MONOPOLISE RESISTANCE?
HOW GLOBALISE RESISTANCE WOULD HIJACK REVOLT

PUBLISHED BY SCHNEWS

“The protesters are winning. They are winning on the streets.
Before too long they will be winning the argument. Globalisation is
fast becoming a cause without credible champions.” Financial
Times, 17th August 2001

For the first time in decades, millions of people are actively
questioning the existence of capitalism. From the Mexican jungle
to the streets of London, from the summits of Seattle and Genoa to
the factories of Indonesia, a broad alliance of groups, networks and
campaigns is mobilising people to take part in action directly
challenging capitalism and its destruction of communities and
ecologies. Millions are beginning to see that another world is
possible.

But there is no guarantee that capitalism will fade away as people
see through it. The rich and powerful would rather lay waste to the
world than lose their control over it. They’ve already made quite a
start. Our job is to stop them.

The anti-capitalist movement is at a key point in its development.
Three years ago it hardly existed. The next three years will be
crucial. This is why we’ve decided to make public our fears that all
this good work could be undone by people who have nothing to do
with this resistance but instead want to take it over for their own
ends.

This pamphlet is an attempt to show why the Socialist Workers
Party and Globalise Resistance are trying to do just that. While
working closely with ‘respectable’ anti-globalisation groups, the
SWP/GR increasingly attack those involved in direct action,
describing us - just as the gutter press does - as disorganised,
mindless hoodlums obsessed with violence. They are willing to
make these attacks so they can portray themselves as more
‘organised’ and, therefore, the best bet if you think capitalism
stinks and want to do something about it.

They are nothing of the sort. They want to kill the vitality of our
movement - with the best of intentions, of course - and we need to
organise better in the face of this threat.

Which is the other reason that we’ve written this pamphlet. Direct
action has achieved great things over the years but - let’s face it -
sometimes the way we organise things is just crap. We need to change that.

This isn’t some stupid slagging match. As regular readers will
know, SchNEWS is not in the habit of attacking other groups. We
just think these things need saying.

The opportunity for winning mass support for anti-capitalist ideas
has never been greater. Let’s not blow it.

THE TWEEDLEDEE TENDENCY
As the anti-capitalist movement grows across the world, some
people are beginning to tell us that we need closer links with social
democratic parties - the tweedledee of electoral politics and often the
very people organising the state’s attacks on us - in the name of ‘unity’.
We believe in unity - but watering down anti-capitalist politics to gain a
spurious ‘unity’ with supporters of capitalism is a betrayal that history
rarely forgives. In-yer-face, on the streets anti- capitalism is what
gives our movement its vitality and attracts

support for our activities - it’s not something to be played down,
disguised or get embarassed about.

Over the last year the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and its front
organisation Globalise Resistance (GR) have been attempting to
fundamentally change the nature of the anti-capitalist movement in
Britain. The SWP have got involved in the anti-capitalist movement
for very different reasons to the rest of us. Their main aim is to take
control of the anti-capitalist movement and turn it into an ineffective,
pro-Labour pressure group so as to increase the influence and membership
of the SWP. They’re not mainly interested in working with others - they
completely disagree with the politics of just about everyone else
involved. As they put it in Genoa, “Remember, we’re the only people here
with an overall strategy for the anti- capitalist movement. So I want five
people to go out with membership cards, five to sell papers and five to
sell bandanas.” (1)

They see the anti-capitalist movement as made up of well-meaning
but muddled people who will not be able to achieve anything
significant until they are led by the SWP. They want to lead us for
our own good: “Mass movements don’t get the political
representation that they deserve unless a minority of activists
within the movement seek to create a political leadership, which
means a political party that shares their vision of political power
from below”. (2)

But the SWP do not share the views of the movement they now
claim to be a part of and want to ‘lead’. They vote for the
government. They oppose ‘confrontational’ direct action. They
vastly overestimate the extent to which the Labour Party and trade
unions represent ordinary people, consistently arguing for anti-
capitalists to moderate their activities to suit the prejudices of
‘Labour Party activists’. They want to take us back to the days of
ineffective walk-to-Hyde-Park-and-listen-to-a-Labour-MP politics
that the direct action movement in this country was born as a
reaction against.

There is a world of difference between winning people to anti-
capitalism and watering down anti-capitalism so as not to upset
people in the Labour Party. If it was just a matter of the SWP
having pointless marches and shouting themselves hoarse inside
police pens it wouldn’t be a problem - they’ve been doing that for
years and nobody’s noticed. The problem is that they are actively
conning people attracted to anti-capitalism away from direct action
and into compromising with the Labour Party. All their activities are
geared towards making our movement less confrontational and less
effective. And their way into our movement is Globalise Resistance.

