Narcissism is not a Third Gender

             by Arthur Brick & friends 

                  

Editorial Note:  We publish the report below after

some consideration.  It raises some serious questions

about the standards of debate on the libertarian left.

We have long been aware of a deficiency among the
British left with regard to addressing truth to power,
but we would have expected the anarchists to hold to
a better quality of journalistic standards.  Yet, our
experience has been that the anarchist media blog put 
out under the title 'Freedom News' has a sadly depressing
tone in the way that it has become a mere megaphone for
a 'trans' tendency, and is too fashionably trendy 
for its own good.  The small 'Solidarity Federation' grouping 
has become yet another addict to this politics of the absurd,
its members Ron Marsden and Phil Dickens are mentioned below 
in dispatches: we know nothing of Mr Dickens but Mr Marsden
was in attendance when 'Arthur Brick' was roughly removed by a gang from a  meeting discussing blacklisting at the Liverpool Anarchist Bookfair on the 7 April, 2018.  

Knowing Ron Marsden we are not surprised to learn that he was cagey and even furtive about supplying help to this victim of discrimination & blacklisting.  

Sitting next to the passive Mr. Marsden someone tried hard to get 
the exclusion of 'Mr Brick' discussed, but to no avail.

This silencing of free debate is becoming a cancer that lies at the
heart of the politics of the far left in the UK.

*****************************

Open letter to Sol Fed’s Keyboard Warrior from 'Arthur Brick'& friends:

Phil Dickens: 'The conflicted tax collector'?

THIS article is in relation to the use of abusive terms adopted by some left wing and anarchist political groups to put down anyone who does not take their opinions on the subject of transgender seriously.  The name calling and abuse of socialists, anarchists, activists etc. living outside their freaky social scenes is a way of them avoiding debate, through fear of their claims being scrutinised.
The article also deals with a pretty insignificant group called ‘Sol Fed’.  We are not sure what they are federated to, as they are almost invisible on a street level, yet they do a great job of discrediting class politics with their absurd adoption of transgender identity politics.  So here we will shed a light on the keyboard warrior.

I was recently asked by a feminist friend of mine if I knew an individual named Phil Dickens. I should point out that Phil Dickens is already a somewhat conflicted individual and I found it amusing to discover that whilst being an
‘anarchist’ he also works at the tax office!   On the one hand ‘smashing the state’ for purely theatrical effect but on the other being a servile state functionary.  I think we can safely call that contradiction and hypocrisy, but it does reveal the level of insincerity regarding the bogus claims of this keyboard warrior.

2. Response to my question.

I was sent a link to his social media outpourings and decided to challenge
him. No sooner had I done so, Phil Dickens blocked me and backed out of answering my question.  After further investigation it would appear that
SolfFed has no platform in which to redress the behaviour of its members.
For example there are no positions in the group such as regional or
national secretary in which you can voice your concerns.

Ron Marsden of Manchester Sol Fed was asked about this when people wanted to address the behaviour of Liverpool SolFed member Pablo who disrupted a blacklisted workers meeting, as it was considered somebody attending did not hold the correct opinions on gender self identification (such was the outrage he saw fit to disrupt the meeting).  This is covered in depth in the booklet 'Shit Wigs and Steroids'.

1. Phil Dickens post and my question.  This makes any external or internal grievance of Sol Fed members go unanswered or conveniently ignored.  Any ‘difficult issue’ is swept under the carpet with the hope it will not raise its ‘ugly head’.  So when we see these ‘members’ (scuse phallic pun!!) advertise ‘women’s meetings’ but are also calling women TERFs (trans exclusionary radical feminists) in public, how are we to take that?

It could be said the SolFed is nothing more than an obscure social group with
a supposed ’workerist’ base. Its older members seem happy with its utter failure to grow into anything meaningful but lets put that comical issue to one side.

However, the issue here is that the term TERF is aimed at women, which is an
affront to working class women who have suffered at the hands of men.  What we are seeing displayed by Liverpool SolFed who perhaps number four people is crude bullying of those not towing a line that is being widely scrutinised elsewhere.  Another example of bullying in full effect is when Liverpool SolFed recently ousted one of their own members who sought discussion on the issue. Members of Sol Fed are clearly cowardly on this issue.

It really does show SolFed’s absurd contradiction on women’s rights. It shows the complete denial of women’s voices over their concerns of men identifying as women and, comically, as lesbians.  The use of TERF as a slur by tax official Dickson shows his contempt for those of us not falling into line with the male
perspective that transgender activists peddle.  It looks like Liverpool
SolFed / Mersey SolFed (all four of them) are sinking in the mire of their own introverted identity politics bullshit. The adoption of a pro trans narrative does not seem to be swelling the ranks of their “disorganisation”.  When we see SolFed publishing articles on class and women, we really are left scratching our heads to the clear contradiction and absurdity of their “politics”.

Will Phil Dickens answer this question:

What names have you got for us Northern Working Class blokes who do not swallow the idea that our fathers, brothers, sons can miraculously be ‘actual women’ through the power of thought, medicine, body modification etc.? What you are holding up as transgender, Phil Dickens, as you insult women (with critical opinions), is transvestism,  Autogynephilia* and a whole set of other
issues.  But you are good at calling people things they are not.  If you had a grasp of radical feminism you would see the people you are abusing are not ‘radical feminists’ merely people with the capacity to consider issues well outside of your narrow field of understanding on issues whilst working for the state in your little tax office.

Ron Marsden:  'Hay que malalingua!'

I see you have had 4 views on your Youtube videos.  I think we can help boost that for you.  Being angry on behalf of others, whilst not looking at the issues, leaves people open to responses like ours.  We politely suggest that the 'toxic tax worker' has a read of this:  https://uncommongroundmedia.com/as-a-transsexual-i-support-dr-eva-poen/ the trans activists.

It is easy to overlook the significance of the arguments adopted by these fringe groups, but tomboys are now pushed into identifying as male, effeminate men are getting swept along with the idea they are female, straight men who identify as women claim to be lesbians.  All kinds of absurd ideas and contradictory thinking are marketed as ‘transgender’.  There is a considerable backlash from
many people in wider society against the absurdity of claims from the trans activists.


There has been a substantial ground shift against the claim of transgender activists because what is actually happening is that many of the young people and significantly young women over the last number of years are detransitioning.  The publicity this is rightly receiving are collapsing the arguments that ‘trans activists’ put forward.  Many young people leaving the ‘trans cult’ are left physically and emotionally scarred by the process of conditioning that led them to consider themselves ‘trapped in the wrong body’.  The physical impact on some has had a catastrophic effect.

When we look at the small groups of individuals who claim to be ‘anarchists/ socialists’ etc. who promote the transgender narrative, what we are seeing is the very clear closing down of actual debate on the subject.  One facet of opinion (they want to personally profit from) is ridiculously over emphasized by them, but any challenging opinion of that one facet is shut out.  How can you claim
to support issues around gender but then do all you can to keep the debate massively reduced.

