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

A reply to Derek Pattison on class

by Andrew Wallace

THANKS for Mr Pattison’s reply on my article which raises some interesting issues, particularly concerning what he considers to be my penchant for ‘pretentious academic verbiage’ along with the social philosopher David Selbourne whose writings I drew upon.

His beef at the outset seems to be with my perceived stylistic idiosyncrasies and resort to pedantry, which he considers ‘barely comprehensible to most people’.  This seems to be an ad hominem attack and a disingenuous slice of anti-intellectualism.  Northern Voices amongst other things is a forum for literate and stimulating thought-pieces of various complexity and for employing a ‘highbrow’ discourse I make no apologies.  I suggest my vocabulary is hardly a radical departure from the general tenor and house style of NV.

Leftists struggle to push this faux anti-intellectualism because it is so obviously built on contradiction.  Leftists are often the chattering classes incarnate.  Only in the discredited regimes of ‘actually existing socialism’ did intellectuals face real persecution, but of course those societies had a very different dynamic in contrast to their Western European counterparts.

However even thinkers like Selbourne has taken issue with the “incomprehensible scholasticism, emanating from the nether darkness of academia where nothing grows”, so it seems a certain ‘anti-intellectual intellectualism’ is justified.  Certainly Selbourne and other writers of his ilk have largely avoided the dense impenetrable obscurantism of post-modernism that was so successfully lampooned and deservedly so in the Sokal Affair. So Selbourne might be galled to learn his former student accuse him of this very vice that has been so assiduously critiqued in his life work.

Dan Fox seems to have the measure of this ‘Prolier-than-thou’ trolling in his book (see below) even references Orwell’s ‘Politics and the English Language’ –

' “pretentiousness” is the put-down of choice for a certain sort of bluff, meat-and-potatoes Englishman who distrusts foreign words and complicated ideas'.

I do plead guilty to neglecting the newer, more ‘liberal’ cohort of the working class as depicted by Guy Standing in his work on the Precariat.  My admittedly non-scientific anecdotal observations are largely based on the older, traditional working class, based around the factories and textile mills that gave brief sustenance in the post war era.

Working class autodidacts are often deeply impressive and imposing figures, yet their comparative rarity makes them extra-ordinary individuals and a far cry from being representative of the working class.

Regards

Andrew Wallace

References

How the left was lost: the need to relearn what true progress means, New Statesman, 24.07.14. – David Selbourne

Pretentiousness by Dan Fox – (11.02.16.) Guardian review by Steven Poole

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/feb/11/pretentiousness-why-it-matters-dan-fox-review

Pretentiousness by Dan Fox review – why anti-intellectualism is the real snobbery | Books | The Guardian

The Working Class & Leftist Delusion

 by Andrew Wallace

LEFTISM gets itself into bogged down into certain delusional mythologies, one of which concerns the romanticisation of the working work, the heroic proletarian toilers and tillers of the earth,  preordained by Marxist gospel to act as the historical revolutionary agent to overthrow capitalism.  Marx had been pretty disparaging about peasants and 'rural idiocy', instead he and his fellow 19th century socialists felt that a newly emergent class of industrial labourers would shape up as the critical agents of modernity.

Alas some 140 years after Marx's death the working classes across the globe remain as distant from this pre-ordained enterprise as they ever were.  Indeed it seems quite the converse; the working class as hitherto constituted has played a most passive if indeed not reactionary role.

Leftist pretensions to scientific rigour can no longer disguise the romantic fallacy and cognitive bias of 'The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed'. As Bertrand Russell tartly observed 'Marx was the Wordsworth of the proletariat; its Freud is still to come."

