Interested in finding out more about anarchism and anarchist ideas?
Come along to the Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair 2018 which will be taking place at Partisan, 19 Cheetham Hill Road, M4 4FY on Saturday 1st December from 11am until 6pm.
This is a free event.
On November 30 and December 1, the 2018 G20 summit will bring together the rulers of the 20 most powerful nations for a meeting in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In the third installment of our coverage of the 2018 G20 summit, our international correspondents describe the unprecedentedly massive security operation that is accompanying this summit, the international protest mobilization, and police violence against the poor population in the periphery.
The government announced on Monday, November 19 that it will be tightening border controls, focusing on the border triangle with Uruguay and Brazil as well as the international airport. They claimed to have “extensive international lists” and that they “will strictly prevent the entry of radical G20 protesters.” In case friends and activists are detained at the airport, the Protest Alliance has set up a round-the-clock legal emergency service.
On…
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Unite Community have finally started confirming some of the details for their upcoming day of action against Universal Credit. Obviously, this is all pretty inadequate, especially the late notice, since these events would be a lot more powerful if they were properly promoted at jobcentres and managed to attract claimants from outside the usual activist circles, which is unlikely at this kind of timescale; but any kind of resistance around social issues like Universal Credit is better than just passively watching the latest developments in the Brexit soap opera. If you’re interested in helping plan serious resistance around welfare reform, it might be worth going along and seeing if anyone there might be up for organising something more concerted than just a badly-promoted day of action once or twice a year.
And as a quick reminder, other stuff coming up this week includes:
Thursday 29th: Electricians’ meeting in London
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Êvarbaş Hevalno!
We’re enormously happy to say that the launch meeting for London Kurdistan Solidarity (of which this is the email address) will be next Friday, the 30th of November, at LARC in Whitechapel. The meeting will have a discussion of the Kurdish Freedom Movement’s past and present, and the new group’s basic aims and principles, before a social where we can get to know each other better. The Facebook event is below, and send us any emails here if you’ve further questions.
Hope to see you there!
A few days ago, we wrote this piece about proposals from Thurrock Council to refurbish their civic centre in New Road, Grays: Never mind us plebs, just build yourselves some shiny new offices! Since then, the proposals were subjected to questioning on Tuesday 20.11 by the council’s Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee: Officers defend plans for £200,000 plus ‘grand entrance’ to council offices. The plans will now go to the council’s cabinet who will decide if the project can move to the next stage which will be a public consultation.
Take a really close, careful look at the report in the Thurrock Independent because it’s actually quite revealing. It really does sound like the council officers had to put in a lot of work to convince the scrutiny committee that this scheme was needed. You could be forgiven for thinking that they may have their work cut out convincing the…
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We are a network of women standing up against the unlawful occupation of Afrin by the Turkish state and its collaborating jihadist groups. On February 8th 2018 Kongra Star started the “Women Rise up For Afrin” campaign in Afrin, focusing mainly on the Middle East. In Europe and South America, it started on the International Women’s Day, on March 8th 2018, when women from all over the world began taking part in different activities against the Turkish occupation. The actions you carried out for Women Rise Up For Afrin had a lot of impact around the world and made visible Turkish true colours and intentions.
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A great deal of B.S. has emanated from the chattering classes in recent years around this term. You’d be forgiven for thinking it originated in academia, where vested interests compete for the right/privilege of influencing impressionable minds. We are told that debate is being shut down, that intellectual development will be stunted if student bodies decline to entertain purveyors of hackneyed reactionary views, which might provide a stimulating foil to contemporary orthodoxy. Trouble is, we’ve heard it all before.
Fascism never took off in Britain, in the sense that it never gained the executive and slaughtered or imprisoned a significant proportion of the population, as it did in many other countries. This despite it having a sizeable constituency, being well funded and having the sympathy of the establishment. The bitter experience of Italy, Germany, Portugal and Spain taught that appealing to the bourgeois ‘authorities’ to uphold constitutional values was futile. It turned out they would only ban events that threatened good civic order and commerce.
Such appeals to decency and morality were taken as signs of weakness, and only emboldened the fascists. Physical superiority was central to fascist ideology, so the only way to halt their progress was to beat them at their own game. Time and again, their attempts to insert a respectable presence into a community through paper sales and public meetings were thwarted by Working Class people, not all politically affiliated, who would rather see a riot in their back yard than a fascist parade.
In 1945, after six years of war against Nazi Germany, a British labour government permitted the fascists detained under Regulation 18b to resume their activities, and gave them a police escort wherever they went. They were joined by Axis prisoners of war who were supposedly being rehabilitated. Apart from Spain and Portugal, which retained fascist governments, the only country in Europe where it was legal to glorify Hitler and the holocaust was Britain.
Mosely’s comeback was thwarted by the 43 Group, formed by Jewish ex-service personnel and their allies. Their game was to knock over the speakers’ platform, forcing the cops to shut the event on public order grounds. This task would be accomplished by selected ‘commandoes’, many of whom had actually performed that role during the war. They would quietly take their places in the hall, then at a pre-arranged signal charge in wedge formation at the line of stewards protecting the platform. A large and well-stewarded meeting could require several wedges, precisely timed and co-ordinated. Other supporters would heckle and pick fights in the audience.
Nor did they set out to stifle debate. In his eponymous history of the 43 Group (highly recommended) Morris Beckman recalls that often dialogue with fascist supporters commenced after they had received a good hiding, and there were defections at all levels. Politicians and other worthies wrung their hands in shame as the Working Class cleaned up its own mess.
Rough justice was similarly dished out by London’s Caribbean migrants in the 1950’s and by the regional Asian Youth Movements of the 1970’s. The phrase “no platform” was well established by the time I first experienced antifascism at the end of that decade. It isn’t about supplication; it’s a simple ultimatum to those in power: “Call your dogs off or we’ll tear the place up”.
Your original snowflakes weren’t students asking for safe space, they were Jewish commandoes, their wives, girlfriends and mates, Asian youths, rude boys, miners, dockers, Brighton rockers, and East End pugilists looking after their manor. There isn’t, and never has been, a right to free speech – liberals don’t go asking the state to grant it. For a detailed explanation of how and why the state grants rights, see here: It’s a useful social skill not to piss off those around you to the extent they want to hurt you. So if your career path relies on vilifying, excluding or slandering the poor, migrants, LGBT people etc, making others fear for their safety, and you fear for your safety as a result, that’s fine by me. If you’ve got a contentious opinion you aren’t prepared to physically stand up for, I won’t give it the time of day.
In the midst of a devastating civil war, Kurds in Northern Syria, are building a multi-cultural society based on feminism, ecology, and direct democracy. How can these ideas lead to a lasting peace in the Middle East? What are their implications for radical politics in the West? What is is about the social structures of Rojava that inspires the fierce loyalty of its defenders and its people?
Join Debbie Bookchin and David Graeber at the DJAM Lecture Theatre SOAS Russell Square Campus to discuss these issues Sunday November 25 from 5PM to 7PM at an event to launch the new publication Make Rojava Green Again by the Internationalist Commune in Rojava. The book will be available to buy and all proceeds from sales of the book support the work of the Internationalist Commune.
More information here:
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