**In vain you tell me that government is good, but that Ifall out only with the abuse. The thing itself Freedom is the abuse Vol. 55 No. 1 8 JANUARY1994 FIFTY PENCE Edmund Burke THE FEAST IS OVER 1994 UNEMPLOYMENT GALORE! ffectiverieCUVc uio though u g n uic the government’s a legislation has proved, in finally the case of one or two banks, such as E BCCI which went broke, the bosses destroying the already bankrupt helped themselves with ‘loans* that trades union movement in this in this issue country, their master stroke was to have ‘disappeared’!) ensure that there should be a large Thatcher’s ‘property-owning’ permanent pool of unemployed - not SPAIN devotees are having their homes only among the so-called unskilled - francisim o to repossessed in tens of thousands for there is nothing like it to make annually by the moneylenders, and those still in work work harder for less FBLIPISIMO finding themselves homeless, the pay. ‘lucky’ ones into bed and breakfast In 1979 the Thatcher government temporary accommodation, other inherited high unemployment THE EX-USSR joining the cardboard box residents in (remember the ‘Labour isn’t working' m e e t t h e n e w b o s s the big cities. poster?) and high inflation. They eventually reduced the inflation at the he price of the Lawson ‘bonanza’ T in the ’90s is that the balance of expense of a massive increase in payments (that is imports-exports) unemployment so much so that the ut all good things’ in the capitalist has escalated (in spite of the fact that then chancellor launched his, now Bworld end upip benefiting benefiting a a very very few few Britain boasts that it is now the notorious, ‘spend-spend-spend’ at the expense of the many. second largest exporter of weapons of policy: plastic cards galore, the banks True, for three years or so destruction, mainly to the starving foiling over each other to lend money, unemployment went down, but when third world!) and successive and Mrs Thatcher’s ‘property-owning all the bills had to be paid the great chancellor s - Major, Lamont - can democracy’ was launched with gusto. Lawson-Thatcher dream soon turned only boast that in their wisdom and Property prices were rising so rapidly into a nightmare. Unemployment expertise the debt that their latest that some people changed houses went up and small businesses went successor - the apparently cheerful once a year and made a profit on each broke. Revenue from taxation onbeer-drinking Ken Clarke - inherited transaction. profits and employment decreased. was £50,000 million.B u tthe sacred Even the banks had to write off cows for this government are on billions of pounds in unpaid debts. (In (continued on page 2) THE PRICE OF THE FREE-FOR-ALL CAPITALIST SOCIETY WILL BRITISH WORKERS HAVE Norwich manufacturer of A aromatic products’ was labelled TO COMPETE WITH THIS TO KEEP by the Low Pay Unit as ‘Scrooge of the Year’. He is threatening to sue them THEIR JOBS? for libel. n example of the price workers are dangerous factory in China, They say he seeks full-time clerical Apaying for the so-called Chinese -According to official statistics, probably workers for £50 a w eek- which Is less Economic Miracle received some understated, 11,600 people died at their than even a pensioner receives. It was publicity when the Zhlll toy factory workplaces in the first eight months of this also alleged that he pays was destroyed by fire caused by an year." homeworkers 7p a sachet for making electric short circuit. Eighty one The 2hili factory, as with most of the products, which is an hourly rate workers died, mostly young women lndustry ln shezen, described by of between 28p and 42p according to from distant provinces, according to Simon l™ , ^ -the boom town that the unit. Simon Long,G uardian correspondent has a ^ e n almost overnight on Hong Among the ‘Scrooge’s’ rivals for thein Hong Kong. Kong’s border', Is Hong Kong owned. title the Low Pay Unit includes: The high death toll can be explained Indeed: a company paying a security guard when one learns that: “Much of Hong Kong's manufacturing £1-19 sn hour for an 84-hou.r -week; a industry, including an estimated 90 per butcher’s shop which 17 year old -O n the upper two storeys. cent of its toy production, has relocated £1.37 an hour for wor^ n®par^ } i r8- Other mesh over the windows survived t h ^ across the border, ln China." cases included a 'ieav*ty The blocked windows conW bu^ m ^ therapist m t high death toll. Many 8UW> Joors were No wonder the Hong Kong Stock worked 66 ho toved at an bovu-y,, poisonous fumes. Even tne •_ « E xchange is boom ing ... on slave locked to keep them at thclr labour. A n d how much of that capital Yvovurm a. w eek lOf 8m. hour 1 B u t »*xts w as n o isolated CflS®o f ft InvKstnient came Grom IjOTXtori? EDITORIAL COMMENTS FREEDOM • 8th January 1994 2

was European. Today the crisis for THE FEAST IS OVER western capitalism is the competition from the Far East which is being financed OUR 1994 UNEMPLOYMENT GALORE! by capital from the West. It also coincides with the ratification of the GATT treaty which again is in the interest not Just of ‘GOOD NEWS’ (continued from page 1) neither aware nor sympathetic to the the United States but of the course: inflation has been kept within the anarchist alternative even though most of transnationals. After all, 500 of the latter declared limits (only because workers them are the victims of capitalism. control 80% of world trade. COLUMN wages have been frozen and retail prices As realist anarchists we also know that, The ‘health’ of capitalism depends on the slashed) and interest rates have come with rare exceptions (which we hope will expansion of the economy - that is of the down several points in the year which is find their way into our ‘Good News’ markets. Western European markets are A traveller isa traveller is ‘good news' for all those who owe money column), most ‘right-thinking* people in virtually saturated, more so since the Far a traveller... to the banks and other moneylenders, the Western world are not prepared to go East is swamping them with all the and not least the government (they will beyond manifestoes, protest meetings technology - radios, videos, televisions, t is gratifying to be able to contribute to the argue that we the public benefit thereby) and demonstrations at weekends and the lot - which could never be produced I‘Good News’ column so soon after my having to service the £50 million debt they May Day marches on a non-working day! in Europe at the slave-waged prices of account of the predicament of the travellers at have landed us with! The bad news is for The ruling class, which as we have China, Taiwan, etc. some pensioners who have savings to explained earlier need not necessarily lie Yoke Farm in Herefordshire who faced immediate eviction subject to the outcome of supplement the £56 a week on which a the government, recognises only two here could be three possible solutions single pensioner is expected to keep fit kinds of opposition: violence (which they the local public inquiry. Tto save government face and the The inspector has made his report earlier and enjoy all the perks that the denounce as ‘terrorism’ but their own unemployment problem which, however, advertisers dangle before our noses daily! violence is ‘law and order*) and workers’ this government is not prepared to take. than expected and found for the fanner and organised resistance, which in our The first ha$ to be to halt the export of against the council. The enforcement notice is opinion becomes irresistible only and quashed and a planning permission granted, capital to Eastern Europe and the Far ut Christmas is over and ‘the (City) when it is based on solidarity. We are albeit for a limited period of two years. The B pigs are getting (too) fat*, but it’s no neither playing on words nor idealising East. The government and the opposition are all the time talking about investing in advantage of this qualification is that it use thinking that government will ‘put a the ‘working class’. We are simply saying enables the inspector to side-step a danger I penny in the old man's hat*. They are not that until all the millions of people who industry here. At the same time we came even doing so for theyoung , why bother are dependent on somebody with the across a news item (Guardian, 4th had foreseen. I was fearful that the council about the old who are still getting their power to hire orfire they have a common December) which reads: would try and impose unwanted and generous Christmas bonanza of £10 - enemy - not just the bloke who takes that “Britain has purchased more companies in the unnecessary arrangements for hygiene that unchanged for how many years? decision; in a sense he too can be a privatisation of East Germany’s industry than would torpedo the travellers’ and the farmer’s The Tories have been in office for scapegoat for the system - and yes, you any other country, it emerged this week. The intention of preserving the unspoilt natural fourteen years but in power (meaning the have guessed, we are saying it is the UK has bought 121 firms ... with £806 millions beauty of the site. But the inspector says: “I do 5% of the population who own 60% of the capitalist system that must be destroyed. of investment guaranteeing over 17,000 Jobs." not consider that harm to any interest of nation’s wealth) for hundreds of years. No Equally important, it cannot be AnotherGuardian