David Selbourne has dissected this fallacious intellectual cul-de-sac as:

'prodigies of useless intellectual labour, whose largely metaphysical character is determined  by the metaphysical nature of the problems to which they seek a solution At the lowest political level, however masked by intellectual sophistication, they can descend to disappointed abuse of the working class for having failed to live up to middle-class socialist expectation. Theories, as we have seen, of 'consumerism', of the 'deferential' working class, of the 'long catalepsy' of the British working-class movement, of a class consciousness 'subordinate' in its very 'texture' to the 'hegemony of the bourgeois', all have silently inscribed within them the figure of a politically defective proletarian who is the obverse of the archetypally active class hero of socialist romance, first cousin to Dyden's noble savage.'

A truth which can still barely be alighted upon in progressive circles, 'socialism' is a not a product of the working class worldview, instead it is a quixotic interloper of sorts, a radical import of déclassé intellectuals who had reason to take issue with the corrosive workings and hardships of industrial capitalism. The wage labourers of course bore the brunt of the exploitative economics that coerced them to work in the most degrading of conditions and had active interests in agitating for improvements in their lot. However 'labourism' isn't 'socialism', whereby the former is to be realised in seeking redress to particular grievances and privations rather than the latter politically undefined and radical goal of usurping the settlement of the day.  Conservatism presented itself in the passivity of the general population and the consequent isolation and containment of dangerous radicals and agitators who threatened to bring anarchy to social order.

Marxism has had the unenviable task of confronting this conspicuous turd in a swimming pool with a battery of impressive rationalisations. Chief amongst these is the infamous idea of false consciousness which has been taken as an unfortunate slur on character in the same way ignorance as a descriptor is taken as an insult even though a concise definition isn't morally pejorative.

Marxists have also proved adept at accounting for a multitude of countervailing tendencies that militate against economic immiseration, such as the co-opting of 'bourgeois' sociology's 'embourgeoisment thesis' of middle class expansion, thereby muddying the waters of class conflict via a bought off 'aristocracy of labour'.

Leftist intellectuals then have erred in projecting a radical telos onto the working class arena, ignoring the utilitarian and individualistic basis to labour politics and the voluntarist and anti-statist ethos that marked these communities. They have also been oblivious to the deep structural incorporation of working class material resources into the capitalist system through mortgage and hire purchase.

However other sociologists have attempted to sidestep the theoretical travails of working class conservatism and the 'deviant' class voter by pointing out the not unsurprising reality of hegemony by way of the deep state ancien regime of a living museum pageantry (monarchy, parliament, church, armed forces, public schools, civil service, BBC) which naturally defaults us all to the dominant culture. Ironically this confinement to functionalist observation and impotent commentary rather nullifies Marx's famous 11th thesis on Feuerbach which implored for more action and less philosophical windbaggery!

It's the culture, stupid

The class voting sociology (Marxism ‘lite’) of the post war years is now having to contend with the other belated but uncontroversial driver of voting behaviour - culture!  As analysists are now recognising, voters are motivated by cultural issues which may not easily be subsumed within an economic paradigm and furthermore may actually be oppositional to the traditional material class interests.  Bourdieu's ideas on social and cultural capital have helped to redress the balance by giving due prominence to education and the cognitive repertoire that help to constitute social class in the modern era.

Many left revisionists had already discerned that traditional class based politics were becoming problematic with declining working class vote share from the 1960s onwards alongside a new counter cultural zeitgeist. With deindustrialisation poised to pulp much of manufacturing and decimate organised labour, Hobsbawm and Gorz wrote in unflinching terms of the likely recalibration of socialist politics. Gorz talked of moving away from class politics in favour of the 'new social movements'. This turn to identity and culture politics followed in the wake of disenchantment with the 'backward' working class. However such doubling down on the new politics exacerbated the cultural and intellectual chasm between the liberal campus radicals and the more socially conservative blue collar workers, leading to a further breakdown of the previous broad based social alliances between the classes.

