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Time for a charm offensive? A look at policing post-G20

PLUS • G20 and the new capitalism • Occupations: a brief history • Anarchist movement conference

73£2.00 t2.50 Free to prisoners AND MORE Organise! The magazine of the Anarchist Federation Anarchist Federation local groups and contacts Issue 73—Winter 2009

Organise! is the magazine of the Anarchist Aberdeen Kent (east) Organise! editors Federation (AF). It is published in order [email protected] [email protected] Organise!, BM ANARFED, , to develop anarchist communist ideas. It aims to provide a clear anarchist WC1N 3XX viewpoint on contemporary issues and Birmingham, and West Midlands Kent (west) [email protected] to initiate debate on ideas not normally [email protected] [email protected] covered in agitational papers. Preston We aim to produce Organise! twice a year. To meet this target, we positively solicit Brighton Leeds, and West Yorkshire (including Blackpool and contributions from our readers. We aim [email protected] [email protected] north Lancashire) to print any article that furthers the [email protected] objectives of anarchist . If Cardiff Leicester you’d like to write something for us, but are unsure whether to do so, why not get [email protected] [email protected] Resistance editors in touch first? Even articles that are 100% Resistance, BM ANARFED, London, in agreement with our aims and East Anglia (including Liverpool WC1N 3XX principles can leave much open to debate. Cambridge and Norwich) C/o News From Nowhere [email protected] As always, the articles in this issue do not necessarily represent the collective [email protected] Bookshop, 96 Bold Street viewpoint of the AF. We hope that their Liverpool L1 Scotland publication will produce responses Edinburgh and Lothians [email protected] [email protected] from our readers and spur debate on. [email protected] The deadline for the next issue of Organise! will be 12th March 2010. Please send all London (and all other areas) Sheffield contributions to the address on the right. Glasgow BM ANARFED, London, WC1N [email protected] It would help if all articles could be either [email protected] 3XX [email protected] typed or on disc. Alternatively, articles Surrey can be emailed to the editors directly at [email protected] Hereford Manchester C/o BM ANARFED, London, • C/o BM ANARFED, London, C/o 96 Bold Street, Liverpool, L1 WC1N 3XX WC1N 3XX [email protected] What goes in Organise! Organise! hopes to open up debate in [email protected] Tyneside many areas of life. As we have stated Nottingham (including PO Box 1TA, Newcastle-upon- before, unless signed by the Anarchist International of Anarchist Derbyshire) Tyne, NE99 1TA Federation as a whole or by a local AF Federation (contact for) Box AF, c/o The Sumac [email protected] group, articles in Organise! reflect the views of the person who has written C/o BM ANARFED, London, Centre, 245 Gladstone Street, the article and nobody else. WC1N 3XX Nottingham, NG7 6HX Wales If the contents of one of the articles in this [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] issue provokes thought, makes you angry, compels a response then let us know. ideas develop from debate, they do not merely drop out of the air! • Contents Subscriptions Single issues £3·00 (£3·50 non-UK) inc. postage & packaging. Annual subscriptions to Organise! (two issues) are available for: Time for a charm offensive? p04 £5·00 inc. postage & packaging (£6·00 non-UK). £10·00 supporters G20 and the new capitalism p07 £5·00 to pay for a prisoner’s subscription (£6·00 non-UK) There must be some way out of here p10 £15·00 institutions £10·00 for a joint subscription to Organise! and Resistance (UK only). China: ‘the harmonious society’ p11 £6·00 (UK only) Resistance sub. NB: A year’s sub is 10 issues. £15·00 – Special supporters sub: brings Occupations: a brief history p15 you Organise!, Resistance and all new pamphlets as they come out (UK only) Surrealism: a golden bomb p20 • Joining the Anarchist Federation Membership of the Anarchist Federation ‘Mutual Aid’, book review p23 is open to all who agree with our aims and principles. For more information Book reviews p24 write to: Anarchist Federation, BM ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX Alternatively you can email us at ‘Fish Tank’, film review p26 [email protected] or visit our website: www.afed.org.uk Organise! Editorial 3 Editorial – What’s in the latest Organise!

Admittedly the ‘moneygeddon’ topic occupations movement and discover the has been done to death. The authoritarian importance of that tradition. We take a left have very noticeably been cashing in look at the situation in China, exposing on it for the last six months. But while it the conflicts between the Chinese may be a bit passé nowadays to talk about working class and the ruling Communist the recession, the realities of capitalism’s Party and discuss how the policing tactics failures continue to be felt widely by the during the G20 have changed in the face working class. Since the G20 the neo- of state fears. liberalist agenda has had to redefine itself, We also have an AF member’s view of something which is explored in the the anarchist conference back in June and article ‘G20 and New Capitalism’. In the take a look at the history and continuing face of the economic downturn working influence of the surrealist movement. class people and students across the And as with every issue, if you have country have taken up occupation as a any comments, suggestions or tactic against attacks on their jobs and complaints please email the editors at: conditions. We explore the history of the [email protected]

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If so, you can send cheques, postal orders, international money orders (made payable to AF) or UK stamps to our London address (see opposite page) You can also make a donation online at www.afed.org.uk 4 Time for a charm offensive? Organise! Time for a charm offensive? A look at British policing post-G20

“We have to win back the public’s “Community-style policing” trust.” Those were the words of The storm that followed the outgoing Metropolitan Police chief Tomlinson case, and with it the Sir Ian Blair at a public lecture in widespread criticism of the “kettling” November 2008, just days before his tactic, has, for the time being at least, retirement. It was the killing of an put the police under greater media innocent Brazilian man, Jean Charles scrutiny, especially in relation to the de Menezes, by a Metropolitan policing of public protest. (Of course Police officer, and the enquiry that one can only speculate as to the followed, that had eventually led to influence on the importance and his departure. Fast forward almost longevity of this particular story of half a year and the Met have the professional journalists’ experience of death of another innocent man on being “kettled” alongside protesters their hands. This time it’s newspaper on April 1st.) “Community-style vendor Ian Tomlinson, who while policing” is the establishment’s walking home from work is chosen weapon in its PR campaign to inadvertently caught in the anti-G20 win back the public trust it has lost as protests and struck heavily from a result of the G20 fallout. The behind by an officer in riot gear. Just strategy is simple – project a as in the de Menezes case, romanticised image of the controversy would surround the neighbourhood bobby-on-the-beat, tragedy. Tomlinson’s body would be while playing up both the general kept from his family for six days public’s fear of low-level crime and following his death, a rushed first a “summer of rage”. Sky News had for the police’s effectiveness in tackling it. autopsy would find no suspicious days leading up to the event been Many constabularies across the grounds for his death, and only after reporting on the prospect of country, including the Metropolitan video footage from a passer-by’s anarchist hordes “storming the Police, have signed a “policing phone was leaked to the media city”, while widely publicising the pledge”. This pledge reaffirms the would the perpetrators, and the true advice from “officials” in the City of openness of the police force, its severity of the attack, be revealed. London to financial workers to dress accountability and responsiveness to April 1st 2009 was not a good day down and avoid confrontation with its “service users”, i.e. law-abiding for the Metropolitan Police. Actually, protesters. The Daily Mail, for its part, citizens, and its willingness to open scratch that. It would be better to say had sent an undercover reporter into a dialogue with local communities. that April 3rd was a bad day for the the “anarchist mob” and found Local consultations are used to build Metropolitan Police. After all, until shaven-headed “angry men” in the up trust and present the image of a the video footage and photographs Whitechapel Anarchist Group keen caring and responsive service; clear from the public slowly began to be to orchestrate the most heinous acts public targets are set; and if the picked up by the mainstream media, in the name of chaos and service is “unsatisfactory” the following the unfolding of the destruction. The clashes between constabulary is committed to Tomlinson story, the news agencies protesters and police lines, and the resolving your “concerns”. It’s had been generally supportive of the small amount of property damage classic, neo-liberal public reform, police. It was the media, after all, committed against the RBS building already widely applied to health and who had manufactured the frenzy on the day, were all but a self- education, extended to the provision around the G20 protests in the first fulfilling prophecy as far as the of law and order. It essentially place, the origins of which can be mainstream media was concerned. provides the illusion of power and found in the now infamous remark As early as the afternoon of April 1st, responsibility as “consumption” of a by Superintendent David Hartshorn the front page of The Evening Standard “public service”, masking the real to newspaper in had already proclaimed that “riot role of these institutions in February that Britain was headed for police battle in the city”. undermining our power and Organise! Time for a charm offensive? 5

