[Suspect]

Logik, on 10 April 2011 - 10:51 PM, said:

GENERAL STRIKE:

On the 30th of june, major unions in britain will be striking, during this time we are hoping and aiming for other unions to get on board, bringing cities around the UK to a standstill in defiance against the cuts in our hundreds of thousands.

Articles and details coming soon.

The only way you can make a real dent is if you strike for atleast a month, maybe more. A couple days just isn't gonna cut it IMO. Good luck either way though

[Randal Graves]

Logik, on 11 April 2011 - 11:56 PM, said:

Im not going to lie, that article was not the best, I spoke to one of the editors yesterday and he agreed, if another better one does not come along, I will do one myself, but bare in mind, SW online posts are not revolutionary great master pieces and tend to be quite small compared to the general casual chit-chat, again this is strange the SW articles should be better.

:thumbs:

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I don't consider anarchism groups to be vanguardist or to be carrying out vanguardism, more that they are carrying out substitutionalism, substituting themselves instead of the working class in part it is also elitist, in a sense it says that anarchists don't believe that the working class can achieve change, which is why small radical groups mobilise and take action on behalf of the working class - which is kind of wrong.

See, I don't get this feeling at all.. I think anarchists, just as much (and sometimes more) than marxist-leninists believe that only mass working class action can achieve change. It's just that there is a difference in how groups tend to operate in order to build that action, in that anarchists will tend to do it through action, and marxist-leninists through discussion (in an extremely crude, reductionist way - I'm not for any moment trying to suggest that marxist-leninists just sit around talking, I'm just saying that they will tend to seek to build a campaign by holding a public meeting, rather than by taking a direct action).

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Instead anarchists should be working along side the working class, communicating with people and trying to educate them, instead it seems, especially in london - that being an anarchism is a private club type of thing, in anarchist federation you need to be vetted, in various other groups you need to have well established friends to be invited. Its all well and good being able to dress in black and walk/run/attack as the black bloc, but that means there is mass exclusions of communication and in take the radical side of our politics is not taking place.

Yeah, there can be an elitist element to anarchism, especially when it is involving direct actions that need to be at least fairly secretively planned so that they can actually happen, and it can be difficult to get into groups that are doing that kind of stuff because of this, but with the number of undercover police being found out recently, can you blame groups for being concerned?
That being said, I'm suprised that the London SolFed (which is I assuming what you are referring to) is at all closed. There is no Birmingham SolFed, though IWW are strong here. IWW are very open, although not always very good at promoting themselves. I feel like the point of IWW, SolFeds, IWCA or similar anarchist groupings is that they provide a totally open entry point for people who are interested in anarchism or getting involved with anarchists actions, whilst the affinity groups actually taking the actions are more closed by necessity.

Black Bloc is just a tactic undertaken for a single event.. it's not really meant as a space for discussion at the time.

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I don't see anarchists acting as vanguardists, not all it, which is kind of weird that you feel that, The SWP is vanguardist, well being a vanguard party, although we don't seek to control power, rather act as the revolutionary party in the country to push the working class into emancipation and revolution by giving them confidence in themselves, however with anarchist I find that its the opposite in some sense,
that anarchists act with no democratic decisions and then claim to represent the working class but partake in the most minimum engagement with the working class, but maybe I see this because as a revolutionary, our activity is very high to constant, its not a hobby or a part time thing, its the way we live our lives and politics is at the centre - always and constantly organising, communicating, intervening, debating and arguing, hosting meetings, talking to people, recruiting potential revolutionaries to build our party stronger ect, compared to an anarchist organisation which may to some of these things but on a much more casual scale, this must be the case otherwise anarchism would be a big player in left politics today.

I def. don't see anarchism as vanguardist, it was the SWP article that said that. I'm glad you don't either because this was the biggest point of contention for me with the article, and displays a complete misunderstanding of anarchism.