Working class Hobbesian attitudes to the Welfare State

Fern Brady writing for The Guardian was taken aback by the distinctive authoritarian attitudes towards benefit claimants, particularly the unemployed and disabled.  Those without obvious physical markers of disability were often the target of an inglorious brutalism unveiled in her interviewees who amply demonstrated

(an) 'internalised...Thatcherite every-man-for-himself mentality, wanting benefits for themselves but resenting anyone else getting a handout...it went in a circle, anger constantly directed at other victims of the coalition government's Welfare Reform  Act instead of the politicians and policymakers responsible.'

Houtman et al drawing on Bourdieu’s work discerned the recourse to a 'deserving/undeserving' criteria in relationship to limited social capital and associated authoritarian attitudes which also were marked by penalising attitudes for 'out-groups' and fringe communities.

So ought we really to be surprised at this abundance of working class authoritarianism?  Again Selbourne is illuminative on precisely this point:

‘...any form of illiberalism in the human-as worker can come to be discounted or recycled as an aberration from the norm of a supposedly instinctive or class, predilection for progressive, fraternal and democratic solutions to social and economic problems. That history does not reveal the latter unequivocally, to put it mildly, is inconvenient. Indeed, illiberalism is as much an ideological choice of direction as any other and more explicable, in conditions of insecurity or fear of unemployment, than many’

In critically disabusing leftism of its ludicrous 'salt of the earth' workerism, it is not my intention to deny the very real and toxic nature of capitalism and I continue to desire even if without much hope that a saner politics emerge to reign in the excesses of our times.  However we need to face up to the increasing intellectual bankruptcy of the left.  We are now very much at the whims of the political right who continue to exploit the post liberal environment in their canny take on working class sensitivities.  'White van conservatism' and Boris's new 'Workers' Party' are set to run the show into the distant future.

I have drawn on the following essays/books/articles during the writing of this article:

• The Superior Virtue of the Oppressed, (1937) Bertrand Russell
• Against Socialist Illusion (1985), David Selbourne
• http://www.leninology.co.uk/2010/10/working-class-tory-is-something-to-be.html
• Working Class Conservatives: A Theory of Political Deviance (1967), Frank Parkin
• Social Class in the 21^st Century (2015), Mike Savage
• https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/feb/12/anti-welfare-rhetoric-families
• https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9966722/Welfare-reform-Its-class-war-but-not-in-the-way-youd-expect.html
• Farewell to the Leftist Working Class (2008), Houtman, Achterberg & Derks
• The Forward March of Labour Halted? (1978) Eric Hobsbawm
• Farewell to the Working Class (1980), Andre Gorz
• National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy (2018), Matthew Goodwin

Jabob Rees-Mogg defends anarchist protesters

by Brian Bamford

JACOB Reese-Mogg sprang to the defence of the Class War anarchists around the ancient activist Ian Bone, who were busy querying the wages and working conditions of Reese-Mogg's kid's Nanny.  

Others súch as the Archbishop of Canterbury, strongly criticised the stunt tweeting:

'This is appalling. There are plenty of ways you can tell MPs you disagree with them. But targeting their children is shameful and disgraceful. We are – and must be – better than this. We'll be praying for @Jacob_Rees_Mogg’s family at @lambethpalace chapel this evening.'

Yet Mr Rees-Mogg* told LBC: 'I wouldn't get too excited about it.'
He added: 'It was a few anarchists who turned up and it wasn't very well organised.  It wasn't terribly serious.
'We are a free country. They weren't violent.  They aren't admirers of mine. I am in public life and not everybody is going to like me.  That is a reality of public life.
'I'd have preferred it if it hadn't happened but I don't want to get it out of perspective.  I think much worse things happen to many other people.'

