Colin Ward : the anarchist of everyday life :

Wednesday 9 June at 8pm

The Postmen's Office at the North London Community House,
22 Moorefield Road, London, N17.[The old Post Office]
The venue is just around the corner from Bruce Grove British Rail Station, where Bruce Grove meets the High Road in Tottenham. Any High Road bus is OK. Wheelchair accessible.

Glyn Harries introduces us to the anarchist and social theorist, author of nearly 30 books on a wide range of questions, who died in February of this year. We would like to celebrate his life.
(Selections from the DVD Colin Ward in conversation with Roger Deakin will also be shown.)

Colin Ward was the editor of the newspaper Freedom for a number of years,and was also the founding editor of the influential journal Anarchy from 1961 to 1970, which was described as the most original political/intellectual monthly journal being published at that time.

He became influenced by anarchist ideas after being conscripted into the army and ended up in Glasgow where he saw many of the local anarchist orators in action. In 1945 he was summoned as a witness to the trial of the editors of Freedom who were being prosecuted by the government for 'incitement to disaffection' with the publication of War Commentary. Ward, an avid reader of these anarchist publications, had been found with these in his possession and had to appear at the Old Bailey.

In 1973 his most famous book was published: Anarchy in Action, a work that has been translated into many languages. In this Colin Ward presents an alternative view of anarchism, he says: 'The argument of this book is that an anarchist society, a society which organises itself without authority, is always in existence, like a seed beneath the snow buried under the weight of the state and its bureaucracy....Of the many possible interpretations of anarchism the one presented here suggests that, far from being a speculative vision of a future society, it is a description of a mode of human organisation, rooted in the experience of everyday life....'

This idea is perhaps his most distinctive contribution. He elaborated it in his approach to the welfare state, calling the voluntary, non state option the path not taken, and returned to the theme of social policy several times over the years.

His published books cover a range of topics with perceptive criticisms of the social world and its problems and possible practical anarchist solutions to them. Colin Ward saw his body of work as integral from an anarchist point of view. The topics covered included town planning, housing, vandalism, education, child care, the politics of water etc. He was an acknowledged expert on tenants and housing. He also wrote histories on squatting, self-help housing of the working class, allotments and self-built holiday camps. His prolific writing resulted from what he saw his role as being: essentially that of an anarchist propagandist.

In the 2003 book Talking Anarchy Colin Ward is interviewed by David Goodway in what is an interesting and thought provoking biographical work. His influences from Kropotkin, Landauer and Goodman are clearly shown, as well as how he chose the topics that he wrote about.

The meeting will discuss the ideas and writings of Colin Ward, his achievements and how these can be used by anarchists and libertarians, now and in the future.

Freedom obituary of Colin Ward

Guardian obituary of Colin Ward

All elections are a joke - a reply by Dale Evans

The refusal of anarchists to take part in elections stems from the ideas and criticisms of the classical thinkers of anarchism from the 19th century. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon was himself deputy - representing the socialist party - in France's Chamber of Deputies. His views on social questions were ignored, leaving him with a disparaging attitude to parliamentary democaracy. For Proudhon 'universal suffrage is the counter-revolution', and Bakaunin argued that the  revolutionary party would become corrupted once it had gained power through universal suffrage. Indeed, uinversal suffrage only undermined the possibility of attaining socialism. These views have been reiterated by numerous anarchist theorists since, and they form one of the basic tenets of anarchist opposition to the state.

My criticism of Past Tense's leaflet on the upcoming general election arises from 2 areas. Firstly the attitude that elections are joke, all parliamentarians are corrupt and libertarians (anarchists and libertarian socialists) should not touch them with a barge pole; and secondly that their use of history to support their argument is misplaced.

Past Tense Election Leaflet

The text below contains what is the traditional anarchist position on elections, written and published by Past Tense. As a general election approaches it is important that all those of the libertarian left (anarchists and libertarian socialists) discuss this important issue, please feel free to add your comments.



ALL ELECTIONS ARE A JOKE

LET'S TREAT THEM WITH THE CONTEMPT THEY DESERVE

Oh God it’s another General Erection!
We know – all elections are a waste of time. Politicians of all parties fill their pockets, you couldn’t tell their policies apart without a microscope, the power of the rich, the global corporations and financiers continues merrily whoever is elected; well-meaning do-gooders get elected, then become sucked in or ground down by the weight of the system. While the meaningless circus at Westminster rattles on, our lives are at the mercy of their economic upturns and downturns, grinding away at work just to survive. While the rich and their parliamentary puppets wine and dine, whoever gets in next time will slash the NHS and other services many of us need to get by, to balance the national debt – at our expense, again.

