I don't want to be provocative or offensive either, but maybe one of the reasons that more people don't flock to the anarchist movement is that we use divisive statements like 'whoever that vote for, we are ungovernable'. Why all the 'we' and 'they' stuff. Loads of people vote, and do so without having any faith in the parties, or do so without putting loads of thought into it, so I don't see why we would alienate ourselves from people by using slogans that boil down to 'no matter what the public do, we'll still do OUR thing'.

As a broader response, I think that the anarchist movement is so ghettoised and entirley seperated from the workers movement that we hold no sway within mainstream society. I am pleased to se this trend being reversed with militant workers blocs and the resurgence of many class based anarchist groups etc but unfortunatley, they are still the minority.

I think that the anarchist movement in this country (or at least the lifestyly bit of it that seems to consitute a fair percentage of it) has distanced itself from the average person/worker in terms of language used, class demographic, sub-cultural norms and preffered methods of action to the point where many peopel see anarchism/anarchists as so absolutley different from themselves that even if they support us, they find it hard to get involved.

As I siad earlier though, I think that the last couple of years have seen more and more within the anarchist movement get involved with class issues in a meaningful way (such as the IWW etc), so maybe the lifestylist 'fuck all you normals' trend is getting reversed - and about time!

The above poster has hit the nail on the head, in the heyday of anarchism it was at the forefront of the labour movement and thus relevant to people. We need to be putting forward the case for democratisation of the workplace in our workplaces, inside pro-New Labour trade unions and on the streets.

I feel it is high time for an anarchist confrence or convention where we actually discuss these issues.

I hate the fact that so many "anarchists" are essentially just anti-social lifestyle punks who just turn up drunk to demos and act like cunts. If you act like a cunt, you are a cunt regardless of your politics. This just distances anarchism from the rest of the public when many people hold anarchistic ideas without even realising it. As a movement we need to move away from this mentality of being outside society. Squatting etc. is good but it is irrelevant to an older worker with children and/or family to support, they can't just drop out.

We need to move away from the anarchist ninja smashing windows image too, black bloc is fine if there is a real reason for it beyond ritual and just breaking some windows and giving the media the oppurtunity on a plate to tarnish anarchism as just pissed of kids and anti-social punks. I loathe the idea some peope have of a couple of smashed windows and a bit of grafitti and the ignorant workers will rise from their slumber to smash the state.

We need to be within society to change and work towards by being engaged in wider movements, being on the street and educating people.

At a time of world crisis of capitalism it is absolutely ridiculous what anarchism has failed to do or even the left as a whole.

We need direction and I don't mean top down malarky, I mean a progressive conference of anarchists or even the whole left. I would love to see an International too.

I would take it upon myself to organise one but I live in Aberdeen...... Which I doubt anyone would travel to somewhere in the middle of the U.K would be best to allow the most amount of people to come. (Even Londoners who never seem to leave London)

What I see in England is only Anarchist Book fairs and nothing else..nothing changes with a book fair..of course it's something useful but that's all..
I don't think that Anarchists are separated from the Worker's struggle at all..Anarchists fight both for workers and for the right to live in a free society..and I think this is what Workers desire as well.. I agree that the anarchist movement is ghettoized not only in the UK but in Greece as well, but as years go by, we see that Greek comrades resist against e.g. the police state in every way they can(squatting, demonstrating, informing the public, organizing solidarity concerts ect ect) which is something that doesn't exist in England probably because of the police suppression, which is of course understood..
I can say, as a 'foreigner, that the anarchist movement in the UK region is more of an activist movement rather than a 'violent' and decisive protest/answer against many things. please correct me if I am wrong..
Plus, I think that people have to be informed, something which is not happening right now and that's probably the reason why many people are not getting involved or are afraid in a way to get in touch..

thanks for the reply anyway!

Having lived in the UK for 7 years I found it frustrating at points at the passive and compromised approach people had towards the issues they faced. It probably wouldn't be that tragic if the UK wasn't the world's second imperialist nation and if its policies abroad didn't damage the lives of so many people. The way i understand the situation, the UK workforce was, in the not so distant past, relatively organised and was prepared to empower itself against the injustices of the economic system and the country's foreign policy. What seems to have happened is that Thatcher's approach successfully dismantled the structure that existed in within the workplace while at the same time promoting unrelentless individualism which will never allow the masses to empower themselves as they fight their (many times common) battles alone.

So these days what we generally see in the UK is people either repressing their problems or just directing them to the general public in forms of 'anti-social behaviour'. I'm back in Greece now and I feel that we may well go down that route though a major battle will be fought before we determine which direction the country will take.

