, as long as they have the SUBSCRIPTIONS the point while acknowledging the Daily space, the pitches, and the equipment. But It’s now even easier to work out when Mail myth about “lefty schools” where “no all of this costs money, which the government your subscription is up for renewal. The one loses”. cut just two years ago. There’s a reason it’s number above your name on the address The problem for the government is that been run down so much over the years – faced label now tells you the year and month Michael Gove has recently decided that with hard choices schools will prioritise when your subscription runs out. There’s a physical education is no longer compulsory. things which impact on league tables before renewal form on page 19 of this issue if Fine by me, I don’t think anything should be sport. Until politicians find money for it, the you need it, or you can subscribe online at compulsory at school, but it does rather whole debate is just hot air. freedompress.org.uk/news/subscribe. Don’t forget that donations are always extremely welcome, or you may like to take out one of our special supporter subscriptions.

CONTACT DETAILS Freedom Press, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX Tel/fax: 020 7247 9249 www.freedompress.org.uk Enquiries: [email protected] Copy/Letters: [email protected] Subscriptions: [email protected] Bookshop: [email protected] Freedom Press Distribution (for trade book orders): [email protected]

NEXT ISSUE DEADLINE The next issue will be dated October 2012 and the last day to get copy to us for that issue will be Wednesday 12th September. You can send your articles to us by email to [email protected] or by post to ‘The Editors’, Freedom, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 17

