Other important questions lead on from here:-

• Are we existing in a tacitly recognized political ghetto, where we see ‘our’ concerns as more or less unrelated to the more ‘mainstream’ struggles of the students and the workers (public as well as private sectors)?
• If many of the anarchists identify themselves ‘as class struggle anarchists’, are we adequately engaging in that class struggle?
• Perhaps the term ‘class struggle’ itself needs to be sufficiently defined in order for us to engage in it?
• How do we relate to the rest of the anti-cuts movement, which falls within the ambit of ‘class struggle’? Is there a desire to do so?
• Most crucially, as social anarchists, how do we act collectively and in a unified way, as an ‘anarchist movement’, not just in name but in deed?

Looking forward
The answers to the above questions – the desire to engage with these questions – will determine our future as to whether anarchism has an appeal beyond the visuals of menacing-looking black blocs and street battles with the police. Do we have answers to the thorny problems of everyday life? Can we practically and materially create the alternatives needed that the Left has no desire to do? Or, are our ideas mere rhetoric, and incapable of being implemented?

Organizing ourselves, and mobilizing people to this end, not just in the current social unrest but also in the long-term, is key to the continued political life and growth of anarchism. Otherwise, the title ‘anarchist’ would mean nothing at all, and we may have to consider ceding the way to new political subjectivities and new political subjects who are better able to adapt to the changed circumstances. The is true of the Left as much as it is true of anarchists.

Perhaps we can begin this self-critical, but also self-renewing process, by examining whether our current organizations and organizational frameworks have been adequate to meeting this challenge, or do we need to create entirely new spaces and structures that are efficient, inclusive, and non-sectarian. For there is no doubt that the need for such structures and procedures exists, and if we can begin to build them together it might just spell the difference between our political obscurity and a political rebirth.

Back to basics

 1. Who we are
After doing the rounds of the anarchist movement in London as an insider, as well as looking at anarchists from within the student movement as an outsider, a number of features of the existing anarchists stand out to me. The most salient and baffling aspect is the tacit and unquestioned assumption that the only criterion for being an ‘anarchist’ is calling oneself an ‘anarchist’, despite us knowing full well that there are many strands of anarchism. As a result of this, one’s politics is never questioned, never presented, and ultimately never tested. The assumption – and this is an insidious thing – that because we all call ourselves ‘anarchists’ we all share the same politics.

Some of these forms of anarchism such as individualism and anarcho-capitalism are as anathema to anarcho-communism or social anarchism or collectivism as Conservatism and capitalism are. Therefore, I’m astounded and disturbed to find many of the features of individualism and even nihilism among those who call themselves collectivists. The lack of awareness of this contradiction leads people to form attitudes such as hostility to and phobia of organizations, confusing unified and co-ordinated action with hierarchy, and dressing up the lack of accountability and culpability as choice and autonomy.

Such attitudes lead these anarchists to hold rigid and biased beliefs, bordering on superstition, like opposition to the very ideas of leadership (even when nothing is going well), movement, due process and formal relations. Informality, structurelessness, and ‘network’ are deified regardless  of the context and raised to the status of tenets. And there are those anarchists who, though they are part of a formal organization, hold many of the same  beliefs mentioned above. These latter are extremely comfortable being a part of their organization but have little or no involvement outside of it.

Yet none of these contradictions are recognized, let alone examined, even as they have long been hurdles in the development and growth of anarchism, at least here in London. It’s either a case of a new awareness that is lacking and needs to be introduced, or that there is no desire whatsoever to engage with this problem, or even worse, that people think that it’s not important and therefore, does not need to be discussed. This last is most probably the case.

So, there is a crisis of political identity that needs to be sorted out first and foremost. We need to understand what it means for us to ‘do politics’. All the rest follow from here.

2. What do we do
The next thing to resolve is our political role in London. If we want to create political influence among the general population, and make anarchist principles and practice real alternatives to statist Left politics, we should figure out not what we want to do, but what we need to do. We should be able to perform both the fun aspect of politics (if there is any such thing) as well as the tedious, laborious, and difficult part of politics (which is most of it) with equal dedication. Exploring how we put anarchist principles into practice could be fun even as it is tough and labour-intensive.

Once we have assessed that we have the requisite willingness and dedication to engage in politics, we can start to build groups, networks and organizations that define their areas of struggle (workplace, schools and universities, non-unionized workforce, immigrants, women, etc), but also work in tandem if need be (such as during Far Right challenges, or city-level or national mobilizations). The key is that we should stand prepared to act together in a unified fashion, regardless of what happens politically in the country. As social anarchists, we should take responsibility for our beliefs and acknowledge that we have a duty to respond to large-scale disturbances (such as the anti-cuts movement), even as we assist and provide solidarity to small-scale struggles (such as stopping the eviction of a squat).

Thus we can start drafting a long-term political strategy that gives us direction and purpose as a movement. This strategy does not have to be a centralized thing drafted by ‘the movement’. Various groups and networks can draft their own political agendas keeping in mind the various struggles we are engaged in. But these various strategies can feed into one another and feed out to each other in a porous, inflow-outflow mechanism. Perhaps this can be achieved by calling annual all-anarchist conferences or some other type of unified activity for our mutual understanding and benefit, so that we have a physical space to meet in and see each other (visual impression is crucial), and talk to and learn from each other face to face. This is how, at present, I envisage an anarchist ‘movement’ being created out of nothing. The infrastructure and political culture need to be created, maintained and constantly enriched if we are ever going to attract radicals in the making who are looking for a political expression.

For those who fail to see why we need to be a ‘movement’, we must remember that others (outside the anarchist circle) will see us, if they see us at all, as one political entity, as ‘anarchists’, in short as a ‘movement’. It’s only by being a movement that we can liaise with and build connections with other groups and political entities, or oppose ourselves to them. We cannot do so as atomized individuals, or as fractured or disparate groups with no real relationship with each other, practising our own fetishes in our precious corners. If we insist on acting this way, we unwittingly act out the alienation engendered by the present system, and more perniciously, reproduce those same alienated relations and behaviours we claim to oppose. The only position of strength is as a movement. A movement gives us a legitimate claim and a legitimate voice to speak with. Otherwise our existence is weak and fractured at best, or worse, an illusion that exists only in our minds for our reassurance.