I have huge issues with the sentence I've bolded though. This may come from different experiences I guess - I have had a friend around today, chatting about mayday and whether he's going to stay in Birmingham, or go to London, Brighton or Bristol, and he was moaning about "lifestyle activists" in Brighton, and it may be similar in London I guess, that it's not a deeply held political feeling that brings them to anarchism and direct action, but a cultural thing. (Fuck it's really difficult to try to explain what a lifestyle activist is and why it's different, I hope that you have experience of this and know what I'm referring to, it's not meant as a total slate on these people as many of them are committed activists but their politics is not as radical as it should be for the groups they take part in).

I find anarchists far more involved in the working class communities around them in Birmingham than swp/sr/sp activists, in that for instance IWW members help out at community events regularly. I don't remember the swp ever asking members to serve food at a community event in the two years I was involved with them formally. It's just an example, but it's about working differently. Anarchist groups tend not to be so good (or so interested) in promoting themselves, but at the same time the swp/sr/sp insistence on trying to sell papers and recruit at every opportunity is something that really does fuck off a lot of people - some individuals are worse for this than others, but as a group it's always the same.. I really, really, really do not need to be asked 3 times by three people on a coach if I want to buy the socialist worker.

The democratic thing, I don't get that either.. aside from the ever present consensus decision making process within groups, the other way of organising actions that I described - where an action takes place if it gets enough people to support it - is democratic, just not based on votes and without any opportunity of veto.
It's not democratic in the sense that a majority of people could oppose the action and it would still go ahead, but it is democratic in the sense that it's not imposed by an individual on a community - it still needs the support of enough people to happen, it's not like there is some totalitarian structure or anything.
Usually I would expect groups to generally operate on consensus decision making though.
Majority democracy can be destroyed when a group decides to bus people in to flood meetings, and whilst I am desperate for this discussion not to turn into a sectarian slanging match, this is what the SWP did during the Stop the War campaign in Birmingham - and really fucked up the movement here in doing so (the after effects of this are still being felt, many people will simply not work with SWP again in Birmingham). This is just as undemocratic as any kind of anarchist decision making.
However decisions are made there are always potential issues with the process, but I would never describe anarchists as undemocratic, the central political idea of anarchism is that everyone should participate in the governance of their community (or at least have the opportunity to do so if they chose to).

Anarchist groups tend not to have full timers, which does not help to recruit members or maintain high visibility in the way that swp/sp are able to (not sure if sr or counterfire are actually big enough to support any full timers).

Anarchism was huge around the end of the 19th/start of 20th century. Anarcho-Syndicalist unions (like the IWW) were the biggest form of unionism around the turn of the century, and were hounded by western governments.. in the US, leading IWW members were lynched because the IWW split over WW1, the US govt. actively encouraged activity against IWW organisers at the time.. In the 1930s, Spain obivously had a huge Anarchist movement, and Ukraine had substantial anarchist organised areas until the early or mid 1920s (after the Russian Civil war, the Ukranian anarchists were crushed by the Soviet army, but I can't remember exactly when).
I need to read some histories of anarchism really, there was a time when anarchism was a serious group on the radical left, but I've no idea if it ever took hold in the UK in the way it did in the US and on the continent. Regardless, syndicalism in the US pretty much died out after WW1 and anarchism in Europe after WW2 (bar Greece anyway, and to some extent Spain and Italy.. Germany has/had substantial anarchist/autonomist groups as well I think)

I'm not sure what happened to anarchism following WW2, and why it trailed off in popularity whilst marxist-leninist groups grew.

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I think that the university occupation thing was about a specific university unions building here in london which was taken over by anarchists, i.e the left occupting leftie buildings

ah, ok, well that's not at all clear and seems to be a swipe at a much broader target. I have no idea about the incident you refer to.

[Randal Graves]

Logik, on 13 April 2011 - 12:33 AM, said:

It's interesting that you're experience is that anarchists believe just as much at Marxists that the mass working class have the power to bring the change that is needed, which is a revolution,
However during my short and recent entry into student politics and politics among younger people i.e. students, there are anarchists that I have found which don't believe in the working class at all, not one penny. These anarchists say that the working class has been battered; union membership has been declining since it lost the fight decades ago and that the working class have lost its politics and that it’s up to groups that take direct action against the government to defend what is left and what needs to be changed in society.

