INSIDE: Grassroots environmentalism New York City anarchist bookfair Defy-ID & No Borders – better together!

Building schools for the future Social control, restricted choice and the new Academies

£1.50 t2.50 Free to prisoners Organise! The magazine of the Anarchist Federation Anarchist Federation local groups and contacts Issue 69—Winter 2007/08

Organise! is the magazine of the Anarchist Federation (AF). It is published in order Cardiff, and south Wales Leicester Resistance editors to develop anarchist communist ideas. [email protected] C/o Frontline Books, 73 Resistance, BM ANARFED, It aims to provide a clear anarchist Humberstone Gate, Leicester, London, WC1N 3XX viewpoint on contemporary issues and East Kent LE1 1WB [email protected] to initiate debate on ideas not normally covered in agitational papers. [email protected] [email protected] We aim to produce Organise! twice a www.geocities.com/leicester_af Preston year. To meet this target, we positively Hereford [email protected] solicit contributions from our readers. C/o BM ANARFED, London, Manchester We aim to print any article that furthers the objectives of anarchist communism. WC1N 3XX C/o 96 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 Scotland If you’d like to write something for us, [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] but are unsure whether to do so, why not get in touch first? Even articles that International of Anarchist Nottingham Sheffield are 100% in agreement with our aims and principles can leave much open Federation (contact for) C/o The Sumac Centre, 245 [email protected] to debate. C/o BM ANARFED, London, Gladstone Street, Nottingham, As always, the articles in this issue do WC1N 3XX NG7 6HX Surrey not necessarily represent the collective [email protected] [email protected] C/o BM ANARFED, London, viewpoint of the AF. We hope that their publication will produce responses WC1N 3XX from our readers and spur debate on. Ireland Organise! editors The deadline for the next issue of AF Ireland are a part of Organise!, BM ANARFED, London, West Yorkshire Organise! will be 15th March 2008. the Organise! anarchist WC1N 3XX [email protected] Please send all contributions to the address on the right. It would help organisation: Organise!, PO Box [email protected] if all articles could be either typed 505, Belfast, BT12 6BQ Tyneside or on disc. Alternatively, articles can www.organiseireland.org Reading PO Box 1TA, Newcastle-upon- be emailed to the editors directly at Members within Reading Tyne, NE99 1TA [email protected] London (and all other areas) Grassroots Action, c/o Risc, [email protected] • Anarchist Federation, BM 35–39 London Street, Reading, What goes in Organise! Organise! hopes to open up debate in ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX RG1 4NS West Midlands many areas of life. As we have stated [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] before, unless signed by the Anarchist Federation as a whole or by a local AF group, articles in Organise! reflect the views of the person who has written the article and nobody else. If the contents of one of the articles in this issue provokes thought, makes you angry, compels a response then let us know. Revolutionary ideas develop from debate, they do not merely drop Contents out of the air! • Subscriptions Annual subscriptions to Organise! (two Creating common ground p04 issues) are available for: £4·00 or £8·00 Supporting Sub (please add 25% for overseas or institutions) Defy-ID & No Borders p07 £8·00 to pay for a prisoner’s subscription Building schools for the future p08 £8·00 for a joint subscription to Organise! and Resistance. • The price of green capitalism p11 Joining the Anarchist Federation Membership of the Anarchist Federation Grassroots environmentalism p13 is open to all who agree with our aims and principles (found on the back cover). For more information write to: New York City anarchist bookfair plus interview p17 Anarchist Federation, BM ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX Alternatively you can email us at Culture – Margaret Michaelis p21 [email protected] or visit our website: www.afed.org.uk Book reviews p24 Organise! Editorial 3 Editorial – A summer of dissent

At the time of writing, Gordon Brown is data collection for both British citizens these movements could become exclusive rallying the faithful at Bournemouth with and ‘foreigners’, as addressed previously rather than inclusive, by becoming ghettos talk of ‘British jobs for British workers’. in Organise!, through new RFID chipped (albeit mobile ones!) of professional We know what this coded message really passports, DNA collection, databases like counter-culture. In the 1980s and 1990s means. It means drawing a line between the NHS one and, most insidiously, identity (for which see our retrospective on the those who the ruling class want to keep cards ‘for all’. They allow state officials to European anti-nuclear movement) this happy (included in ‘democratic’ decision determine who is included, entitled and arguably occurred. Class-struggle anarchism making; entitled to state support and deserving versus those who are excluded, in Britain emerged, after all, largely in protection; generating wealth etc.) and, in brutal practice as well as symbolically. reaction to essentially middle-class peace, by implication, those who at best don’t As an equally symbolic and also practical environmental and feminist movements count for anything and at worst are a part of this, we have to target the new that didn’t give a damn about deliberate danger to the rest of ‘us’. That means technologies involved; ubiquitous CCTV state offensives against ordinary people. But outsiders, for example people on benefits, cameras, law enforcers’ helmet cameras, this decade feels very different. Many of the and the ‘outsiders within’; asylum seekers, tagging, mobile fingerprinting etc. criticisms that class-orientated anarchists in prisoners, migrant workers, people asking Thirdly, we have to offer alternatives to organisation like the Anarchist Federation for more benefits or fighting cuts, workers the futility of trying change society by might otherwise level at this emerging new fighting for security in the face of ever working within ‘democratic’ structures counter-culture are already being addressed more casualised jobs, Islamic youth (in fact where the ruling class make the rules. We by the movement itself in a deliberately youth in general!) and so on. Simplistically need to create and support autonomous structured and on-going policy of reflexive structuralist as this may sound, it spaces where we can practice forms of social activism, and concrete attempts to nonetheless describes what must surely organising ourselves and of taking actions engage local communities. Indeed, the be the conscious social programme of this that build and reinforce simultaneously crimes of the system are felt so strongly increasingly authoritarian government. social equality and personal freedom; that by people of many social backgrounds This programme is successful in many challenge the boundaries between us that that old divisions between ‘middle class’ ways. Labour still strikes a chord with capitalist alienation creates; that promote reformism and ‘working class’ radicalism, many ordinary people, to the extent that active participation in decision making; and between people of different genders, they might win yet another election by that don’t simply impact minimally on sexual orientations and skin colour are promising to protect ordinary people the environment but take action to force being broken down in resistance to them. from the undeserving poor and the a retreat in capitalist destruction of the There is still further to go … much, much trouble-makers who supposedly threaten planet; that explicitly exclude the cops further … this is undoubtedly a Culture of this romanticised British way of life. and are willing to defend the autonomy Resistance! But anarchists still fervently believe that of people using them; and which, Indeed, those movements that have it is through the same ordinary people unsurprisingly, function better on a human failed to result in change, such as the Postal that change has to come. This has three level than state-run spaces! Workers’ strike, the movement against implications for us in the very immediate This is what this Summer of Dissent the war in Iraq, or the mainstream Green term. Firstly, we have to undermine, expose has been about, be it the amazing Climate movement are those wedded essentially and challenge the image of ‘the enemy Camp at Heathrow and No Borders to redundant hierarchical and reformist within’ painted by the state and perpetrated Camp at Gatwick and their associated modes of organising. Of course anarchists in the media, so that people realise that actions, blockades against the nuclear war should still be involved in these struggles, they have been taken in. We have to prove machine at Faslane in Scotland, numerous initiating and supporting autonomous that when it comes to those ‘other’ people autonomous education initiatives which thought and direct action within them, but that ‘we’, the hard-working British, are deserve a future Organise! article in their no trade union, tame politician or petition supposed to be afraid of, there is in fact no own right, and also movements that are is going to change things for the better. dangerous ‘them’, just a global ‘us’ that an addressed here, including the Common This is why these new movements which alliance of capitalism and the state sets up Ground occupied community garden in emphasise ‘anarchist’ forms of organising boundaries between. Reading and libertarian responses to City are so important, but it is also why we Secondly, we have to encourage people Academies. Awareness of the lies spun by need to learn inspirational and cautionary to actually fight the mechanisms of capitalism and the state are apparent in the lessons from past movements such as those repression that allow the state to control anti-militarist, anti-ID and anti-capitalist discussed in this issue. As Winter forces us and manipulate whilst supposedly environmentalism reflected of these from the autonomous campsite into our protecting ‘us’. The most obvious example struggles. social centres, let’s get as many people in of this is the interrelated introduction of There is always a danger of course that there with us as possible H 4 Creating common ground Organise!

Creating common ground A squatted community garden as a strategy for anti-capitalists

n May this year, a few anarchists and other anti-capitalists based Iin Reading opened the squatted Common Ground Community Gar- den to the public for the first time, receiving support from all sides of their community, breaking an injunction and defying an eviction side by side with other local people. It has been one of the most positive experiences comrades have had in terms of working towards the sort of world we might want to live in, and finding so many people in their community who now understand better what Anarchy is about (and what local councils are like!). Creating a space like a community garden allows normally atomised people to get together socially and chat, in itself a good thing. However, because of the way the space has been created, it also means much Reading’s Common more posh apartments, this seemed In itself though, this would never of that conversation focuses on the Ground garden on to be a perfect space and project to have been enough, or at least not in politics involved. Reading is already day of opening open up communication between our timescale, and it is frustrating a highly developed town, with an ourselves and our neighbours about not being able to get on with the economy centred on the retail/con- these issues. work until you get lucky and find sumer and high-technology sectors. Despite many of us being strongly the thing you need. So we also relied In addition to this, development is concerned about ecology, this was upon huge amounts of donations rampant with new shopping centres, not really the central motive for from family, friends and neighbours posh offices and luxury hotels and creating the garden. This is largely and contributed money ourselves. apartments seemingly appearing due to the expectation that the While most of the garden was every day. The resultant gentrification garden would probably be destroyed finished fairly early and looking causes price increases, and long-time by the authorities in the not too beautiful, we just managed to get the working-class residents are being distant future, despite our intention last areas finished to a pretty decent pushed further and further out of to resist this. However, we definitely standard the day before opening day. the town. We had already squatted had in mind the lack of green space At the last minute (like usual!) we a building as a base for our activity. in our town and the disconnection hung a banner on the fence, put up With shops, offices and luxury flats we have with our natural environ- posters and distributed about 600 on one side, and Victorian working- ment. Also, for both financial and flyers door-to-door advertising our class housing and council estates ecological reasons, much of the opening day on Saturday 19th May. on the other, our squat seemed to garden was created using stuff others Two days before this however, we symbolise the ‘border’ between the were throwing away. We received were informed that the Council were ‘developed, gentrified and con- things through the ‘Freecycle’ taking out an injunction “preventing sumerist Reading’ and the Reading network as well as by finding things the opening day from taking place” where ordinary people lived their lying around the streets or in skips. and that they would be seeking lives. As it was pretty obvious that We even managed to get all our a possession order for the land the Council planned to sell the open fencing for free from a household and buildings. Our response was space next to us to developers for yet who had just had theirs replaced. immediate – we distributed another Organise! Creating common ground 5

500 letters telling our neighbours few weeks, all equally supportive. the Council wanted to actually do about this and making it clear we Through this project we made a something with the land. However, would go ahead regardless, giving conscious effort to engage well with many more agreed outright with the same message to the local media the media. Feeling that it would be what we said, and it’s been great to and inviting all to defend the garden difficult to represent the garden in see how widely held is the view that from owners who clearly hadn’t a negative light, we figured we had the council’s model of development given a damn for five years, and to nothing to lose and much to gain – unaffordable flats, roads, posh of- stand up for the community’s right and, looking back, this approach has fices, hotels and shopping centres i.e. to decide what happens in our area. been really successful. The local press capitalist development, gentrification Early on the opening day morn- have run great articles about the and speculation – is not what local ing, pixies removed the front fence, garden and the surrounding court people want or need. Even some of opening the garden up onto the cases, and a few locals have written the people living in the posh flats street fully. About midday, two letters in our favour to the media over the road have agreed with us! security guards turned up to serve and the council. We’ve even been on Conversations about local democracy the Council’s injunction. After five television now, as ITN Thames Valley and community control have also minutes of being ignored they did and BBC South East have run bril- been very positive and to hear a the sensible thing and went and sat liant pieces, featuring the Council couple of our neighbours use the in their car. It’s got to be said, they sounding a bit silly, our neighbours word ‘anarchist’ in a positive way were great and just stayed out of the sounding great and allowing us to was really nice. way all day, so a big thanks to them! get across our points about the lack Wednesday 20th June, was Then we just waited for people of green space, the high house prices supposed to be eviction day, the day to come along, and we weren’t and Council neglect versus our when the council would take back disappointed – the response from self-organisation and direct action. control of our land and regain the the public was fantastic! Through the Even though the Council won a ability to flog it off to the highest day, many neighbours came through possession order and we faced evic- bidder, for development of yet more the garden, breaking the law to show tion, that’s not the point! Positivity unaffordable prison block flats. their support and looking amazed at was high, and things weren’t over However, it didn’t go according to the difference to the area. Rumours yet! The garden was still being their plan … are, we even had one local cop show opened everyday and we planned to Council officials showed up her support on our petition! Overall resist the eviction, with community early in the morning, about 9am. we had about 200 people through support we hoped. Although we However, we were already busy the garden at various times, as well stood little chance of winning in the barricading the building that has as the same number of signatures on long-term, to beat the first eviction been our home for the last 9 months a petition (supporting the garden attempt would strongly increase our and our beautiful squatted garden. and demanding community control collective confidence and maybe that Reporters and television cameras over the land) and £100 in the do- of our community. showed up, taking interviews from nation bucket. The celebration in the The conversations this project had us and our neighbours for local evening was great! About 100 people allowed us to have with many of our newspapers and regional television enjoyed a great BBQ and plenty of neighbours has strongly encouraged news. A mixture of activists and local alcohol late into the evening. The us, and the garden has definitely neighbours held a picket out the best thing was the diversity: activists been a space where people could at front of the building, while others and punks alongside neighbours least begin to recognise commonal- risked arrest to sit in the sunshine, aged eight to 80! And the tunes were ity, and a common enemy. Certainly, defending the garden. The council fantastic, again ranging from grey- a few people took the view that officials made a fairly desperate offer haired country and bluegrass artists, whilst we have done a great thing of alternative land – rejected straight to gravel voiced acoustic punk rock. by improving land left as a junkyard away – before disappearing for the After the hungover tidy up, the and providing a green space for our rest of the day. So, for now at least, garden had been visited by many community, property rights are sa- we had won. In the evening we held more neighbours over the last cred and that we should leave when a public BBQ and absolutely fantastic 6 Creating common ground Organise! acoustic punk-rock show. Again, several neighbours stuck around all night having a drink and enjoying the music, and the tunes were amaz- ing. Big thanks to the artists who travelled down to play for free! Once again, the best thing about the day was experiencing how much community support this project had and still has. Lots of local residents visited during the day, telling us how much they love the garden and use it all the time. Some were even willing to risk arrest in the morning by staying in the garden past eviction time with us. Another neighbour told me in the evening how a Labour councillor canvassing the area had been desperate to get away when she passionately told him her feelings about the garden and the squatters who have made it. Some residents Music at the met with the Residents Association, by these principles, and is have even showed an interest in community garden and it is possible we will now help ‘directly-democratic’. anti-capitalist/anarchist politics, the residents to create a second and including ex-Labour members who possibly third community garden for he next few weeks are going agreed all political parties are the the area, this time legally. Even bet- to even busier than usual, same now and ‘this’ (i.e. community ter, Common Ground is apparently Tas we are trying to plan a direct action like the garden) is the inspiring others to take direct action Community Consultation, asking only alternative, plus a local couple to improve their neighbourhoods. people what they would ideally like having trouble at work who are On the other side of Reading, a per- to see happen on the site currently now interested in joining Industrial son who had been refused permis- occupied by Common Ground and Workers of the World! sion from her housing association the derelict buildings. The idea is to In late July, the Council unsuc- to create a community garden on gather people’s ideas and campaign cessfully attempted a second some of their derelict land, has told for them and against the Council’s eviction and once again gardeners, people involved in Common Ground plan for yuppie flats. On top of that, neighbours and activists mobilised that she has now been inspired to go we also have events to plan (we are to defend the garden from evic- ahead and do it anyway! Naturally, hosting an infonite about Oaxaca tion, defying the law and again some Common Ground gardeners and are planning events for Hal- seeing Council officials retreating will offer advice and assistance with loween and Bonfire Night), murals empty handed (ok, so we also had any new projects like this. to design (not only for the white a little help from the floods taking Back in our own garden, we walls inside the garden, but also to up the authorities’ time!). And in are getting more organised. Each decorate the front of the derelict early August, despite intimidation Sunday we now hold a couple hours buildings to make the street look as the Council threatened unnamed ‘work session’ followed by an open nicer) and a newsletter to produce. organisers with jail, several people decision-making meeting. One of The main aim of this second news- enjoyed a community picnic and arts the first decisions made was the letter will be to inform residents day in the garden, creating a brand agreement of three fundamental about our upcoming Community new mozaic pathway. principles: Consultation, as well as including Maintaining the occupation of the 1 Control of the site must rest information about gentrification and land is not the only success of Com- with the entire community and the South East Development Plan, mon Ground. In a badly thought cannot be given up to a minority and suggesting alternative ideas for out attempt to move the occupiers, power such as the state, council or our area. Wish us luck! the Council offered two alternative any corporation. Common Ground is located through the sites. However, when the gardeners 2 This also means the project is alleyway, next to the ex-Womens Information refused them, the Council were anti-gentrification and against any Centre in Silver Street, Katesgrove, Reading, obligated to offer them to the local development imposed from above. 10 minutes from the train station. Please Residents Association. Individuals 3 This also means decision mak- email [email protected] for more involved in Common Ground have ing is open to all who can abide information H Organise! Defy-ID and No Borders 7 Defy-ID and No Borders – Better together!