denying us any responsibility over fact that Britain also happens to be our communities. Fear also has an one of the most watched nations in important part to play. “Anti-social” Europe. There are up to 4.2m CCTV behaviour is a consistent concern for cameras in Britain - about one for local communities, especially with every 14 people. The police also regards to large groups of youths. have one of the largest DNA The state, of course, is always keen database in the world. Emails, text to emphasise the positive impact that messages and phone conversations community policing, i.e. bobbies are now stored and kept for walking up and down your street, monitoring, and local authorities can have on this. They are happy to have widely used anti-terror indulge popular fears inflated by the legislation to spy on local tenants. daily scaremongering of right-wing What’s driving the new friendly face tabloids, as visible policing is argued draconian use of stop-and-search of the police is not any real overhaul to provide greater safety and powers came under media scrutiny of tactics, but merely a more protection – neither of which, of after G20, the police’s use of strategic application of their powers. course, the police actually provide. evidence gathering teams and The mistake they made at G20 was These basic principles have also been surveillance throughout the protests to subject everyone, including a extended to the policing of public did not. Likewise, while the physical Liberal Democrat politician and protest. At the Camp for Climate presence of police officers may have members of the professional media, Action in Blackheath in August this been limited during the Climate to their intimidation and violence. year, senior officers told Camp, arguably the “test case” when The truth is that they are still widely representatives from the camp that it comes to the Met’s new strategy, employing these measures; they are they would also be met with this did not stop them using just applying them with greater “community-style policing”. The constant CCTV surveillance on the prejudice. On a local level, no-one is Met even set up its own Twitter site or even infiltration by plain- bearing the brunt of this more than account, named CO11 Met Police clothed officers. Following the G20 British youth. February’s Operation after its public order unit codename, protests, in an interview with Channel Staysafe weekend, for example, saw to provide information and advice to 4 News, a former chief of the police “engage” 1,251 young campers. Chief Superintendent Metropolitan Police argued against people. “Engaged” means that they Helen Ball said neighbourhood-style the increasing use of stop-and- were stopped and spoken to but not tactics, including a “low-key” search powers and in favour of low- found to be committing any crime presence, limited surveillance of level surveillance and the or in any danger, meaning that they activists and almost no use of stop- prosecution of activists on were stopped because... well, they’re and-search powers, proved the Met conspiracy charges. This is a tactic young, so that means they must’ve had changed its approach since the that seems to be being more widely been up to something dodgy, right? G20 protests in April. She went on to applied. April 13th of this year saw Recent figures obtained through the clarify that the approach was “not an the biggest pre-emptive raid on Freedom of Information Act have accident”, but was designed to build environmental campaigners in UK also revealed that West Mercia Police trust with activists after the G20, and history, with 114 people arrested on (the force that covers Herefordshire, would be repeated at future suspicion of “conspiracy to commit Worcestershire and Shropshire) has demonstrations. trespass and aggravated criminal captured and stored the DNA profiles damage”. In January animal rights of over 19,000 teenagers in the So what is “community-style campaigners were sentenced to 11 region. These profiles are being kept policing”? years in prison for “conspiracy to whether the youngsters have Surveillance is absolutely key to blackmail” in their campaign to shut committed a crime or not. understanding the police’s current down the animal testing laboratory How long the police plan to keep up strategy. While tactics such as Huntingdon Life Sciences. This is all this activity is unclear. It’s pretty “kettling” and the increasingly made far easier for the police by the clear that surveillance is here to stay 6 Time for a charm offensive? Organise!

as a mainstay of British policing. As the plant and on the factory grounds. a high cost and many are facing far as protest is concerned, as media Both saw authorities mount very unemployment, job insecurity and interest drops off it is equally likely swift legal challenges to occupiers, cuts in pay, alongside huge cuts in that the police will quickly revert to with the threat of eviction and the “social wage” as the government the heavy-handed tactics of old. Of prosecution an important factor in is desperately attempting to claw course it is also foreseeable that the workers’ decision to leave. If the back spending from public services. “community-style policing” may recent experience of the occupation This is not even to mention the fact become part of a wider trend in of a Thomas Cook office in Dublin is that many of the world’s leading relation to political protest. The more anything to go by, where some 28 financial industries are yet to dump radical elements inside protest former employees were arrested in a their toxic assets. We can expect movements could easily become dawn raid, these threats are to be sustained and recurring crises as isolated as more liberal elements treated seriously. capital restructures itself, all of become willing to embrace the Brown has already made it clear in which is a recipe for social “faciltative” role of the police in recent speeches that his government discontent. It was this, in fact, that minimally disruptive political protest does not intend to bow to pressure was the true context for the original - making it much easier for the from the trade union leadership to “summer of rage” comment: not the police to come down hard on reintroduce secondary picketing prospect of anti-capitalists swarming protesters that are deemed to be rights or reform trade union law. over the Square Mile for a couple of “crossing the line”. The With a wave of days, but analysts looking anxiously reasonableness of the police expected across the public sector, to the discontent in Greece, Italy and towards peaceful elements of the and workers increasingly turning in response to the recession. protest movement helps win back towards wildcat activity, we can only Whether we in fact got our public trust, while any speculate as to the tactics the state promised “summer of rage” is open meaningful, disruptive behaviour may be willing to employ to to debate. What is clear is that we can be demonised through the guarantee future labour discipline. can expect a long and protracted eyes of the media. Despite the assurances of leading struggle over the future shape that economists that we are now entering capitalism will (or will not) take. The Policing a crisis: the other story a period of recovery, the challenges role that the police, and other There is always another story. For to the working class are far from aspects of the state’s legal apparatus, while the police may be now over. Temporary stability has come at will play in this is all too clear. displaying some (temporary) magnanimity towards members of the movement, when it comes to the very real threat of widespread working-class discontent about the economic recession they aren’t pulling any punches. When workers at the Vestas plant in Newport on the Isle of Wight occupied the top floor of offices in their factory to protest against its closure, police, operating with highly questionable legal authority, surrounded the offices and prevented supporters from joining the sit-in or food from being brought to the protestors. The recent occupation of Visteon also saw a heavy police presence both outside Organise! G20 and the new capitalism 7 G20 and the New Capitalism

The global economic crisis has been a moment of truth for everyone – politicians, capitalists and workers alike. For anarchist communists it’s a truth that’s been painfully obvious all along. Capitalism is not only unjust, it’s also wildly unstable, propelled by an inherent cycle of boom-and-bust in which periods of growth are inevitably followed by recession – and the bigger the boom, the more catastrophic the crash, as events of the last year have demonstrated. Of course it’s always the working class who bear the brunt of the crash by losing our jobs, homes, benefits and pensions, just as it’s the working class whose labour fuels the bosses’ profits during the boom years. That’s why the ruling class during times of recession academics and commentators to symposium sums it up in three are usually content just to brazen it refer to anything from consumerism words: “Values, Development, out: they may not be happy to see to the rise of information Regulation”. The values revolve profits fall, but they’re prepared to wait technology, but it really came into its around ethics and social justice. New until the next turn of the cycle when own in the wake of the 2008 crash, Capitalism is going to have a moral they can start making money again, when panic-stricken journalists and basis. Rather than placing people’s and if they’re canny they can even use politicians were rushing to make happiness and wellbeing at the the opportunity to cut their costs and predictions or promises about what mercy of market forces, New snap up a few cheap assets in the would happen next. One of the Capitalism will be actively concerned meantime. But this time the crash has earliest and most enthusiastic with fairness and equality. In been so catastrophic that even the adopters of this “New Capitalism” particular, it will focus on a fairer capitalists have been forced to realise was Nicolas Sarkozy, who as early as distribution of wealth and that some kind of fundamental change October 2008 was touting the opportunities between rich and poor is required. The burning question for phrase around the EU. Sarkozy went nations, which is why its second all of us is what that change will be, on to co-organise (with Tony Blair) value is development. New Capitalism and whose interests it will serve. At a an international symposium titled will reduce the gap between rich time when even the most un- “New World, New Capitalism” in and poor, both within and between politicised worker can plainly see that Paris in January 2009 which brought nations. In order to do this it will capitalism doesn’t work, the ruling together politicians, union leaders, introduce a new framework of class are desperately trying to convince international bureaucrats, financiers international regulation, rather than us – and probably themselves – that and academics. Then, on the opening simply allowing globalisation to capitalism will be able to adapt and day of the G20’s London Summit in unfold as a process of unregulated survive. There will be change, they say, April 2009, Sarkozy published a free trade. Regulation will ensure but it won’t be a revolutionary change piece in the New York Times on global social justice, curb market to a new kind of society: it will be a “Forging the New Capitalism” in excesses, prevent any repeat of the change to New Capitalism. which he set out his vision for the financial bubble which led to the future of the global economy. current economic crisis, and ensure “Values, development, regulation” So what is this New Capitalism, and a return to “sustainable growth”. The phrase “New Capitalism” has how does it differ from the old Regulation on this scale means not been around for years, used by capitalism? The subtitle of the Paris just a “return of the state” (as 8 G20 and the new capitalism Organise!

Sarkozy put it during the from the old days of the IMF, when symposium) at the national level, Structural Adjustment Programmes but also the reinvigoration of made developing countries’ international institutions. economies dependent on exports to the rich; now it’s trying to make “Recovery and reform” their economies dependent on New Capitalism was not simply on imports and consumption instead. the agenda at the G20’s London So much for New Capitalism’s Summit: it was the agenda. The commitment to development. “Global Plan for Recovery and The IMF also turns out to be key to Reform” set out in the Summit’s Final New Capitalism’s ethical values – Communiqué is in perfect harmony that “inclusive, green and sustainable with New Capitalism, even if it recovery”. The “green” part of the doesn’t explicitly use the phrase: recovery, as far as the Communiqué every page of it has something to say goes, was merely a bit of hand- about values, regulation and wringing about rising oil prices and development. But the ways in which the need for “green business it does so are instructive, and tell us opportunities”; in contrast to its a lot about what New Capitalism specific funding and policy really means. agreements in relation to the IMF, The Communiqué sums up the G20’s the London Summit produced no plan in six commitments: environmental policies or 1. to “restore confidence, growth commitments whatsoever, leaving it and jobs”; up to individual nation-states to take 2. to repair the financial system; action. The “inclusive” bit was back 3. to strengthen financial regulation; to life, tripling its funding to to that key New Capitalist concern 4. to reinvigorate international $750bn and giving it a powerful with development, with some more financial institutions, particularly the central role in both stimulating and rhetoric, and some more money – International Monetary Fund (IMF); regulating global trade. for the IMF and World Bank. 5. to promote global trade and reject The Communiqué’s emphasis on So for the G20, New Capitalism’s protectionism; support for developing nations commitment to development is about 6. to “build an inclusive, green, and through the IMF and other opening up new markets in sustainable recovery”. institutions re-affirms the centrality developing countries; regulation is As always, it’s the small print you of development to New Capitalism, about the economic re-armament of have to watch, and an awful lot of but in doing so it also reveals whose massive international institutions to the Communiqué’s small print turns out interests that development really ensure that developing nations to be about the IMF. For decades the serves. The Communiqué urges the IMF remain at the service of the rich; and IMF has been notorious for its to continue its internal reforms, and values … well, values turns out to be behaviour towards poor nations, on singles out the new Flexible Credit not much more than a lot of which it has imposed so-called Line (FCL) as particularly window dressing and hot air. Structural Adjustment Programmes commendable. The FCL is effectively which suit the demands of Wall an overdraft facility for developing New World? Street but have disastrous nations, designed to boost the New Capitalism, then, is an consequences on poor nations’ economies of richer countries by ideology: a set of ideas, in this case economies. In 2008 the IMF looked getting poorer countries to import about sustainability and social like it was finally on the ropes, with from them – in other words, to justice, which distort or even hide its influence on the wane and its stimulate G20 states’ economies by the real power relations at work in own internal finances in trouble. putting developing nations in debt. the world. But New Capitalism is Now the G20 has restored the IMF This is certainly a change of sorts itself also a set of real power Organise! G20 and the new capitalism 9

