“If we sack the banks, it’s because we have recognised money as the central cause of all our unhappiness. If we smash the windows it’s not because life is dear, but because commodities prevent us from living at all costs. If we break the machines it is not because of a wish to protect work, but to attack the slavery of salary. If we attack the police it’s not to get them out of our neighbourhoods, but to get them out of our lives. The Spectacle wished to make us appear dreadful. We intend to be much worse.” – Os Cangaceiros

Some beefy looking short-haired comrades arrived at Harrow last week and were immediately challenged by some local Asian lads as to why they were there. “We’ve come to beat up some fascists” was the reply – received with a whoop and thumbs up.

It illustrates the point that there are no ‘outsiders’ in the working class and people are generally welcomed to participate in local struggles wherever they are from.

One group that made this point more forcibly than most was the French group of politicised gangsters, Os Cangaceiros. I know of no other group that comes anywhere near to them in the political spectrum. I spent a couple of months with some of them during the early days of the Wapping strike. They had come to join in the action – complete with sling-shots, rice-flails and an array of martial arts weaponry. They didn’t announce their arrival, produce literature or even take part in the mass demonstrations. They operated on the margins, seeking always to inflict damage and escalate the struggle to the point of no return. If asked who they were, however, they would reply honestly.

I was incredulous when they told me they’d been in Toxteth in 1985. Spotted by some Toxteth rioters, they were asked where they were from. Marseilles and Lyon, came the reply “to join the riot”. They were reeived with gob smacked scouse ecstacy. People knocking on doors to get others out to hear they were from France. They’d also been in south Yorkshire during the miners’ strike. Wherever there was trouble in Europe, they went there. They being a network of criminals who robbed, sabotaged and acted against all parties.

In 1985 a series of jail riots rocked the French prison system. Os Cangaceiros were active both in the jails and on the streets initiating a year-long campaign of sabotage on the rail and metro systems. Two of them were sitting in my flat in Hackney in February 1986, ready for another night out at Wapping, when news came on the telly of a court hostage taking in Lyon.

“It is our comrade Abdelkharim Khalki” they said of the armed hostage taker. “He is our mate, we must go to Lyon.” They went. I imagine they are still out there somewhere today. There are no outsiders in the working class.

Ian Bone