What is ironic about this noble defence of the right to protest and free speech by the Tory MP Mr. Reese-Mogg, is that the Left has been much less tolerant.  For example in 2012 at the London Anarchist Bookfair, a number of members of the then Anarchist Federation led bizarrely by the former Oldham teacher, Sally Hyman, raided the Northern Anarchist Network bookstall and stole some books *, a month later a man with Jewish ancestors was accused of being an anti-semite and pushed out of another anarchist bookfair in Manchester, and more recently at last year's London Anarchist bookfair a woman famous for her part in a campaign against  McDonald's burger chain was attacked by a so called tribe of transsexuals for defending free speech, since then the bookfair organisers have cancelled future bookfairs.
*  Jacob Rees-Mogg is the son of William Rees-Mogg, who edited the London Times in the 1960s, when the anarchists were very active and influential in the peace movement.  In his editorials at that time he had many thoughtful things to say about the anarchists.

**   www.fiveleavespublications.blogspot.com/2012/10/salad-cream-days.html

*******

Ersatz Anarchists and Fake 'FREEDOM'

by Chris Draper

THERE’s a lot of fake “Anarchy” about these days.  Authoritarians wrapped in the black flag proclaim the pseudo-science of Marx whilst practicing the politics of Trotsky and Lenin.  Their “class-struggle” rhetoric replaces the rejection of authority that properly defines Anarchism.

Kapital' Idea Vicar!

THE rot first set-in at 'Freedom', the movement’s erstwhile newspaper, with the bizarre appointment of a Marxist editor who found Jesus and was reborn as a Vicar.  

Closing the paper down in 2014 with the triumphant declaration, 'Kropotkin Might Have Started it but We Fucking Finished It!'  the ersatz 'anarchists' refused to vacate the building and now run the premises as rentiers issuing occasional press statements like their 6 March 2018 celebration of the violent suppression of free-speech. 

 

'Freedom’s' response to my reasoned critique betrays an utter absence of anarchist values.  In place of a thoughtful, cogent, closely-argued libertarian response all Northern Voices received from 'Zofia Brom' of 'Freedom' was a random string of abusive invective;

• ‘I couldn’t care less what you think’…
• ‘can not (sic) be arsed to read Northern Voices’
• ‘nobody cares what your shitty blog has to say’………etc.

Essential Anarchism

Regrettably this behaviour is all too common. Free-speech, truth and reason are essential ingredients of anarchism.  Other varieties of socialism accept 'means-to-an-end' politics; Marxism-Leninism-Trotskyism demands party-discipline, subservience and uniformity whilst Labourism eschews principles in pursuit of popularity. 

For Anarchism 'the personal is political', to build an anarchist society you need citizens with a libertarian psychology. Communists might imagine they can smash capitalism and mechanically rearrange the pieces to re-engineer citizens in a chillingly instrumental fashion but anarchism’s bottom-up approach demands patience and humanity. 

Old-school anarchists Colin Ward and Gustav Landauer remind us:  

 'The state is not something which can be destroyed by a revolution but is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of human behaviour; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently.'

Ignoring, insulting, censoring, no-platforming and even physically assaulting critics reinforces the sort of authoritarian relationships anarchists oppose and ultimately strengthens the state.  Rather than expound on the sociopathy of ersatz anarchists I prefer to articulate a positive alternative. 

To offer a practical guide to 'everyday anarchy in action', originally compiled by A K Brown and, incidentally, published in 'Freedom' in the years before the authoritarians took over.  Of course, there’s more to Anarchism than just these eight bullet points but if you’re uncomfortable adopting them you’d probably be more comfy under the duvet with the Commissars.

 

Everyday Anarchy

1.  Say what you honestly think, not what some theory says you ought to think.  If the evidence of your eyes contradicts your theory (and I include anarchist theory under this), ditch the theory, don’t go blind.

2.  Don’t join organisations whose ideals you don’t share simply because they are bigger than you. Campaign openly and honestly whenever you can and if you can’t form your own organisations and have to join someone else’s (eg a union at work), don’t try to take it over unless the majority agree with you and you want to help. Argue for your ideas instead.

3.  Never ask for something you don’t really want in order to take 'workers' through the experience. Campaign for things which are worth winning (and preferably which may be won soon).