Freedom • September 2012 17 FEEDBACK

The article, ‘The snake eats itself’ [Freedom, services is accounted for by interest charges. dingy, unwelcoming lair it used to be, lurking August 2012] “Explaining the panic Get rid of debt-based money, and virtually at the top of a dusty flight of stairs. And to surrounding a banking sytem which cannot all of this would disappear. judge by the impressive spread of organisations lend”, describes the current predicament of As a measure of the panic among the you list as represented in the collective, it the money system operated by the commercial financial powers: a committee of the IMF has sounds like it is making a much needed banks, without reference to or comment on just issued a report of their re-examination contribution to bringing our often too frag - the fundamental nature of this system, of the ‘Chicago plan’, and found its analysis mented and sectarian movement together. which has led inevitably to this state of valid, with even more benefits than originally It’s good to know all that will be able to affairs. claimed for it! continue, but I can’t help feeling the paper Modern society has come to rely for its Brian Leslie must have had a role to play in that – in money supply almost entirel y (over 97%) on allowing such a varied mix of voices to rub interest-bearing ‘loans’ from banks of ‘credit’ together within its pages. (Although it would that banks create as they lend it. As s omeone who was closely involved with be a rare treat if, just once, it fell through This gives the banks huge power over us – Freedom and Freedom Press for 18 years my letter box on time!) It’s terrible to think power to decide who can get first use of the (1965–1983), the last 12 of these as one of that such positive steps might be jeopardised money/‘credit’ they create, and also huge the group responsible for the bookshop, an by the grubby, petty-minded profiteering of profit, from the interest they charge on this, observation or two concerning ‘Our constitu - a parasitical faux lefty – or perhaps even which is used in part to buy influence on tion’ [Freedom, August 2012]. “foe” lefty, if you’ll forgive the pun. politicians and public media. Firstly I find it a document to which it is Keep up the good work, don’t let the bastards However, it also makes them vulnerable. hard to object – except perhaps as a grind you down and see you at the bookfair. They have to balance th eir books; initially, ‘constitution’; ‘articles of association’ would Jim Bartlett the loan is a bank’s ‘liability’, but is balanced have been better perhaps. I have somewhere as an ‘asset’ by the borrower’s debt to it. similar articles for ‘Friends of Freedom Press’ Fine, as long as debts continue to be ‘serviced’, dating back to my involvement. Charlotte Wilson, the founder of Freedom but to allow ongoing repayment, which Incidentally all the original ‘Friends’ are Press, wrote (anonymously) about what cancels money out of circulation, yet more now dead – are there actual named ‘Friends’ anarchists believe, in the first issue of Freedom: money must continually be loaned, to cover now? (I do not, of course, ask who they are!) “…Therefore, we reject every method of these repayments plus the interest on the Do they meet? (They never did in my time.) enforcing assent, as in itself a hindrance to outstanding loans. This has led, over the last Lastly I trust that the penultimate sentence effectual co-operation, and further, a direct several centuries, but much faster since the about “an election” was a joke. I certainly incentive to anti-social feeling.” ‘deregulation’ of the banks by Reagan and hope so. Beware lest someone takes you Anarchism is opposed to all intimidation, Thatcher, to growing levels of debt, to the seriously over stuff like that. I trust that or influencing behaviour by means of threats. point that many are now unpayable. Freedom will not shortly go exclusively on Against chattel slavery: ‘Do as I say or you This leaves the banks vulnerable, and liable line and that I may have the pleasure of will be beaten or deprived of f ood’. Against to fail; hence the recent ‘bailouts’ and their reading it in the future. (I have been a subscriber wage slavery: ‘Do as I say or you will be reluctance to lend. since 1962!) reduced from poverty to destitution’. Against This system is at root the driving force of Jim Huggon military conscription: ‘Join up to kill the most of the growing problems, of pollution, subjects of other rulers, or you will be ‘over-production’ and waste, grossly unequal imprisoned or shot’. And of course against distribution of wealth, socia l breakdown I was very sorry to read of your financial what is sometimes described as government and destruction of the environment. It can, troubles [Freedom, July 2012] and downright at its most primitive level, mugging: ‘Give and urgently needs to be changed. furious to hear they originated in such a me what you have, or I will bash you’. While we have a government (theoretically) flagrant betrayal of basic solidarity. Who The ideal of anarchism is a society where responsible for creating and maintaining the does this Hoffman character think he is? all relationships are of voluntary co-operation, common resources and infrastructure of And what has become of the radical left that and nobody ever makes threats to anybody. roads and public utilities, it, and not private such characters are allowed to operate with But we recognise that we do not live in an profit-seeking banks, should be creating all impunity within our milieu? I sincerely hope ideal society, and therefore that some threats the money needed by society and issuing it that as a result of his actions (however foolish are regrettably necessary. People who drive into circulation, by spending it on such you may have been in using photos that were cars without regard for the safety of other ‘public goods’ ( which could include basic still under copyright, a comrade should be a road users face the threat of being deprived incomes to all citizens) without creating any comrade) his name will forever be mud, and of their cars. People who go in for raping, matching debt in the process. This would that any protection that may have been killing people, or (not to put too fine a point leave the money as a permanently-circulating extended to him in the past is immediately upon it) mugging, face the threat of various medium-of-exchange, and with little need withdrawn. No anti-fascist should feel they social sanctions. for people, businesses, or governments to be can trust him. And there are even cases where anarchists in debt. It is not often that I am able to make it might approve of threats against expression In the 1930s the ‘Chicago plan’ produced down to London these days but, when I have of ideas. Those who organise propaganda by leading economists proposed just this, but been able to, I’ve been very impressed with campaigns, in favour of racial discrimination it was not implemented. the way Freedom – the paper and the and oppression, face the threat of being hit It has been estimated that, on average, organisation – has developed over recent on the head with beer bottles. almost half of the prices we pay for goods and years. The shop is a far cry from the dark, Donald Rooum Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 18