WHAT A FRONT!
Globalise Resistance exists mainly to increase the influence of the
SWP within the anti-capitalist movement. It is only interested in
activities to the extent that its brand recognition increases. For
instance, commenting on Gothenburg GR’s full-time organiser and
SWP member Guy Taylor said “GR has gone down brilliantly, the
words on the GR banner ‘People before Profit, Our World is Not for
Sale’ were taken up and chanted by the whole protest!”(3)

Globalise Resistance would no more take part in an action without
prominently displaying its banners and placards than an oil
company would give money to an environmental project without
telling anyone.

In all important respects GR is run by, and in the interests of, the
SWP - it is a front organisation. This does not mean that all its
supporters are SWP members - far from it. the whole point of a
successful front organisation is that it involves people who wouldn’t
otherwise join the party while at the same time being dominated by the
party and existing to fulfill the aims of the party. A really successful
front organisation will have lots of non-party people involved in running
it while remaining politically dominated by the party controlling it. As a
speaker put it at the SWP’s Marxism 2001 conference, “The united front is
a way for a tiny minority to win over lots of people… Globalise Resistance
is a united front.”(4)

Soon after he attacked Reclaim the Streets in the press for being
“part of the problem, not part of the solution” George Monbiot was
invited by the SWP to be a main speaker at a number of GR
rallies. This allowed the SWP to promote Globalise Resistance as
a ‘broad-based’ movement involving well known figures like
Monbiot. The important business of that tour was reported in
Socialist Worker: “On the Globalise Resistance tour 18 people
joined the SWP in Manchester, 10 in Birmingham, 9 in Sheffield, 8
in Leeds and 4 in Liverpool”. (5)

BRIGHTON 2001 - SEATTLE IN REVERSE
A clear illustration of the difference between the SWP/GR and anti-
capitalists was their opposition to any form of direct action against the
2001 Labour Party conference in Brighton. Soon after returning from Genoa,
Chris Nineham of the SWP/GR told a meeting in Brighton that “it would be
wrong to close down the Labour conference”, arguing that attempting to
blockade the conference would “give the media an excuse to call us mad
extremists” and “isolate us from potentially massive support”. Instead he
called on activists to “give encouragement to those in the Labour Party
fighting Blair”.(6)

Two years earlier in Seattle, hundreds of workers left a union march
to join activists blockading the World Trade Organisation. They
waded through tear gas, pepper spray and police tanks to join an
illegal blockade that stopped the WTO in its tracks. It was a major
victory for our movement. What the SWP argued for at the 2001
Labour conference was a sort of Seattle in reverse - instead of
trying to get unions and workers to join the direct action they
wanted the direct action to stop so as not to upset the union
leaders. in the face of calls for a blockade of the conference they
organised a ‘non-confrontational’ demonstration aimed at “unit[ing]
everyone who hates privatisation and wants to push for real
resistance from the union leaders”(7). Forget taking action
ourselves, they tell us - our job is to “place pressure on our leaders to
fight”(8).

THANKS, BUT NO THANKS
The instinct for unity in our movement is very strong, even amongst
people with very different political outlooks. Some people see no

problem with the SWP’s involvement in our movement, viewing
criticism of their politics as splitting the unity we need to be
successful. But this is to misunderstand what the SWP are up to -
if the SWP’s aggressive selling of their sect’s politics is successful our
movement will be significantly weakened. As an anonymous posting on the uk
indymedia site recently put it, “Many have heard of the recent British
history of direct action protest, and it was particularly clear in Prague
and Genoa how many have been inspired by it. How many are inspired by non-
confrontational protest marches to nowhere? I can tell you, only the
equivalents of SWP in all those other countries. So let’s please keep up
the momentum for creativity and change, and not give it up to people who
advocate going back to old, stale and useless tactics! This is no call for
disunity, it’s a call for a movement not to commit suicide by default!”

But if we’re gonna stop the SWP/GR from blunting the impact of
anti-capitalist politics, we need to examine what we’re up to.
Globalise Resistance advertised and organised transport for
hundreds of new people to Genoa - we did not. They organised
dozens of public meetings within days of coming back from Genoa -
we failed to. Globalise Resistance have organised large
conferences designed to raise their profile within the movement -
we have organised direct action conferences in the past but
nowadays, while rightly concentrating on actions, seem to act as if
these conferences don’t matter. They do.

We want to kickstart a debate about how we grow. How do we
meaningfully involve new people in activities? How do we learn from
our mistakes and pass on our experiences? How do we get our
message across faced with a hostile and manipulative media? In
short, how do we expand from a handful of relatively small
autonomous groups into a mass movement organically linked to
everyone at the sharp end of capitalist exploitation and state
repression?

