Anarchoblogs

A tribute to the brave young member of the EDL seen here courageously flailing into the bushes.

The English Defence League1 were formed under a year ago in Luton as a reaction to protests from a fringe Muslim group Ahle Sunnah al Jamah. According to the press they were a splinter of the previously banned al-Muhajiroun, in reality it is more likely they are exactly the same people using a different name2. … Read more

Continue reading at The Miserablist Speaks …

I have been having a discussion with a really good friend of mine on Facebook and our posts were getting slightly too long for comments on a status update so I’m replying on here. “****, if all the Anarchists in the country voted, they may have a say but right now you are taken about as [...]

Continue reading at The Miserablist Speaks …

Below are the lyrics to Attitude Problem by the 1936 Committee, a folk/punk band from London in the early 1990’s. I’ve only ever seen their album, More of the Same, on cassette tape. It would be awesome if anyone who happens to have their album as Mp3s would get in touch with me.Attitude Problem I thought [...]

Continue reading at The Miserablist Speaks …

Keir Snow of Liberty and Solidarity wrote recently, in an article on their website(link), that Anarchism is a brand which has been sullied by the mainstream press and the establishment so much over the last century and a half that it is a waste of effort to ‘reclaim’ it. That the time and resources required to alleviate the damage that has been done to the name far out strips the resources available to anarchists in the UK. I disagree with him on a number of key points, I’ll leave aside the oddness of using market speak in political conversation and address his points.

‘Non-leftists’, he claims, when asked to describe what an anarchist is would describe an “insurrectionist, black-clad Molotov thrower”. An image that no doubt he feels would be informed by the summit hopping protests of the late twentieth and early twenty first. Is this however the case? I seriously don’t think so and I wonder if Keir has actually done any research on this or whether he is making a sweeping assumption viewed through lenses already informed by a leftist perspective? It would be interesting to see even the most basic of research on this carried out, even an afternoon out with a questionnaire would be enlightening.

In all my political activity over the last decade and a half I have always been up front about my politics as an anarchist and the only time I have ever had a reaction other than either positive or inquisitive has been from leftists, often even from anarchists who seem afraid of the word. Most people don’t have a preconceived idea of what anarchism is and if they do then they are normally more inquisitive than anything being as the person they are talking to, who has just referred to themselves as an anarchist, is a regular person who wears cardigans and eats cheese and everything.

Keir also claims that on the left anarchists are “widely viewed as being ultra-leftists opposed to organisation”. Whilst this may be true that a large section of the left propagates this misnomer I wonder on reasons for Keir’s use of this term ‘Ultra Left’. It is one often aimed at anarchists and other communists who are suspicious of trade unions in their role in the management of labour and are extremely doubtful of their revolutionary capacity, entrenched as they are in acting as a pressure valve for class tensions. It is not simply anarchists that are ultra left but council communists and autonomous Marxists. I for one am quite happy to be considered ultra left by a left wing that has failed the working class time and again and wasted countless years in the dead end of partyism and pitiful attempts at vanguardism.

The suggestion that to ‘reclaim’ the brand of anarchism would take a massive dedication of resources is also not accurate. If ‘anarchism’ were a company this would be so. Its not, it is a political ideology and a mode of social organisation. The ideology, and the form of organisation, are propagated and promoted through activity at a grass roots level in communities and workplaces. Not through high impact advertising campaigns. The parents fighting to save their school, or the workers on the picket line, don’t learn about anarchists and anarchism through glossy ads or TV commercials. They learn about it when they find out the woman who has gotten out of bed at 5a.m. to be with them at the picket is an anarchist or when the man helping them occupy their primary school happens to be an anarchist. That’s the kind of advertising ad execs have wet dreams over and that is exactly how the brand of anarchism is reclaimed.

He says that should we abandon the name then people fear that our politics would be watered down, diluted somehow. That is not the worry I have with avoiding using the name. The worry I have with disguising our politics is that at some point the people we are working with will find out we have been obfuscating the truth, that we have been lying. This will either make them think we are ashamed of our politics or, worse still, put us in the pigeon hole with politicians and all the other leftist sects who want something from them.

There is a worry as well about not being explicitly anarchist in our organisation. Organisations can easily be saturated with people whose political ideas diverge massively from the original ideology of the organisation. Is an anarchist organisation mostly made up of liberals and/or Trotskyists an anarchist organisation? Not if it has any form of real internal democracy as this will soon mean that the ideology of the organisation begins to reflect the make up of the organisation. We need only look at the ‘politics’ of the SWP and how they have changed over the years with their ‘recruit them all’ policy meaning the party has become suffuse with ‘well meaning liberals’ attracted by the radical rhetoric*. We can see similar with the Climate Camp which hid its anarchist roots so well that the anarchists involved in forming the camp are having to reclaim it from lentil munching Monbiot fans.

To conclude, anarchism and anarchy do not have to be reclaimed nor do they need a publicity campaign to reinvigorate the brand image. The actions we take in our communities and workplaces, putting our money where our mouth is, will do a far better job at dispelling myths and promoting our politics. Obfuscating our politics will only result in us being branded as dishonest or ashamed of our politics.

*Not to imply that the SWP has internal democracy but allowing the party to be swamped by all comers has inevitably leaddown the path of liberalism they are set upon.