18 Freedom • September 2012 GETTING ACTIVE WHAT’S ON SEPTEMBER n 1st Juke Joint Saturday Night, a blues night benefit for Anarchist Federation (London) at LARC, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES from 7.30pm, with a fine selection of the best of rocking, jumping, swinging blues in all styles from a seasoned and refined connoisseur at the decks, plus live music is also being looked into. n 4th and18th Practical Squatting Evening at LARC, 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES from 7pm to 8pm, for more see http:// www.squatter.org.uk/ n 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th London group of The Anarchist Federation meets weekly on Thursday evenings at Freedom Bookshop ● Earth First!’s annual summer gathering At its height was a major force in the fight 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 took place late last month, with around 200 against the mega road building projects of 7QX. If you would like to attend please people camping at a site near Shrewsbury in the 1990s, while in more recent years it has email [email protected] beforehand. Shropshire. been influential in green campaigns against n 8th News from Nowhere Club presents The main discussion was around preparing polluting and dangerous industry from nuclear ‘Making a living as an artist craftsman’, for the next G8 meeting, due to take place to coal and most recently shale gas fracking. with speaker Marshall Colman at The on the shores of Ullswater in the Lake For more on EF! and to find local groups, go to Epicentre, West Street, Leytonstone E11 4LJ, District in 2013. http://www.earthfirst.org.uk buffet 7.30pm, talk starts 8pm, for details Callouts have been going out to mobilise see http://www.newsfromnowhereclub.org/. against the famously expensive and paranoid ● The Advisory Service for Squatters is n 9th Bloomsbury Radical History Walk, government bigwigs pow-wow, which is currently looking at the full implications of meet at 3pm outside the café in the middle expected to have a theme of “saving the changes made to the squatting laws, which of Russell Square, London WC1B 5EH, Middle East” (sadly not from the West). came into force on 1st September and this Past Tense walk will last about an More discussion is expected to take place effectively render it illegal to squat unused hour and a half to two hours and end in a in Birmingham later this month to sort out residential buildings (though ret ail and in - decent pub, it’s free and also interactive, so ideas for keeping pressure up on the event, dustrial properties seem to remain unaffected. bring you r own tales and memories of the which seems to be starting to fall out of The group notes on its website: “We expect area. favour with even David “yes to circuses, but that the next few months will see a spate of n 11th and 25th Practical Squatting Evening hold the bread” Cameron questioning in challenges and test cases, which will draw lines at 56a Infoshop, 56a Crampton Street, July what it actually achieves other than between what can and what can’t be done. London SE17 3AE from 7pm to 8pm, see putting an unwelcome spotlight on inter- “We at ASS, along with others, have been http://www.56a.org.uk/ for details. national ruling class collusion. going through what’s actually in writing, to n 15th Save South London Hospitals, no Other themes over the five-day event work out how we can help people to be as hospital closures, no cuts to services, included saw a strong focus on gender with safe as possible. Unfortunately we can’t be assemble at 1pm at General Gordon good meetings both mixed and not, Luddite a s reassuring as we would wish. Square, Woolwich, called by Greeenwich workshops on bio-technology, social “What is clear is that we should take & Bexley Trades Council. networking and computer technology and a down our old much-loved Legal Warnings, n 18th Radical Anthropology talks, The useful anti-fascist meeting to build links in as these will be read as an admission of sc ience of mythology with Chris Knight at the wake of more violent forms of far-right committing a criminal offence.” St Martin’s Community Centre, 43 Carol organising that have emerged in the last If you’re worried that you or people you Street, London NW1 0HT from 6.15 to 9 couple of years. know might be affected by the changes, pm, £10 waged, £5 low waged, £3 unwaged, Earth First! was founded 20 years ago in advice is being updated on the ASS website, see www.radicalanthropologygroup.org Brighton as a non-hierarchical ecological http://www.squatter.org.uk, or you can ring n 21st The Red & Black Club at LARC, protest and resistance group. 020 3216 0099. 62 Fieldgate Street, London E1 1ES from 8pm, Dissident Island Radio will be broadcasting live as the local anarchists host a traditional east end knees-up. n 25th Radical Anthropo logy talks, The revolution which made us human with Chris Knight at St Martin’s Community Centre, 43 Carol Street, London NW1 0HT from 6.15 to 9 pm, £10 waged, £5 low waged, £3 unwaged, for further details see www. radicalanthropologygroup.org OCTOBER n 7th Rare Doings at Camberwell, radical history walk featuring rioting Chartists, Leninist artists, general strikers, anti- fascists, squatted streets and cent res, the fight for the right to live, and the mad and proud, meet at 2pm, on Camberwell Green by the corner of Camberwell Church Street, London SE5. Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 19