item refers to “an entire acknowledged importance would result from Labour government, nor trades union nor destroyed until enough of us agree as to redundant Welsh steel mill" which is allowing the site to continue in its present r well-meaning middle class what the alternative should be. But even being “floated through the port of manner for a comparatively short period of professional-dominated would-be more important, that we are prepared to Liverpool towards industrial revival in pressure groups, such as Charter 88 (a China". Presumably the steel produced in two years”. do something - and something means So no ablutions blocks or ring roads for fire New Statesman & Society creation now more than just attending lectures or the China will then be imported to this boasting a membership of 50,000 of attractive summer schools in Glasgow, country. engines. All he is insisting on is that numbers . obviously well-educated well-established Venice and the latest one in Barcelona The second ‘solution* is to encourage are kept down to present levels and that a people with at least a bad conscience) will w h ere as many as a thousand people production locally, regionally and better, safer access to the site be made. This even dent the status quo until they have attended, including a contingent from nationally and exclude imports which last point had already been the subject of an the courage to attack the capitalist Glasgow! More than we have readers in compete. We will be told that this is amicable conversation with the best of the system and private property.* Most realist Glasgow these days! ‘protectionism’. What these same council’s witnesses, the highways engineer anarchists are only too aware of the fact defenders of free trade don’t tell us is that that a system even approaching that for these cheap imports, often subsidised who has agreed to a reasonable, practical ut ultimately capitalism (nor proposal for improving sight lines. -envisaged by anarchists cannot be Bgovernment for4hatr matter) will gtve either by the taxpayers of those exporting attained via the ballot box. We are also up its power and privileges because a countries or by slave labour wages, the I think that the inspector, in his more than conscious that most people are majority so wishes. In that case reason public is paying by the back door for enlightenment, might have published his cannot prevail because any government unemployment here! . findings particularly promptly in order to be or ruling class will in the end have to The third ‘solution* - which Is so obvious able to give planning permission before the * For the sake of some nit-picking anarchists, resort to force. but escapes the government, perhaps (imminent) repeal of the 1968 Caravan Sites we believe that everybody should have a roof We go on repeating, as often as we can: because they may think that votes are Act This Act, with its accompanying ministry over their heads as of right for life, just as they government is violence, depending as it involved - and it is that ofwork-sharing. circulars, as well as making it a duty on local should have the means to provide their daily does on laws, mainly based on property, Sooner or later, as technology takes over needs in food and clothing as a m in im u m . and which are enforced by the police, the more and more repetitive and boring jobs, authorities to provide adequate judiciaiy, the prisons and ultimately the surety the leisure society Is on the horizon accommodation for gypsies residing in or armed forces. Anarchists are opposed to and we should be demanding a shorter resorting to their area, also gave travellers the use of violence toimpose their ends. working week. On the continent they are special status when local authorities were What we do say is that if, and when, a already introducing a 35-hour or the considering planning applications. THE POLICE OPT majority of the people have no time for the four-day week, but here not only has The inspector acknowledges in his report parliamentary circus, which anyway only parliament voted a seven-day week for that under the proposed new legislation FOR THE NARK rubber-stamps the privileged capitalist shops, but any proposals for gypsies will have to suffer their applications society, then the people will be faced by work-sharing or a shorter working week are being resisted by employers and being “treated on die same footing as other I T t was one of the characteristics of the fascist the military and presumably the pacifists developments”,41 in the words of the f, JLregimes in Italy and Germany, and among us will seek to reason with them vigorously by the government. and we hope that the revolutionary Understandably, but a freedom-loving lot government’s draft planning guidance notes. Stalinism in Russia and satellites, that the of wage-slaves would surely accept even (continued on page 7) patriotic citizen was prepared to inform not anarchists will take a leaf out of the history of their Spanish comrades in 1936 a reduction in wages in order to have an only on his neighbour but even on members and go the whole hog and avoid their extra day or two a week away from the of the family. In Britain our police have relied mistakes! office or factory. Or were we so * This sounds okay until you consider the on paid informers to do the dirty work. And consumer-orientated as to be money unrestrained prejudice which gypsies experience at they even have the nerve to publish in their e are only too aware that we are a worshippers? If that is the case, dear the hands of the settled majority, manifesting itself annual report that “increased use of Wlong way from even the Spanish anarchists propagandists, you've got a as vehement opposition to any gypsy proposal; and informants may be more cost-effective than situation of 1936. But in our opinion the rough job on your hands! the absence, in a development plan led system, of capitalist system in 1994 Is in a greater But the anarchist message is surely the provision in the laid-down ‘structure plans* for any surveillance operations”. such development Not even ‘solidarity’ among the crooks! crisis than it was in 1936. Then the crisis only one that makes sense.

ddbB G foi] ihfr hnmb throwers ck Ru&itfiH Ibttfn lU cU vwft Northern Ireland -o n both sides - 2J fifep&etl teijuiiioi tnmsetm, are V gpdle&s, 2)selfish, ij foispty uiwipluied, and . r , 3) anarchic, and 4) cowardly. 4) mUiJtg to tiitt p f tin 8th January 1994 • FREEDOM FEATURES

s the European union enters a new year — ANARCHIST NOTEBOOK — In 1933 transport on the Tennessee River A with twenty million unemployed ruined for navigation by the soil washed down workers, those politicians who aren't totally from the hillsides, was less than 33 million enslaved by free market dogmas look hack ton-miles. longingly at Roosevelt's New Deal of sixty Paradoxes of TVA By 1951 it was ov er589 ton -miles. Interms years ago, the Keynesian policy of public of power generation the TVA was works intended to lift America out of the scale; observably the newer industries tended RPAA, Norris waited for a change in the political climate. over-successful. When the A uthority began its Depression. Its most lasting monument was to be small in scale". He cites Kropotkin's dam building activities it was prophesied that With F.D. Roosevelt’s New Deal promising the Tennessee Valley Authority (TV A), a vast view inFields , Factories and Workshops that there could be no possible use for the power the big industrial concentrations of the to get America back to work, the TVA was generated. The electricity producing capacity programme of water control in the poorest part created on 18th May 1933. To its board he of the poorest region of the United States, nineteenth century were destined to die out (as of the region in 1933 was under 815,000 indeed they have, to the immense cost of the appointed three men who made, as Hall kilowatts. By the mid-1950s it was four intended, as Percy Goodman noted, to provide explains, a totally, explosively incompatible an area the size of England “with populations, by the end of the twentieth million kilowatts, but already in 1951 power century) and he noted how Geddes directly mixture". The chairman was A.E. Morgan, had to be borrowed from other systems, power hydro-electric power, flood control, a who “had much in common with the early navigation system, soil and forest followed Kropotkin in anticipating an era in cuts and load shedding had to be introduced. which we would “apply our constructive skill, utopian communitarians" and “saw the job as The Authority began building five conservation, from which followed rural his life’s opportunity to realise his personal electrification, manufacturing industry, model our vital energies, towards the public steam-generating power stations intended to conservation instead of the private dissipation vision of a new physical and cultural burn eight million tons of coal annually. farms, educational and health services*'. environment: a vision he believed FDR to By 1933, as Herbert Agar put it, the area's of resources, and towards the evolution Subsequently it added nuclear power stations. instead of the destruction of the lives of share". He hoped that the new town of Norris I commented in Freedom in 1954 that: livelihood had drained away with its topsoil. would follow the Kropotkinian vision of a 'The balance of nature was upset A