"What I see in England is only Anarchist Book fairs and nothing else..nothing changes with a book fair..of course it's something useful but that's all.."

There is actually quite alot going on in England. There's plenty of squats, especially in London and Bristol and two protest sites [Titnore Woods in Worthing, near Brighton and the newly set up Defend Huntington Lane protest in Shropshire]. Also, for me certainly it seems like everytime I look on this site there's been another action against something shit in Bristol. Maybe that's not you're immediate area but it feels good to know people are taking action in whatever way they are able.

It can definately be hard to find people that you want to organise with but taking a trip to your local social centre or getting involved with some groups you think you might agree politically with is a great start. You said that you were disappointed that there was nothing organised for Mayday in Birmingham, maybe next year you and some friends could organise it yourselves.


"we see that Greek comrades resist against e.g. the police state in every way they can(squatting, demonstrating, informing the public, organizing solidarity concerts ect ect) which is something that doesn't exist in England "

I totally disagree with this. Aside from the places I have mentioned above, there are also demonstrations [for example the G20,EDO demos], eco villages [Bristol and Kew Bridge recently]. Also there are plenty of autonomous actions which take place throughout the UK against airport expansion, open cast coal mining, immigration and the arms trade to name but a few.

There is also the rest of the UK to take into consideration. Lots of stuff has been happening in Scotland over the last few months with the Mainshill Solidarity Camp and also in Rossport in Ireland, local people and supporters from all over the world are constantly battling against Shell.


There are lots of different ways to take action, and lots of different targets to choose from. You don't have to be out on the streets physically fighting the police, and that's not always the best tactic.

totally agree with you greek dude... uk is the most passive country in europe , almost nothing happen here and is one of the most terrorist country in the world , the most controled (thousands of cctv) plus evrytime sameone does demo nobody cames and people get arrested because no one have balls to support the comrades ..well i left uk because that reasons ...i cudnt get it anymore ..anyway hopefully samething change and the comrades start up to wake up ... ALL THE BEST international linke hamburg ST.PAULI

What do you think of the idea of a national conference to give our movement as a whole some direction and addres the real problems facing the movement? It would be amazing to have people involved in struggles all over the U.K come together and discuss ways to deal witht hese issues and see what has worked for people and what hasn't.

I live in probably one of the most apathetic cities in the whole of the U.K but we even managed to get some stuff started up here.

Thanks to the Greek comrade for sharing his feelings. Its not the first time that we hear this reflection of the anarchist movement in the UK, especially from comrades who have come to the UK from other european countries - especially Greece.

To answer a few things around a national conference, well last year was the first UK-wide anarchist conference held in London in June 2009. Around 300 people participated to discuss and look at these problems. Though I admit the conference didn't go far enough for those that attended but we did get a good reflection of the anarchist mentality in the UK. Sadly it seems that there was little or no effort put in place by people outside London to organise a follow up this year. Its one thing complaining about why UK-wide things always happen in London, but when no group steps up take on calling anything then whats the point.

There is also another question about Anarchism and the "anarchist movement". We have a lot of people which I call anarchist sympathisers which are people who support anarchist ideas but who don't participate in any groups, actions or initiatives. They may come out once a year ( or two ), or they may participate in some social or cultural "anarchist" activity like squatting, parties..etc but thats it. In London there are thousands of people who are, were, or would call themselves anarchists but those actually involved in developing a collective anarchist movement numbers only 100 - 150 people.

Secondly, this talk about anarchists being distant from a workers movement is also not completely true. There is no workers movement in the UK, if there was, it too would be ghettoised and marginal from the rest of society. Its easy to believe that anarchists are the only ones on the margins but so are all lefty parties, the trade unions and community groups. The problems of fragmentation is a problem all those on the extra-parliamentary left face. No one is doing well in this period.

Thirdly, there has been positive developments across some cities in the UK to form more coherent groups that are involved in their locality. Recently in nottingham around 20 such groups net and formed Community Action Network. I am not saying this is the way forward or that they are effective but many people in those groups have chosen to do that because of the ineffectual nature of what constitutes anarchists initiatives.

Fourthly, you have the "national" federations that have been historically marginal in the UK. The AF have around 160 members across the whole UK, Solidarity Federation (IWA) around 60 and Class War perhaps no more than 20-30. It doesn't necessarily depend on numbers but passion sadly wanes in a lot of these anarchist circles.