This is done by abusing people who are a part of that debate, dehumanising intelligent people with insults and shutting down supposedly public events like bookfairs, conferences etc.  What we have seen are people like Phil Dickens, Ian Bone, Freedom Press, Simon Saunders, Alice Flebotte, Dave Downes etc. promoting the idea they are concerned about an issue, ‘gender identity politics’,
but under scrutiny, and without doubt, they are showing no compassion or empathy for those who struggle with gender identity issues.

To use 'TERF' to put critics down is beyond sloppy.  It is weak and derogatory.  You have got to hand it to them that they arrogantly believe they can avoid being pulled up on their contradiction and lack of sincerity.  When people take such an abusive line by calling strangers TERFs or bigots etc. they will be in for a shock when their words are drawn into public debate.  We hope to add to this article and we will by looking at particular individuals who hope to avoid any personal responsibility and publicity for the farcical ideology they push from behind their
keyboards.


* autogynephilia

A sexuality that consists of someone being aroused by the idea of themselves being the opposite sex. Not to be confused with transsexualism, which is a medical condition defined by sex dysphoria.

*************************************************

This was written before Covid 19 happened.  As in all negative situations we are seeing positive initiatives come from the chaos:
LGB Alliance https://lgballiance.org.uk/
LGB activists standing up to the transgender nonsense
Boxer Ceiling https://www.facebook.com/BoxerCeili

Tameside TUC joins THE ORWELL SOCIETY

North West trade unionists merge with poet of common decency
by Brian Bamford

THIS year, Tameside Trade Union Council [TUC] in Greater Manchester became the first corporate affiliate of the ORWELL SOCIETY.  This SOCIETY is dedicated to the understanding and appreciation of George Orwell's life and work as one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century.

The Society is a registered charity in the UK and it aims to keep the study of Orwell alive through its educational activities.  The Orwell Society is without political affiliation,and was founded in 2011, and though it is based in the UK its membership is worldwide.  George Orwell (the pen-name for Eric Blair; 1903-1950), was the author of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.

The Society's intention is to embrace a grasp of Orwell's life and writings, from his literary criticism to his diaries, and from his political writings to his poetry. . 

Last Friday, the President of Tameside, Derek Pattison, announcing this said:  'In an Age of Post Truth, Fake News, and Alternative Facts, we need George Orwell's guidance more than ever.'  

When I attended the Annual General Meeting of the Orwell Society on the 28th, April this year, I spoke to Richard Blair, the son of George Orwell, and to Quintin Kopp, the son of George Kopp Orwell's commander as captain in the general staff of the 45th Mixed Brigade of the Spanish Republican Army.  Both were anxious to get more participation in the Society from trade unionists such as ourselves.

Since Tameside TUC  first published our booklet commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Spanish Civil War in 2006, and followed this up with the unveiling of a blue plaque for James Keogh in 2011 who died fighting with the republicans in the Spanish Civil War, this trade union council has had a special interest in both George Orwell and his experiences of the Spanish Civil War.

Malcolm Muggeridge in his essay 'A Knight of the Woeful Countenance' wrote about this:
'I FIRST became aware of the existence of George Orwell in the middle thirties when I read some articles of his on the Spanish Civil War which appeared in the New English Weekly, a publication founded by A.R. Orage to expound the principles of Social Credit.  They provided the basis for Homage to Catalonia, one of his best books.  These articles made a great impression on me.  I liked their clear, simple style, and the obvious honesty of purpose which informed them,  They touched a chord of personal sympathy, too.  I saw in Orwell's strong reaction to the villainies of Communist apparat in Spain a compatible experience to my own disgust some years previously with the Soviet regime and its fawning admirers among the intelligentsia of the West as a result of a stint as Moscow correspondent of the Manchester Guardian....'

When we at Tameside TUC began to produce and publish a balanced account of the Spanish Civil War  in 2006, we were confronted with resistance from some elements within the more narrow-minded political left of the trade union movement in Greater Manchester.   These people deliberately tried to stiffle our efforts and those of other local trade unionists to bring about publication.  Both Orwell and Muggeridge had had difficultes getting their articles published by the so-called progressive publishers like Kingsley Martin at the New Statesman and C.P. Scott at the Manchester Guardian, and perhaps even more absurd, was the Victor Gollancz rejection of Animal Farm.

Muggeridge relates how when Orwell and he were lunching together in a Greek restaurant in Percy Street, Orwell asked if he would mind changing places?  When Muggeridge asked him why?  Orwell just said 'he just couldn't bear to look at Kingsley Martin's corrupt face, which, as Kingsley was lunching at an adjoining table, was unavoidable from where he had been sitting before.'

I feel much the same when I am forced to gaze into the faces of Ronald Marsden and his friend Mike Luft of the International Brigade Memorial Trust:  two people who did their utmost to undermine the production of the Tameside TUC memorial booklet about the Spanish Civil War.

******

Identity Confusion in Anarchist Federation?

A Crisis of Cookbook Thinking

A recently expelled member of the now fragmented 'Anarchist Federation'  wrote a complaint about the group last August on libcom, he or she concluded the long epistle by describing the background of the organisation thus:

'Bureaucratic, formalistic, bereft of ideas, willing to accept a group of leaders because they have organisational power and its members do not, because they occupy all spaces within the Federation, allowing no space to other ideas.  When it attempts educational work it is like being in school: there are things that members must learn and learn to repeat back but never to discuss, to explore, to refute or reject; that is not allowed.' 

This individual account seems to form a basis for what is now happening in the AF, by suggesting the membership organisation was a sort of Sunday School for anarco-commissars who are only capable of cookbook analysis of an half-baked Marxist type..

Anarchist Bookfair Blues

Following the wild attacks on Helen Steel, and what have been described as the 'Radical Feminists' at the London Anarchist Bookfair last October, some elements of the Anarchist Federation outside London began issuing statements and signing open-letters condemning the organisers of the London Bookfair for their tolerance of critics of the proposed amendments to the Gender Recognition Act.  The provincial groups which put the names of their factions to the open letters attacking the Bookfair organisers calling for 'disassociation' included such bodies as the  'AFED TRANS ACTION FACTION'; 'Edinbugh;Anarchist Federation'; Liverpool A.F.; and South Wales A.F.

At the same time there was a deafening silence from the A.F. high-command around Nick Heath in London.   Clearly the open-letters published by the provincials were seen in London for what they clearly were, compositions of gross ineptitude.  

What very likely followed were attempts by Nick Heath and his Metropolitan elite to get things under control by urging  the bumbling provincials to withdraw their corny compositions attacking well respected anarchists like Helen Steel and the Bookfair organisers.  Events resulting in the recent resignations of the central core 'communist anarchism' faction, is now demonstrating that that the attempts to get a grip on the provincial supporters of the Trans hotheads failed.