land of others." In the small, specialist world of American place where the inhabitants would combine “If you can conceive of an ecology of industry, then abundance had become a land of rural slums." the Tennessee Valley had already moved from the advocates of these ideas, the Regional agriculture and industry. He was soon in The isolated valleys were occupied by dispute with his colleagues and was dismissed unbalance of wasted resources to the subsistence farmers attempting to grow cash Planning Association of America (RPAA) over-exploitation of resources. The difference crops, and as yields diminished they cut down was started in March 1923 asaresult of chance by Roosevelt in 1938. between power generated from water and that the trees, burnt off the vegetation and meetings between Geddes’ most influential The second member was David Lilienthal, generated from burning coal is obvious. One is ploughed the hill slopes, moving further and disciple, Lewis Mumford, with the architects described by Hall as “an immensely inexhaustible and the other uses material which cannot be renewed. When coal has to be imported further up the mountain sides. The heavy Clarence Stein and Henry Wright and the ambitious, driving young man with the proposer of an Appalachian Trail, Benton reputation of stealing any show he joined”. He by the largest producer of hydro-electric power in rainfall, the failure to replace the land's America, something has gone wrong.” fertility and the removal of the forest cover MacKaye. In June that year, Patrick Geddes wrote the official account of the TVA (a allowed the soil to wash away into the rivers. visited New York, and the RPAA adopted a best-selling Penguin in wartime Britain) and Something had indeed gone wrong, but before There are two possible explanations for the programme which included the creation of was in charge of power generation and the revealing it we should turn to the third board programme of rescue that followed: anarchist garden cities within a regional plan, engineering works concerned with water member of the original TVA triumvirate. This and governmental. The geographer Peter Hall development of regional project, “and surveys control. These were a vast technical was Harcourt A. Morgan, no relation to the achievement By the end of its first twenty traces what he calls '"the anarchist roots of the of key areas, notably the Tennessee Valley chairman, and characterised by Peter Hall as basin". years, the TVA had built twenty dams across “President of the University of Tennessee, planning movement” through a tradition the river and its tributaries and these, together which flows from the founding fathers of There was also a quite different representative of the conservative agrarian governmental range of enthusiasts for the with those which existed before 1933, form a interests at Vanderbilt, obsessed with the idea French geography, Paul Vidal de la Blache system of 28 reservoirs controlling the flow of and Elis6e Reclus, to the Russian Peter Tennessee Valley. Theodore Roosevelt, of rural extension services and in particular re-elected as president in 1904, was famous water by a defence-in-depth system of flood with a scheme for a phosphate fertiliser Kropotkin and the Scottish biologist Patrick control which, along the Tennessee River and Geddes. for his bellicose, imperialist policies abroad, programme. He readily made common cause and for his concern with the conservation of the lower Ohio and Mississippi, brought with Lilienthal... But of regional planning - “For Vidal and his followers, as for Geddes, natural resources at home. It was his ideas that annual savings of many millions of dollars especially that radical variant espoused by the regional study gave understanding of an 4 active, led to the establishment of both military and worth of otherwise unavoidable damage. The RPAA - there was an imperceptible residue: experienced environment* which ‘was the motor civilian bodies given the task of studying the locks and reservoirs form 630 miles of community developm ent, health and power of human development; the almost sensual navigable canal from Paducah to -Knoxville— reciprocity between men and women and their problems and potentialities of the American educational services got a minuscule sliver of surroundings was the seat of comprehensible regions. the total budget.” liberty and the mainspring of cultural evolution*, During the First World War the federal which were being attacked and eroded by the government had built nitrate plants in the JVam (ZuuiiaMe he TVA exists to this day, with a staff of centralised nation-state and by large-scale machine Tennessee Valley for the production of T24,000, and its main source of revenue is industry... For Geddes, as for Vidal, the region was explosives and had begun a dam to supply Social Defence: Social the sale of electricity to 160-odd municipal more than an object of survey; it was to provide the them with electric power. The post-war Change utilities and corporations that use it as a basis for the total reconstruction of social and Republican governments of Coolidge and wholesale supplier. But there is one more political life/* Hoover proposed to sell the plants and dam to Brian Martin Argues for social defence as a grassroots political truth to reveal. When it was created, Peter Hall explains that “one of the most Henry Ford, but the sale was blocked by initiative linked to challenges to oppressive the military programme of nitrate production crucial insights that Geddes borrowed from Senator George Norris, whose bills for federal structures in society, such as patriarchy, police for explosives was changed to the production Kropotkin" was the impact of technical control were, in turn, vetoed by the presidents. and the state. Filled with examples from of nitrate fertilisers. But in the Second World change, the prospect that “new sources of Meanwhile two army engineers, General Finland to Fiji. 168 pages ISBN 0 900384 69 7 £4.95 War the Atomic Energy Commission selected power, hydraulic and especially electric, Brown and Major Watson, had by 1930 it as the place for die production of plutonium meant that a big central unit of power was no published a comprehensive 734-page report for the atom bomb. Peter Hall, again in his longer needed; industries that depended on The Tennessee River and its Tributaries. fron FKEEDON PRESS useful book Cities o fTomorrow, comments on chiefly on skilled labour had no economies of Armed with this and the studies made by the the irony that “the one element that Roosevelt had removed from the TVA prescription, munitions production, was now driving the economic development of the Valley”. comfort much older children in the same way, Thousands of people worked night and day The Moral Maze - another viewas women always have comforted their in the largest users of TVA power, the plants n a recent discussion in Radio 4 entitled an adult because language, if it is to be distressed men. at Oak Ridge and Paducah, to produce the IThe Moral Maze’, a majority of the effective, has to become part of the psyche of bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, participants expressed the view that ‘God’ the individual - a process that has to start from without the slightest knowledge of what they (undefined) or 'Religion' (also undefined) before birth and continue for many years. It is he family, whose very centre is the mother were making. Its story is full of sucb were necessary to endow mankind with by now almost universally known that the Tand her voice, is the birthplace of morality contradictions. It was a creative harnessing of morality. One or two made passing reference child can hear its mother’s voice for at least for every new infant There he is loved and water power, the realisation of the dreams of to ‘the family' but without indicating how it two months before birth and that the sound of nourished for many years, not only by his the pioneers of regional planning. K operated or, indeed, why it had evolved. her voice is particularly important in the mother but by his father, by older siblings, accomplished a great deal in changing d* The following is a very short summary of a period from birth onwards when it is aunts, uncles, grandparents, close friends of prospects for the most poverty-stricken region set of ideas which I expounded when invited necessary to ‘create’ human intelligence by a the family, old and young. This constant love of the United States. The chance that it was a to lecture in some twenty universities and wide variety of sensory stimulation associated and nourishment gives him his sense of his visible symbol for Roosevelt’s New almost all the colleges of education during the with the mother’s voice. own worth. The daily example of similar love enabled him to over-ride both the universe period of nearly twenty years following the Having associated that voice with the and care extended to other babies and young faith in private enterprise and die conflict closure of Risinghill School. comfort and nourishment of the intra-uterine children powerfully builds into his psyche the interests of the state governments. But it ** state during the last two months before birth, theme of equality in love. He, in return, feels only the accident that the US govern©*®1 s he first thing to understand is that human that voice now, in the external world, still affection for