Lastly, and sorry for going on this long - if all the anarchists in the UK who were pissed off with the current state of our movement were to get together then it will probably be bigger than all the groups put together. The problem is that we may all be pissed off but we still lack the ambition and passion to follow thru on a project, collectively anarchists are political impotent, we fail to discard things that don't work, or try hard enough to make them work when they fail, we also spend too long argue about things we disagree on rather than construct collective initiatives on things that we do agree on.

Having been involved for almost 13 years in anarchists politics, we have had some very strong moments and some success, but we are only as good as our last success and sadly, recently we've had very few.

Red & Black Solidarity

OMG! A Greek telling us how much better Greece is than the UK?

I am guessing people don't follow the Greek way because they don't want to live in a shambles like Greece. Maybe, just maybe, our country is in a better state than yours because of this?

I also find it strange that if he doesn't think much of the UK people, why has he come here to study? Why not stay in Greece if it is so great.

Anarchy is an emotion response. But when you actually look at the Outcome (The outcome is only really what most people are interested in), you can see anarchism just attracts walter mitty types, cunts, social misfits, people who dont want to work, and other degenerates. If we were all like anarchists then I think that getting food onto people's plates would be an impossible task.

The outcome looks bad if we follow Greece's example

No need to get all touchy feely. The reason the UK economy is in such a 'good' state is mainly because it has a past and present of abusing the wealth of other Nations (including Greece in fact) and it is very good at this as well. I would argue that people there are so passive due to the elevated level of prosperity in comparison to the vast majority of countries but the working class of France puts that argument to shame. Anyways don't for one minute think that it's the people's work ethic that allows the country to develop.


PS: No matter who wins the next UK election, you will very likely realise how precarious your standard of living really is.

Your not obliged to share your thoughts

Couldn't agree more with London Anarchist.

I have to say I feel positive at the amount of frustration about the lack of a cohesive movement in UK on Indymedia. Hopefully from that frustration we can get some work done. The next couple of years should be prime organising time for anarchists of all trends, be it organising against cuts to local services in your community, setting up unemployed groups, being involved in community projects like people's kitchens and community allotments to help get healthy food to those that need it, organising free parties so we can meet, talk and have fun for free, producing free literature and running free skill shares, or confronting the state and the far right in the streets.

Another thing that feels like a turning point is that the militant liberal activist scene in the UK seems to have lost its steam some what. Hopefully this may mean people giving up on reformist single issue campaigns for anti-statist revolutionary politics. To reflect this, a moderated explicitly anarchist news site for the UK would be good, something like infoshop news.

Hopefully we can all look past our petty differences to fight the larger battle.

To be fair AF will remain marginalised even in the Anarchist movement whilst some of it's members are such arrogant, self-gratifying douche bags whose fetishisation of a long dead (if ever existant) homogenised working class does more damage than good, and who think that they alone have the one answer to start revolution. Not to say that represents all of those involved in AF by any means but despite being involved with anarchist struggle for 6 or 7 years have I never warmed to them myself, largely because of a few more visible individuals.

In reply to the original questions you have to understand the psyche of the British people. They're so busy trying to get one over on their neighbours and expecting the same back that they often miss the bigger picture.

The same goes for the 'anarchist movement' here. During the Spanish Revolution the anarchist Emma Goldman tried to organise funding and solidarity here for the Spanish anarchists. She was left frustrated and angered by the paranoia and in-fighting.

Same as it ever was...

hi dGs, totally agree with you. It must be well frustrating for you living here in this cotton wool country of imaginary heroic deeds such as ''there are also demonstrations [for example the G20,EDO demos], eco villages [Bristol and Kew Bridge recently]''
''Eco villages'' sucker please! These are not alternatives, they are distractions.
I think the above posters defending the UKs activist effort on fighting the system are seriously deluding themselves and not really understanding what state oppression is all about.
Think about it, 4years to shut down one factory (EDO). All that effort on publicity,films,info nites,wednesday noise demos,parties,marches,arrests etc for what? People look at this spectacle and shake their heads in disbelief. Don't be the flies swarming around the shit, be the shovel that clears up the mess.
Yep the activist scene is exciting and fun but also it is ineffective and elitist. Its very easy to become disilusioned with it, especially if you come from the poorer sectors of society as the focus is too much on standing out and being contrary, rather than working together.

''Eco villages'' sucker please! These are not alternatives, they are distractions."