In this way the A,Fed embrace of the exotic Trans identity tendency has resulted in a disaster which would have been a little local difficulty in a bigger body like the Labour Party, but among the tiny tribes of political anarchism it represents the virtual extinction.from the body politic.  By embracing gender politics Nick Heath and the AF have gained a few members, but ultimately it has bit them on the arse.*

 Fleas Pretending to be Elephants!

On the 20th, November 2017, just over 3-weeks after the London Bookfair debacle the Anarchist Federation issued a Statement which included the following observations:
'The AF regrets that the opportunity has probably been lost to transform the London Anarchist Bookfair – which in recent years has developed into one of the most important and representative anarchist events globally – into an environment where this situation cannot not reoccur.  Whilst the right of people to choose their gender identity is not up for debate, discussion about the relationship between different oppressions and their relationship to the wider class struggle are nonetheless important.'

This is the kind of froth that the general public, if they troubled to read it, will find wearisome, but to the people inside the bubble of the interpretive community it may sound impressive.  It's full of froth because their Statement is rooted in humbug and hypocrisy.  It's hypocritical because members of the AF have often been at the centre of the troubles at the Bookfairs up and down the country.

In October 2012, Nick Heath dismissed the theft of books from a book stall at the London Bookfair by some AF members as 'an unofficial action by some people in the AF'.  In December 2012, Nick Heath was at the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair orchestrating Barry Woodling expulsion through an Emergency Exit where he had to climb down a Fire Escape.  In October 2013, there was an AF reported altercation outside the London Bookfair against Ciaron O’Reilly accusing him of being a 'rape apologist' for supporting Julian Assange.  The Manchester Anarchist Bookfair took place without incident because of a deal struck between the management of the People's History Musuem and an editor of Northern Voices.  In 2014, the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair was hit with problems because it became apparent that Ronnie Marsden of the Sol. Fed., Peter Good (Cunningham Amendment) and others were operating a lifetime ban against Barry Woodling, a lad of Jewish origins, who Mr. Marsden from 2012 has accused of being an 'anti-Semite',  In 2015, the management of the People's History Museum, after Baron John Monks became involved, finally banned the anarchists around Ronnie Marsden from having any further Bookfairs, and as a consequence there was no Manchester Bookfair that year.

When in December 2017 Tony Wood, one of the distinguished organisers of the London Anarchist Bookfair, was interviewed on Dissident Radio in London** about the decision not to hold another bookfair in 2018, he referred to ongoing conflicts at bookfairs over the last 5- years.  It is noticeable that during that period the tiny Anarchist Federation with little political clout in main stream politics, has been close to the centre of the bookfair disputes with the possible exception of the Syrian / Kurd conflict in 2016.

See the AF blog article is also on the web: http://www.afed.org.uk/2018/01/01/2018-in-with-the-new/

For more:
http://www.afed.org.uk/2017/11/20/statements-following-london-anarchist-bookfair-of-october-2017/
Or more: 
 https://communistanarchism.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/class-struggle-anarchist-statement-on_1.html?m=1

Readers also ought to consider the following matterial by Milan Rai on Peace News:

https://anarchistnews.org/content/how-destroy-our-own-movements

  

 *  On the Moral Maze, it was estimated that the Trans constituency nationally represents about 0.1% of the population,  A relatively small social community, but one substantially larger than the AF membership, which must be very nearly two in one million or less than 100 in total.  In this situation it is not surprising that the gender politicians out-voted the Sunday School League class struggle types.
**  Listen to Radio interview on 

http://thebrilliant.org/podcast/episode-58-exclusion-iv/

http://thebrilliant.org/podcast/episode-58-exclusion-iv/

The Significance of Roberts Arundel in the 1960s

by Brian Bamford

Northern trade unionists confront police at Roberts Arundel

IN Nov 2006, the anarchist historian, Nick Heath* reflected upon his experiences in the UK anarchist movement since the 1960s, and the lessons on organisation and politics he finds valid for anarchists today.  His observations include the idea that '[o]rganisational responsibility and discipline should not be controversial'. [see 'The UK anarchist movement - Looking back and forward' posted on libcom].

Part way through his long account he ponders the problems of the failures of anarchists since its high point in the early to mid-1960s during the rise of the peace movement:
'One of the shortcomings that they had highlighted was the lack of industrial activity.  As Brian Bamford, whom I do not often agree with, has pointed out:  “At the time of disputes at Roberts-Arundel in Stockport**, Pilkington’s Glassworks in St Helens***, the strikes and stay-in occupations at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders and in engineering, the miners struggles in the 1970s, the anarchist influence was tiny” (Freedom 6 August 1994)'

This year it is the 50th anniversary of the Roberts Arundel strike in Stockport, and Stockport Trade Union Council has put on an exhibition to commemorate the occasion.

At the time of the strike at Roberts-Arundel in 1966, mentioned in the above quote from Freedom, the Manchester Anarchist Group [MAG] was far bigger than the small International Socialist body with only 20 members locally and most of whom were students.   Both Colin Barker and his then friend and fellow sociologist John Lee, who later like me became an ethnomethodologist, were anxious to engage with me and some of the local working-class anarchists.  They knew that I had been involved in the national strikes of the engineering apprentices in the early 1960s, and still edited the apprentice paper Industrial Youth that came out of those disputes; both Colin and John were keen to collaborate with us with a view of building up their own I.S. group.  The trouble then was that most of the Manchester anarchists in the MAG didn't have any affinity with factory workers and trade unionists.  They were good on peace demos etc. waving their black and red flags, but it was as if they were frightened of engaging with genuine workers at their places of work.

When I was sacked for supporting the apprentices at Robinsons in Rochdale in 1965, the MAG refused to come down because they said they didn't want to be 'authoritarian', and tell the apprentices what to do!  Again in 1966, when I was given my marching orders at Tomlinsons up Milnrow the MAG held aloof yet again steering clear of the factory gates.  In similar circumstances I doubt that Colin Barker and I.S. would have been so timid, but by that time I had already decided to return to Spain, where I had a job waiting among the more practical and proletarian Gibraltar anarchists.

Under the influence of Ron Marsden, and Alan Barlow**** when the Manchester anarchists discussed the Roberts-Arundel dispute at a meeting at Mother Macs pub in central Manchester, the meeting was swayed and persuaded to not attend a support meeting called by the International Socialists [IS] to support the Roberts-Arundel strikers, the reasoning at that time being that they didn't want to swell the support for the trotskyists in IS.  This is significant and relevant to what Mr. Heath is saying, yet I believe both he and Colin Barker draw the wrong conclusions in arguing that the anarchists and international socialists needed a national organisation or party.