all those who care for him, wartime development of nuclear weap^ Tbeings have evolved a structure of brain carries, those associations, as anyone may try whether they are members of the family or needed both an abundant source of po^ff^ of such a kind that language, speech or other for himself by putting bis ear on the belly of a friends. Whoever ministers creates love. a docile labour force that made the T v forms of symbolic communication are woman where the head of the baby would be It was only with the discovery by Alexandr financially successful. At the same tij essential. Physically this can be seen in the for the last two months before birth, closing Luria and his colleagues about the importance emulation ofone version of the TVAhasfl^ much greater proportion of neocortex (alsohis other ear and asking the woman to speak of the mother’s voice that we have begun to it a model for spectacular post-’ known as associative cortex* or ‘learningsoftly. Not only will he be surprised at the understand the deep psychic bonds created dam-building projects in Africa, Asi* cortex ) to sensimotor cortex in humans clarityas with which the voice can be heard, but within the family, and thence the importance lAtin America which have brought compared with even their nearest relatives the higher apes. at the sense of comfort and reassurance that of small groups such as the village and the for the local populations. These arcj* comes with that voice. Even after the birth small town in extending to civic organisations awkward and troubling paradoxes of fl* The second thing to understand is that the mothers hold their babies close to them for the lessons learnt in the family. human being takes a very long time to become feeding and comfort. They continue to Michael Duane INTERNATIONAL NEWS FREEDOM. 8thJanuary 1994 4

asba Kabakov, a Russian satirical writer, Russia) in the exploitation of its oil wealth”. Swhen asked recently what good news there This new charitable approach again will only was in the ex-USSR replied: ‘The Soviet Focus on the ex-USSR fool those who wouldn’t delete the bracketed system had collapsed”. And the good news? reference to it in the quote. “The Soviet system hasn’t collapsed...” Meet the new boss... same as the Stability and the role o f Russia old boss* Meanwhile, away from the elections and back Ex-members of Politburo at the in the real world, the West must continue the time of the anti-Gorbachev coup the low turn-out, the far right seem to have Russia provided the reformists won the search for ‘stability’. For stability is what the secured about 12% of the vote of the Russian elections (note: if they go ahead, as they will, West wants and for stability, of course, read ... and where they are now people. It is hard to think of a European then the liberal democrats are ‘acceptable’ to repression. The lessons learnt in South • Stanislav Gurenko - Leader of country where they would have done much Western capital). Initiatives should include a America are proving useful. In a moment of Ukranian Communist Party worse. There is nothing exceptional in all this. waiving by the World Bank for the first time frankness referring to Aliyev, President of • Islam Karimov - President of More importantly the fact that the new of the ‘negative pledge9 rule, which means Azerbaijan, who won his election with 98.5% Uzbekistan constitution makes the parliament little more dropping its insistence that countries give of the vote (hardly the right credentials for a • Peter Luchinsky - Speaker of than a talking shop means that economic priority to the bank over other creditors. This ‘democrat’) a Western diplomat said he could Moldovan Parliament reform is not threatened and our chum Boris apparently charming act of charity loses its be “Azerbaijan’s General Pinochet, creating can be presented as the only ‘democrat* left on sheen when we learn that the first result will an en vironment for the seeds of democracy to • Absamat Masaliyev - Senior Member grow”. This we understand may help in a of Kyrgyz Communist Party the stage. It was surely going to be hard to be an agreement by US Eximbank to provide present a man who shut down an elected £1.3 billion of loans to Russians wanting to region where the countries deep divisions are • Vladimir Movsisyan - Member of parliament, silenced media criticism, buy oil and gas equipment from the US. Hius causing a big headache for international oil Armenian Government proclaimed a state of emergency and dissolved the US corporate interest is more important companies trying to secure exploration deals • Nursultan Nazarbayev - President of his capital's city and borough councils all in than the World Bank and third world worth billions of dollars. Kazakhstan the space of a few hours as a ‘democrat’ or economies struggling to pay back crippling Or perhaps we should lode to the likes of • Saparmurad Niyazov - President of ‘moderate’ - now it’s easy. debts. The US ambassador said the agreement Islam Karimov, the President of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan Of course it comes as no surprise to was the base for further investment in energy where the old KGB is called the National • Yegor Stroyev - Governor of Oryol anarchists to learo that the elections were a and other fields: ‘There must be no doubt of Security Service, former communists are province joke before they were held. Almost a quarto* the desire on the part of US industry to play called the People’s Democratic Party and of the candidates were from Yeltsin’s trade delegations can only visit with • Geidar Aliyev - President of Azerbaijan the leading role (in extending assistance to executive branch, either government ministers presidential approval. Seemingly this is the or heads of regional administrations; 22% ♦ Pete Townsend (continued on page 7) represented Russia’s new business class as The elections directors of newly privatised companies; 3% That the Liberal Democrats should have done were journalists and only 1% were industrial well in the recent elections is no bad thing for workers. Boris was onto a winner before the — TURKEY — the West With results still to come in, given vote was cast. Either he got a bunch of sycophants or he got a parliament he could ignore. And he disdained the process Arrested anarcho-syndicalist throughout (the one and only thing we have in common). The people didn’t get a look in (and Oil versus Indians they knew it - witness the low turn-out). interviewed ust recently Freedom spoke to Guy When the Jandarma tried to interview the he Texan oil company Maxus is Indeed we were informed (Financial Times, Cheverton, an anarcho-syndicalist member intensifying its research with a view to an 7th December 1993) only five days before the J human rights party some, including Guy, T of a trade union backed human rights underground exploitation of the land of the elections that they didn’t matter anyway and refused to co-operate. These were shackled delegation which was arrested in the Kurdish Huaoram Indians in Ecuador. Up until now the privatisation programmes which are when they declined to participate in a area of Turkey on the last weekend in four petrol companies have pulled out of the increasing unemployment and poverty would propaganda film being prepared by the November. region because of damage to the environment continue come what may. Turkish army security force. As part of the 12-member human rights and the deleterious effect their activities have However, we wouldn’t want those readers team, Mr Cheverton was visiting the village of on the local people. who are perhaps new to the anarchist position Boycott Turkish tourism! Birek in the Kurdish zone, which had just been Despite the protests of the Indians and their to feel that we dismiss fascists lightly. On the At Istambul airport on Sunday 28th contrary, we are alarmed by the rise of the burned to die ground by Turkish troops. The November, as the human rights supporters in the outside world, the official Turkish explanation for the arrests is Ecuadorian government has given the right... we simply ask the question: how will representatives were waiting to leave Turkey, Boris and the West react, not just in the that the delegation was taken into custody for they were met by trigger-happy soldiers. Mary company permission to lay down 400 I its own protection. kilometres of road in the forest, given its immediate aftermath, but rather in the medium Brodbin, a London freelance journalist, was and long term? Our opposition will continue. Guy Cheverton tells us the manner of their shot at as a sample of soldierly horseplay. necessity in order to carry out the oil arrest was far from friendly. The arresting exploitation. Will theirs? Guy says the British Consul representative troops had balaclava helmets over their faces, in Istambul was useless and unsympathetic. Apart from Maxus, other companies such as and the team was first taken into a field and Aroo, Orix and Elf'Aquitaine are responsible G7 support When someone suggested that our Consular Part of the answer to this question will be lined-up against a grassy bank. Only after officials are in bed with the Turkish for severe damage to other Indian peoples: about a quarter of an hour, when the officer in provided by the West’s investment strategy. authorities, he flounced off saying “If that’s Quechuas, Shwars... charge got instructions over the field Of course now, more than ever, Boris needs your fucking attitude you can look after On the other hftnd many organisations are telephone, were they taken off and held in calling for a boycott and other actions against our support and so we are of course willing to yourselves”. 