SchNEWS Issue 573 / 26th January 2007

ON THE SOCIAL

A PAUSE FOR THOUGHT AS SchNEWS MAKES THE FIRST MOVE...

Welcome back for 2007 as SchNEWS enters its thirteen year of producing this ‘ere news sheet you hold in your hand. The new year has brought a significant change for us – leading to a longer Xmas break than usual. We’ve quit the Metway, the Leveller’s building, and moved into the Brighton’s autonomous social centre, the Cowley Club. Thanks must go to the Levellers, who back in 1994 gave Justice? (Brighton’s anti-Criminal Justice Act collective) an office to base their myriad of activities - from direct action to community squats to a certain weekly newsletter. The band probably thought the raggle-taggle Justice? crew wouldn’t need the office for very long – and indeed Justice? ran its natural course after several years - but they ended up giving the office to us for free for eight years, providing a solid base for SchNEWS to go on to produce nearly 600 issues in our twelve years there.

What took us away from the Metway was the opportunity to be at Brighton’s social centre, and closer to the hub of libertarian activity here. The Cowley Club was opened as a co-op in 2003, and likewise has its roots in the local direct action milieu, and the string of squatted street-front cafes often under the ‘Anarchist Teapot’ banner. The Cowley Club is a cafe/bookshop by day, a pub and gig venue at night, and is the centre of a whirl of countless groups, meetings, screenings, open days, jumble sales and gatherings.

Just as SchNEWS is run entirely by an unpaid (and unemployable) crew, all roles at the Cowley Club, from cooking, cleaning, bar and admin are undertaken by volunteers. Both projects show what people can do when they cooperate, and put the building of a better community - and a sustainable world - as a higher priority than doing the sort of jobs which only reward you with new cars and flat-screen TVs.

ONE FOOT IN THE RAVE?

Alternative media and the co-op movement in Britain are just pieces in a larger jigsaw of creating a sustainable and egalitarian future – in the here and now – and not waiting for a utopian revolution which isn’t gonna happen. Both show that these types of project can, and in fact must be, embedded in the community on a long term, cross-generational and multi-racial basis – proving that anarchism is for life, not just for yer two post-degree year’s dole-drums. This movement is inhabited – and inhibited at times - by some hard cases here for the long haul.

The Cowley Club is one of a network of autonomous social centres across Britain – and beyond – some of which arose in a wave since 2005, building up to the G8 Summit in Scotland, while others arose from previous movements, such as Bradford’s 1 in 12 Club, which was started in 1981, or Kebele in Bristol which started in the mid-nineties. These ‘legit’ social centres rise out of the squatter movement as veterans seek to break the eviction cycle. Either way – whether a centre is part of the new wave, or part of previous movements, or totally separate from these circles, these centres are all about creating community spaces away from commercialisation and prejudice – a place where you can nurse a cup of rooibosch tea all afternoon, and where activities cultural and political can happen. For a list of autonomous social centres in Britain see over the page.

CAUGHT IN THE NET

Likewise SchNEWS is part of a network of alternative media, which has the same goals of creating an autonomous media free from commercial forces. Obviously these days the network of regional Indymedia websites is at the heart of it all, but on top of this there’s a plethora of regional or campaign specific websites, publications, independent video crews and more.

The work of video crews like Glasgow’s Camcorder Guerillas (or SchMOVIES) feeds into free online distribution points like ClearerChannel, while at the grass roots level we find that there is still a healthy amount of highly localised free newsletters around the country such as Gagged in South Wales, or Gay Bishop in Reading, or Brighton’s virtually fact free Rough Music - proving that the web can’t reach the places a piece of paper still can. Again, this is no new phenomena – it serves a need which has always been there - and what we have now carries on from the FIN’s (Free Information Network) zines produced on a regional basis which were a popular format in the years between the anarch-punk zines of the eighties, and now the web.

Which brings us to the next point... SchNEWS has survived by growing with the political networks it is part of – and the technologies (it was around before mainstream use of the web). It has (tried to) stay relevant by keeping involved in these movements, and has always been open to feedback and participation by anybody. The move to the Cowley Club over the new year, leading to the longest break SchNEWS has ever taken has plunged us into a bout of navel-gazing.

Whereas our video collective – SchMOVIES - is new, evolving and going from strength to strength (there is a new DVD out this month), the newsletter and the website are formats which settled into place years ago. The fact that it’s survived is partly because it’s been a popular format, and partly because it’s been a sustainable format on a weekly basis for the size of the crew. But the media world has caught up with SchNEWS – subjects we banged on about for years like globalisation, privatisation, climate change, corporate crime, and the environment are now common place not only in the Guardian and the Indy but the Daily Mail, BBC, and Woman’s Weekly. Is SchNEWS now flogging a dead hobby horse?

What’s missing from the mainstream is news of grass-roots resistance. People all over the world actually struggling to make a change rather than waiting for politicians to do it for ‘em - and especially here in the UK, where there is a chance for you, personally, to get involved and do something about it. If you’ve been a regular reader of SchNEWS, or if you’ve only just picked one up, how about sending us your feedback? (Don’t worry, we haven’t quite got key demographic focus groups in mind). E-mail us and release the bees in your bonnet, or go one step further and get involved, particularly if you’re in Brighton. And wherever you are, please continue to send your stories into us, and if SchNEWS isn’t the right thing for your town, start your own newsletter, or see what’s in your area. And if the food in your social centre isn’t quite to your taste, well don’t just moan, get involved with the kitchen crew!

In fact this extends to everything:– if what you see around you is beyond the pale don’t just sit in a pub moaning about it, get off your arse and do something about it. If not you, who? If not now, when? Do-it-yourself. That’s the one constant thing we have been banging on about for 12 years and, whatever else, will continue to do so.