When we have all this up and going, we can start to take risks with our actions, and start to be actual revolutionaries. As of now, no anarchist in London even comes close to being a revolutionary. Most of their attitudes are closer to a liberal or soft left ideology than a truly anarchist one. Moreover, without knowing or understanding anarchist history, what our relationship to our own past is – what people who swore by collectivist anarchist ideals thought and did since the nineteenth century – we have no means of knowing who we are now and what we are doing here. If anarchism has mutated in the UK it has mutated into a most undesirable form. If we have no past we have no present – and no future.

What we have now are mere remnants of a vision and an ideal that existed and was real to the anarchists of the past, but which we seem to believe only out of habit. Our attitude is one of fatalism proper – of waiting for something to happen, and if and when it happens cheering it on voyeuristically as the best thing ever, or looking down our noses at it as something ‘leftie’ or ‘liberal’ that we are too good to be part of. No popular struggle is ever seen as ‘ours’. We don’t see ourselves as a legitimate part of a popular struggle (as is happening with the anti-austerity movement), and that allows others to view us as outsiders, so when we do choose to take part we are seen as ‘injecting’ ourselves into them. Not only does this attitude make us at times look like political vultures, but it also effectively hands the baton to long-established and inefficient Left parties who then take over, reduce it to useless sloganeering and stamp it with their brand.

Political Vision
Politics is a struggle for power. It is a struggle by those who have less power to have more of it, and once they have it, to retain it. In our case, it is the struggle to neutralize ‘Power’, spelt with a capital P, and to enhance self-power. In the long run, anarchist political struggle is a struggle to create a society where no one power is dominant, where there is a balance of power. This is the invisible goliath we are tackling.

But politics is also about the ‘polis’, or civil society; it is the art of actively planning, creating and managing the structures, institutions, customs and practices of the society we live in. In this way politics involves two different but intricately and inseparably connected facets. The sooner we understand this the better for us. I say this because, as I mentioned earlier, there is a strong nihilist element in the ‘anarchism’ I’ve witnessed where politics is a ‘bad ‘word; politics is something the lying, corrupt, power-mongering elites, or the long-discredited ‘Left’ (seen as a monolith) engage in, replete with its association of boredom and bureaucracy.

Perhaps this attitude is the reason why we refuse to define ourselves ‘politically’ or to explain our ‘politics’. This way we effectively saw off the branch we’re sitting on, because we enter into battle with the powers-that-be without a plan, without a political strategy, since one needs to have a politics in order to have a political strategy, and having a political strategy means doing politics (in the sense understood above, which involves a plethora of tasks). It means figuring out one’s own position, one’s relation with other comrades, one’s relation to the political antagonist (e.g., state and capital), one’s relation to the rest of the world – regionally, nationally and internationally. It entails figuring out our collective political purposes and the goals to be achieved, and committing ourselves to achieving them – in deed, not just in word.

When we begin to think on these lines and begin to put the work in in earnest, we begin to engage in revolutionary politics. Anything short of it is a wishy-washy liberal attitude of “Oh, I’ll do whatever little I can to make the world a little less nasty” disguised in revolutionary posturing. Now, I don’t expect such revolutionary politics to emerge signed, sealed and delivered in a matter of days. Years of work needs to go into it. But the process has to begin sometime.

Every once in a while time presents us with an excellent opportunity to begin this process. The 1840s in Europe, 1917 Russia, 1930s in Spain and Germany, the mid-twentieth century in the colonies, the 1990s in the Americas etc. have all been terrible times, but also opened up trap-doors for people to break-through their usual paralysis, apathy and despair. And that’s what constitutes political vision: to be able to notice the calm before the storm and prepare for the challenges and opportunities provided by the flux. Political vision also involves recognizing that we may fail due to lack of resources, or lack of ability, or because we make mistakes, but failing because we never got started is worse. Political vision might come with experience but there is no excuse for a lack of willingness to act while claiming to be ‘revolutionaries’.

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These tests are part of the latest attempt to distinguish between a mass of ‘idle’ and a few ‘deserving’ poor. Whereas the former are demonised, the provision of alms for the latter is used to maintain the guise that capitalist regimes can be ‘progressive’ (a term that really needs to be reclaimed from Clegg) and caring systems of social relations.

Atos’ implementation of the WCAs resulted in the company also becoming a target of widespread criticism from beyond the radical community. Campaigners have e.g. repeatedly referred to the substantial success rate of appeals against Atos’ decisions. A report by the BBC Inside Out ‘found that of the 146,200 appeals that have been heard to date, 56,500 (more than a third), have been upheld in favour of the claimant’[1].

Furthermore the professionalism of those conducting the assessments has been repeatedly questioned. The Guardian reported in August that twelve doctors employed by Atos were ‘under investigation by the General Medical Council over allegations of improper conduct’ [2].

With Atos being such a particularly disgusting part of the modern British ‘welfare’ system, there have been a number of protests against the companies’ offices all over the country. The protest in Nottingham was not unusual in having been not only entirely peaceful, but also extremely (one might say far too) polite.

The rather ham-fisted reaction by the local police, until now better known for their frequent blunders and blatant incompetence rather than a particular urge to repress peaceful protests, as well as the CPS’s decision to charge the Atos Two have been received with astonishment. The prosecution is widely seen as politically motivated, a perspective only underlined by one of the arresting copper’s admission that ‘there’s been too much of this sort of thing going on and we’ve been told to crack down on it.’

The case of the Atos Two is indeed not an isolated one. The offence of aggravated trespass was introduced in the 1990s in response to the successes of hunt saboteurs and road protesters. It is frequently used against activists to deter people from engaging in acts of protest and civil disobedience. Recent examples include the cases against activists who went into Fortnum & Masons or Panton House.

All of these protests were using forms of direct action that are usually accepted within western representative democracies unless a certain line of annoyance is crossed. After the wave of direct action by UK Uncut and others in Nottingham and across the country over the last year this is apparently now the case.

‘Total policing’ does not only entail total surveillance and the increasing armament of the repressive apparatus, be it with Tasers, water cannons or rubber (and live) bullets. It also entails the repression of anything perceived to be putting a spanner in the efforts to maximise the accumulation of capital, however small that act of direct or indirect sabotage may be.

The ‘Atos Two’ have been supported by an impressive solidarity campaign. At their first court hearing there was a solidarity demo of around 40 people outside, despite it being early morning on a workday. A further protest is planned for the first day of the trial, as well as a demonstration on February 3rd with a number of other activities in the pipeline.

