This was originally posted on Bristol Indymedia at this address 
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/693475
I wrote this as part of the bristol anarchist/squatter movement. We seem to have a lot of energy and mobilisation going on at the moment over various issues/campaigns. So as austerity has arrived I've become confused about why on earth we've been so distant from the workers' movements. I wrote this as an appeal to people to get stuck in to local anti-cuts campaigns. It's opened up some very interesting debates online and in person, and has seen some interesting (and for me at least, positive) developments at meetings and in campaigning. I didn't write this to tear us apart - just to suggest ways we could improve our 'service'. I know very little of campaigns outside of the southwest so this may be of absolutely no relevance to you. I'm sure it will be relevant to some though, and I'd like to share my thoughts with people nationwide. I've edited it to bring in some stuff I wrote after publishing.
http://bristol.indymedia.org/article/693475 I wrote this as part of the bristol anarchist/squatter movement. We seem to have a lot of energy and mobilisation going on at the moment over various issues/campaigns. So as austerity has arrived I've become confused about why on earth we've been so distant from the workers' movements. I wrote this as an appeal to people to get stuck in to local anti-cuts campaigns. It's opened up some very interesting debates online and in person, and has seen some interesting (and for me at least, positive) developments at meetings and in campaigning. I didn't write this to tear us apart - just to suggest ways we could improve our 'service'. I know very little of campaigns outside of the southwest so this may be of absolutely no relevance to you. I'm sure it will be relevant to some though, and I'd like to share my thoughts with people nationwide. I've edited it to bring in some stuff I wrote after publishing.
I'd like to respectfully suggest that while we do lots of very good work, we are falling miles short of where we should be in terms of supporting workers and unions right now. I'm as guilty of this as anyone else - I believe it's a trap very easily fallen into to. But I'm trying to find ways of changing, and just want to put my thought processes out there. I'm also aware that everyone has personal circumstances etc. I'm not trying to take a pop at anyone in particular, more our collective areas of struggle and focuses. I'd appreciate respectful/constructive feedback.
On Monday the TUC decided to adopt a strategy of coordinated action against the savage cuts that threaten to further devastate UK's vulnerable groups. Bob Crow of RMT - the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers - has specifically called for a campaign of civil disobedience. The class war is on.
It seems to me that we don't do too much workers' solidarity work. It may be a simplistic way of looking at things but it's always seemed to me that the reason for this is the unions, workers' movements etc tend not to hold and shout anarchist beliefs, slogans etc.
So we don't tend to agree with them on everything, and they tend to come across more socialist than anarchist. But we're just toying with terms. The radical critique of the state is not something that you average union always has the comfort time to sit back and consider, whereas the average SW anarchist gets plenty of time to do exactly that while locked in their squat. I do not mean to attack the squat-dwelling anarchist (I'm one myself), but I think we should recognise that our existence within the squat rather than the workplace grants us a certain angle of privilege in that we have time to reflect upon the world, just as it also grants us a certain angle of disadvantage - no steady income etc.
That's a privilege that we could use to support those who do work in incredibly unjust environments, those who wish to do something about it. The unions, at the very least as they represented themselves at the TUC, are allies with which we can struggle for social justice. We may not agree with everything about how unions are organised and the beliefs that union reps hold, but hell when you're facing the wrath of maggie's little puppies surely some sense of context must occur to the clear-thinking.
The greatest feat of the ruling classes is to trick the country into thinking there's no working class any more, no industry, that the expansion of the middle class left no one behind. The working class, workers' struggles etc have been made invisible. Strikes meet with general condemnation because those who you'd hope would support are now so emotionally detached from the people whose lives and livelihoods are on the line, that the greatest concern becomes whether you'll get stuck in a traffic jam on the way home from work.
This is what I got involved in anarchism to get away from. Screw social division and fuck partisanship. To replace it with the sense of community, of common struggle, that an attack on one is an attack on all. Instead we're scared to touch anyone if we're not entirely sure that that touch will be the midas touch that enlists that person to the wonderful world of anarchy. Or maybe if we're being particularly tolerant we'll engage with someone, but for our own self-respect not treat their non-anarchisty views with a shred of respect, like an illness we need to purge from them. It's like we don't want to contaminate ourselves. When did we become so fucking elitist?
Of all times, at the point where jobs are being axed left right and centre, where service cuts and privatisation are about to desecrate the country leaving the most vulnerable sections of society as ever bottom of the pile taking the hit for everyone else, where workers are mobilising nationwide to fight this abomination, we mustn't allow ourselves to be tricked that we're the only people struggling - that it's anarcho-squatters vs the ruling class. This divisive mindset plays directly into the hands of the ruling class. It's the same divisive mindset that paints us as yobs to so much of society that I want to work with.
Anarchism, to me at least, is about empowerment of everyone to do what they wish with their time upon this planet and encouragement of people to use that responsibility ... responsibly. There is so much good work to be done, so many vulnerable people and communities to support. We shouldn't insist on people holding every one of our standards before we deign to help them. Then we're sunk unless everyone spontaneously just ... realises the anarchist way! And in the meantime we're some closed community that only looks after itself.
If you think the fight for workers' rights is too state-ist, perhaps consider how you'd react (by 'you' I mean your standard squatting JSA-claimant) if squatting were criminalised or the dole were scrapped. Are we so proud of our anarchist state-alternative that we've set up that we don't see how reliant we are on the welfare state? Would you continue as if nothing ever happened? They're just state handouts right? We should look to our own solutions right? No gods no masters right? No! When you're in jail you fight for your crust of bread. Sometimes I think we're so desperate to condemn the state and prove the strength of our beliefs and existence outside it that we're scared of getting close enough to it to confront it.