In terms of how organisations operate to build, I think that Socialist Workers party is probably unique in the way it has worked, from the decades and centuries that have amounted in experience from revolutionary activists, first and foremost all SW action is based on action rooted in reality, not theory, following on from action which has worked (It can be from all different parts of the country, all different types of workers, students, volunteers anyone who is in the SW) will come together at our party councils, throughout a whole day, share their experiences in what has worked, what needs to be done, and what we can look to next. We have weekly branch meetings or in some cases members going to multiple branch meetings a week, discussing and meeting new members or sharing history, examples and our tradition on a basis where they talk with hundreds on a weekly basis for many hours on a certain weekday night. We are national committees which check that our leadership's plans of action are working and going along accordingly if not they are accountable ect. We have a series of united fronts in which we try to reach in unity with groups that are not SW, absolutely any groups left or to the right of us can get involved this can worked out fantastic especially with the anti cuts, our organisation is highly democratic and almost action-proofed in terms of planning, yes we have the discussion but we are based in the reality of real action.

One comrade used the example when SW was at the Genoa g20? Protests, it was militaristic as fuck and they fought to get into the red zone, they were some of the only ones to break lines or even get near, but stopped and beaten the shit out of by Robocop’s, broken bones and all.

I wouldn't say public meetings are our form of direct action, nor is it meant to be. It’s an opportunity and aim for us to build a public meetings, where we can invite more people to get involved in politics, getting involved in their local area, hear about what’s happening, what’s being cut, where the protests are at ect. First and foremost the working class are put forward over any group of hardcore activists within any group; we are always accountable to each other and primarily the workers.
I agree discussion and debate can be crude for those who are not in SWP, but when it comes to reporting back how revolutionaries have led walkouts, started occupations and pickets ect, it’s a whole different ball game.

About the elitist element, the fact that action has to be planned to a relatively secret level should present a flaw within the action that anarchists take; it causes more problems than it necessary.

Firstly secretive action excludes many people who might think about taking part, from 14 year old students to the elderly.
Secondly, a direct result of people not being able to get involved means that anarchist direct action is always going to be small to a point where there is an absolute possibility that their action might be stopped, although this is a reality for many organisations against the state.
Thirdly, because anarchist groups are so small, it is much easier for the police to infiltrate (and I’m not going to pretend they don't already exist within anarchist groups, there are hundreds of undercover police within anarchist groups), this easy means of infiltrating means that a vicious cycle is started which continuously will hinder anarchist organisations building up.

Can I blame those groups for being concerned? Yes and no, I say this being a former anarchist, which was when I first got into politics, yes it can be scary to face up to the state, whether you are in an organisation that is peaceful or carries out direct action, but then again yes the anarchists can be blamed for being concerned, there exact secrecy fuels the police in many ways;
1. Constant example for the police to be giving more and more powers to limit protests and beat the shit out of people with new weapons
2. Therefore resulting in harsher protests which deter people, especially the young and elderly.

My solution, which is kind of links to our other discussion on the validity of black bloc, which I’m going to tie in here, that the benefits of anarchists using black bloc becomes used to the extent where debates finally emerge and its benefits are re-evaluated, while always holding the working class as the main beneficiaries.
SW do not black up or join black bloc, there has been increasingly more arguments against black bloc, especially with the 26th (not a cause though), police have joined our organisations, just as the EDL BNP or whatever losers, they soon learn that there is nothing unordinary going on, we have a strong belief in a political tradition in which any undercover police officer would soon realise.

Tony cliff said that as long as undercover police sell the Paper and Pay subs, we don't care.