Freedom • September 2012 19 SPORT Soccer vs The State

With the football season upon us once again, tortured you when you were kidnapped, if he Unite: Football and Socialism’. Among other perhaps it’s time to remind ourselves of the supported the same club as you did, this things, the authors claimed: ‘… it would be perennial ambivalence of the Great Game: terribly mad ghostly bond would be established patronising in the extreme, to the millions of “[I]n intellectual circles football has often … I hate World Cups because they dissolve working class people who watch and play, been described as nothing but a circus in the class struggle. In a way, during the World to declare that they’ve simply been conned which ‘twenty-two adults run after one ball.’ Cup it seems we are all the same. We are not or duped, that their love of the sport as Especially among Marxists, the ‘opiate of all the same.’ entertainment is simply a form of crowd the masses’ argument has had a very secure “[…] However, while many aspects of control ‘brainwashing’ [...] Outside of the place for a long time. The gist of the argument football politics give reason to the ‘opiate of trade union movement there are very few is simple: you give the masses something to the masses’ argument, football is too complex areas of modern society where thousands of be passionate about, and it keeps them from a phenomenon for such a reduction. The working-class people can gather under a being passionate about political change. game retains many rebellious aspects as well common banner, in support [of] a common “Arguably, the history of soccer confirms as genuine elements of working class culture. cause. While some may cast this aside as this. Fearing the unruliness of the game, the In a 1998 article, Austrian Marxist Eric mere tribalism, there upper classes realised that it could work to Wegner states that: ‘It has become necessary exist clear feelings of their own advantage as a controlled working- to partially partake in different forms of inter-fan solidarity, class distraction, as a time to forget the hard - capitalist mass culture in order not to become which if promoted ships of work, and as something to look completely isolated and to avoid psychological can have a positive forward to while toiling away in the factories. breakdown. Football has historically not great impact on “Perhaps even more troubling is the false only served the distraction from political promoting working- sense of unity that soccer victories produce. and social problems, but also the creation of class conscious ness.’” Graciela Daleo remembers celebrating with collective pride and class consciousness [...] ‘the guy who had tortured you with electric with a more than average progressive An extract from Soccer drills’ after Argentina’s Men’s World Cup potential.’ vs. The State – Tackling victory in 1978. She says: ‘The football thing “In July 2010, Portsmouth Socialist Party Football and Radical becomes the dominating thing even in the branch posted a text expressing similar Politics by Gabriel Kuhn, concentration camp. The torturer who had sentiments, entitled ‘Workers of the World PM Press, £16.99. Hidden victims of the NHL lock-out

7page 24 that during a period of such unprecedented Canada, with plenty of attention focused on NHL being operational, will not get paid. prosperity within the sport they are being told how the fans will suffer. Yet there is no There have been suggestions by the NHL to receive a 10% pay cut, so that the bosses mention of the real victims of the dispute bosses that should the dispute continue past can snaffle a bigger share. and how it impacts on them. the short term, then they will consider bringing It seems that neither the billionaire club For as long as the lock-out lasts, the arena in scab players to enable teams to complete owners nor the millionaire players care too workers, the hot dog and burger vendors, their l eague season. This move would not be much about what the average working class the cleaners, the pop-corn sellers, the many for the benefit of the fans, or the workers fan who buys the tickets, the shirts, and who buskers who work outside the st adiums, the whose livelihoods are dependent on hockey, travels around the country supporting their merchandise vendors, the hotel workers, the it would just enable the NHL to fulfil their team thinks of the situation. bar and restaurant workers who rely on tips bloated television contracts and to keep the The dispute has predictably attracted wide - earned during match night and the countless dollars rolling in. spread media attention across the US and other workers whose jobs depend on the Matthew Black