This is the text of a leaflet produced by made to have biometric visas, including arises about a person’s status in relation to Nottingham Defy-ID in February 2007, those already in Britain. Plus, the European nationality or immigration.” group in which Anarchist Federation Commission has already put in place a plan members are involved. It was also to require children to be fingerprinted and Solidarity reproduced in the ‘No Borders reader’ photographed for passports from at least Exposing the government plan to get a national ID distributed at the No Borders camp at the age of 12 years old (EU member states scheme accepted Gatwick in September where a workshop can decide to make this even younger). The single issue campaign No2ID has was held on ID and Border control. The What is perhaps less well known is this previously attempted to keep the right- leaflet examines the link between the was trialed on asylum seekers in Britain. wing on board by telling them they can introduction of identity cards and databases Children as young as five are known to be against a national ID scheme because it resulting from the ID Cards Act of March have been fingerprinted at asylum centres “won’t work to stop illegal immigration”. 2007, and the British state’s intention to in Croydon and Liverpool, for example. Countering this, the Defy-ID network has introduce much stricter border controls Plus we are starting to hear about police seen that the government’s ID system will though a new UK Borders Bill … mobile fingerprinting units being used work against immigrants. ID cards and to further harass people in cars and on databases will be used against ‘foreigners’ in Defy-ID demonstrations. general as a central part of the government’s Groups and individuals in the Defy-ID The plan for a new National Identity plan, before they extend the scheme network have for the last few years been Register has also been dropped in favour to everyone. The fact that ID cards and campaigning against the introduction of a of combining three existing databases to fingerprinting technology has been tested national ID scheme, biometric upgrading create a ‘meta-database’: The Home Office on asylum seekers shows that the state is of passports, and the surveillance society in asylum-seeker database; The Identity prepared to impose ID on those people with general. and Passport Service database, and; The the least voice to oppose it, before rolling At the same time, No Borders have been Department of Work and Pensions ‘National it out to the whole population. Together, tirelessly protesting against maltreatment Insurance’ database. Although the eventual Defy-ID and No Borders could help get and incarceration of asylum seekers in plan is to extend ID cards and a meta- the message across that the government is detention centres and against repression database to everyone in Britain, this change trying to get its ID plans accepted by cynical by government (and privately run) of policy makes it clear that asylum seekers scapegoating of immigrants and asylum- immigration ‘services’. and other ‘foreigners’ are first in line for seekers. This would hopefully make for a It’s becoming clearer than ever that these more repression. stronger anti-ID campaign that is based on campaigns should be working closely solidarity rather than fear. together … Because of the new ‘UK Border Bill’ The government seems to have put the Using the Social Centres network to widen Because ID has already been tested on asylum seekers powers given to it by last year’s Identity collaboration of No Borders and DefyID and will also be used first on other ‘foreigners’. Card Act on the back-burner (at least for Those involved with No Borders (UK) The Home Office is now much more now), whilst biometric passport and visas and other refugee support groups already open about its intended use of a biometric are coming very soon. A new UK Border have a strong involvement in the emerging ID database scheme to control Britain’s Bill introduced by Home Secretary John network of autonomous social centres in borders. This is not completely new – we Reid on 25 January 2007 now aims to Britain. Many progressive anti-ID activists know that ID technologies have always formally bring together border controls are also involved with social centres. This been tried out first on asylum seekers. and compulsory ID. is true in Nottingham with activists using For example, the ARC ‘smart card’ that With relation to Biometric registration the Sumac Centre as a focus for Defy-ID is carried by asylum seekers is used for the Bill (amongst other things): “confers a campaigning, for example. As well as their regular reporting and to obtain power to make regulations to require those strengthening links between campaigns, NASS payments from the post office. It subject to immigration control to apply for social centres could also help keep an eye is an ID card which goes hand-in-hand a … “biometric immigration document”; on the development of the Identity and with their digital photos and fingerprints and to require a biometric immigration Passport Service’s 69 new Authentication being stored by the Home Office. Asylum document to be used for specified by Interview ‘interrogation’ centres for seekers are fingerprinted when they report immigration purposes, in connection with passport (and ID card) applications. to their reporting centre or police station. specified immigration procedures, and in Email: [email protected] Non-European Union visitors will soon be specified circumstances where a question Web: www.nottingham-defy-id.org.uk H 8 Building schools for the future Organise! Building schools for the future Social control, restricted choice and the new Academies

any schools in Britain are crumbling. The build- Mings are old fashioned. They leak heat, badly need repair and cost a fortune in maintenance. For years the state seemed to hope that the odd lick of paint and a ritual bollocking for teachers would be enough to ensure that future generations of workers gained the skills they needed to drive the British economy forward. When that failed they tried curriculum reform and constant testing and examination of young people. Our children are the most tested in the world. They are tested on arrival in nurseries and then with a regularity that is frightening. From the age of 11 hardly a year goes by when they are not subjected to terrifying national examination. Added to this are the education Following six their effect is further increase the the push towards an 14–19 curricu- league tables which so stress teachers months squatting control of the central state over what lum. Young people are asked at age and parents that many children are a threatened sports is taught in schools. 13 to make choices in their studies driven to study and revise to the ground, teachers that will determine their future point of exhaustion. against the Wembley New names for old working life. They are discouraged Though exam results are rising City Academy took A key element in education strat- from anything that might expand every year, though the curriculum is to the trees to avoid egy over recent years has been the their horizons or from learning a more and more focussed to produc- eviction creation of specialist colleges instead foreign language. Instead they are ing ‘skills based’ qualifications and of comprehensive schools. Schools encouraged on to a skills based path critical thinking is discouraged, still were asked to get an amount of that will last them through college the education system is failing to private sponsorship. In return they and on to either a job or university. turn out young workers with the received additional government tools capital needs to continue to funding to the tune of a couple of PFI – ripping off council tax payers make healthy profits. hundred thousand pounds. They When the state finally realised The Labour government has then rebadged themselves as it needed to rebuild nearly every responded to this with a two fold ‘technology colleges’, ‘arts colleges’, secondary school in the country, the reform programme. The curriculum ‘sports colleges’, even ‘humanities decision was also taken to build on is being focussed on 14–19 and colleges’ and subtly shifted the this earlier strategy. This time the schools are being rebuilt en masse curriculum to match the specialism role of the private sector in state as part of a programme known as being offered. This could mean, for education was to be enhanced. The Building Schools for the Future.These example, that every child studied an first option chosen was simple. two are actually inextricably linked art GNVQ or an ICT GNVQ. These Private Financing Initiatives let into a scheme to further intensify the low status qualifications with low corporations build the schools. The skills based approach to education academic standards had the effect of local councils then rent them back and to remove from educationalists inflating GCSE league tables due to off the financiers. As new schools what elements of autonomy exist. some very dodgy accounting1. cost upwards of £25 million each Under the guise of decentralisation, This programme was the start of this seemed attractive. However, the Organise! Building schools for the future 9

rents charged would put the Council sponsors include Oasis and Edutrust Academies can pick and choose who Charge up so much that many chose and car salesman Reg Vardy. they let in. They don’t have to take not to go down this road. Control over what is taught is anyone. This means it is harder for The state then responded by increasing the number of ‘specialist’ children with learning difficulties dusting down an old, discredited schools. In Manchester, for example, to get in, which can mean they are Tory policy of building City Technol- Manchester Airport has an Academy. denied the chance to go to their ogy Colleges (CTCs), called them A key aspect of the curriculum there local school with their friends and Academies and plan to build 200 of is ‘leisure and tourism’. Others teach can add the further burden of travel- them by 2010. engineering. One in Sunderland has ling to other schools further away. CTCs were supposed to replace installed a mock call centre. The list Further this control means they ‘failing schools’. This usually meant is endless. The effect is to produce a can suspend and expel more freely. closing schools in poorer working generation of young people pre-pro- Academy schools already have. class communities and reopening grammed for particular industries The Anti-Academy Alliance report them with new management and with limited visions of the world. on their website that, “According sometimes staff. They significantly This curriculum control comes to the 2007 national Audit Office failed to raise exam results and the through control of the governing report, permanent exclusion rates programme looked to be heading body. The sponsor is able to nomi- in Academies are nearly four times for the dustbin. nate over half of the governors. They higher than the national average”. are not just a rubber stamp for the This is possible because the Fundamentalist education head. Aggressive governing bodies Academies are outside the control The new policy was to invite private actually do control their schools. of the Local Authorities. It may sponsors to find £2 million to Staff at all levels stand to do badly seem strange that anarchists are invest in a new school. In return at these new institutions, except concerned about which part of the government would find the of course the Head and Deputies the state controls education, surely remainder. In return for this money, (nowadays called the Senior Leader- all are bad? Whilst this is on one the sponsor would gain control of ship Team). Currently wages and level true, it also means that the the school’s governors, control over conditions are nationally negotiated. new schools are removed from what is taught in the school and This means that education workers opportunities for staff training and crucially also control over the pay in low cost parts of the country development. Local Authorities pro- and conditions for staff working earn the same (outside London) vide training packages for teachers there and the admissions policy of as those in the south east. The new and teaching assistances. Although the academy2. Academies will do away with this. the provision of these is becom- The sponsors who came forward We can expect a general lowering of ing increasingly market driven, fall into three main categories: wages and a worsening of condi- they are comparatively accessible businesses and corporations, public tions in these new schools. In at and give staff the opportunity to bodies like universities and religious least one, Salford Academy, the new improve their skills and knowledge. groups. This latter has caused the owners clearly sought to head off Academies will have no recourse most controversy. A number of opposition. They explicitly decided to these, unless they choose to high profile sponsors are Christian when building the school to have no negotiate them and pay for them. fundamentalists who object to social areas for staff. So for example, We firmly expect to see the growth science lessons teaching evolution. there is no staff room. This removes of an industry of private consultants Instead they insist that nonsensical from teachers, technicians and growing fat off the training needs fairy tales about ‘intelligent design’ teaching assistants the opportunity of these institutions, but providing and ‘creationism’ are taught as to get together and talk about their a package that lacks the variety or being equally valid theories. Other workplace and plan ways of resisting depth that is currently available. We sponsors include the Church of worsening conditions. also expect to see staff being forced England who are using Academies to undertake training in their free as a backdoor way of gaining more Learning difficulties, no thanks time, rather than being released control over education. Religious Control over admissions means the during the day. 10 Building schools for the future Organise!

Inspection 24/7 number of campaigns against them. with big name speakers to do that. Clearly, Academies being outside the This is something we, as anarchists, Brown has certainly not scrapped the control of the Local Authorities will should be firmly supporting. The plans however. not mean they escape state control. problem lies in the nature of the Clearly we need to be organising They will be under the scrutiny of campaigns and the responses both in our workplaces, as staff and the Office for Standards in Education of the unions to academies. The students if we are in education, (OFSTED) who will be inspecting campaigns are relying heavily on and in our communities to fight every two or three years. This means demonstrations and lobbying, rather this. It needs to focus on the effects the only real control comes from the than in trying to build industrial on those working in education, central state. To make the regime of and community opposition. The on the effects on young people inspection more draconian, schools view of the main teaching unions and on the way it will deprive are already being put through a firmly supports this approach. When communities of existing resources. process of ‘self-evaluation’ coupled confronted in Oldham with the need It should be led by those involved with regular ‘performance manage- to take industrial action to secure themselves and needs to understand ment’ targets. Rather than being an working conditions, the General the motives behind the plans for example of more self-management, Secretary of the NUT, Steve Sinnott, academies as well as realising that these mean that every person in the became apoplectic and launched into relying on officials is unlikely to school has a permanent inspector in a tirade of abuse against the speaker succeed. We also need to be wary of their own head, doing the work of who had suggested it. The unions support from opposition politicians. OFSTED for it. don’t like the idea of academies, Experience shows that this is likely A final note on the way these but they see their main task as to evaporate as quickly as it arises, schools will treat young people. They being to gain representation within especially after an election has are planned to be large institutions. them when they open. They even returned them to power. They will have many open communal rule out of the possibility of strike Finally, we should point out that areas that are easily spied on either action in the new schools for fear of this article does not begin to tackle by CCTV or by staff. The students alienating parents, even though this the question of what anarchists think will find it hard to escape the glaze would be the most effective way of education should really be like. We of a disapproving adult. Secondly we ensuring decent pay and conditions have tried to show how the current are aware that in some authorities for workers there. government’s plans are leading they will have seriously reduced The opposition had hoped that to even greater control and more areas for sport and leisure activities. Gordon Brown would ditch the restricted learning opportunities for In Oldham, for example, there are programme when he became leader. young people which are aimed at plans to shut schools with swimming At a meeting sponsored by the making industry more profitable. pools, Astroturf and other pitches. NUT in Manchester, the writer of Education in an anarchist society These will not be replaced in the new this article clearly heard this fantasy would clearly look nothing like schools which will be on signifi- proposed by local NUT officials and any of the current systems on offer, cantly smaller sites. Not only will this even backed up by the SWP, although whether the old comprehensives or risk the health of young people, their line was that he needed to be the new academies. But, discussion denying them the opportunity to ‘forced’ by a popular demonstration on that area is for another article H play and exercise, it also removes valuable resources from already poor 1 Intermediate GNVQs are supposed to have the equivalence of 4 GCSEs at Grades A*–C. There is considerable debate as to whether this is true. Schools manage to teach them in between three and five hours a week. We know of at least one school neighbouring communities. which has taught GNVQ Art, then entered the students for Art and Graphic Design GCSE. Amazingly their results soared. This has been mirrored across the country. Most of the ‘improvements’ recorded by the new Academy schools have come from this route. 2 The government quickly backtracked on the requirements for this £2 million. First they announced that it could be cash, Unions – for or against? in-kind or services provided. So, instead of spending anything, a PC company could donate ICT equipment at market rates. Com- Academies are unpopular with panies could provide the services of executives as in-kind aid, at inflated salaries. All these are, of course, tax deductible. Recently the government has announced that it is thinking of removing the need for any contribution whatsoever. They are merely going education workers and there are a to give the new academies to the sponsors. Organise! The price of green capitalism 11 Environmental surveillance: The price of green capitalism