relations, involving states, respective state treasuries. Even more seems to have inflated a political institutions, markets and significant, though, is the emergence football for an internal power commodities which are all being of the so-called BRIC bloc of Brazil, struggle between the US and Europe dramatically reconfigured in the Russia, India and China – the world’s on the one hand, and the BRIC wake of the global financial collapse. most rapidly emerging economies – countries on the other. If we are The triumph of New Capitalism is of who want to use the IMF for indeed destined for some form of course not guaranteed; Sarkozy and purposes of their own. China has New Capitalism, it won’t necessarily his allies have seized on it precisely long wanted to displace the US be on Sarkozy’s, or Obama’s, terms. because the economic crisis is dollar as the global currency and If the triumph of New Capitalism threatening to hurl them out of their replace it with Special Drawing is not inevitable, what are the positions of global power – if not to Rights (SDRs), the unit of account prospects for an end to capitalism destroy capitalism altogether, then at used by the IMF as a kind of internal altogether? At the Paris symposium the very least to re-organise it “currency”. In June 2009 the BRIC in January 2009 it was no less a drastically so that Europe and the US countries held their first summit person than John Monks, General no longer call the shots. Having meeting and announced plans to Secretary of the European TUC, proposed a New Capitalist switch some of their own foreign who reminded participants of what programme of reform, heads of state currency reserves (their national had been happening on the streets will now have to fight to make it “savings accounts”) from US dollars of Athens just a few weeks before, stick, and to make it deliver the to SDRs. So in increasing the power and who warned of the danger of results they’re hoping for. Economic and wealth of the IMF, the G20 “social unrest” if economic protectionism, the spectre of which recovery was not forthcoming. The is repeatedly invoked in the Final fact that the ETUC was not just Communiqué and elsewhere, will be represented at the symposium, but just one of the issues over which was eagerly offering help and that fight will take place. advice on how to avoid the International institutions like the overthrow of capitalism, tells us IMF will be another. everything we need to know about Nation-states and international the role of mainstream trade institutions are the means by which unions in working-class struggle. capitalists oppress the working class, But the point is that working-class but they are always also arenas where struggle is alive, and active, and the ruling class plays out its own angry. The current economic crisis, internal power struggles. This is complex and contradictory as such certainly what is happening in the G20 historical moments always are, will at the moment, and it’s unlikely that all continue to inflict hardship on of the G20 leaders who endorsed the working people, but it will also Final Communiqué did so out of a shared provide opportunities for enthusiasm for Sarkozy’s New , resistance and perhaps, Capitalism. To put it bluntly, everyone’s ultimately, revolutionary action. playing an angle, and the return of the Anarchist communists need to IMF is a case in point. keep a weather eye on the The Communiqué may praise plans for manoeuvrings of New Capitalism, IMF reform, but it does not mention both to track its changing power the wrangling that was already going relations, and to unmask and on between the US and Europe over combat its ideology. But we all the form those reforms should take, know perfectly well that no nor the wrangling that leaders will version of capitalism, New or now have to perform to raise the otherwise, can ever form the basis promised new IMF funds from their of our New World. 10 There must be some way out of here Organise! There must be some way out of here A Report from the Anarchist Movement Conference 2009

First off, a disclaimer: naturally, with any event, a report based on one person’s experience will be highly subjective and fail to adequately represent the whole thing, but this effect is sharply increased with an event like the Anarchist Movement Conference, where participants spent most of their time discussing in small groups, so people in different groups had vastly differing experiences. This report is not, and could not be, a definitive description of what the conference was like, or a statement of what the Anarchist Federation thought of it; it’s just an account by one participant. First of all, who was the conference for, and what did it hope to achieve? The conference defined its target audience as “those opposed to the state, all forms of nationalism, practice with an eye to working out it in practice; from what I’ve heard, capitalism, sexual/race/gender what works, not only examining the not every group was so lucky oppression and all forms of glorious high points but also our (although several others were). exploitation and domination”. In (fairly frequent) failures, such as the Another key question was the practice, those who turned up were massive movement against the Iraq relationship of the movement to the mainly class-struggle anarchists of war, which was marked by a double working class as a whole - while it’s one form or another, with a healthy failure - both the failure of anarchists true that the anarchist movement attitude to escaping the anarchist within the movement to effectively needs to be far larger and stronger ghetto and trying to build a genuinely challenge the authoritarian leftist than it is, it’s also the case that the effective movement with some leadership of the movement and their class itself is coming out of a long connection to the wider working passive liberal tactics, and, partially as period of defeat, so it’s questionable class. Which isn’t to say that it was a result of that, the failure of the whether the movement could be entirely made up of class-struggle movement itself to ever really pose a much better than it is without a anarchists by any means - there was a serious threat to the war drive. The generalised increase in class scattering of bizarre post-situationists topic of sustainable activism and consciousness taking place first. who declared that the working class national vs. local campaigns was also As with every other political was totally integrated into capital and discussed, with a recognition that discussion this year, the utter mess no longer revolutionary (they forgot activity is most likely to be effective that is our economy was also talked to tell us who, if anyone, was still and sustainable when it’s rooted in about quite a bit, with a few practical revolutionary), as well as people people’s day-to-day lives, although it’s initiatives being planned, such as the newer to the movement, who were also certainly the case that we can’t idea of setting up support groups for just discovering concepts (like the just fight capitalism on a localised workplace actions like the centrality of class struggle) that might basis. Within the group I was in, the occupations that have characterised so seem totally obvious to the rest of us. discussion went fairly smoothly and much of 2009; other concrete topics The latter, at least, were a welcome was run on a fairly commonsense of discussion included the lack of sign that the movement is still basis, although this was only possible quality anarchist propaganda attracting some new people to it. due to the vast majority of the group’s representing the movement as a The discussion over the course of the membership having a fairly similar whole, instead of one particular weekend showed an encouraging understanding of what group, and the possibilities for commitment to examining our means and a commitment to building improving Freedom and Black Flag to be Organise! China: ‘the harmonious society’ 11 There must be some way out of here China: the working class against ‘the harmonious society’ A Report from the Anarchist Movement Conference 2009

more representative of the entire If we’re to believe the commentary springing up in Chinese cities. To the movement. A proposal, originating to be found in the mainstream Chinese government, this is ‘ within the AF, for an anarchist media, China is the economic with Chinese characteristics’, the directory of contacts, was also powerhouse that will pull us ‘harmonious society’ of state circulated, and the Autonomous through the global economic crisis. propaganda marching along the path Students Network seems to have Though the economic slowdown of success and development. The become somewhat more lively since which hit the country in late 2008 biggest threat to this picture of the conference took place. was widely reported, and led to successful development seems to be It would be utterly dishonest to write claims that China’s meteoric rise was ethnic tension and threats of regional this report up without discussing the stalling, the country’s ‘recovery’ secession: the rioting between No Pretence intervention, where the since has been the subject of many Uyghur Muslims and Han Chinese final session was disrupted by anarcha- excited column inches. The growth earlier in the year received much feminists seizing the stage to show a of its economy in 2009 has been more media coverage in the West than short film highlighting the continued seen as part of Asia’s ‘astonishing ‘mass incidents’ of a similar scale but existence of male dominance and rebound’ – or at least that of rising which lack the racial element often gendered power structures within our supposedly anti-hierarchical movement; powers like China, India and do, and the same can be said of the this intervention inevitably generated Indonesia – by publications such as unrest in Tibet last year. fierce debate, and there certainly isn’t an The Economist. The implications for However, what we want to argue agreed AF position on the events, but as world recovery and the balance of here is that behind this picture of an individual I thought it was brilliant, power are significant, it is argued. growth and success lies both in terms of the ideas raised and Likewise you could be forgiven for on a huge scale. The conflict between the confrontational attitude taken. thinking that the inhabitants of the Chinese workers and their employers Without wanting to get too world’s most populous country are – along with their friends in the complacent, I also think that the broadly increasingly enjoying the fruits of ruling Communist Party – has supportive atmosphere during the economic growth and the bright increased in intensity as the intervention, and the level of discussion future that faces them. As has been economic crisis has hit China, and afterwards, are indicative of a well reported, automobile and has continued to deepen and movement that’s not cultishly afraid of electronic goods consumption in continue as workers learn important self-criticism, but can discuss its flaws China is up, the Chinese are entering lessons from struggles. This wave of and weaknesses honestly. cyberspace in droves, and Western struggle has continued well into So, overall it went as well as could be consumer outlets like Wal-Mart are 2009, and has yet to break. expected. Several hundred anarchists converged in London; we managed to China and the world economy find the venue and spend a weekend Though we may be familiar with the talking to each other without anyone talk of China as a rising economic ripping anyone else’s head off; and I superpower, the tendency of the think that pretty much everyone media to discuss the matter simply there had their prejudices and in terms of competing national expectations challenged at some blocs, with China playing the role of point during the conference. Still, a growing threat to US hegemony, Rome wasn’t built in a weekend, and we’re not going to burn it down in has meant that China’s overall role in one either, so the true test of whether the global economy is less well the conference actually meant understood. While China certainly anything, instead of just being a fairly does engage in geopolitical rivalry pleasant way to spend a few days, can with the US, and boasts rival only come as we try out the ideas we financial, energy, and increasingly discussed that weekend in ongoing high-level manufacturing industries, struggles around our day-to-day lives. the country also plays an important See you on the streets! symbiotic role with the US and 12 china: ‘the harmonious society’ Organise!