✂Please return completed form to: Freedom Subscriptions, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX SUBSCRIPTION RATES inland Europe outside outside Europe Europe ❑ Please start a NEW subscription / RENEW my subscription to Freedom (surface) (airmail) (to avoid errors, please circle required subscription rate, see right) Freedom (annual subscription, 12 issues) Claimants £18.00 ––– I enclose a donation ❑ Regular £22.00 £3 0.00 £30.00 £50.00 Institutions £26.00 £44.00 £44.00 £64.00 ❑ I’d like to pay by Standing Order, please send me details Supporter £48.00 £60.00 £60.00 £72.00

I enclose £ ...... payment (cheques payable to Freedom Press please) Note that we have a special ‘supporter’ sub rate for those who wish to ensure the future of the paper. Name ...... If you want to make a regular donation to Freedom get in touch and we can send you a Standing Order form – email [email protected] for details, Address ...... or to find out how to donate online.

...... For more information on subscriptions/bundles, email [email protected] ...... Postcode ...... FREEDOM fortnightly ISSN 0016 0504 Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 20

20 Freedom • September 2012 REVIEWS FICTION BOOK Self-doubt Things hadn’t turned out too bad after the EDL demo. There had been a five arrests, Reacting to prudent investment in social and cultural and a benefit to pay the fines. A lively Reality capital that others are excluded from access to. exchange of letters in the local papers Television: Except now the analysis prioritises ‘affect’ – followed, with Connie able to put across Performance, immediate visceral responses only later over - the anarchist point of view. Within the Audience and lain with individualistic connotations of Hurstbourne anarchist group people were Value psychol ogical and emotional nuance more getting on okay and Pete and Dave had by Beverley easily skewed by the oppressive weight of buried the hatchet. Everything was looking Skeggs and superior education, taste and distinction to up, but Connie couldn’t work out why she Helen Wood, hence favour privileged perspectives. The was feeling so deflated. Routledge, researchers solicited working- and middle- They hadn’t met in August, everyone £23.99 class viewers’ explanations of their undeniably knew it was pointless as people were away. strong reactions to Reality TV narratives, Was that it? She still saw the others socially exploring how this lived experience became if they were around, she began to worry coded in discourse in ways which might that all of her life was concentrated in correspond or conflict with the presumed these same few actions. She’d tried to talk efficacy of biopolitical domination as to Dave about this, she considered him her This intriguing study follows its authors’ represented in degraded form by these closest comrade. All he’d said was that she comprehensive international collection of sadistic scenarios. needed a holiday. academic research in Reality Television and The idea of sp ending two weeks on a Class (Palgrave Macmillan 2011), showing Morality Plays beach was not her idea of fun. But even that the genre quintessentially recycles – in Gratifyingly, the focus groups consistently hardened anarchist activists have to have a melodramatic excess but fitting contemporary rejected the mocking ministrations of the break sometimes so she arranged to visit neoliberal ideology – the governmental programmes’ ‘experts’ and ‘mentors’ in her friend Rachel in Edinburgh. disciplining of the lower orders. The latter reforming recalcitrant charges. Nonetheless, After meeting Rachel, they ended up enthusiastically display, commodify and middle-class viewers preferred moral criteria sampling single malts till the early hours. cultivate their inadequate conduct – yet with and patronising liberal sentiment in Connie surfaced with a sore head and scant chance of benefiting – in formulae with sympathising with the plights of lower- class found Rachel in the kitchen with some ubiquitous global appeal to media producers subjects – but emphatically condemned strong coffee. massively profiting from an apparently anyone succeeding without knuckling down “So what’s up then, Con?” she asked. “I insatiable appetite among audiences to to