In an interview with Colin Barker, now a retired sociology lecturer, in 2015 in the publication RS21 (Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century) vividly describes the situation he found himself with the IS in 1966 at the time of the Roberts-Arundel dispute:
'We were a group of about twenty people.  We’d got the building workers, and we were talking on very friendly terms with one or two CP engineers.  By then I think we’d recruited one or two.  We look as if we’re going to recruit significant numbers of militant workers to the branch – I don’t want to exaggerate, but we’re a little bit confident, a little bit rooted.  We’re distinctive.  We don’t know that you can’t do things – that’s quite important, we don’t know of any limits to what we can do.  So we take initiatives, try things out, sometimes they don’t work and sometimes they do.  This is in ’67 – the next year of course everything changed.'  (rs21onAugust 5, 2015)

Clearly the advantage that the Manchester International Socialist had in 1965 was not that of a mass organised party, but rather that of disciplined organised body but rather an imaginative tendency that was willing to act on its own initiative.  By acting outside the box the IS was enabled to have a great impact in regional industrial disputes such as Roberts-Arundel in Stockpost and at Pilkingtons in St Helens.  Meanwhile, the Manchsester anarchists who were so heroic in the peace demos in central Manchester were too timid when it came to turning up at the factory gates.

Drawing up a neat historical narrative

Like all historians Mr. Heath provides us with neat narrative to explain what was wrong, and how the anarchist decline could have been avoided in the past, but also how its continuing fall in the present and in the future can be stemmed:
i]  The historic issue, according to Mr. Heath, was that there was 'The increasing frustration with the swamp of pacifism, liberalism and vague humanism'.

ii]  Two now defunct bodies entitled ASA (Anarchist Syndicalist Alliance) and ORA (Organisation of Revolutionary Anarchists) were potentially Mr. Heath's ideal tools for social change, but he writes the 'ASA ran out of steam pretty quickly'.
[I personally was one of the founding members of this short-lived ASA organisation, which was set-up around 1970 from remnants of the old Manchester Syndicalist Workers Federation, and went on to play a role in the Courtaulds Arrow Mill strike involving mainly Asian workers in Rochdale, and later to successful campaign for shop stewards in textiles inside the National Union of Textile & Allied Workers*****].

iii} On the other hand, Heath writes that 'The ORA had started moving away from the swamp as a result of the dockers and miners struggles and the influences of French libertarian communists.'

Mr. Heath quotes from an ORA booklet entitled 'Towards a history and critique of the anarchist movement in recent times' by K. Nathan. R. Atkins, C. Williams [ORA pamphlet no1. 1971] to support his diagnoses about the rise of Trotskyism and the fall of anarchism in the late 1960s and earlier 1970s:
'The IS [the International Socialists which later became the SWP] would not have attained their size and influence such as it is if a decent libertarian organisation had existed.  It is an unholy mixture of libertarian and Leninist groups.  The attempt by Cliffe (sic) to compete with IMG by out-trotting Mandel will make this alliance increasingly unstable. BUT do we have any capacity to attract these comrades?  In fact, the flow has been the other way. Good comrades (for the most part industrial militants rather than students) have been lost without anyone attempting to understand why.'

He argues that that was a true analysis and remains so today.   Hence, he claims, that in spite of what he calls 'the decline of Leninism' it was a 'lack of effective organisation', that has meant that anarchism will be at a standstill until we rectify this problem of organisation.

What this shows is that Nick Heath has a mechanistic Marxist approach to organisation that is rooted in a form of deterministic thinking that is part of the problem.  The main problem among the anarchists, which has been amply demonstrated in most recent times at the London Anarchist Bookfair etc., is a psychological inability to engage with real people in the real world.  Some of the left don't have an engaging relationship with working people.  This has been a long term problem which no amount of management, membership cards, statements aims and principle, mission statements, or tick lists can solve. 

Because Mr. Heath has been a white-collar office worker (a librarian) for much of his life he looks at the problem in a top-down way so that all he comes up with are cookbook solutions.  In the same way his close colleague Mike Ballard - now a retired local authority housing manager - has a similar cultural problem.  Commenting in another essay entitled 'Anarchist communism in Britain, 1870-1919', on the libertarian organisation founded in 1960 called 'SOLIDARITY', Mr. Heath writes:
'Their wilful failure to translate this into the establishment of a national organisation was a disaster, as International Socialism (the precursor of the Socialist Workers Party) was able to build on this territory abandoned by Solidarity (and by the Anarchist Federation of Britain).  They failed to engage as fully with the Anarchist movement as much as they could have, as their contributions at meetings and conferences could have considerably strengthened the class struggle current within it.' 

Thoughts on aspects of northern anarchism

There were some protests from southerners and Mr. Heath's type of 'organisational anarchists', when on November 2011, Sidney Huffman wrote his interesting  'Message from a North East Anarchists' on libcom:

'We believe the anarchists may actually be the single largest radical tendency in the North-East and wider North, yet we remain largely invisible, rarely initiating action ourselves and instead just tagging along in ones and twos with events organised by the left and liberals.  We have repeatedly found anarchists who have joined Trotskyist parties simply because they couldn't find an organised anarchist presence here.  Older comrades coming out of premature retirement spend 6 months looking for political anarchists and cannot find any during that time.  It is not good enough.  If we are serious about change, we have to step up and make ourselves visible.'

What's interesting about this statement and some of the protesting comments that followed it, is the implied organisational and activist nature of what is being proclaimed.  Sidney Huffmann writes about 'tagging along in ones and twos' on other people's events tail-ending other left protests.

In response to Mr. Huffman, Tom Harrison wrote on libcom that the 'SF [Solidarity Federation] and AF [Anarchist Federation] have been turning out regularly at the sparks strikes/demos/blockades in London, bolstering picket lines and generally providing the much needed solidarity for these workers. There was a particularly good SF turnout at the sparks demo on November 9th ... just watch this vid and you can see their placards at many point.  We're also organising and attempting to link student militancy with worker militancy.'

Mr. Heath will recognise from this that despite his efforts nothing has changed today from the stagnant pond from which anarchists seems unable to escape.  Of course, anarchists in London may have put out more flags as seen on the video on the electrician's demo, but that is not news.  What would have been news would have been if like Tameside Trade Union Council they had been in the forefront of the campaign against the blacklist moving motions to the TUC, manning lonely picket lines in the early hours since 2003, in the DAF dispute or at the Manchester Royal Infirmary in 2009.  If Mr. Harrison is saying the anarchists are a kind of rent-a-mob available on street demos well that is part of the problem, because despite all the talk of organisating they don't seem to have the initiative to build serious enterprises themselves apart from bookfairs.  Now because of narrow-mindedness of some anarchists even bookfairs are becoming a problem for the anarchists to organise.

What Mr. Heath failed to grasp when he considered the Roberts Arundel strike (in his quote from Freedom above) was that the lesson from that strike was that the Manchester anarchists in 1967 failed to engage with the workers in dispute because they were afraid of real workers at the factory gate.  They didn't know how to address a real worker then, and they still have problems today.  Even in the run up to the campaign against the blacklist in the naughties people like Nick Heath's mate Mike Ballard, a former housing manager at Manchester City Council, was describing the Manchester electricians as not being involved in class struggle because they were taking 'individualuist'  actions by setting up pickets rather than collectivist actions.  Mr. Ballard came up with that claim at a meeting of the NAN in Burnley, of course it was before the Information Commissioner made his successful raid on Ian Kerr's office in 2009, and before Kerr pleaded guilty for keeping an illegal data-base at his trial at Knutsford Crown Court.