The question is, what do we DO? Sink into apathy and distrust, giving up even the controlled lack of interest our rulers hope to kindle in us...? or take back the power in our own lives, now, every day, at work, in the streets, in our relations with each other, not every five years on a bit of paper but for real? We could do away with all politicians, bosses, bureaucrats, and run the world ourselves for the pleasure of us all and love of each other…

20 years of organised anarchist, and related, activity in Haringey, North London [1980-2000]

I’ve been active in various local libertarian, class struggle and community groups and campaigns in Haringey, North London for about 20 years. This is my personal recollection and summary... it is just one view.

250,000 people live in Haringey, North London - the generally middle-class western side (Crouch End, Hornsey, Muswell Hill) and the generally working-class eastern side (Tottenham), with a very mixed centre (Wood Green) dominated by the commercial High Rd and its ‘Shopping City’. In the predominately working-class areas there’s a very high percentage of people from minority ethnic groups, mainly african and carribean, and greek, turkish and kurdish.

100 years ago Tottenham’s population mushroomed as new rail lines were built and industry expanded. Most factories (except maybe clothing) have closed down and employment is now mainly service and shop work, with the Council being the largest employer.

I haven’t heard about local anarchist activity before the 70s, although there was: the so-called ‘Tottenham Anarchist Outrage’ in 1911 when apparently 2 russian anarchists killed a copper chasing them after a robbery; Albert Meltzer, the founder of Black Flag grew up in Tottenham (where he went to the same synagogue as my dad); and there was an anarchist bookshop, Libertaria Books, in the area in the early 70s.

In the late 70s and early 80s local anti-nuclear power campaigners were very active, and there was a strong Haringey Women’s Centre. The local labour movement was also strong, but dominated by the Communist Party. When I moved to Tottenham I was initially active in the Haringey and Islington Claimants Union - a libertarian group who’d been highly involved with claimants struggles since the late 1960s. A few of us set up the Tottenham Claimants Union (TCU) in 1983, at first meeting in someone’s home, then in a newly-set up council-funded Unemployed Workers Centre dominated by the Communist Party.

The TCU flourished, concentrating on empowering claimants to fight for their needs, exposing fraud squads, and making good links with local labour movement activists, the pensioners’ action group and short-life housing co-ops. Women at the centre set up Haringey Unwaged Women’s Group. Our high point was calling a 200-strong occupation of the Civic Centre to demand emergency payments during a DSS strike. We were also very active in the Federation of Claimants Unions and helped organise a few of their annual camps.

Some Haringey activists got heavily involved in the Stop ‘The City’ mass protests/carnivals in 1983-4. We decided to form the Haringey Community Action (HCA) anarchist collective, to support and encourage autonomous, radical local campaigns and groups - it also set up a pro-squatting group Homes For All. Some of us started an anarchist paper, The Free Tottenham Times.

During the 1983-4 miners’ strike both HCA and TCU got involved in support, with TCU members putting strikers up in their homes. In 1985, TCU’s active support for the Wapping printworkers was the last straw for the local Communist Party who decided to try to suppress our ideas, example and influence, producing a hilarious local scandal sheet attacking us. All to no avail - the CP itself collapsed soon after following the overthrow/demise of the Soviet and eastern european Communist regimes. The Socialist Workers Party are now by far the most dominant Left party in Haringey.

In 1985, following some years of black people’s self-organisation and anger at injustice, there was the local Broadwater Farm anti-police uprising - the resulting defence campaign has since inspired a number of other local campaigns against police brutality and racism. There were also battles that year between police and anti-fascists when anti-fascists attacked a National Front meeting in Tottenham.

HCA ground to a halt in the late 80s, but libertarian activists in the west and central parts of the borough were involved in renewed anti-nuclear campaigning and strike support. TCU and the Unwaged Women’s Group decided we’d had enough of the way the Unemployed Workers Centre was run, and set up our own Unwaged Centre (which we kept open daily for over 5 years).