It is thinking like THIS that is a big part of the problem. YES "concern about the environment" is a distraction if you think that the ONLY fight worth fighting is socicalism vs capitalism and the environment be damned. Just like the "enviros" might be convinced "a plague on both your houses" because industiral civilization socialism might be no better for the environment than industrial civilization capitalism.

But "distraction" in this sense should NOT be equated with "working for the other side". We need to learn to live with and work with others who have a different order of priorities than we do, learn how to at least keep out of each other's way. And this is NOT just about "environmentalism". There are others out there for whom some other issue that affect them DIRECTLY (rightfully) gets a higher place on their priority list. Sorry if you disagree, but when a fight gets serious I'd rather have by my side those who feel their own flesh is in the line of fire rather than allies who are there "because of ideological theory".

By all means, if you want to stay marginalized, want to stay fragmented inot miniscule ineffective groups, dead right "in theory" but dead useless in practice, just carry on as usual. To organize a MASS movement you have to (at least temporarily) forget about what your theory says the folks who make up this mass SHOULD want and try to find out what they actually want. Then somehow manage to work with that. We do NOT get others to work with us by telling them that they are wrong to want what they want; that they should instead want what we want them to want!

... would rather take drugs and party than go on protests. They have money for drugs, but not for a train ticket to a demo, or they won't go if they have to walk more than half a mile from the train station... they are lazy... apathetic, and they make out they are "full time activists" and yet do less activism than others I know with jobs.

I would like to see our anarchist movement come to life, build and make positive change in society but I can't do it alone, and it's like hitting my head against a brick wall trying to get people to do anything.

I don't mean to generalise, because there are very good activists out there, but I think the lazy ones are bigger in numbers!

You then get other people, who don't want to get involved in activist groups because of "hierarchy" and then use it as an excuse to do nothing! I respect their decision not to work in groups with hierarcy, but then they don't do anything themselves is doing more harm than good.

@MDN, nice one, I think you may have found something, like your post suggests, that we can agree on - ''when a fight gets serious I'd rather have by my side those who feel their own flesh is in the line of fire rather than allies who are there "because of ideological theory" - and I don't really have much faith in a group of privilleged idealogical students titting about on a rubbish dump, watching my ass when things get real.
You got me right on the MASS movement topic, I aint looking for that, it wont happen -better off in small cells - much more effective.
@Anna, spot on! Lazy,selfish, privalleged, opportunistic and insinsere, basically users - and if readers dont believe me just check out any gathering,bookfair or after action party, the place will be crawling with 'em.Avoiding clearing up,washing up,cooking etc
The scene is too much like a social dating club for the incapable.

How's this for an idea. A complete rejection of the systems social drugs - you wanna drink, then brew your own. Recycle your bottles (as in, clean, then re-use) You wanna smoke, then grow your own. You wanna eat, then grow it. You wanna be free, then get off your fuckin' knees and get serious.

Firstly I would like to answer to mr 'Craig M'..
Dude, I am not a man, I am a girl.. I never said that Greece is doing the right thing and UK is not.. I came here to study because I want to see different places and people. if this annoys you, then you should probably join the BNP or something and don't write your trash in indymedia.
You sound like a fascist and that's quite annoying.. I have to say that many ''anarchists'' in the UK are quite patriotic as you..and I am really sorry for you man.
plus, i didn't say about following the Greek example.. what I am saying is that UK anarchism is not developed with everyday actions..that's what I am telling you.. I consider the movement in the UK more of an ACTIVIST one rather than a violent one as in Greece..
England is one of the most passive countries and people simply do nothing to change that.that's what I am trying to tell you.. I am not here to judge if you are doing the right or wrong thing.. i can't judge people's attitudes and i will never do..I am just expressing a sincere opinion and trying to get sincere answers from you..
Thanks anyway for the responses to all of you..

See you at the barricades..
Cheers comrades!

"How's this for an idea. A complete rejection of the systems social drugs - you wanna drink, then brew your own. Recycle your bottles (as in, clean, then re-use) You wanna smoke, then grow your own. You wanna eat, then grow it. You wanna be free, then get off your fuckin' knees and get serious."

Really interesting how you slag off eco villages then come out with this. Is growing your own vegetables suddenly not the same thing if you're doing it on a squatted piece of land?

It seems to me like people are confused about what 'taking action' is. So, nothing is successful until we completely overthrow this government? Shortsighted, much?

Like I've been saying, not enough of this sort of conversation goes on and a national conference would be a great forum to do this. I am willing to do what Ican in Scotland to promote it but I can't organise it in Aberdeen.

No one would come if it was in the most northern part of the UK.