In my own personal opinion, as someone who does go to black blocs was/is/am an anarchist to some extent and a dedicated revolutionary, anarchists can do themselves a favour by not hiding their faces, instead building the working class masses so that we can all go and smash some fucking rich wankers stores together and smash the fucking state - and we won't get in trouble


I agree with your mate, Yes I know what a Lifestyle activist is and they are a dime a dozen in London, many many many lifestyle activists, sadly very sectarian and in control of a lot of SU's and other political groups that have prospered and in decline, while trying not to sound sectarian, many of them are lifestyle activists because they can afford it, many of them are middle class and as you said they don't share the same sense of radical politics or radicalness that me and you might hold, because simply put the way they have lived their lives is probably completed different and they have a good financial base to retreat to i.e. mummy and daddy.
Some lifestyle activists, as you said can be very dedicated and active, but most of the time they are careerists, only looking to get a job with labour ect NUS conference is prime hunting ground for the next labour leader, next labour councillor, next labour political advisor, next labour campaigner ect, it’s a joke what the NUS has become, but it’s being slowly won back to the left

Regarding SWP and Anarchists in different parts of the country, this debate has given me a clear idea of the amount of scaling difference around the country based on activity. It’s a shame SWP comrades have not asked people to do food or done food themselves ECT, funds are tight but that’s not an excuse, but you know - we get by and do what we can.
I believe that the anti-racist group up in Birmingham is good, and UAF is the main concern up in brum, working with the different local groups and including those with different political beliefs, by forming a united front against the BNP/EDL.
In other parts of the country, anti-racist/ua.f groups vary but anti-cuts can be very strong, it all depends on what has been built and maintained by comrades

As for the anarchist's not promoting themselves, this is definitely true. But it’s also a big mind-boggling to hear the word anarchist and promoting in the same sentence, Its adding to the confusion among people that I’m listening to about what anarchism is from apparent anarchists, some of which they claim that anarchists don't organise and it’s an autonomous thing, while saying that there are clear anarchist organisations (obviously I’ve seen them). It’s a bit all over the place, can't pinpoint it at all

One thing I would not like to see is SW and SP/SR mentioned in the same sentence when it comes to paper sales and recruiting, I hope to god that there is are plenty of clear examples that the SWP is clearly a party based in direct action in reality, from Genoa back in 2001, to Milbank last November (which we initiated to some point ). We have to sell our papers and recruit at every chance, because that is what we do, I’ve said it’s not a hobby but we really embody our politics - we are revolutionaries, there is no pause or stop button as capitalism continues to kill and oppress our people all over the world, we don't stop and never back down from the state - in any country, one Egyptian comrade started the chant in liberation square in Cairo, "Revolution, Revolution, victory or death".
I don't want paper sales to seem like we are just making some cash on the side, if we don't sell papers, we don’t have an organisation, there is no SWP, simply as that. Paper sales are a big part of keeping the party alive. We recruit because we genuinely want to build the revolutionary party of the UK much bigger in the event of a revolution or uprising in the UK, that we have learned the lessons of history and are ready to organise against the counter forces which occur during every single revolution, Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya - Libya seemingly a failed revolution now that 'counter revolution' seems to be happening.
If we seem over the top in our paper sales or recruiting, it’s only meant out of good meaning and friendliness to smash the state and hopefully act as one way people can become conscious.

The problems within Stop the war probably amount to more than just bussing people into meetings, although if you could explain it to me in a different way I might understand I’m a bit confused on that.
People who run Stop the War is not in SWP anymore, nor is STWC a group of SWP anymore, as far as I understand.
However you do have to realise that Stop the War has the record for the biggest demonstration in British history credit is probably due, the decline, I highly doubt is the cause of the way in which meetings where dealt with, but a more internal dispute.

Yes, I believe full-timers can help, the pay isn’t even worth it according to them, and I believe it too, work is hard.

As for SP? They probably have full timers just to come to anything remotely related to SWP to intervene and heckle, the most bizarre - coming to out Egyptian revolution meetings in central London by real Egyptian activists and accusing the SWP of being sexist because we supported the revolution and demonstration in liberation square, bunch of nut-jobs. On the 26th one of them had an argument with a friend, claiming that it was right to go into Iraq and Afghanistan because of terrorists wanting to blow us up

I really need to brush up on anarchist history, I do know of the unions you speak of being massive across Europe, in some countries like France and Spain, memberships of up to 2 million workers and more, really impressive stuff, although I believe anarchist in Europe really started to collapse after the anarchist leadership did a deal with the capitalist parties in Europe at the time, in which the capitalist parties fucked them over. Really is some interesting history and lessons to be learned for all on the left.