improving themselves in the prescribed can tell something is.” passively consume cheap spectacles of the manners. Whereas working-class viewers “I dunno,” Connie replied. Rachel had shaming devaluation of their peers. Austerity empathically registered contextual restrictions, known her for ten years and regarded agendas of cuts in welfare and social provision valuing humility, concern for others and Connie as a sort of anarchist superhero. may help explain more blatant demonisations perseverance over vanity, pretension and piety “I guess I’m having doubts that anything of the undeserving,1 whereas objectification, – only incompletely succumbing to capitalism’s I do makes a lot of difference,” Connie went judgement and punishment for failing colonisation of the depths of the soul which on. “This last year, with the splits and so on bourgeois exhortations has a longer pedigree. widespread seduction by Reality TV (and has been really tough. I kept going through But what seems genuinely new – along with other trivia) might signify. This more all that, and we saw off the EDL, but now the popular acceptance of Reality TV as a contradictory mulling over, rather than mere I just feel… just kind of empty.” legitimate, even entertaining, enterprise – is surrender to, the unpleasant ‘reality’ of every - “Everyone has these moments, you the narcissistic clamour among its targets to day life – the surveillance society’s fracturing, know,” said her friend. offer themselves wholesale to th e sacrificial monitoring and instrumentalisation of “Not me, not until now.” slaughter of self-respect. intimacy amid deteriorating conditions of “Well maybe you’ve just taken longer to However, such compelling interpretations precarity and intrusive management – hints arrive,” said Rachel. imply that lower-class agency and resistance at abiding sociocultural resources still “But I don’t know that what I’m doing is already successfully closed down – also beyond the reach of unequal exchange.2 makes sense any more. I spend loads of accommodating the blaming of victims for www.tomjennings.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk time working on different campaigns, their abjection and chiming with traditional http://libcom.org/blog/tom-jennings linking up with people in other towns and snobbish prejudice as well as current material in London, trying to make things better in assaults on the poor. Unwilling to so collude, 1 See, for example, Owen Jones’ Chavs (Verso, people’s lives and for the planet. And it all the authors drew on Beverley Skeggs’ 2011). just seems so hopeless.” Formations of Class and Gender: Becoming 2 See also: ‘Imagining Personhood Differently: “Connie, you’re one of the most rooted Respectable (Sage 1997) and Class, Self, Person Value and Autonomist Working-Class people I know. You’ve stayed in the town Culture (Routledge 2004; reviewed in Value Practices’, Sociological Review, 59, 2011, you grew up in where most folk our age Freedom, 11th February 2006), which offer pages 496–513 (www.hum.aau.dk/~proj-forsk/ end up living in a big city. Your activism is manifold insights into the middle-class beverley_skeggs/articleskeggs.pdf). based on your life and experiences, not just something abstract. You weren’t against the EDL because they are nasty people but QUIZ ANSWERS because their presence would hurt people in your town that you care about.” 1. It’s a hunting bow. From the US, of course. badge in support of the two Americans. “I don’t know…” Connie said. 2. He was one of the founders of the Australian authorities banned him from “Maybe you need a break?” said Rachel. California Soccer League and was running for two years and didn’t send any Connie grimaced. “You don’t want to be a inducted into the US Soccer Hall of Fame sprinters to the 1972 Olympics. He was martyr now, do you?” in 1971. also exlcuded from the Sydney Olympics “No,” said Connie. 3. The 1968 mens 200 metres was the race until the American team invited him. Martin H. won by Tommie Smith, who made a black Smith and Carlos were pallbearers at his To be continued… power salute from the podium with John funeral in 2006 and gave eulogies. Carlos. Norman wore a human rights 4. Clara Thalmann. Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 21