It’s clear that the state is going restrictions to give police real-time to make us pay for capitalism’s transfer of number plates of all disregard for the health of the planet cars entering or leaving the central by tracking our every move. Using London congestion charging zone, initiatives such as road-pricing and for anti-terrorism work, we are told. bin-chipping, national and local state If, and most likely when, a digital bureaucracies want us to pay for camera network is set up across the everyday living, out of our pockets UK, the police will be able to track and by us having to endure micro- whoever they like, wherever we go control over our consumption. by car. We already know that the po- Fighting social control of this kind lice do not need encouragement to is not straightforward because many use anti-terror laws against activists environmentalists, who anarchists during events like the Camp for Cli- might otherwise agree with, are mate Action or to use their Forward in favour of schemes that monitor Intelligence Teams to photograph individual usage of resources and activists outside social centres and promise to change behaviours. On detention centres, so we can be such the other hand you only have to that a digital camera network will be read the mainstream press to see that used against us. opposition to road-pricing and bin- chipping are part of a wider right- Pay as you throw wing backlash against ‘Nu-Labour’ addition, hundreds of petrol stations Twenty-four Bin-chipping (or ‘Chip n’ Bin’) by half-crazed motoring lobbyists, and parking enforcement companies hour surveillance: is a different example of how anti-tax libertarians, anti-EU political have access to the DVLA database, London’s congestion individual identification and parties and climate change deniers. under licence. Whilst a lot of speed charge cameras surveillance is fast becoming part of cameras like the GATSO ones at road everyday life. This is already being Road rage junctions use loadable film which trialed in Britain. It involves weigh- Many environmentalists are in has to be replaced after 200 pictures, ing wheelie-bins to work out the favour of road-pricing and conges- these are now to be upgraded by amount of waste individual house- tion charges to discourage car use. digital ones. This, and expansion holds produce. An RFID chip on the If car drivers pay in proportion of the digital camera scheme on to bin enables the refuse collector to to usage, the hope is we will use many more roads, will allow the make a record of the weight when- them less and choose to use public police to achieve their goal of a na- ever the bin is collected, identify it transport more often. Nice idea? tional network that gathers number with an address and so link it to a Not really, not least because the rich plate data continuously, information council tax payer. The carrot offered will just pay and carry on regardless. that they will have unfettered access to those producing less waste is that Higher road taxes don’t exactly seem to at all times. they will pay less, and a stick for the to be reducing the number of SUVs Should we be worried? Well, as rest. Bin taxes (or ‘pay as you throw’ on the road either. But whatever, to revealed last year in the documen- schemes) are, not surprisingly, seen make these schemes work, cameras tary Suspect Nation, Transport for by many as just another way for that read number plates (or other London’s congestion charge cameras councils to raise money to make proposed schemes using satellite are switched on 24 hours of the day waste collection pay for itself (and tracking or roadside tag readers) even outside of congestion charg- also make it ripe for privatisation), have to be linked to the car’s ‘keeper’ ing periods! It is known that police in the same way as utility companies through the DVLA database that is regularly request this number plate benefit from water metering. As a used to tax vehicles. data for law enforcement, a good result, it’s all too easy for revolution- Over 6,000 digital camera systems example of ‘function creep’. But in aries to concentrate our arguments already exist on motorways and busy July this year home secretary Jacquii on the potential unfairness of bin roads for enforcing speed limits. In Smith lifted Data Protection Act taxes. But this just plays into the 12 The price of green capitalism Organise!

single minded anti-tax agenda of the in anyway. Spying by national and minded civil liberties opposition libertarian right. A much better plat- council authorities is just one more either – more a hatred of civil service form to fight on as a class struggle kind of divide and rule – dividing us bureaucrats who think that it’s fine anarchist is the sheer hypocrisy of into good and bad citizens. We need for them to measure our lives when the idea that persecuting individuals to turn this thing around and point the excessive consumption of the is going to make much difference to the finger at the system, making it rich goes on regardless. Neither is the destruction of our environment. clear that if they introduce bin- it the duty of revolutionaries to find Furthermore, it can only weaken chipping we’ll empty our bin bags solutions for better dealing with community cohesion, since it will outside the local council building pollution or waste when the root greatly discourage sharing of bins (being careful to remove envelopes cause is capitalism and our being (needed after a spring clean, for in- and personalised junk mail first!). forced into a way of living that is stance) which is perhaps one of the Just as with identity cards, we inherently wasteful of the world’s few communal activities that exists shouldn’t write off opposition to the resources. If we had more social between neighbours in our atomised surveillance aspects of road pricing living, local production, transport communities, to be replaced with an or bin charging as paranoia or as a pooling and stored things in bulk individual relationship to the local side issue to taxation. Class struggle this would reduce pollution and authority. anarchism/libertarian communism waste to an extent, but to make real is not just about economics, but difference we’ll need to get rid of Capitalist rubbish about recognising attacks on money and a growth economy based It’s fine to advocate avoiding freedom by an overpowering state. on profit, and for that a revolution wasteful consumption by carrying We are not talking about some high- will surely be needed H reuseable bags, eating local unpacked food and choosing biodegradable products. This shows we are con- “All this rubbish is sold to us by capitalists scious about our relationship with who profit at the expense of the environment the natural world and looks forward to future sustainable non-capital- … and then we are expected to pay to clear ist world. But in environmental up the mess? No way!” campaigns anarchists need to get across that we shouldn’t feel guilty about individual contributions to waste in the here and now, since so much of it is created at the front end by producers who package stuff to the hilt and sell us products that are made to be disposable or so badly made that they break down unneces- sarily, whose sell by/use by dates on food often make no sense, processed food that goes stale a day after it’s bought – just so we are encouraged to buy more of their crap. All this rubbish is sold to us by capitalists who profit at the expense of the environment … and then we are expected to pay to clear up the mess? No way! Environmental campaigns need to be as antagonistic as possible and not let anyone feel guilt-tripped Organise! Grassroots environmentalism 13 Grassroots environmentalism

In this article we examine the significance of popular participation To get back to environmentalism from below, a number of as a form of revolutionary self-activity in environmental struggles different strands can be identified. Firstly, opposition to what in the last century. Grassroots environmentalism was central not are jargonistically known as ‘locally unwanted land uses’, that only to the success or strengths of individual struggles affecting is particular sources of pollution, either existing or under single communities, but also to the building of generalised, development. Secondly, in situations where commonly held self-consciously confrontational movements for resistance and resources are sustainably used, and where communities are change. In this sense it was more significant than leftist ideology dependant upon them, environmentalism from below includes or mobilisation. Some of the examples offered seem all the more ‘defence of the commons’ from expropriation by private landlords relevant and interesting in the context of the current growth and or the state for high yield exploitation, or for new developments. success of environmental activism in the British Isles and its ability This can be seen historically in England, particularly in the 16th to reflect constructively on its own strengths and strategies. and 17th centuries, but as late as at least 1816 as well, with riots “It was not only in connection with industrial disputes that the people against the ‘enclosure’ of fenlands and forests. It is now, obviously, demonstrated their readiness to take direct action. The August 1892 issue of more prevalent in the global South, most famously with the Commonweal reported that 3,000 people had first pulled down the railings Chipko peasant movement in the Himalaya, India, resisting the protecting a railway that had been run across common land at Leyton, near London. take over of their forests for commercial forestry, forests people They then proceeded to wreck the railway itself.” depend on for animal fodder and firewood and to which they Conventional histories of environmentalism tend to be have a sustainable approach. Thirdly, there are workplace based and somewhat top down, focusing on the publication of particular struggles around pollution related health and safety threats. popular science books, or on the expression of particular theories Some less typical strands are no less significant. While or on the establishment of high profile lobby groups. Key events ‘wilderness’ conservation is often dismissed as elitist or esoteric, for instance would be the publishing of Rachel Carson’s Silent and not without grounds, there have been popular struggles Spring, or the founding of Greenpeace, or the election of the first around access to the countryside for recreation and in defence of Green party politician. Antecedents to environmentalism are, in areas of natural beauty. A tradition of this can be traced back at these histories, to be found in the early 19th century intellectual least as far as the Kinder Scout mass trespass in 1932, which was trend romanticism, or, perversely, in Malthus, the arch justifier one of the things that led to the establishment of national parks. of inequality, who maintained that population pressure was Another faint and rare but significant strand is those workplace responsible for the poverty and hunger of industrialisation. struggles which have raised the question ‘what is produced & to However another history of environmentalism can be written, what end’. Notably in Australia in the 1970s ‘green ban’ boycotts a history of environmentalism as a popular grassroots movement, were placed by construction workers on developments judged whose different parts are variously referred to as ‘environmental destructive, and there were strikes against uranium mining and justice’, ‘eco-populism’, or ‘environmentalism of the poor’. uranium transports. Something similar to this happened in Ireland Environmentalism is a word used to mean many different, often in regard to planned nuclear plants. At the same time in Britain contradictory, things. the Lucas Aerospace alternative development plan was proposed We have the environmentalism that is the state’s effort to manage by the Lucas workforce, which put forward a switch from military environmental problems and environmental conflicts, in the production to socially useful production. interests of the continued garnering of profit. For instance in early These are ideal types, generalizations. In fact these strands September this year the ‘Environment Ireland 2007’ conference may be present in the same struggle. For instance, the practises took place, with representatives from various government of the Raybestos Manhattan company’s plant in Cork, Ireland, departments and state agencies, and from a consultancy company were opposed by both residents’ groups and its workforce. The working for Shell on the Rossport pipeline. Then we have ‘the aforementioned Chipko movement contained both ‘defence of environment’ as an investment opportunity, these days investment the commons’ aspects, and an element of opposition to locally magazines are full of the joys of the returns on putting your dangerous environmental destruction. Likewise the trends focused money into wind farms, or into carbon off-setting. on in conventional histories of environmentalism interconnect with Finally we have environmentalism as a lifestyle trend and environmentalism from below, for instance, the writings of Barry marketing niche. Witness organic food and eco washing machines Commoner have an influence in American ‘eco-populism’, while and a whole plethora of similar ‘save the planet’ consumer goods. local ‘citizens initiatives’ and mass national anti-nuclear power As an aspect of ‘environmentalism’, the political movement protests fed into the development of the German Green Party, (ie lobby groups, political parties, et al) feed into this. See for and some Friends of the Earth sections have an ‘environmental instance books like ‘The Armchair Environmentalist’ or the ‘Green justice’ perspective. On the other hand there was Friends of the Consumer Guide’. A lot of this is simply greenwash – as with Earth participation in the ‘Environment Ireland 2007’ get together British Petroleum, BP, changing its name to Beyond Petroleum. It is mentioned above. In addition some local oppositions to particular beyond the scope of this article, but we shouldn’t fall into the trap developments can contain dubious elements, for instance when of thinking these fashions represent the successful adaptation of major players in the tourism industry, or wealthy stud farm owners, capitalism to meet ecological crises. object to projects that they think will cut into their profits. 14 grassroots environmentalism Organise!