What happened with STW was that when there were meetings with decisions being made, SWP would literally bus in activists from outside of Birmingham, people who played no part whatsoever in Birmingham STW, in order to produce a block vote that would go with their decision.. I said I'd never work in a group with SWP again after that, and lots of activists (not just anarchists) still feel that way in Birmingham. I've not stuck to my promise with anti-cuts stuff but I'm very wary of what might happen, so far so good and no underhand tactics though.
Full credit to STW for those marches though, but the decline in Birmingham of STW was very much to do with how the meetings were handled. I'm not for any second saying that this was a problem nationally.

I put SWP/SR/SP together because as far as I know they all follow marxist-leninist traditions, and broadly the same patterns of activity. I would agree that SWP are the most actually active of them, SP follow a more electoral based strategy, whilst SR basically do fuck all as far as I can see.

There are definitely anarchist organisations - the syndicalist unions like IWW, Solidarity Federations, Anarchist Networks and IWCA (that I'm still to investigate properly, I'm not entirely clear what it is).. but they are organised as federations, with lots of autonomy for individuals and different groups to pursue their own agenda, rather than a centrally set line, so London, Liverpool and Brighton SolFed's can all follow drastically different lines of argument or action without this being an issue.

My example with the food was not specifically about that one thing, it was more a demonstration of how anarchists in Birmingham work with and inside the communities around them in a non-political way, which was never something I saw when I was in SWP. It's not about funds, it's about time and how you choose to use it, about whether you see non-political activity which helps to build communities as being worthwhile from a political point of view.

The thing with the paper is that I understand how and why it is important to the SWP, and the internal logic of it is absolutely true, but surely people in the SWP must realise how annoying it is to be asked at every meeting, on every demo all the fucking time if you want to buy a paper. It's things like the example I gave of being asked 3 times on a coach if I want to buy the paper, it's just not necessary, once ok I'll accept that even though I don't like it, but more than once? Does no-one think that perhaps if I changed my mind, I would ask for a copy?
The flipside of that was that when I was in SWP doing stalls, I'd have a decent chat with someone, and the first question would be whether I sold a paper or asked that person to join, not what I chatted with them about or anything like that. It felt very much that they would rather sell a paper than get someone thinking, the pressure to sell at every given opportunity was immense.
One of the things I've enjoyed most about working in anarchist groups is the total lack of being asked to buy something, or having people try to push their particular group onto me.


I didn't make it to Genoa, but trust me SWP were not the only people to break through, nor the only ones to get bones broken. Italian anarchists are fucking hardcore from the accounts I've heard, perhaps not as much as the German autonomists though..


On the secretive action stuff, ok I'll agree with you in principle that mass action would be better, but the fact is that it isn't going to happen right now, but there are actions that can be taken that will be effective if they are done by a small group of people, but if there is a couple of hundred it won't happen.
It would have been great if Hawk2Ploughshares had been a mass action involving the million plus people who marched against the war a few years later (this two things aren't that well connected admittedly), but the truth is that most people are not up for risking arrest/jail to stop BaE from shipping those jets to Suharto. If it is a small, tight group, then they can plan and carry out the action. Once it is open it becomes much easier to stop, because that relied on being able to break into the base, and if they were alert to what was about to happen, the only way that it could happen would be if you had tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of people there.

But these kinds of actions should be the exception, actions should really be about building a movement, and UKUncut show how it can happen. Here a small group of people (I'm not sure how many, 10 or 20 perhaps?) took direct action against vodafone and said they would be back on saturday and called others to join them. The following saturday, 3 days later, iirc 8 actions happened around the UK.. the following weekend it was 12 or 15.. that was the start of november.. by december the 18th, 55 places had groups organising actions, and the london actions had grown in number to a few hundred people.