Disclaimer-tastic: this is entirely my personal opinion and not necessarily that of any organisation I am a part of.

Kirsten Dunst singing a song about how much she likes wanking…

Glorious success for the defenders of freedom and all that is good in this land.

The Scottish Defence League today managed to pull off their most resounding success in their campaign against the Islamification of our fair sceptred isle. Rallying to the call of the ages to protect the nations inhabitants from the threat of foreign invaders, truly these are the inheritors of Arthur’s legacy, the Scottish Defence League took to the pubs of Edinburgh. Following on from their victory over the communist archarchists[1] and the radical left wing Scottish Nationalist Party on the streets of Glasgow last November the brave boys, and token girl, of the SDL struck fear into the hearts of Muslim Islamofascist bombers all over the city.

Numbering in their dozens our brave boys defied the red-left-wing trouble makers by occupying a pub on the Royal Mile near the Scottish Parliament, a deft strategic maneuver that surely shook the marxists inside to their very core, and then surrounding the pub with Lothian and Borders police. This cunning ploy easily defeated the hundreds of counter protesting unpatriotic reds who sought to thwart our boys plan to rid our green and pleasant land of the Moorish invaders intent on destroying our native way of life.

Following on from this dazzling display of valour the brave boys of the Scottish Defence League proceeded to board buses, in no way coerced by the police, out of the city centre. At least one minibus of valiant defenders was seen heading back to Newcastle full of, in no way miserable and defeated looking, SDL heroes.

Here’s to the future exploits of our new breed of heroes and may they cause much future amusement and hilarity in their epic fail.

[1]From the SDL website

“These communist archarchists who claim to make a stand against fascism are really the haters of this nation who support all forms of terrorism and marxist fascism…”

A good overview of the day’s events can be found on Though Cowards Flinch.

Crowd of antifascists blocking the E/SDL into Jenny Ha's on the Royal Mile

See the blonde with the death toll to the right?——->

That’s Jenny McCarthy, ex-Playboy Bunny and campaigner against vaccinations for children. In this interview she gets well and truly sceptically pwnned.

Well OK, maybe that’s not actually Jenny McCarthy but then again her arguments aren’t really arguments.

50 women incarcerated in Yarl’s Wood detention centre have been on hunger strike since Friday(5th Feb) in protest at the disgusting manner in which they and their children are being treated by the British government. The detention centre holds 405 women and children who are guilty of no crime other than fleeing their homes in [...]

Folk musician, socialist and activist Alistair Hulett died last week. I met him many times since I moved to Glasgow and always found him to be a warm and friendly person, a top bloke. He will be sorely missed and my thoughts and condolences go to his partner Fatima and all those he left behind.

From Indymedia Scotland.

Alistair Hulett died suddenly last week after a short illness. He was an acclaimed songwriter, guitarist and singer, and a committed socialist, anti-war campaigner and community activist.

His songs demonstrate not only his passionate loathing of a system that kills and maims its way to profit but also his delight at the resistance that springs up in response.

One of his best known songs, recorded by June Tabor, Roy Bailey and Andy Irvine, is “He Fades Away”, about a former blue asbestos miner who is dying of asbestosis.

In “Don’t Sign Up for War”, Alistair celebrated the anti-war stand of the Scottish revolutionary John Maclean with the lines “Betray your country. Serve your class. Don’t sign up for war my friend. Don’t sign up for war.”

His two lifelong heroes were Bob Dylan and Ewan MacColl.

Alistair was born in Glasgow where he discovered folk music in his early teens.

But just as he was about to take the Glasgow scene by storm, he reluctantly accompanied his parents as they emigrated to New Zealand.

At 18, Alistair, who by then had a growing reputation on the folk circuit, escaped the sedate town of Christchurch for Australia.

After some years of solo performing he threw himself into the emerging punk folk scene, fronting the Roaring Jacks band.

Alistair said of them, “We took the very hard-edged political tone that was characteristic of punk at that time.

“There was an anger and a vitality in punk that reminded me of the folk music that I fell in love with way back in the 60s, when folk music was at the cutting edge.”

During this period he wrote songs about the Australian labour movement past and present, the struggles of indigenous peoples, anti-racism, yuppie gentrification, miscarriages of justice, love and having fun.

Alistair joined the ISO (the then sister organisation of the SWP in Australia) during the first Gulf War. His band sang against the war at demos and benefits.

He remained a committed and articulate revolutionary for the rest of his life.

After the Jacks folded he had both a successful solo career and a fruitful partnership with the celebrated Fairport Convention fiddler Dave Swarbrick. They made three albums together.

Alistair arrived back in Glasgow with his partner Fatima at the end of the 1990s where they continued their political and cultural activity.

This encompassed both the international campaigning against the war and the G8 summit, and local campaigning to welcome refugees and to save local services.

I had the pleasure and privilege to work with Alistair writing and performing shows on Pete Seeger, Ewan MacColl and Songs of Irish Rebellion at the Marxism festival, Socialist Worker’s fighting fund events and at festivals across the country.

In his last few years he also joined with three other musicians to form a new band, The Malkies.

As well as their album Suited and Booted they also produced a special edition EP for Socialist Worker.

Our thoughts and condolences go out to his partner Fatima, his sister Alison and his parents in Queensland.

He will be sorely missed as a friend, comrade and cultural inspiration.