The rest of this article is going to look at environmentalism village on the French side of the border with Germany. A rota was from below through two instances, the environmental justice and drawn up so that each week the site would be occupied by groups anti-toxics movements in the United States, and the European anti- from different villages from both countries. nuclear power movement. It should be stressed these are just two The violence in France, and associated internal dissension, examples of the many possible. These examples help show us what had a demobilizing impact, except for in the case of successful is possible and probable in the contemporary West. The global position to a nuclear development in Plogoff, Brittany. But state South is replete with further instances of environmentalism from violence did not have quite this impact in Germany. A banned below, important, interesting and admirable, but of less practical demonstration at Brokdorf in February 1981 was 100,000 strong, import to us here. despite police blocking people from getting to the area and the train service being shut down. The highpoint was reached in Anti-nuclear Europe 1980 at the proposed nuclear power station at Gorleben, which In the 1970s, across what was then the nine states of the again saw a protest camp occupation of a construction site. It European Common Market, the predecessor of today’s European took 8,000 police to clear it, at that time largest post-war police Union, a massive expansion of nuclear power was planned. deployment. These protest camp occupations also involved setting Initially this was to involve 160 new nuclear facilities, but the up ‘peoples’ colleges’ which featured a wide range of workshops French state alone planned for to have hundreds by the end of and discussions. the century. Growth in the nuclear sector was also on the cards The Gorleben campaign continues to this day. The almost annual elsewhere, such as in Sweden, the United States, and Spain. transportation shipments are met with blockades in both France Opposition began in the early part of the decade, reaching a and Germany, even though in 2004 one young protester in France crescendo in 1977, and at a highpoint for a few years after that. was killed after the waste carrying train failed to halt before the In 1977 German New Left publication Kursbuch saw these piece of rail track to which he was chained to. The protests have struggles as a way out of the ghettoization of the far-left restricted but not entirely halted the area being turned into a hub commenting: for the nuclear industry. There is an active temporary storage area “In the movement against the nuclear power stations … it seems possible to for nuclear waste there, but the planned nuclear power station, overcome this isolation. These initiatives came into being quite independent of the waste reprocessing plant, and permanent waste storage facility left. The left only took notice when they began to mobilise the population … Wyhl have not been built. was certainly no affair of tourist demonstrators, that was a people’s action, a people’s In Wackersdorf, Bavaria, Germany, in the late 80s, another movement. The citizen didn’t just fall into line this time, they took the initiative prospective nuclear waste reprocessing project was defeated.The themselves.” response of an unsympathetic observer hightlights the social basis Wyhl was the location of the first big battle of the movement, of the protest: where the construction site for a nuclear power station was “Stunned Germans watched unprecedented scenes on their TV screens as old ladies occupied first by a few hundred people, and then, a few days later, led masked Autonomen away to hide them from the police, and farmers wielded after the first occupation was cleared by 650 police, a second shovels and pitchforks against the police.” occupation took place involving over 20,000 demonstrators. In Carnsore, in the south east of Ireland, the state planned Campaigners built a hüttendorf, a protest camp, on the site. to build four nuclear power stations. The site was temporarily These protests were multi-national, Wyhl being near to France occupied in August 1978 with perhaps as many as 25,000 people and Switzerland, and successful, as the courts ordered a halt to attending a free festival there. The plans for a nuclear Ireland construction. were defeated. In part, particular circumstance led to this. The Following this the governments moved in a more repressive controversy around the project coincided with the Three Mile direction. A reactor construction site at Brokdorf, Germany was Island nuclear disaster in the United States, and economic down turned into a fortress over night, and one demonstrator was killed turn also pushed the nuclear plan down the agenda. However the and two disabled, in a police ambush in Creys-Malville, France. prospect of mass direct action was clearly a major factor, given The 60,000 strong demonstration in Creys-Malville was against what was happening on the continent. One opposition politician the proposed construction of the type of ‘fast breeder’ reactor which counselled that the Government should at least hold an open would produce the fuel for nuclear power plants. As well as the public inquiry lest they end up with “something like the new conventional tear gas and batons, police used grenades which left Tokyo Airport shambles on our hands at Carnsore”. This was a metre wide craters and were of similar explosive force to military reference to the long running battle against the expansion of issue grenades. The prefect, or local governor, in charge, had Narita Airport, Tokyo, Japan. The minister responsible for the Irish experience of running repression in Algeria, and openly stated that project talked about sending the army in against “20,000 hippies”. he was ready to deploy live ammunition against the unarmed crowd. In addition some of groups involved in the anti-nuclear movement The other establishment reaction to the Creys-Malville protest was clearly and unambiguously took a ‘by any means necessary’ stance. to attempt to divide people on nationalist lines. It was described as At the same time as this was a campaign against uranium mining ‘the second German invasion and occupation’ and Germans were in Donegal, in the north east of Ireland. This campaign successfully particularly singled out for arrest, imprisonment, and other violence. employed a wide range of tactics from the most respectable to the Ironically enough the reactor itself was actually a pan-European highly illegal. project, with German, Belgian, Spanish and Italian involvement. The European anti-nuclear struggles were formed by The international co-operation against the nuclear machine a confluence of relatively strong post-68 New Lefts and was presaged by other struggles along the Rhine. Previously, a mobilisations by communities adjoining the sites of proposed successful campaign had been waged against a lead plant next to a plants. The latter led the way in the early days. This movement Organise! Grassroots environmentalism 15 was also the greenhouse for the development of ecological This culminated in a direct action blockade and the arrest of five politics. The oil crisis was the pretext for nuclear expansion, hundred people. and this led to a questioning of ‘growth economics’, which was Warren County’s per capita income was the lowest in the state, variously interpreted as either the inherent ‘grow or die’ nature and 60% of its population was black, Afton, the community of capitalism, or a ‘growth ideology’ without any social context. adjoining the proposed dump, was 84% black. Environmental The nuclear power issue also provoked a further questioning justice therefore brings some of the themes and ideas of the civil of technology. Traditional left-wing politics was focused on the rights struggle to bear on environmental issues. Its main focus is apparent inefficiency of capitalism when it came to increasing on the disproportionate impact of environmental problems on low production, and was unquestioning of particular technologies. income ethnic minorities, in the context of the racial hierarchy Now it became clear that more and more production and more within the American working class, resistance to it, and the and more growth was in fact a threat to survival. consciousness formed through these factors. However, it states that: The anti-nuclear cause was also related to increasing state “… all of the issues of environmental racism and environmental justice don’t repression. ‘The nuclear state is a police state’ went the slogan and, just deal with people of color. We are just as much concerned with inequities in obviously it was related to nuclear weapons. Appalachia, for example, where the whites are basically dumped on because of lack Often, but not always, the anti-nuclear movement went forward of economic and political clout and lack of having a voice to say “no” and that’s meeting the opposition of traditional left parties, and trade unions. environmental injustice.” (There has been long running opposition It should also be remembered that the anti-nuclear struggles were to strip mining and to mountain top removal, which is a more not a singular phenomenon, very similar struggles took place pronounced version of strip mining, in the Appalachian region). around other issues, such as the expansion of Frankfurt airport in Another part of the context is the fact that the big environmental Germany, or the expansion of Larzac military base in France, and lobby groups and NGOs in the United States have been the final of the four Carnsore gatherings was much taken up with exceptionally conservative. In one instance their lobbying efforts the issue of non-nuclear toxic production. Although we do not live involved producing a plan as to what each federal government in a nuclear free Europe, the movement considerably impacted on department should be doing, excepting the housing and labour the extent of the blossoming of nuclear power. departments, these apparently having nothing to do with the environment. Also it seems to be the case that the radical Environmental justice in the United States alternative to these groups, Earth First!, was, in the 80s at least, In the United States recent decades have witnessed the almost exclusively concerned with ‘wilderness’ preservation. development of two overlapping, but distinct, movements; What the environmental justice movement focuses on, the anti-toxics and environmental justice. It should be stressed that disproportionate exposure to environmental risk, shouldn’t be by movements here we mean the linking together of particular thought of as peculiar to the United States. Such local struggles local struggles across space and time into a unity. With regard to against polluting plants or dangerous developments are to be opposition to local sources of pollution, this movement forming found in many places. In 1999 a Friends of the Earth study in process seems much more advanced in the U.S. than in Britain or the UK found that 660 sources of industrial pollution were in Ireland. areas where the average annual income was below £15,000 while The situation in the United States is also often extreme, as can only five were to be found where the average annual income was be seen in Pellow’s description of the environmental injustice over £30,000. They are to be found earlier in history also. For experienced by a black community in Chicago: instance in southern Spain in February 1888 the army carried “Built on a landfill in 1945 on the edge of an old industrial and ‘sanitary’ out a massacre of people demonstrating against the Rio Tinto dump (or ‘sewage farm’), Altgeld Gardens is now home to 10,000 residents. The Zinc mining company, the victims included striking miners, and neighbourhood is 97 per cent African American, 62 per cent of whom live below the peasants angry at the company’s pollution. The singular nature poverty level, and is surrounded by more than 53 toxic facilities, including landfills, of these American movements, singular in terms of the English oil refineries, waste lagoons, a sewage treatment plant, cement plants, steel mills, coke speaking world, isn’t to be found in the particular local struggles, ovens, and incinerators.” but in the fact there is a movement which unites them. The anti-toxics movement got going in the wake of Love Canal, which was a school and residential development built on land Moving Forward which had been a dump, and in which hazardous wastes were still The opening passages of this article spoke of the many different buried. One prominent activist from the campaign to compensate types of environmentalism. In the case of histories this is in part Love Canal residents, who were forced to move, went on to form an attribute of the bias of the intelligentsia (after all many histories the Citizens’ Clearinghouse for Hazardous Wastes (CCHW). She, of anarchism will focus on theoreticians to the detriment of Lois Gibbs, was getting more and more people in similar situations movements). In addition the more long lasting a group is, and the contacting her after mass media coverage of Love Canal. more formally organised, the more historic record it will leave CCHW is a networking and support node for campaigns against behind it. However in the different variants of environmentalism local pollution, or proposed hazardous developments. By 1988 what we can see is different class interests. the CCHW group had networked with 4,687 local groups, and State centred and market centred forms of environmentalism by 1994 over eight thousand. Characteristically this movement is express the needs of capital. The focus on individual consumption working class and often led by women. allows the opening of new market opportunities, through new The seminal event for the environmental justice movement products, obscures the social roots of environmental crises and was a campaign against the establishment of a dump for PCP allows environmental rhetoric to be used as a weapon in the class contaminated soil in Warren County, North Carolina. struggle against the working class. This is seen in the water and 16 grassroots environmentalism Organise! Organise! New York City anarchist bookfair 17 bin charges battles in Dublin. The state’s imposition of this double A class struggle interpretation of grassroots environmentalism taxation on ordinary people, while the super rich got tax evasion faces two possible arguments. Firstly that, in the anti-nuclear amnesties and corporations the lowest tax rate in the EU, was case, the developments were situated in rural areas, with a The first annual New York City justified in terms of ‘paying our way for our waste’ and ‘preserving predominantly ‘peasant’ or ‘petit-bourgeois’ population, although resources’. This does not mean that a libertarian socialist society it has long been held that a movement to socialism involves the would not involve marked alterations to consumption. It means leading role of the working class and the participation of other anarchist bookfair that the focus on individual consumption within capitalism actually subaltern classes. Secondly there is the idea at large, mostly spread has the opposite impact from that intended by genuine, but from academia, that environmentalism is a creature of a ‘new Friday 13 April 2007 – Monday 16 April 2007 By Daniel mistaken objectors. middle class’, that is of white collar employees. Apart from the fact However, much of this ‘consumption spotlight’ originates not in that such strata are a part of the working class, there is evidence error but in the deliberate intent to obfuscate, as with greenwash, for the exact opposite, with, in some instances, greater support “New York City, a centre of My personal highlight of the or to sell products, as with ‘green consumerism’. Similarly the for environmental goals found among people in blue collar anarchist life, culture, struggle, and weekend was a meeting on Saturday ‘we are all responsible’ line, from the most powerless to the occupations. ideas for 150 years, has never hosted entitled: ‘Remembering Spain, most powerful, conveniently obscures causes. In addition, as What the experience of the two examples of environmentalism an Anarchist Book Fair. That’s about Remembering Heroes!’ during environmental crises threaten the profitability of at least sectors from below can tell us in regard to moving forward today, is to change!”1 which two anti-fascist veterans of of capitalism, the state as the management system of capitalism, particularly how durable and popular environmental movements With these words the New York the Spanish Revolution spoke to a must attempt to address the problems. (Whether it can, which is are formed. The experience of the anti-nuclear movement is City Anarchist Bookfair Collective packed audience. To some present doubtful, is beyond the remit of this article). especially relevant here. As we have seen it came about through announced their intention to orga- the stories of the revolution were an The state must also manage environmental conflicts, head the combination of two factors, firstly a staunch mobilisation nise an anarchist bookfair. The An- unknown history, which illustrated them off from the path of popular struggle, and divert them among residents of the most immediately effected areas, and archist Federation (AF) and Interna- the extent to which the bookfair into labyrinths of bureaucracy and ‘consultation’. In contrast, the secondly a relatively strong anti-capitalist political scene, with tional of Anarchist Federations (IFA) had drawn in New Yorkers new to environmentalism which by direct action stops a road or a nuclear at least some propensities towards direct action and libertarian were invited to take part in what the anarchist workers movement, plant is an expression of our needs for a viable living space against forms of organisation. These two strands combined in a common was, according to all known records, whilst for others the two pensioners the needs of capital for particular developments. An expression willingness to fight together. the first ever Anarchist Bookfair in are heroes. The first of the speakers of this is the desire to move towards a post-capitalist society, It is of course impossible to lift from one moment in history a New York City. The AF ran a stall with was George Sossenko, who at 16 where production is based on fulfilling social need rather than form of struggle and plant it in the present. There was a particular members of the Grupo Anarquista had left his home in France to shareholder gain, and that need of course includes a habitable and context, such as a general higher level of class struggle and hence Albatross from our sister organisa- fight in the Durruti Column. Today pleasant environment. This is an expression of the interests and wider politicisation, confidence, solidarity and combativity. tion Federación Anarquista Ibérica George travels speaking about his the needs of another class; of another form of class struggle, from However, it is surely from the recent past and from similar - FAI, distributing newspapers, Brad Wills, who had recently been Moe Fishman time during the revolution, and below. This is not a glib response to the ‘revolution versus reform societies that we can draw lessons for today. In addition we magazines, pamphlets, stickers, and murdered whilst reporting from (left) with bookfair spreading his vision for an anarchist question’, not a proposal to wait for the glorious day. It means shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties faced then. The movement CD’s from Britain and Spain. Oaxaca. The main bookfair kicked organiser, Patrick society. The second speaker was maximising disruption from below because this forces reform but in Germany in the mid-70s faced trade union organised counter- By the close of play it was pretty off on Saturday, where a large hall Moe Fishman who volunteered 2 is also a building block of revolution. demonstrations. Ireland was then a markedly conservative country, obvious that the event had been a contained over 40 vendors, and sev- for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade , Genuine environmentalists who take up the state and market as it had been for much of the 20th century. In France the success. Having decided to aim big eral meeting rooms hosting a wide the American section of the centred strategy of lobbying for change, or promoting alternative combination of state violence and a turn to electoral politics seems with over 40 vendor tables, an art range of panel discussions. On Sun- International Brigades. Serving as technologies, are repeating the error Marx identified in early to have collapsed much of the movement. gallery, numerous panels, and pre- day the panel discussions continued the General Secretary of the Veterans socialists From drawing this lesson from the European anti-nuclear sentations, as well as workshops, and elsewhere in the city, unfortunately of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade “The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, experience we can see part of the significance of this year’s skill shares and various other events severe torrential rain reduced atten- throughout his life, disseminating causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class Convergence for Climate Action, the North American sister such as book and ‘zine readings, as dance. Monday saw a smaller event, information about the important antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even camps to the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow. The two well as parties spread over four days, with a book reading and discussion role the International Brigades that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without North American camps explicitly stated among their aims that of their commitment to this project evening. played in the international anti- the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, promoting “environmental justice by supporting communities that was to pay off. Fascist struggle. Moe Fishman 28 September 1915 – 6 August 2007 when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the are fighting dirty energy developments in their backyards”. One The mainstream newspapers The First Annual New York Anar- best possible state of society?” was part of the annual Mountain Justice Summer against mountain around New York had advertised Sadly Moe Fishman passed away on August 6th 2007. It was an chist Bookfair was a great success, Even Murray Bookchin, one of the foremost of the left greens, top removal in Appalachia, and the other in an area of Oregon, the event in the days leading up to honour to have met and talked to a man who travelled half way around drawing in a large crowd, beyond saw ecological crises in terms of a ‘general human interest’. If this where there is local community opposition to a liquefied natural the Bookfair, and the following day the world to fight alongside the people of Spain against the tyranny the anarchist Milieu, and by all ac- is the case, it is an interest mediated through class into contending gas terminal. The Heathrow camp was less explicit about this, but the New York Times ran a favour- of fascism. A man who served his life in the anti-fascist cause, having counts has led to increasing confi- interests, contending ways of managing the problem. One way nonetheless deliberately organised in conjunction with residents able review of the event, including been wounded in Spain, he returned to New York where he participated dence for the anarchist movement strengthens capitalism, and hence, from our point of view, opposing the expansion of the airport. mention of the ‘Anarchist Aspira- in the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, and would later serve in in the city. We present here (p18) an maintains the environmental problem, the other way undermines Similarly Rossport Solidarity Camp involves supporting a tions’ Panel Discussion in which I the Merchant Marine during the Second World War. After the war he interview with one of the organis- capitalism, and hence makes a small step towards dealing with community based resistance to Shell and the state’s destruction had been a contributor, along with became the General Secretary of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln ers of the event, and hope that next the problem. These different tendencies are not necessarily clear of a part of the West of Ireland. Likewise with the camps and Aragorn! (Anarchy: A Journal of De- Brigade and would serve in that capacity throughout his life. He was years bookfair can grow upon the cut and distinct in the real world. They can exist in the same occupations and actions in Trebanos, Milford Haven, Cilfrew, sire Armed) and Wayne Price (North instrumental in that organisations defence against the House Un- success of this years, once again movements, same actions, and even the same individuals. This is the and the Brecon Beacons national park, all on the Welsh leg of Eastern Federation of Anarchist American Activities Committee, actually winning on appeal, quipping making it the “place to be” that the ideological dominance of the ruling class and also how our own the route of a high pressure gas pipeline. This isn’t to be blind to Communists). “maybe we better do something subversive and get back on it”. His life local newspapers listed it as H ideas are formed and shaped within capitalist society and hence the the many problems with these events and campaigns. However The Bookfair began on Friday with and struggle for the anti-fascist cause was a true inspiration, the title 1 The bookfair announcement: replication of features of that society, or of ideas congenial to our a perfectly formed movement isn’t going to arise from our nice a film festival, where the anarchist of the talk he gave in New York just a few months ago comes back to www.anarchistbookfair.net/index. php?title=Announcement rulers, within opposition movements. Many opposition movements thoughts. We have to work with the existing possible sparks of community paid their respects to the me and with these few words I wish to remember and pay my respects 2 The Abraham Lincoln Brigade website form structures mirroring the hierarchy of capitalism. new movements H New York based Indymedia reporter to a hero. www.alba-valb.org/ 16 grassroots environmentalism Organise! Organise! New York City anarchist bookfair 17 bin charges battles in Dublin. The state’s imposition of this double A class struggle interpretation of grassroots environmentalism taxation on ordinary people, while the super rich got tax evasion faces two possible arguments. Firstly that, in the anti-nuclear amnesties and corporations the lowest tax rate in the EU, was case, the developments were situated in rural areas, with a The first annual New York City justified in terms of ‘paying our way for our waste’ and ‘preserving predominantly ‘peasant’ or ‘petit-bourgeois’ population, although resources’. This does not mean that a libertarian socialist society it has long been held that a movement to socialism involves the would not involve marked alterations to consumption. It means leading role of the working class and the participation of other anarchist bookfair that the focus on individual consumption within capitalism actually subaltern classes. Secondly there is the idea at large, mostly spread has the opposite impact from that intended by genuine, but from academia, that environmentalism is a creature of a ‘new Friday 13 April 2007 – Monday 16 April 2007 By Daniel mistaken objectors. middle class’, that is of white collar employees. Apart from the fact However, much of this ‘consumption spotlight’ originates not in that such strata are a part of the working class, there is evidence error but in the deliberate intent to obfuscate, as with greenwash, for the exact opposite, with, in some instances, greater support “New York City, a centre of My personal highlight of the or to sell products, as with ‘green consumerism’. Similarly the for environmental goals found among people in blue collar anarchist life, culture, struggle, and weekend was a meeting on Saturday ‘we are all responsible’ line, from the most powerless to the occupations. ideas for 150 years, has never hosted entitled: ‘Remembering Spain, most powerful, conveniently obscures causes. In addition, as What the experience of the two examples of environmentalism an Anarchist Book Fair. That’s about Remembering Heroes!’ during environmental crises threaten the profitability of at least sectors from below can tell us in regard to moving forward today, is to change!”1 which two anti-fascist veterans of of capitalism, the state as the management system of capitalism, particularly how durable and popular environmental movements With these words the New York the Spanish Revolution spoke to a must attempt to address the problems. (Whether it can, which is are formed. The experience of the anti-nuclear movement is City Anarchist Bookfair Collective packed audience. To some present doubtful, is beyond the remit of this article). especially relevant here. As we have seen it came about through announced their intention to orga- the stories of the revolution were an The state must also manage environmental conflicts, head the combination of two factors, firstly a staunch mobilisation nise an anarchist bookfair. The An- unknown history, which illustrated them off from the path of popular struggle, and divert them among residents of the most immediately effected areas, and archist Federation (AF) and Interna- the extent to which the bookfair into labyrinths of bureaucracy and ‘consultation’. In contrast, the secondly a relatively strong anti-capitalist political scene, with tional of Anarchist Federations (IFA) had drawn in New Yorkers new to environmentalism which by direct action stops a road or a nuclear at least some propensities towards direct action and libertarian were invited to take part in what the anarchist workers movement, plant is an expression of our needs for a viable living space against forms of organisation. These two strands combined in a common was, according to all known records, whilst for others the two pensioners the needs of capital for particular developments. An expression willingness to fight together. the first ever Anarchist Bookfair in are heroes. The first of the speakers of this is the desire to move towards a post-capitalist society, It is of course impossible to lift from one moment in history a New York City. The AF ran a stall with was George Sossenko, who at 16 where production is based on fulfilling social need rather than form of struggle and plant it in the present. There was a particular members of the Grupo Anarquista had left his home in France to shareholder gain, and that need of course includes a habitable and context, such as a general higher level of class struggle and hence Albatross from our sister organisa- fight in the Durruti Column. Today pleasant environment. This is an expression of the interests and wider politicisation, confidence, solidarity and combativity. tion Federación Anarquista Ibérica George travels speaking about his the needs of another class; of another form of class struggle, from However, it is surely from the recent past and from similar - FAI, distributing newspapers, Brad Wills, who had recently been Moe Fishman time during the revolution, and below. This is not a glib response to the ‘revolution versus reform societies that we can draw lessons for today. In addition we magazines, pamphlets, stickers, and murdered whilst reporting from (left) with bookfair spreading his vision for an anarchist question’, not a proposal to wait for the glorious day. It means shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties faced then. The movement CD’s from Britain and Spain. Oaxaca. The main bookfair kicked organiser, Patrick society. The second speaker was maximising disruption from below because this forces reform but in Germany in the mid-70s faced trade union organised counter- By the close of play it was pretty off on Saturday, where a large hall Moe Fishman who volunteered 2 is also a building block of revolution. demonstrations. Ireland was then a markedly conservative country, obvious that the event had been a contained over 40 vendors, and sev- for the Abraham Lincoln Brigade , Genuine environmentalists who take up the state and market as it had been for much of the 20th century. In France the success. Having decided to aim big eral meeting rooms hosting a wide the American section of the centred strategy of lobbying for change, or promoting alternative combination of state violence and a turn to electoral politics seems with over 40 vendor tables, an art range of panel discussions. On Sun- International Brigades. Serving as technologies, are repeating the error Marx identified in early to have collapsed much of the movement. gallery, numerous panels, and pre- day the panel discussions continued the General Secretary of the Veterans socialists From drawing this lesson from the European anti-nuclear sentations, as well as workshops, and elsewhere in the city, unfortunately of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade “The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, experience we can see part of the significance of this year’s skill shares and various other events severe torrential rain reduced atten- throughout his life, disseminating causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class Convergence for Climate Action, the North American sister such as book and ‘zine readings, as dance. Monday saw a smaller event, information about the important antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even camps to the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow. The two well as parties spread over four days, with a book reading and discussion role the International Brigades that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without North American camps explicitly stated among their aims that of their commitment to this project evening. played in the international anti- the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, promoting “environmental justice by supporting communities that was to pay off. Fascist struggle. Moe Fishman 28 September 1915 – 6 August 2007 when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the are fighting dirty energy developments in their backyards”. One The mainstream newspapers The First Annual New York Anar- best possible state of society?” was part of the annual Mountain Justice Summer against mountain around New York had advertised Sadly Moe Fishman passed away on August 6th 2007. It was an chist Bookfair was a great success, Even Murray Bookchin, one of the foremost of the left greens, top removal in Appalachia, and the other in an area of Oregon, the event in the days leading up to honour to have met and talked to a man who travelled half way around drawing in a large crowd, beyond saw ecological crises in terms of a ‘general human interest’. If this where there is local community opposition to a liquefied natural the Bookfair, and the following day the world to fight alongside the people of Spain against the tyranny the anarchist Milieu, and by all ac- is the case, it is an interest mediated through class into contending gas terminal. The Heathrow camp was less explicit about this, but the New York Times ran a favour- of fascism. A man who served his life in the anti-fascist cause, having counts has led to increasing confi- interests, contending ways of managing the problem. One way nonetheless deliberately organised in conjunction with residents able review of the event, including been wounded in Spain, he returned to New York where he participated dence for the anarchist movement strengthens capitalism, and hence, from our point of view, opposing the expansion of the airport. mention of the ‘Anarchist Aspira- in the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee, and would later serve in in the city. We present here (p18) an maintains the environmental problem, the other way undermines Similarly Rossport Solidarity Camp involves supporting a tions’ Panel Discussion in which I the Merchant Marine during the Second World War. After the war he interview with one of the organis- capitalism, and hence makes a small step towards dealing with community based resistance to Shell and the state’s destruction had been a contributor, along with became the General Secretary of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln ers of the event, and hope that next the problem. These different tendencies are not necessarily clear of a part of the West of Ireland. Likewise with the camps and Aragorn! (Anarchy: A Journal of De- Brigade and would serve in that capacity throughout his life. He was years bookfair can grow upon the cut and distinct in the real world. They can exist in the same occupations and actions in Trebanos, Milford Haven, Cilfrew, sire Armed) and Wayne Price (North instrumental in that organisations defence against the House Un- success of this years, once again movements, same actions, and even the same individuals. This is the and the Brecon Beacons national park, all on the Welsh leg of Eastern Federation of Anarchist American Activities Committee, actually winning on appeal, quipping making it the “place to be” that the ideological dominance of the ruling class and also how our own the route of a high pressure gas pipeline. This isn’t to be blind to Communists). “maybe we better do something subversive and get back on it”. His life local newspapers listed it as H ideas are formed and shaped within capitalist society and hence the the many problems with these events and campaigns. However The Bookfair began on Friday with and struggle for the anti-fascist cause was a true inspiration, the title 1 The bookfair announcement: replication of features of that society, or of ideas congenial to our a perfectly formed movement isn’t going to arise from our nice a film festival, where the anarchist of the talk he gave in New York just a few months ago comes back to www.anarchistbookfair.net/index. php?title=Announcement rulers, within opposition movements. Many opposition movements thoughts. We have to work with the existing possible sparks of community paid their respects to the me and with these few words I wish to remember and pay my respects 2 The Abraham Lincoln Brigade website form structures mirroring the hierarchy of capitalism. new movements H New York based Indymedia reporter to a hero. www.alba-valb.org/ 18 interview with Patrick—NYC Bookfair Organise!

