"You are not guilty because you are m m anarchtstmtfortnightiy ignorant but you are guilty when you resign yourselves to ignorance. " Guiseppe Mazsini FreedomFIFTY PENCE (1805- 1872) Vol. 55 No.6 19 MARCH 1994 THE LASER GUN this year. Such a weapon could easily - made in Britain? be copied for production elsewhere". part from the Sunday Times which could cause instant incurable e are constantly, and rightly, report (quoted in Freedom, ‘No blindness are being manufactured A reminded - now with a film - of More Hiroshimas (perhaps)’, 22nd and could soon proliferate through W the ‘Holocaust’, the example p a r January) the media have shown very the world’s trouble spots”. little interest in the warnings and excellen ce of man’s inhumanity to man, but there is very little interest, pleadings of the International “Laser weapons are silent; their beams are Commission of the Red Cross (ICRC) totally invisible and their effects let alone indignation, shown in the to have the laser gun banned. The Instantaneous, making it impossible for West for the two atomic bombings on public, it would seem, is much more human targets to defend themselves.” Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the block interested in the excavations and bombing of the civilian population (by exhumations at 25 Cromwell Street, It would appear that military conventional bombs) of Dresden and Gloucester. laboratories in the US, Russia, Hamburg. (Indeed the Brits recently Be that as it may, we are more Britain and France have been (continued on page 2) interested in the potential of the laser working on “blindness’ weapons for gun, more horrific, more cold-blooded some years, not only to counteract and sick than the actions of the ‘mass’ their effect on their own equipment murderers in Gloucester or in but also for ‘offensive use’. The Paper-W ealth- Hebron, because it is the dream-child According to the G uardian's report, of our society’s respected scientists, the Red Cross appeal made at the end Producers are now technologists, industrialists. of last month (we have seen no reports of government reactions) was A h ead h e G uardian (19th February) probably prompted by the fact that ccording to a report issued by the Treports from Geneva some of the the US “may begin manufacturing A Corporation of London in ICRC’s warnings: “portable laser guns laser guns, mounted on an M-16 rifle, conjunction with the London Business School, the City’s financial services industry accounts for more than a quarter of UK gross domestic product (GDP). And this, according to NEW DEAL FOR Professor Richard Brealey of the LBS, was larger than manufacturing in revenue terms. PART-TIME WORKERS? So what do those 120,000 busy bees NOT WITHOUT WORKERS' MILITANCY! employed in the City's square mile ‘produce’ which is so profitable? he Neanderthal members of the and hire as he pleases the part-time Shipbuilding - no, shipbrdking TTory Party are up in arms at two workers, and no holiday pay or commissions; international insurance judicial rulings: one gives part-time redundancy, no insurance and no ‘earns’ about £1.8 billion a year and workers the same rights as their minimum rate of pay. And for the as much from Forex (foreign full-time fellow wage slaves; the full-time workers: if the bosses have exchange) trading; and the Stock got to p ay in su ra n c e a n d holiday pay, second limits the maximum number Exchange s international trading of working hours to 48 in the week. make ’em work more than 48 hours a system is “the other main success The first ukase came from the Law week and employ fewer workers, sto ry ”. Lords by a four to one majority; the which m eans less of the silly frills like Thats very good news! But can we second was a Brussels directive from holiday pay, sick pay and National Insu ran ce. on ^11 the output of paper the European Union. Produced in that vital ‘square mile’ The notorious Tory MP William (Bill There was old Bill-the-Neanderthal- which obviously makes a few people to his friends) Cash who always man explaining that if Britain was to very rich though we are sure they appears on ‘Newsnight’, let the cat out survive we must be able to co m p ete don t eat any of that paper. They too of the bag when, as to be expected, he with the developing Far East and this rely on the real producers ofw ea lth . denounced both decisions (so for old means wages must also com pete. the under-paid farmworkers to start Bill not only is Brussels out of order This will prove somewhat difficult, With, and all those engaged in but even his own Law Lords) and his we imagine, since the wages in some Providing the services we all need for reasons are the usual ones - which of these countries are about $2 a day a civilised existence. When re!j certainly meet with the approval of — not £2 and not per hour! realise that they ^ rf deClde to do No possible fr e e m a rk et caprtalist producers of wealth an ^ b u t i o no f most of Major’s cabinet: namely that something about the ‘redJ stn employment of labour must be solution exists so long aS e Is - - - • * ■■ . . f n n n t in u e 0** d P&QB 2 ) w e a l t h ”? w EDITORIAL COMMENTS FREEDOM • 19th March 1994

THE LASER GUN - made in Britain? NEW DEAL FOR PART-TIME WORKERS? NOT WITHOUT WORKERS’ MILITANCY! (continued from page 1) following the technology's development erected a status to ‘Bomber’ Harris’s (that is of the portable laser gun). He (continued Jrom page 1) get work, any work, even at slave labour memory.) thinks the ICRC is right to raise the issue a vast difference in the standards of living pay - potential scabs) are the only It would seem that the brainwashed of legal control (note: not of abolition) between East and West, as at present. practical demands, coupled with direct public cannot see that the scientific “because if this form of weaponry gets out Even within the ‘prosperous’ West, where action, that can even justify their killing of man by man is just as heinous of control it could introduce a new and all the former Central European countries continued existence. and sick as the Holocaust and the various unnecessarily harmful form of warfare" are wanting to join the European ‘club’. The unions know full well that the Cromwell Streets, Hebrons, Wacos, et (our italics). Germany’s neighbour Czechoslovakia is a employers will get round the Law Lords’ alia. Until society will condemn, banish Presumably for Rupert Pengelley, “some ukase about part-time workers’ rights those scientists and technologists who case in point An industrialised country, weapons are more unnecessarily harmful but the workers’ wages (according to a simply by sacking them shortly before are prepared to engage in the than others" - surely we are living in a they have worked two years (when their development of even more ghastly news item on BBC World Radio) are a worldwide madhouse! sixteenth of what a German worker gets equal rights with full-time workers weapons of destruction, as enemies of operate). And as for the 48-hour week, mankind, it will go on and the merchants nd last but not least, the Ministry of in the same job. of death will go on profiting from it. The ‘free market* is a fiction of the that surely can be fiddled by a bit of skilful A Defence when approached said it was book-keeping! All these new weapons are, after all, good aware of the ICRC’s concern but would capitalist fundamentalist sect. The fact is for business. Ministers who have been give no information on its own research it doesn’t work. After all, is not the USA appearing before the Scott Inquiry into and the Royal Navy’s programme. threatening sanctions against Japan s we write, young working women who the supplying of military weapons and For those readers who have forgotten unless they open their markets to reduce Abecome pregnant are now legally equipment to Iraq right up to their what the laser gun’s function is, we quote the export-import imbalance? entitled to all kinds of benefits at the invasion of Kuwait emphasised that an again from the Sunday Times feature of employer’s expense. Needless to say, important consideration was the number 9th January: The purpose of the laser ut the other basic fact is that the latest when top CBI spokesmen were of jobs dependent on this dirty arms gun is “to blind enemy troops byBruling from the Law Lords and interviewed on television’s ‘Newsnight’, as business. No such consideration, burning out their eyes". Brussels will not work so long as there are to be expected they were not alarmed. All however, for the 100,000 and more And in our 22nd January editorial four million unemployed, most of them they said was that they would obviously miners who have lost their jobs as a result comment we maintained that all involved desperately looking for a job, and trades employ fewer young married women! of the privatisation of the electricity in the research and development of the unions which are impotent so long as they When will the workers of the world industry. laser gun should be named and cannot, or refuse to, see that realise that no legislation, no articles in denounced as Enemies o f the Peoplel work-sharing, the shorter working week Freedom, will change the status quo until hat we are living in a sick society is and solidarity with the unemployed (who there is a massive revolt worldwide by all Tsurely demonstrated by the public’s should be encouraged to Join: after all, who are dependent on an employer for the hen will the tabloids, those basic needs for their survival? acceptance as normal the ‘Research and Wself-declared amis du peuple, give they are - because they are desperate to Development* into ever-more lethal less space for their ghoulish fascination weapons of destruction. Typical are the with Cromwell Street and make their comments of the editor of Jane’s readers aware of what some scientists International Defence Review who, and technologists are cooking up for the according to the Guardian, “has been future victims of war? A ‘revolution’ is not necessarily a ‘social revolution’ Storm in a Teacup he suffering which capitalism inflicts regime, because of its very militaristic nature Tupon humanity in its ruthless scramble for and what such militarism entails, leaders were profit and power ultimately culminates in a thrown into prominence and having had by surge of revolutionary fervour, the evil must virtue of the struggle control of the decision ‘THE RIGHT TO LIE’ be destroyed. This has happened time and making they were now loath to relinquish such part from George Washington, who can e know beforehand that we shall be again throughout the world, tragically not power. Adeclare hand-on-heart that he/she never Waccused of being simplistic (including ushering in a new libertarian society but only It was Domela Nieuwenhuis who pointed Bed - without lying? professed anarchist readers like Eric a change of masters. out that ‘a people in uniform is its own worst Anyway some thinkers, such as the Bosworth - Freedom letters, 5th March) when Why should this be so? The reason lies in the tyrant’, and by this he meant that the very Stimerites, declare that we should have ‘the we declare that capitalist society thrives on fact that every revolution hitherto has been a nature of a militaristic struggle subjugates a courage of a lie’. And indeed we can imagine lying about everything. Alright, not about negative revolution; by that we mean it has people. And when we consider the technology all sorts of situations where, certainly this everything! But is it not obvious that a society been a revolution against something, not a of militarism - satellite communication writer, would lie not only in his own interest that encourages tooth-and-claw competition at positive revolution for something. These systems, highly sophisticated weaponry but especially if it concerned a friend in need. ground level (cartels and take-overs, at top revolutions have taken place at times when operated by highly skilled personnel, possibly But what the media and opposition level) that maintains (not by accident nor bad people were reacting against tyranny but had operating from areas outside the country, politicians are getting all excited about, and luck) four million unemployed to add to the not yet acquired the mass understanding together with the logistic problems involved - are now gunning for Mr Waldegrave, has ‘competition’ at ground level, cannot be a necessary to ensure that the system they had then the absurdity of this violent method of nothing to do with ‘the courage of a lie’ but truthful, honest society because it is a society overthrown was not to be supplanted by an struggle becomes apparent. with their own particular interests and at war with itself. even worse tyranny. This said, nevertheless