Their case shows that fluffy protesting is as liable to repression as more radical forms of direct action. As one of the solidarity messages sent to the ‘Atos Two’ noted, it is an example of ‘the ruling classes cracking the whip’. But the solidarity shown towards the defendants from within and outside the radical community as well as the wave of demonstrations and direct action against the imposition of “austerity” in the UK show that the attacks by the ruling classes can be – and are being – resisted. If anything, an increase in repression can often be a sign that resistance is beginning to work. We just need to keep pushing.

For updates on the ‘Atos Two’ please follow http://twitter.com/nottsdefence
Email: nottsdefence@riseup.net

 UPDATE: The charges of the Atos Two were unexpectedly dropped by the CPS on January 13th apparently ““complainant no longer supports the prosecution”. The ‘Atos Two’ have asked us to express their gratitude to everyone who has supported them over the last few months and let you know that you’re all fantastic! Check the campaign website for details of further actions against Atos: https://network23.org/nottsdefence/2012/01/13/atos-two-charges-dropped/

Notes:
[1] http://bbc.in/ulXxMG
[2] http://gu.com/p/3x7jd

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I remember my Political Economy lectures at university when the European Union was held up as a successful model of a political and economic ‘superstate’ which other continents in the world could follow. I remember shuddering at the very idea of such mega-scale integration and central control, only one step behind Bertrand Russell’s insane idea of a ‘world government’, even as we struggle to contain the growing power and aggression of the nation-state itself.

The political collapse of Greece and Italy unfolding before our very eyes, should put such fantasies to rest. I say ‘political’ rather than ‘economic’ because although the initial crisis occurred in the financial arena, all the subsequent decisions made were political in nature, though dictated by capitalist imperatives. Since the mainstream media are no help, we need to unmask the full picture of this ‘crisis’ by tracing things back to the beginning and understand what is actually happening in the Eurozone and what implications it has for all of us.

When the profiteering bubble in the housing/mortgage industry in the US collapsed, mainly by extending deceptive and complicated loans, the consequent mass defaults struck at the heart of the banking and investment industry which had amassed all the risks, wiping out trillions of dollars of asset value (ie property, businesses, housing) off the books. Investors withdrew their money that caused a shortage of money supply,  leading to the jamming up of the gigantic conveyor belt of financial markets that move money back and forth within the system, keeping it greased, allowing wages to be paid, loans to be lent, debts to be serviced etc. This is why the ‘real economy’ (commodities and services) takes a hit whenever there is a ‘financial’ crisis.

Since the financial system is globally integrated the crisis spread like wildfire, extending the liquidity problem to all connected countries, but some more than others.  As money became scarce governments, and allied institutions, had to raise it themselves through Quantitative Easing, by slashing interest rates for banks and big businesses, and by selling public assets to private companies.

But this still does not explain why the focus within mainstream circles suddenly shifted to the ‘debt problem’ in the last two years.

What the media won’t tell us is the fact that there is an inherent contradiction within the current system: constant economic expansion and the accumulation of ‘wealth’ is impossible without borrowing; and the constant cycle of borrowing and repayment is what keeps the money flowing through the system; meanwhile, constant repayment is not possible without further economic growth and for that more borrowing is necessary, leading to more debt, and so on.

In a debt-accumulating economy the sudden shortage of money supply caused by the financial crash has brought the thorny problem of debt back in focus, but not in the way it should have been. Rather than arguing against the long-term consequences of debt money, reliance on private investors for the supply of it and of never-ending economic expansion which has to be unsustainable by any rule of logic, mainstream media and their cartel of ‘experts’ have focused on the need to raise capital through ‘Austerity’. Austerity is only ‘necessary’ to the extent that they aim to save the system at any cost, and that is entirely a political decision.

At the moment, we are being given the impression that Greece is the ‘bad guy’ dragging down the economies of the whole of EU through its huge debt and its lack of diligence in repaying it. The truth is Greece, being a smaller and weaker economy, has borne the brunt of the crisis and is hence one of the biggest victims of the crisis. We are not informed of the obvious capitalist contradiction that without credit and a consuming and spending population Greece cannot expand its economy and hence service its debt. Such knowledge would lead to the obvious conclusion that Greece cannot save the system without causing its people unprecedented misery, and therefore they are better off choosing a different alternative. If the governments don’t then the people will. For well-known reasons such a solution is not acceptable because investors cannot make profits off of it, and it will probably lead to the end of the EU.

So what we see is a shamelessly Machiavellian Greece-baiting, painting a vivid picture of inept and lax politicians who are not man enough to implement ‘tough’ measures to please investors, which , incidentally, is not true. Greek politicians are risking coups and a veritable revolution in falling over each other to do the bidding of Big Brothers, Germany and France. The scrapping of the popular referendum on austerity is the most blatant example.

Eurozone is proof of the fact that politicians will go to any extent to save the system. If Greece defaults it will intensify the liquidity crisis, and we might see much harsher austerity measures undertaken here in the UK. If Italy defaults, which is more doubtful, it will be even worse because Italy’s debt is so large (over £1 trillion) that bailout appears unthinkable. The only easy pickings for politicians is us – the masses. So, if Greece is in any indication, we in the UK must prepare to be far more militant, on a regular basis, and much more organized, if we aim to truly stop the juggernaut of the Austerity Program.

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No Borders activists work in solidarity with migrants who struggle against the border regime. We want to strengthen links between this resistance and the wider discontent seen on Britain’s streets against commodification and police harassment.

Stop and search – racial profiling
In the 3 months before the August Riots, the Met Police stopped and searched black people almost 5 times more often than white people. Despite this, the arrest rates following a search were almost identical [i].

Racial profiling by Police is also a major problem facing migrant communities living in Calais. Many refugees try to cross covertly from this French harbour to England. Calais Migrant Solidarity (CMS), part of the No Borders network, has spent over two years monitoring police behaviour there. Riot and border police are stationed in the town to harass migrants continuously. They raid camps and squats, often at night or early in the morning, and patrol the streets to stop and search migrants found there. Both raids and patrols may lead to arrest. There were 17,000 arrests of migrants in Pas-de-Calais in 2007 (with many of the same people being arrested repeatedly); yet only 41 of these were deported back to their countries of origin [ii].

The effect of this standard practice has been to create a climate of fear for refugees in Calais. Nowhere is safe: a migrant can be picked up at any moment, whether sleeping, eating, going to or from meals at the charity distribution, at the medical clinic, just walking in the street or sitting in the park.

Deaths in Custody
The stabbing of reggae-star Smiley Culture in March and the shooting of Mark Duggan in August have forced more people to recognize that police brutality is alive and kicking. Local communities kept these events in the news by taking to the streets for sizeable demonstrations and/or spontaneous rioting.

