1 OORGANISE!RGAN...... forfoIr revolutionaryrevSolutionarEy aanarchismnarch!ism FFromrom tthenhen uuntilntil nnowow AAnniversarynniversary IIssuessue PPLUSLUS • TheThe Anti-cutsAnti-cuts MovementMovement aandnd tthehe LLefteft ••TheThe GreatGreat Unrest:Unrest: 11910-910- 11914914 ••TheThe ParisParis Commune:Commune: A ContestedContested LLegacyegacy ••TheThe anarchistanarchist sculptorsculptor HenriHenri GaudierGaudier BrzeskaBrzeska AANDND MMOREORE 777£2.50 €3.00 Free7 to prisoners Anarchist Federation local groups and contacts Organise! Scotland/Alba castle Upon Tyne, NE99 1TA Th e magazine of the [email protected] [email protected] Anarchist Federation h p://scotlandaf.wordpress.com/ No ngham AF (including No s) Issue 77 - Winter 2011 Edinburgh & the Lothians Box AF c/o The Sumac Centre [email protected] 245 Gladstone Street Organise! is the magazine of the Anarchist No ngham Federa on (AF). It is published in order to Glasgow NG7 6HX develop anarchist communist ideas. It aims [email protected] no [email protected] to provide a clear anarchist viewpoint on mansfi [email protected] contemporary issues and to ini ate debate Striling h p://www.afed.org.uk/no ngham/ on ideas not normally covered in agita onal papers. s [email protected] We aim to produce Organise! twice a year. Organise! editors To meet this target, we posi vely solicit con- Wales/Cymru Organise!, BM ANARFED, London, tribu ons from our readers. We aim to print cardiff @afed.org.uk WC1N 3XX any ar cle that furthers the objec ves of [email protected] [email protected] anarchist communism. If you’d like to write something for us, but are unsure whether England (and all other areas) Resistance editors to do so, why not get in touch fi rst? Even BM ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX, Resistance, BM ANARFED, London, ar cles that are 100% in agreement with our England, UK WC1N 3XX aims and principles can leave much open to debate. [email protected] [email protected] As always, the ar cles in this issue do not necessarily represent the collec ve view- Brighton AF (including Lewes) Sheffi eld AF point of the AF. We hope that their publica- [email protected] sheffi [email protected] on will produce responses from our readers h p://yorks-afed.org and spur debate on. Bristol AF The deadline for the next issue of Organise! [email protected] Surrey and Hants AF will be 1st March 2012. Please send all con- h p://bristolaf.wordpress.com/ [email protected] tribu ons to the address on the right. It would help if all ar cles could be either typed or on disc. Alterna vely, ar cles can East Kent AF Worcester AF be emailed to the editors directly at [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] • Lancashire AF York AF [email protected] [email protected] What goes in Organise! Organise! hopes to open up debate in many Leicester AF areas of life. As we have stated before, un- [email protected] less signed by the Anarchist Federa on as a whole or by a local AF group, ar cles in Or- Leeds AF ganise! refl ect the views of the person who [email protected] has wri en the ar cle and nobody else. h p://yorks-afed.org Special alternative If the contents of one of the ar cles in this cover edition. issue provokes thought, makes you angry, Lincoln AF compels a response then let us know. [email protected] Revolu onary ideas develop from debate, they do not merely drop out of the air! Liverpool AF (including Merseyside) c/o News From Nowhere Bookshop 96 Bold Street Liverpool L1. [email protected] London AF BM ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX, England, UK [email protected] Manchester AF [email protected] h p://www.af-north.org/ Anarchist Communist Newcastle AF (including Tyneside) Editions Anarchist Federa on, PO Box ITA, New- Organise! 3 Organise! Issue 76 - Spring 2011 Organise!, BM ANARFED, London, WC1N 3XX [email protected] Editorial 4 Subscriptions 25 years of the Afed 6 Organise! single issue: £3.50 UK / £4.00 EU / £4.50 rest Th e Paris Commune: A Contested Legacy 13 of world Th e Anti-Cuts Movement and the Left : a local Organise! subscrip on (2 issues activists perspective 22 per year): £6 UK / £7 EU / £8 rest of world Th e Great Unrest: Prelude to the Storm 29 Resistance subscrip on (10 issues per year): Revolutionary Portrait: £8 UK / £15 EU / £20 rest of Eugene Varlin, Martyr of the Paris Commune 35 world Th e Day Will Come: Chicago 1886 37 Organise! & Resistance joint subscrip on: £14 UK / £22 EU / £28 rest of Th e Mexican Revolution 38 world Th e anarchist sculptor Henri Gaudier Brzeska 48 All prices include postage. Reviews 50 Cheques or postal orders payable to ‘AFED’. Obituary: Bob Miller 1953-2011 51 Order online: h p://af-north.org Ask about discounted bulk or- ders: distribu [email protected] 4 es ‘violence’ against property and Welcome to the 77th issue of also people in the ‘August riots’ Organise! In it we focus on some of this Summer. Even socialist of the several anniversaries that organisa ons supposedly in touch fall this year, including the 25th with the working class bluntly birthday of the Anarchist (Com- dismissed rioters as misguided munist) Federa on itself. and as invi ng the repression of As such we give you ar cles on the whole class. Perhaps because the Paris Commune of 1871 and there were fewer a acks on the on one of its heroes, Eugene Var- police than in the riots of the early lin, on the Mexican Revolu on 1980s, for example, the upsurge that started in 1911, on industri- in proletarian anger was inter- al struggles in Britain in the same preted as individualis c and/or year, and on the Haymarket mar- materialis c by everyone from the tyrs 125 years on. We look at the Daily Mail to the Socialist Party. past history of our movement Anarchists do not sit in judgement in celebra on but also cri cally. on the working class, however. It We also look at present struggles does not sit comfortably with us through refl ec on on the recent that people were killed and that Editorial What’s in the latest Organise! ac vity of the AF itself in the the lives of others, including fi re wider anarchist and an -author- fi ghters, were put in danger by itarian movement over the past other working class people. But fi ve or six years, and an interview how can this explosion of fury, with a local an -cuts ac vist. sparked by yet another police In addi on, we bring you the killing of a young black man, not reviews of recent literature and be seen as poli cal? The social look at the life and work of the and economic rela ons that allow sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. some to revel in luxury whilst the majority are supposed to look In Organise! #76 we very much on passively from the sidelines focussed on the issue of what underpin everything that took cons tutes ‘legi mate’ violence place. Anarchists were involved in and the necessity of wrestling helping our communi es interpret the right to defi ne this from even what took place and to turn the the more liberal le . This was in spotlight on a state and media the context of rio ng by students that, since the Blair government, and the ‘Black Bloc’ in response has undertaken a systema c policy to the cuts. We know that we in demonising and criminalising echoed the views and values of the young. Anarchists have been many anarchists in this. The mat- part of amazing street mee ngs ter con nues to be important for and community ini a ves that did our movement as it also address- not seek to iden fy and margin- 5 alise rioters as ‘feral’, inherently Hundreds of thousands have taken to bring libertarians of the Euro- ‘criminal’ or as some terrifying to the streets as the European pean and African Mediterranean ‘underclass’ opera ng in the economy collapses in the face of and Middle East together for the shadows. Anarchists are also sup- that not only exploita ve but illog- fi rst me. por ng those hundreds of young ical system they call ‘Capitalism’. people now being vic mised in Anarchists are ac ve in all of the We have delved deeply into the courts and threatened with coun es in the EU and its immedi- some historical events in this loss of benefi ts and of the evic on ate neighbours, encouraging the issue at the expense of bringing of their en re family from social emergence of mass-movements you anniversary ar cles on The housing. within them that are decentralised Ba le of Cable Street (1936), and also inclusive of migrant la- Kronstadt (1921) or Luddism (the Faced with a hos le and igno- bour, such as the recent No Border fi rst communiqué of ‘Ned Ludd’ rant mass media, such grass roots camp in Bulgaria: h p://nobor- was issued in November 1811). ini a ves are le to tell their own derbulgaria.org There is plenty to be read about story, with UK anarchist bulle ns Kronstadt from an informed anar- and newspapers being an impor- What has taken place and is s ll chist perspec ve, although Lud- tant medium for this.