capitalism has to be vanities. Obviously the Labour opposition are Truthfulness can only flourish in a united The institutions though which the power of destroyed, but this is not merely a matter of depending on the Tory government’s society no less than in a united family. And the old ruling class was exercised were seizure of the means of production or the ‘scandals’ and corruption and inefficiency to there can be no unity without equality. In the retained by the revolutionary forces and overthrow of the state. The ideological basis win the local and European elections; the family it is by the parents replacing Victorian become the institutions though which a new upon which capitalism rests must itself first be ) power elite was able to impose its will on destroyed, ideas such as the legitimacy of 3 media to give themselves the illusion or reality ‘punishment’ by openness, understanding and of being the king-makers (one has only to see explanation. In society there is no solution so society. power, leadership, privilege, exploitation, pn) Andrew Neil of the Sunday Times on long as competition and inequality divide the Not only were old institutions of authority status, sexism, racism, and all the other values television to realise what puffed-up egos these people into the haves and the have-nots, a retained but even more fundamental old social and prejudices upon which present society is 0 media people nurture). subject we shall return to. values and relationships were retained, based. Just consider for one moment: if, as Mr One other thought on the subject. Whole hierarchy and bureaucracy remained as Unless such ideological changes take place ad Waldegrave was pointing out, in politics industries and professions in a capitalist acceptable forms of procedure, rank and status then no social revolution can occur, a revolution resulting in a change of master may almost everything was open and above-board, system depend on lying and conning. The vast still permeated society negating any 00 well occur but this would not be an anarchist 00 then why have very expensive secret services advertising industry is largely a con. But equalitarian relationships. oo in all countries not only spying on each other Furthermore, often as a result of the violent revolution. where would the law industry be if there was (continued on page 3) but within their own countries? no reason to speak anything but the truth? struggle which had overthrown the old

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lthough one can report from India the development of popular resistance to the spSffl in the collection of fuel and 20% A fetching water. Thm the release of new colonialism it is easy to lose sight of the horrendous inequalities that exist in this schooling requires an improvement in S' Inside India access of households to water, fuel and foddT society as a result of the rule, since independence, of what can only be called a prejudicial, patriarchal society. The prevailing education should enhance opportunity in In rural areas especially, efforts in ft direction of social forestry, drinking water neo-colonial elite. The field of education is a cultural norms of gender behaviour and the every sphere of public and private life supply and greening of village common lands case in point and the deep-rooted inequalities perceived ‘domestic’ and ‘reproductive’ roles How* then can one provide such an that afflict the Indian education system today of women tend to detrimentally affect the education? In the first instance the education should be viewed not merely as eliminating drudgery from women’s lives but as necessary are probably more pronounced in relation to education of girls. Negative attitudes to girls’ of the girl child and the woman, young and schooling, to maintaining them in school old, has to be viewed within the larger context inputs to improve girls’ access to and retention girls and women than they are to any other in schools. grouping in society. The evidence is should they ever start, to their mobility of development. Educational policy must Thirdly, easy access to organised childcare staggering and a massive indictment of especially after puberty, all reflect dominant address the structures and attitudes that have prevented women’s equality until now, and is crucial if families, especially among the governmental policy over the last 45 years. patriarchal values and attitudes that keep girls under-privileged, are expected to relieve girls have perpetuated and strengthened patriarchal Nationwide, female literacy stands at around and women in their place. This gender of this responsibility in the family and spare 39% but the illiteracy rate is as high as 90% prejudice has a direct bearing on many aspects values and institutions that subordinate them for schooling and education. Without amongst women from scheduled castes and of the educational system. These include women. Similarly policy should reflect a providing full-fledged daycare service.^ tribes. Further there are enormous regional inadequate facilities for girls’ education at commitment to see education promote a new particularly for the 0-3 age group, no school disparities. For example, illiteracy in Kerala is different stages, unequal access to sense of equality in the division of roles, rights educational programme can hope to become as low as 34% in some areas, but in Rajesthan ‘non-traditional’ courses, gender stereotypes and responsibilities between men and women accessible to girls in the 6-14 age group. and Bihar the rate peaks at 95%. Statistics in both the ‘official’ and ‘hidden’ curriculum, in every sphere. Fourthly, we need to address the whole issue relating to school enrolment and school negative attitudes of teachers and There are, however, specific areas of of what actually goes on in schools and attendance are equally disturbing. While administrators and poor representation of concern which demand attention and action in centres. Generally the need is for institutions about 42% of boys in the age group of 6-14 women in positions of authority and power in order to address gender inequality in to become more ‘girl-friendly\ One can gpp/y years at an all-India level are not attending the educational sphere. education. Firstly, the availability of facilities this argument to all spheres of girls’ and schools on any kind of regular basis, almost for schooling within easy reach of girls is women’s education. There needs to be an It really is about time that something was 62% of the girls in the same age group do not crucial for access to and retention of girls in increase in the visibility of women and done to change this situation. The argument go to schools or attend any centre in the school. At present 46% of the habitations projection of a positive image of the role of non-formal sector. This gender disparity is for priority to be given to developing an equal representing about one-fifth of the country’s women in history, their contribution to society education for girls and women is a demand for further accentuated if one views the rural rural population do not have a primary school in general and the Indian context in particular. social justice. In this sense it is also part of the population separately. About 47% of the rural or any centre for education. Although 95% of So too for an undifferentiated curriculum for boys in this age group do not attend school, demand for a more egalitarian system in the rural population, according to official girls and boys. Outmoded traditions and but the figure for girls not attending is 70%. general, but given the extreme prejudice that figures, are served by a primary school either myths that hinder positive development of girls and women suffer there is a case for If we then look at higher education, that within or up to a walking distance of one women and their role in national life should be special attention to gender issues. Before we bastion of privilege for the top 10% in Indian kilometre, this should not give rise to any objectively discussed in the classroom. consider what those are it is worth stating the complacency as far as girls’ education is Similarly the portrayal of women in Indian society, the picture is equally bleak. The case for girls’ and women’s education. representation of women in higher education concerned for it is necessary to recognise that epics and mythology needs critical is as low as 31 %. Further, data reveals that of First and foremost every girl and woman in the involvement of girls in sibling care and examination. all women enrolled in higher education, 55% this society has a right to access to educational domestic chores and other socio-cultural To set about some of these issues would only are in arts courses and only 20% in science facilities that will foster personal reflection, constraints make even one kilometre beyond be a beginning, but it is a beginning that is long courses. Women also tend to join lower growth and development. Secondly, walking distance for them. The need is for overdue. The crucial question, of course, is professional courses and only 6% of students education should enable girls and women to schools and facilities in all centres of whether or not the battalions of men who enrolled for engineering courses are women. gain a greater social understanding, an habitation. wield power in the educational world are How does one explain this picture of awareness of the roots of their position in Secondly, the education of girls is in a very prepared to at some point implement a series inequality? Research available on the society. Thirdly, education should provide real sense linked to the availability of water, of developments and changes that will education of women in India points to a girls and women with access to important fuel, fodder and^hUdcare facilities to ultimately change the balance o f .power multiplicity of socio-cultural and economic sources of information, particularly in the individual families. As much as 29% of the between them and women more generally. factors that stand at the heart of India’s field of personal and social health. Fourthly, entire time of a young girl in a rural area is John Shotton

‘heads', Gunter Sonnenberg and Berhard Rossner, A ‘revolution’ is — GERMANY — who were suffering from physical or psychological problems. The German state retained its inflexible not necessarily position vis-a-vis its most bitter former political Death of RAF Militant opponents, giving little faith to its relative declarations of a ‘‘refusal to escalate a a ‘social revolution’ confrontation” (Irmgard Moller imprisoned since e will one day leam the truth with regard to Kohl replaced him with Manfred Kanther (further July 1972) or the “renunciation of armed struggle (continued from page 2) Wthe events surrounding the death of the RAF to the right). A few days later the Federal Public m ilitant Wolfgang Grams (aged4 0 ) who died on Prosecutor Alexander von Stahl was thanked and (Karl-Heinz Dellwo, on behalf of some of his imprisoned comrades). The commando Katharina It may well be a long drawn out educational 27th June 1993 on a railway platform in Bad pensioned off early. In total nine state servants hung Hammer-Schmidt broke ranks on the night of process. The building of the functional Kleinen in the former East Germany. up their boots. However involutarily, the RAF 26th/27th March 1993 by blowing up a recently Early in the afternoon on that Saturday, 56 public achieved more in Bad Kleinen than in 23 years of framework of the new society within the shell completed building with an explosive charge of 200 of the old, whilst constantly resisting further order agents infiltrated the area in order to arrest the armed struggle! aforementioned and his companion, Birgit kgs. (a high-tec high security prison five days erosions of liberty of the destruction of the This episode, as annoying as bloody, highlights before its official opening). Nobody was injured .. Hogefeld (aged 36), who like him had been in the contradictions at the heart of the government welfare services may be the only sure way biding since 1984. Klaus Stein Metz had been but damage ran to 100 million deutschmarks! forward. and the authorities. Klaus Kinkel, at the time Justice infiltrated into the autonomous movement in 1984 Minister (now Home Secretary), had surprised the But we must not confuse the day-to-day by the ‘Protectors of the Constitution' The demands of eighteen hardliners who had struggle against capitalism as beingthe social political Landerneau with his initiative of 5th (Verfassungsscbutzer) and who bad made contact January 1992, “the state must be prepared for regrouped in order to discuss their position on revolution, this can only truly occur