Interview with Patrick of the NYC Bookfair Collective Conducted by Daniel on behalf of Organise!

Organise!: Please introduce yourself, and tell us a little about yourself, and how came to be part of the bookfair collective. My name is Patrick. I am originally from Baltimore, Maryland. Which was where I first got introduced to Anarchist politics in, or around, 1997. Later I was a member of the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists (NEFAC) for a brief couple months in 2000 or 2001 but the collective I was in split up and I went travelling for a bit. I lived in London for about seven months around 2002 and was running with the Anarchist Youth Network kids and also volunteering at Freedom about one day a week. I have been in New York City for two and half years. I am in the Bookfair Collective and also a part of New York Metro Alliance of Anarchists Patrick, one of the about a hundred people showed or are in, various groups, such as: (NYMAA), which are two different bookfair organisers up. I was truly inspired by the lack Anarchist People of Color (APOC), things. of the ‘life-stylist’ tendency and the Industrial Workers of the World commitment to class, and other (IWW), Students for a Democratic This being the first ever New York important struggles, that most of the Society (SDS), Direct Action Network City Anarchist Bookfair, it appears people there had. NYMAA developed (DAN), NEFAC, and others I am leav- to have sprung up out of nowhere. out of this meeting, as some of those ing out. These groups are all pretty Please inform us a little about the present decided to form a more class focused, which is why NYMAA recent history of Anarchism in structured group that would act as leans, a lot, towards the politics of New York City, and as the Bookfair visible ‘face’ of anarchist politics, class war anarchists. The group is a came out of the NYMAA group, tell struggle, and action in New York little over a year old and politics are us how NYMAA came about. City, so that people from out-of- definitely getting worked out. So Since the break up of the Love and town knew where to plug into, and far there hasn’t been that big of a Rage Federation, there have been dif- for people in town to plug into. problem with competing currents, ferent splintered groups, and many so wish us luck! individuals not tied to any group, it Does NYMAA follow any explicit seemed that they were all aimlessly anarchist tendency? Or what cur- So How is NYMAA structured/ existing, and where not visible to rents are within NYMAA, and have organised? others within New York City, or there been problems with compet- NYMAA membership is based on out of town. Since the Republican ing currents? fulfilling 2 out of 3 criteria: paying National Convention was held in Well I think this is becoming dues, attending the two previous New York City, anarchism has been a problem. There is no political last GAs (or 2 out of 3 of them) and developing a more active presence in backbone to the group. Although, being in a working group. So most the city, but still nothing I wanted to the structure is pretty well or- people do the latter 2, meaning be involved with. Then about a year ganised and most people are of NYMAA is hardly getting enough and a half ago NYMAA came out of a red/black tendency, it is not in money to rent the spaces for the a weird ‘Anarchist Circle’ in which paper. People in NYMAA came from, meetings. Now that we have t-shirts Organise! Interview with Patrick—NYC Bookfair 19

maybe we will get rich off the sales, bandwagon of the early 2000s are Organising a big event like an but I do not think so! This being realizing this now, which is really Anarchist Bookfair is a pretty the fact, we really need to work out good. NYMAA does have all kinds in ambitious project, for a newly a way of having some money for it, including transit workers, activist, established group, and then to projects we would like to do. students, etc. complicate matters it became a four We hold GAs every three to four day event … any comments on your months. These are organized by the So how did the Bookfair Collec- sanity, or how this came about? ‘Nuts and Bolts’ working group, tive come about, out of NYMAA? Officially the Bookfair Collective which rotates people almost every One of, if not, the main purpose only organised Saturday and Sunday, assembly. The agenda is usually of NYMAA is for ideas to develop the weekend format made sense, decided by items we ‘benched’ last into working groups, who in turn I mean we knew we would have GA and new items brought forth. will execute these into projects. The people coming from far and for a We have a brief break out session proposals to form such working one day event? Forget about it! The in the beginning, with a couple groups are generally proposed at film fest was organized by another proposed questions/problems, and the General Assemblies (GA) and person and the afterparty was people meet up in groups and try to developed in-between each GA. organized by myself and the blackkat solve/talk about them. This is pretty The bookfair was simply a proposal collective. It was pretty stressful but I new, and a bit weird, but it does get brought up at one of the GAs. figure it was well worth it. the blood and brain working, which is really important for a six hour So the Bookfair collective and I think many Anarchists in the meeting. NYMAA are separate entities, the UK would be surprised by the The working groups have regular bookfair being simply a working amount, and positive nature, of meeting in the time between the group first developed at a NYMAA- the mainstream media coverage GAs and make announcements to the GA, does this mean that there were the Bookfair received. Could you list and on the website, so that other people involved in the collective elaborate on this, and other media NYMAA members can get involved. who were not part of NYMAA? approaches that were undertaken. There are more in the structure, but Well, again, the Bookfair Collective Yeah that was ridiculous! Most it is, almost, always changing. So go is separate then NYMAA. The main New York papers and magazines to website (www.nymaa.org) to find Bookfair collective group was only actually gave a pre-write up by some out yourself! four to five people, with others editor, telling their readers to go. contributing things here and there. We just emailed and did mad press From an outsider’s perspective, Only about three people involved releases. The NYMAA props working the class struggle focus of NYMAA were a part of NYMAA, the others groups is also subscribed to a lot of seems a bit of an anomaly for the were in Books Through Bars and US anarchist, and regular activist, US anarchist scene, would this be Radical Reference. groups from NYC to Texas, and we fair to say? emailed all of them. I am a little No, I don’t really follow. As I said Were other bookfairs elsewhere curious as to why NEFAC never put before, most individuals in the group an influence on you in anyway? it on their calendar! are pretty class focused, most luckily I think the main motivation was due to the other groups that they are that Providence, Rhode Island, had Another thing that may surprise involved in or came from. I think it one and that burned us up! We felt UK readers, is the lack of anonym- is an East Coast thing though. Most that New York City should have an- ity of the organisers, you were very people didn’t have time, or care, archism institutionalised somehow, I open about who you were, and about eating out of bins or other mean if a city the size of Providence chose to identify yourselves both life-stylist trophies. Not to say some can then surely NYC should, right! on the website and booklet. Did don’t do it, but it is as important to Since it was the first time it was nice you feel this was a necessary step? the change we want to see as build- not to try something completely ‘ out Did this have any known positive ing model airplanes. I also think of tradition’, in a sense, so that we or negative outcomes? that most people that got on the could guarantee people would come. I don’t know. I didn’t really want 20 interview with Patrick—NYC Bookfair Organise!