The first action was, to my knowledge, pretty much secret.. spread only through a tight, existing network of activists. Most actions are still pretty small, in Birmingham the most people we've had is around 25, but they continue.. and of course there were thousands of people on oxford street who were not black bloc, but were there to take part in the ukuncut actions.. at that's in 6 months of building, with no financial means beyond what the individuals involved were willing to put it. (Plus of course it's gone international with US holding actions in I think 77 places this weekend), Canada, France and Australia all have local groups taking action).
Each local group acts independently of the other groups, although of course there are conversations and influences happening, each local group decides it's own methods. The extent to which there is a central group is that the original group of people control the website/twitter/facebook feeds and call a date for national days of action.
The extent of secrecy varies, some groups will do a flashmob type thing, others will give a meeting point. Sometimes plans are made before the day, sometimes they are made on the day by the people who turn up.

There hasn't been a single public meeting or rally, no-one has made any papers to sell or created a membership list, but people get involved and they do so because they agree with the message and generalised methods of the group, which is better described as a network than a group anyway.
It's been built through action. Discussion happens online and in local groups, but there'll never be a conference or anything like that because there is no need for it. We talk about what works and what doesn't, we look at reports and videos from other peoples actions and take inspiration and ideas from them, we talk to other people from other groups around the UK and see what has been good, but there'll never be a big conference or anything like that, because there doesn't need to be.

I don't understand how anyone who calls themselves an anarchist could abandon the working class. I agree that that the working class has been battered, and that unions are not just very weak but also very moderate (with a few notable exceptions), I'd even say that small groups of people can take actions to defend something and that's fine, but real change will only come through the mass involvement of the working class, there's no chance of a small group of people doing anything that will cause the capitalist system to collapse and a (genuinely) socialist system to emerge.
I just find it odd that someone could subscribe to a viewpoint which says that there should not be rulers and that eschews the idea of heroes and formalised leaders, and think that actions from small groups are the way to bring about change - they aren't, they are a way to build for change, and at the same time win small battles (even if that small battle is just stopping caterpillar's production lines for a few hours & costing them money because of their involvement with israel).

But then that's the difference between a lifestyle activist and someone with more deeply rooted politics I guess. The lifestyle activist isn't so concerned with building towards a point of class consciousness and revolution, really just concerned with the small short-term defence/gains that can come from direct action.

I know I've not responded to everything in your post, it's all getting a bit tl;dr so I've just responded to the things that stood out in my memory, if there's something I've missed bring it up again
I think you said something which suggested a divide between peaceful action and direct action which I can't see again, I jsut wanted to point out that direct action can be peaceful, and usually is.. I can't find exactly what you said though so I might have misread first time

[Randal Graves]

Afraid I won't be coming, can't possibly afford it, and could only make the saturday/sunday anyway because of work.
Hope it goes well

[Randal Graves]

Logik, on 15 April 2011 - 08:47 PM, said:

If it was national meeting called in Birmingham then yes people would have transport to attend, I highly doubt people were bussed in just for an STW local meeting and if it was something important then it was probably just important that lots of people come. What was the vote on?
There were problems within STW and it is no longer SWP, as a result it has been effected nationwide as the leadership factioned off and are no longer SWP, they wanted not to really get involved on the side of branch organisation and move away from grassroots, which we reject.

I honestly can't remember now what the vote was, but it was for local meetings not for national ones.

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I see what you mean about the community thing, I would expect most comrades wouldn't have that kind of time, a lot of swp's have work or kids, and only do what they can, unlike our full-timers or those with more time on their hands whoare either specifically set to a certain role or managed to do a bit of everything. eitherway unless you know a full-timers then it will probably be formal

Yeah, but anarchists are in the same position really. It occured to me that the difference is this.. in IWW in 6 months I've had 2 or 3 emails on the mailing list saying "there is this community event happening and they need some volunteers to help them with it, can anyone do it?" and each time a couple of people have said yes.. in SWP, it would be "there is this community event happening, and can anyone come and do a stall" and of course people would say yes.
The difference being that for IWW by helping a community event, you help build the community. By building the community you build class consciousness and the IWW and by doing that you move closer to a revolutionary possibility.
For SWP it's a case of by being at a community event, you build the party. By building the party you build class consciousness and community and move closer to a revolutionary possibility.