As a movement, we can stress how similar this is to the deaths of migrants held in Immigration Prisons, during deportations, or at the border. Only two days before Mr. Duggan was shot dead by the Met, a detainee at Campsfield immigration prison died, driven to commit suicide hours before a deportation attempt. Indeed, this was just one out of three deaths in immigration detention in the month leading up to the August Riots. These deaths followed that of the Angolan asylum-seeker, Jimmy Mubenga, who died in October 2010 from asphyxiation while being forcibly deported by G4S guards. CMS have also documented deaths of many migrants at the French/UK border.

The abuse of migrants in these situations rarely makes headline news, even though detainees may react with protests inside the detention centres. A quick look back on resistance by immigration detainees suggests a microcosm of what was seen more openly in the August uprising. Rioting erupted at Yarl’s Wood in 2002 and Harmondsworth in 2004, 2005, 2006 (twice), 2007 and 2008. A detainee commented recently, after watching rioting in London on the TV news and having spent almost 2 years in detention: “Bring the fire here!”

Commodification…and corporatism
The purpose of government spending cuts is to turn public services into commodities – things that can be bought or sold to make profit. The vibrant anti-cuts movement shows how unpopular their program is.

This is a process of “commodification” – and migrants detained in the UK have seen the consequences of this already. Instead of Removal Centres being run by HM Prisons, the operating contracts are awarded to major multi-national corporations, like Serco and G4S. This gives big businesses a financial interest in more detention centres being built and more people detained, so they can profit from it. Now government policies are handing these same companies more involvement in our hospitals, schools and for the Olympics. Resistance towards austerity and action against companies that profit from detention should be linked more closely.

Commodification blurs the line between big business and the State, suggesting they need each other to survive. Talking about a clear divide between ‘the state’ and ‘capitalism’ is unhelpful because their power is not arranged like two distinct pillars. Mussolini said that: “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power”. Perhaps this is not far from what we are seeing now. It is especially visible when you look at how immigration controls are managed.

Charities have also merged into this corporate-state power concentration. Barnardo’s, the UK’s biggest children’s charity, has collaborated with the UK Border Agency and G4S to provide services at a new detention centre for families with children. This secured jobs for 29 Barnardo’s staff in difficult financial times [iii]. But Barnardo’s role is funded by the UKBA, so we doubt their willingness to speak out against the government when it inevitably sees people harmed by the border regime.  The first mother to be detained at the new centre was dawn-raided from her home and then assaulted on the way to the airport – and Barnardo’s have so far said nothing [iv].

With these elite groups supporting each other through uncertain times, it’s more important than ever for migrants and citizens to question the borders that keep us apart … and struggle together for more accountable power structures and a fairer share of the world’s wealth.

The wave of occupations that has rolled around the world from Madison, Wisconsin to Tahrir Square in Cairo, from the Spanish M15 movement and onward via Occupy Wall Street has been deeply inspiring to us, and deeply challenging to the system we live under. While it is reaction to a global, though particularly western, economic crisis we must give credit to all those camping out for their commitment, for instigating the debate as to where we can and want to go, and for breaking the deadening political stagnation of recent years.

So to make a critique of the Occupy movement at this moment, seems at first absurd. To think five years ago that city centres across the globe would be occupied by hundreds of thousands of people, would have been laughed off. Yet they are. And it is a fantastic. It has created a space where capitalism, democracy and revolution are being openly discussed like never before. But that debate also needs to look at the Occupy movement itself and the fundamental problem with the concept of the 1% versus the 99%.

Anti-capitalist vs anti-banker
As someone who has been politically active on the libertarian left since the late 1970s, there is something in the rhetoric of this 99% movement that I and many of my generation find disturbing. We were, and are, anti-capitalists and revolutionaries but this new movement is neither anti-capitalist or even just reformist, but explicitly concerned with elites. Exemplifying this, the banner at Occupy London stating “Capitalism is Crisis” was removed after much debate and replaced with “What would Jesus do?”

While the Spanish M15 movement concentrated around the slogan ‘Real Democracy now’, encompassing reformist demands but going far beyond the criticisms of finance capital, the Occupy movement is based on: ‘We are the 99%  and that we oppose, criticise and demand action against the 1%’. It is the idea that somehow if only this 1% were made to behave properly, then the system would work for everybody.

But the crisis in finance capitalism is not some aberration but related to the long term crisis of capitalism itself. We need to look at what that is, how to make that accessible to people and reformulate the discussion away from conspiracy elites to a more general critique of capitalism and its problems.

Voices of dissent
There is an excellent statement that has recently come out of one of the US occupations where many people are equally concerned about this issue.

“Banks and “bankers” are an easy target because they stand as the visible monetary centers, but this analysis completely ignores the primary functions of capitalism: the production of commodities, the exploitation of human labor, and the extraction of surplus value. Capitalism is not a conspiracy.”[1]

And that is what needs restating; the 1% are out of control not because they are a conspiracy but because that is how capitalism works! And people only notice when the trickle down stops trickling! There is no pure capitalism without finance capitalism, but finance capital does not control capitalism. It is still production that is the key, because that is where ‘surplus value’ (profits) are extracted by paying people less than they produce. And in the West that mode of production is in crisis.

Enter the conspiracy
But the other very dangerous problem that comes for the 1% idea is how it leads very easily and smoothly into the idea that we are dealing with an out of control elite which operates through conspiracies. And indeed we see this all over the camps, and online, where the crazies of Zeitgeist, David Icke, and other random conspiracy theorists, often go unchallenged [2]

And from the idea of conspiratorial elites it is a stones throw to anti-Semitism i.e. anti-Jewish. It is suggested that Jews have historically controlled all the worlds’ finances/banks and that therefore it is their actions that are behind the crisis. This anti-Jewish bullshit is never usually overt though, the right-wing scum who push this have words and phrases they couch their lies in, but it is there. [3]

Another classic device these racists/fascists use is the deliberate confusion of a very real Zionism, the brutal nationalist and expansionist project of the Israeli ruling class, aided by the US, with a mythical Zionism that runs the world. [4] And sooner rather than later this bullshit manifests itself in reality. At the beginning of November a young Jewish woman was told to fuck off at Occupy Finsbury Square (London) as she, it was suggested, was part of the problem.

Exclusive and exclusion
There are also a number of other problems which may or may from the 99% issue, but is probably more to do with class!