So I guess I want to finish by encouraging people to get stuck into workers' rights/solidarity work. The tory party conference is on october 3rd in birmingham - there's been a call-out for an anarchist direct action bloc. I know some people involved in organising this demo and there's been a huge amount of work gone in, there's a LOT of people mobilising. The cops' latest line is that for health and safety reasons they'll allow 30 to protest and no more in case the protest causes "hazardous congestion". Clearly we need a huge mass of bodies in town that day to assert ourselves. There's probably coaches going from where you are to where the toffs are - maybe people organising those regional coaches will stick details up on here. I know a few myself:
Bath Coach -Leaves 9am, Sunday Oct 3rd, Laura Place, Bath
Tickets - £10 waged, £5 unwaged
Contact
bathagainstcuts@yahoo.co.uk for more info.
Bristol coach -Leaving central Bristol at 9am
Tickets £5 Anne 01179556198 or Tim 07866660335
nocutsbristol@yahoo.co.uk
On Monday the TUC decided to adopt a strategy of coordinated action against the savage cuts that threaten to further devastate UK's vulnerable groups. Bob Crow of RMT - the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers - has specifically called for a campaign of civil disobedience. The class war is on.
It seems to me that we don't do too much workers' solidarity work. It may be a simplistic way of looking at things but it's always seemed to me that the reason for this is the unions, workers' movements etc tend not to hold and shout anarchist beliefs, slogans etc.
So we don't tend to agree with them on everything, and they tend to come across more socialist than anarchist. But we're just toying with terms. The radical critique of the state is not something that you average union always has the comfort time to sit back and consider, whereas the average SW anarchist gets plenty of time to do exactly that while locked in their squat. I do not mean to attack the squat-dwelling anarchist (I'm one myself), but I think we should recognise that our existence within the squat rather than the workplace grants us a certain angle of privilege in that we have time to reflect upon the world, just as it also grants us a certain angle of disadvantage - no steady income etc.
That's a privilege that we could use to support those who do work in incredibly unjust environments, those who wish to do something about it. The unions, at the very least as they represented themselves at the TUC, are allies with which we can struggle for social justice. We may not agree with everything about how unions are organised and the beliefs that union reps hold, but hell when you're facing the wrath of maggie's little puppies surely some sense of context must occur to the clear-thinking.
The greatest feat of the ruling classes is to trick the country into thinking there's no working class any more, no industry, that the expansion of the middle class left no one behind. The working class, workers' struggles etc have been made invisible. Strikes meet with general condemnation because those who you'd hope would support are now so emotionally detached from the people whose lives and livelihoods are on the line, that the greatest concern becomes whether you'll get stuck in a traffic jam on the way home from work.
This is what I got involved in anarchism to get away from. Screw social division and fuck partisanship. To replace it with the sense of community, of common struggle, that an attack on one is an attack on all. Instead we're scared to touch anyone if we're not entirely sure that that touch will be the midas touch that enlists that person to the wonderful world of anarchy. Or maybe if we're being particularly tolerant we'll engage with someone, but for our own self-respect not treat their non-anarchisty views with a shred of respect, like an illness we need to purge from them. It's like we don't want to contaminate ourselves. When did we become so fucking elitist?
Of all times, at the point where jobs are being axed left right and centre, where service cuts and privatisation are about to desecrate the country leaving the most vulnerable sections of society as ever bottom of the pile taking the hit for everyone else, where workers are mobilising nationwide to fight this abomination, we mustn't allow ourselves to be tricked that we're the only people struggling - that it's anarcho-squatters vs the ruling class. This divisive mindset plays directly into the hands of the ruling class. It's the same divisive mindset that paints us as yobs to so much of society that I want to work with.
Anarchism, to me at least, is about empowerment of everyone to do what they wish with their time upon this planet and encouragement of people to use that responsibility ... responsibly. There is so much good work to be done, so many vulnerable people and communities to support. We shouldn't insist on people holding every one of our standards before we deign to help them. Then we're sunk unless everyone spontaneously just ... realises the anarchist way! And in the meantime we're some closed community that only looks after itself.
If you think the fight for workers' rights is too state-ist, perhaps consider how you'd react (by 'you' I mean your standard squatting JSA-claimant) if squatting were criminalised or the dole were scrapped. Are we so proud of our anarchist state-alternative that we've set up that we don't see how reliant we are on the welfare state? Would you continue as if nothing ever happened? They're just state handouts right? We should look to our own solutions right? No gods no masters right? No! When you're in jail you fight for your crust of bread. Sometimes I think we're so desperate to condemn the state and prove the strength of our beliefs and existence outside it that we're scared of getting close enough to it to confront it.
So I guess I want to finish by encouraging people to get stuck into workers' rights/solidarity work. The tory party conference is on october 3rd in birmingham - there's been a call-out for an anarchist direct action bloc. I know some people involved in organising this demo and there's been a huge amount of work gone in, there's a LOT of people mobilising. The cops' latest line is that for health and safety reasons they'll allow 30 to protest and no more in case the protest causes "hazardous congestion". Clearly we need a huge mass of bodies in town that day to assert ourselves. There's probably coaches going from where you are to where the toffs are - maybe people organising those regional coaches will stick details up on here. I know a few myself:
Bath Coach -Leaves 9am, Sunday Oct 3rd, Laura Place, Bath
Tickets - £10 waged, £5 unwaged
Contact
bathagainstcuts@yahoo.co.uk for more info. Bristol coach -Leaving central Bristol at 9am
Tickets £5 Anne 01179556198 or Tim 07866660335
nocutsbristol@yahoo.co.uk
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