Working Class Heroes with nothing to do

Spikymike on libcom

Jan 16 2018 18:15

Not unsurprisingly this split in the AF has attracted some unwanted interest from other of the tiny groups claiming their place in the anarchist and communist milieu - from some confused sympathy for the 'Communist Anarchism' element by members of the SPGB to outright hostility towards both sides of the split and plain nastiness from the sectarians of the 'Northern Voices' outcasts, well known for their regular misinformation and lies directed at other anarchists. Not much sign here of cooperatively tapping in to any 'collective knowledge'.

INEVITABLY Christopher Draper's witty account of the decline and fall of the rather pretentiously labelled 'Anarchist Federation',  has stirred-up some chat room types who once spent their lives seeking out left-wing 'talking shops' in pub rooms.  Michael Ballard, who on libcom uses the pseudonym 'Spikymike'  and has lived in south Manchester for years, originates from the London-set and is one such figure.  He seems to have moved to the Midlands as a student and later settled down into  a career at Manchester City Council, ultimately rising through the incremental scales to ultimately reach the heights of Housing Manager.

Mr Ballard was very much a white-collar worker who fetishize the working class from afar.  He solemnly pontificates upon what he pretentiously describes as 'the anarchist and communist milieu'.  Milieu according to one dictionary means 'the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops'.  

Yet just now it's easy to see that something has 'occur[ed] and develop[ed]', with everything falling apart and with the Anarchist London Bookfair organisers throwing up their hands despair rather than risk another disaster like last year with the feminist constituency and the Trans community disputing with each other over the who has the right to use of the 'Ladies' toilets.

Mr. Ballard, who although now retired was always anxious to protect his status as a housing manager, has never been at the centre of any action in Greater Manchester.  Though, he talks here of the 'anarchist milieu', he has never described himself as an 'anarchist' and he usually hangs around meetings pontificating on the actions of others:  like the Manchester electricians fighting the blacklist who he challenged for their lack of consciousness of the 'class struggle' as a bit of a boss himself he knows all about 'class struggle'.  Normally, these people represent an interesting 'type' who want to preserve their double life, often have very little to do with themselves, and on a recent thread Ballard has described himself as 'a loner' reduced to putting comments on libcom.

Yet, the fall out which followed with Nick Heath's 'Anarchist Fed.' splitting up, was a natural consequence of the slippage in Mr. Heath's strangle-hold on the federation, after several provincial sections took unilateral action supporting the trans-sexuals faction by signing open letters, and denouncing the feminists and the bookfair organisers.   

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Libcom, Nationalism & the Cultural Dope!

  Cookbook Thinking on the Left

READING on the so-called 'anarchist' website libcom their recent analysis of the Manchester Arena Atrocity and an article on the rise  of  nationalistic popularism, I was impressed initially by the rapidity of their response to events.    But on closer examination we see the architecture of the arguments are built on sand.  Such exotic assertions as the pretentious Internationalist Communist Tendency [ICT] and its affiliate the CWO [Communist Workers Organisation]** presented on libcom can clearly be seen to be nonsense if we boil them down to their basic propositions:

The Brexit vote = [a] green light for bigots and racists everywhere. 

IMPERIALIST AGRESSION ABROAD =  INCREASED RACISM AT HOME.

The Turkish referendum = [a] green light for bigots and racists everywhere. 

Trump becoming President = [a] green light for bigots and racists everywhere. 

Our job = [to] undermine racism by stressing the fact that wage workers [world-wide] are in the same boat

The working class = a class of migrants and has been throughout capitalist history

 “Workers have no country”

Whatever other differences we have, we are united as a class by the fact that we are all the exploited victims

 'No war but the class war'.

Now read the orIginal piece entitled 'NATION or CLASS?' in full in all its drama:

'Imperialist aggression abroad means increased racism at home. The Brexit vote, like the victory of the AK party in the Turkish referendum, or Trump becoming President, have given the green light for bigots and racists everywhere. Attacks on people perceived to be outsiders have escalated dramatically. Some of this has been orchestrated by the state. Under the umbrella of “the war on terror” regimes around the world have a perfect excuse to lock up and murder anyone whose very existence might spoil the official picture of ‘the nation’.
'The working class is a class of migrants and has been throughout capitalist history. Let’s not fall for “nationalist” claptrap or defence of any country. When capitalists call on us to “defend the country” they are really calling on workers to die in defence of their property. “Workers have no country” as Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto. Whatever other differences we have, we are united as a class by the fact that we are all the exploited victims of capitalism. This makes the working class the international and internationalist class. Collectively it is the only force capable of putting an end to the infernal cycle of crisis and war. Today it’s not so much that we have a world to win – we have a world to save from a system which offers only social and environmental devastation.'