Abstract Anarchists & the ethnographic approach

The folly of the mechanistic managerialist approach of both Mr. Heath and Mr. Ballard is evident given that the subsequent development of the struggle of the 'Boys on the Blacklist' in Manchester, which Tameside TUC has been in the forefront of since 2003: had this handful of electricians often acting in opposition to the official union, using their own initiative not engaged in a series of small pickets around Manchester after 2003, the office of the Consulting Association, managed by Ian Kerr, would never have been raided by the Information Commissioner in  Droitwich Spa in 2009.  Consequently, the blacklist with over 3,000 names of building workers would never have been exposed.

In the mid-1970s, the criminologist Ian Smith and other anarchists used to talk about the contrast between the 'sectarian syndicalists' and 'shop-floor syndicalists' in the ASA,  Now we have very opportunistic 'abstract anarchists' like Mr. Heath and Mr. Ballard to contrast with more ethnographic approaches of others anxious to listen to the public.

What Nick Heath may have in mind when he envisages a future anarchist organisation is something like what Ken Weller and member of SOLIDARITY, talked about when he described the influence of the British Communist Party in 1956:
'People can’t realise how big an apparatus it was.  There were the embassies, the Friendship Societies, the printshops, the front organisations, the unions; 120 were employed by the Electrical Trades Union alone.  There were all the agencies of the Soviet government, Tass [the Soviet news agency], the Moscow Narodny Bank, all these sorts of things were full of people; I mean, the Soviet Weekly alone employed a network of people who were distributing agents for the paper, and so on.'

It must have been exactly like George Orwell said in the 1930s about it paying some folk to adopt a commie position, but to accomplish that kind of body among the anarchists would require something more substantial than what Nick Health has to offer with his own small-scale Anarchist Federation (AF) with all of its one hundred members paying their fees, and with perhaps a possible trans-gender platform to stand upon with its own estimated constituency of 0.1% of the national populous.  That would in any case be a very different approach from that experienced by anarchists in the early 1960s, when anarchism was at last part of a genuine social movement; that is the peace movement and the Committee of 100.

With the 'People in the Streets', as Vernon Richards described the peace movement in Freedom in the 1960s, the anarchists had a significant role to play on Ban the Bomb demos and in the Committee of 100 sit downs.  Yet when the social struggle moved to the picket lines, trade unions and factories after the Roberts Arundel strike in 1967, where the communists had the great advantage, the Manchester anarchists had very little grasp of what was required.  Only in the struggles for shop stewards up in Oldham and Rochdale in the failing textile industry such as at Courtaulds Arrow Mill in 1972, did the anarchists of Manchester have an impact, and then again in London in the building workers' struggles, anarchists like Peter Turner had a role to play.   None-the-less, in the significant disputes of the late 1960s at Pilkington Glassworks in St Helens, Upper Clyde Shipbuilding [UCS] and in engineering sit-ins, the miners struggles in the 1970s, the anarchist influence was tiny.

*     Nick Heath leader of the Anarchist Federation.

**   Roberts Arundel strike from 1966-68 of engineering workers against dilution and cheap labour.

*** Pilkington strike in St Helens of glass-workers in the Municipal & General Workers Union [now GMB] in which the workers, frustrated by both the union and the bosses, attempted to set up an independent union.

****  Ron Marsden and Alan Barlow came to Manchester in 1964 and joined the Manchester Anarchist group [MAG], which was then meeting st that meeting in the Lord Nelson in Salford.   The MAG had been founded earlier by Graham Lee and James Pinkerton, then International Secretary of the Syndicalist Workers Federation [SWF].  Marsden from Preston, and Barlow originally from Liverpool, had recently become members of the SWF, and were hoping with the help of the Liverpudlian Vincent Johnson also of the SWF, to form a faction within the MAG and drive it in a 'class struggle' direction. 

*****   COURTAULDS INSIDE OUT:  CIS ANTI REPORT No.10.  Produced in co-operation with The Transitional Institute.
******

Inevitable roughhouse at Manchester Partisan!

Background to anarchist bookfair antics

THE promoters of the Partisan venue in Salford on Cheetham Hill Road and within sight of Strangeways Prison, have declared in their mission statement as follows:

“The aim of Partisan is to create a space in Manchester for grassroots or DIY music, political and cultural events,” explains Kate Hardy, one of the founding members. “The aim is to make somewhere that everyone can go to, even when they don’t have much cash.”

Not so at the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair today when a few folk hitherto associated with the Northern Anarchist Network, attempted to gain entrance and enjoy the event at around 1pm.

First of all the veteran anarchist Barry Woodling and several others mingled peacefully with folk buying books untroubled, but then the tall man Barry who stood out like a sore thumb with his garish black and red fleece was spotted by one of the organisers.  Since the 2012 bookfair, when this same bookfair bod, who hides behind the name 'Veg', had accosted and abused Barry accusing him of being an 'anti-semite', there has been much bad blood between anarchists in Manchester over the events at this 2012 event.  This was entirely provoked by the 'Veg' attack on Barry Woodling and particularly because having called Barry an 'anti-semite' and pushed him, Barry had to leave the premises of the bookfair venue, the People's History Museum, using a fire escape.  The manager of the People's History Museum later told me that Barry had to leave the premises by this strange route in the interests of 'his own safety', a baying mob having assembled including the leader of the local Solidarity Federation, Ronny Marsden and the national leader of the Anarchist Federation, Nick Heath.

Today's events followed the usual uproar seemingly now common at anarchist bookfairs nationally, and which this year, following a confrontation between radical feminists and trans activists, has led to the organisers of London Anarchist Bookfair to abandon plans to have a London bookfair in 2018.

This is the background to what happened at today's Manchester Anarchist Bookfair, and we hope to have more news on today's events as soon as we have more information of what went on.

Meanwhile, the Marxists in Manchester and beyond are laughing their socks off.

Norman Smith MBE & lesser critics of N.V.