WHAT IS ANTI-CAPITALISM?
The anti-capitalist movement involves a wide range of groups and
diverse styles of campaigns. But there are common principles that
run through all our activities.

1 A DETERMINATION TO RESIST CAPITALISM PRACTICALLY
Our movement is firmly based on the principle that direct action is
central to opposing capitalism. Capitalism is a very practical thing, you
don’t overthrow it by proving that it’s not very nice - you take actions
to prevent its destruction of communities and ecologies. This means
occupying offices, destroying jet fighters, shutting down docks and
blockading summits. It means creating social centres out of derelict
buildings, holding parties on motorways, defending picket lines and
trashing GM crops. It means going beyond words and making resistance part
of everyday life.

2 TAKING A LEAD FROM MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH
Capitalism is responsible for enormous, and growing, inequality in
the world - and it is the peoples of the world’s south that suffer
most. The income of the richest 20% of the world’s population is at
least 75 times greater than the income of the poorest 20% (it was

30 times greater forty years ago). Third world debt, enforced by the
military might of the United States, Britain and other rich countries, is
simply a racket to keep this inequality entrenched. Every day, £128m flows
from the poorest countries in the world to the banks of the rich
countries.

Our movement has always been inspired by the struggles of
peoples in the south, the majority of humanity, against capitalism.
Massive social movements such as the Zapatistas in Mexico,
Narmada Andolen Bachoa in India and Movimento Sem Terra in
Brazil are fighting life and death battles to defend their communities
from capital’s never ending quest for profit. In recent years strike waves
and popular protests have been seen from Argentina to Korea, Nigeria to
Indonsia. We support and learn from these movements. We see our struggle
and theirs as one and the same.

3 BUILDING PRACTICAL ALLIANCES WITH OTHERS
Our movement encompasses a wide range of groups and
campaigns with overlapping activities and ideas. We are a
movement of one no and many yeses. While there are constant
discussions and disagreements amongst people, our organic,
decentralised way of organising minimise the extent to which
abstract ideological debates prevent us from working together. New
ideas are tested in practice in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

The media and others are keen to pigeonhole anti-capitalism as a
cultural phenomenon defined by lifestyle, dress and age. The direct
action movement in Britain has roots in various communities,
noteably the anti-road camps and campaigns of the 1990s, but the
portrayal of our movement as a ‘sub-culture’ minimises the extent
to which anti-capitalist ideas have taken root in many parts of
society. For instance, it is simply not true to say that this is an
‘anarchist’ movement - anarchists play an important role, but so do
socialists, greens, communists and loads of people who wouldn’t
call themselves any of these things.

People are always developing new, practical links with others
fighting capitalism - strikers, anti-racist campaigners and others
both here and abroad - based on mutual respect and a shared
determination to challenge capitalism in all its forms. The way we
organise allows us to minimise the state’s targetting of individuals
as ‘leaders’ and encourages new ideas and tactics to develop in a
way that would otherwise not be possible.

4 SHOWING A HEALTHY DISREGARD FOR LEGALITY
The law has always been used as a weapon to prevent effective
opposition to capitalism. From the anti-union laws preventing
picketing to the Terrorism Act outlawing free speech, from the
Criminal Justice Act stopping people dancing, squatting and
protesting to the Public Order Act’s attacks on basic rights of
assembly, laws are constantly brought in to attack us. We’d be
mad to treat these laws as anything but an occupational hazard to
be got around - we certainly don’t let them dictate what we do.
Opposing capitalism within the law is like playing a game of
football after deciding you’re not going to kick the ball outside your own
half. It doesn’t work.

This doesn’t mean it’s okay to go around attacking and robbing
people everywhere - that’s what capitalism does. It means
recognising that the state and its laws are there to defend the
capitalist system and we shouldn’t be surprised when it does
exactly that. It means showing that we will not play by capitalism’s
rules of ‘legitimate protest’ because they are their rules, not ours, and
if we play by them we will lose.

5 BREAKING WITH THE ‘OFFICIAL’ MOVEMENTS AND PARTIES
THAT HOLD OUR STRUGGLES BACK
The wealth of the richest 358 people in the world is more than the
annual income of nearly half the world’s population; 800 million
people in the world are severely malnourished or starving; a tenth of
children in the poor countries of the world die before their fifth
birthday. We use these sort of facts to illustrate how obscene a system
capitalism is. But the sheer scale of this obscenity raises an important
question - not so much how do we get rid of capitalism but rather, if
capitalism is so obscene, so wasteful, so against the interest of
humanity, how come it still exists?