The basis of this so-called Marxist class analysis is that it treats working people as if they are cultural dopes and are constantly being tricked by events.    This can be understood by perusing the propositons they propound below:

Why should 'Imperialist aggression abroad = increased racism at home'?  
Why does 'The Brexit vote = [a] green light for bigots and racists everywhere'?
 Why does 'The Turkish referendum = [a] green light for bigots and racists everywhere'?
Why does 'Trump becoming President = [a] green light for bigots and racists everywhere'? 
Why is 'The working class = a class of migrants and has been throughout capitalist history'?
Why is there 'No war but the Class War'?  and if so how does it help us in our current situation?

Nothing is really explained for us in the text of either of the articles 'Nation or Class?' or 'The Manchester Arena Atrocity' account.

The problem with this kind of writing and analysis is that it is about using a formula or recipe to spin a tale so that the critique almost writes itself.  

Why is libcom, an anarchist website, publishing this kind of vulgar Marxism?  Why is it offering us this half-baked anarcho-marxism sometimes called anarcho-communism?

Simply because the anarchists around this website lack intellectual rigor.  Few of them seem to have served  a serious apprenticeship in practical anarchism or factory conditions.  Consequently, they have fallen under the influence of a kind of Sunday School League types like the former Manchester housing manager, Mike Ballard (revolutionary communist) from Chorlton or is it Didsbury?, and the former London librarian, Nick Heath of the Anarchist-Fed. These are both white-collar office staff creatures who promote the kind of clap-out thinking which prevails in the International Communist Tendency above, and which now dominates the libcom website. 

It makes no attempt to grasp why nationalism is so attactive to many working people, and why it represents something they are often prepared to die for in a way they are unwilling to throw down their lives in the class struggle. 

 *    The Internationalist Communist Tendency is a political international whose member organisations identify with the Italian left communist tradition. It was founded as the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party in 1983 as a result of a joint initiative by the Internationalist Communist Party (Battaglia Comunista) in Italy and the Communist Workers Organisation (CWO) in Britain. Its other affiliates are the Internationalist Workers Group / Groupe Internationaliste Ouvrier in the United States and Canada, the Gruppe Internationaler SozialistInnen (GIS) in Germany and a small French Section.
**   The Communist Workers Organisation (CWO) is a British left communist group and an affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency, formerly the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party. It publishes a quarterly magazine, Revolutionary Perspectives and distributes an agitational broadsheet Aurora.

NHS London March & advocates of anonymity

'SPIKYMIKE', otherwise known as the now retired Manchester City Council housing manager Mike Ballard, on libcom on Feb 6th, 2017 commenting on the forthcoming London NHS March on the 4th, March wrote:

'This will be big I'm sure but although I've attended a few local NHS demo's and picket lines in the north west over the last couple of years I can't bring myself to get up before 5am to catch a coach with a load of lefties down to London for a tramp around the big smoke - its bad for my health. There are some useful local campaigns around but the trade unions that will be at the forefront of this have hardly shown themselves able to mount any genuine solidarity action in the workplace where it matters (during the doctors strike fore instance) and one wonders how much of this effort will be about garnering support for the Labour Party in forthcoming elections rather than anything else?  Still it would be good to get some reports and feedback from London comrades on this. The NHS really is descending into something of a crisis - round here for instance with at least two local hospitals planning big cuts in beds just as the national news is highlighting the shortage of both beds and staff!!'

Well, it was indeed a 'big' demo, and there wasn't a red and black banner to be seen on the march. 

Yet the National Shop Steward's Network, otherwise known as a front for the Socialist Party, estimated the numbers and reported it thus:

'But this march of over 100,000, although some reports say double that attended, must be the start not the end of the campaign. The health unions and the TUC must call another national demonstration that could be absolutely massive. This would give health workers the confidence to take co-ordinated strike action, which we believe last year’s junior doctors’ dispute showed, would have the full support of patients and communities.'