other western economies within the much coverage of the upsurge in the oriented zones such as Dongguan capitalist system. The relationship of fortunes of the Chinese economy in being hit by huge waves of layoffs. mutual economic dependence 2009. Between the first and second The situation for Chinese workers between the West – the US in economic quarters GDP growth was has remained largely unchanged particular – and China has been up by 15%. Manufacturing output despite the changing fortunes of the important in recent years, as debt- increased by 11% from July 2008 to economy. The question of the precise fuelled consumption in the US July 2009. It has been argued by reasons for GDP growth becomes served to stave off threatened crises some that 2008’s downturn was moot when one million workers out at the turn of the century (most only in part due to the export- of Dongguan’s workforce of ten significantly following the collapse oriented role of large sectors of its million have been sacked. Millions of the dot.com bubble). China’s economy and the subsequent of migrant workers have returned to export-driven manufacturing turbulence they experienced due to the countryside as job opportunities industries pumped out the the global crisis. According to these in the cities dry up, and the commodities to meet this commentators, it was also influenced purchasing power of many working- burgeoning demand, fuelling the by the explosion in the prices of oil class Chinese has been squeezed by growth of China as a centre for the and food pushing down levels of wage cuts. What is vital, however, is accumulation of capital. Meanwhile consumption, along with the that none of this has transpired Chinese capitalists increasingly Chinese government’s anti- without struggle from the working became global players in the world inflationary money policies. As the class in China. of investment and credit. scale of these problems declines, it is It was not difficult to predict that the argued, China’s economy can pick A wave of struggle current financial crisis which began up the pace once more. According to the Chinese last year would have significant On the other hand, other government, the first quarter of effects on China. The intricate commentators argue that job 2009 saw the highest number of practices of packaging, trading and creation and increases in purchasing “mass incidents” recorded to date. reselling debt which laced the global power are largely non-existent, and The euphemism refers to strikes, financial industry led to the spread that total spending is in fact being demonstrations, protests, roadblocks of risk throughout the system in a carried by a thin sector of the and the like which involve over 25 way which was nigh-on impossible population – well paid urbanites – people. The state claims there were to follow. As crisis quickly spread while the majority is frozen out of 58,000 such incidents in the quarter, throughout the system, confidence the economy. The Chinese and should the trend prove to be fell away in the face of financial government, less hobbled by debt consistent throughout the year, 2009 disaster. The subsequent collapse in than Western counterparts, has will have been the most volatile growth and attempts to claw back launched a huge fiscal stimulus since records began, with nearly wealth from workers through cuts package which has pushed up twice as many incidents as the year and layoffs in the West led to a drop output artificially. The unused before. While information can rarely in consumption, and hence a drop capacity in the Steel industry is be taken from the Chinese in demand for China’s export- equivalent to the steel output of government on trust, the fact that oriented manufacturing industries. Russia and the US combined, for unrest is building in China is China’s economy virtually stalled at example. Likewise the stimulus has undeniable, with large struggles over the end of last year, leading to huge functioned to create bubbles in real layoffs, withheld pay, land seizures, numbers of layoffs and a concurrent estate and the stock market. It is corruption, pollution and so on wave of struggles over sackings and argued that all of this defers crisis occurring on a daily basis, alongside unpaid wages. Through late 2008 for the sake of short-term recovery, strikes, occupations and protests over China saw a fall in the rate of or at least the appearance of it. a range of workplace grievances. investment, a fall in economic Either way, it is undeniable that the News of much of the unrest has growth, a fall in state income and a crisis had a severe impact on the barely filtered through to the West, fall in output. living conditions of Chinese with the exception of certain high- However, since then there has been workers, with cities in export- profile incidents. The killing of a Organise! China: ‘the harmonious society’ 13

boss by an angry mob in Tonghua in government to intervene, leaving the the north-east of the country during official unions and their petitioning the rioting which accompanied a tactics far behind. takeover of a steelworks was one A recent example of such such incident, an incident which developments is that of the taxi also saw 30,000 steelworkers battle drivers’ struggles which have swept riot police. the country since 2008. Taxi drivers Nonetheless, the broader trends are in Chongqing - who had previously observable to those able to carry out been subject to repression when the research. In recent months China organising autonomously - went on Labour Bulletin has published a report strike en masse in November 2008. which examined 100 struggles, and Faced with 10,000 workers found that workers are increasingly undertaking determined action, the acting autonomously, and becoming government changed its approach powerful enough to force the and sought to placate the strikers. government to intervene and end After initial threats of repression, it the dispute. Moreover, struggles are ruled that their treatment was illegal consciously being spread and and enforced their demands on replicated, with protests moving no secret of this, recently making employers. Following this victory, throughout regions like wildfire. On public its “five-faceted and unified” copycat strikes spread throughout top of all this, workers are frequently plan for the protection of workers’ the country, with drivers in Hainan going on the offensive, making rights: “1.leadership of the party, 2. and Gansu provinces beginning demands in their own interests support of the government, 3. stoppages over similar grievances. In rather than just carrying out cooperation of society, 4. operation Yongdeng, a county in Gansu, the defensive struggles as confidence by the unions and 5. participation by drivers blockaded the offices of the increases. the workers”. These points were traffic bureau. Again, the One important aspect of ranked in order of importance. government acceded to their developments covered by the report What this means in practice can be demands. Fujian and Guangdong has been the fact that workers are seen in a recent case. When workers provinces were hit next, once again often bypassing the official trade in Shaanxi attempted to set up a forcing the government to impose union bodies altogether. Trade congress which would seek to put the demands on employers in order unions in China form little more workers in control of unions and to stave off further unrest and to than another layer of the state shopfloor organisation, the ACFTU stop the struggle spreading further. apparatus, locking workers into swung into action, threatening the The wave of strikes spilled over into government and party workers involved and claiming that December, with drivers in manoeuvrings. The sole trade union the congress was a “reactionary Guangzhou stopping work en masse. organisation in China is the All- organisation.” According to ACFTU More mass taxi driver strikes have China Federation of Trade Unions officials, the congress was an attempt occurred this year, with 5,000 out in (ACFTU). With 174m members, it is to destroy China’s “harmonious Qinghai province in June. Chinese the world’s largest trade union society”, and was being controlled taxi drivers have discovered that they organisation. The ACFTU unions by foreign interests. didn’t get their demands met by frequently run closed-shop Unsurprisingly, workers are petitioning officials, but by arrangements, and the organisation increasingly seeing the ACFTU as part terrifying them. of independent, competing unions is of the problem, not the solution, and Other workers have made use of illegal. The ACFTU has deep ties to have been attempting to bypass it similar tactics. In November last year the ruling Communist Party, and altogether. They have sought to 7,000 factory workers in Dongguan participates in the implementation spread their struggles, causing - a major manufacturing centre - of government strategies and policy enough trouble to disrupt the normal went on strike, occupied their goals in industry. Moreover, it makes functioning of society and force the workplace and blockaded roads after 14 china: ‘the harmonious society’ Organise!

three months’ pay was withheld. The workers and peasants has been to invest it in the cause of re- government was faced with paying significantly dented. The belief that the organising in the wages or the risk of unrest Communist Party is doing its best for favour of a less severe-looking set spreading through the city, and the ‘Chinese people’- despite events of ‘democratic’ rulers. Russians coughed up the money. and developments - is common. have had to learn this lesson the This wave of struggles has continued Workers still articulate struggles of the hard way, as the fall of the into 2009, and such incidents are most confrontational type with Communist Party in that country happening at a higher rate than ever reference to the revolutionary heritage has led to a collapse in living before. It is clear that workers are of the Communist Party. For example, standards, incomes and learning from their experiences, and during a demonstration by factory employment for the majority of the their tactics are developing workers in Liaoyang in 2002 which population and the rise to power of accordingly. They are taking control demanded the release of imprisoned a new ruling class of billionaire of their own struggles, and leaving workers’ representatives and the oligarchs as transparent in their behind the official unions as the sacking of the Liaoyang Party Secretary, self-interest as their ‘red’ dead weights they are. and which saw the attendance of predecessors. between 30,000 and 80,000 people, An alternative political perspective is Where next? workers lined up behind a huge vital. This perspective must reflect Though these are important portrait of Chairman Mao as they the developing power of developments, and show the potential marched through the city. More the working class in China, and for a movement of the working class recently, authorities have attempted to maintain a perspective focussed on acting in its own interests, they have contain protests and struggles by imposing change on employers and not yet come near to challenging the focussing attention on inept local the state through direct action and ongoing rule of the party or officials and party representatives, so as solidarity. Consciousness develops threatening capital in a significant to draw attention away from more alongside struggle, and we are sense. The state is still capable of systemic problems. seeing increasing confidence cracking down on organisers and Just as it is important that workers accompanying snowballing unrest. militants, and has handed down break with any illusions in the Radical new perspectives are not lengthy jail sentences to those involved Communist Party, it is also impossible, and are not without in strikes and protests in recent years. important that any alternative precedent in China. Any major Even if it is currently finding that political perspectives that arise do unrest which threatens the rotten backing down may be safer than not gain new illusions in Western- state-capitalist system must be attempting to crush struggles in many style democracy. While rights accompanied by an outlook which cases, it would certainly swing into snatched from the state in the maintains a healthy distrust of action in the most brutal way if it felt course of struggle are important, employers, the unions and seriously threatened. they are meaningless without the officialdom alike. Only with such an On top of this, it is unclear whether collective clout to enforce them on understanding does the working the image of the Communist Party as a employers and the state. It would class in China and around the world party of paternalistic ‘socialists’ trying be a disaster if Chinese workers stand a chance of escaping the their best to look out for the interest of were to discover their power only ongoing disaster that is capitalism. ‘The belief that the Communist Party is doing its best for the ‘Chinese people’ is common’ Organise! Occupations 15 Occupations of the land, occupations of the workplace: a brief history

