Anarchy No. 13
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: 65 practised After all direct action is no novelty. It has been Contents of No. 13 March 1962 t means simply again and again with more or less success . It to this—the firm, determined attitude on the part of the people assertion assert their rights and to pursue happiness whether such Direct action: the make-it-yoursclf revolution 65 or not. or pursuit be considered illegal m indivi- Direct action, after all, simply means that each of us The politics of direct action Peter Cadogan 67 any dually must decide for himself the morality or immorality of to act, Direct cation and the new pacifism Nicolas Walter 71 course of action; and having decided, to act or to refuse according to the circumstances of the case and the character of David Wleck 96 The habit of direct action ... the question involved. „ : Action versus Legislation Cover by Rufus Segar —J. Blair Smith "Direct (Freedom Press 1909) Other issues of ANARCHY Next month in ANARCHY on Disobedience 1. Sex-and-VioIence; Galbraith; A symposium Direct action the New Wave, Education, Opportunity, Equality. 2. Workers' Control. Broadcast on ANARCHISM it yourself revolution 3. What does anarchism mean today?; BBC Home Service April 27th 7.30 the make Africa; the Long Revolution; Exceptional Children. 4. De-institutionalisation; Conflicting Universities and ANARCHY can be obtained in termtime French strains in anarchism. Anarchy The phrase direct action was first given currency by the from: 5. 1936: the Spanish Revolution. syndicalists of sixty years ago, and was associated with Oxford: Martin Small, Trinity College revolutionary 6. Anarchy and the Cinema. stake, go-slow, at University Labour Club various forms of militant industrial resistance—the 7. Adventure Playgrounds. Cambridge: the or Tim Oxton, general strike. 8. Anarchists and Fabians; Action meetings from working-to-rule, sabotage, and the Anthropology; Eroding Capitalism; Trinity Hall. First World War, when the Orwell. What about Redbrick? For a while, in the years before the and in the 9. Prison. ideas of syndicalism were being popularised in this country, it seemed 10. Sillitoe's Key to the Door; period of intense industrial unrest which followed that war, Machines on Crime; Augustus of direct action and its corollary in the demand for John's Utopia; Committee of 100 that the philosophy in British trade unionism. and Industry. workers* control, were going to take root the end of this Paul Goodman; Neill on Education; The General Strike of 1926 is usually taken to mark but haracter-Builders. period, and the end of the syndicalist "myth" of the general strike, are the anarchists? a strike for revolutionary it be noted that this was not in fact lychological and should miners (a fact which makes the •logical enquiry. ends, but an act of solidarity with the cowardice and vacillation of the trade union leadership seem all the more contemptible in retrospect). The weakness of syndicalism in its discussed in Anarchy 2; the point to emphasise Subscribe to ANARCHY traditional form were are not weaknesses Single copies by post Is. 9d. (30c.) here is that the limitations in the syndicalist armoury 12 issues 20s. ($3). of direct action as a tactic or of the strike as a weapon. and to FREEDOM the anarchist weekly, which readers of Indeed, the use or the threat of the strike (which is after all, the ANARCHY will find indispensable. A commonest' example of direct action, and one which is neither illegal year's subscription to both journals is frequently is, in terms of the aims for which it is employed, offered at 32s. nor violent) ($5). observes that Cheques, POs and Money Orders successful- A leading article in The Guardian (5/2/62) should be made out to "The tragedy of industrial relations since the war is that time and again FREEDOM PRESS ,17a Maxwell Road London SW6 England iTel: RENown 3736 ExpiJJs Printers, London, E.I. — 66 67 strikes or the threat of strikes have paid handsomely'*. Whether you think this a tragedy or not depends on your point of view. The railwayman, contemplating the 3% wage increase offered after The politics a year's negotiation, by Dr. Beeching, formerly of ICI, who is paid £24,000 a year for trying to make the railways pay by the not very original method of cutting down services, is not likely to agree; nor of direct action are the 120,000 government employees whose 2s. a week increase was withdrawn under the "pay pause", when they read (New Statesman 26/1/62) that Mr. R. A. Butler has become £25,000 richer (tax-free) PETER CAD0GAN as a result of the rise in Courtauld shares following Id's take-over bid. If it be true that the future of politics belongs not to parliament- The theoretician of French revolutionary syndicalism, Emile Pouget, ary but to direct action we are required to define what is meant by observed in La