Now I'm not saying one is better than the other, they both have the same aims (building class consciousness, community and ultimately revolution), they just go about it in a different order, and for me the order the IWW goes about it makes more sense.
For IWW, the politics is implicit in seeking to build a community, for SWP it needs to be explicit, and sometimes - perhaps even a lot of the time - that kind of explicit politics at what are essentially non-political events does not go down well.

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I wasn't trying to use genoa as a SWP unique thing, I reread and it seems like it, im just saying that we do get involved, not just like SP or AWL other groups who do nothing but work from the back of us, they have no organisation apart from themselves and follow some weird distortions of communism that im scared of .

fair enough and yeah I don't understand AWL, though I've not read very much of their offerings, they seem like they might be a renamed Liberal Marxism, ie: people who think Marxism sounds great but don't actually want to do any of the things that are needed to make it fucking happen, and in failing to do so constantly sell out the working class to the liberal end of the ruling class.
I also agree that SWP are much more active and willing to be physically involved than other left groups outside of anarchists and the odd unaligned activist.

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But these kinds of actions should be the exception, actions should really be about building a movement,

Agreed, but I think mass action should involve more than 20-50, but its a start.

The problem with UKuncut is, that because it is so unstructured, when it comes to talking about alternatives, it won't be able to set any apart from those who have set alternatives, because it lacks strucuture and any attempt to set principles and aims will cause it to fall apart unless they form a group, but I doubt that they will set alternatives or aims and principles because at the moment its a group based on direct action which is broad and open and allows people no matter what their politics to get involved, which is what it will always remain.

It is almost coming to the point of constant direct action with no impact, because there is not an aim apart from making corperations pay tax and for that to happen, you have to target the MP's and lords.

Well, UK Uncut is pretty much a single issue campaign group, with two aims - one is to bring tax avoidance to the publics attention (done pretty well here) & try to change some of the laws around it (disagree about targetting MPs and Lords, the campaign has achieved an NAO investigation into how HMRC handles large tax avoidance cases and a select committee investigation into tax avoidance - bound to be whitewashes admittedly but you don't have to target MPs to get those things).
The other aim is to show how the cuts are not necessary or fair - and the way polls have changed since october last year shows that someone has been having success in this respect - I wouldn't for any second want to suggest that it's all down to UK Uncut because that would be ludicrous, I don't think it's really possible to try to untangle the effect from all the different things that have happened, from the student protests to the continued working of groups like SWP and local anti-cuts groups up and down the country (I'm discounted March 26th because I've not seen any polls since then), and the actual efects of cuts starting to be seen by people whose jobs have come under threat, or council budget cuts ending services that people use or rely on etc.. plus all the other campaigns and the NHS stuff.. but I would definitely include UK Uncut in that as an important part of it.

Mass action should definitely involve more than 20-50 people, no doubt about that. A few thousand were out on oxford street on the 26th though, and I would guess that on the national days of action there have been a few thousand out around the country. I just don't think action should be rejected because it's not mass action, as long as there is either the desire to use that action to build future stuff, or a definite short-term goal that can be achieved (such as stopping those particular hawk jets getting shipped to indonesia, or delaying at huge cost the building of a road or increasing the security costs of Balfour Beatties AGM so much that they stopped being involved with the Ilisu dam)

UK Uncut is not a revolutionary movement, it doesn't aim to be. That doesn't remove it's value which has been, along with the wider student movement, and the hangover of the failure of the iraq war marhces, to help radicalise people in terms of the kind of action they are willing to take. A couple of days ago, a group occupied a youth centre in Rubery (near birmingham).. now I would think this was organised with the knowledge and consent of the youth centre, but the fact is that these kids no longer see a petition as the way to save their youth centre, they occupy!
All this helps to build towards a generally more radical working class.
I hope it all acts to undermine the TUC, and either radicalise the unions, or radicalise the workers so they start looking for more radical answers to their workplace struggles - whether that comes from groups like SWP or IWW I don't really care (well that's not entirely true, I'd obviously like them to come to the same place as me, but if they don't I'm not so bothered, as long as they are getting more radical, more militant).