“We must bear in mind that no the lords, with laws being passed to government, however honourable, grant them a third of such land. can decree the abolition of misery. With the of 1789 the The people themselves – the hungry tide turned, and new laws were and disinherited – are they who passed to attack the rural seigneurs. must abolish misery, by taking into However this went against the ideas their possession, as the very first of the bourgeois step, the land which by natural right, leading the French Revolution, who should not be monopolised by a few strongly believed in individual but must be the property of every property whilst being opposed to human being... What you need is to the monarchy and aristocracy. As a secure the well-being of your result any recovery of common land families – their daily bread – and seized by the aristocrats was this no government can give you. suspended in 1796. However no You yourselves must conquer these active occupation of the land seems good things, and you must do it by to have occurred during the taking immediate possession of the Revolution. land, which is the original source of During the all wealth. Understand this well; no which began in 1910, the subject of government will be able to give you land occupation came firmly onto that, for the law defends the “right” the agenda. Under the dictatorship of those who are withholding of Porfirio Díaz a great amount of wealth. You yourselves must take it, of the first recorded examples of Workers occupy the land had been seized from the despite the law, despite the seizure of the land so that it could be Vestas factory, peasants for the big landowners. In government, despite the pretended worked in common. Following Isle of Wight the south, Emiliano Zapata and the right of property.” – Ricardo Flores physical attacks by gangs organised by Liberation Army of the South called Magon, Mexican anarchist the local landowners, the Diggers were for radical redistribution of the land This article will look at the history of forced to move to nearby Little Heath. under the slogan “Tierra y Libertad” occupations, both of the land by They were driven from there too by (“Land and ”), and began to peasants and rural workers and of similar means. Another Digger carry this out. The call was taken up workplaces by those who work in community which occupied common by Zapata’s allies throughout Mexico, them. It will show that there is a land at Wellingborough in including the forces of Pancho Villa long tradition of such occupations, Northamptonshire was harassed by in the north. The Zapatistas destroyed and that far from being dead, the authorities and several of its all land records in the villages they wherever workers and peasants need members arrested. Other Digger occupied, and the haciendas (big to reply in a strong way to the greed occupations of the land took place in estates) were handed over to the and callousness of the boss class of Iver in Buckinghamshire, Barnet in peasants. In Morelos State, 53 such land and city, occupations are still an Hertfordshire, Enfield in Middlesex, haciendas were given back to the effective means of struggle. Dunstable in Bedfordshire, Bosworth workers of the land. The defeat and in Gloucestershire, and in institutionalisation of the Revolution The Land Nottinghamshire. By the end of 1650 and the murder of Zapata in 1919 It was in April 1649 that the Diggers, all the land occupations appear to have ended the radical redistribution of inspired by the teachings and writings been broken up by local landowners land. However in areas where of Gerrard Winstanley, began their or by the actions of the Cromwell peasant organisation remained occupation of wasteland at St George’s government and its armed forces. strong and where they defended Hill near Weybridge in Surrey and In the lead-up to the French land with arms, the governments of called on all poor people to join them Revolution there was increasing the 1920s and 1930s entered into or follow their example. This was one encroachment on common land by alliance with them against the 16 occupations Organise!

landed gentry and to further their radical than those in the factories in own aims of nationalisation of the north. The Fascist squads were resources. In this process the used against the land occupations government increasingly sabotaged just as much as they were against independent peasant organisation by those in the workplaces in the their strenuous efforts to integrate period of reaction that ended the them into a movement of support revolutionary wave in Italy. for the government. From March 1936 onwards, during During both the 1905 and 1917 the Spanish Revolution, 60% of land in Russia, peasants took in the area outside of Francoist a major role in seizing land. In 1905 control was rapidly brought under the condition of the Russian peasants collective working, with 2,000 was dire. Land seizures took place, anarchist agricultural collectives sometimes followed by looting and Italian factory Peter Arshinov noted in his History of totalling 800,000 people. The burning of the houses of the big occupation the Makhnovist Movement: Revolution on the land was more landowners. Illegal logging and The peasants made good use of the sweeping than in the towns. hunting on land owned by the land of former pomeshchiks (land- Throughout the rest of the world aristocracy also took place. Three owning gentry), princes and other land occupations have been no less hundred districts of 47 provinces landlords. However, this well-being important, particularly in the years were affected and 1,000 manor was not given to them by the after the Second World War. For houses were burned down during Communist power, but by the example, in the Telangana region of the three months from October to revolution. For dozens of years they Andhra Pradesh in India, massive December 1905. The unrest did not had desired the land and in 1917 land occupation against the local end with the events of 1905 but they took it, long before the Soviet landed elite took place which was continued into 1906 and right up power was established. If Bolshevism only crushed with the intervention until 1908. Government concessions marched with the peasants in their of the Indian Army in 1948. In given in 1905 were seen as a green seizure of the pomeshchiks’ lands, it South Africa in the 1980s one of the light for the redistribution of the was only in order to defeat the forms of struggle against the land, so attacks took place with the agrarian bourgeoisie. But this in no apartheid regime was occupation of aim of forcing landlords to flee. way indicated that the future the land, a necessity for many These actions were answered with Communist power had the intention landless agrarian workers who were massive repression from the of furnishing the peasants land. On being robbed of livelihood and authorities. the contrary. The ideal of this power sustenance. Under the new regime Similarly in 1917 peasants began is the organisation of a single the land struggle continues – as it mass land seizures, most significantly agricultural economy belonging does in neighbouring Zimbabwe, in areas like the province of Tambov altogether to the same lord, the State. where the occupation of the white in the east. In some areas communal Soviet agricultural estates cultivated farmers’ land has been working of the land was by wage workers and peasants – this institutionalised by the Mugabe inaugurated. However, the hostility is the model for the State agriculture regime. ZANU-PF and the state have towards the peasantry of the which the Communist power strives made strong efforts to co-opt, – who at first exploited to extend to the entire country. contain and control the land the slogan “The Land to Those Who In Italy, whilst factory occupations occupation movement, using it as a Work It!” – resulted in grain are more remembered from the Red weapon in their own war against seizures, mass terror, and finally to Years of 1919-21, parallel their political enemies. Former forced collectivisation rather than occupations of the land were guerrillas have been integrated into the free collectivisation of the land happening in the south. Anarchists the regime and play a leading role in that could have been achieved by the like Camillo Berneri have argued that this movement. Criminal elements peasants themselves. As the anarchist these land occupations were more and those intent on opportunistically Organise! Occupations 17

grabbing land for themselves are also bureaucratic and highly centralised people in a workshop with one present. There remains the possibility organisation, seeking to demobilise mandated and recallable delegate for of independent peasant organisation genuine land occupations and every 15-20 workers. These in turn set breaking with this state- and ZANU- sidetrack them into rural shanty up their own internal commisions PF-controlled movement, which towns. It is allied with the Brazilian which became known as factory itself has been responsible for the state and offers an internal market councils. In 1920 this became a mass death of many black agricultural solution, laced with strong doses of movement, and occupations began labourers economic patriotism. The rural after the bosses attempted to oppose Land occupations are spreading uprising in Brazil will have to break changes in conditions and pay. Metal throughout Latin America from with the politics of the MST. and shipbuilding workers in Liguria Paraguay to Mexico. A movement of As we have seen, the movements for occupied and ran their workplaces for land occupations began in Brazil as land occupation have to develop an four days. Anarchists were among the a result of intense pressure on independent and autonomous first to suggest occupying the agrarian labourers and peasants. politics and free themselves from workplaces. This was taken up on a Entwined with this was the the machinations of state wide scale in the anarchist and development of the Movimento dos manipulation and the rackets of anarcho-syndicalist movements, both Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) – political “vanguards”. of which had seen a massive increase the Landless Rural Workers’ in size in the immediate period after Movement – which had its roots in The Workplace the First World War. the 1970s, and which emerged in The occupation of factories was This brought a counter-attack from the the 1980s and orientated itself to launched in Italy in the years just after bosses, who sought to ban the factory the land occupations. At first the the First World War. A massive councils from the shop floor and limit MST was controlled by liberation movement to occupy and run the their meeting outside of work hours. theologists of the Catholic Church. factories started to get underway in the This move was defied by workers. It then came under the control of big industrial centres of the north like When several council delegates were Maoists and social democrats from Milan and Turin. Internal commissions sacked, a new wave of occupations the old left parties. It is a sprang up, each based on a group of began. Bosses responded with a lockout and the appearance of armed troops outside the workplaces. A , solid in Turin, broke out in response to the repression. At its climax the strike involved 500,000 workers. Railway workers in Pisa and Florence refused to transport troops to Turin. In September there were more massive occupations. Strikes spread to engineering factories, railways and road transport, with peasants also seizing land. The occupying workers began production for themselves under their own control. Italy was paralysed, with half a million workers occupying their factories and raising red and black flags over them. The movement spread. But after a month the movement was sold out by the Socialist Party and the unions it controlled. This major defeat resulted 18 occupations Organise!