Firstly the idea that the camps represent the 99%. In many ways it is a useful initial concept to grasp, and 99% of people in the camps are clearly NOT part of the 1%. But the camps are very exclusive, both practically, where they exclude most people who have to work, who do not live locally, who have family responsibilities etc and culturally, appealing pretty well only to young activist types. This is not on one level a problem but they must be very careful when claiming to speak for the rest of us.

In the US there has also been a lot written on how exclusive the camps are not just in terms of class but race which is more politically an issue there. African American and Native American activists have noted the irony of white middle class Americans ‘occupying’ land they themselves have been historically ethnically cleansed or segregated from

Women have also felt the issues of gender are similarly belittled though I am not convinced that the camps are unique in this aspect. [5] There have been a number of rapes at Occupy camps, and while the issue is being taken seriously by most many women think their safety is disregarded to a significant extent as it is subsidiary to what the camps are about.

All in all the Occupy camps have been a massive boost for the movement for change but they like any part of the movement is not immune to debate and I hope this has been useful contribution.

Richard Price

[1] 99 Problems by some anarchist occupiers, Bloomington, Indiana. Original here: http://rififibloomington.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/99-problems/
[2] For background into the Zeitgeist movement see: http://thethirdestate.net/2010/03/zeitgeist-exposed/
[3] http://norfolknonaligned.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/occupied-with-conspiracies-the-occupy-movement-populist-anti-elitism-and-the-conspiracy-theorists/
[4] See Third Estate’sguide to Zionism.
http://thethirdestate.net/2011/10/when-are-comments-about-zionists-not-really-comments-about-zionists-a-few-tips-on-working-it-out/
[5] http://globalcomment.com/2011/how-occupys-non-power-structure-enables-sexism/

This article originally appeared in the December edition of Freedom newspaper see here
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Bank of England chairman Mervin King now openly admits that this might be the worst economic crisis in the history of capitalism. Those in positions of power and responsibility are supposed to play it cool. They are supposed to understate bad news and overstate good ones. But doing so is proving to be a difficult job now that financial experts and economists are sounding well nigh apocalyptic, implying that a double-dip recession, if not a second credit crunch, is just a matter of time. It is difficult to say what form it will take, although most are agreed that it will come from the Eurozone.

Bail-outs and downgrades
There are good reasons for thinking so. Twelve UK banks and building societies – including Lloyds TSB, Santander, RBS, and Nationwide – have been downgraded by Moody’s, one of the world’s big three credit rating agencies. This means ‘market confidence’ in the government’s willingness to bail them out is at an all time low. Both Italy’s and Spain’s sovereign credit ratings (their ability to expand their economies and pay off external debt) have been downgraded by Moody’s, Standard and Poor, and more recently by Fitch. Bailed-out Franco-Belgian bank Daxia is going under and requires a second rescue.

Is this bad? It seems so, as a direct result of the downgrades Prudential, the large UK based insurance company, which provides pension-related services has slashed its annuities (similar to a pension fund) to its customers. Observers fear that other companies will follow this example and cut their pensions too.

Added to that the European Central Bank (ECB) which controls the Eurozone has rushed in to extend direct, unlimited short-term and long-term loans to European banks. This is done to solve an immediate liquidity crisis, that is, to make sure that banks have enough money to lend to each other, since banks have massively reduced interbank lending due to many banks’ exposure to bad Greek debts.

Creating money
England, on the other hand, has taken the much-tabooed route of increasing money supply to spur economic growth. This process is euphemistically known as quantitative easing or QE, where a central bank virtually creates money and with it buys assets (usually government bonds) in large quantities. This money then circulates through the banking sector, where it is hoped that the banks will lend to businesses. The problem with this method is that it risks driving up an inflation that is already running at a painful 4.5% (measured by the Consumer Price Index).

The Bank of England had already released £200bn through a first round of QE in 2009 at the beginning of the crisis. Now it has added £75bn more, which came as a shock to the system. Other central banks are expected to follow, but they are resisting. The BoE expects food and fuel costs to fall next year, which it thinks will absorb the inflation, but manufacturing costs (both of raw materials and price of finished products) are rising steeply. This will push up the prices of retail goods, passing on that burden once again to ordinary consumers – you and I.  This manufacturing cost (measured by the Producers Price Index) has to be factored in before measuring real inflation.

Besides, hoping that banks will lend to medium and small businesses in a laissez faire economy is unreliable, since they have no legal obligation to do so. This is why even some Liberal Democrats are calling for the nationalization of certain banks like RBS so that they can be forced to lend. This is in the midst of fears that RBS may need another bailout.

To add to these local woes, Germany and France agreed in late September to extend the bailout package for Greece, Portugal and Ireland to 780bn Euros or £670bn from the initial 440bn Euros or £383bn. UK taxpayers are already contributing £12.5bn to this package. We don’t know yet if this contribution will be increased. All we know is that the people here or anywhere else are in no mood for generosity. It may well be that UK’s austerity scheme could be expanded further, as is happening in Europe, even as liberal and Left experts argue for more spending to stimulate the economy. Portugal and Greece are held ransom by the unholy trinity of the EU, the ECB and the IMF who are using this opportunity to force cruel, neoliberal reforms upon those countries, and ruling elites everywhere are abiding by it.

No way out
Right now we are in a no exit situation. A second credit crunch will make things a lot worse than they already are. Politicians of all stripes are utterly clueless and cannot think beyond austerity because that’s what the financial system wants of them. Social spending coupled with an unregulated finance economy has proved to be utterly unsustainable with its extreme debt levels and rapid transfer of wealth to a small financial elite. Whether functional or in breakdown this system is disastrous to the ordinary masses. Therefore a mere anti-cuts appeal will not succeed in mitigating our long-term problems. Hope lies only in a meaningful anti-capitalist movement that will make its resistance systemic rather than focussing on single issues like “greedy bankers”, “corrupt politicians” or “anti-cuts”.

This article originally appeared in the November edition of Freedom newspaper see here
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Anarchists, perhaps more than any other political grouping, have always excelled in solidarity and support work. It is because we challenge the authority of government and the legitimacy of the state that we often face the severest hostility and repression from them, and we understand what is required in supporting others against that same hostility and repression.

At the moment there is a massive campaign by the state to subdue the wave of unrest and disquiet being expressed by all sections of society. The use of physical force by police is matched by the use of judicial force in the courts. What we are witnessing through this process is the state re-asserting its own conditions of social participation upon us. This is where politics becomes real – in the mass detentions and arrests, in the prison cells and police stations, in the broken bones and hospital treatment of protesters, and in the propaganda machine of the mainstream press that chooses to vilify and demonise any voice of dissent however expressed.

