Climate Camp, Anarchy & I

It’s 2008 in a field on the Hoo peninsular. Around three thousand people are camping here for a week under the banner of the Camp for Climate Action, or Climate Camp, an environmentally centered radical anti-capitalist movement with its roots firmly planted in modern anarchist tradition. The location is near the Kingsnorth coal fired power plant and it’s here the government hopes to start a new generation of coal based power plants. The writer George Monbiot is receiving applause from the thousand or so activists in the camps largest marquee. In some ways it’s a miracle; a credit to his ability at public speaking. He has just been quizzed on the use of the state in combating climate change. In as passionate and eloquent a way as possible, Monbiot has gone against the fundamental anarchistic, anti-capitalist principles of the camp. He has recommended using the state to help solve the impending problems of climate change. He argued there is no longer time for revolution; that using the state was now the only option left.

Despite the applause, all is not well. The next morning a letter is circling the camp, a letter that breaks from the traditional process of the camp and comes across, no doubt unintentionally, as wildly authoritarian. The letter, penned by a seemingly anonymous and elite few, calls for the camp to completely reject all state based solutions to the problems of climate change. Its brashness and over-emotion is less compelling than the smoothness and forethought of a Monbiot speech and despite sympathies for its positioning, the letter is not received well. If Climate Camp represents the most radical and relevant environmentalism on offer today then clearly such a lack of clear direction is a problem. What is left is a movement in principle against the system, but with those inside it now questioning whether using the system may be the only way to save mankind before the lights go out.

Skip forwards a year and 2009’s camp is in London, highlighting the relationships between big business, the city and the growing problems of climate change. London’s accessibility, along with a low, post-G20 police presence and positive press coverage inevitably means more people through the gates and more curious visitors. There are those who prefer to put larger numbers down to Climate Camps success at building a mass movement but this is debatable; there is no significant, exponential rise in campers. While the camp is getting the environmental issue out there, it is not converting the middle or working classes into radical state-rejecting anarchists in any great quantity.

Despite the camps “capitalism is crisis” header, once again there are signals of division. Climate Camp 09 is not the field full of hard line anarchists or anti-capitalists that many of its more active organisers talk it up to be, or wish it were. To exemplify, far less than half of the people onsite engage in any of the week’s direct actions; the camps most promoted method of tackling both climate change and the state based system that has produced it. To suspect a silent minority of reformists exist is not radical speculation. If true, that minority will grow and become more vocal. Meanwhile, there’s more talk of Climate Camps founders jumping ship, amid fears of onsite authoritarianism, a developing hierarchy, and I imagine, suspicion of newcomers.

Negatives aside, the Climate Camp movement remains a successful and vital one. The relative few who put so much time into the camp deserve praise. Climate Camp pushes environmental issues back into the media spotlight, the political agenda and the public eye. It’s no coincidence that carbon trading is on the Newsnight agenda for two nights running during the camp. Another success is the camps ability to demonstrate an alternative community. Life onsite is a rewarding, fair and involving experience, if a little tricky to get used to. Climate Camps alternative methods of organisation, decision making and task sharing are useful ideas for any small group trying to survive either a post apocalyptic world, or looking to build a feeling of community and sense of belonging in the current one. Not to forget the mental benefit of living in a low impact environment, out of the consumerist bubble.

Despite this, walking through the vast expanses of London a week after this year’s camp, with its swollen and polarised population, its mighty and silent buildings, its seemingly endless development, diversity and strange energy, you simply don’t get the feeling that Climate Camp has left much of an impression. The multibillion pound city appears to have survived its onslaught of angry ideological students and seasoned activists with their anti-capitalist, carbon conscious ranting. The few hundred or so of us that took to the streets will easily be outnumbered by the queues outside a new Primark or the next nearest football match.

Climate Camps anarchistic and anti-capitalist tendencies cap its potential popularity. George Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network (C.O.I.N) put it as well as anybody else when I emailed him following 2008s camp concerning this very issue. He replied, “I argue very strongly that camp should be working much harder to build bridges with people from other movements, especially labour faith and social justice. But this requires letting the self consciously anarcho anti capitalist ideology be part of the camp not all of it”.

Key anarchist principles do not sit well with the general public. Consider the difficulties we face convincing people of climate change. Despite scientific consensus and countless examples, they are profound. Consider then the difficulties of convincing people to reject all strains of leadership along with such embedded notions as law, authority and criminality. When you consider the great diversity of the world, those difficulties are more than just profound. We need not consider the merits of an anarchist world if it is unlikely to exist. It is true that anarchy may have its day on a post catastrophe earth, but there are many who purport it as vaccine to that catastrophe and here lies the problem. It’s not just Climate Camp, the animal rights and anti arms trade movements are these days steeped in anarchist sentiment and similarly, the growth and success of those movements is stunted by such alliances.

I am not a defender of capitalism. Capitalisms nature means that it will wage wars, mistreat animals and pollute its way through history. It must do this with some slyness. It justifies its wars (with lies), hides its animal abuse (with spin) and quantifies its environmental impact (with greenwash). It achieves these objectives as much as is needed to keep public outrage at bay, yet here lays its Achilles' heel. The system is ours to morph, it is reliant upon people.