to do it, but didn’t really care. they developed? Also, I was told that the people were Probably got me a good spot if you Well this the panellists made up ‘intelligent’ here. Don’t really know google my name! and sent them in the applications, what that means, but it sounds good. so we couldn’t change the titles they I reckon of those present it was Could you tell us how was the gave them, are you kidding me? about 35% of people come in off the bookfair structured, and organ- I actually thought the titles were street! ised? Was there an overall aim, in pretty good, maybe I am a hippy? the choices for panels? Was there How do you think having an a conscious choice to have ‘panels annual event such as this will effect of experts’ with speakers from I saw George speak at the Montreal the NYC anarchist movement? various backgrounds, rather than I think it would be great. It is giving spaces over to groups or Anarchist Bookfair and invited him up, a great location and there are so specific projects? many anarchists in the city that are Well the panels were on a first simple. He is a truly amazing person burned up, and pissed off at other come first serve type basis. When we anarchists, and, for some reason, got applications for talks or work- and one of the kindest people I ever met. this seems like a stress valve. People shops of the same content we tried seemed really re-energized post- to put them together onto a panel, bookfair. this was mostly due to the severe What was the standout moment lack of space. We didn’t try to make of the bookfair for you? Mine Do you have any advice for any a ‘panel of experts’ we just tried to would have to be seeing George groups/individuals who may want cram together whatever applications Sossenko (of the Durruti Column) to replicate what you did? came to us. As the applications came and Moe Fishman (of the Abraham It’s not nothing! Just be confident in the bookfair collective decided Lincoln Brigade) discuss their time and do it. Be tough, and do it your which ones would be appropriate during the Spanish Civil war. This damn self. Well, it is a bit stressful at and got them. However, I did invite talk was inspiration to many, and times, and anarchists really annoy George Sossenko to speak though. informative to many others new to you sometimes, but in the end it is The tables were also organised the period of history. So I would really worth while. on a first come first served basis. like to know how this meeting However, we tried to keep an almost came about? What do you see as the future for equal balance between groups from I saw George speak at the Montreal NYMAA, and the bookfair. NYC and out of town. Our next Anarchist Bookfair and invited him Well NYMAA seems good. People priority was zines, and then we also up, simple. He is a truly amazing are into it. The bookfair will hope- gave tables half price to groups that person and one of the kindest people fully become an annual event and sold nothing more than five bones. I ever met. become thousands of people. I really This was an attempt to get zines, My stand out moment however is would not like to make just another but, some groups just left every- my mother, who knows little about stop in the anarchist ‘event hoppers’ thing at home over $5 and then got anarchism, asking Wayne Price a circuit, but I don’t mind that too a discount table, we might have to question about Canada; and, at the much, but the hope would be that re-examine this for next year. But party, my brother trying to pick people in NYC would get something there will still be discount tables up my good friend from phillies out of it. for groups that need them, as I feel ‘significant other.’ this is an important aspect of the Any major plans for next year’s bookfair. So what’s the feedback been like? bookfair, should the revolution not Are you kidding me? It was great. intervene!? I thought the titles/descriptions The tables were all on one floor Well I would tell the revolution of some of the panels were a bit so I didn’t get yelled at by groups to come to the after party!! But the milieu jargon heavy, sort of hippy saying ‘… you gave me the shit spot, space already welcomed us back and meets liberal academic, how were change the location’! That is stressful. we are booked! See you there H Organise! Culture—Margaret Michaelis 21

Visual chronicler of the Spanish Revolution Margaret Michaelis

argaret Michaelis’s prow- ess as a photographer Mhas been until recently hidden away. Recent exhibitions in Canberra, Australia in 1988 and 2005 and in Valencia, Spain in 2005 have begun to dispel this cloud of obscurity. Her best photographs from her stay in Spain between 1932 and 1937 are now beginning to be admired and recognized and rightly seen as moving and striking depic- tions of the period. Margarethe Gross was born into a Jewish family in Dzieditz in what was then Austria, in 1902. Dziedzitz is now Dziedzice in southern Poland near Krakow. Her liberal upbringing led her to be given every educational opportunity by her parents. She stud- ied photography at the Institute of Graphic Arts and Research in Vienna. During the 1920s she worked in leading Viennese studies, including the prestigious Studio d’Ora, as copyist, he became an anarchist in his Paramatta River, German anarchists who met with retoucher and photographer for teenage years and was an important 1948 the outstanding Spanish anarchists adverts, fashion and industry. These member of the anarcho-syndicalist Francisco Ascaso and Buenaventura years of apprenticeship made her union, the FAUD (Freie Arbeiter Durruti, when they stayed in Berlin conscious of the use of modern Union Deutschlands – Union of in 1928. styles in photography and sparked Free Workers of Germany). He Margaret and Rudolf became close a lifelong interest in photographic wrote under the name of Michel and were to marry in 1933.The poor portraiture. Women of her gen- and worked in the State Museum economic situation meant that she eration were beginning to see of Berlin restoring antiquities could secure only short-term jobs photography as a possible career and from the Near East. He also took in various photographic studios Margaret appears to have seen herself part in archaeological expeditions, as an assistant. She set up her own as a neue frau, a modern woman including one to Uruk in Iraq for studio Foto-gross in 1931. In 1932 challenging established convention six months in 1932–1933. Rudolf she visited Barcelona. She lodged in and morals. was the main animator of the a hotel in the poorest and shabbiest In 1929 she moved to Berlin and GFB (Corporation of Libertarian part of town, the Barrio Chino. a few months later she met Rudolf Booklovers) a book club set up by She began to photograph the local Michaelis. Born at Leipzig in 1907 the FAUD. He had been one of the people with a little Leica camera, She began to photograph the local people with a little Leica camera, taking pictures of gypsies, card players, children, street musicians and sailors 22 Culture—Margaret Michaelis Organise!

taking pictures of gypsies, card five weeks and only freed with the by Jose Luis Sert and worked with players, children, street musicians intervention of the museum director. them between 1934 and 1936. and sailors. However, there was For her part Margaret was arrested These architects wanted to revitalize mistrust in that neighbourhood on a flimsy charge of book theft. and rehabilitate the Barrio Chino, a towards outsiders, and she was They both decided to leave Germany project that was never realized. She mistaken for a police informer and in November 1933, and chose took many photographs of Barcelona forced to take shelter in her hotel Barcelona as their destination. on their behalf and contributed to with her German compatriots. She In Barcelona they met up with their exhibition Nova Barcelona (New wrote movingly on her experience other German anarchists and formed Barcelona) in 1935. Her photos ap- in the Barrio Chino and how the DAS (German Anarcho-syndical- peared in the modernist magazines statistics pointed to between 90% ists) group. But life was hard for AC (Documents of Contemporary and 95% of neighbourhood children them in Spain. They spoke neither Activity) and D’aci e d’alla. She being affected by congenital syphilis. Spanish nor Catalan and lived in acquired a knack of getting people She had seen a street accordionist poverty. They were suspect in the on the street to be relaxed at having start playing outside her hotel, their picture taken. She used tech- who became surrounded by local niques of taking pictures of streets children, with noses eaten away, She acquired a knack of getting and their inhabitants from rooftops bald, blind and on crutches—“A and attic windows and buildings sad and terrible image … the people on the street to be relaxed at from low on the ground. Her images Barrio Chino is the shame of all of dilapidated and grimy dwellings, Catalonia. The children are a silent having their picture taken poverty-stricken interiors, rub- denunciation”. Her images from this bish-strewn courtyards and sick and visit are both a record and a savage diseased children were accompanied social critique. eyes of the authorities as either by graphics, statistics and diagrams anarchists or as German spies! This which further dramatized them. Her Hitler difficult situation led to the break-up photomontages were arranged in a The rise to power of the Nazis in of the relationship between Margaret similar fashion, combining images Germany spelt danger to both Jews and Rudolf in 1934, although they with texts and statistics. and anarchists. Rudolf had secretly remained in contact throughout She accompanied Sert and the attended the congress of the Inter- their lives. painter Joan Miro to Andalusia national Workers Association (IWA), In the same year Margaret opened and her photos of this tour were the anarcho-syndicalist international, a studio, Foto-Studio, which later published in AC. She made photos of in Amsterdam. His anarchist and became Foto-Elis. She made contact Miro’s paintings. She made architec- antifascist activities and his refusal with the avant-garde architects of the tural studies for individual architects to recognize the new regime meant GATPAC (Group of Catalan Architects of the new modern buildings being that he was soon to be sacked from and Technicians for the Progress of built in Barcelona. the museum. He was imprisoned for Contemporary Architecture), led The coming of the revolution The coup d’etat organised by Anarchist Prison Library – books needed right-wing forces in the armed forces, the Church and in the far Cassidy Wheeler is spending seven years in an American jail for stealing a pair of socks. He is a committed right and royalist parties and its anarchist and is gathering material from around the world to try and set up a prison library. If you have any initial defeat in parts of Spain un- old books on anarchist politics you can donate, please send them to Lawrence ABC, PO Box 1483, Lawrence, leashed a revolution in 1936. Rudolf for his part became delegate of the KS 66044, USA. Email: [email protected] German anarchist unit, the Erich For letters of support only contact Cassidy Wheeler 14282456, Two Rivers Correctional Institution Muehsam Group, named after the (TRCI), 82911 Beach Access Road, Umatilla, OR 97882, USA. famous German anarchist murdered by the Nazis in 1933. This became Organise! Culture—Margaret Michaelis 23

part of the anarchist militia column, writers, like her, European and Jewish the Ascaso Column, where Spaniards refugees. She undertook very little fought alongside Germans. The DAS open air photography. In these war became part of the local federation years she experienced a “very, very of anarchist groups in Barcelona and sharp, loneliness” in her own words. Rudolf took part in the occupation of Margaret was forced to close the German Club in that city, which her studio in 1952 because of her had been a notorious nest of Nazis. failing sight. She married Albert For her part Margaret’s work Sachs in 1960 and worked with him became more and more closely asso- in his window framing business in ciated with the burgeoning revolu- Melbourne. In the years after the war tion. She accompanied the American she began the agonizing process that anarchist Emma Goldman on a tour many others experienced of hunting of Aragon along with the German for her family and friends back in anarchists Hans Erich Kaminsky and her home town. All had perished Anita Garfinkle and Arthur Lehning, in the Holocaust. One rare open air the secretary of the IWA and they shot, a kind of self-portrait, from visited the collectives being set up in this period, Paramatta River, taken the countryside. She realized a heroic on 14th June 1948, shows her in portrait of Emma Goldman during the middle distance facing away this tour. At the end of the year she from the camera looking out over a photographed the funeral of Durruti. landscape of industrial desolation. In 1937 she worked for the Propa- She renewed contact with Rudolf ganda Commission of the Catalan in East Germany in the post-war Government, recording scenes from 1938. She photographed some Rudolph Michaelis years. He, like a number of other everyday life in Barcelona, with graphic views of the Jewish ghetto surviving German anarchists, had reportages on public health and in Krakow. She then obtained a visa been under the illusion that he support to children. Her quick and from Britain and then moved on to could join the Communist Party and propagandist documentary images Australia, having in the meantime spread anarchist ideas from within. were used in magazines and papers. secured the release of her equipment Instead he became its captive and She undertook a series of photo and photographs which eventually was forced to write denunciations shoots in the Barrio Chino, this time reached her in Australia. of anarchism. She visited him in being able to snap away without Rudolf had crossed over to France East Berlin in 1967 and remained being driven off. Her rapid image with the defeat in 1939. He returned in correspondence with him until taking, as mentioned above, is appar- secretly to Spain in 1939, was 1975 (he died in 1990). Grete (as ent in these photos, including one of arrested and imprisoned until 1944. she was known to Rudolf and other a pickpocket dipping into a handbag! close friends) kept the letters, dried Some of these images were later Exile in Australia flowers, maps and photographs she seized and used by the Francoists in In Australia, German incomers had received from Rudolf in a large a publication Homage from a Freed were viewed with suspicion and envelope on which she had written Catalonia to its Caudillo, without, kept under surveillance. Margaret Michel in large black letters. She kept obviously, Margaret’s permission. arrived in Sydney a few days after the these until the end of her life. With the worsening situation in outbreak of the Second World War. Margaret kept her collection of Spain, Rudolf was arrested several She worked first as a housekeeper photographs from the Spanish period times by the Stalinists in 1937. and then in 1940 opened Photo-Stu- hidden throughout her sojourn in The couple was divorced that year. dio. Her work from this period was Australia up until her death in 1985. Whilst Rudolf stayed on to fight, strictly bread and butter, with the With her death her photographic Margaret left for France and then usual studio portraits, although they collection and archives were given to visited her parents in Poland in were mostly of artists, dancers and the National Gallery of Australia H 24 Review—What’s left? Organise!