when the at the beginning of 1992 with the leaders of the RAF reconciliation ... The anticipated liberation of violence became bogged down due to entrenched understanding of the people is such that they and had put his underlings on the trail of the former terrorists is possible". In a letter to Agence positions. In addition, the various views at the heart can not only effect it, but ensure its fugitives. In a well documented work, RAF - France Presse (13th April 1992) the leaders of the of the former Baader group set out their differences establishment by their practice and Terrorismus in Deutschland, Butz Peters calls the RAF announced their renunciation "of aggression with various communiques. “The urban guerrillas relationships towards each other. actions of the various police units ‘disastrous'. The against people in the political and economic consider themselves capable of anything" wrote As Alexander Berkman wrote in his book the word ‘breakdown’ occurs most often in the media. sphere". The intentions of the liberals led to Oliver Tolmein (Woz, 21st January 1994). The ABC of Anarchism: Various errors in procedure (lack of coordination, minimum effect, amongst those prisoners who writer who claimed in the Hamburg Konkrd malfunctioning waikie talkies) are the hallmark of benefited from the new attitude were only two (August 1993) that the GSG-9 was a ‘death squad’ ‘The desperation of the masses, and (heir hatred for the operation conducted by the Federal Crime continued “the dogmatism which informs the those responsible for their misery, and the Officers (BKA) and the frontier protection group activities of the RAF is not a totality, in contrast to determination of the lords of life to hold on to their GSG-9, whose commissioner Michael Ncwzrclla what a general historic revisionism aims for . privileges and rule combine to produce popular (aged 25), who was not wearing a bull el-proof vest, RAF have assassinated about 25 people and los uprisings and rebellions. was killed in the exchange with Grams. His JVoiu CUiailaMe some 15 members since its formation in May 1970 But blind rebellion without definite object and superiors accepted no responsibility! Rudolf It can count on about 250 members. purpose is not revolution. Revolution (meaning Seiters, the Home Secretary, applauded this social revolution] is rebellion become conscious of “important breakthrough in the fight against Violence and Anarchism On 13th January 1994 the trial concerning ^ its aims. Revolution is social when it strives for terrorism". events in Bad Kleinen exonerated the t^? fundamental change." various authors Aware of (he mistakes made by civil servants in ‘Rambos' of the GSG-9 incriminated by witness*5 his department he resigned on 4th July. Helmut !f the revolution hasn 7 first occurred in the A supplement to the Freedom Centenary like the newspaper-seller Joanna Baron, mind, then social revolution cannot occur in Series. An attempted assassination of Hendrick, swears that Wolfgang Grams was shot at dp5* the social body. Verwoerd, prime minister of South Africa, was range whilst collapsed on the railway track. 1° “\j greeted by a Freedom editorial headed Too bad It is far too dangerous a gamble to say that themselves as to what they are advocating, and absence of fingerprints, removed carefully he missed . The controversy this provoked is whose orders?) by investigators, reports the revolutionary situation will politicise the take into account its possible consequences, reprinted in full. reached a verdict of ‘suicide. We have already 1*1 people as they go along, such a fundamental whether or not the desired end can be attained 79 pages ISBN 0 900384 70 0 £2.50 change in society cannot be left to chance or whether the very method they advocate and heard such allegations sixteen years ago- events. Those who advocate a violent precludes this. upheaval of present society must question BM fna M O M PRESS ReneH^j In Le Monde Libertaire• 24th FebruiO international new s FREEDOM • 19th March 1964

riting an obituary on Federica they were absorbed in official posts which WMontseny seems rather like justifying they accepted in spite of their traditional the knighthood of Sir Herbert Read. No Federica Montseny: repugnance for government functions”. But wonder nobody at Freedom Press fancied the despite all their political string-pulling it is job. Considering the life of the daughter of a doubtful if it was much use: in June 1937 the family of Catalan anarchists who joined the a life of necessary folly?CNT and UGT demanded that the collective Republican government and became Minister farms be legalised, but the Communist of Health presents as tough as task as government did slow down (but not stop) the Minister of Agriculture, Vincente Uribe, who explaining how an anarchist art critic from drift to dictatorship and one party rule on the stayed in charge until the end of the conflict, Yorkshire could accept a title. ^ Republican side. The membership of the CNT never granted permanent legal status to the Some anarchists seek to pass off Federica s within the cabinet of Largo Caballero gave the collectives. participation in the government of Largo government credibility and status, which it did Caballero in November 1936 as a folly forced not otherwise have. Montseny admitted: “I Slippery slope upon her by the circumstances of the civil war, -knew, we all knew, that in spite of the fact that Federica Montseny must have felt herself to just as some seek to explain, or rather excuse, the government was not at that time a real be on a very slippery slope. When she joined Herbert Read’s ennoblement by claiming he government, that power was in the street, in the Government her father, Juan Montseny was pushed into it by his domineering younger the hands of the combatants and producers, (Federico Urales), warned her that this meant wife (a point recently made in a review by [government] power would once again be ‘the liquidation of anarchism’. Her Anthony Burgess). co-ordinated and consolidated and, what is participation in the negotiations in Barcelona How does one sum up the life of a woman worse, with our complicity and our help, and in the May Day rising helped to confuse and such as Federica Montseny without being that it would ruin many of us morally.” disarm the workers and undermined either complacent and seeking refuge in The anarchists, in joining the Government, anarchism. Though she did claim that she expedient justification for shelving basic had lost their moral standing. Their pragmatic believed the rising was provoked by the anarchist ideals, or joining the vindictive approach also failed in May 1937 when the Communists in the PSUC (United Socialist camp that claims the Spanish anarchists who Communist Minister of Agriculture in the Party of Catalonia). collaborated in the Republican government I cabinet, calling for the oudawing of the The CNT Ministers, including Federica, felt were traitors? POUM (Leftist workers’ organisation) and the f j themselves caught up in a trap when shortly arrest of its members. Largo Caballero replied y after their names appeared in the Gaceta de that, as a militant of workers’ organisations r. , Anarchist stateswoman? Madrid , Largo Caballero raised the idea of long persecuted by reactionaries, he refused to >r No consideration of Federica can avoid her transferring the seat of government from part in the involvement of the anarchists in the dissolve any workers’ organisation ministers ... anarchist officers and policemen Madrid to Valencia, Caballero expected the id Spanish Republican government Feminists whatsoever. On that occasion Federica now talked more like officers and policemen enemy to seize the capital within days. The of may argue that, as the first woman to enter a Montseny and the other CNT ministers than anarchists...” CNT Ministers, having just joined the be ministry in a Spanish government, her backed him. But the two Communists left the It is argued, in their defence, that during the Government, felt they had been taken in. m. elevation represented some sort of advance for cabinet room and when the Republican May Day rising in Barcelona the anarchist According to Indalecio Prieto, the -an Spanish women. No anarchist can accept that ministers and some Socialists did not back ministers did their best to stop the right-wing Socialist Minister, the proposal :al this represents any kind of advance. We lose Caballero, he resigned. Communists and Republicans in the cabinet that the Government leave Madrid provoked no sleep over the lack of female representation It seems that a deal had been done between from moving the National Assault Guards a rumpus with the anarchists. He wrote: in parliament. A government minister is an the Communist Ministers and the right-wing against the workers of the CNT and UGT “Believing that they had been made ministers authoritarian representative of the state - Socialist Ministers, led by Indalecio Prieto, to occupying the telephone exchange. They were solely in order to implicate them in this grave neither the sex, the gender, the race, the colour, get rid of Largo Caballero as premier. And, out-voted. But Montseny and Caballero decision, they refused to approve it. After the religion, the politics or the ideals of the with the collapse of the Caballero wrung a concession that the measures would considerable discussion they suggested that esteemed minister makes any difference to government, Federica Montseny left office not be put into effect until the CNT and UGT we should all leave except the four [anarchist this. and the CNT experiment in government was leaders had had a chance to negotiate a ministers] who would remain in Madrid. I Her decision, and that of the other three undermined. peaceful settlement Vernon Richards claims joined in the debate, vigorously opposing that ministers, not only was a basic rejection of the “that the action of the workers m raising the formula. ‘Either we all leave' I said, ‘or no one tenets of anarchism but in violation of Communist manipulation barricades in Barcelona in May 1937 was a leaves. It would be unacceptable if some were democratic principles in that it had been taken The communist approach, on the face of it, last desperate attempt to save the revolution to be branded as cowards and others hailed as without consulting the rank and file of the was aimed at influencing international from strangle-hold by the Jacobins and the heroes. Either we are all cowards or all CNT (anarcho-syndicalist trade union). opinion and seducing the great powers of reactionary politicians who had insinuated heroes’.” The CNT Ministers, after discussing However, according to Severino Campos, Britain and France into supporting the Spanish themselves once more into positions of power. the proposal among themselves, backed down then Secretary of the Committee of Anarchist Republican government. The Soviet Barcelona in May 1937 was to the Spanish and approved the move to Valencia. Groups of Catalonia who was at the meeting diplomatic representatives, Federica claimed, Revolution what Kronstadt sixteen years This seems to have been the first of the CNT-FAI which decided on the entry of held frequent conversations with the earlier had been to the Russian Revolution.” compromise of many for the CNT Ministers. the CNT into the government, Federica CNT-FAI leaders. She said: “The advice they Juan Lopez, the CNT Minister of But later when it came to defending the Montseny at first vigorously opposed her own gave us was always the same: it was necessary Commerce, had insisted that the anarchists POUM from persecution of the Communists appointment as one of the four ministers, but to establish in Spain a ‘controlled democracy’ who entered the Caballero government had and the Negrin Government, Federica finally yielded to pressure. The other three [dictatorship]; it was not advisable to create accepted the communist slogan of the supported the arrested POUM members. anarchist appointees were not at the meeting. the impression abroad that a profound ‘democratic republic’ “in order to produce an During the trials of the POUM leaders in 1938, At a meeting of the CNT, after she had revolution was being carried out; we should impression beyond the frontiers, but never to on charges of espionage and treason, she ceased to belong to the cabinet, she declared: avoid awakening the suspicion of the strangle the legitimate conquests of the testified in their favour. After the arrest and “What inhibitions, what doubts, what anguish democratic powers.” working class”. But what part were these disappearance of Andres Nin, a POUM leader I had personally to overcome in order to accept Federica insisted that the behaviour of the leading anarchists