Legal Defence and Monitoring Group (LDMG) and Green and Black Cross, both organisations with close anarchist affiliations, are at the forefront of legal support for those arrested and charged during the various mass protests and demonstrations and have issued an urgent appeal for witnesses.

March 26th, June 30th
Your help is needed if you attended any of the big student protests, especially December 9th, plus March 26th TUC demonstration (UK Uncut, Piccadilly, Oxford Street, Trafalgar Square) and June 30th public sector strike and march, all in central London. What you saw during these demos might stop more people going to prison.
The job of LDMG and Green and Black Cross is to stop people going to prison by helping people prepare their best defence – but of late we are spending way too much time preparing people for prison instead, and many of the cases could have been so different if we had more witnesses come forward. It is hard to know if you could be useful as a witness but we hope to find that out if you get in touch with some basic information.

It is often the case during a trial that it is simply the police version of events against the defendant and it is often blatantly obvious that the police are lying (yes, shock horror). The judge and the jury often believe the police version of events in most case (yes, shock horror). And it often doesn’t matter if defendants are telling the truth, if they don’t have their own witnesses; they have far less chance of being believed and therefore being found not guilty.

Judges dealing with these cases are being incredibly harsh in their sentencing, harsher than many of us have ever known before, and things show no sign of easing up as the public’s memories of the protests fades.

It seems like the courts are sending out a massive message to anyone who dares to challenge the cuts and the system that is behind them that people dare not protest and we need to support all those going through this court process. It could easily have been any one of us who were arrested and preparing for the possibility of prison right now.

There is no sense or justice in many of these arrests. Some people were trying to protect themselves and those around them when attacked by police in an unprovoked manner, many weren’t even doing that, they were simply ‘in the wrong place at the wrong time’.

So far it has mainly been people pleading guilty that have been sentenced but trials are now starting to take place and the gaps in the defence for some are huge as many defendants believe that if they get up on the stand and tell the truth, they will be found not guilty. Sadly it just doesn’t work like that.

In our experience it is people who have witnesses who are more likely to be found ‘not guilty’.

As we approach the one year mark for some of these protests, many of those facing charges are incredibly stressed and others completely terrified of what lies ahead if they are found guilty and it is heartbreaking to see, especially when you know that it doesn’t have to be like that.

What little justice there is seems to have gone out the window. Their best hope is other people!

December 9th
There is an appeal for specific incidents of the student December 9th demonstration.

• People who witnessed the policeman falling off his horse and / or witnessed the police charge into the crowd.
• If you were in Parliament Square or Broad Sanctuary (in front of Westminster Abbey) during 2pm and 3.30pm
• Witnesses to events near the Treasury from about 5.30pm to 8.30pm.

Get in touch and tell us which protests you were on and where you were. You can leave it that vague for now. We will get in touch with you about specifics if you were in a place where people are calling for witnesses.

If you think that you can help please get in touch with LDMG and GBC
Email: ldmgmail@yahoo.co.uk

LDMG: http://ldmg.org.uk/
Green and Black Cross:  http://greenandblackcross.org

This article originally appeared in the November edition of Freedom newspaper see here
Freedom newspaper can be purchased directly from our shop or available at any good radical bookshop/social centre.

Freedom Bookshop
Angel Alley
84b Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Alternatively take out a yearly subscription and have the paper delivered to you.

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Reports that the US is determined to maintain a presence in Afghanistan will surprise no one except 99% of foreign policy analysts. Responding to the announcement that the US is in negotiations to maintain a presence until 2024, Mahdi Hassan, senior editor at the New Statesman, writes “the US-led invasions and occupations of both countries have been a dismal failure” because “the presence of western troops in Muslim lands has provoked more terrorism than it has prevented.”

Regardless, Obama escalated the conflict on coming to office. Citing research that outlines the primary goal of suicide terrorism is to end foreign military occupations, Hassan asks, “Why does an intelligent politician such as Barack Obama have such difficulty understanding this?”

The Afghan and Iraq invasions were launched on the expectation they would increase the terrorist threat to domestic populations, as they duly did. It is a remarkable example of extreme naivety or intellectual subservience that claims the US is concerned with reducing terror not be met with widespread ridicule.

As Julien Mercille, a lecturer at University College Dublin, points out in the journal Critical Asian Studies, the War on Drugs is equally vacuous.

The claim to be concerned with reducing the level of drug production is undermined, he writes, by “the Taliban’s relatively small role in drug trafficking; U.S./NATO support for proxy forces involved in the drug trade; the focus on poppy cultivation over drug money; the chemical precursor trade; money laundering; Western support for tobacco and alcohol industries; and the emphasis on overseas operations and enforcement and neglect of drug treatment and prevention.”

In Afghanistan, the War on Drugs serves as “a rhetorical device used by the U.S. to facilitate overseas military intervention and the fight against insurgents opposed to U.S. policies in Afghanistan.”

In Colombia, a victim of both the Wars on Drugs and Terror, whilst US support has failed in its publicly stated goal of eradicating drug production it has “succeeded in modernizing the Colombian Armed Forces.” Furthermore, “by targeting FARC areas almost exclusively” it has “helped paramilitaries vertically integrate their criminal enterprise and turn it into a political instrument,” writes scholar Forrest Hylton.

This should lead to some caution before we can claim the War on Drugs has “failed.”

Slightly more honestly than Hassan, the editor of the Financial Times acknowledged that the aim of the war in Afghanistan is “to establish a client state with a semblance of democracy in a hostile region with no tradition of strong independent institutions or basic human rights.”

In order to achieve this goal, the militarisation of the state is crucial. Afghanistan is set to receive $2.7 billion dollars worth of military equipment over the course of this year. The Washington Post reports, “the U.S.-led coalition will deliver 22,000 vehicles, including 514 new four-wheeled “mobile strike force” armored vehicles yet to be used in Afghanistan, 44 airplanes and helicopters, 40,000 weapons, and tens of thousands of radios and other pieces of communications gear.”

An adviser to Karzai was quoted as saying “in the next eight months, we are getting more equipment than we’ve gotten in the last eight years….and this time it’s not all discarded equipment, it’s brand new.”

This delivery is the culmination of what has been termed the “Golden Decade” for defence companies. The Associated Press reports, “Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the annual defense budget has more than doubled to $700 billion and annual defense industry profits have nearly quadrupled, approaching $25 billion last year.”