What’s left? How liberals lost their way By Nick Cohen (Fourth Estate, 2007)

The left meets the right the British government than the should not be simply dismissed. On the face of it, a book with such Nazis. He sees it paralleled in However the uncomfortable truth is a title does not have much to say recent years by leftists praising the that some of our greatest examples to anarchists. But I believe it does. Iraqi resistance to the American- are many decades old, and overall Firstly, because the book is in fact dominated “coalition of the anarchism has historically largely questioning the modern history willing”, even though this resistance existed on the margins, the way it of what he views as “the Left” is in large part made up of Islamists, is treated here showing how that (broadly speaking, Marxist groups, Baathists and al-Qaeda supporters. marginalisation continues today. liberals and middle-class Labour Further examples of Marxist The problem remains how to make supporters), and in doing so raises organisations he denounces on it relevant and practical for vast some uncomfortable questions for us various grounds are the Workers numbers of people, for of course also. Secondly, by taking the measure Revolutionary Party (for the abuse of anarchism could never be imposed of the arguments of someone like members by its leader Gerry Healy or decreed in the manner of even the Cohen, it could strengthen our ideas and support for Middle Eastern most “democratic” governments. and their practical application. dictatorships in return for money), It initially concerns the the Revolutionary Communist A leftist who went west experiences of a courageous Iraqi Party (which denied Serbian ethnic Cohen is an example of someone Trotskyist named Kanan Makiya, and cleansing) and the Socialist Workers from the “democratic” Left his struggles to alert the world to the Party (for their alliance with the (Christopher Hitchens and Francis nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime. reactionary Muslim Association Wheen are other prominent By Cohen’s account, the Left hailed of Britain in the Stop the War examples) who see the world him in the 1980s for exposing the coalition). opened up by the admittedly reality of life under Baath Party rule terrifying objective of Islamists—a and the West’s support for Iraq as Anarchism global theocratic dictatorship—as a counterweight to the militantly What he has to say about the overriding political reality of Islamic Iranian regime which had anarchism is in the context of Noam our time. It is certainly true that come to power in 1979. However Chomsky’s adoption of it at the age in its full flowering Islamism is a after Iraq’s attempted annexation of of 13. Cohen describes it as “an totalitarian movement with no room Kuwait led to defeat in the Gulf War, honourable political philosophy for dissent. It is also true that this and the US and Britain subsequently that did not implicate itself in any was not widely understood for some established partial control over Iraq of the criminal ideologies of the time because legitimate grievances in the form of no-fly zones and the twentieth century from colonialism (e.g. the oppression of Palestinians sanctions regime (the UN’s “oil for to Islamism, but also a facile one or Chechens) were and continue to food programme”), Makiya was because its supporters could never be confused with the underlying then spurned by many of his former put its theories into practice”. Taking political objective of a “godly” supporters because he believed that the first half of that sentence, since dictatorship. the war should have been carried the book details an appalling litany But the stance of Cohen and on so as to overthrow Saddam. Their of political crimes, it should surely others overrides any sense of logic hatred for US imperialism overrode have given Cohen more pause or history. What he and his ilk are everything else, even the recognition for thought as to why and how asking us to believe is that current that Saddam’s Iraq was a modern anarchists were consistently on the British and American policy has form of fascism. side of freedom and not implicated cut itself free from a history that Cohen links this attitude of in those crimes. The second half includes “imperial wars in Kenya significant parts of the Left back is mistaken in its blanket assertion (and) Malaysia…the saturation to the 1930s, when the British about lack of practice. The efforts bombing of Vietnam, Cambodia Communist Party dutifully followed of such as Makhno in the Ukraine, and Laos…the American-backed Moscow’s line after the Nazi- Durrutti in Spain, and a host of overthrow of the democratic Soviet pact of 1939 and were more attempts at communal living, free governments of Iran, Guatemala committed to struggling against schools, etc in many countries and Chile” (pages 160–161). This Organise! Review—What’s left? 25

partial list in itself is revealing of they are “mixed economies”. remarkably untroubled approach to the background of politicians and It’s good of him to show us this war. For him, rearmament to oppose writers such as Cohen. They know mistaken denunciation of a system the Nazis should have happened about this history, and it can be organised for profit, which depends much sooner; bombing the civilians assumed that such knowledge went on private ownership (or state of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved into their political formation as ownership which increasingly the lives of thousands of troops; in people of the Left. Yet somehow imports the working practices of the Gulf War, the US should have governments with this sort of the private sector) and generates a pushed on to Baghdad; the rest of past are supposed now to be class-ridden society. Perhaps labels Europe should have opposed Serbia only interested in freedom and are less important than concrete militarily, or at least armed the humanitarianism. consequences: “a billion people Bosnians; and, in quite the most The break-up of Yugoslavia (live) in abject poverty… access to disgusting passage in the book, he through the ethnic slaughters of the adequate sanitation (is) unknown to accuses the millions of anti-war 1990s, followed by the cataclysm 2.4 billion”. protesters who marched in February of 9/11, the event where Islamism Where Cohen is on stronger 2003 of doing so “to oppose the went global and which does indeed ground is in attacking the inchoate overthrow of a fascist regime”. demand fresh thinking from all ideas of “anti-capitalism”. It is true The prospect of massive slaughter of us, has seen them only able to that these still need to become presumably had no influence. view the alternatives as being “the more of a positive programme Nonetheless, if it is true that the West” or Islamism. Even though rather than simply exposing the Marxist left or the various shades of some of the book rightly locates injustices of the present order. This liberal have preferred to ignore the the malaise of what passes for the is an international movement still current plight of the Iraqis except Left in the West in its decades-old in its infancy, albeit one of the most insofar as it can be blamed on the divorce from class-based politics significant examples of resistance in Western forces, anarchists cannot (so old-fashioned, unlike today’s recent history not least because it is continue on this path. For among nineteenth century-style exploitation so self-critical of its own emerging our core beliefs are freedom, class in the “developing world” or the programme. But he downplays how unity and internationalism. However resurgent bigotries of nationalism or the incessant attacks of the ruling I am not aware of any organised, religion) it cannot imagine anything class and the mainstream media sustained effort to support or beyond “democracy”. But since this on anything outside the “centre encourage anarchists in Iraq, or in term is never defined, it can only ground” of politics, and how the region generally. Yet this area be assumed that Cohen sees no collapse of so-called communist of rampant authoritarianism and need to do so because he actually and socialist parties has meant religious lunacy is precisely the kind regards the present system—despite younger generations of activists in which a mass anarchist movement the concentration of economic are largely cut off from the past is both least likely to thrive and most power and widespread sense of and consequently lack so much in need of it. powerlessness—as something of what needed to understand the The problem for anarchists of how that really does serve the people present. He also shows not a trace of to respond to wars can be traced in general. In fact any notion of understanding a politics in which all back to the First World War, at a economic democracy is absent from are involved rather than voting for time when it could be reasonably the book, that very absence which others to run their lives. hoped that international working- makes parliamentary democracy so class unity might stop the war hollow. Any war but the class war in its tracks. Subsequently most Similarly he has little time Where Cohen is at his most anarchists, such as Malatesta, held to for anti-globalisers and anti- challenging and troubling is in his this position. This standard anarchist capitalists. This stems in part from rejection of neutrality in the actual, position is a coherent one: ‘No War his notion that countries such and often literal, battlegrounds of But The Class War’. This isn’t a cop as America and Britain are only the day. That said, for a thoughtful out. War is essentially the result of “allegedly capitalist” because writer, he seems to have a competition over resources, which is 26 Review—What’s left? Organise!

seen as natural in capitalist societies, to whom war is therefore tolerable. Conversely, anarchists see scarcity or competition over resources as a fundamental social and economic failure caused by the ruling class, and we therefore reject involvement in or responsibility for their wars. The idea that we should be called upon to solve problems modern capitalism has created, without the removal of capital itself, is therefore nonsensical to the committed anarchist. We feel no responsibility for resolving capitalism’s problems, instead giving whatever help we can to relieve suffering resulting from wars and attempting to change the world before any more break out. But that is very easy in a hypothetical situation and it is well known that one of our otherwise most coherent theorists, Kropotkin, supported Britain and its allies against Germany in World Anti-war wars defending the weak from the totalitarianism to the limited room War One. Another example is that demonstrators strong?’ Many anarchists have faced to breathe in which, for example, of participation in the Spanish … ‘opposing the these questions, and so maybe it socialists and communists can to government by some anarchists overthrow of a would be useful at this point in some extent be visible again. Yet during the Spanish Civil War, along fascist regime’ the development of our theoretical this has come about not through with Republicans battling Franco’s analysis to explore another line of mass revolution, but because of fascists. We look back on these argument. an invasion by imperialist powers episodes with some embarrassment We might start by suggesting that with dubious motives. This is not to because those anarchists failed to the point in both the cases of WW1 support the invasion, with all of its act as anarchists and support ‘no and the Spanish Civil War is that slaughter, but to recognise that there country’. Maybe, given the analysis an actual situation of life or death is a real dilemma. If we believe that above, we could account for them struggle was not a case of clear-cut the kind of democracy and economy with the benefit of hindsight and revolution versus reaction. Let’s being implemented in Iraq are a suggest these mistakes were made consider that if anarchist politics fraud which ultimately will only at the point where war was still mean anything they have to deal really benefit the ruling class (both only emerging as a vital tool of with such muddied situations and domestic and foreign), what are we capitalism, or that a clearer position make a difference, and that only this doing to relieve the suffering, to on wars was reached only after sort of response can hope to attract seek allies and to offer a constructive those earlier mistakes had been and build support. What happens if alternative? Similar questions made. On the other hand, no small we pursue this line of thought rather were asked of Anarchism in recent number of people moving towards than rejecting it out of hand? conflicts in the Balkans, and of anarchism from socialism will have In the present day one of those course it was another of these which asked, ‘how can anarchists help situations is Iraq, and Cohen was the spark for the imperialist war those really being oppressed in the would reasonably ask if we prefer in 1914. here and now if they don’t support the political suffocation of Baath Whether or not anarchists Organise! Review—What’s left? & George Brown 27

George Brown, the cobbler anarchist of Philadelphia By Robert P. Helms (Kate Sharpley Library)

The life of an anarchist shoemaker from Freethought in Northamptonshire, England to the burgeoning anarchist movement in Philadelphia. should be challenged by Cohen’s hold America responsible for all As described by another anarchist, George’s accusations, we are not doing the problems the world faces, this “whole soul is in the cause. He is a most genial ‘nothing’. An important example absurd position tries to uphold it companion, with a warm, human heart, but of concrete action by anarchists is as a beacon of freedom and yet not rigidly uncompromising in his devotion to away from the front line, in support deny its war crimes, support for anarchist principles”. of asylum seekers from repressive dictators and right-wing parties, George was born in Raunds in 1858, one of regimes, for example of Iraqi Kurds, and the obscene gulf between the 17 children! Around 1881 he got work in a boot Afghanis, Congolese and Darfuris, rich and the poor the economic factory in Cawnpore, India. Here he noted the and as part of this putting forward system it promotes results in. To resistance of the Indian population to capitalism a No Borders position. Anarchists this mindset it is not possible to and factory regimentation. He started thinking have supported community-based criticise both America or Britain about this. movements of war-resisters & war- to anything like the degree such He moved on to Chicago and was caught up in survivors in countries ranging from regimes as China, Sudan and the the events that led to the deaths of the Chicago Serbia, which Cohen would consider Middle Eastern dictatorships merit: Anarchist Martyrs. He was one of those that an aggressor state and therefore this would be “moral equivalence”. the police fired on on May 4th 1886. George ‘legitimate target’, to the Lebanon, Being bombed to destruction or already had formed his own opinions like the a ‘victim’ in recent years. This is at being tortured produces the same anarchism he now had come in to contact with the same time as taking a principled agony everywhere, yet to the and he became an enthusiastic supporter of the anti-war stance. Eustonians these are “lesser (though movement. all too real) violations of human He settled in Philadelphia by 1892 or early Naivety rights” when they are “closer to 1893. A vigorous anarchist movement had been Much of what Cohen writes home, or are the responsibility of in existence here since 1883 and George became is criticism, whether it be of certain disfavoured governments”; one of its most respected and persistent standard- Marxists, liberals, anti-capitalists, what we should really turn our bearers. impenetrable theorists like Michel attention to is “other violations that He was active as an anarchist for 28 years until Foucault, or Noam Chomsky are flagrantly worse”. This moral his death, and often spoke at public meetings in (Chomsky’s anti-Americanism is equivalence line is a great favourite Philadelphia. such that, allegedly, he has been nowadays. So Israel should not Like many members of the anarchist movement, an apologist for authoritarian be criticised because of Hamas , George was almost entirely self-educated. The regimes like Cambodia’s Khmer nor America because of al-Qaeda. Jewish anarchist Joseph L. Cohen describes him Rouge and Milosevic‘s Serbia. I Or if there is an admission of the as a “very important and active member … a think his position is rather more justice of what critics say, it will highly educated man and a powerful speaker on complex than that). His own be quickly minimised by directing the platform, like an erudite professor with a fine stance seeps out from time to time, our attention to “other violations sense of humour … his imposing appearance chiefly in the form of support for that are flagrantly worse” (even if, made a very fine impression on the audience”. democracy and universal human say, Chinese exploitation of workers As the author notes: “... when Emma or rights, and concludes in support for is actively assisted by Western Voltairine, or Peter Kropotkin, or some other the Euston Manifesto (available at investment). respected anarchist writer of the time arrived www.eustonmanifesto.org ). This The desperate situations to give a lecture, they were not alone on a street document, although Cohen did throughout the world today demand talking to strangers … When a squad of policemen not contribute to it, well illustrates more far-reaching solutions than lumbered onto the scene, scores of people would certain strands of contemporary the continuing election of elites feel the truncheon crash down on their heads. social democratic and liberal (miscalled democracy), and an It’s these smaller, local anarchist figures that make thinking. Much as the McCarthy-era economic system that generates the fabric of the story, whereas the star characters in America produced a reaction in parallel elites, can ever hope to make for wonderful embroidery.” the form of what was called anti- produce. The blindness of Cohen George was one of those important, ‘local’ figures, anti-Communism, these thinkers and his cohorts to this is their own and his life and times are portrayed vividly in this hold to anti-anti-Americanism. form of the naivety of which they fascinating pamphlet H While it is of course mistaken to are so quick to accuse others H 28 Review—Bakunin Organise! Bakunin: the creative passion By Mark Leier (St. Martins Press) Review by Brian Morris