Northern Voices Editor - Brian Bamford

THE letter below from the former Rochdale Mayor, Norman Fowden Smith MBE, who has recently died, was sent a decade ago to Harold Sculthorpe, who was then part of the editorial committee  of Northern Voices.  It is addressed to the editor, Brian Bamford, and purports to be a complaint about coverage of Mr. N. Smith in the NV No.6 edition of that journal in which there was reference to his support for developers on the Spodden Valley site with its serious issues with regard to the threat of asbestos disturbance.  Norman had been referred to as 'a stout defender' of the developers.  Mr. N.F.Smith is of course the brother of the then famous and influential figure Sir Cyril Smith, who lived on Emma Street in Rochdale.  Norman Smith was perhaps the first person to threaten Northern Voices, but others followed; notably the veteran anarchist, Ronald Marsden, of Barlow Moor Road, West Didsbury who, in 2009, objected to something in NV in which attention was drawn to his acquisition of some photos of a refugee camp in Lancashire: he went on threaten NV with 'criminal libel' and bullied our printer and some of our outlets.  Then there were two individuals Matthew Baker, formerly an aide to Simon Danczuk, and the former police officer and later lecturer, Gordon Mills, who both complained that NV had wrongly said they were 'sacked' from their posts.  We corrected these admitted errors but both Baker and Mills went on to threaten NV with allusions to defamation.  In the case of Gordon Mills he also challenged the Guardian, the Morning Star and the USI over similar issues.  We understand that the GMB union is presently his target.*
Besides these litigious personalities there have been other valiant attempts to persuade us to watch our backs.  In 2012, the 'anarchist' former school teacher, Sally Miller nee Hyman, recruited a contingent of schoolboys to ambush a bookseller at the London Anarchist Bookfair and tried to have the publication removed from sale. 
The letter sent a decade ago from Norman F. Smith to Harold Sculthorpe and addressed to Brian Bamford as editor, is as represented below, it was all in capital letters:

FROM MR NORMAN SMITH MBE,

TO:  MR BRIAN BAMFORD

NORTHERN VOICES.

DEAR MR BAMFORD

THANK YOU FOR YOUR LETTER AND COPY OF YOUR NO.6 N. VOICES.

        I VERY STRONGLY OBJECT TO YOUR ARTICLE.  I HAVE NEVER ONCE DEFENDED THE DEVELOPERS RE. SPODDEN VALLY, OR SUPPORTED THEM.  TO SAY SO IS A LIE AND YOU KNOW IT.  I FIND YOUR ARTICLE AND REFERENCES OBJECTIONABLE AND SEE NO REASON TO REFER TO MY BROTHER.

I HAVE SPOKEN TO MY SOLICITOR, AND I HAVE GOOD REASON TO CONSIDER YOUR ASSERTIONS TO BE LIBELLOUS.

ALL I HAVE EVER DONE IS STATE THE LEGAL POSITION, PLANNING WISE AND HOW – NOT IF – IT SHOULD BE OPPOSED.

I REQUIRE A FULL PUBLISHED APOLOGY FROM YOU, IN YOUR “NORTHERN VOICES” AND A STATEMENT OF THE ABOVE FACT, AND AN ADMISSION THAT WHAT YOU WROTE WAS AN UNTRUTH.  I ALSO REQUIRE YOU SEND ME THE RELEVANT ISSUE – FREE.

Norman F Smith.

Owing to our knowledge of the past involvement of Sir Cyril Smith MBE with Turner Bros. Asbestos Company, and the supportive comments of his brother Norman F. Smith MBE with regard to the developers plans to build on Spodden Valley, Northern Voices refused to give either an apology to Mr. N. F. Smith or to offer him a free copy of Northern Voices.  We heard nothing further from either Norman F. Smith MBE or his brother Cyril.

*  A retired policeman who worked for a secretive unit monitoring political protests is suing a trade union over claims that he colluded with an unlawful blacklisting operation that prevented construction workers from getting jobs.

In a libel claim lodged in the High Court, Gordon Mills, who worked for five years in the unit, has accused the GMB of defaming him and is claiming up to £10,000 in damages.
His legal action is being defended by the GMB which said it had been acting in the public interest. The union said there was “credible evidence” suggesting that Mills, while he was a police officer, shared information with construction firms which were funding a clandestine blacklist of workers.

For more go to

Former police officer suing GMB trade union for defamation | UK news ...

https://www.theguardian.com 

Jim Petty: Radical Working-man Dies

Born Burnley 6^th, March 1933, died in Blackburn Hospital 10^th, July 2015:

Married to Mary (died 1989), one son Iain survives him.

WHEN we call Jim Petty a radical northern anarchist we haven't even begun to describe his nature as a man and human being.  Radical anarchism and decency grew in his soul as  remarkable human being.  His early interest in politics was in the Labour Party but he never voted Labour after the 1970s.  Later he joined the Independent Labour Party (ILP), and was active as a shop steward in both textiles, where he worked as a stripper and grinder, and later at Lucas in engineering.  Jim Petty was on the industrial committee of Committee of 100 from 1960 to 1961, where he came in contact with the anarcho-syndicalists of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF) - at the time the journalist Ken Hawkes was its national secretary.   

In the 1960s, Sydney Silverman was the radical socialist MP for the nearby Nelson and Colne constituency.  Silverman was instrumental in pushing a law through parliament to abolish capital punishment later in that decade.  Consequently the local ILP in Burnley, Nelson and Colne was perhaps closer to the Labour Party at that time than other branches elsewhere in the country. 

The early 1960s was also a time when the ILP nationally; Brian Behan's Workers Party; Solidarity; some of the Freedom anarchists like Peter Turner, Jack and Mary Stevenson; Commonwealth and the Syndicalist Workers' Federation  formed the National Rank & File Workers' Movement.  The Rank & File Workers' Movement existed for little more than two years and attracted the attention of the Sunday Telegraph columnist Perigrine Worsthorne, but the success of the direct action peace movement protests around the Committee of 100 distracted most activists away from industrial Rank & File activism.  At the time of the Spies for Peace campaign exposing the Regional Seats of Government in 1963, the Burnley activists around Jim helped to reproduce the state secrets that the spies had made available on that year's CND March, and the Times of London ran a headline:  'Anarchists Take Over'.

Jim Petty, although he was involved in the campaigns of the peace movement, was very much a working-class anarchist all his life.  While he was in textiles he clashed with the then regional officer of the National Union of Textile & Allied Worker's Union (NUTAWU), Joe King, based in Accrington.  Sections of the NUTAWU, which was the spinner's and the strippers and grinder's trade union, had no proper shop stewards to represent them and the officials tended to be close to the bosses.  Later, when he working in engineering at Lucas Aerospace in Burnley, Jim was a member of the Transport & General Worker's Union, and about that time he was secretary of  Burnley Trade Union Council. 

He married Mary, a secondary school teacher in the Burnley area, she supported the Labour Party.  When Mary died he had friendships with Susan & Jenny, both who were at one time involved with Burnley anarchists. 