Then came the poll tax - a huge turning point. Through our contacts with Claimants Unions in Scotland (where the tax was first brought in) we in TCU thought it could be beaten. In 1988 Tottenham Against the Poll Tax (TAPT) was set up - one of the first such groups in England - and soon after, libertarian activists elsewhere in the borough were the key to the setting up of Hornsey & Wood Green APT, followed by Green Lanes APT. These three groups were the basis of a Haringey-wide mass non-payment campaign (HAPTU) involving the distribution of hundreds of thousands of leaflets, 500 street reps and up to 20 independent neighbourhood groups. As a strong and active organisation we helped set up London-wide and national anti-poll tax networks and federations, including the Trafalgar Square Defendants’ Campaign after the poll tax riot.
As the campaign drew to a close in the early 90s, all 3 main groups decided to build on what was achieved and to transform themselves into local general solidarity organisations. After a year or two, the three groups merged into Haringey Solidarity Group which continues today.

HSG has been involved in a wide range of issues, campaigns and initiatives - including support for community struggles, anti-police brutality groups (in particular the Delroy Lindo campaign), strikes (including support for a bitter local strike by turkish factory workers), unwaged claimants issues (including Job Seekers Allowance and housing benefits), and opposing privatisation or anti-social regeneration and development projects. All the while we have run a small office, done monthly info/minutes mailouts to about 140 local people, held discussions and produced a number of leaflets and for many years a free local door-to-door newssheet. HSG has always tried to encourage other people around London to form community-based local solidarity organisations, taking an active part in helping organise national networks and events, doing an annual mailout to other groups - and helping produce The Agitator directory of anti-authoritarian groups countrywide (now up on our website). Numbers have fluctuated, with up to 20-30 people regularly attending meetings a few years back. There’s currently about 8-15 people actively involved. I myself have recently got stuck in again after being slightly side-tracked for about 6 years by the McLibel case. I helped produce a new set of HSG stickers, and I have argued at great length for activists to set up neighbourhood based residents’ groups throughout the borough, such as the one going so well on my estate.

The group’s politics has been flexible and there is often debate and sometimes controversy - but in general we have promoted libertarian/anarchist ideas, activities and collective forms of decision-making, and grass roots working-class solidarity and struggles. Apart from some turkish comrades, there have been very few black and ethnic minority people in the group. Men are always well in the majority at meetings, and women in the group have set up their own HSG Women’s Group. There are few parents involved. These are major challenges to us if we want to involve more people, have real influence, and overcome marginalisation.

Other recent dilemmas have included: agonising over the excellent 1998 Reclaim The Streets mass party which took over Tottenham High Rd but with unfortunately no prior involvement with local activists or residents; how community and class issues intermix; whether to set up our own local workers network, ...and continually asking why aren’t we achieving so much more when there’s so much fucking potential out there?! Many of these questions affect any and every anarchist group. If we are going to become a popular mass anti-authoritarian movement then we need to see similar locally-based solidarity groups everywhere, sharing ideas and experiences and thereby developing successful strategies for long term community resistance and real alternatives. I want to see an independent residents’ group in every street, a solidarity group in every workplace, and an anti-authoritarian/anti-capitalist organisation in every borough and town.

Dave Morris

Note: This was written in 2001 - as of December 2006 Haringey Solidarity Group has continued to meet monthly, to produce regular newsletters, to support residents associations, to support 'single issue' campaigns (eg HSG has been instrumental in the launch of the ongoing 'Haringey Against ID Cards' ) and support workplace disputes. HSG is currently helping develop a nationwide 'Community Action' network of grass roots anti-authoritarian activists, and helping people throughout London to set up groups similar to HSG in all London boroughs.

Contact: HSG, PO Box 2474, N8 hsg@haringey.org.uk We have produced pamphlets on the local anti-poll tax campaign, and on a local support campaign for a strike. Stickers and various leaflets are available.

Some thoughts on the history, strength, influence and potential of the Anarchist movement [1970-2005]

Anarchist ideas are the only effective and coherent ideas which point the way to ending oppression and injustice, and to creating a free society for the benefit of everyone. Yet despite the lessons of history and the cynicism of those trying to control and manipulate society for their own ends, people continue to flood into shitty political parties, polling booths, religious sects, drugs and escapism, the lottery etc etc.

This is a paradox that we seem to be able to do little about, at least in the short term, whatever we do - so let's not give ourselves a hard time... We can only do our best and hope that our time will come, and soon - before the whole fucking planet goes to pot.

So, what are the strengths and weaknesses of anarchist activities in recent times?


The anarchist movement includes formal and specific anarchist organisations, the diverse activities of dozens of local groups, and broader anarchist-influenced groups, networks and movements. Key questions we all have to face include:

· what can we do on a daily basis where we live and work
· how can we contribute effectively within various movements and struggles?
· how can anarchist ideas grow beyond ideological or cultural ghettos into having the influence and effect on our society they deserve?