“Liberty without socialism is privilege and full of zest, as Leier relates the many relationship with his immediate injustice; socialism without liberty is slavery incidents and events in Bakunin’s family, as well as his young wife and brutality” Bakunin (p.190) colourful and fascinating life. It is Antonio; of Bakunin’s penchant for As I intimated in an earlier review, thus extremely readable, free of the secret societies; of the nature and more than a decade ago I was kind of scholastic jargon that one context of his anti-Semitic outbursts; prompted, indeed provoked, into usually encounters among so-called and of Bakunin’s participation in the writing a little introduction to the postmodern anarchists. In fact, political insurrections in Dresden life and work of Michael Bakunin. Leier’s biography is a delight to (1848) and Lyon(1870). Leier also My motivation for doing so was read, and at times quite entertaining, gives a sympathetic and enlightening that I was not only incensed by although occasionally his quips jar a account of Bakunin’s many years in the harsh, derogatory and unfair little, especially if, like me, you have prison (1849-1857) – two years criticisms of Bakunin produced by little interest in pop culture, comic of which were spent in solitary liberal and Marxist scholars – who strips and the Jerry Springer show. confinement in the infamous Peter dismissed Bakunin as an intel- What is helpful about Leier’s and Paul Fortress. It was there that lectual buffoon bent on nothing biography is that not only does Bakunin penned his famous confes- but violence and destruction – but it offer an absorbing account of sion to the Tsar. by anarcho-primitivists and Nietzs- Bakunin’s life, writings and political Throughout Leier’s text there chean individualists who completely activities, but that it also provides are also interesting insights into repudiated Bakunin’s social anar- a lot of useful background mate- Bakunin’s rather flamboyant chism. For such fundamentalists rial regarding the socio-historical personality; not for nothing did Bakunin was a “leftist” and not a real context in which Bakunin lived and Richard Wagner and the Konigstein anarchist like themselves, and was thought. There are, for example, police describe him as a “colossal”. thus best forgotten. extremely enlightening accounts of By all accounts Bakunin had a warm, In his admirable study of Ba- the following: Russian serfdom, the generous and outgoing personal- kunin’s philosophy, Paul McLoughlin nature of capitalism as an economic ity, loved Beethoven’s music, was has already done a great deal to re- system, the Paris Commune, and seriously overweight, smoke and store Bakunin’s intellectual integrity German idealist philosophy – in drank to excess, and unlike Marx as a political thinker, underwriting which Leier delightfully summarizes was generally free of rancour, deceit his seminal importance in the the metaphysical ideas of Fichte and and political intrigue. Leier affirms development of social anarchism, Hegel; as well as wonderful vignettes that Bakunin, given his generosity as well as affirming that Bakunin of Bakunin’s contemporaries of spirit, had no ability as a politi- is less of an historical curiosity – Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Wilhem cal intriguer, despite his fondness than an anarchist whose ideas have Weitling and Sergei Nechaev. for secret codes and imaginery a freshness and originality and a Interestingly though, Bakunin’s more organizations. He thus argues that contemporary relevance which we immediate comrades, Carlo Cafiero, there is absolutely no evidence at all would do well to examine and learn Errico Malatesta, James Guillaume that Bakunin ever wanted, or even from. Complementing this work we and Elisee Reclus – all committed tried, to take over or destroy the First now have Mark Leier’s biography of anarchist communists – get no more International. Bakunin – subtitled “The Creative than a passing mention. Besides providing us with a Passion”. It is an excellent biography The main contours of Bakunin’s sensitive and poignant account of of the real Bakunin, not the carica- turbulent life are perhaps well Bakunin’s life and activities, as well ture invoked by the likes of Aileen known, but Leier treats his subject as of the wider context, Leier’s bi- Kelly, Isaiah Berlin, Hal Draper and with an unusual critical sympathy, ography also gives succinct outlines Francis Wheen – a biography long giving a lucid and balanced ac- of all Bakunin’s major writings. overdue. count of the key issues and events These range from his early article Well researched and full of good surrounding Bakunin’s life as a “The Reaction in Germany”(1842), scholarship Leier’s biography is revolutionary anarchist. There are which had a tremendous impact on written in an engaging style, a style thus poignant discussions, by no his avant-garde contemporaries, to that is informative, insightful and means uncritical, of Bakunin’s his last work “Statism and Anarchy” Organise! Review—Bakunin 29

(1873). The former article, on Bakunin offered warnings against youth; both were philosophical real- reactionary and reformist politics in the harm caused by revolutionary ists and historical materialists; both Germany in the 1840’s, ends with violence, and had nothing but were atheists, but sympathetic to those famous words: “The passion contempt for Nechaev’s revolution- the fact that religion often provided for destruction is at the same time a ary nihilism and Jacobin politics. meaning, solace and consolation creative passion”. But as Leier makes Bakunin’s “passion for destruction” for the oppressed; both were clear this did not imply for Bakunin did not then entail a cult of violence committed members of the First mindless violence or that he was but a call to build gradually a new International; both were essentially prepared, like Attila and Robespierre, world free of oppression and ex- anti-capitalists – although Marx and to “wade though seas of blood” ploitation. Bakunin’s anarchism thus Engels both sanctioned capitalist – as Isaiah Berlin churlishly put it implied a philosophy of freedom, imperialism in relation to Morocco, – but rather it indicated the nega- morality and solidarity; and the aim India and the invasion of Mexico by tion of the present social order (the of a social revolution was not to kill the United States – Engels viewing overcoming of capitalism and the individuals but to destroy “property such imperialism as in the interests modern state) and the creation of and the state” (p.199). of “civilization”; and, finally, both a decentralized society based on remained dedicated revolutionary voluntary associations. Moreover, as socialists to the end of their days. Leier emphasizes, this for Bakunin All this, despite the animosity that did not imply some apocalyptic Bakunin had a warm, generous developed between the two men vision – which is how Bakunin and their political differences. For still continues to be understood, or and outgoing personality, Bakunin was always critical of rather misunderstood. Leier thus of- Marx’s authoritarian politics. fers a clear riposte to those self-pro- Director of the Centre for Labour claimed postanarchists, like Richard loved Beethoven’s music, was Studies at Simon Fraser University, Daly, who, putting new labels on old and author of several books on wine bottles, follow Bakunin’s liberal seriously overweight, smoked labour history, Mark Leier is to be and Marxist detractors, in seeing complemented for providing us Bakunin as lost in some millennial and drank to excess with a readable and very useful or apocalyptic vision. And certainly, biography of Bakunin. Indeed, Leier though Bakunin was an advocate of specifically offers an interpretation direct action and propaganda by the of Bakunin’s life and ideas that can deed, and had sympathy for Russian Running through the book, almost be used by anyone interested in brigands, he was never an advocate like a silver thread, at least for the anarchism and social change. For of assassinations, revolutionary last two hundred pages, is a discus- Bakunin’s critique of capitalism violence or terrorism (unlike the sion of the complex relationship and the state has lost none of its youthful Engels). As Bakunin clearly between Karl Marx and Bakunin. force, and that today, more than put it: “Liberty can only be created Leier, to his credit, tries not to take ever, Bakunin holds out a vision of by liberty, by an insurrection of the sides, and seems to act as a kind of a world of freedom, equality and people and the voluntary organiza- broker, intent on bringing together fraternity against which the “present tion of the workers from below” Marxism (authoritarian socialism) reality” of global capitalism may be (p.287). This entailed overcoming and anarchism (libertarian social- measured and found wanting. Such capitalism, and a complete break ism) – or “collectivism” as Bakunin are the concluding words of this with all governments and bourgeois described his own brand of revolu- insightful biography. The book is politics – a social revolution. As Leier tionary or class struggle anarchism. indeed a timely affirmation of class writes: Bakunin “insisted that revo- Leier emphasizes that Marx and struggle anarchism. It is a pity there- lutionary violence was to be directed Bakunin had much in common be- fore that the book is only referenced against institutions not people, and sides their hirsute appearance; both with “notes”, and so there is no nowhere did he advocate terrorism came from privileged backgrounds useable bibliography or even a listing or assassination” (p.208). In fact, and were radical democrats in their of Bakunin’s writings H 30 Review—Remembering Spain Organise! Remembering Spain: Italian anarchist volunteers in the Spanish Civil War By Umberto Marzocchi (Kate Sharpley Library)

mberto Marzocchi was like Antonio Cieri, Aldo Perissini and Read more about anarchist organisation against a life long anarchist. many others who fell in fighting fascism including Edelweiss Pirates, FAUD UA shipyard worker in the Francoists, and Camillo Berneri, underground, Zazous, 43 group, Arditi del La Spezia, he was involved in the “anarchism incarnate” as Marzocchi Popolo in our latest pamphlet, Resistance to revolutionary events in Italy in the calls him, murdered by the Stalinists Nazism, available in print for £2·00 including years just after World War One. He in 1937. postage (£2·50 outside of UK) from BM helped organise the Arditi del Popolo The pamphlet describes the ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX, England, UK (The People’s Commandos) which Communist provocation that led or online via www.afed.org.uk physically fought with Mussolini’s to an attack on the telephone fascists. Driven into exile in 1922, exchange in Barcelona controlled by he played an active part in the exiled the anarchists, and the subsequent Italian anarchist movement in France murder of anarchists like Berneri, and Belgium. and of members of the dissident In 1936 Marzocchi went to Marxist party POUM. Spain and fought with the Italian As Marzocchi says: “ The Italian Column of anarchist volunteers. The anarchists’ contribution to the pamphlet describes his experiences Spanish revolutionary experiment in Spain and the organisation of was wholehearted, unselfish anarchist militias. It recounts the and sincere: a veritable poem of fighting on the Huesca front and the generosity, fraternal solidaroity, battle of Monte Pelado. It remembers audacity, consistency of ideals and the outstanding anarchist comrades sublime resolution …” H

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Defending anonymity Against parliament, for anarchism Back issues of Organise! are Free ID cards and the National Identity Register £1·00 Insights into the political parties of still available from the London are coming to Britain (and elsewhere) very Britain, and why anarchists oppose all parties address. They cost 20p each + SAE. soon. This pamphlet aims to see through Alternatively, send us a fiver and Labour’s smokescreens of ‘identity theft’ and Basic Bakunin we’ll send you one of everything the ‘war on terror’. Second edition – now a £1·00 This new edition outlines the ideas plus whatever else we can find lying ‘living document’ with continual updates of one of the 19th century founders of class around. struggle anarchism Resistance to Nazism Issue 50 GM foods; Who owns the land; £1·50 Telling the stories of libertarian groups The role of the revolutionary organisation War in Kosovo; Ireland – the ‘peace’ process. £1·00 Anarchist communists reject the Leninist that were opposing Fascism in Europe before, Issue 52 East Timor slaughter; Kosovo model of a ‘vanguard’ party as counter- and into, the 1930s including Edelweiss Pirates, – no war but the class war; J18 stop the revolutionary. This 2003 new edition explains FAUD underground, Zazous, 43 group, Arditi city; Why we changed our name; Gueorgui del Popolo and dozens of other Italian groups the concept of revolutionary organisation and its structure. All libertarian revolutionaries Cheitanov portrait. Beating the Poll Tax should read this fundamental text Issue 53 Mass direct action; East Timor; Online only A relevant ‘blast from the past’ that Youth resistance to the nazis; Workplace notes. encouraged and analysed the rise of mass Beyond resistance – A revolutionary Issue 62 Participatory economics; revolt against the Community Charge in manifesto Anarchist movement in Argentina; Camille 1989/90. Out of print £2·00 The AF’s in-depth analysis of the Pissarro; International of Anarchist Federations. capitalist world in crisis, suggestions about Issue 64 G8 special; Casualisation; ID Anarchism – As we see it what the alternative Anarchist Communist cards; Women’s struggles in Iraq £1·00 A newly revised edition of our very society could be like, and evaluation of social Issue 65 International special. Reports popular pamphlet, describing the basic ideas and organisational forces which play a part in from Australia, Belarus, China and Croatia. of anarchist communism in an easy-to-read the revolutionary process form Issue 66 The fight against ID cards; Work and the free society Rossport; Mountain top removal; Empowering The anarchist movement in Japan £1·00 Why work is so terrible and why it must prisoners; Spanish revolution 1936. £1·80 The fascinating account of Japanese be destroyed before it destroys us Issue 67 The anniversary issue: twenty anarchism in the 20th Century, by John Crump years of the AF, Hungarian revolution and the Ecology and class – Where there’s brass, British general strike; decroissance; Belarusian Aspects of anarchism there’s muck anarchism. £1·00 Thoughts and commentary on some £2·00 This major second edition looks at the of the most important issues that anarchists ecological crisis facing us today, what is being Issue 68 Anarchism and nationalism must confront, from an anarchist communist done about it and sets out in detail our views in Armenia; Neighbourhood communities; perspective. Collected articles from Organise! on what an ecologically sustainable world Psychology of uniforms; Albert Camus, magazine would be like Anarchist vision of Flores Magon; Georg Elser. Stormy Petrel pamphlets Foreign language documents

Towards a fresh revolution by The Friends of Durruti As we see it 75p plus postage The Friends of Durruti were a much misunderstood 70p inc. postage Available in Welsh, Serbo-Croat, Greek, German, group who attempted to defend and extend the Spanish Revolution Spanish and Portuguese of 1936 The role of the revolutionary organisation Malatesta’s anarchism and violence 70p inc. postage Available in Serbo-Croat. 50p plus postage An important document in the history of anarchist theory refutes the common misinterpretation of anarchism as Aims and principles of the Anarchist Federation mindless destruction while restating the need for revolution to 20p plus postage Available in German, Greek, Portuguese, French, create a free and equal society Italian, Esperanto and Spanish

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1 The Anarchist Federation is an organisation of revolutionary 7 Unions by their very nature cannot become vehicles for class struggle anarchists. We aim for the abolition of all the revolutionary transformation of society. They have to be hierarchy, and work for the creation of a world-wide classless accepted by capitalism in order to function and so cannot play society: anarchist communism. a part in its overthrow. Trades unions divide the working class (between employed and unemployed, trade and craft, skilled 2 Capitalism is based on the exploitation of the working class and unskilled, etc). Even syndicalist unions are constrained by the ruling class. But inequality and exploitation are also by the fundamental nature of unionism. The union has to be expressed in terms of race, gender, sexuality, health, ability able to control its membership in order to make deals with and age, and in these ways one section of the working class management. Their aim, through negotiation, is to achieve a oppresses another. This divides us, causing a lack of class unity fairer form of exploitation of the workforce. The interests of in struggle that benefits the ruling class. Oppressed groups are leaders and representatives will always be different from ours. strengthened by autonomous action which challenges social The boss class is our enemy, and while we must fight for better and economic power relationships. To achieve our goal we must conditions from it, we have to realise that reforms we may relinquish power over each other on a personal as well as a achieve today may be taken away tomorrow. Our ultimate aim political level. must be the complete abolition of wage slavery. Working within the unions can never achieve this. However, we do not argue 3 We believe that fighting racism and sexism is as important as for people to leave unions until they are made irrelevant by the other aspects of the class struggle. Anarchist communism revolutionary event. The union is a common point of departure cannot be achieved while sexism and racism still exist. In order for many workers. Rank and file initiatives may strengthen us in to be effective in their struggle against their oppression both the battle for anarchist communism. What’s important is that we within society and within the working class, women, lesbians organise ourselves collectively, arguing for workers to control and gays, and black people may at times need to organise struggles themselves. independently. However, this should be as working class people as cross-class movements hide real class differences and achieve 8 Genuine liberation can only come about through the little for them. Full emancipation cannot be achieved without revolutionary self activity of the working class on a mass scale. the abolition of capitalism. An anarchist communist society means not only co-operation between equals, but active involvement in the shaping and 4 We are opposed to the ideology of national liberation creating of that society during and after the revolution. In times movements which claims that there is some common interest of upheaval and struggle, people will need to create their own between native bosses and the working class in face of foreign revolutionary organisations controlled by everyone in them. domination. We do support working class struggles against These autonomous organisations will be outside the control of racism, genocide, ethnocide and political and economic political parties, and within them we will learn many important colonialism. We oppose the creation of any new ruling class. We lessons of self-activity. reject all forms of nationalism, as this only serves to redefine divisions in the international working class. The working class 9 As anarchists we organise in all areas of life to try to advance has no country and national boundaries must be eliminated. the revolutionary process. We believe a strong anarchist We seek to build an anarchist international to work with other organisation is necessary to help us to this end. Unlike other libertarian revolutionaries throughout the world. so-called socialists or communists we do not want power or control for our organisation. We recognise that the revolution 5 As well as exploiting and oppressing the majority of people, can only be carried out directly by the working class. However, Capitalism threatens the world through war and the destruction the revolution must be preceded by organisations able to of the environment. convince people of the anarchist communist alternative and method. We participate in 6 It is not possible to abolish Capitalism without a revolution, struggle as anarchist communists, and organise on a federative which will arise out of class conflict. The ruling class must be basis. We reject sectarianism and work for a united revolutionary completely overthrown to achieve anarchist communism. anarchist movement. Because the ruling class will not relinquish power without their use of armed force, this revolution will be a time of violence as 10 We oppose organised religion and religious belief(s). well as liberation.

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