4.  If you are in an organisation, don’t be scared to disagree with each other in public and to accept varieties of opinions. You don’t have to split every time you disagree over what’s happening in Nicaragua.

5.  Respect the rights of minorities. Listen to what others have to say and try to avoid imposing the majority will on them until there’s no alternative.

6.  Participate in campaigns and actions when you want to, not when others make you feel guilty. This will lower your political activity in the short term but enable you to be active for much longer and be more effective (you will sound like you mean what you say not like you would rather be at home).

7.   Accept that no one organisation has a monopoly of the truth. Just because other people belong to other organisations doesn’t make everything they say wrong.

8.   Trust people who are putting forward sensible ideas now (they are the only leaders we need). Never trust anyone calling themselves a leader and thus assuming the right to have all their ideas treated as if they were all good ones.

Christopher Draper (March 2018)

******

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.

LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT ...

The article below was published on page 10 of the last edition of Private Eye:

 SINCE it was founded in 1886 by the Russian geographer Peter Kropotkin, the anarchist journal Freedom has included among its contributors and supporters George Orwell, Alex Comfort, Augustus John, Herbert Read, Benjamin Britten, and Cliff Harper.  For almost 50 years it has owned its own building, next to the Whitechapel Art Gallery in east London. 

However, after the death in 2001 of Vernon “Vero” Richards, who had presided since the days of the Spanish civil war, it was run into the ground:  first  under the editorship of Toby Crowe, who was more hardline Marxist  than anarchist and eventually packed it in to become an Anglican vicar; then under a young thruster called Simon Saunders, whose consuming passion is for computer games. 

Last October the paper closed down altogether, with a final edition that bizarrely boasted:  'Never mind, Kropotkin might have started it but we fucking finished it!' 

The build at Whitechapel High St, recently valued at £1.1m, is now occupied by a bunch of scribblers, activists and Class War enthusiasts who style it an 'anarcho-hang-out' and call themselves the Freedom Collective – though one veteran Freedom supporter tells the Eye it's less a collective than 'a bunch of oiks and morons' whose anarchism seems to consist largely of swearing a lot.  One denizen rejoices in the moniker Gawain 'the Cunt' Williams. 

Needless to say, there was much jubilation at Class War's '#fuckparade' assault  last month on a nearby hipster cafe selling breakfast cereal. 'The Cereal Killer cafe is a legitimate target,' the Freedom Collective's website declared.  'Yes hipster businesses aren't the actual problem  - capitalism and landlords are – but it is certainly a good thing that these people are made to feel unwelcome.' 

But will the oiks themselves be made unwelcome soon?  The building owned by a formerly constituted company, Friends of Freedom Press Ltd, and under its articles of association its board is obliged to sell if the magazine ceases regular publication, and to use the proceeds for other editorial ventures. 

The hitherto somnolent board of FFP Ltd – mostly old-style anarchists – will meet in London on 21 October to initiate formal eviction procedures.  Meanwhile, despite having spectacularly failed to publish a newspaper, the occupants of the anarcho hang-out refuse to recognise the board's authority and claim ownership of the building 'on behalf of the movement'. 

Regular visitors to Whitechapel Art Gallery can anticipate some lively impromptu performance-art next door in Angel Alley in the coming months. 
And, naturally, a lot of swearing.  

Private Eye ponders problems of 'Freedom'

THE demise last year of Freedom newspaper, founded in 1886 by the geographer Peter Kropotkin, has now reached the columns of Private Eye.  In a feature story in the H.P. SAUCE feature (page 10)  entitled 'LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT...',  the journal today reveals that:

'The hitherto somnolent board of FFP Ltd (Friends of Freedom Press) – mostly old-school anarchists – will meet in London on 21 October to initiate formal eviction procedures [against a group of failed anarchists in residence].  Meanwhile, despite having spectacularly failed to publish a newspaper, the occupants of the anarcho hang-out refuse to recognise the board's authority and claim ownership of the building “on behalf of the movement”.'