Freedom • September 2012 21 REVIEWS Punk’s dead

IRA bombings of the preceding three years) Julie Goldsmith on an and surrounded by The Home Office, Buckingham Palace, New Scotland Yard and exhibition and book that Westminster Cathedral, the notorious Room 1016 at the St James Hotel under the resurrect punk’s past tenancy of his friend Linda Ashby was, extraordinarily, “home, refuge and halfway When Simon Barker, aka SIX, arrived from house to major protagonists of what was to Prague last June to install his show and become known as ‘Punk’ in London”. launch his book Punk’s Dead at the Divus Barker’s photographs and essay, full of rare, gallery in London, he was astonished to intimate portraits and stories, document a witness the magnitude of Queen Elizabeth’s legendary subculture. Diamond Jubilee extravaganza. Just over Through the centre of the gallery flowed twenty-five years earlier, the teenage Barker ceiling to floor silk banners reminiscent of brought himself one of the “cheapest pocket medieval pageants. Printed with beautiful cameras available, a simple point and shoot, almost fairytale images of black and golden no controls or settings, requiring just a slot horse-drawn carriages lined in pink satin, in film cartridge.” For economic reasons he with liveried servants riding atop, and had to count every shot. The films were plumed horses and helmets. It was in fact a processed at the local chemist, and printed military procession, a display of wealth and onto cards with rounded corners. On the power. Soldiers in khaki uniform line the back of each was a template so that it could streets. On closer inspection we saw the be sent as a royal souvenir postcard for the Queen waving out to us from her open-top Queen’s Silver Jubilee. SIX never did.e H carriage. Seated at her side, her travelling took spur of the moment portraits of his companion through the Westminster streets, friends sleeping, talking, reading, playing. was the brutal tyrant, President Ceaucescu. Individualistic, rebellious, feminist, openly Until recently they lay untouched in a lock- Prince Phillip rode in another carriage, with gay, dissenting, nihilistic, artistic, the punks up, but then – lovingly and painstakingly Madame Ceaucescu. are captured here challenging the status quo restored – they were shown in an exhibition The photographs lining the gallery walls of the day through their confrontational and book called Punk’s Dead. He calls the were naturalistic, intimate portraits of behaviour, performance and dress. book a family album. youth: joyful, audacious, posing, at play, Unlike the moody black-and-white art The St James Hotel in Buckingham Gate, creating, performing, or inward-looking, photography of the time, in the music press London SW1, was the less documented kissing, sleeping. and tabloids, these vivid colour pictures fully London equivalent of the Chelsea Hotel in Shot in colour, with stunning composition convey the vibrance and loudness of punk New York or the Paris Beat Hotel. The that brings to mind recent work by Martin music itself. The portraits tell of legends born photographs span the two years that Barker Parr and Matthew Stone as well as early in bedsits, gigs and dressing rooms. Jordan lived there, between 1976 and 1978. Nan Goldin, they document and define a (the original punk muse, not the supermodel), Located in a high security area (due to the transfo rmative time. Siouxsie and the Banshees, Poly Styrene, The Slits, The Sex Pistols, Generation X, Malcom Mclaren, Nico, Adam Ant, Slaughter and the Dogs… The women in particular were brave pioneers, turning received notions of repressive English dress code and behaviour upside-down. Jordan, featured on the cover of the book and exhibition poster, travelled daily for two years from a seaside town to work at Seditionaries in King’s Road, the shop belonging to Vivienne Westwood and Malcom McClaren. She always wore her tribal make up and subversive punk dress. Mothers complained that their children had to see this; someone once tried to push her off the train. The kind British Rail staff let her sit in first class so that she would not get into trouble. Interestingly, Barker realised only as he worked on the recovered portraits that they were mainly of women, “strong, independent, creative women. Not the styled mannequins and puppets that had preceded them.” The show and book, although documenting the past, feel very current. Anarchy, art and even Dickens are still felt in the ether today; repression too and the military presence in the background of the London Jubilee page 228 Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 22

22 Freedom • September 2012 THE ARTS BLAKE AND THE DR

Review

7page1 2 Olympic year. Barker’s photographs were truly romantic and fascinating. Life in the St Sir James Dunnet; The Sex Pistols’ Anarchy not taken in order to be exhibited or shown James Hotel with toast in the morning from in the UK tour, with the famously ill-fated to anyone but friends. It was the untimely the hotel bread delivery; Sid and Nancy Jubilee river cruise; Derek Jarman’s parties deaths in 2010 of Malcolm McLaren and living for two weeks in the kitchen and Sid’s in Butlers Wharf; Seditionaries and more. Ari Up, lead singer of The Slits, that prompted Mother paying early morning visits in full A series of ‘Afterwords’ from illustrious Barker to unearth this treasure trove and motorbike leathers; Barker’s friend Linda contributors such as Michael Bracewell are a create the show and book. It was born not Ashby in her pink womb-like room holding further delight. of nostalgia but of a conviction that the court for days to various friends including work still holds relevance and power. the flamboyant Vicky de Lambray, trans - Punk’s Dead by Simon Barker is published by Divus. The stories and anecdotes in the ook b are vestite prostoveritute ofl the head of MI6, His website can be found at: www.six.cz Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 23