1 waive the global economic rules in this secure premises by the Jandarma (Turkish Texaco for the widespread contamination this army security) overnight Mr Cheverton, who was in Turkey for Hull company left behind last year in Ecuador. ‘special* case. This was demonstrated by the Trades Council, is involved in theSyndicalist M adridUFA bulletin number 176 decision made by the G7 countries to help Bulletin group and has been an Clearing the Kurdish countryside anarcho-syndicalist for over ten years. Human Guy said the Turkish authorities have a policy rights reports are being prepared with of clearing out the Kurdish villages and evidence collected on the trip and he says that forcing the country people into the big towns a campaign to boycott tourism to Tmkey is INTERNATIONAL NEWS and cities. It seems the Turks feel the Kurds underway. can be controlled better centralised in urban He points out that Turkey, with four million areas. Mr Chcvertou told us: “It's ethnic army conscripts, has the largest army in SERVICE cleansing on a grand scale; far worse than is Europe. Much of this army, he claims, is being happening in Bosnia". He claims the small used against the Kurds. In the EC both Britain he readership survey early Iasi year articles wnucu wiiti a foreign audience in town of Lice, which the delegation also and Germany are massive arms suppliers to Trevealed a perceived lack of international minrf Overseas icadm arc always interested news coverage inFreedom. We therefore set visited, had been flattened. the Turkish government ixj |reJand, fascism/racism, industrial news Because ofUus policy of transportation from out to rectify the situation. We fed we have The comparison is made by Mr Cheverton and newt of specific anarchist organisations, the land to the cities, the city of Diyarbakar, made progress, last year carrying articles on a between the plight of the Kurds in Turkey and Articles can then be translated (where die Kurdish regional capital in Turkey, has dozen or so countries with news either of the the wartime Jewish resistance in the Warsaw possible) and seat abroad. Clearly we also do had a population rise of one million in the last movement abroad or information of interest to ghetto. The Turkish regime argues that to give not want to duplicate wort which is already year. The population is now I V4 million. Even our readers. We also started 'Focus oo being done and we are keeti to co-ordinate the Kurds self-government would be to cut off particular regions and countries. in tilts city, where the human rights team were a finger of the unitary state. with comrades already involvedin this area. held, there has recently been more than a We are now getting into our unde. A steady Finally, a warm (hank you to all those Guy Cheverton asks the Turkish anarchists flow of shorter articles will conunue to appear dozen killings by "persons unknown*. to make their views known to us on the comrades who have responded to our requests While the team itself was treated in a firm and there will be focuses on the farmer USSR, for help with translating material. We now Kurdish question. “How”, he says, “do trade and the Middle East during the next few and slightly rough fashion, two Kurd women anarcho-syndicalists operate when their every have a working network to cover mostjournalists with the team were, says Mr months. languages. More help will of course be move is the focus of death squads?’ Guy tells Cheverton, "beaten black and blue, and one welcome. We are n calling for a huge me that his trade union contacts involved in 01 had her haad smashed. Both were threatened How you can help commitment, just an indication that you are the Kurdish human rights campaign would be with death if they reported the incidents to the What you read in Freedom is one halfof the there and may be available to help, time glad to send speakers to interested anarchist or equation. We are also now on a regular basis permitting, etc. p*per”. libertarian organisations. Those interested sending information to our comrades We look forward to a positive response. Of the fourteen villagers arrested with the contact* Gay Cheverton, 62 Westbouroe overseas. We are therefore asking readers to The InternationalSection team when the village of Birek was burned, Avenue, Hall (Id: 0482 861679). ------14. uu /C/W ------J . u u I m H Guy lells us “six were killed overnight”. BB T/ 8th January 1994 • FREEDOM REVIEWS 1 / — BOOK REVIEW — Through the anarchist press1 t was at the annual Freedom Bookshop I hope people won’t accuse me ofbecomm Fugitive Writings Iparty when it occurred to me that it was a parochial, for the news that is dished out in th* good time to think about new year resolutions. national press is already tendentious stuff and ' Fugitive Writings ‘Anarchism’) as a Freedom Press Anarchist It was probably the good company and as long as it has not become compulsory to * by Peter Kropotkin, edited by George Classic, edited by Nicolas Walter. Woodcock sparkling conversations which induced the read their wretched propaganda I shall not be Woodcock has used Baldwin’s version which contains thought, although I have been thinking about sent to a place of correction. Black Rose Books, paperback, £11.99 minor errors and alter ations and major is for some time previously, that I shall stop omissions. The essay is a useful exposition ofreading any other than anarchist literature, that But that is as maybe. For I am reliably is newspapers and periodicals, for the coming informed that the law-making industry has olume 10 in the ‘Collected Works of Peter Kropotkin’s political and economic views. ‘Anarchist Morality’ was first published in a year and that I shall experiment relying never been so busy, that ministers now first VKropotkin’ being published in Canada is entirely on news percolating through the commit atrocities then have a law passed to collection of five essays, with individual French anarchist magazine in 1890, published as a Freedom Pamphlet in 1892, and anarchist press. In other words, I will not make their action legal and even if it is played prefaces and a general introduction by George bother my head with the news unless I read it according to old Erskine May (look it up) Woodcock. The title is curious, for none of the frequently reprinted. Woodcock has used Baldwin’s version, which again is drastically in Freedom. I am one of those rare people who these gangsters can push through their items is minor or obscure, all of them were abridged. The essay is a useful exposition of haven’t got a television and only turn on the government by decree in less than a day. serious writings, four of them have been Kropotkin’s ethical views. radio to listen to the weather forecast and published many times, and the texts of all have although people around me listen to the radio It was good to meet so many anarchists been taken from two widely circulated ‘Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal’ and all day long I would be more interested to tune crowding out Freedom Press, and of course I previous American collections - Roger N. ‘The State: Its Historic Role’ were lectures in if it was a pirate broadcast Baldwin's Kropotkin's Revolutionary made my pilgrimage to Arthur’s court where intended to be given in France in 1896, I was reliably informed that our esteemed art Pamphlets (1927) and Martin A. Miller’s immediately published in French, published correspondent had not missed a Saturday yet Selected Writings on Anarchism and There is nothing much I can do about seeing in English as Freedom Pamphlets in 1896 and the headlines as I walk around town, but I shall in twenty years. Again there is no better table Revolution (1970). 1898, and frequently reprinted. Woodcock has talk in London. ‘Must We Occupy Ourselves with an try to avert my eyes as much as possible. used Baldwin’s version of the former, which Should Major resign, I would wait to be Examination of the Ideal of a Future System?’ was yet again drastically abridged, and was a long memorandum which Kropotkin officially informed until Freedom deigns to I hope I can keep this up for a year even to Miller’s version of the latter, which was announce the great news, although come to the extent that if there was going to be an write in 1873 in a vain attempt to convert his complete - it was taken from the 1969 comrades in the Chaikovski Circle to think of it Harold Wilson could still be prime anarchist revolution in this country I shall only revolutionary socialism. It was seized when he translation by Vernon Richards, which is minister for I cannot rememberFreedom ever believe it if I see it printed in Freedom. was arrested in 1874, preserved in the police currently available as a Freedom Press having disclosed to us that he wasn’t John Rety archives until the Revolution of 1917, and first Anarchist Classic. The essays are useful published in Russia in 1921. The first English expositions of Kropotkin’s scientific and translation (by Victor Ripp) was published by historical views. Miller, and this painfully literal version is used So, of the five items in the book, one isn’t Afow aaailaMe pcam tfteedom by Woodcock. The essay is relevant to the really worth reprinting, three are inferior Freedom to Roam Violence and Anarchism ideological history of Russian Populism and versions, and two are easily available elsewhere. Meanwhile the ‘Collected Works Harold Sculthorpe various authors to the intellectual biography of Kropotkin, but Short, witty essays by a rambler on tne problems A supplement to the Freedom Centenary Series. it was very much a tract for the times and is of Peter Kropotkin’ ignores dozens of his encountered in walking in the countryside as the An attempted assassination of Hendrick rather a waste of space here. genuinely fugitive writings - articles and military, large landowners, factory farmers and, Verwoerd, prime minister of South Africa, was ‘Anarchist Communism: Its Basis and pamphlets which have never appeared in book more recently, water companies try to exclude greeted by a Freedom editorial headed Too bad form. The editorial material is readable but walkers from the land. he missed'. Principles’ was first published in an English 68 pages ISBN 0 900384 68 9 £3.50 79 pages ISBN 0 900384 70 0 £2.50 liberal magazine in 1887, republished as a unreliable. Altogether this is a very disappointing addition to a rather Freedom Pamphlet in 1891, and frequently disappointing series. rm m press reprinted; it is currently available (with the MH 84b Whitechapel High Street, London El 7QX Encyclopaedia Britannica article on Spain: Francisimo to Felipisimo The Raven 23: Spain Under Franco, and After & Emma gordos to sustain the Spanish love bug; and discontent with Puerto Real in the 1980s; the strikes in education by a quarter Goldman (avoice fo r women?) the dictatorship breaks out, and, adds Brenan: "... the of a million teachers which hit centres in Barcelona, Madrid, Published by Freedom Press at £3 (post free) democratic orchestra strikes up again, every instrument the Asturia and the Canary Isles in the late 1980s; and an magnificently out of tune, while the streets are littered with outline of the successes of the CGT (breakaway CNT) at the s I was doing this review a small news item caught my eye discarded novias and mistresses”. SEAT motor company. AU Spain’s Interior Minister, Jos6 Luis Corcuera, an old Hence Spain in this century has staggered from the The above account was first published in Lausanne in 1988. friend of the Spanish Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, ‘dictadura blanda’ of Primo de Rivera to the Republic in the In another essay Neil Birrell (‘La Fundacion: reality and confirmed that the Socialist Prime Minister had just accepted 1930s; then Civil War leading to the dictatorship of General appearance in Spain’) tries to bring us up to date. He is his resignation. Senor Corcuera had staked his job on a law Franco (1939-1975) followed by a drift (rather than a depressed, as many of us are, by the disputes both within the allowing the police the right to enter homes without a warrant, ‘ruptura’) into a kind of democracy under a constitutional Spanish libertarian movement and in the anarcho-syndicalist but the country’s Constitutional Court had rejected key monarch. Today with the ‘Socialist Party’ (the PSOE) in CNT, which have gone on since the death of Franco. Yet he clauses in the law, saying they infringed citizen’s rights. power since 1982, pursuing the policies of ‘Felipisimo’ of is hopeful that the CNT could once again become a force of Of course this police right of entry law was designed to deal Prime Minister Felipe Gonzalez, Spain is coming to look inspiration, and be says: “... it will need to get in amongst the with drug cases, yet the application of such a law would have increasingly like an elective dictatorship. people of Spain, abandon its dogmatism ... without been open to obvious cases of abuse by the police with fishing Jos6 Peirats in his Raven essay ‘Spanish Anarchism in Exile’ abandoning its principles, which it must reapply to the new expeditions, etc. It would have been open season for a police commenting on this drunken drift between dictatorship and situation”. state rivalling Franco's Civil Guards at their worst. democracy says: “There was a time, in a Spain swinging When in 19631 lived in the Spanish fishing village of Deni* between progress and decadence, a thread linking the in the province of Alicante, I was puzzled by the initials CWS History on a yo-yo generations, fathers to sons, individuals and families, clans (Co-operative Wholesale Society) stamped into the Gerald Brenan, the ‘historian’, told in bis book South From and dynasties - a thread which allowed traumas to be stonework of a building in the marketplace. I wasn’t then Granada how a Spanish drinking crony claimed that the forgotten”. And if the history of Spain was to yo-yo around, aware of the impact of the co-operative movement on northern ihythm of life* in Spain was a tussle between love and so, Peirats argues, anarchism, “one of Spain’s popular Spain up to the civil war. Gerald Brenan claims: “One m*y politics. In this age of post-modernism, someone who just had manifestations”, could not be excepted. He adds: “The safely say that nowhere else in Europe has collectivisation a skin-full carousing in one of Yegen’s delightful bars can be patcbed-up rope which held the Regional Spanish Federation been so successful, yet because this work has been carriedo® considered as potentially profound pundit as the distinguished together from 1870 to 1910 and from 1910 to 1939 when the quietly in an unpolitical atmosphere little has been beard of academic historian. As Brenan recounts; this view argues that civil war ended tragically, was vacillating wildly like the lines it”. Under the influence of the federalist principles of W J in Spain every dictatorship is born under the sign of Venus, of a cardiogram”. Margali the co-operativists had set up eight large co-operafl^ and homo bispanicus is forced into a period of compulsory This rope broke at the National Congress of the CNT in 1979 shops, each with its caf6, billiard room, gymnasium, readmS happiness as he becomes aware of the opposite sex and goes in Madrid, and has been unravelling ever since. Peirats calls room, cinema and baths, in Barcelona in 1933. Like the Dem* off on the paseo after polishing his shoes and cleaning his it “a real disaster a clear split!” CWS I suppose all these were closed down after the civilj*^ teeth under the watchful gaze of the Civil Guard, whose shiny but in the 1950s, in the Basque country, an industrial co-op winged hats represent las alas de Cupido. \Principles without dogma ’ was established which later moved to Mondragtin. Mikel& t But the real Don Juan who on his off days goes round The second Raven contribution, ‘Which Way Forward for the reviews the status of this now massive industrial co-opera^ breaking voting urns, on his on days needed plenty of pesetas CNT?\ charts the developments after the 1979 National complex inRaven 23, detailing the history of the in bis pocket io be effective with women. Love would be the Congress - the problem of trade union elections; more splits; which grew quietly under the Franco regime. k order of the day, and Brenan says:“... for many people utopia the ‘Reunification* Congress of 1984; the battle over the CNT Mike Long has covered the literature relevant to the would have already arrived if it were not that to provide for name; the judicial process and the claim to legitimacy by the co-ops very thoroughly. Again, just as in the CNT and these things more money has become necessary”. No rise in CNT. This account ends by describing the activities of the much else in Spanish society, he tells us of a split bet**£ salaries can keep up with the demand for pesetas, duros, CNT, including the serious impact of the organisation in those who want the co-ops to return to the basics of FREEDOM • 8th January 1994

ways to redefine our everyday life. Big Ian Borrows’ comment Freedom ( , 27th — LETTER FROM ROTTERDAM — Brother’s ideological grip on the past and the November 1993) on the ongoing process of future can only be combated by the revitalisation of our authoritarian society - recognition that the authoritarian social firmly controlled by Big Brother himself - has More of Big Brother context in which we find ourselves made us libertarian readers clear again that impoverishes our lives. So our answers can be Power is determined to liquidate our personal work, and trade unionism refuses to loosen its cybernetic kind is nothing else than a found in a different approach to daily life, not lives. In the roaring ’60s Raoul Vaneigem dominant grip on the organisation of labour democratised and dehumanised Stalin or Mao. in mindless activism or in writing intellectual showed us that the rise of “the great and wages. Therefore the local governments tracts in academic armchairs. We’ll have to Kafkaesque machine of cybernetics” has and the unemployment bureaux are allowed Tan Borrows is right when he notices that we learn about the nature of authority, our given way to planners, managers and only to ‘create’ jobs that don’t compete with JLare becoming more isolated in this atomised relationship to it, its trajectories and organisers who form a new rational elite, the ‘official’ jobs in society. Since the society. Unfortunately many leftists still tendencies, and how we can fight it As Feral specialised in the dictatorship of production sector is closed for the