The current occupants of the building who closed down Freedom newspaper describe themselves as 'the Freedom Collective', and imagine themselves as representing the British anarchist movement.  

The building they occupy at Whitechapel High Street has been valued at £1.1 million, and the Eye says the collective is composed of 'a bunch of scribblers, activists and Class War enthusiasts who style it an “anarcho hang-out”.'   

The strategy of the Friends of Freedom who own the building, if the Eye is to be believed, now seems to be to sell the building over the heads of the layabouts on the Collective who have failed to produce a newspaper as required.  Next weekend is the London Anarchist Bookfair, and one wonders what 'the movement' will have to say about all this.  Meanwhile, the Eye's H.P. SAUCE feature urges regular visitors to the Whitechapel Art Gallery to keep a eye-out for 'some lively impromptu performance-art next door in Angel Alley' from the colourful crowd who form the Freedom Collective.

www.private-eye.co.uk

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.

Who Killed Freedom?: an unauthorised history 4.

The End but Not for Everyone…

by Chris Draper

ON March 10^th, 2014 FREEDOM announced:

“We have come to realise that a solid hardcopy newspaper is no longer a viable means of promoting the anarchist message…An underlying problem has been a lack of capacity to sustain it. We had hoped that Freedom would be adopted as THE paper of the anarchist movement…Although Freedom Press has changed from a political group with a particular point of view to a resource for anarchism as a whole, we have not managed to shake the legacy of the past and get different groups to back it as a collective project…the shop, publishing and book distribution will continue…As will the use of Angel Alley for meetings, events, offices…”   

Four aspects of this statement deserve close scrutiny:

1. no longer viable
2. a resource for anarchism as a whole
3. not managed to get groups to back it
4. shop, publishing, book distribution…meetings, events, offices.  

I dispute all four, interconnected, elements.  

Viability

FREEDOM’s viability was adversely affected by the development of the internet but in 2000 Freedom Press published a quarterly journal, the Raven, and a fortnightly newspaper so it should now be possible to finance a monthly paper.  The premises are owned freehold (and contribute almost 6K annual rental income), Aldgate Press printed the paper free (which alone equates to a 10K annual subsidy), hundreds of subscribers paid upfront, the paper had an established brand name and distribution network so FREEDOM enjoyed huge commercial advantages over other aspiring anarchist publications but as I’ve attempted to illustrate, successive collectives took all this for granted, alienated existing writers and readers and failed to secure a new constituency.

 

Resource for All

Under Charles Crute’s editorship FREEDOM welcomed articles of every variety of anarchist thought and practice.  When two articles presenting opposite sides of an argument were submitted both were published. Until 2001 FREEDOM relished controversy and open debate, after Toby’s ascendancy a narrow class-struggle line was enforced.  The collective’s claim to be a resource for 'anarchism as a whole' whilst consistently refusing to publish material that challenges their party line exemplifies their arrogance and dishonesty. 

Not Managed to Get Groups to Back It

I lied about disputing this section of the statement, for it indicates a rare flash of insight on the part of the collective.  As I argued from the beginning, groups, like SolFed and AF have enough problems maintaining their own organisations to put much effort into FREEDOM.  It’s the bit claiming:  

We have not managed to shake the legacy of the past'  that I dispute. 

Successive editors have not just shaken the legacy; the intellectual, moral and political legacy of pre-Crowe FREEDOM has been razed to the ground. 

Spoils of Class War (shop, book publishing, offices, meeting rooms etc)

Having provided a political play-school for aspiring class warriors FREEDOM newspaper is no longer of interest.  Like the Revd Toby Crowe, several members of the collective past and present have gained other pulpits for their sermons. Political organs from libcom to Morning Star now 'benefit' from the opinions of interns schooled in Angel Alley.   The alumni’s attention is now focussed on other assets in the FREEDOM portfolio and the collective privately admit that most were always more interested in getting their hands on the building than producing the paper.   'Within the Freedom Collective only a small minority were involved in producing the paper, not so much lack of commitment as not seeing it as central to what Freedom as a building was for.'   Vernon Richards must be spinning in his grave.