As an ancillary benefit, the ongoing construction of US-run prisons in the country will mean detainees can be held long into the future, possibly allowing for the eventual closure of Guantanamo as inmates are moved to less conspicuous sites in Central Asia.

The decision to maintain military bases and troops on the ground may have ended any prospect for peace and negotiations, but it will allow a US presence in one of the world’s most geo-strategically important regions and help to keep Iran and China in check; the latter being bent on “foreign military adventurism” according to a 2001 Pentagon report.

For Afghans the situation is increasingly desperate.

The first half of this year was the deadliest period for civilians since the war began. The UNHCR noted in its Global Trends 2010 report that “three out of ten refugees in the world were from Afghanistan, with 96 per cent of them located in Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran.” If Iraq is included, almost half of the world’s refugees are natives of US war zones.

Due to funding shortfalls, the World Food Programme recently announced they would be cutting programmes in nearly half of Afghanistan’s provinces. Refugees International reports that 250,000 people have been displaced in the last 2 years, with 70% of those driven to the cities living in “unplanned areas or in illegal settlements.” In Kabul “80 percent of the population live in unplanned settlements where poor sanitation and lack of access to safe drinking water are common.”

Last year, one analyst exemplified the approach of commentary in general:
“I used to assume the Americans did certain things in Afghanistan (support corrupt governors, ally themselves with abusive commanders), because they didn’t know any better. If they only had the proper information, I thought, they would change such malign behaviour. The revelations in WikiLeaks indicate that they often have such information or at least serious allegations and indications, but then, apparently, carry on as normal.”

The inability to abandon commonly held pieties prevents discussion of the logical next step. Meanwhile, the US is cementing its client in Central Asia and securing a permanent presence in the region, a “victory” built on the corpses of Afghan civilians.

Ross Eventon

This article originally appeared in the new monthly October edition of Freedom newspaper see here
Freedom newspaper can be purchased directly from our shop or available at any good radical bookshop/social centre.

Freedom Bookshop
Angel Alley
84b Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Alternatively take out a yearly subscription and have the paper delivered to you.

Freedom newspaper:

• Latest issue
• Back issues
• Subscribe
• Freedom stockists

Reports that the US is determined to maintain a presence in Afghanistan will surprise no one except 99% of foreign policy analysts.  Responding to the announcement that the US is in negotiations to maintain a presence until 2024, Mahdi Hassan, senior editor at the New Statesman, writes “the US-led invasions and occupations of both countries have been a dismal failure” because “the presence of western troops in Muslim lands has provoked more terrorism than it has prevented.”

Regardless, Obama escalated the conflict on coming to office.  Citing research that outlines the primary goal of suicide terrorism is to end foreign military occupations, Hassan asks, “Why does an intelligent politician such as Barack Obama have such difficulty understanding this?”

The Afghan and Iraq invasions were launched on the expectation they would increase the terrorist threat to domestic populations, as they duly did.   It is a remarkable example of extreme naivety or intellectual subservience that claims the US is concerned with reducing terror not be met with widespread ridicule.

As Julien Mercille, a lecturer at University College Dublin, points out in the journal Critical Asian Studies, the War on Drugs is equally vacuous.

The claim to be concerned with reducing the level of drug production is undermined, he writes, by “the Taliban’s relatively small role in drug trafficking; U.S./NATO support for proxy forces involved in the drug trade; the focus on poppy cultivation over drug money; the chemical precursor trade; money laundering; Western support for tobacco and alcohol industries; and the emphasis on overseas operations and enforcement and neglect of drug treatment and prevention.”

In Afghanistan, the War on Drugs serves as “a rhetorical device used by the U.S. to facilitate overseas military intervention and the fight against insurgents opposed to U.S. policies in Afghanistan.”

In Colombia, a victim of both the Wars on Drugs and Terror, whilst US support has failed in its publicly stated goal of eradicating drug production it has “succeeded in modernizing the Colombian Armed Forces.” Furthermore, “by targeting FARC areas almost exclusively” it has “helped paramilitaries vertically integrate their criminal enterprise and turn it into a political instrument,” writes scholar Forrest Hylton.

This should lead to some caution before we can claim the War on Drugs has “failed.”

Slightly more honestly than Hassan, the editor of the Financial Times acknowledged that the aim of the war in Afghanistan is “to establish a client state with a semblance of democracy in a hostile region with no tradition of strong independent institutions or basic human rights.”

In order to achieve this goal, the militarisation of the state is crucial.  Afghanistan is set to receive $2.7 billion dollars worth of military equipment over the course of this year.  The Washington Post reports, “the U.S.-led coalition will deliver 22,000 vehicles, including 514 new four-wheeled “mobile strike force” armored vehicles yet to be used in Afghanistan, 44 airplanes and helicopters, 40,000 weapons, and tens of thousands of radios and other pieces of communications gear.”

An adviser to Karzai was quoted as saying “in the next eight months, we are getting more equipment than we’ve gotten in the last eight years….and this time it’s not all discarded equipment, it’s brand new.”

This delivery is the culmination of what has been termed the “Golden Decade” for defence companies. The Associated Press reports, “Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the annual defense budget has more than doubled to $700 billion and annual defense industry profits have nearly quadrupled, approaching $25 billion last year.”

As an ancillary benefit, the ongoing construction of US-run prisons in the country will mean detainees can be held long into the future, possibly allowing for the eventual closure of Guantanamo as inmates are moved to less conspicuous sites in Central Asia.

The decision to maintain military bases and troops on the ground may have ended any prospect for peace and negotiations, but it will allow a US presence in one of the world’s most geo-strategically important regions and help to keep Iran and China in check; the latter being bent on “foreign military adventurism” according to a 2001 Pentagon report.

For Afghans the situation is increasingly desperate.

The first half of this year was the deadliest period for civilians since the war began.  The UNHCR noted in its Global Trends 2010 report that “three out of ten refugees in the world were from Afghanistan, with 96 per cent of them located in Pakistan and the Islamic Republic of Iran.” If Iraq is included, almost half of the world’s refugees are natives of US war zones.

Due to funding shortfalls, the World Food Programme recently announced they would be cutting programmes in nearly half of Afghanistan’s provinces.  Refugees International reports that 250,000 people have been displaced in the last 2 years, with 70% of those driven to the cities living in “unplanned areas or in illegal settlements.”   In Kabul “80 percent of the population live in unplanned settlements where poor sanitation and lack of access to safe drinking water are common.”