On an early TUC march against the cuts some years ago, I had just come out of the Gent's Urinals at John Lewis and my heart skipped a beat when I saw the red and black banners blowing in the wind on Oxford Street.  It soon sank as the anti-climax set-in, especially as I scrutinised the feeble figures with their pigeon chests who were carrying the flags.  These bands of fellows were being followed by a bunch of press photographers hoping no doubt for something untoward to happen, and trailing behind these were the Metropolitan Police.

Last Saturday, there was no sign of the BLACK BLOC  or the anarchists with their pigeon chests, just an orderly well organized demo put on by Unite and the Peoples Assembly.

Meanwhile, on the anarchist FREEDOM webpage on February 4th, the FREEDOM 'publishing House' ran a story recommending demonstrators wear mask and entitled:  'Why covering your face at a protest is the right thing to do' by someone called Kevin Blowe.

Mr. Blowe writes that:

'In June 2015 Netpol launched a campaign to try to encourage activists to start covering their faces when taking part in demonstrations and marches.

'We saw this initiative as one of the few remaining ways of resisting the growth of intrusive surveillance on the streets, which sees police monitoring social media for images and live-streamed video, chatting to protesters in the guise of ‘facilitating’ their activism and routinely filming everyone. This data-gathering is overwhelmingly overt rather than involving undercover officers — and most of the information is handed over by ourselves without objection. It is also carried out on an almost industrial scale, intended to build up a picture of different social movements, their structures and alliances.'

This is an interesting little essay and very typical of the kind of psychological state of mind of those who inhabit the metropolitan bubble of paranoid politics with its cheap thrills for the pigeon chested.  Such an approach has no insight into what was moving the participants on last Saturday's March.

The point about the March to save the NHS was that it had mass support from people who wouldn't normally consider themselves 'activists', indeed it was probably supported by many of the officers policing the demo.

For the organisers to introduce bundles of masks wouldn't have encouraged a spirit of revolutionary fervour it would have inspired fear and alienation among the crowds.

Mike Ballard above is right to ask the question 'one wonders how much of this effort will be about garnering support for the Labour Party in forthcoming elections rather than anything else? '

Last Saturday's demo had much to do with boosting support for the Labour Party, and there is a real underlying danger that inconclusive demos of the kind we were involved in actually undermines morale in the end.

Yet, covering one's face will not improve matters anymore than knocking off a few policemen's helmets.

BANarchists at PEOPLE'S HISTORY MUSEUM

THE busy business of banning Barry Woodling continued apace last Saturday at the People's History Museum during this year's so-called Anarchist Bookfair on the banks of the River Irwell.  The river is a 39-mile stretch of water that flows through the Irwell Valley in the North West of England.  The source of the river is at Irwell Springs on Deerpark Moor just north of Bacup.  The river forms a boundary between the great cities of Manchester and Salford.

Less great and more murky than the river itself is the politics of the Manchester Banarchists, who annually ban Mr. Barry Woodling from their midst at a now discredited annual event called the Manchester & Salford Anarchist Bookfair.  Though Mr. Woodling, who lives in Swinton, is of Jewish descent, he was first expelled from the Bookfair in 2012, when he was  accused of  being an 'anti-Semite' by one of the organisers of this event and seemingly 'banned for life'.  Although this has now been disputed, no-one will put a precise date on when he might be accepted as a good comrade again.

The Banarchists are committed to excluding folk like Barry for all kinds of reasons. 'Anti-Semite' was the first charge in 2012, but recently it has been claimed by Peter Good, a self-proclaimed professor of mirthology, who has had a stall at the bookfair for donkey's years, that Barry was somewhat intemperate in 2012 and indulged in altercations with various stall-holders.  Mr. Woodling denies this but has never been given the opportunity to put his side of the case because no proper case has been put forward by the organisers of this event.

Who are the organisers?

Well, it is not possible to identify the two main protagonists because they assume the titles 'David under the Pavement' and 'Meat and two Veg'. 

On Saturday various veteran anarchists like Ron Marsden from Didsbury, and a well-known senior fellow-traveller, Mike Ballard, from Chorlton, expessed their surprise at the continuing ban on Woodling.  Yet, the exclusion of Barry continues.

Who is to blame?

It seems that the management of the Museum were asked about their stand on this matter by other parties who happened to be at the event:  'Is Barry Woodling banned for life?' someone asked.

The Staff manager present said certainly not but was unable to identify any date in the distant future when Mr. Woodling would be allowed into the 'Anarchist Bookfair'.