Conveniently situated between Aldgate East tube station and Whitechapel Art Gallery; the premises now provide convivial clubrooms for members and friends of the FREEDOM collective. Class-struggle groups might not have done much for the paper but ironically FREEDOM now provides them with convenient London meeting rooms.

FREEDOM’s book-publishing business was initially exploited by the clique to produce the decidedly dodgy,'Beating the Fascists'.  In 2014 they reprinted John Quail’s, 'Slow Burning Fuse' with the added 'benefit' of a new introduction penned by collective member and leader of AF, Nick Heath.

The collective have grand ambitions as Andy Meinke, who now runs the bookshop explains:

'At some point we want to move out of here, somewhere on a street front to get more passing trade.'  Sale of the freehold could raise around a million pounds.

Many of FREEDOM’s lesser assets have already been disposed of to friends and associates of the collective. In 2008, former FREEDOM editor John Retty discovered classic books from the shop of no appeal to class-struggle types were being destroyed en masse.  Confiding to friends at the London Bookfair that he’d managed to salvage a few copies of his own literary works, he appeared gloomy and depressed as he reflected on the significance of the destruction.

FREEDOM’s archive of historic books and newspapers has been similarly looted:

'We have multiple copies of pretty much every issue ever printed of our august newspaper, along with a big batch of foreign publications…Multiple copies are already kind of getting promised out…With the books, we’re hoping to keep a lot of them but of the ones which are going it’ll probably be first come first served.'   'I was in Freedom this week with Iain Mckay flicking through back issues of Freedom and War Commentary…We in AF have been discussing setting up an archive…its our history and pretty interesting too'.  Pretty interesting it undoubtedly is but is it not outrageous that individuals and groups like AF and Black Flag who unceasingly denigrated FREEDOM now exercise proprietorial rights over its assets?  

Authoritarian Asset Strippers

The takeover of FREEDOM didn’t require much planning, the new boys on the block were astonished how easily they gained control, 'When Vernon Richards died (2001) he handed over FREEDOM to the “Movement” on a plate but it was too surprised to notice, it was comrades coming out of the Anarchist Youth Network (AYN) who saw the opportunity with the paper and reclaimed it for class-struggle.'

Whilst the class warriors consider this coup commendable, to me it was invasive, cynical, dishonest and exploitative. The people who piled into FREEDOM had nothing but contempt for the paper’s political outlook. FREEDOM embraced a gentle, considered, constructive range of anarchist ideas and practice that contrasted sharply with the class-struggle politics of alternative anarchist organs (Class War, Black Flag, Organise! etc).  The new regime swept into power on a triumphant wave of youthful enthusiasm. Once Simon Saunders found his feet, stopped admitting his own ignorance and started proclaiming his infallibility there was no going back.  Gainsayers were systematically treated with contempt.

In 2006 Saunders described FREEDOM stalwarts as:

'reeking of allotments, of forgetting class, of irrelevance and reformism.'   

An obvious, yet demeaning, reference to Vernon Richards who ran a commercial organic market garden and Colin Ward who wrote extensively about allotments as a model of mutual aid.

Crowe, Saunders, Talent and associates ridiculed FREEDOM’s prefigurative politics and dismissed the paper’s distinctively anarchist critique of Britain’s welfare state, characterised by David Goodway as, 'Freedom Press being unswervingly hostile to the Labour governments and their nationalization and welfare legislation.'  