By the early 1980s, Jim had become a member of the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF), and later went on to become the first national secretary of the Direct Action Movement (DAM), after  Dave Thompson the SWF  national secretary stepped down.  This was a time when the anarcho-syndicalists were on a roll, and membership of the DAM began to rise in the run up to the miner's strike.  Jim Petty led the British contingent of the International Congress of the International Workers Association (IWA / AIT), when it convened in Madrid in the Spring of 1984.   It was essentially under Jim Petty's influence as its national secretary, that the British DAM gained some serious status in the international movement and built up a grass-roots membership across the country.  The DAM during the 1980s,  was at its most effective as a protest group and political force.  During the Miner's Strike in 1984-85 at the Congress for Industrial Action in Burnley, the then deputy leader of the NUM, Peter Heathfield, and Dave Douglass spoke about the strike on the same platform.  So successful were the Burnley anarchists that there was constant rivalry with out other left groups so much so that the Communist Party sabotaged an attempt to support the Shrewsbury pickets, and Jim's T&G Branch came to have the greatest number of party political levy 'opt outs' to the Labour Party. 

When Jim left office as national secretary the DAM changed it name to the 'Solidarity Federation' (Sol. Fed.) in 1994;  it then tried to represented itself as an imitation trade union body emphasising 'syndicalism' and playing down the anarchist vision.  Jim Petty and other members of the Burnley section took a dim view of these changes, which they regarded as wrong-headed and foolish. Jim though he was a trade unionist for most of his life was cynical about the British trade union set-up generally which he regarded as irredeemably reformist, and even reactionary in the sense that rather than create a vision and set an agenda of its own, the British trade unions merely responded to the agenda set by the bosses and the state. 

Jim Petty not only had experience in the trade union movement and radical politics, but he was involved in the Church of England as a member in the Anglo-Catholic Church, he was a lay reader and was later was ordained as a Father in the faith.  His own father had been also a member of the Church of England.  This extra dimension helped Jim to swim in social circles outside the narrow political ghetto, and the Burnley anarchists were able to build up connections and become an influence within ethnic communities in Burnley in the 1970s and 80s. 

Jim Petty remained a disgruntled member of the Solidarity Federation until 2005, when he was expelled by e-mail after his branch in Preston hounded him out of the Sol. Fed.  The formal reasons given for  his expulsion were mixed up with complaints relating his links to his Church and its distaste for abortion; Jim himself disagreed with his Church policy over this matter.  After his expulsion from the Sol. Fed. a derogatory photo was published of Jim in a dog-collar on libcom providing Holy Communion to his parishioners.  Following this a leading member of the Sol Fed. in Manchester, Ron Marsden, boasted to others that he had written to the Church hierarchy at which Jim was a Minister to acquaint them with his association with the anarchist movement, presumably with the intention of getting Jim defrocked.    

Jim told me years later that he had had an interview with the Dean who showed him the letter of denunciation, and asked Jim:

'Are these friends of yours?'.    

To which Jim replied ruefully 'Yes!'.

Jim always told me that he always believed that the real grounds for his dismissal from Sol. Fed. were to do with him addressing a conference of the Northern Anarchist Network (NAN) in Hebden Bridge in 2004 on racial problems in Burnley.  By that time Jim had also participated on the editorial panel of Northern Voices, and had written a remarkable eye witness report on the 'race' riots in Burnley for NV.   He helped to organise several NAN conferences in Burnley including the one in December 2012 at which Barry Woodling and others moved the Burnley Declaration which gained 150 signatures berating the conduct of the organisers of the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair in operating a blacklist against some supporters of the Northern Anarchist Network.  

As I write this, I have just returned from Tolpuddle, where I learned from a member of the IWW that the Solidarity Federation which once expelled James Petty 'imploded' two years ago.  Is it not ironic that the organisation that once excluded Jim is itself now politically virtually in ruins, and Jim's enemy Ron Marsden is helping claimants at Salford Unemployed Centre.

Community Union imposes restrictions on freedom of speech!

Northern Voices Editor - Brian Bamford

JUDGING from recent reports that we have received from sources within Unite the Union, it appears that union bureaucrats are cracking down on dissenting and awkward voices within the union in order to exert discipline and control over their members.

At a meeting of the Greater Manchester Community Union Branch, on Tuesday, which was attended by ten members, there was a recommendation from branch officer’s that branch policy in relation to postings on the branch’s Facebook page, should be changed with immediate effect to allow only content that reflected UNITE policy at either branch, regional, or national level, to be posted on Facebook. It was also recommended that only UNITE members should be allowed to comment, even though the function of the branch, is to carry out community campaigning work.

We understand that this motion to restrict free speech within the branch was opposed by Chris McBride, the branch communications and media officer, who hitherto had been posting articles of general community interest. He told the meeting that other UNITE branch’s Facebook pages were 'open, inclusive, and vibrant' and that this was what was needed, to build a branch of the union that was rooted in the community. Another member pointed out during the discussion, that even without these restrictions, some items being posted on the branch’s Facebook page, were being censored and blocked.

When put to the vote, the officers’ recommendations were defeated with three in favour, four against and three abstentions. The Branch Secretary, John Clegg, then immediately questioned the accuracy of the vote and Branch Chair, Communist Party member, Evan Pritchard, called for a fresh vote to be taken. The decision was then reversed and the officers’ recommendations were adopted.

Among those who attended Tuesday’s meeting, was the septuagenarian, veteran Manchester anarcho-syndicalist, Ronny (gall and wormwood) Marsden. This self-proclaimed libertarian evidently voted against the motion on the first vote but did a volte-face on the second vote - after being seen to exchange glances with the Branch Secretary – and voted for tighter controls over branch freedom of expression. 
The branch also unanimously agreed that officer's of the branch produce a newsletter.

Over the Pennines in Rochdale, another septuagenarian veteran anarchist is facing possible expulsion from Unite the Union, for allegedly bringing the union into disrepute after publishing a report on Northern Voices about a union meeting in Liverpool and blacklisting. Brian Bamford, Editor of Northern Voices magazine and Branch Secretary of Bury UNITE branch, has been summoned before a union inquiry to investigate whether he has broken union rules. 

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'. 

Nick Clegg, Nick Heath, SWP: Crisis Cover-ups!

The Strange Death of the English Liberal-Left

THE news of the travails of Nick Clegg, as he tries to explain how got into mess of 'knowing', but not being 'aware of specific complaints' of inappropriate behaviour by a senior Liberal Democrat, Lord Rennard, towards a number of women dating back to 2008, comes on the back of the other problems and allegations regarding the late Liberal MP for Rochdale, Sir Cyril Smith.  The scandals of a sexual nature have tended to attach themselves to the Liberals and Tories over the years (one thinks of the Profumo Affair in 1963), while it has been pointed out that the Labour Party has more in the way of financial scandals.

Now the Metropolitan police are to interview Lib Dem officials to talk about if a crime has been committed in connection with the claims of sexual harassment against the ex-party chief executive Lord Rennard.  The Daily Telegraph has reported that one of the accusers of Lord Rennard, Helen Jardine-Brown, a former boss of fund raising in the party, who made an complaint 4-years ago, was paid a £50,000 settlement by her employers accompanied with a gagging clause conditional on her silence.  Recently, Lib Dem peer Baroness Hussein-Ece told the Daily Mail, that there were similarities to the Jimmy Savile situation. 'There aren't sufficient checks and balances in place,' she said.