playing in the workers’ who had reportedly been handed over to the that post! For others it could have meant their Russians was always very courteous. “I never constructive efforts? Gaston Leval (quoted in communist police, Federica Montseny was the goal... but for me it implied a break with my heard them utter a threatening word ... When Richards) says outstanding militants such as first to ask ‘What have you done with Nin?’ life’s work, with my whole past linked to the I went to Geneva in January and February of Federica Montseny “played no part in the It is curious that though she started writing ideals of my parents. It meant a tremendous 1937 to attend the Congress of Hygiene, work of the collectives. From the beginning as a young girl for the anarchist journal La effort, an effort made at the cost of many tears. Rosenberg [the Soviet ambassador] urged me Revista Blanca, she could not join the CNT But I accepted the post... on condition that I to go to Russia, saying ‘Comrade Stalin would because she was not employed by a boss. At always remained faithful to the ideals of my be very happy to meet you. Go there, Federica! the start of the Republic in the early 1930s she parents and of my whole life. And that is how You will be received like a little queen’.” She was active in the CNT, though still not a I altered the government.” said the Russians never made her a concrete Raven 24 member. Only later, on the formation of a Years after the war she admitted that she offer that would have forced her to break with o n union for intellectuals and liberal professions, personally “never had any illusions” as to the them. she became a member. After the Civil War she The Russians were very subtle in offering went to France where she was imprisoned by possibility of achieving anything in the S cience — 1 government. “At the time” she said at a later their seductive inducements. But Federica had the German puppet government and narrowly date, “we only saw the reality of the situation her head screwed on as well. She suggested, avoided being extradited to fascist Spain. In created for us; the Communists in the in a letter, that her “blood froze” in her veins exile, she became publisher of the weekly government and ourselves outside, the when on various occasions “Rosenberg CAT in Toulouse. manifold possibilities, and all our conquests suggested that I send my daughter Valencia to She remained influential in the Spanish exile endangered.” Their knowledge of how the live with his wife and children in a villa they movement and held many positions in the Communists had operated in other situations occupied on the outskirts”. This instinctive exile organisation. Last week I asked some earlier in the century made the anarchists fear emotion, expressed in a letter, endears her to Spanish anarchists who happened to be being sidelined. me more than anything. staying with me what they thought of her and S e l i Other reasons were given for the entry of the Of course, to this day there is considerable if they considered her a renegade. As they are CNT into the government: to prevent an attack criticism in anarchist circles about her active in the current anarcho-syndicalist r on the conquests of workers and peasants, to decision to collaborate in the government, and movement, they said they thought she had the EHH stop the war from being conducted in a that of the other anarchists. Vernon Richards, mentality of the ‘pequeno bourgeois’ owing to n If sectarian manner and the army being used as in his book Lessons o f the Spanish Revolution her background. But they claimed that she was the instrument of a single party, of avoiding (1972), even casts doubt on the sincerity of her a decent person and anarchist who te#g the danger of dictatorship, of cutting out later recantation. Others, like Pierre Brou6 and unfortunately, unlike La Pasionaria, had not totalitarian tendencies in the Spanish Emile T6mime, as dissident Marxists been very active in Spanish politics since the Republic’s economic and social life. sympathetic to the POUM, have claimed: 96 pages £3,00 (post free anywhere) death of Franco. ■ “The anarchist ministers became true Brian Bamford a / It could be claimed that the anarchists in 19th March 1994 • FREEDOM FEATURES — PUB TALK — Kowloon; instead they must look to poorer OUR an occasional look at some of the institutions parts in Asia . Mexicans too. And if the dominating our lives workers give ’em any hassle they just shift elsewhere to where they’re a little more ‘GOOD NEWS’ ‘reasonable’. Number 1: TNCs So Third World exploitation, that’s what COLUMN you're talking about? TNCs? isn't that the active ingredient in assembly. A Ford Escort is actually made in cannabis or something ? fifteen countries if you look at where all the Yeeees. But us too. Look at how Hoover Wish it was. No. Transnational Corporations. different parts come from. relocated from France to Scotland last year In fact, most people don’t realise it but by far the Sometimes called multinationals. But there is Sounds like a bloody expensive way to Cheers! biggest chunk of TNC investment is in the What happened to the Good News column? a difference. TNCs operate in at least two produce things if you ask me. developed world. countries by definition whilst conventionally Can it be that nothing good is happening? If Depends what you mean by expensive. multinationals operate in at least six. Go for Oh yeah ? And far how long ? this is regrettably a plausible reason in the Environmentally it’s a disaster. But this is the public sphere, it certainly is not in the private TNC because some pretty big fish get through big change which lets TNCs operate. They Fair point. the definitional net otherwise, particularly - and anarchists live in both and observe the took off in the ’60s when the jet airliner hit the LookI can see what you 're saying but all thissame values in both. Many of our actions new ones who confine their operations to a scene, another difference between them and handful of countries in the first place and who is just standard Marxism. What's anarchism straddle both spheres. We want to have the the East India Company you were on about. got to say about all this ? freedom to control our own lives, and that can still see phenomenal rates of growth in the Used to take bloody ages to get to India from early stages. includes enjoying ourselves. here and now you can get from New York to Well there is overlap between us and the left. I don’t think I am the only person, anarchist So where do they come from? Tokyo in the same time it takes to get to There always is when it’s economic talk. For or otherwise, (what is the correct term for one example, the ‘structure-agency’ dichotomy. America mosdy. Philadelphia. And communications. Satellite of our brothers or sisters still under the thrall systems. Signals go thousands of miles into The w hat ? of authority?) who gets enjoyment out of a UK? space and thousands of miles down again. glass of beer. It quenches the thirst, gives Anarchists and Marxists would tend to point Oh yes. The biggest here is Unilever. Doesn’t matter if you’re calling your next door nourishment and above all lifts the spirits - neighbour or China. And once they’re up there out the similarities between the TNCs and particularly promoting that great anarchist Thought they were Dutch the more you use the cheaper the unit cost. how they operate in the ‘structure’ of value, conviviality. capitalism.4 Agency’ theorists tend to be more Yes Anglo-Dutch. But these TNCs are only Mitsubishi has cable communication network What is the best glass of beer? You are ahead firm-specific, pointing out national and national concerns in an almost incidental way. lines 450,000 kms. long - more than the of me - if you are used to hearing me go on cultural factors which influence TNCs. Globalisation is the word. In many cases distance from the earth to the moon. about the best sort of house being the one you they’re bigger than countries - economically I would have thought anarchists would have built yourself you will hardly be surprised that Mindboggling. Where d'yafind that out then? I claim the best beer is homebrew. It’s good speaking that is. For example... gone for a bit of both. Global Shift by a chap called Peter Dicken. for you and bad for the state. So they*re not trading companies like the old You’ve got a point. In fact I think there’s an The good news is that it is both easy and Good book. Loads of statistics if you like that even bigger difference between us and the East India Company and what have you? cheap to make. Why contribute so much sort of thing, but well structured and easy to Marxist left. Take John Smith for example ... Well there are overlaps and the East India read. money to the capitalist giant brewers - aren’t Hardly a Marxist. the Guinness family some of the wealthiest Company is in some ways a precursor of the So what*s the matter with these TNCs then? TNC, but it was only interested in trade not Well how about Lang and Hines the authors people around? Why pay huge customs duty production. Everything that ever was wrong with of The New Protectionism, that book to the thoroughly hateful state when you can, capitalism. But now things are global they’re Freedom's been going on about by putting yourself out ever so slightly, make Oh come off it! Decimation of the Indian better at exploiting. For example, they just this excellent stout at a fraction of the cost? textile industry, military conquest, love Chinese working people cos they only They're not Marxists either. etceteraaaah. Don *t tell me it was just *trade '. cost £20 a week. Look at what it says here in Equipment needed: A Burco electric Well who is these days, Deng bloody washboiler (from jumble sale, car boot occy&a You start to sound like Bill Clinton. The Economist* about Hong Kong investment Xioping? in the place: “... wage rates at home are rising, rubbish skip, they are well out of fashion foi j Okay, it’s a grey line. But TNCs cover all Fidel Castro? clothes laundry). If you can’t find one you I aspects of the production process. Trade is property prices are almost as high as Tokyo’s and inflation is nudging into double figures. could use large pans on any hot plate. A I almost incidental. In fact most world trade is Not for much longer. But okay, non-anarchist thermometer. A five-gallon brewing vessel. A intrafirm. No longer can Hong Kong’s entrepreneurs radicals then. I was saying, John Smith ... make their millions from sweatshops in muslin straining bag; a linen cloth to cover the Intra what? Ha, ha ha. vessel to let vapours out while stopping flies; ... and others. Hang on. He reckons we should dropping in. Some strong bottles. (Now that i Shoving different parts of a final product all quart flagons have become unusual, the best over the place until they all come together for * The Economist, 8 th December 1990. combine the IMF and the World Bank. We must have a chat about them sometime, not get source is Grolsch bottles with their porcelain rid of them, and Lang and Hines, who see rubber-sealed washers that are secured with a : themselves as radical, say “current political strong wire clip, they are surely worth more structures will probably require considerable than their transient - though pleasant enough change ...” [my emphasis]. Very radical that - contents.) A polythene tube for siphoning. Food for Thought... one. Even Susan George, who’s generally Ingredients: well clued up, doesn’t think the IMF are as bad Five gallons of water (tap water with a; as she first thought if you read her book A Fate teaspoonful of salt or ‘mild conditioner’ will and Action! Worse than Debt. Don’t get me wrong. Apart j do, but pure well water would be better) from Smithy we’vealot in common with these Seven pounds of malt extract (Edntf Latest news from Freedom Press bookshop. pamphlets, books ... connects you to a whole chunk of the independent, alternative and dissident people, but as Chomsky said... Superflavour is best quality, but a poor man’s Covert Action Quarterly #47 (Winter *93-’94). ‘underground’,” with short, intelligent reviews of Who? alternative is a 71b tub of Meridien malt from The latest issue of this parapolitics magazine from all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff. Illustrated any good wholefood shop) the USA maintains the usual high standard. A4 magazine, 18 pages, £1.00. Noam Chomsky. American geezer. Look, just Two pounds of crushed crystal malt grain Included in this issue: 'Russia in the Winter of JC shut up a moment, you asked a question and Democracy’; Brian Abass on the Rocky Flats Half a pound of crushed black malt grain nuclear weapons plant; 'The Federal Bureau of Notes: Apologies for the incorrect