There is, or should be, continuous interaction and overlap between the specific anarchist organisations/activity and the much larger, wider struggles and movements - with each influencing the other. Just as anarchists work for such movements to move in an anarchist/self-organisation/class-conscious/wider-issues/militant/direct-action direction, so we need to work to enable all anarchist groups to transform themselves into being much more accessible and relevant to the wider tens of thousands of dissidents and activists who can't relate to / avoid / are unaware / or are unimpressed with specific anarchist organisations - or who just get swept up into political parties or single-issue reformism as an end in itself, or just the only show in town.

There's been a very rich history of significant anarchist activity in recent decades. The following is a crude list of some of the most significant anarchist-influenced activities (which many anarchists and local anarchist groups supported or took part in). Some of the activities and movements, at least in part, consciously adopted many anarchist ideas - and in turn also helped influence and strengthen the anarchist movement.


Some current and recent Anarchist organisation and activity (in no particular order):

- the wide range of activities of local anarchist groups - including involvement in campaigns, local newsletters (eg. Hastings Poison Pen came out weekly for 5 years in the 1970s, the excellent papers produced in Bristol over decades etc etc), regular leafletting, interaction with grass-roots community groups and workplace struggles etc...
- local anarchist/radical bookshops and social centres
- 'national' anarchist organisations and papers
- the annual Anarchist Bookfairs (including regional ones)
- SchNews, Peace News, CounterInformation and other radical papers around which wider networks developed

Some anarchist-influenced 'grass-roots' struggles and movements (in no particular order):

- radical environmental movement, including 1970s anti-nuclear energy movement, Earth First!, anti-road-building struggles
- anti-militarist movements and campaigns (especially the anti-cruise blockades and camps in the early 1980s), including the influence of Peace News
- Reclaim The Streets...and anti-capitalist mobilisations (and the early 1980s Stop 'The City' actions)... Maydays... Critical Mass cyclerides
- squatting
- punk movement, and then the free raves/parties movement
- anti-fascist activities
- anti-corporation campaigns (eg. anti-McDonald's/McLibel)
- civil rights / defence campaigns
- freedom to protest struggles... the Legal Defence and Monitoring Group
- women's liberation movement
- Claimants Union movement (‘60s - 90s)... unwaged and unemployed groups (80s - early 90s)
- animal liberation movement
- local community action (libertarian-influenced grass roots groups and campaigns)
- workplace self-organisation of various kinds (eg rank and file building worker, couriers union etc)... community solidarity groups during strikes etc... Miners Strike and Dockers support work... Picket bulletin (Wapping)... the London Workers Group (1975 - 83), IWW
- coherent libertarian/radical cultural and lifestyle projects and movement (music, theatre, etc)
- conscious co-operative movement (mainly in housing, cafes) ...the Radical Routes network
- the Free Schools in the 1960s... libertarian education initiatives and children-centred activities since then... WEA and U3A?
- consciously alternative/radical media projects (eg radical
documentary groups), the indymedia network
- anti-poll tax movement
- right to roam, and 'land is ours' movements
- LETS schemes
- rural libertarian intiatives, including mutual aid.... back-to-the-land /
self-sufficiency / grow and make-your-own networks
- international solidarity campaigns, and 'no borders' groups
- prisoner support groups
- disability civil rights movements
- free self-organised and /or green festivals
- new traveller movements

Of course, each of these movements may have different, even contradictory tendencies and limitations, but they also have strengths and a great deal of potential. Most importantly, millions of people have taken part in such activities and we need to analyse and learn from their experiences to see how the anarchist movement can become the 'idea and movement of choice' for everyone who wants to oppose any aspect of our oppressive global system or create a better society. In my opinion the priority should be to build up strong community-based pro-working class local anti-authoritarian organisations in every town and borough, as well as help create strong grass-roots community groups in every neighbourhood.

At the end of the day, society seems to be dominated by its own internal forces. Sheer will power and doing the right thing often can only make small ripples in a massive pond. But forces shift, major movements can emerge, and real change can happen fast. Then revolution and social transformation become possible. But anarchist ideas will need to be prevalent to ensure a genuinely free and sensible society is created. Let’s all celebrate our activities and efforts, and our history, and continue to do our best.

Dave Morris
- involved with Haringey Solidarity Group