Having said all that, I'm reading Ian Bone (of Class War fame) autobiography at the moment, and he said this and it made me think of this conversation:

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I'd been in the dole office when news of the bombing of Robert Carr's house had come through - greeted with hilarity and punched fists by our Dole Express readers. But in reality, I'd always thought bombings were a sign of failure, a sign of giving up on the woking class in favour of a few (self-appointed) revolutionaries acting (in their own eyes) on behalf of the working class. In reality this was not "on behalf of" but "instead of". You can't blow up a class relationship after all

(He is talking about spending time with some of the Angry Brigade who were out on bail whilst he was a student, or just after uni, in Swansea)

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think you said something which suggested a divide between peaceful action and direct action which I can't see again,

er I did?

my memory probably made that up then

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Randal Graves, on 15 April 2011 - 08:33 PM, said:

Afraid I won't be coming, can't possibly afford it, and could only make the saturday/sunday anyway because of work.
Hope it goes well

call them up and see if you can get around it, or simply go unemployed? The money should not stop you from coming, get it waived man.


you must come!

yeah, well I might to talk someone here about that but even blagging my way in for free I'm not sure about it, I need to keep as much money as I can right now just in case of unforeseen expenses even though that shouldn't be a problem.

[Randal Graves]

yeah, I saw two videos and that guy is a dick quite frankly.
The only way that his attitude can even slightly be justified is if he had already asked nicely that the swp did not use the megaphone and instead joined in with the actual protest which was a snogathon, which was then ignored.
But to claim he's an anarchist and then try to control exactly what happens on a demo is a bit :hmm: imo

otoh swp turn up to things and do try to hijack them - in Birmingham some egyptians organised a solidarity demo and swp turned up with a megaphone and instead of asking the egyptian guys what they would like to do, would any of them like speak etc. they just started talking on it, and not even stuff which was actually directly relevant to the egypt solidarity stuff, but also stuff about the luton edl demo the next week (yes I do see how it ties in, but it's not directly relevant), about cuts (I mean they even asked me if I wanted to talk about UK Uncut, which I declined).
They didn't actually ask the egyptian guys if they wanted to talk, but one of the egyptian guys asked them and they said yes.
Then as the demo marched off, and the egyptian guys were chanting something in Arabic, the SWP person with the megaphone and another SWP guy tried to get a different chant going (I can't remember which it was now, it was a call and return type chant, I say Mubarak, you say out or something)
There's a history of a lack of respect for other peoples demos with the SWP, and that history means that sometimes the SWP simply isn't welcome. What they should have done is come along and just joined in. I'm sure there are SWP activists who would have joined the snogathon, they didn't need to try to push the fact that they are from SWP.
The difference is between supporting and action and trying to make it seem like it's yours.

(I also heard that they were talking about libya on the megaphone at the John Snow demo which makes no sense, I mean if you're going to turn up with a megaphone at least make sure what you're saying is relevant to that demo - I don't actually know if that's true or not, but it wouldn't suprise me)

I don't for a second think that guy's action/attitude was correct or justified btw, but if you don't understand where that anger comes from or why it might have been out of order for the SWP to act how they did at that demo*, then you need to think about it hard.

*obviously I wasn't there so I don't actually know what happened or if they were out of order or not, I just know from my (both recent and past) experiences of how SWP activists can and do act on demos, as to what might have happened to lead up to this outburst.

re: marxism, Accomodation isn't a problem, I can stay with friends in London.

This post has been edited by Randal Graves: 17 April 2011 - 12:27 PM