price of I’m trying to answer it Chomsky says “We Half a pound of flaked maize Intimidation’ by Howard Zinn; William Blum’s Foucault’s Discipline and Punisht listed on our now have an international economy and we’re Quarter of a pound of dried hops - preferably moving towards an international state - amusing ‘Cold War Anti-Communism Redux’; booklist at £12.99, it is in fact only £8.99. The Northern Brewers, but Goldings will do ‘creating’, to quote the business press, ‘a new ‘Trilateral Spin on NAFTA*, concerning the Spirit of Freedom, The Poll Tax Riot, Against A sachet of Edme brewing yeast conspiratorial elite group of the Trilateral Separatism and Yugoslavery are now all out of imperial age with a de facto w orld Commission and the North American Free Trade print (see pamphlet section), as are the other two government’.” We don’t need to go over all Method: Bring the water to 150° farenheitafld Agreement (NAFTA); and an important article by titles by Joe Peacott. But Regulated to Death, the arguments here. We want to abolish ‘mash’ (technical term for converting tW Ward Churchull about the FBI’s possible co-written with Joe Baker, is still available. Digger governments, not reform them. starches) the malts, etc., for a couple of hoitf involvement in the bombing of Earth First! activist Tracts, edited by Hopton, is back in print at £3.00. at 150° exactly. Then add in the hops and boil Judi Bari’s car - and the subsequent attempt to Other price changes recently include: Peace News So this Chomsky guy's your new god is he ? together for half an hour. Strain through frame Bari and a fellow activist up for illegal 80p; How Children Fail (Holt) £7.99; East End muslin into a tub and allow to cool to blood possession of explosives (i.e. that they were Docklands (Fishman) £8.99. We do not have the No, but he’s worth reading. knowingly carrying a bomb in their car when it Anarchist Yearbook 1994 (£1.50). The heat. Add the powdered yeast Ferment Last question. How are we going to get ridfive of or six days. After the first day there wjj went off). A4 magazine, 67 pages, £4.50. Dispossessed (Le Guin) is again out of print. We them? are hoping to bring out a new, greatly revised be a lot of foam which you skim ofHjJa Bypass'.Cross Currents in Under-the-Counter booklist sometime this spring, as changes are Culture #1. The first issue of this review magazine You taking the piss? Listen, a bunch of discard. The tub is covered with the 1 ^ coming thick and fast. To avoid the possibility of is very much influenced by the US review ‘zine’ Nepalese workers have just taken on Union cloth. When the ferment has died ^ , Factsheet 5. The proliferation of self-published long waits and/or disappointment, please do try to Carbine and won. Zapatistas in Mexico. siphon off into the bottles, adding H and ‘underground’ magazines over the past decade include alternatives when ordering by post. French transport workers. Syndicalism and teaspoonful of granulated sugar to each KM or so means that there is plenty of material (from anarchism in general aren’t dead. You win before fastening down. Leave for a foftflig the great and the good to the piss-poor and worse) some battles, you lose others, but you’ve got and it is superb - it improves to a peak a for such a review magazine. Although containing If ordering a single periodical add 24p postage inland, to keep trying. We’ve got to keep arguing our far fewer reviews than its counterpart from the to twelve weeks and will keep at least a 35p overseas. If ordering with books add 10% towards USA, this “review and listings service for the corner and try to build social forms of Label it with a memorable date - the reP ^ postage and packing inland, 20% overseas. Cheques organisation that build self-reliance and the poll tax or whatever is happening. self-published and small press zines, comics, payable to F reedom Press please. autonomy to offer an alternative to the and good health. ff madness. In the meantime, it’s your round. HOME NEWS FREEDOM • 19th March 1994 ^

ork on the Ml 1 link road began in September to occupy the houses for the night of I5th-16tb W 1993. If it is built, the road will go through February. Wanstead, Leytonstone and Leyton. It would end Operation Roadblock: The composition was very mixed, as at all events at Hackney Wick, servicing the Blackwall Tunnel on the campaign. Perhaps a third were visitors from - and thus the routes to the Channel Tunnel. As well out of town, another third were regular and as trees and green areas, there are a large number Wanstonia rising! irregular campaigners who have been involved for of houses in its path, many of which are being a while, and the rest were people living locally. We squatted. The manifest contrast between people s campaign. Not only symbolically but also of time before they took the nearby houses. The packed into the houses, and from about five or six Immediate needs for housing and a pleasant practically, it changed the shape and size of the houses were like an island in the middle of a desert in the morning we were on the roofs, in the trees L environment and the needs of the state and struggle overnight. A tree-house was constantly of building sites, the last remaining stronghold and and barricaded into rooms. At seven in the morning, European capital for a fast and efficient roads occupied in the old chestnut tree which became a embodiment of the campaign of active resistance in bang on time, the cops turned up and sealed the network has increasingly engaged people in an site for daily gatherings. The new people that were Wanstead - the last area controlled by protesters in whole area off. This action was a very shrewd move environmental campaign that is about much more drawn in potentially provided the necessary Wanstead on the route of the road. Since on their part, for it effectively prevented those than ‘green issues*. By fighting back, people have numbers for further occupations of the land as well September, one of the houses - 8 Cambridge Park people thrown out of the houses and those coming revealed the grotesque interests behind the road and as other activities. - had functioned as a campaign office and late to the struggle from rejoining it have become still more militant in their opposition communal house, as well as a home to full-time There were 700 cops, although most were not to the insatiable demands of the roads empire, Blue Tuesday’ — 7th December protesters. By January, the Department of visible most of the time. The sheriff s bailiffs led handmaiden of capital. They have increasingly A month after the Green was reclaimed from the Transport, who leased this house and two others on the way, smashing down doors with come to recognise it for what it is: a blood-sucking developers, hundreds of people stood vigil under the same block, settled financially with the lessee sledgehammers. They and the cops would drag and vampire. the tree all night after hearing rumours that an attack and the houses became squats. A number of court carry people out of the houses once they got access. There have been plans to build a road linking the on the old chestnut tree was imminent. Two wrangles eventually failed and the occupants of 2, Quite often the bailiffs had to use giant Ml 1 with Hackney since as long ago as 1911. For hundred cops turned up at half past five in the 8 and 10 Cambridge Park (declared the cherry-pickers to get anywhere near the rooms at a number of years, a relatively small number of morning (later followed by a couple of hundred ‘autonomous free area of Wanstonia’ back in the top. Then they would start attempting to drag locals produced newsletters, held meetings, more) and fought until the mid-afternoon to remove January) were given seven days to get out The people off roofs. In the attic room in which I was attempted to lobby MPs and engaged in all the other people from in and around the tree and to prevent residents of numbers 2 and 10 had been living in barricaded, they gave up trying to smash their way ultimately futile methods to stop the road. The them from hindering the actions of the sheriff’s the houses twelve and three years respectively. through our barricade in case it fell on them. So they collective campaign began in earnest in September officers’ cherry-pickers* and the mechanical There then followed a period of sustained virtually demolished the house next door and began 1993 when the developers’ bulldozers first digger which eventually felled all the trees in the barricading which got more intense as the attempting to whack holes through our wall and appeared. Most of the people who were sitting in area. seven-day deadline approached. Firstly, huge floor with a sledgehammer. They didn’t give a toss front of bulldozers, sitting in trees, occupying sites A lot of the locals who had gathered under the tree trenches were dug and walls of mud and rubble that there were people inside. This kind of thing was and locking themselves on to JCBs with bicycle didn’t know what to expect and were disillusioned erected in the areas that we thought might be used quite common. A lot of people complained that the D-locks in September and October comprised by the action of the police. Although far bloodier to get cheny-pickers in. Second, we barricaded the buildings were being demolished with JCBs when experienced eco-activists who had moved to the scenes than this have been witnessed in London in houses themselves. Since these were such big people were still on the roofs. area a few weeks previously. recent years, many of the locals perceived the houses with so many windows, and since people Some of the lock-ons were carted away from the The Department of Transport bought all the were using them to live in all the time, it was felt buildings almost intact to save the bailiffs drilling i police as ‘excessively brutal’. Now the area is a pile houses in the way of the proposed road a long time of mud patrolled day and night by an army of that not all the houses should be completely and sawing them in the buildings. Others could not it ; ago and has been throwing people out of them for security guards. barricaded. Thus, levels of barricading varied. The be removed in this way and much time was spent d years. Once people are evicted, firms like Squibb biggest house had a specially barricaded room, trying to get people out using special tools. & Davies are brought in to make the houses The Battle o f Wanstonia whilst the smallest had all its stairs taken out, all its Despite using two giant cherry-pickers at once, it id uninhabitable: toilets are blocked and smashed, After this happened, we knew it was only a matter doors blocked, etc. Then we created a number of took the bailiffs until late afternoon to get everyone :h floorboards removed, staircases demolished, doors lock-on points. We used oil drums of concrete, off the roofs. Then they had to get people out of the and windows breeze-blocked, etc., to deter chimneys on the roof and even a twin-tub washing trees. This took till it was dark - gone six o’clock. * Sheriff s officers are no better than cops. They turn up f squatters. From the beginning of the campaign, machine to insert steel tubes for people to lock Eleven hours we successfully resisted. And those st to carry out eviction orders - on trees as well as houses! then, the defence and restoration of these houses as Since trees cannot be legally felled if there are people in themselves on to. of us thrown out and excluded by police cordons ity dwelling places was important The houses could them, sheriff s officers and developers have to use mobile We got a tip-off two days before the evictions and kept them busy with a number of attempts to break in, be used not only as ‘permanent’ homes but also as cranes (‘cherry-pickers*) to get people out. were able to mobilise about three hundred people through their lines and sit in the road in front of their ike bases for information and communication, vehicles. We knew that if they really wanted to take ? meetings and coordination. the houses, they would bring enough cops, bailiffs At first, although most local residents appear not and machinery and that the maximum we could ric Id want the road, few were prepared to get directly hold out would be a day or two. In many cases, the ven involved in action against it. There seemed to be a only way they could get us out was to endanger our f a f feeling that, since the decision to build the road had lives. you' gone ahead and since the bulldozers had already A arrived, there was nothing they could do about it. Significance o f the struggle :1. A Things began to change when the developers For those locals critical of the struggle the issue is fenced off George Green, Wanstead, to begin