in the rise to power of Mussolini’s Parties had sabotaged a movement. workforce, the following week. Fascist movement as big employers Thirty years later in May 1968, a However once again the movement poured large sums of cash into its massive uprising began with was sabotaged by the Communist coffers in an effort to deal a mortal barricades being built in the Latin Party and the unions it controlled. blow to the workers’ movement. Quarter of Paris. Initially the This, coupled with the brutal attacks In France, the threat to the French movement only involved students, launched by the French state, brought Republic from the far right but it quickly drew in many other the movement to an end. paramilitary ligues, and their attempted people. The largest general strike in The movement and previous overthrow of the government in an advanced western economy, one examples of occupations had not February 1934, combined with a deep that was not called by the union completely disappeared from French economic depression, resulted in a centrals, broke out. The events workers’ consciousnesses, however. wave of protest from the workers’ highlighted the malaise within As a result of their discovery of plans movement which drew in both the France, which had been ruled by a for huge restructuring and mass Communist Party and the Socialist Gaullist administration for many sackings at the Lip watch factory Party. A Popular Front government years. Eleven million workers, about near Besançon, workers once more under the leadership of the Socialist two thirds of the overall workforce, went into occupation with a work-in Léon Blum was set up after the were involved in this movement at in 1973. One hundred thousand electoral victory of April 1936. This one time or another. people demonstrated in support at sparked off an unprecedented strike Following large demonstrations and Besançon. Eventually, in what was wave in May and June, which included street fighting, the Sorbonne college seen as a victory, the factory was occupations of the factories. In the was occupied in mid-May. This was taken over by a finance capitalist, and countryside, land occupations also followed by the setting up of the entire workforce was re- began. The government conceded hundreds of occupation committees employed, ending the occupation. something that had not happened throughout France. It was echoed in Things did not end there though. before – paid holidays, a 40-hour the action of workers, who began The incoming right-wing week and other reforms (necessary for occupying factories, starting with a government led by Chirac was the modernisation of capitalism). But sit-down strike at the Sud Aviation determined to punish the Lip at the same time collective bargaining plant near Nantes, followed by workers. The new owner was forced was agreed upon by the main unions another strike at a Renault factory out, and the attacks on workers and the Communists – a sell-out of the near Rouen which spread to the began again in 1976. Another strikes and occupations movement, Renault manufacturing complexes at occupation began, ending with the and a diversion from far more radical Flins in the Seine valley and the Paris workers setting up a co-operative possibilities. This was harshly criticized suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. By involving 250 of the original 800 by anarchists and other revolutionaries. 16th May workers had occupied workers. This collapsed in the 1980s. The flight of capital and other around 50 factories, and by 17th May The tactic of factory occupation economic problems led to the 200,000 were on strike. That figure spread throughout Europe in this resignation of Blum and the collapse snowballed to 2m workers on strike period to Belgium, Holland and of the Popular Front in 1937. Once the following day, and then 10m, or . It was often employed again the Socialist and Communist around two thirds of the French by Italian workers during the years ‘Over 150,000 people took part in more than 200 factory occupations in Britain in 1976’ Organise! Occupations 19

of unrest in the 1970s. It was Now workplace occupations have factory on the Isle of Wight. widely used during the Portuguese started rearing their little heads, Alongside this were the occupations Revolution of 1974 and the snowdrops pushing through the of threatened schools in London overthrow of the Fascist regime soil. The Obama administration and Scotland. there. It even spread to Britain: received a welcome with the It looks like workplace occupations Briants (April 1971), UCS in occupation of the Republic Window are returning with a vengeance. Glasgow (July 1971), River Don and Door factory in Chicago, the When bosses get into difficulties, Works (October 1971), Fisher- first sit-in strike the USA has seen particularly in times of economic Bendix (January 1972), Linpac in for decades. In Ukraine, workers crisis, they attempt to cut and run at Liverpool (March 1972), BLMC in occupied a harvesting machine the expense of workers. But workers Cowley (April 1972), Lovell’s in factory in Kherson. In Poland a are resisting with tactics of direct London (May 1972), and Thomson factory was occupied, in action. However, workers cannot let Westinghouse Brake and Signal Co. Ireland it was the turn of the crystal themselves be trapped inside the in Wiltshire (May 1972) – more factory at Waterford, in Scotland it factory. They need to spread the than 200 factory occupations was the Prisme factory in Dundee, struggle and gather support from occurred up to 1976. Most of these in London it was the Visteon factory, other workplaces and from their were around five major industrial and more recently it was the Vestas neighbourhoods. As we said in a cities – Glasgow, Liverpool, Sheffield, recent London AF pamphlet on the Manchester and London – although Italian factory councils: occupations also occurred in rural The struggle was too confined to areas like Fakenham and Great the factories and workshops Yarmouth in Norfolk. This was in a themselves, and not enough was period of major factory closures and done to move mass action to the sackings. Over 150,000 workers streets… The factory councils were took part in these actions over that an expression of the skilled and period. However the occupations semi-skilled industrial working remained under the control of the class, they did not represent and unions, and their Labour and vocalise the interests of other Communist Party officials failed to sections of the working class, and take the offensive and generalise the were therefore an expression of a struggle, ending in various deals minority of the class. where some jobs were saved. We are far from the revolutionary situation that existed in Italy in the The Present early 1920s, but we should still try It might have seemed that workers’ to widen the struggle and develop a militancy had passed – if you were strong support movement for the mug enough to believe the occupations that can move outside propaganda onslaught in the ruling- the stranglehold of the unions and class media of the last decade or so. the so-called . 20 Surrealism: A golden bomb Organise! Surrealism: A Golden Bomb

“The mere word ‘freedom’ is the only one that still excites me … Imagination alone offers me some intimation of what can be.” —First Surrealist Manifesto

“All power to the imagination!” —Surrealist and Situationist slogan

It’s commonplace nowadays for anarchists to cite the Situationist International as important political forebears, and to use Situationist ideas in their political analyses. But there is far less understanding or appreciation of the movement that arguably gave birth to it: Surrealism, a genuinely international revolutionary movement which predated the Situationist International by several decades, has outlasted it by even longer, and continues with unabated fury today. was not acclaimed as its “Pope” (the The poetic storm The claim that anarchists are epithet was coined as a vile insult by The truth Surrealism is seeking is ignorant of the Surrealist movement Breton’s enemies). It was and is not not the factual truth of “reality” might seem at first glance to be restricted to Paris, or to Europe, and as defined by the social or natural an odd one, given the enormous it did not end in 1945, 1966, 1969, sciences, or indeed by most volume of books, exhibitions and or any other date you may have revolutionary political analysis. The TV documentaries on the history of read. In fact today there are active utopian philosopher Ernst Bloch, a Surrealism which cultural pundits Surrealist groups in cities all over major influence on recent Surrealist continue to churn out – not to the world, including Athens, Buenos thought, sums it up: mention the extent to which the Aires, Chicago, Istanbul, Izmir, Is truth a justification of the world word “surreal” has entered everyday Leeds, London, Madrid, Montevideo, or is it hostile to the world? Isn’t language as a synonym for “bizarre” Paris, Prague, São Paolo, St Louis the whole existing world devoid or “zany”. The problem is that and Stockholm, as well as scores of of truth? The world as it exists is not almost all of these representations individual Surrealists working alone true. There exists a second concept of of Surrealism, academic and popular or in collaboration with others. truth which is not positivistic, which alike, are gross misrepresentations of Surrealism’s participants are is not founded on a declaration of the movement’s principles and passionate in their devotion to their facticity, on “verification through the trajectory. So let’s start by listing a cause, which aims to re-enchant facts,” but which is instead loaded few of the things that Surrealism and revolutionise everyday life. It’s with value – as, for example, in is not. It’s not a 20th-century art a revolutionary movement not just the concept “a true friend,” or in movement. It’s not an artistic or in the sense of Juvenal’s expression Tempestas poetica literary style. It is not a precursor of, – much less artistic revolution – but – that is, the kind of storm one finds or identical with, postmodernism. total revolution, a transformation of in a book, a poetic storm, the kind Salvador Dalí was not its greatest reality at every level. For this reason that reality has never witnessed, exponent (he was expelled from the it can perhaps best be characterised a storm carried to the extreme, movement in 1939 for his betrayal not as a cultural movement, or even a radical storm and therefore a of its basic values), and André Breton as a philosophy, but as a quest for truth. true storm. And if that doesn’t Organise! Surrealism: A golden bomb 21

correspond to the facts … in that of the Surrealists than the hope of experimental, and usually take case, too bad for the facts. finding and fixing this point. the form of play – sometimes in Surrealism is a quest for the true organised games, which can be storm: the value-laden kind of Dreams and play more or less elaborately truth which is truer than facts, The Marvellous, then, is the point planned in advance, and logic or rationality because it tells where contradictions are transmuted, sometimes in more us not merely what is, but what can the rules of logic implode, and the spontaneous outbreaks of be – the truth, in other words, of unity of truth, imagination and sheer playfulness. (Such the imagination. The imagination freedom is manifested. The most playfulness is evident, for is therefore both Surrealism’s important fault lines upon which example, in the practices of research instrument and its field Surrealism operates are therefore détournement and the dérive, both of of investigation; and because it the contradictions not just between which were being explored by reveals to us what can be, the real and imagined, but also between Surrealists before their adoption imagination is also the truest realm conscious and unconscious, by the Situationists and continue of freedom. Thus truth, freedom sleeping and waking, and to be developed and refined and imagination are indivisible, and subjective and objective. by Surrealists today.) their indivisibility is manifested in This is why Surrealists Play is Surrealists’ poetry – not poetry in the mundane have always been favourite mode sense of lines on a page, but in preoccupied with of research at the deeper Surrealist sense of poetic dreams – not because least partly truth, a kind of illumination which they simply love because Surrealists also refer to as convulsive “bizarre” images for their serious beauty, surreality or, more often, the own sake, but because dreams occur, play as such Marvellous. precisely, at the vanishing point operates at that The annihilation of the distinction between all those contradictions. vanishing point between between apparently contradictory Dreams therefore offer a real and imaginary, conscious and states, such as that between truth privileged point of access to unconscious. It also expresses and poetry, has been the central the Marvellous, and are both Surrealists’ furious rejection of principle of the Surrealist movement cherished (most Surrealists work, duty, usefulness and all ever since the First Manifesto of keep a dream diary as a matter those other “adult” values which 1924: in all the decades of activity of course) and interrogated represent compromise and defeat since then, in all the different (Surrealists often experiment at the hands of a disenchanted locations and historical, social and with different forms of dreaming, and immiserated world. Play with political contexts in which it has including collective dreaming others also revolves around the been conducted, this ongoing quest and lucid dreaming). Other such core Surrealist value of collectivity: for the Marvellous has been what privileged points of access include Surrealism is often described gives the movement its unity and practices of automatism, ranging as a “collective adventure”, and purpose. As the Second Surrealist from automatic drawing and the practices of joint enquiry Manifesto (1930) famously puts it: writing to musical improvisation and shared experience have Everything tends to make us believe and even dance; encounters with been essential throughout the that there exists a certain point of “found objects”; and experiences movement’s history. Working the mind at which life and death, of “objective chance”, where collectively is not just a way of the real and the imagined, past extraordinary and sometimes expressing solidarity and sparking and future, the communicable prophetic coincidences obliterate ideas; opening up one’s own and the incommunicable, high the dichotomy between objective, unconscious and putting it into and low, cease to be perceived as “external” events and subjective, direct communication with those contradictions. Now, search as one “internal” significance and meaning. of one’s comrades constitutes a may one will never find any other Surrealist investigations into these radical experiment in breaking motivating force in the activities phenomena are rigorous and down the barriers between 22 Surrealism: A golden bomb Organise!

