Freedom newspaper critique by John Desmond

UNFORTUNATELY, I do not know whether all of the contents of Chris Draper’s long-running critique & post-mortem examination of the death of the Freedom newspaper are factually correct. However, in general, they fully accord with my long-held suspicions about the ignominious and inexorable decline of the Freedom Collective, which I arrived at wholly independently of Chris Draper. 

I began to harbour my suspicions about the Freedom Press collective about five years ago; when I realized that it strongly resembled other third sector organizations that I knew, and which I classify as organizational enclaves.  My definition of an organizational enclave is ‘an organization or part of an organization which isolates itself from its external environment’. The data that I adduce to classify the Freedom Press collective as an organizational enclave comprise two sets of back copies of the newspaper, my own set and the skeletal set in the Bodleian Library, and my experiences of the collective. During the last five years, I have refined my concept of third sector organizational enclaves with recourse to the concept of directional discourse, which I define as ‘discourse which is produced in a hierarchy’. In addition, I have written a paper about third sector organizational enclaves.

Obviously, a blog is not an appropriate place in which to reproduce a paper. However, I can very briefly outline its contents. The paper has two functions:
1. it is a framework of analysis that enables the Freedom Press collective to be understood as an organizational enclave
2. it is a matrix into which can be inserted the enclavic behaviours of the Freedom Press collective.

In the paper, I analyse third sector organizational enclaves about three sets of characteristics:
1. the behaviours of their centres of power
2. the mentalities of their centres of power
3. the directional discourse in such enclaves.
i. The centres of power in third sector organizational enclaves establish themselves like any centre of power, clandestinely, with recourse to subterfuge. Once a centre of power is established, it will ensure that the organization ignores its external environment. Moreover, the centre of power will then clandestinely displace the legitimate goal of the organization with the illegitimate goal of protecting its own power. When the centre of power succeeds in its goal, it effectively takes over and, de facto, becomes the organization.
ii. The centres of power of third sector organizational enclaves have three negative mental characteristics. They: a. concentrate upon the internal environment while ignoring the external environment of the organization b. have a low awareness of their situation c. are deluded. Two additional negative characteristics of such enclaves can be inferred from the characteristics just identified. Such enclaves are seedbeds of delusions and are psychologically harmful.
iii. Third sector organizational enclaves imply two types of directional discourse, descending discourse and ascending discourse. The centres of power of such enclaves isolate themselves within the organization by constraining both the descending discourse that they produce and the ascending discourse that is produced by the other people in the organization.

Descending discourse: The centre of power of a third sector organizational enclave constrains its descending discourse about two types of information. First, the centre of power constrains its discourse about the decision-making that occurs in the organization, for example, about who in the organization makes decisions, when they make them and where they make them. Moreover, if the centre of power reveals its decision, it will reveal its decision after the decision has been made. Second, the centre of power constrains its discourse about the external issues that affect the organization.

Ascending discourse: The centre of power of a third sector organizational enclave constrains the ascending discourse that is produced in the organization by proscribing adequate opportunities for the other people in the organization to produce it and by ignoring any ascending discourse that they do produce. Third sector organizational enclaves are the very opposite of anarchist collectives. Consequently, the fact that the Freedom Press collective is classifiable as a third sector organizational enclave begs the extremely perplexing issue about the functioning of the Friends of Freedom Press Ltd. I should be very happy to make a presentation of my paper to the Northern Voices' affinity group and to contribute to a discussion about any issues that might arise from my presentation, for example:
1. the issue about the Friends of Freedom Press
2. the issue about the Freedom Press collective
3. the issue about the death of the Freedom newspaper
4. the issue about where anarchism goes from here.

John Desmond: 31st March 2015