As a disenchanted subscriber posted on the History Workshop web-site following FREEDOM’s demise:

'The problem is that, for many years now, Freedom has been run by dimwits.  It has had nothing of value to say for a long while.   It is such a shame that this historically important paper has been ruined…In recent years, every edition of Freedom was anti-denationalisation and pro-welfare.  It was often difficult to tell it apart from a left Labour paper except for the juvenile photos of people in masks throwing things at the police.'

In 1986 Tony Gibson could still claim:

'FREEDOM has survived while many other anarchist journals have failed, because among its many virtues it has been flexible, intelligent and able to withstand periods when this or that bunch of bone-headed zealots have striven to turn it to the service of their own narrow creed.'  

From 2001 the 'bone-headed zealots' imposed 'their own narrow creed' with predictable consequences. 

Although the zealous class warriors had a range of apparently more appropriate newspapers available in which to indulge their class struggle fantasies they latched onto the fact that capturing FREEDOM offered them unique advantages.  FREEDOM loyalists were too polite, trusting and geographically scattered to react as swiftly and determinedly as the situation demanded.  Those of us who spoke out were constantly frustrated by the censorship and evasion of the new regime.

FREEDOM was taken over by entryists with no allegiance to the organisation whose assets they have now monopolised and exploited for more than a decade.  The collective have doubtless convinced themselves of their entitlement but are living off the hard won gains of anarchists they despise.

In the end just 2 of the collective of 14 voted against ending FREEDOM. For most of them, their heart was never really in it, their allegiance lay elsewhere.

Collective member, Nick Heath dismissed the newspaper as 'a pole for liberal anarchists' and used an internet thread mourning the passing of FREEDOM not to offer condolences but to advertise his own newssheet ('if you want to spread real class struggle anarchist ideas then think about ordering a bundle' ) until informed by a fellow contributor that it was;'in bad taste on a thread about the ending of another paper.'

Collective member Meinke was always, 'very sceptical of its (FREEDOM’s) liberal bent'  whilst Jim Clarke wasn’t at all bothered about FREEDOM’s disappearance:  

'I’m not sure FREEDOM had much of an illustrious history…I’m more concerned about Black Flag to be honest'. 

The tone of Charlotte Dingle’s joyful celebration of the ending of the newspaper more befits a party invite than the passing of an invaluable institution:

' * Waves * Hello, Freedom editor here…Frankly I am overjoyed that the paper is going online…(SMILEY FACE)…'

What is to be Done?

Those of us who loved FREEDOM are not prepared to sit back and see its ideas traduced and its legacy misappropriated by authoritarians. The primary aim of this essay is to puncture the myth and challenge self-serving accounts of the downfall of FREEDOM propagated by successive editors since 2001.

This is also an extended appeal to Steven Charles Sorba (Aldgate Press); Sonia Markham (Retired Illustrator), Richard Parry (Solicitor); and even rather plaintively to Donald Rooum (Cartoonist and collective member), the directors of the holding company, FRIENDS of FREEDOM PRESS Ltd. to belatedly get a grip on the legacy, both intellectual and material, handed down to us by anarchists who didn’t hide behind aliases or enforce their own narrow political creed.  Please do not allow the collective to sell the building without yourselves ensuring that the whole anarchist movement benefits not just the current ruling clique.

Finally the destruction of FREEDOM should give all anarchists pause for thought.  The very openness of FREEDOM left it vulnerable to subversion of its political ideals. We tolerated illiberal behaviour for too long and allowed authoritarians to take over.  FREEDOM stalwart Nicolas Walter had forewarned us:

'In a sense, anarchists always remain liberals and socialists, and whenever they reject what is good in either they betray anarchism itself.'  

A Final Challenge

I challenge any, or all of the current clique that closed down the paper to leave your comfy clubrooms for the day, come up North and politely debate, 'THE FATE of  FREEDOM' at the next (2015) Manchester Anarchist Bookfair. Hopefully you will offer a positive response, though I rather suspect open debate is not your preferred medium.                         

                                                            Christopher Draper, Llandudno, February 2015