In The Guardian, 27th, Feb. 2013, Simon Danczuk, the Labour MP for Rochdale, who first raised concerns in parliament in November about Cyril Smith's activities, said that there is a pattern whenever allegations of sexual abuse emerge inside the Lib Dems.   He added:  'They bury their heads in the sand and claim to know nothing,' he said.  'For the sake of Rochdale victims, Clegg has to stop stonewalling and now come clean on what his party knew about the sexual abuse carried out by Cyril Smith.'   Now there is further evidence from the police files that Cyril Smith tried to meddle with the police probe according to Simon Danczuk.
 
In January, another left of centre party, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), was engulfed in allegations of rape and sought to resolve the matter through what some of their media critics have described as a 'socialist sharia court' cover-up to investigate rape accusations against a senior member instead of reporting them to the police.  The reasoning of the SWP leadership, outline by a member, was that as they had 'no faith in the bourgeois court system to deliver justice' they would engage in a bit of do-it-yourself proceedings in the spirit of the quasi-judicial.  The result seems to have been a bit of a judicial circus in the forensic investigation of the facts of the case. 

Andy Newman, a Swindon-based Labour Party member described the SWP's conduct thus: 
'It's quite clear reading their account of what's going on that they sort of see themselves as an alternative group in society that is not part of mainstream society... they think someone couldn't or shouldn't go to the police because it would damage the party.' 
Mr. Newman, it seems, likens the SWP's disciplinary hearing to an extrajudicial 'Sharia' system or the much criticised investigations by the Roman Catholic Church into clerical abuse that by-passed reporting allegations to the authorities. 

The minutes of the SWP's disciplinary committee show that allegations were put against a 'Comrade Delta', a senior member on the party's central committee.  These accusations were made by an unnamed female member of the party, who says she was assaulted over a 6-month period between 2008 and 2009.  The minutes show that she did not want to go to the police.  The disciplinary committee cleared 'Comrade Delta', with six out of seven members of the committee supporting his story of what happened.  But when the case was later put to party members, the disciplinary committee's decision was only accepted by 231 votes to 209 votes. 

In his resignation letter, the SWP journalist Tim Walker wrote: 
'I thought that they took the case seriously, this was not a jury of his peers, but a jury of his mates.' 
A friend of the female complainant, who was not allowed to attend the disciplinary hearing, said that she felt betrayed by the party, and another said that the woman thought, naively, that 'if she put in a complaint to the party it would be dealt with in line with the party's politics and our proud tradition on women's liberation... sadly her experiences were quite the opposite.'

The Independent newspaper has contacted the SWP's head office for a comment on the allegations but got no reply.  The SWP was formed in 1977 out of the International Socialists, it considers itself a 'revolutionary party' in the tradition of the Russian politician Leon Trotsky.

Beyond the realms of the Lib Dems and the SWP, another left-wing tendency is now dealing with a dilemma of a more political nature.  On the anarchist left censorship and restraints of freedom of expression are considered an even greater sin than sexual deviation.  Recently a major row has brewed up among anarchists and their fellow-travellers about attempts to censor the northern anarchists in the Northern Anarchist Network and to put the publication Northern Voices out of business.  Bookshop managers who stock Northern Voices have been approached  menacingly, book-stalls at Bookfairs have been overturned, and the printers of Northern Voices have been telephoned, and on one occasion a couple of years ago threatened with a solicitor.  The leftist group that is now embroiled in this embarrassing political dilemma is the British Anarchist Federation (AF), some of whose members have been involved in political bullying, blacklisting and feeble-minded violence aimed at the censorship and control of the publication Northern Voices, that culminated last December in Barry Woodling being herded out of a Manchester bookfair and forced to climb down a fire-escape. In the 20th Century, the two social movements that harassed shopkeepers to distraction were the mafia in the USA and the German national socialists, but now the perverse anarchists of the AF seem to have taken a leaf out of their book.

Interestingly, Rudolf Rocker and Noam Chomsky, both distinguish libertarian/ anarchist social thinkers, have defined the intellectual origins of anarchism as lying in the two strands of progressive thinking coming out of the Enlightenment: a socialist strand on the one hand and a liberal strand on the other. The historian David Goodway in his book 'Anarchist Seeds Beneath the Snow' (First published 2006 and now revised & expanded by PM Press in paperback in 2012 and to be reviewed by Derek Pattison in the forthcoming issue of Northern Voices) argued:
'A fruitful approach to understanding anarchism is to recognize its thoroughly socialist critique of capitalism, while emphasizing that this has been combined with a liberal critique of socialism, anarchists being united with liberals in their advocacy of autonomous associations and the freedom of the individual and even exceeding them in their opposition to statism.' 
This split personality of anarchism allows in certain shallow personalities who operate a form of secretive and conspiratorial politics; it is hard for example to decide if the political body that describes itself as the Anarchist Federation has an authentic voice or face. The only AF individual I'm aware of connected with it for sure, is one of its founders Nick Heath, a retired London librarian, who now works in the bookshop of Freedom Press on Wednesday afternoons and successful got the bookshop manager to take NV13 off the shelf last August.  It was Heath, who like Cyril Smith with the police, successfully sought to bully the independent anarchist publication Freedom not to publish material about the attacks involving his AF organisation on Northern Voices and others.  Others in AF are most often known only by their first-names or pseudo-names such 'Sally', 'Andy of London AF', 'Claire of Nottingham AF' and 'Alex the National Secretary of AF', there are also a number of strange miscellaneous AF groupies such as the shy one who calls himself 'Spikymike' and another called Ron Marsden from Didsbury. But no-one from the Anarchist Federation has yet made any official statement or justification for the crazy conduct of their members: indeed one must doubt the existence of the AF as a serious political entity.

The silliness with which these AF people and  the way this rag-tag-and-bobtail 'anarchist' army have performed, has been such that some respectable anarchists have sought to try to pretend that nothing has happened. But to ignore these acts, or just to dismiss these people as 'fools', or to play the Pontius Pilate is to risk falling into the trap that the Liberal Nick Clegg and the socialist SWP is now facing.  All these cases suggest is that the 'left' in British politics, whether Liberal, Socialist or anarchist, is suffering from a deep-seated corruption and lack of serious purpose; Simon Danczuk from Rochdale with his Cyril Smith revelations, Andy Newman from Swindon in highlighting the SWP's misdemeanours, and Barry Woodling in affirming the rights of a free press, are all fighting on the side of political decency.  As Simon Danczuk says of the Lib Dems  and Cyril Smith; burying 'their heads in the sand' may be a pattern but it is certainly not a solution.
_________________________________________________________

There are still a few copies of the printed version of NORTHERN VOICES No.13, available for sale it can be obtained as follows:

Postal subscription: £5 for the next two issues (post included). Cheques payable to 'Northern Voices' at c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH. 

Tel.: 0161 793 5122.

email: northernvoices@hotmail.com