As implausible as it sounds, anarchists and reformists must meet half way. Reformists must open their hearts to a more pressing and engaging way of life, embracing the action focused credo of the anarchist, anarchists must accept the time sensitive nature of climate change restricts the ways in which we can tackle it. Only then can we begin to build the kind of mass movement needed to tackle climate change, a movement than can pin down and manipulate capitalism. There are two targets, business and government, and both can at our feet if we are of critical mass.

In truth, many of us in the environmental movement, regardless of our political preferences, sense that it is perhaps already too late. The mountain we must climb is colossal, the difficulties immeasurable. Yet that is not to say that we will not try. The anarchists have not yet abandoned us to set up independent communes; the green reformists have not given up on a sustainable economy. We fight on regardless of our instincts; duty bound to do all we can.


The modern anarchy movement in this country has been an amazingly effective one. Any against-the-grain mass movement wishing to supersede anarchism in popularity would do well to mimic its methods; it may sprout directly from it. I suspect Climate Camp will grow out of its current acutely anti-state chains and perhaps that will be the beginning. Anarchism’s constant support of veganism, environmentalism, consensus decision making, freeganism, non violent direct action, its anti-globalisation, no borders, autonomous, anti arms trade stances, its social centres and local and national networks, its swoops, blockades, marches and gatherings, it’s passionate, digestible literature and fiery music, it’s support of personal responsibility, community and localisation, and its relatively dogma free, inclusion focused rhetoric have all left anarchism in the popular and accessible place it is today. Anarchies core principles cap its potential to expand significantly, but this does not take away from the achievements made so far, by a movement of essentially leaderless, penniless and ostracized volunteers. Compare this to the dry, stylised ramblings of the green political parties, or the inaccessible, cash-focused, leaflet and petition based green NGOs and you get a sense of why anarchism is popular.

If anarchy has a place in our global future, it may be in building a new world after the lights go out, when the state has crumbled under more powerful forces and when working together in mutual cooperation may be the only option left. Yet for now, we must work with what we have.

An Afterthought

After finishing the above essay I gave it to my girlfriend to read. She told me it came across as pro-anarchist. Alarm bells rang; not my intention. In showing sympathy and respect for the anarchist movement, while pointing to radical reformism as the only possible solution to climate change, I had failed to show any positives of the reformist movement.

The reformists, a collection of NGOs, the ultra left and the Green party, are not easily summarised with as much passion as you can muster for the anarchists. At 2009's Climate Camp a Friends of the Earth spokesman talked about the need for his group to be more radical; herein lies at least part of the problem. More often than not the reformist world is one of dry speeches, glossy leaflets and endless petitions, with an annual mass march thrown in for good measure. Yet though reformists may let themselves down, it’s not all bad.

The Green party, led by Caroline Lucas, are currently chasing their first parliamentary seat. Anyone who has seen Lucas speak will recall her profound skill as an orator. Her fresh and coherent passion may well be the party's greatest asset and under her the Greens will continue to grow. Recently Lucas has shown support for Climate Rush, a fluffy direct action group modeled on the Suffragettes. Branching out in this way and lending her voice to a grassroots movement is good. These days Lucas and her green army crop up everywhere, from Radio 4's Any Questions to your chosen broadsheet. The Greens have worked hard on some well worded policies and in the current, unnerving climate, those words are getting more respect than usual. Even activist and comedian Mark Thomas, a man with anarchist tendencies, recently called on us all to vote Green in an online video. Let’s hope his more radical fans can forgive him!

However in-shape the green reformist movement is, the sad truth is that just as Climate Camp is not going to force a revolution, so to the Green party is not going to win the next election. Just as Monbiot and countless others have called for, what we need now is an environmental mass movement. Such a movement is unlikely to align itself to a political party, however noble. Instead it will need to be free from such constraints, just as it will need to be free from any revolutionary agenda. A mass movement is there to force change; a political party is there to implement it. That mass movement will come, but the question is when, for it is needed before the sorts of problems that would naturally evoke it have been allowed to occur. Our only hope then is to inspire it into existence.

Just as I had failed to praise the reformists, so too the anarchists received a more pleasant critique than I would usually dispense. This is because Climate Camp on the whole does not attract the sort of anarchists who I most despise. I’m talking about the rock-throwing, masked-up, stick-wielding idiots who turn up to protests with homemade body armour, crash helmets and cans of Kronenbourg. These people are neither bringing down the state nor converting people to their cause, they are misguided, self opinionated and self righteous, yet they aalso the real hardliners who are the most fully subscribed to the anarchist code.

The way forward is clear. Reformists, right minded politicians, scientists, NGOs and grassroots movements must converge to inspire and build a mass movement under a new green flag. That movement will need to be delicately balanced; it will need to be inclusive enough to be a “mass”, active enough to be a “movement” and formed quickly enough to be useful. To succeed, we need the mind of a reformist and the heart of an anarchist.


Jazel Seven, autumn 09

comment this -  http://jazelseven.weebly.com/contact--comment.html