Freedom • September 2012 23 THE ARTS DRUNK SOLDIER Detail from painting by Michael Couper Michael by painting from Detail

William Blake and the Drunk Soldier Fortunately he was acquitted. According to Matthew Hyland, Marlowe Chan-Reeves, Yvette Byrd, In this ex-voto painting, which was specially the local paper “The invented character of Max Reeves, Niall McDevitt, Lois Olmstead, Micalef, commissioned for the William Blake inspired [the evidence] was … so obvious that an Helen Elwes, Joel Tomlin, Felicitas Aga, Adam Grey, exhibition currently showing at the Freedom acquittal resulted.” Peter Bond, Cameron Bain, Nicolai Kozin, Julie Press Gallery, Matthew Couper represents a Schofield was later depicted wearing Goldsmith, Howard Grange, G O D photography, Zoe momentus occurence in Blake’s life. “mind forged manacles” in an illustration to Young, Mark Rathnall, Tracey Moberly, Joh n Riordan, In August 1803 Blake kicked a drunk Jerusalem. Ben Watson, Leigh Martin, Denise Kum, David soldier, John Scofield, out of his garden in Beales, Adam Dant, John Crow, Katie Kaos, Jill Rock, Felpham. Human thought is crush’d beneath the iron hand Heathcote Williams, David Mitchell and found stuff Scofield later claimed that Blake “damned of Power on William and Catherine’s tombstone… the King and said th at soldiers were all The group show at the Freedom Press Gallery The show is open during shop hours (12 noon to slaves.” Blake was charged with high includes work inspired by William Blake. 6pm on Mondays to Saturdays, 12 noon to 4pm on treason and put on trial at Chichester. Artists include: Matthew Couper, Ben Seymour, Sundays) until 30th September. Freedom September 2012_Freedom 18/09/2012 22:32 Page 24

24 Freedom • September 2012 SPORT Hidden victims of the NHL lock-out

bosses are trying to reduce the percentage of total revenue that is allocated to pay players’ wages. Gary Bettman the NHL commissioner has said that, “the players overall share of the pie is far too high, a nd the owners deserved a more equitable split”. The players, whilst accepting that they are very highly paid for their work, are unhappy page 198 THE QUIZ

1. What kind of item is a “Bear anarchy compound”? 2. Nicolaas Steelink was an IWW member Following the failure to reach a consensus In 1995 the season was drastically shortened jailed in the criminal syndicalism trials of on a new collective bargaining agreement following a dispute, and a major trophy 1920. What is his other claim to fame? between NHL (National Hockey League) (Stanley Cup) was not awarded for the only 3. Australian sprinter Peter Norman won bosses and the players union, all 750 players time in its 100 year history. silver for the 200m at the Mexico Olympics registered with the NHL have been locked- In 2005 the season in its entirety was in 1968. His time of 20.06 seconds is still out as of Sunday 16th September. cancelled due to a dispute, and subsequent an Australian record. Why did he not race For the duration of the lock-out all players lock-out. ag ain at any future games? are free agents and can play for any team or The NHL is a multi-billion dollar industry 4. Who travelled to Barcelona in 1936 to take in any league in the world – many of whom that stretches across the US and Canada. part in the People’s Olympiad (a counter have already jumped ship and moved to Last year the league’s total earnings were to the Berlin olympics) as a representative leagues across Europe. $3.2 billion, which is an increase from of the Swiss Workers Swim Clubs, and This is the third occasion that players have around $2.2 billion the previous year. ended up joining the Durruti Column? been locked-out in the last seventeen years. Despite this huge increase in revenue, the Answers on page 20

Published by Freedom Press, 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX. Printed in Great Britain by Aldgate Press, London E1 7RQ. Printed on recycled paper.