Confederation du Travail that "Direct action is not neces- both these terms and give grounds for saying why the second must sarily synonymous with violence. It can be brought about by gentle supercede the first. Wishful thinking has nothing to do with the case. and pacifist conduct, as well as by very violent means." This brings Parliamentary or electoral politics consists of the business of us at once to Gandhi, and to the more recent examples of direct action electing Members of Parliament or local Councillors so that they may on Gandhian lines from America in the struggle for racial equality be entrusted with the functions of legislating and government and be the Montgomery bus boycott and the lunch-counter "sit-ins" examples — periodically accountable for their deeds. In the nature of the case of the way in which, as Martin Luther King points out, direct action this kind of politics is the special responsibility of the few; the majority has effected social changes which decades of "constitutional" struggle have but to register their vote at set intervals and in the interim to would probably have failed to achieve. maintain skeletal electoral machinery in readiness for the next call Today's field of experiment is direct action against war and war upon its employment. representa- preparation, which is the subject of this issue of Anarchy. Nicolas Parliamentary government was originally based upon Walter in his long essay follows the history of anti-militarism, of tion of propertied interests defined by the limited franchise of the rural the pacifism, of non-violence, and of the current campaign in which these freeholder and the urban freeman. It was the means whereby constitutional embodiment themes are drawn together. Peter Cadogan's article, which was origin- new rulers, the gentry and merchants, gave ally a contribution to the discussion of "new politics" in Peace News, to a form of state different in substance to that of government by royal not estab- is included not for its advocacy of a "new party" (albeit a non-electoral prerogative. This parliamentary sovereignty, however, was the Model Army acting in its name. one), but for its imaginative enlargement of the discussion in what is, lished by Parliament but by New for us, an anarchist direction. Constituent design followed in the wake of direct revolutionary action. It was over two hundred years later that representative government was To campaign against war, on any but the most superficial and transformed into parliamentary democracy by universal franchise. This illusory of levels, is to campaign against the state, and to campaign achievement did nothing to alter the fact that Parliament, of its nature, against the state is to envisage a different form of social organisation, could be nothing but the instrument of the few governing the many. in which people take back into their own hands the control of their In the face of the complexity of modern political economy the few own destiny. This is direct action, and it has applications to every have been obliged to extend the machinery of control without permitting field of life; to work, leisure, education, welfare, and to our whole it to face the sanctions of democracy—thus the proliferation of the social physical and environment. Civil Service, the Armed Forces and police; and Oxbridge. The new To the anarchist, one of the tragedies of human existence is that the vast majority of the world's inhabitants are people to whom things happen. Direct action is the method of people who do things, who PETER CADOGAN is not an anarchist. He regards himself as part of initiate things, who are their own masters. the tradition that is associated with John Lilburne, John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Tom Paine, George Julian Harney, William Morris, Tom Mann, R. H. Tawney and Christopher Caudwell~-the English radical-revolutionary tradition, but also thinks that political literacy necessitates real knowledge of Marx, Ixnin and Trotsky, and takes a good view of Raya Dunayevskaya's marxist humanism. 69 68 decentralised unit democratically conducted—these are legion and are state structure built largely under the stress of two world wars (when of the future. In the centre of the of the germ of the direct democracy constitutional precedents tend to pass un-noticed) and composed union- new scheme of things is politically conscious rank and file trade people literally related to those who make up the government of indus- professionalism. the ism and try and finance, is now of vast proportions and wholly beyond that at It is for each of us to study the decision-making methods effective control of Members of Parliament. Something vestigial Is present relate to his own particular and specialised form of work and retained at Question Time, and, for the rest, Members are allowed to spheres of interest and activity.