jobpools, consider this atomising as a result of the Faun recently rightly wrote (Anarchy no. 38, consumption. This cybernetic organisation of the new jobs are ‘necessarily’ created in the ongoing individualism of the people and their 1993): “Radical theory is thinking becoming consumption (in which production is reduced spheres of everyday life. In the last couple of society (a bottom-top process). This sensually integrated into an insurgent life and to the slave of consumption) urges public and years we’ve seen a rapid growth of street authoritarian explanation is useless for learning, however slowly, to express itself private planners and managers to control guards, wagon assistants, housekeepers, shop libertarians who consider the atomising of with precision and fluidity. When developed everyday life. Daily life is stolen from us and guards, safety agents, prison guards, contemporary culture as a steady growth of it cuts like a well-honed knife.” In our we’re forced to work and consume till the day environmental police officers and ticket anonymity that is forced upon us (a post-modern society culture and economics we die. Irrational rulers have become rational controllers. It’s a sad thing that the top-bottom process). Today, all of us are have become one cybernetic whole. Fighting managers, the working class has become a authoritarian society uses ‘losers’ and reduced to anonymous products on the shelves separate aspects has lost any meaning and we consuming class, creativity has become ‘drop-outs’ for the defence of its system of of the enormous supermarket we call life. need to confront this whole as holistic as it routine, routine has become force, and force production and consumption. Women, young Anonymity still means lack of individuality. presents itself. And this means finding ways has pushed us back to slavery. Our aim can no workers, migrants and other perspectiveless Life has been degraded to survival and to live authentic lives and thus promoting an longer be to liberate work, our goal must be to unemployed people are degenerated to a flock survival is the true base for any Big Brother insurgent lifestyle. The libertarian press finds liberate life itself. of ‘little masters of today’ whose only task is society. We kill time by staying at home, by itself a beautiful task here. to discipline social and personal life. More and driving to work and back home again, by more people are earning their living by closing our doors and curtains, by protecting ig Brother feeds himself with ignorance s in Leeds, in my city - that is Rotterdam interfering in the lives of their neighbours and our possessions, and by watching television Band we’ll have to learn to live a life against A- police helicopters and searchlightsclosed cities with well protected while the streets become more and more conformity, authority and hierarchy. This pollute the nightly air. They’re not interested neighbourhoods are emerging. We do all suspect. If you’re out there after eight o’clock ‘lifestyle approach’ is pragmatic and dynamic in joy-riding over here, but like giant flying know who in return receive the misery of this at night you must be either a criminal looking and will never end because it’s a continuing pitbulls they keep an eye on coffee shops and catastrophical development for victims or a coloured foreigner searching process of creativity. Your life is what you drug houses. In the subway stations you’ll find In the ’90s Big Brother is a complex system for shelter. As Ian writes, the outside has make it, not what you get Society is not where big screens telling you: ‘Hello, you’re on of relationships between managers and become something less familiar to us. In other you’re bom (Biggie’s territory), society is the television now’. Cameras follow your traces consumers - the cybernetic society - and as a words, we’re locking ourselves in our own libertarian network you build yourself. Let us in the public spheres, and the army of ‘Minor result it has become more and more difficult prisons and are screaming for Big Brothers to fight Big Brother, but let us also find out who Big Brothers’ is gradually increasing. As in to recognise the face of Big Brother himself. protect our alienated life. he is, where he lives, and when he strikes. the United Kingdom, unemployment in the You encounter Big Brothers everywhere in The degrading of everyday life has sold us Should we be pessimistic? I don’t think so. Netherlands has reached its post-war climax your personal and daily life and I don’t need the cybernetics and with bowed heads we When fighting Big Brother I always and the ruling Christian and Socialist to explain who they are. There might even be consume and consume until we die (even remember Vaneigem’s optimistic words in his politicians have introduced a new strategy to a Big Brother inside of you. If you’re death has become a commercial activity since The Revolution o f Everyday Life(1967): combat the unemployment. Local you have to save money for your own funeral). unemployed these days, there’s a big chance “Utopia? Not in the least. Enough whining governments have developed the so-called you’ll become a member of Biggie’s family: Christmas popping today is the ultimate and excessive expression of survival in condescension! a There’sno-one who does not cling ,‘jobpools’ for people who have been you’ll get paid and you’ll feel yourself a true with all his might to the hope of such a world. unemployed for many years. As anywhere in working member of society again. Big Brother consumer society. Many, of course, lose their grip on this hope - but authoritarian consumer societies, capitalism enjoys an enslaving society because it gives The Orwellian concept of ‘1984’ is still they put as much desperate energy into falling as has a long history of eliminating unskilled him a human face. But this Big Brother of a improving and it won’t stop unless we find (continued on page 7)

original idealism, and ‘experimentalists’ who, he says, “see and pioneering new forms of freedom - and so it is that her This sense of the ‘degeneration brought by modern life’ is Mondrag6n not as static but as continually developing, and so splendid, frank autobiography Living My Life ... is her vital to Peirats’ critique, and elsewhere (Preface toAnarchists requiring constant innovation and change to keep the outstanding work”. in the Spanish Revolution) he says: “... the Spanish anarchists founding principles alive”. In Long’s view the co-ops work The Anglo-Saxon feminists have never forgiven her for [in the civil war] suffered from an excessively urban democratically, based on one worker, one vote, and within enjoying bedding her men, and being bedded by them. They orientation in their revolutionary, or rather insurrectionary, each co-op authority is vested in the General Assembly of will never forgive her for upholding the value of motherhood, plans.” Workers, which consists of all co-op members. Daily and sneering at the empty careerism of middle class women. Neil Birrell agrees with me that the libertarian spirit is operations of the co-op are dealt with by an unpaid elected Instead she identified “with the needs and desires of the somehow woven into the Spanish character. When he argues board, the Governing Council, which meets each morning, working class women she helped organise”. for “principles without dogma” he is calling for rules or values after which its members join their workmates on the shopfloor which are sensitive to social situations. Julian A. Pitt-Rivers, for a day’s grafting. Anarchism in modern times the anthropologist, sees an important element in the history Mike Long feels that some of the recent literature on When I was first in Andalucia in 1964 - the year of the of Spain as a development in the relationship of the pueblo Mondrag6n, such as Roy Morrison’s Mondragdn, a celebration of Franco’s ‘Twenty Five Years of Peace’ in (village) to the state, in the conflict between the values of the co-operative system (1991) and William Foote Whyte’s Spain - they were digging up the vineyards all over and community and those of the central power and its allies. He Making Mondragdn, are weak on criticism. Long lists ten planting orange and lemon groves. Today there are mountains sees the CNT as a national organisation and the snags in the co-ops from the anarchist point of view, including of lemons rotting unsold and poisoning the land and streams anarcho-syndicalist doctrine of the General Strike as part of the growth of bureaucracy and hierarchy, the lack of job outside Estepona. That’s progress! this urban trend, and he claims: “The resistance to becoming rotation, employment of non-members, substantial pay It is also a kind of progress that brings the drug crisis that a national organisation is very strong, for it was recognised differentials, absence of industrial unions and right to strike. got Setter Corcuera, the Interior Minister, the sack, and is that it involved the sacrifice of essential value, the sovereignty But these are. reservations, and Mike Long is right to argue ruining big towns like La Linea in the south and the fishing of the local community.” The state continues to encroach that “participatory democracy and efficiency are natural ports in Galicia in the north. It is the progress of market control over the local community, state education, television partners”. economics which created 25% unemployment