work one of ‘outsiders’ imposing themselves (and their rthe in that area. ‘hippie’ lifestyles) on a respectable local flies Saturday 6th November: continuing the community. This argument has been the main that ideological weapon of those locals who want the peasants’ revolt &U.UC vtlTK l best road, including James Arbuthnot the absentee MP While the houses were perceived as private, and not elatf O f (K J O o z who lives in Kensington (an irony he appears not a community natural resource, the Green was to notice). Involved locals recognise that the issue zitba recognised by locals as a common facility; its 300 Dioft isn’t where people come from but what they are year old chestnut tree was perceived as of historical, prepared to do; they simply want as many people lOU$ practical and symbolic value to the local children. as possible to help them fight the road. ling- A children’s tree-dressing ceremony organised by Eco-warriors add that one more road encourages eco-warriors and local campaigners attracted a still more cars and ruins the quality of air for large number of local families who were dismayed everyone and adds to the global environmental to find that the developers had fenced off the land /ith* crises. But perhaps the central issue is that the f wfil with nine-feet high hoardings in order to dig up the outcome of the events in Wanstead/Leyton/ earth and cut down the tree. The first few that ) , Leytonstone have consequences far beyond East Ed®; climbed over the fence were restrained by the London. Any kind of victory for those acting security men. But then the kids started climbing in. u # 5 against this road will both discourage the roads The security men and cops didn’t know what to do. industry and encourage those involved in s im ilar ltft^ And pretty soon there was nothing they could do struggles in other parts of the country (just as because they were outnumbered inside the site. Twyford and Oxleas Wood have inspired this rain People then took over the site. The kids often led struggle). aifl the way in this; for example, they demanded that same day as the action. Defence profits for the the security men release those eco-warriors they The future: Operation Roadblock! were holding. previous year amounted to £345 million. The .fef# Fountains of previous day marked the first screening of The campaign has recognised the necessity of Immediately after a mechanical digger was stepping up a gear. For this reason, a ‘national rota’, do occupied and made to leave the site, people John Pilger’s harrowing documentary about Britain’s complicity in the genocide in East dubbed Operation Roadblock, has been organised. spontaneously made use of this opportunity and Blood It starts on Tuesday 15th March, so by the time you began undoing the digger’s work by carrying the Timor. Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975 read this it may already have begun. But it is not H earth back to the roots of the trees! The digger had wo women were arrested for criminal with the support of Britain, the US and too late to get involved. The idea is for a hundred made an enormous pile of earth, perhaps hundreds T damage at British Aerospace (BAe) Australia, and has remained diere ever since people a day to turn up and cany out peaceful direct of tons, but people made a line and used bags to headquarters at Farnborough, Hants., on 23rd in defiance of ten UN resolutions calling on it action for as long as is necessary! The more people, M carry it all back to where it belonged. February, after dyeing a fountain blood red to to withdraw. In the last nineteen years 300,000 the more resistance, the more chance of stopping symbolise the effects of BAe weapons being people, one third of the population, have been this road and others like it - and transforming our De facto common land! used by the Indonesian military against the killed. Britain is Indonesia’s largest weapons’ social relationships in the process! I therefore urge 10 y Still police and security men were doing nothing to supplier and eyewitnesses have described you to contact the campaign immediately and book hinder this action. Having seized the initiative, people of East Timor. Bloody footprints were stencilled on the ground around the fountain being bombed by BAe Hawks from an earlier yourseff into Operation Roadblock. those involved quickly saw the need to act on their Events in the campaign have been consistently power and go further in reclaiming the land. So they and a message painted on the wall behind: deal. BAe has signed a deal to supply Indonesia with 24 more Hawks worth £500 characterised by an ethos of non-violence and good pushed the fence down. Once the first bit went ‘Fountains of Blood. BAe Hawks ==■ East humour; civil disobedience has been the main down, more people joined in. People acted fast and Timor deaths. No Hawks to Indonesia*. million and due for delivery in 1996. ^ , o' tactic. When you turn up on the day, you* will in unison, and eventually very little of the fence was Other members of the London-based direct The two women, Emily Johns and Andrea receive some training in non-violent methods and left standing. The police intervened very late and action group ARROW (Active Resistance to Needham, were held at Aldershot police a legal briefing, so you will know what to expect by then most of the necessary work had been done. the Roots of War), leaileted workers about the station for nine hours and reported with a view These events can be fun too! a The ‘site’ had been transformed into de facto Hawk fighter aircraft deal and held a banner to prosecution. Johnny Yen common land! By dismantling the fence the For more information on this action, the " & boundaries of the site had been destroyed. It saying ‘From BAe to East Timor: a trail of Contact: The No M U Link Campaign, Arch 211, couldn’t operate as a site any more. blood’. Hawk deal and East Timor, contact 081-347 Grove Green Road, London E ll 4AS. Tel: 111 To date, this event has been the high point of the BAe announced its annual results on the 9452 or 071-275 9150. 081-5582638. »l>8- i 19th March 1994 FREEDOM • FEATURES

here’s a man, well-known to London Treaders, who for decades helped produce — ANARCHIST NOTEBOOK — Committee in Lewisham, in admin* the modest journal Solidarity which was an “the astonishing courage and vi^0n of attempt to build libertarian links between showed by entering into the firs!0? disillusioned Marxists and anarchists. agreement with squatters in 1969. As ^ Nowadays he has a whole series of more Tower block epitaphs of his action, tens of thousands of homefSUlt parochial concerns, one of which is the would otherwise have stayed empty have ^ tower-block era in local authority housing. brought back into use and hundreds thousands of homeless people given new h He is interested in the links, as he puts it, and homelessness and dignity”. °k “between authoritarian state socialism and the insufferably paternalistic attitudes of councils Since central government is so keen appalling disaster of municipal housing in the century. One of them lives happily in Edinburgh’s Martello Court, condemned as and officials to their tenants”. condemn the level of vacant housing own10 post-war decades”. Like me, he frequently unfit in 1979, and not privatised. And they are There’s another new housing book which I by local authorities, he produces figures t meets people who explain away the right up to date, with a picture from September do recommend, which addresses the housing show that 1.9% of council houses are vacant tower-block period as a capitalist plot by the 1993 of the ‘blow-down’ of Sir Basil Spence’s situation of today rather than of the ’50s and while 4.6% of privately owned houses, and purveyors of system-building, or the result of Gorbals blocks, where one spectator dies from ’60s. It comes from a political party but, for a 15% of houses owned by the Ministry the corruption of local councillors by the big ‘blunt force trauma’. change, it’s the Green Party, and its housing Defence. contractors, or else a consequence of a general spokesman turns out to be someone else well He then provides a strategy for bringmo shortage of money for investment in housing ll the same, I have serious reservations known to veteran London readers of the defective property back into either permanent by central government. Aabout the story as told. We learn little anarchist press. or short-life use, a scheme for reducing Ken Weller insists that in fact this epoch was about damp penetration and exorbitant Government policy since 1979 has been to dependence on the horrifying expense of the result of a whole ideology (machines for heating costs, and the opposition to get local authorities out of housing, with rather bed-and-breakfast family demoralisation, and living in, etc.) with deep roots in the town-cramming in favour of regional different motives than those of the anarchists, a programme for forming self-build co-ops of decision-making classes, and can't be just redevelopment is consistendy denigrated and through the ‘Right to Buy’ policy of homeless people on each area’s listed vacant dismissed as a capitalist plot. So whenever there is a similar blanket ridicule of later persuading tenants to become sites. These include the emergency unite some British pioneer of modem architecture diagnosticians. They are wildly wrong in owner-occupiers, while preventing the carefully devised and tested by the Architype dies, Ken sends me the obituaries from the receipts from being re-invested in public Design Co-op. All these proposals are posh press, underlining the passages that show seeing Alison Ravetz’s Remaking Cities housing, and by urging housing associations carefully costed, simply to prove that the how out of touch these people were with the (1980) as continuing “the grand old English to take over the role of providers of ‘social’ charge on the public budget is less than the way ordinary families live. architectural tradition of authoritarian housing, through the fiction that they are part price of homelessness, let alone the misery. I always relish these snippets, and it has rhetorical prescriptions”, and Pearl Jephcott’s Homes in High Flats (1971) as carrying of the private sector, even though they depend To facilitate our change of heart, Bailey always seemed to me that if public authorities on the government’s Housing Corporation. provides a draft Homeless Persons and Mutual ever consulted tenants or studied the way forward an “anti-high-flat tradition”. In fact, the phrase that Jephcott continually Council rents have risen astronomically as Aid Bill, an updating of the Empty Property people really live, many of the more obvious councils make tenants the scapegoats for their and Community Aid Bill devised by Shelter housing disasters might have been avoided. heard from tenants was “I love my home” and she wrote with great sensitivity about the sharply reduced revenues, with the and actually introduced into Parliament in A blockbuster of a book has just appeared, households who were suited to high flats and assumption that those who can’tpay can apply 1987 by a Conservative MP, Ken Hargreaves. copiously illustrated and full of detail. This is for housing benefit. And even though councils His proposals are framed to win the widest Tower Block: modern public housing those in who were not. Every week the subversive television comedy from Glasgow have a statutory duty to house homeless possible support across the spectrum, and they England, Scotland, Wales and Northern families, whole categories of homeless people carefully draw on the experience we already Ireland by Miles Glendenning and Stefan about Rab C. Nesbitt reminds us that some families do bear the mark of deprivation, and fall outside the legal definition. Hence today’s have of deprived and homeless people Muthesius (Y ale University Press). It is just as dreadful crisis of homelessness. changing their miserable situation through well that it isn't quite the book that Ken Weller as Jephcott observed, “high flats are likely to include some such families; and it is asking a self-help and mutual aid. and I were waiting for as it costs £40. It lot of them suddenly to show the self-restraint, ack in 1965 Ron Bailey was one of a Anybody in this field can identify the series concentrates on the administrative and social competence and rather nice habits Bhandful of activists publicising conditions of obstacles in housing finance, planning and contractual processes in local government needed for a satisfactory use of multi-storey at the King Hill hostel in Kent, and after a long building legislation, as well as the key one of We tend to ignore the fact that there are housing”. campaign the council had to