subjective and objective, and can of the international Surrealist University of Texas Press, 2009. be a transforming (and sometimes movement is a mixture, broadly Michael Richardson & Krzysztof terrifying) adventure in its own speaking, of Marxists (often, though Fijalkowski (eds), Surrealism Against the Current: Tracts and Declarations, Pluto Press, 2001. right. not exclusively, Trotskyists) and Penelope Rosemont (ed.), Surrealist Women: an anarchists (including communists, International Anthology, Athlone Press, 1998. Surrealism and revolution syndicalists, Wobblies, primitivists Ron Sakolsky (ed.), Surrealist Subversions: Rants, Facts are hostile to truth, and and anarcha-feminists). With Writings & Images by the Surrealist Movement in the surreality is more real than reality; such a mixture of revolutionary , Autonomedia, 2002. truth, imagination and freedom perspectives, it’s no surprise that Some Surrealist groups’ websites in are indivisible, and the Marvellous internal political debates within the English: is their manifestation. Clearly, movement are frequent and often Chicago Surrealist Group – Surrealism is a revolutionary heated. Nonetheless it remains www.surrealistmovement-usa.org movement in more than the usual a matter of principle that the Leeds Surrealist Group – sense of the word. But contrary movement as a whole does not toe leedssurrealistgroup.wordpress.com London Surrealist Group – to the widespread accusation that any party line or subordinate itself londonsurrealistgroup.wordpress.com they are apolitical dreamers or, to any one political viewpoint or Surrealist London Action Group – even worse, well-meaning political programme. This Surrealist rejection robberbridegroom.blogspot.com idealists, most Surrealists are acutely of dogma even extends to Surrealism Stockholm Surrealist Group – aware of the burning need for itself. The commitment to poetic www.surrealistgruppen.org and www.icecrawler.blogspot.com revolutionary action in the factual truth is an unshakeable fundamental world here and now. Imagination principle, but all other practices and may give us glimpses of what can be, ideas, including those of Breton, are but real-life revolutionary activity constantly tested and questioned. is required to get us there. In the There is no such thing as orthodox words of Benjamin Péret: “This Surrealism. urgently-required, indispensable Surrealists recognise the urgent revolution is the key to the future … necessity of social revolution and A poet these days must be either a the overthrow of capitalism, and revolutionary or not a poet.” many of them are active participants The Surrealist movement today in revolutionary struggle. But is justly proud of its heritage of they insist no less furiously on the revolutionary consciousness and urgent necessity of poetic truth, action. From Péret fighting with imagination, freedom, and the total Durruti in Spain, to Claude Cahun’s transformation of reality. Indeed, for Resistance activities on Occupied Surrealists the seeming dichotomy Jersey; from the courage and between poetry and political action persistence of the Prague Surrealist is just as false as all the others: Group under Stalinism, to that of poetry is the practice of freedom, Surrealists living under vicious and vice versa. On the table in dictatorships in southern Europe my parents’ house lies a golden and Latin America; across a whole bomb, with a live caterpillar for its range of revolutionary commitment detonator. Social revolution alone as anarchists, Marxists, Trotskyists, just isn’t going to be enough. street-fighters and insurrectionists of every kind, Surrealists have played passionate roles in resistance Suggested further reading: and social action, and continue to André Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, Ann Arbor Paperbacks, 1972. do so today. Michael Löwy, Morning Star: Surrealism, The current political composition , Anarchism, Situationism, Utopia, Organise! Mutual Aid 23 Mutual Aid , Freedom Press

Freedom Press’ new edition of Peter those familiar with Kropotkin Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid comes at a already, but it does a good job of timely moment. As the financial failiarising those new to his works crisis hits its heights and regular with the outline of his life, work people feel its burden, ideas of and motivations. mutual aid and community become Another useful addition is a Further all the more important. With that Reading section, also by Iain McKay. in mind, this republishing of This provides details on both Mutual Aid, along with a significant Kropotkin’s own writings – usefully raft of additional introductions containing information on where and changes as well as a general to find collections of many of the updating and correcting of the text shorter articles that Mutual Aid is is very welcome. made up of – and also on other The preface by Donald Rooum and biographical and analytical works short biography by Iain Mckay relating to Kropotkin and the ideas are the main new additions to the he presented. The only criticism text and are interesting in their that can be levelled at this is that defence of Mutual Aid, not just as many of the works in it specifically an “anarchist classic”, but as a relate to Kropotkin as the anarchist, work of natural geography and rather than perhaps providing science. Whilst the earlier chapters reading suggestions to show where of his books have been perhaps Kropotkin’s ideas could be placed superseded by contemporary in the geographical and biological scientific understanding, and The focus on Kropotkin as biologist literature of the time. have previously been dismissed rather than anarchist is a positive This new edition of Mutual Aid, as “crackpot”, the grounding this one, as it shows not only the solid then, is a timely update to this very introduction gives for Kropotkin’s foundation of his ideas in personal useful text. However, the steeper ideas as being part of a movement political conviction but the basis in price tag of £15 might run the risk within Russian science illustrate fact for a social system based on co- of relegating this edition to the how Mutual Aid was a natural operation rather than competition. more academic reader, rather than conclusion of ideas in circulation These new introductions are a general audience. Regardless, at the time. Meanwhile, the short, but they were certainly the obvious effort that’s gone later chapters on human social thought-provoking! Mckay’s short into this new edition makes it a organisation still remain invaluable overview biography is punctual pretty definitive version of the examples of human co-operation but hits all the important points text. Whilst the additions probably and mutuality. Furthermore, the in his life: his upbringing, his aren’t anything especially novel that introductions shed some light on education and experience as a couldn’t be found elsewhere by a how Kropotkin’s ideas have been geographer and his revolutionary good researcher, having them all in slowly accepted into evolutionary activities in Russia and Western one place, tied into the original text, understanding as misconceptions of Europe. There’s nothing in this makes this a great resource and read his meaning have been corrected. biography which will surprise for class struggle activists. ‘It shows the basis for a social system based on co-operation rather than competition.’ 24 Book reviews Organise!

Free comrades: anarchism this changed with the start of the and discusses various differences twentieth century. In particular, the between then and now. As he says: and homosexuality in the work of the anarchist John William “Almost alone among their United States, 1895–1917 Lloyd in relation to Whitman and contemporaries, the anarchist sex Terence Kissack,AK Press Carpenter is given great attention. radicals addressed the issue of Anarchists were often involved in homosexuality within the context of (2008). 237 pages. £14·00 discussions on prison, partly because their larger political goals: no Terence Kissack is on the board of it was seen as a facet of mainstream politician did so; no the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, capitalismthat should be eradicated major independent intellectual did Transgender Historical Society of San with the coming of a free and equal so; no leading American scientific Francisco. By looking at public society, and partly because so many figure did so; and no social critic records, journals, and books anarchists suffered in prison for saw the question of the social, published between 1895 and 1917, their beliefs and activities. One topic ethical, and cultural place of same- he examines the role of what he calls that came up was prison sex love as worthy of their time and anarchist sex radicals within the homosexuality. Whilst advocates of energy. The work of the anarchist sex anarchist movement itself and prison reform talked about the radicals was unique and valuable. It within society as a whole. eradication of homosexuality in is time we honour their Kissack starts off with an prison, “what is striking about the accomplishments.” introduction to the anarchist anarchists’ discussion of prison movement with an emphasis on homosexuality is their refusal to see Anarchist seeds beneath the anarchist sexual politics. He argues it simply as an emblematic that sexuality was a concern of manifestation of a repressive snow: left-libertarian thought English-language anarchists in the institution.” In relation to this, and British writers from USA. He compares the anarchist Kissack gives particular consideration outlook on sexuality with that of to ’s great book to state socialists. Prison Memoirs of An Anarchist. . Liverpool He then goes on to take a look at the Anarchists in the United States were University Press. 401 pages. trial of Oscar Wilde. What had sympathetic to the ideas of thinkers on £20·00 previously been a minority concern sexuality, like Edward Carpenter and the David Goodway offers this book firstly among anarchist sex radicals- who German Magnus Hirschfeld, who they as a “serious, scholarly contribution to had been primarily concerned with felt were on their own wavelength. The the cultural history of Britain”, and and birth control and the anarchist included here he succeeds well. Secondly, he free, uninhibited and unashamed talks on these subjects, including offers the studies in the book as an discussion of sexuality- now became homosexuality, in her famous speaking “intervention in current politics by a cause to be defended. Anarchists tours of the United States and again demonstrating that there has been a were, as Kissack says, nearly alone Kissack deals with this in detail. significant indigenous anarchist among their contemporaries in The author argues that the work tradition, predominantly literary, and defending Wilde. Like their French undertaken by anarchists on sexual that it is at its most impressive when at counterparts, American anarchists politics became a casualty of the its broadest as a left-libertarian fought against Wilde’s works being collapse of the anarchist movement in current.” Here lies the problem. This censored. the United States and the rise of the reviewer would point to a working Kissack also looks at the role that the Communist Party. . Despite this, these class anarchist movement that once work of the poet Walt Whitman, as ideas were kept alive by a small had some significance before World well as his admirer, the Englishman minority and started to re-emerge after War One, had very little life between Edward Carpenter, played in World War Two, along with anarchist the World Wars and had some small anarchist discussions of same-sex thought and anarchist groups. influence on social movements in the love. At the end of the nineteenth Kissack concludes by contrasting the post-war period. To equate that century, Whitman’s work was used anarchist sex radicals of the era with tradition with primarily a literary one in relation to heterosexual love,but the modern US anarchist movement would be a mistake, and here again is Organise! Book reviews 25