in Spain, the and other media carrying the urban culture, but Pitt-Rivers highest rate in the EC. To tackle the drug crisis the says “the fundamental values of Andalusian society persist, Red blooded Emma government tried to introduce draconian measures, giving the for they are common to the whole culture, the whole The last two essays focus on Emma Goldman. David police free right of entry into homes without warrant. To deal population of the south”. Goodway, the academic and organiser of the anarchist strand with the economic problems the Gonzalez government is While it is possible to see this shift to central control as part of the History Workshop, has written an informative brief preparing labour reforms, which will represent an assault on of the march of progress, a glance at the Balkans shows that biographical account of her life, especially in exile. Indeed, the workers. local communities can soon start to reassert themselves. given that she left her homeland (the old Russian Empire) at Last week El Pals reported that “hundreds of thousands of In a letter in Emma Goldman quoted in The Raven, Aldous 16, she was almost a lifelong exile. In 1925, she did gain people had turned out into the streets against the proposed Huxley wonders if new small scale technology could British citizenship through a marriage of convenience to labour laws” and for work. In all there were fifty undermine “the tyranny of political and big business bosses”. James Colton, an anarchist miner from Scotland. demonstrations throughout Spain. El Pais notes the But he laments that “... so obsessed are modem men by the She never much cared for England or the English, who she anarcho-syndicalist CGT was active in the campaign in idea of centralisation and mass production that they can think found frigid, thriving in “the barren spiritual soil” of their Barcelona and Valencia region. in no other terms”. institutions. It seems she much preferred the Americans and We seem to have come a long way, but we haven’t got very Another possibility is Mike Long’s Mondrag6n - which he the Russians, and pined for the South of France “where one far! quotes as standing for “a revolution without violence built might meet people with red blood in their veins and not water A clue to what both Jos6 Peirats and Neil Birrell are groping from below”. But this approach has its own flaws and would which the British certainly seem to have”. for is in the text where Peirats says: “Our activities had created be too much of a compromise for some of us. This unashamed lust for life seems to have put her out of a collective way of life, a small traditional civilisation which However things shape up in the years ahead, it seems to me step with most of the more puritanical Anglo-Saxon could be disrupted but not broken. The civil war, with its huge that anarchism is central to all the arguments and

Dear Editors, When last writing you I said, in replying member of the LSE anarchists threatened to Tim Francis, that the principles of the Anarchist Organisationto knife Mike Mallett; Ralph Rosenbaum Obscure and French Revolution included an Dear Comrades, (who has subsequently boasted of having ‘unspoken’ condition. In your issue of Nick Heath (11th December) rightly Alliance (which Nick Heath been employed by the CIA to disrupt the 11th December the word underwent a subsequently joined) as a pro-Vietcong boring points out that 1 conflated two splits British left) amongst other things used to Dear comrades, magical transformation into when T said that his entry‘into Big Flame group; and a section of the London pass anti-NLF members of the ‘outspoken’, making nonsense of the membership (which, though voted off Historians of anarchist factions may was at the same time as Keith Nathan’s Committee of 100 notes saying that make use of the recollections of Peter sentence. to the WSL, and this time correctly the executive, was in ’69 left in charge of while meetings were on he was sending In a recent correspondence I pointed the property of the group and so expelled Neville, Nick Heath and Laurens Otter of identifies the WSL. (It was he not I that down friends to beat up their wives and the AFB, the ORA and the rest, twenty out that there are no social freedoms had said Keith had joined the SLL so his all the anarchist members) expressed children. I had to explain to him which do not interfere with the freedom support for Mao. or thirty years ago. But it strikes me as magisterial insistence that it had by then somewhat forcibly the distinction obscure and boring. Can’t it be stopped? of others; freedom and limitation come There was considerable pressure. IS between believing that anarchism can changed to the WRP is hardly relevant) Donald Rooum together, so that the exercise of any ORA may not have finally decided — (now the SWP) sent a party to try and only come by non-violence and being a fpeedom imposes a corresponding until October ’ 72—to adopt the Platform; break up a Freedom meeting at Easter personal pacifist. limitation. Here we have a neat but the document was translated and ’67, alleging that anyone who did not ORA was intended to represent those (Pfease feep sending inillustration of that point. For writers to circulated in December ’71, and also a support the NLF was an American agent. who insisted that anarchism was about enjoy freedom of communication number of dissenting arguments, A faction pushing this line broke up the revolution, but that this did not mean your (etters and printers have to accept the limitations including my own, were circulated Committee of 100 a few months later. tail-ending stalinists. donations entailed by accurate transcription. during that winter, and it was clear by the It got quite rough. One pro-NLF Laurens George Walford spring that only a minority rejected it, and the syndicalist members left. We had in fact opposed the initial adoption of the name, which had each will be not less than 160 pages Freedom Press Overheads suggested the direction in which the Unpublished News from and the cover price will be £5 each Fund group was going.As in French the noun (post free to readers ordering from precedes adjectives and adverbs, the letter toThe Freedom Press, cash with order Stirling, AD, £6; Hamburg, PG, £5 literal translation overstressed Angel Alley please). More details in the next Frating, AG, £100; Oxford, VH, £1 issue. organisation suggesting a move away Leeds, CO, £6; Hamburg, PG, £2.50 from being a ginger group. Guardian ecause of the Great Shutdown of Sheffield, JC, £10; Wolverhampton The document was written in the ’30s How can anyone be expected to learn the postal services this Christmas JL, £2; London, PL, £50; Norway, FR B £3; Tonbridge, BL, £6; Lancaster, JA and the fact that the French paper difference between right and wrong from the list of donations to the end of published it in May ’72 did not mean it December in fact had to be closed on DONATIONS £10; Pinner, LOM, £4; Harrow, MB either politicians or clergymen? They £4; Saltburn on the Sea, TE, £3.50 was unknown before; indeed I was in the spend so much of their time telling lies - 23rd December. We mention this for 1st - 31st December 1993 early ’50s a member of the FCL, from the benefit of those readers who Winterthun, Switzerland, KS, £8 politicians about this world, clergymen London, PCW, £5; Cambridge, TG which the French ORA was descended, about the next - that the state and the renewed their subs and sent Freedom Fortnightly and at that time I would have endorsed donations in the last week of £6; Gateshead, GD, £5; London church must take much of the blame for Fighting Fund REM, £6; Bolton, DP, £2 the Platform. December. They will appear in the the ethical corruption which pervades so Stirling, AD, £11; Frating, AG, £100; Crowborough, SR, £3; Swansea, LR Curiously, however, Nick omits to first list for January. Meantime our much of our society. Abingdon, MB, £15; London, PL, £1; Troy, New York, DW, £13 mention the major ommission in my warm thanks to all who have But the media must also take their share £50; Bridgton, RG, £2; Tunbridge, London, PS, £1.50; Rotterdam, Vrije letter the reason for the formation of of the blame. The stream of spectacle, contributed to our three funds, plus BL, £6; Wolverhampton, JL, £2; the special Damage Repair Fund, a Bond, £S0. 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Both volumes have been Beckenham, DP, £40. £6; Beckenham, LM, £40. of the SWF supported the NLF and left on! compiled with exhaustive Total = £398.00 Total = £209.00 to form the Anarchist Syndicalist Nicolas Walter introductions by David Goodway and 1993 TOTAL = £1,516.00 1993 TOTAL = £1,127.00 22nd April - Anarchism and the Gift Economy (speaker: Michael Murray) Red Rambles FREEDOM AND THERAVEH London 29th April - General discussion Sunday 1st or Monday 2nd May - May Day SUBSCRIPTION Picnic in Derbyshire Anarchist Forum 6th May - Anarchism and Utopia (speaker: A programme of free guided walks in RATES 1994 Meets Fridays at about 8.00pm atJasoiy Wilcox) The Raven the White Peak for Greens, 13th May - General discussion inland abroad outside Europe Conway Hall,25 Red Lion Square, Anarchist Quarterly Socialists, Libertarians and surface Europe 20th May - Talk by a member of the Socialist airmail London WC1R 4RL (note new Party of Great Britain (specific details later in Anarchists. 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