Last year, one analyst exemplified the approach of commentary in general:
“I used to assume the Americans did certain things in Afghanistan (support corrupt governors, ally themselves with abusive commanders), because they didn’t know any better. If they only had the proper information, I thought, they would change such malign behaviour. The revelations in WikiLeaks indicate that they often have such information or at least serious allegations and indications, but then, apparently, carry on as normal.”

The inability to abandon commonly held pieties prevents discussion of the logical next step. Meanwhile, the US is cementing its client in Central Asia and securing a permanent presence in the region, a “victory” built on the corpses of Afghan civilians.

Ross Eventon

This article originally appeared in the new monthly October edition of Freedom newspaper see here
Freedom newspaper can be purchased directly from our shop or available at any good radical bookshop/social centre.

Freedom Bookshop
Angel Alley
84b Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Alternatively take out a yearly subscription and have the paper delivered to you.

Freedom newspaper:

• Latest issue
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Since the last London bookfair, the UK’s biggest and one of the world’s best known anarchist gatherings, no one could have really predicted events unfolding the way they have. From the belligerent student protests and occupations to the anti-cuts movement and European-style black bloc erupting across the streets on March 26th followed by the most intense period of inner city unrest the country has seen for 30 years.

It’s within that context that this year’s bookfair defines itself, and unsurprisingly there will be a lot of talk and discussion on anarchism’s relationship to the current events. Certainly the expectation is that there will be many more people attending this year eager to discover more about anarchism. Always priding ourselves on being at the forefront of social struggles the atmosphere at this year’s event is set to be electric.

Here are some highlights of this year’s event.

• Current events

Four days that shook the world
The riots in August started after the murder of yet another black man killed by the police. Mark Duggan’s death may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it wasn’t the main cause for the riots and looting throughout the country for nearly a week.  A discussion about why the riots took place, the aftermath and where we go from here.

UK Youth Rebellion
Anarchists have been commenting on the increase in the marginalisation of young people; being young is a crime in itself. Since then youth have been fighting back, demanding respect and to have a voice. But do Millbank, Black Bloc and the recent riots present different faces of youth rebellion? Anarchist Federation explores why and how young people are fighting back, and how anarchists figure within this

• Class

Why do we call ourselves Class Struggle Anarchists?
In some anarchist circles the term “class struggle” is seen as outdated and boring. Are they scared of the term, or do they just not understand what is meant by it? Is the reaction a class or cultural thing? Members of Anarchist Federation, IWW and ALARM will explain what we mean by “class struggle”, why it is still important in today’s society.

• History

Mistakes of the Spanish Revolution
Stuart Christie explains why  the FAI-CNT committees of the CNT-FAI abandoned all pretence of being popular revolutionary organs, instead constituted a structure that served to apply the brakes to — and reverse — the spontaneous revolutionary activity of the barrio (ward/district) committees and repress the rank-and-file activists who were pressing for social revolution.

The Battle of Cable Street
The 75th anniversary of The Battle of Cable Street took place earlier this year, when at least 100,000 East Enders turned out to physically prevent the British Union of Fascists marching through Stepney. They built barricades, fought the police who had been sent to clear the way and the day became part of left-wing history and mythology.

• Practical

All London Anarchist Revolutionary Movement (ALARM)
The purpose is to build an organisational structure to give London Anarchism a chance to grow and meet the opportunities coming up. ALARM provides local contacts to act as hubs for anarchist activity in each borough. In addition to area based groups, college, workplaces and campaigning groups are welcomed into the structure as are national anarchist organisations.

Organising in the Workplace
What does radical workplace organisation look like? This talk includes a condensed version of the SolFed’s Organiser Training, focusing on the ‘nuts and bolts’ of workplace organising.  SF members will then recap the Office Angels campaign in which nationwide pickets forced the world’s largest employment agency redress a case of wage theft.

Debt & Resistance
As the economy nosedives, more people are turning to high street loan sharks and credit companies to survive, amassing unpayable deficits. Toxic debts still fester on nationalised banks books and could lead to mass homelessness, while in 2012 the new university fee regime kicks in. Debt is becoming an ever more important part of the way capital controls our lives. This session offers some ideas about how to fight back.

Resisting the criminalization of squatting
Once more the government is threatening to destroy squatting, though all they could do would be to make it harder – there will still be thousands of empties and the need to squat. Come and hear what campaigning is already running. Is campaigning enough or should we be preparing to ignore the law, and squat bigger and better (and what would that mean?)

• Anti-fascism

From Casa Pound to Anders Behring Breivik
From black-bloc autonomist nationalists in Germany to ‘third millennium fascist’ squatters in Italy to suit-wearing Nazis in Sweden, the last twenty years has seen huge developments in the Neo-fascist scene. Paul Hull, veteran anti-fascist and trade unionist in Sweden, will discuss the evolution of Neo-Nazi theories and tactics in Northern Europe and how the modern militant anti-fascist movement can adapt to these changes.

• International

Against Austerity: Anarcho-Syndicalism across Europe
This talk will see radicals from across Europe come to London to discuss how anarchists can effectively fight austerity. A great opportunity to learn from each other and build the bridges of solidarity we’ll need to beat back the global wave of austerity!
Organised by: Solidarity Federation

Tenants’ movement in Poland
Since 1990 the housing situation in Poland has deteriorated mainly due to the neo-liberal policies of the state and local authorities. As a response, grassroots tenants’ organisations have emerged in a number of polish cities. They aim to stop these attacks and promote social alternatives. The anarchist movement is involved in many of these groups.
Organised by: “Syndicalist Courier” – polish syndicalist paper in UK

 
From the Bookfair organisers: Anarchists all over the UK are putting on successful events – bookfairs in Bristol, Manchester, Bradford, Norwich, Oxford, Sheffield and Durham as well as Newcastle’s Projectile festival. No-one can say that anarchists can’t organise. These are great social events and a real opportunity to spread anarchist ideas as well as debating them.

We know anarchist politics aren’t only about organising a bookfair. All of us in the Bookfair collective would choose a big, effective, militant anarchist movement over a successful bookfair. Let’s use these events to take things forward.
Website: http://anarchistbookfair.org.uk/

This article originally appeared in the new monthly October edition of Freedom newspaper see here
Freedom newspaper can be purchased directly from our shop or available at any good radical bookshop/social centre.

Freedom Bookshop
Angel Alley
84b Whitechapel High Street
London E1 7QX
Alternatively take out a yearly subscription and have the paper delivered to you.

Freedom newspaper:

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