change its policy. access to sites, that stand in the way of the conflicting forces and a pecking order both in If the standard of management and They moved on to a similar campaign in Essex hopeful. After 25 years of struggle, R qq, government ministries and in town halls. maintenance in local authority tower blocks and a battle with the GLC over conditions at Bailey isn’t aiming at a national hoiSsifif Dynamic city politicians with a mission to had been of the quality taken for granted by Bromley-by-Bow. Then they shifted to the policy, merely at sensible interim strategies in empty the slums within their own municipal the affluent, much misery would have been symbolic occupation of empty property and which the housing and governmental boundaries, and able chief officers bent on spared to tenants. The authors do not cite the the settling of homeless families in 1968 at establishment, right or left, can become cutting out red tape could negotiate vast testimony of a life-long socialist, Tony Judge, Ilford in unoccupied houses earmarked for supportive rather than punitive. programmes for redevelopment, and bulldoze on his experience as Chair of the Housing demolition years later. The council responded even central government in ways Management Committee of the Greater by deliberately wrecking the interiors of y own approach as an anarchist inconceivable in today’s ultra-centralised London Council from 1974 to 1977. He says empty houses, just to keep the squatters out Mpropagandist is not quite the same. I am Britain. that “the impression, often confirmed as But squatting was here to stay. concerned to stress the concept that the first In this connection it is worth mentioning that accurate on deeper examination, is of a vast For the cities were, and are, full of principle of housing is dweller control, and in the anarchist press outside Britain, there is bureaucracy concerned more with publicly-owned property and they were, and consequently to stress the way that a few a debate, instigated by Murray Bookchin, self-peipetuation than with either efficiency are, full of homeless people, including those people manage to battle their way through the about ‘anarcho-municipalism’. The book or humanity”, and he bitterly criticises “the encouraged by the government to buy but obstacle race and assert this principle, whether provides a wealth of empirical detail useful to who, through unemployment, have been in squats, housing co-operatives or self-build both sides in this debate on the way local evicted. It is estimated that today there are groups. But I value Bailey’s efforts to administration works in practice, rather than JVem titles cwaitadle toon 40,000 squatters and the current Criminal penetrate the deafening silence of both in theory. o o o Justice and Public Order Bill is yet another government and opposition, about the Architects and planners, despite their attempt by government to shift squatting from potential for helping, rather than hindering, professional pretensions, were often low in the AGAINST POWER AND DEATH the realm of civil law and to make it a criminal people’s aspirations to help themselves. hierarchy. London was an exception which The Anarchist Articles and offence. Colin Ward provides a great deal of evidence to support There is of course no concurrent policy of Ken Weller’s thesis. The LCC Architects’ Pamphlets of Alex Comfort bringing empty property and empty sites into Department became an adventure playground edited and with an iotroductioo by David Goodway use for the homeless. In fact the Home Office of rival socialist design theories, and there was consultation paper asserts that “squatters are endless rivalry between County Hall and the Articles published between 1943 and 1986 in the journals War Commentary, Freedom, Now, Peace News generally there by their own choice, moved by ea London boroughs. Until reorganisation in and elsewhere, together with the pamphlet no more than self-gratification or an 1964 the boroughs’ bousing ambitions were Peace and Disobedience (1946). unreadiness to respect other people’s rights”. Books reviewed in squashed by the county. With the coining of This grotesque claim is enough reason for me Freedom can be ordered the GLC and its attenuated powers, the 168 p a p s ISBN 0 9 0 0 3 8 4 7 1 9 £5.00 to urge you to read Ron Bailey’s new book from boroughs' own ambitions flourished. But the o o o Homelessness: what can be done (£7.99 plus alleged economies of repetitive bousing HERBERT READ £1 p&p from Jon Carpenter Publishing, PO programmes never had a chance in London, as Box 129, Oxford OX 14PH, or from Freedom Freedom Press architects could never be restrained from A One-Man Manifesto Press Bookshop). design experimentation. and other writings for Freedom Press It is the third of a series of Green Party Policy It was quite different in Scottish and edited Mod with as introduction by David (Joodway Pathways, and if you find that amusing then Bookshop provincial cities. City bosses could ride The complete Letts o f all the article!, broadcasts, you can’t have noticed the high-minded roughshod over tedious considerations of emptiness of the housing policies of the major densities, daylighting and 'plot ratios’, and reviews, poems and speeches ofilerbert Read published opposition parties. For Bailey’s sub-title is an 84b Whitechapel High Street cram towers in everywhere on pockets of land in the anarchist journal Spain & the World and its between the railway tracks and the gasworks, successor* Revolt/, War Commentary and Freedom, immediate programme of self-help and mutual London E17QX with negotiated rolling contracts with from 1938 to 1953, together with the pamphlets aid , and it is remarkable that no other political The Education o f Free Men (1944) and programme pays any attention to the ways in « 071-247 9249 system-building contractors. Some of them, of Art and the Evolution A/a/s of (1951). course, were disgraced or jailed for cutting too which people could help themselves if many comers. 208 pages ISBN 0 900384 72 7 £6.00 provided with support and enabling — open — The authors are rightly withering about the o o o legislation instead of automatic hostility from Monday to Friday 10am-6pm the official system. subsequent urge to expunge the past by Saturday 10.30am-5pm blowing up tower blocks, when the loans to mnim This is why his book is dedicated to the late build them won’t be paid back until the next 84b Whitechapel High Street, London E l 7QX Councillor Herbert Eames, who was Conservative Chair of the Housing READERS’ LETTERS FREEDOM • 19th March 1994 Q

Dear Freedom% It seems that Tony has inadvertently Demanding Nonsense about Gender found himself on the wrong side of the. literary barricades, so to speak. Dear Freedom, New language use can help challenge garbled life arid language in Orwell’s the unfeasible 1984 is in some way or another Although contesting the application of With this week’s paper I received a these relations (... or should Proudhon Dear Editors, have stuck to the old ‘common-sense’ manifesting itself increasingly as time terms such as ‘gender’ must seem an reminder that my subscription was due academic irrelevance to many, as Tony In November last year Freedom started a for renewal. Excellent foreign news, meaning of ‘anarchy’?) goes on, no matter what government is in Good News column, intended to present But apparently it is the case that the power. 1984 is not a condemnation of observes, it is the defining of such words sound comment, useful info and contacts which can reinforce or challenge power instances of positive, practical anarchist ... surely I couldn't miss an issue ... and young and impressionable (who paternalistic socialism, but of relationships. However, I believe Tony is growing within authoritarian society. then I came across Tony Gibson’s article obviously can’t think for themselves) are government outright. The instances given: homeless people ’Nonsense about Gender’ (Freedom, 5th being subverted by a totalitarian Nothing is helped, and certainly not wrong in thinking anarchists and other freedom-loving folk should align them­ getting together to build themselves March). conspiracy of foreign lesbian feminists! any reformist programme such as houses; a doctor inducing the Illinois selves against those who he derides as To put it bluntly, this is the kind of A sentiment that would not be out of anarchism, by a thoroughly irresponsible state authorities to use their coercive dinosaur mentality that puts off place at a Tory Party conference. and debased national press and media, “the extreme of the lesbian-feminist movement of America**. Likewise, he is power upon employers, making them feminists, greens and libertarians from Obviously anything that claims to be which more than most things is guard their workers’ health; NHS wrong to see this latter as creators of a realising their common cause under the ‘politically correct’ (even if it calls itself responsible for apathy, depression, practices in Sheffield stressing the suppressive ‘Orwellian Newspeak* - Black Rag. As the academic excerpt that ‘anarchy’) is dangerously authoritarian - anxiety and sexual mania to name a few. connection between work and health Gibson included in his article suggests, indeed it is this group which are fighting but it is simply not the case that the use It was possible to have a quarter- (and using less authority than medicos generally the use of the word ‘gender* is for the liberation of sexuality from state of the word gender’ and other linguistic hearted laugh over ‘politically correct’ usually do); a government inspector intended to mark a difference between dictated norms and definitions. challenges to authority emanate from unless you were the unfortunate to whom deciding in favour of gypsies; a doctor in biological sex and the social or cultural The attempt by (American) academics sex-hating lesbian separatists, rather they it was direfcted in all seriousness by Spain performing abortions at the cost of ideology of sex and sexuality that to liberate ‘gender* from ‘sex* is an im­ arise from a broad spectrum of thought, someone in authority who should know repeated imprisonment. condemns women and men to alienated portant one, not only for feminists but for by far most of which is anti-authoritarian. better, but I would draw to your attention These can all be accepted as positive and hierarchical relations. If 'in the very all who seek a more libertarian society. Gibson’s crass back-to-basics appeal a far more sinister and dangerous contributions to human welfare, but not same book’ someone uses a different deserves analysis. Now I would agree Newspeak word, namely ‘underclass*. As Tony says, people have a sex - i.e. are (and in my opinion useless) definition one of them has anything distinctively with him that language is indeed precious Underclass has nothing to do with that biologically sexed, male or female - they anarchist about it. Each of them falls (i.e. gender = sex), so what! All this and that we should pay attention to its grand old OED word diclassi which are not however biologically/genetically within the range covered by the pro-state suggests is that the use of the word is not use. If we apply this attention to Gibson’s means ‘unclassifiable’ or ‘beyond class gendered (i.e. masculine or feminine). reformers. part of some sinister attempt at thought article we find the following insights into or classification’. I do not suggest that Masculinity and femininity are words Only one of them has led to conflict control and that Gibson has some his thinking: language is a ‘commodity’; members of the d£class£ past or present which traditionally are ascribed to with the state, and even that would find head-problems with the notion of the only guarantee against linguistic were entirely free of class prejudice or males/females respectively, but need not official acceptance in some countries unity-in-diversity. anarchy is by appeal to an external not conscious of our gripping class necessarily be so. This is the important outside Spain; one calls for more active This problem with diversity is more authority (the OED); subjection to this system, but it was and is still one large point: that which we call masculine or use of state power. Each of them takes than evidenced by his subsequent authority guarantees ‘freedom’, revolt area in human affairs where people of feminine is socially constructed and not place within the state, showing what can comments. WhiJe he recognises that against it is illegitimate (‘bastardised’) character, ideals and natural intelligence determined by sex at all. “language is changing all the time” be accomplished in its presence. Rather and the rebels are a conspiracy of could learn from and love each other. The implications of this are important apparently it is the authority of the than moving towards a stateless society ‘perverters of language*; these Working class intellectuals flourished and must be obvious. If gender is these activities help the state overcome dictionary that sanctions whether our ‘perverters’ are also ‘lesbians’ (surprise, there as did aristocrats with more human determined by sex, then ways of language is pure, good old-fashioned some of its problems, rendering it more surprise) but they are also extollers of a sensibilities and social conscience than behaviour outside ‘accepted’ norms and English o r4bastardised’. I would suggest acceptable. ‘new prudery* (perverts, lesbians and the rest of their breed. At all costs the stereotypes automatically must be This attempt by Freedom to establish a that Gibson read some of the literature on prudes! it sounds like a tabloid rogue’s d£class6 must be kept going, and ‘deviant’ — if however gender is not positive role for anarchism ends by non-standard English (such as Labov) gallery); language is what distinguishes Freedom itself is part of it. ‘naturally* determined, then all gender confirming the contrary interpretation of that suggests (horror of horrors!) that us from ‘mere beasts’ (despite all the Underclass has the same connotations identities and behaviour are liberated and the movement. When anarchism there are ways of speaking that are evidence of animal communications) - as ‘underworld’, meaning a criminal equally valid. Thus, writers such as attempts positive, constructive action, it neither 'plain English’ nor therefore a hierarchical relation between sub-stratum of society. It means anyone Albert Brok (quoted by Tony) and Joan does no more than duplicate the work of 'impoverished’; such as the various humans and anim als is ‘natural’ (‘beasts’ not up to government and socially Scott are not prudes attempting “to make the reformers. It performs its distinctive dialects and patois spoken in this being worth intrinsically less than approved standards of living or gender refer to more than sex**, but are role in negative, critical activity, country. Obviously the kind of language humans) and those humans that do not behaviour. We know only too well the attempting to show that gender is remorselessly bringing to light the Gibson attacks is of a different form to have language (such as the mentally candidates for this class that is rated even separate to sex. In this light the attempt failures and shortcomings of present these —‘•it is a technical, academic* handicapped) are themselves no more lower than the working class: to see this differentiation more widely society. The title of a recent history language that has come to permeate into than animals (thus presumably of less unemployed, mentally or physically acknowledged is in fact an action against suggests that anarchism demands the other sections of society. Any anarchist value than other humans and therefore unfortunate people, homeless, d£class6y ‘Big Brother* rather than one for him. impossible; that is not strictly so, for should know that language is not neutral legitimately dominated). Interesting working class intellectuals, ex-prisoners, As to the Oxford English Dictionary nothing is impossible. Anarchism makes but reflects the hierarchical relations of positions for an anarchist, especially one and I am sure that Freedom’ s readers can being “our only bastion against the its unique contribution to social our society as a whole - it is a terrain for who pays such close attention to his add to it This sociological label is being various forms of Newspeak” - I think development when it demands the the struggle of meanings, dominated by language use that he is presumably fully seriously bandied about by radio hosts, rather the OED*s rigid definitions on unfeasible, for only in this way can the the most powerful groups in society. aware that this is what he is saying. professors and politicians. Nowhere do what is and what is not only serve to give limits of the feasible be found. (In the The British education system has St these people talk for themselves, and ‘moral* authority to those who would issues of 22nd Januaiy, 5th and 19th of thankfully remained largely free of nowhere is there any through-going impose their ideas of right and wrong m February, no Good News column authoritarian PC, which has been a real analysis of the evils of our society. We upon those of us who wish to define our st appears; have the editors recognised the problem in the US; it is not the case that are ‘liberal wimps’, comrades, for own lives. A weakness of it?) such language originates in the media, as preferring analysis to labels, giving voice Piers J. Hale # Burning George Walford Gibson suggests. Elements within to the voiceless and saying that crime is be British education do however strive to caused and to be cured the cause must go. question offer some small resistance to power by One cause for sure is capitalism. Another a teaching people that language and cause is Newspeak. to Dear Freedom, culture are not natural givens sanctified I suggest Freedom should compile a Laying Marx’s Ghost itb Living abroad, I rely on my two by God, State or Dictionaiy, but terrains dictionary of Newspeak, and circulate it subscriptions to Freedom and The Dear Editors, be open to the struggle for emancipation. I around ‘society* - whatever that may Now is the time for laying ghosts. textiles, tailoring and trade that Guardian Weekly for my news from am sick and tired of seeing the largely mean. transformed Europe and laid the home and elsewhere. Nevertheless, in Marx usually got it right when he non-existent spectre of PC being bandied Mary Quintana rehashed classical scholarship and economic and social foundations of the both cases, I find that I more often than about as an ideological label to abstractly modern state. Witness the Woolsack. not skip the front pages - and 1 have [Shouldn’t it be dtclasstel - Eds.] wrong when he ventured to be original. denounce anything challenging to Thus he was wrong in his redefinition of The wool economy then lasted until it found that my own preferences are current power relations and I am was superseded by the effect of steam shared by many. One section of The the labour theory of value (in that he disappointed to see a so-called anarchist excluded the forces of nature), wrong power in the late eighteenth century. Guardian which I have found engaging in such a reactionary gesture. The key feature of capitalism remains entertaining, and which has enjoyed a about the class struggle and the There is often discussion in Freedom dictatorship of the proletariat (because the dominion of the market serviced by long run, is entitled ‘Notes and Queries’. about broadening the readership - you Social money. Marx missed this. He never Readers ask and respond to questions the record shows that it is class alliances can rest assured that any thinking that make history), and wrong in his understood that it was based originally (mainly of a frivolous nature). I wonder women, certainly feminists and lesbians on large scale enterprise, not by if Freedom might be prepared to start inversion of Hegel’s dialectics (so (and Tony, the one is not necessarily the freedoms excluding the creative genius that defines capitalists but by collectives, i.e. such a section. It might be pure other) and many libertarians and greens the human psyche). monasteries. Individual monks owned entertainment value, of course. But, from Dear Freedom, besides would immediately be put off the George Walford (19th February) doesn’t For my sins, many years ago, I read nothing - they had taken vows of my point of view, it might equally be paper and perhaps anarchism by this poverty, chastity and obedience. devoted to questions of a more serious get the joke. My social freedom to Volume III of Capital from cover to crass and reactionary article. organise and struggle against workfare cover. I was then a devout Marxist. From this salient and long ignored and truly problematic nature. I find that Yours annoyed, background emerges the elementary anarchists are sometimes reluctant to be does not Interfere with the social freedom Volume HI is about medieval economics l>an Welch of the bosses to get work done cheaply and mercantilism. Marx came to the truth that so long as we need money and self-critical when it comes to challenging the market we shall have to put up with their own beliefs and assumptions. and enjoy their dinners without choking. conclusion that feudal economies were capitalism of one kind or another. It is up Questions like ‘Who will do the dirty This is simply because the freedom of all about ‘small scale production’. How work?’ do get asked. For me at least this Dear Comrades, capitalists to exploit me is not a social wrong can one get? to us to distinguish between its has never been a genuine 1 agree with Tony Gibson’s article on freedom but an antisocial freedom. Up to the twelfth century the acceptable and unacceptable faces. stumbling-block. I am rather partial to a Newspeak in Freedom (5th March). It is The freedom of capital is a competitive economies of Christendom were based Even the very best cooperative el bit of dirt so long as I can see my way to a pity that he did not enlarge on his atomised freedom that negates social on pre-monetary inter-relations of enterprise remains the captive of money some running water at the end of the day. subject. There is nothing evil or cooperation and genuiue community, so services - military, religious and labour. and the market and is thus part of Anyhow, my own burning question is: inadequate about the Oxford English it is an antisocial freedom. But social Money was only marginal. capitalism. ‘Do readers know of any airline pilots Dictionaiy, but thinking makes it so. freedoms, expressed in communal The great change came in the twelfth When the law of scarcity is eclipsed by who are also anarchists?’ And if my own Such words as ‘pregnancy’, ‘homo- solidarity, interfere with antisocial century when money and the market the law of surplus (a condition that is now hunch is right - that there areuprobably sexual', ‘sex', ‘male’, ‘female’, freedoms while complementing each suddenly went centre-stage because the well over the horizon) we shall be able to very few - does this indicate any ‘woman’ and ‘man’, to name but a few, other. My social freedom to resist and monks of the Cistercian Order invented phase money out and proceed to a gift fundamental flaw either with anarchist are perfecdy sinless, and even ‘sexual undermine slave labour schemes the huge sheep farm - flocks of up to economy. This Marx never saw either. f theory or in the personalities of those intercourse’ is nothing but a plain encourages your social freedom to do the 20,000 sheep to an abbey. In this post-Marxist era can we update who choose such a vocation? description of an act of nature. same. This extraordinaiy and unprecedented ourselves? !______Tim Fran^fi It certainly appears that the soulless and Paul P. development led to a massive growth in 1 Peter Cadogan 24th June - Paganism, Feminism and FREEDOM AND THE RAVEl London Ecology (speaker: Daniel Cohen) 1st July - General discussion SUBSCRIPTION 8th July - Drawing up the 1994/95 Red Rambles Anarchist Anarchist Forum programme RATES 1994 Meets Fridays at about 8.00pm at Monday 29th August - Summer Picnic (venue in Derbyshire Discussion Forum (formerly Northern Research Group) inland abroad outside Ewope Conway HaO,25 Red Lion Square, to be decided) surface Europe airtnaj A programme of free guided walks in airmail London WC1R 4RL the White Peak for Greens, NEXT MEETING Freedom (24 issues) half price for 12 ta* Socialists, Libertarians and Saturday 9th April 2-5pm Claimants 10.00 — — 18th March - General discussion Anarchists. 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LT Tube stations: Turnham Green, Back issues still available: campaigning, using more participatory 26.00 32.00 Sunday 5th June:Circular walk copies x 12 44.00 Chiswick Park and Gunnersbury (also North 23 - Spain / Emma Goldman methods of informationdissemination. 10 copies x 12 50.00 60.00 84.00 London Line) and Chiswick BR Station from 22 - Crime around Upper Padley. Meet 11 am for Other bundle sizes on application Waterloo, Clapham Junction and Reading (via 11.15am start at Upper Padley For further details or information 21 - Feminism ring Jon on 0484 847764 Witton). Good pubs in Chiswick and 20 - Kropotkin's 150th Anniversary railway station cafe (off B6521). Walk Giro account number 58 294 6905 Strand-on-the-Green far early arrivals. Caf6 guide Malcolm Bennett. 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