the problem of this “left-libertarian intelligent discussion of Wilde’s retention of some kind of state current” at its “broadest”. This is politics-other than sexual- given that apparatus, advocated world apparent in the range of writers that one of Wilde’s most important and government, refused to call himself an the author includes in this work. We popular essays is ‘The Soul of Man anarchist publicly, and wheedled his are offered looks at William Morris, Under Socialism’. He reclaims Wilde way out of any real support for Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde, John for anarchism, indicating his strong Spanish anarchism at Emma Cowper Powys, Herbert Read, Aldous sympathies for the anarchist Goldman’s prompting; however, later Huxley, Alex Comfort, E.P. Thompson movement and quoting the veteran on Huxley is again mentioned and finally Chris Pallis and Colin Ward. Scottish-American anarchist Tom Bell, approvingly, with the dubious Goodway is honest and correct in who knew Wilde well: “…in his assertion that he “was a key mediating saying that whilst “mass, proletarian maturity he was undoubtedly an figure in the renewed popularity of anarchism failed to erupt in the British Anarchist, an Anarchist of the type of anarchism among the youthful since Isles, there was all the same a Edward Carpenter or Elisee Reclus, an the 1960s.” And so it goes on, with a distinguished minority intellectual, Anarchist and philosophic and reasonable defence of Alex Comfort overwhelmingly literary, anarchist- humanitarian but clean-cut and plain- and Herbert Read (although too much and rather broader and still more spoken, though avoiding the use of the special pleading for Read’s acceptance distinguished libertarian-tradition. As term Anarchism itself as one likely to of a knighthood, at odds with his he says, a large part of the book is cause misunderstanding in the minds open espousal of anarchism, which devoted to “three libertarian of his readers.” led to his distancing from the British communists or socialists who were The great writer John Cowper Powys anarchist movement) through to the definitely not anarchists”: William is given two chapters in this book, the likes of Colin Ward and Chris Pallis. Morris, George Orwell and E.P. first detailing his individualist Strangely enough, Ethel Mannin, who Thompson. anarchist ideas and the second often had anarchist themes in her Goodway is clear in the way Morris describing his evolution towards a novels, is given scant attention. falls short of being an anarchist, sympathy for . Goodway is “convinced of the urgent indeed of him being unable to bring Cowper Powys has been, up until relevance of the anarchist position.” himself to adopt such a label. Certainly recently, too long neglected, and the Whilst aware of the anarchist for much of his political career he was revival of interest in his novels should communist and anarcho-syndicalist an anti-parliamentary socialist, best come with an awareness of various currents, he incorrectly claims Gandhi summarised in his The Policy of anarchist themes within them, which as some kind of anarchist and lauds Abstention, and only reluctantly Goodway highlights. anarcho-pacifism as containing “the moved to parliamentary participation Whilst Orwell wrote Homage to most original, creative anarchist in later life. Catalonia and often expressed thinking over the last seventy years”! That other great contemporary of sympathy for the anarchists, He compounds this by offering the Morris, Edward Carpenter, is given Goodway’s pleading for him as a advice that anarchists give up violence, much attention. Goodway points to libertarian socialist seems questionable. failing to adequately address the whole his general libertarian outlook and In the end Orwell remained a debate of state and class violence. the fact that he generally democrat and socialist with a strong Finally, he has come to believe that it is sympathised with the anarchist awareness of civil liberties, but he the American individualists and French movement, but was put off by what could never overcome his prejudices, mutualists who “have the most going he regarded as the too extreme which he himself summed up as for them” because they “saw nothing stances of some within the “despising authority while undesirable in the existence of modest movement in the Sheffield area disbelieving in liberty, and preserving amounts of property”. where he lived. the aristocratic outlook while seeing Whilst this book addresses some Goodway points to a remarkable clearly that the existing aristocracy is important and interesting topics in absence in the “twin industries, one degenerate and contemptible.” literature, it ultimately fails in its too gay, the other academic” that have Goodway’s advocacy of Aldous Huxley eager cooption of various literary sprung up around the life and work of is similar. George Woodcock is quoted figures into the anarchist and Oscar Wilde. This absence is one of an on the fact that Huxley believed in the libertarian socialist pantheon. 26 Film review Organise! Film Fish Tank

Andrea Arnold has been hailed as a major auteur of British social realism. The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw asserted in his review that her new film, Fish Tank, “shows that director Andrea Arnold is Ken Loach’s natural successor.” This is quite an accolade to bestow on a woman who has only written and directed two feature films, but it attests to the sheer vitality of Arnold’s film-making, and to her ability to capture the beauty and tragedy of modern Britain. Her films get to the heart of our own emotional engagement with struggle and existence. Fish Tank’s narrative may seem pretty mundane at first sight. Mia is 15 years old and lives in a dysfunctional family situation with her mother and encouraging a perception of honest, uncompromising younger sister. She wants to be a working-class culture which is articulation of our existential dancer, and the film opens with her ultimately inaccurate. Arnold herself confusion, and of the longing practising a dance routine in an shows contempt for attitudes which inherent in all of us. Arnold abandoned flat which she has she claims neither understand nor cultivates a feeling of unease in Mia’s converted into her own space, away care about what “working-class life” actions, of fear and embarrassment from all her troubles, where she can actually is – the attitudes of those even, but this is life – it’s uneasy, it’s immerse herself in her music and who observe working-class life as embarrassing, and we are all scared. her desire to find a way out. Things spectators rather than participants. In (Spoiler alert:) There is a scene near become complicated when Connor, an interview for Sight and Sound she the end when Mia has decided to her mother’s new boyfriend, takes sharply points out that “it’s only the leave home, and when the time an interest in Mia and her ambitions middle classes that find the council comes to say goodbye she dances – something that she’s clearly never estate ‘grim,’” explaining that her with her hitherto uncaring mother. experienced before, and which decision to focus on working-class It’s tense and unnerving, but at the launches her on a naive, desperate life is not a resort to obvious same time it epitomises Arnold’s and unnerving journey. narrative backdrops, but aspires point. We are cast into a world we All of Andrea Arnold’s films to date instead to portray the inspiring, cannot understand, but through our have been set on council estates. ceaseless fortitude of a culture and own struggles we can be happy with Both her Oscar-winning short film community which is simultaneously who we are; in spite of our anxieties Wasp, and her dark first feature Red divided and united in the face of real and divisions, we can find unity. Road, told the stories of characters conditions. Her films are not simply While Arnold may not call herself a immersed in that “council estate” a reflection of an image, but an political film-maker, that is what she world. Many observers have affirmation of life – its hardships, its is. Without ever being patronising, criticised her use of these settings. wonderful, vexing limitations, and she has become the story-teller of Some say the films play up to a the journey we all face, graced by the working class, of our struggles stereotypically grim view of humour and love and tragedy. and dreams. Even more importantly, working-class life; others assert more The profundity of Fish Tank is not in her films are a celebration of life – of abstractly that the worlds she creates the council estate backdrop, nor in our humanity as a class and our constitute a form of hyper-reality, Mia’s lonely struggle. It lies in the power to fight. Organise! Available from the Anarchist Federation 27 Pamphlets from the Anarchist Federation Back issues Postage costs UK: 50p per item. Non-UK: £1·00 per item

ACE 20: Against nationalism ACE 12: Against parliament, for anarchism Back issues of Organise! are available from Published September 2009, an analysis of nationalism Insights into the political parties of Britain, and why the London address for £1·50 (£2·00 and why anarchist communists are fundamentally anarchists oppose all parties. ONLINE ONLY non-UK) inc. p&p. Alternatively, send us a against it. £2·00 + p&p fiver and we’ll send you one of ACE 11: Beyond resistance – A revolutionary everything plus whatever else we can find ACE 19: In the tradition manifesto for the millennium Published as a pamphlet for the first time in 2009, this The AF’s in-depth analysis of the capitalist world in lying around. collection of articles from Organise! magazine outlines crisis, suggestions about what the alternative anarchist Issue 50 GM foods; Who owns the land; the root of and influences on the politics of the A(C)F. communist society could be like, and evaluation of War in Kosovo; Ireland – the ‘peace’ process. £2·00 + p&p social and organisational forces which play a part in Issue 52 East Timor slaughter; Kosovo – no the revolutionary process. £2·00 + p&p war but the class war; J18 stop the city; Why we ACE 18: On the frontline – Anarchists at work changed our name; Gueorgui Cheitanov portrait. New for 2009, the AF’s workplace strategy is explained. 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This new in Armenia; Neighbourhood communities; and the National Identity Register are coming to Britain edition explains the concept of revolutionary organisation Psychology of uniforms; , Anarchist (and elsewhere) very soon. This updated pamphlet aims and its structure. All libertarian revolutionaries should vision of Flores Magon; Georg Elser. to see through Labour’s smokescreens of ‘identity theft’ read this fundamental text. £2·00 + p&p Issue 69 Squatted community garden; and the ‘war on terror’. Free (pay p&p only) grassroots ; academy schools; ACE 3: Manifesto of libertarian communism Defy ID and No Borders. ACE 14: Aspects of anarchism Written in 1953 by George Fontenis, this is one of the Issue 70 Anti-fascist special; Social centre Thoughts and commentary on some of the most key texts of the anarchist communist current, translated history; May 1968; Constructivism. important issues that anarchists must confront, from from French. 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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 plus postage Available in Welsh, Serbo-Croat, Greek, German, group who attempted to defend and extend the Spanish Revolution Spanish and Portuguese of 1936 Beyond Resistance 70p plus postage Available in French Malatesta’s anarchism and violence 50p plus postage An important document in the history of anarchist The role of the revolutionary organisation theory refutes the common misinterpretation of anarchism as 70p plus postage Available in Serbo-Croat. mindless destruction while restating the need for revolution to Aims and principles of the Anarchist Federation create a free and equal society 20p plus postage Available in German, Greek, Portuguese, French, A brief flowering of freedom – The Hungarian revolution 1956 Italian, Esperanto and Spanish 60p plus postage An exciting account of one of the first post-war uprisings against the Stalinist monolith All available from our London address (see page two) Aims & Principles of the Anarchist Federation

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

Published by Anarchist Federation, BM ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX