Colin Ward, Class Struggle & Everyday Life

Approaches to Our Philosophical Enterprise

 

HOW do the methods of those of us who are the anarchist critics of the current collective in control of Freedom Press, differ from theirs in reality?  We critics of those who may now portray themselves as the 'anarchist mainstream', are indeed a mixed bunch:  from historians, anthropologists, sociologists, to trade unionists; teachers; electricians; a former bin-man; social workers; a retired make-up artist; peace activists; university lecturers; the editor of Northern Voices and the editor of Anarchist Voices, some of us who would identify with 'class struggle', others who wouldn't.  Within the realm of contemporary anarchism the prolific writer Colin Ward has been utilised by some of us to distinguish our distinctive position and methodology, from those who circumstances have brought us into conflict.

 

Our approach, so far as I understand it, and others among us may have a different view, is one of grappling with the problems of everyday life from within, while I feel those who would see it differently would want to impose a set of values on society from outside.  The ethnomethodologists used to disparagingly dismiss this approach as the 'cookbook method' of seeking inert recipes to force into place. 

 

To give justice to the Freedom Collective* and people like Nick Heath of A.F. and Iain McKay of Black Flag, let  me readily admit that their position is common in the Western tradition of thought, and Raymond Plant in his book 'Modern Political Thought', wrote:

'Plato reflected... on the confusions and contradictions of conventional morality in Athens and felt compelled by that confusion to seek a form of society in which humans could properly flourish on the basis of a set of values which transcended the everyday world, the Forms and Ideas.  These to be known only to the philosopher.  The task of political theory there was to redeem the everyday world by leaving it behind and identifying a set of values which could found society on a different and more secure basis.'

 

This seemingly is the approach of most Marxists today, and some anarchists like McKay and Heath, who broadly speaking adopt the same idea of how to transform societies.  Michael Walzer has argued in his book 'Sphere of Justice' that this approach can't be the foundation for practical reasoning about values, and he offers us the two contrasting viewpoints:

'One way to begin the philosophical enterprise – perhaps the original way – is to walk out of the cave, leave the city, climb the mountain, fashion for oneself (what can never be fashioned by ordinary men and women) an objective and universal standpoint....  But I mean to stand in the cave, in the city, on the ground.  Another way of doing philosophy is to interpret to one's fellow citizens the world of meanings that we share.  Justice and equality can conceivably be worked out as philosophical artifacts, but a just or egalitarian society cannot be.  If such a society isn't already here – hidden as it were, in our concepts and categories – we shall never know it concretely or realise it in fact.'

 

This last sentence could well have been written by the distinguished anarchist writer (formerly one of the Friends of Freedom Press**) Colin Ward.  It seems to some of us that the theoreticians who are now dominating on the left, and among the contemporary anarchists, do not accept that we don't need yet another set of values to buck-up society, but rather, we need to throw into relief the values and local knowledge that are already embedded inside our localised way of life.  It is our dedication to the work of being embedded inside the ethos of the everyday that distinguishes our methodology and concern for social transformation from that of those who, even though they may call themselves 'anarchists', would try to impose an inert set of values upon society.


*    The day-to-day managers of Freedom Press.
**  The trustees of Freedom Press.

Under the Black Flag!

IN an e-mail extract below Iain McKay questions the concern of some of us on the Northern Voices Blog have about the plight of Freedom Press in particular and the left press in general, saying:

'All in all, I'm not sure why you are doing this Brian – all you seem to be doing is alienating people. ....  Given what you have written about me all I can say is that I would suggest your readers take everything you write with a very large pinch of salt.  All in all, I really do have better things to do that (sic) to reply to obvious distortions and insults.  If you want to help build the anarchist movement in the UK, well, that would be good but, to be honest, it does not look like you want to do that – if you did, you would not be writing such nonsense....  if you want to do something constructive then please consider getting involved with Black Flag – like the “Freedom” Kropotkin helped create, it is a communist-anarchist journal...' 

Comrade McKay then patronises me suggesting:

'If that (Black Flag) is not your version of anarchism, get involved with something more suitable for you (apparently “Anarchist Voices” is still going).' 

The fact is that, as I have already pointed out, I have never to my mind ever written anything about Iain McKay.  So far as I know I have never set eyes on him, and though I know the name I cannot recall having read anything he has written much beyond his recent e-mails to me.  Other people have remarked upon him and what he has written, but I have no pre-conceived ideas about him. 

As an alternative to the historic publication Freedom (first published 1886), which was put to death last year, Mr. McKay proffers Black Flag (circa 1970).  It is hard to take Iain McKay seriously here if only because, it seems to me, that Black Flag had its historical origins in a failed projected that I was involved in, in the 1960s.  Black Flag evolved out of a charitable venture called Black Cross which was set-up by Albert Meltzer and Stuart Christie.  In the early 1960s, both Stuart Christie and I took part in a campaign organised by the young Spanish anarchists of the F.I.J.L. to discourage tourism in Spain as part of the general struggle against the Franco regime. In the end, we clearly failed to discourage tourism to Spain; and in August 1964, Stuart Christie was arrested in Spain and served three years of a 20-year sentence.  For my part and that of my then wife, we were involved in research and propaganda, which involved us in providing photographs of shanty towns around Barcelona and Barcelonetta.  We sent reports of working and living conditions in Spain and later Gibraltar to our contacts in Paris for publication in the F.I.J.L. the Spanish underground periodical Nueva Senda as well as providing reports for 'World Labour News', 'Worker's Voice' and 'Direct Action' in the UK.  

When he came out of prison, Stuart Christie was taken care of by Albert Meltzer and, as I understand it, they first formed the Black Cross and later the journal Black Flag.  It may well be that the Black Cross did its job in providing assistance for prisoners held in the jails of General Franco,  but Black Flag was never a publication which had any significant status in the British labour movement.  I joined a trade union in 1957 – the ETU as an apprentice electrician; but, in all my years on the shop-floor I have never known a working man or woman who had ever heard of a publication called Black Flag.  Certainly none of the blacklisted electricians that I'm involved campaigning with today will have heard of such an obscure journal.   Its exotic and melodramatic contents and title may well appeal to young students but not to the working people and trade unionists, I know.   

Stuart Christie knows my views on what happened in the 1960s, and he knows that I am critical of his historic aloofness with regard to the British labour movement to which I belong as a lay trade union official, and his literary failure to seriously re-examine what transpired at the time of our involvement with the Spanish resistance to Franco.  However, having said all that, when Tameside Trade Union Council published its tribute to the 70^th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006, Stuart had no hesitation, when at my request, it came to him writing an introduction in our booklet (see 'Other publications' on this Blog).    

If Iain McKay had owt about him he would know that I already edit the regional political and cultural publication Northern Voices, perhaps he unaware of this because he lives in London and works at a University.  Because it is so well publicised he ought, however, to be aware of my involvement in the campaign against the blacklist in the British building trade if only because since 2009, when the Blacklist Support Group was set up, there has been a London aspect to this struggle.

& Iain McKay's Misplaced Critique!

BELOW Iain McKay addresses an e-mail to me in which he gives me

too much credit.  I can only assume that has responded in

such haste that he has failed to notice that I am not the author

of the critique on which he exercises so much passion. 

The author of all the critiques about 'Who Killed Freedom'

is clearly Christopher Draper who lives in Llandudno, and

though Mr. Draper writes for Northern Voices he is, as any one who

knows him will realise, very much his own man.  Iain ought to

understand that the words Northern Voices is in the plural, and

 is not one of those smelly little orthodoxies in which everyone speaks in chorus.

Dear Brian,

I'm sick and tired of your petty insults and smearing good comrades -- I also don't appreciate you twisting of my words.
Here is what I actually wrote:
'And what of "Total Liberty"  ?  If this analysis were accurate then that should have gone from strength to strength.  If I remember correctly, it became 'Anarchist Voices' -- does that still exist? I can find issues up to 2010 on-line.  It looks like it "lost its way" long before Freedom did...' compare that to Brian's 'Flaunting his ignorance, McKay celebrates the demise of the magazine "Anarchist Voices", which "lost its way long before FREEDOM did" but I can reassure Iain that it’s alive and well...'


The bad faith and dishonesty is clear. ' Flaunting my ignorance'... oh hum.  I guess that my going through the 'Freedom' archives from the 1880s to the 1960s to produce a Peter Kropotkin anthology amount to nothing... as does my reading of the paper from the late-1980s -- so I have 'flick[ed] through copies of FREEDOM before 2001.  Rest assured, the Freedom of the 1880s to 1930s was class-struggle focused, was communist-anarchist -- even if it opened its columns to others (and why not, if the articles are of sufficient interest and quality).   It is interesting to note that a single quote from 1919 apparently overturns the self-proclaimed communist-anarchist position 'Freedom' had from 1886.  Its recreation in the 1930s was also on this basis.  This did not exclude other anarchists writing for it -- as did other anarchists after 2001.  Something I have noted many times but which Brian fails to acknowledge.


So, all in all, I'm not sure why you are doing this Brian -- all you seem to be achieving is alienating people. Your insults on Richard Griffin are disgraceful (he is no 'useful idiot' and to suggest so shows you do not know him).   I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve by these poisonous emails -- given what you have written about me all I can say is that I would suggest that your readers take everything you write with a very large pinch of salt.   All in all, I really do have better things to do that reply to obvious distortions and insults. 


If you want to help build the anarchist movement in the UK, well, that would be good but, to be honest, it does not look like you want to do that -- if you did, you would not be writing such nonsense.   For the other people cc-ed into these bile-filled emails, if you want to do something constructive then please consider getting involved with Black Flag -- like the 'Freedom' Kropotkin helped create, it is a communist-anarchist journal. If that is not your version of anarchism, get involved with something more suitable for you (apparently 'Anarchist Voices' is still going).

Iain (McKay)

Who Killed FREEDOM?: update two: April 2015

by Christopher Draper

IN 2014 the world’s oldest radical newspaper, FREEDOM, ceased publication. In February 2015 I (with help from NV comrades) identified the culprits and causes of its destruction in a detailed critique, 'Who Killed FREEDOM?' (available on this website). If you’ve been following the thread, here’s the latest update…



1. Despite their angry responses not one member of the FREEDOM collective has had the courage to accept our challenge to come up North and publicly debate Who Killed FREEDOM? at a Manchester Bookfair.



2. Two recent FREEDOM respondents, Iain McKay and Richard Griffin, are no exceptions. Both signally failed to offer any substantive analysis of why a paper that had survived so long through such a variety of adverse circumstances should now find it impossible to continue. As the authors of an excellent analysis of the failure of alternative organisations observed:
'If we refrain from rigorous criticism for fear of upsetting our friends we can be sure our enemies will be much less restrained and when reality eventually kicks in our initiatives will continue to collapse' ('What a Way to Run a Railroad', Commedia, 1985).


The FREEDOM collective’s continuing refusal to accept responsibility or properly analyse its own failure adds insult to injury.



3. Both McKay and Griffin have nothing to say about key issues such as FREEDOM’s refusal to print criticism of Anarchist Federation intimidation or the paper’s censorship of further specified articles. Neither confronts the fundamental criticism that FREEDOM abandoned its core role of fostering open-minded anarchist debate and instead introduced a regime of simplistic, sub-Marxist rhetoric enlivened by images of masked, missile-throwing juveniles.



4. When McKay claims FREEDOM from “the 1880’s until the 1940’s was always a class-struggle journal” he exemplifies his limited understanding of the FREEDOM tradition perhaps best illustrated by an example that appears in FREEDOM’s centenary edition, published in October 1986.  When Tom Keell, the paper’s editor in 1919 heard that anarchist William Charles Owen had returned to England he asked him to write for FREEDOM.  As Owen had grown sceptical of the merits of communism he wrote back pointing out that as an Individualist he thought his writings might not suit the readers of an Anarchist Communist paper, 'but on being told we were Anarchists first and foremost, he consented'. That is the point, for 115 years FREEDOM was 'Anarchist first and foremost'.  From 2001, in the words of editor Simon Saunders, FREEDOM 'enforced a strict class first line'. 



5. Griffin claims his contributions to FREEDOM on 'gardening, architecture, skateboarding etc' lacked class analysis and still got published.  Sadly he failed to draw the obvious conclusion that he served the collective as a 'useful idiot'.  His offerings challenged nobody, he had and apparently still has, nothing to say about the collective’s censorship or abusive treatment of critical contributors.  His sycophantic attitude is embarrassingly obvious from his pat on the back to Comrade McKay,  'Well said Iain, couldn’t have put it better myself'. 



6. It is apparent to impartial observers that Iain McKay and Simon Saunders, assisted by cabin boy Griffin are better suited to sailing off into the sunset under the 'Black Flag' of vicious old sea-dog, Captain Meltzer (deceased) who never let facts get in the way of a good story.  It is to my profound regret that before doing so they first drove the graceful old flagship FREEDOM onto the rocks.

7. Flaunting his ignorance, McKay celebrates the demise of the magazine 'Anarchist Voices', which 'lost its way long before FREEDOM did' but  I can reassure Iain that it’s alive and well and the current issue contains some excellent articles, including one by myself and a chap named Richard Griffin!   Interestingly, in his 'Anarchist Voices' piece Griffin reveals that he actually stopped reading FREEDOM many years ago but omits to explain whether it was his own or Iain McKay’s articles that caused him (along with many others) to loose interest in the paper.  



8. Echoing McKay’s mix of arrogance and ignorance, Griffin advises, 'Rather than spending hours on this (critique) why don’t you produce and distribute something along the lines you think FREEDOM should have taken?'  It’s clearly escaped Griffin’s attention that besides writing for 'Anarchist Voices' us Northern anarchists have also recently produced 'Boys on the Blacklist' and 'Northern Voices' magazine.  Anarchist campaigns and literature that not are only exemplify lots of imaginative ideas absent from FREEDOM but also popular and bought by ordinary people uninterested in the tired, formulaic nonsense trotted out by recent FREEDOM editors (copies available from the editor of this website).  For further ideas Griffin and McKay could also flick through copies of FREEDOM before 2001 where they’ll readily find articles written by myself and others that don’t simply reduce to their latter-day, 'fight capitalism and create heaven on earth' formula.  If they’re inspired enough they might belatedly reconsider another idea of ours, proposed back in 2001, that FREEDOM practices what anarchism preaches and introduce federated editorial control  (ie - each region contributing a couple of pages per issue through a local editor).  Despite the rhetoric, London wouldn’t accept our idea, retained central control and cultivated group-think.



9. None of this should have happened. Formally, the assets of FREEDOM are not ultimately controlled by the editorial collective but safeguarded by a Board, 'THE FRIENDS OF FREEDOM PRESS Ltd (FFP)'.  As the main purpose of the enterprise is to publish the newspaper FREEDOM if it ceased then FFP are supposed to step in and appoint others to take over production but this did not happen. We will, in the course of time, reveal exactly what has been going on at FFP, for the time being we will simply say all is not well.  In 1982 the FFP Board was constituted with seven directors.  There has been much irregularity since and suffice it to say there is now urgent need to appoint additional directors with integrity and political credibility to restore proper oversight of the activities of the collective and recommence publication of FREEDOM. On the 24th June 2015 FFP are scheduled to hold a meeting to consider the appointment of two new directors; long-time peace activist, Ernest Rodker and libertarian writer and academic, Dr. David Goodway.  Predictably, the collective are already scheming to promote their own tame, rival candidates so the outcome of the Board meeting will have critical significance.  The result is not a foregone conclusion as the legitimacy of some Directors is open to challenge and there is a serious issue of conflict of interest. We will most assuredly reveal more in a future update.

Tussle Over Death of 'Freedom'

IAIN Mckay answers Chris Draper's Critique in an e-mail comment below:

'(CHRIS Draper writes) - Angry members of the collective attempted to portray my critique as mere personal criticism and proffered no substantive refutation'

 I'm glad to see that members of the Freedom collective have echoed my comments on these disgraceful emails being no more than personal attacks.

 I have written for Freedom but never been a member of the collective -- I have always found the editors to be open to printing articles from many viewpoints and they regularly put things into the paper I wish they hadn't.  The notion that Freedom closed its doors to other views is wrong -- it opened them and this seemed bother the reformist-liberals (as can be seen from the quotes from Jonathan Simcock below).

"It appears the destructive implications of regime-change engineered by Toby Crowe were presciently anticipated in Spring 2004 by Jonathan Simcock of Total Liberty in the magazine’s editorial column:   'Sadly, the longstanding flagship of British Anarchist journals, namely FREEDOM, has increasingly abandoned the broader church of Anarchist ideas, and has metamorphosed into a poorer version of Black Flag’.”

 A 'poorer version of Black Flag' is far better than being a poorer version of 'Total Liberty' (which showed how well it knew anarchism by proclaiming the so-called "Libertarian Alliance" as allies!).  As for "the broader church" (church, really?) of anarchism, Freedom regularly put in articles from a wide range of views -- which provoked responses from other readers.

In the following edition, Simcock rammed home his analysis and critique:
'To reach ordinary people Anarchist papers need to re-evaluate Anarchist ideas and to hold an open debate. I am afraid the regular dose of 19th century Marxist and Class Struggle dominated viewpoints to be seen in FREEDOM will repel not attract people to anarchism.  FREEDOM has lost its way.' 

The notion that class struggle has something to do with '19th century Marxist' views is pretty ignorant of the views of the anarchists who founded Freedom in 1886 -- and relaunched it in 1936. It is nice to see that Simcock would not be happy to see Freedom opened up to the likes of, say, Kropotkin...

 And what of 'Total Liberty' ? If this analysis were accurate then that should have gone from strength to strength. If I remember correctly, it became 'Anarchist Voices' -- does that still exist?  I can find issues up to 2010 on-line.  It looks like it "lost its way" long before Freedom did...

As Richard noted, 'Black Flag' is still going and if you want to do something constructive for anarchism in the UK rather than ignorantly slang others off, we would like to hear from you.  It's is, as noted, an anarcho-communist paper -- in the same way that Freedom was when Kropotkin helped found it.

The major problem with the movement seems to be an unwillingness for people to get actively involved in projects -- that is the fundamental reason why Freedom is no more.  Perhaps rather than produce nasty little attacks on individuals, perhaps a more constructive activity could be found? Show us all how it is done... that would be a nice change.