The answer, of course, is that lots of people want it to. Many
people in Britain and other rich countries are able to live in relative
affluence as a result of the millions that capitalism keeps flowing in
from the south. It has been estimated that if UK consumption were matched
globally we would need eight planets to provide the resources needed. The
cheap commodities produced by slave labour in the south, the massive ‘debt
repayments’ to the north, the manipulation of world markets by the rich
countries and their institutions such as the World Bank, World Trade
Organisation and International Monetary Fund contribute to a higher
standard of living for many people in the rich countries. It’s not just
merchant bankers and multinational directors that gain from Britain’s
financial power - many middle-managers, professionals and others benefit
significantly.

It is from people like this - stuck between those at the top and the
millions of workers, carers and unemployed with no security or
privileges at the bottom - that the Labour Party and, to a large
extent, the trade unions draw their membership. While there are
working class people in the Labour Party and trade unions they do
not determine these organisations’ political standpoint.

The Labour Party has always played an important role in
sabotaging, undermining and holding back effective opposition to
capitalism, acting as a safety valve for capitalism, allowing people
to feel they have a choice, without anything changing. A recent
survey revealed that only 15% of Labour Party members see
themselves as working class. This is not a party of the toiling
masses - it is a thoroughly pro-capitalist organisation that is
backed and funded by major corporations. From supporting the
corporate takeover of our public services to arming third world
dictators, from incarcerating asylum seekers to criminalising
opposition with the Terrorism Act, the Labour Party has shown
itself to be not misguided or wrong-headed or badly led but, quite

simply, capitalism’s government of choice.

The unions today are little better. They are major financial
institutions in their own right, holding assets of over £1,000m.
Unions are now more interested in providing financial services for
its members - the better off, the better - than fighting for their
members and facing the prospect of having their assets
sequestrated. Less than a third of British workers are in unions and
those that are tend to have more secure jobs - every other trade
unionist is a professional and over a third have degrees while only
one in five casual workers and 6% of workers under 20 are in a
union. A middle aged manager with a mortgage and a private
pension is more likely to be in a union than a teenage casual
worker on the minimum wage.

This isn’t to say that we don’t support strikes and other actions by
workers - far from it. The direct action movement occupied and
blockaded docks during the Liverpool dock dispute and Reclaim
The Streets have taken action in support of striking tube workers.
In contrast, almost all significant strikes in the last few years - the
Liverpool dockers, the Hillingdon hospital workers, the Tameside care
workers, the Dudley hospital workers - have been denied the support they
needed to win by their own unions.

As privatisation kicks in we can expect to see thousands of
workers, like the SITA workers in Brighton (see page 15) taking
action to defend basic services against profiteering fatcat
companies. These actions will only win if they are based in local
communities and take the sort of action that unions, usually more
concerned with staying within anti-union laws than defending jobs
or services, all too often tell their members to avoid. Anyone with
an ounce of anti-capitalism in them will be supporting these actions
- and hopefully helping them to win.

‘VOTE LABOUR WHERE YOU MUST’
The SWP reject all these principles. While using the language of
direct action, they take part in it as little as possible. Handing out
leaflets in Bristol becomes an ‘action’. A book launch in London is
preceded by a widely advertised ‘action’ that involves shouting slogans
outside McDonalds for half an hour. While paying lipservice to the idea of
direct action, the SWP prefer legal, ineffective demos - preferably with
Labour councillors or MPs - everytime because they are more unacceptable
to the Labour Party supporters they are trying to win to their party.

The SWP believe that the struggles of peoples in the south are far
less important than trade union struggles in Britain and other richer
countries. They believe that third world debt is peripheral to the world
economy and that workers in Britain and other richer countries are more
exploited than workers in the third world (9). The Zapatistas, they
reckon, are “not in a position to provide political leadership for the
movement that has celebrated their example” (10). No, that’s a role that
the SWP have reserved for themselves (and since when did the Zapatistas
want to ‘lead’ us anyway?).

But what most clearly differentiates the SWP from anyone with a
spark of anti-capitalism is their support for the Labour government.
The SWP have always voted for the Labour Party. At the last
election they stood Socialist Alliance candidates in a minority of
seats but instructed their members to vote Labour in the majority of
seats. In the same publication that they say “a vote for Labour is a
vote for continuing inequality, poverty, privatisation and slavish
devotion to the market” (11) they announced that “our approach in
the coming election should be ‘vote Socialist where you can, vote
Labour where you must’” (12).

The SWP would have us believe that the Labour Party and unions
are full of closet anti-capitalists who can hardly wait to take to the
barricades with us - as long as we behave ourselves. When they tell us
that “many who were on the anti-capitalist demonstrations or sympathised
with them will also be members of the Labour Party” (13) and
“anti-capitalists have to build bridges towards these outraged Labour
members” (14) you know that they’re not calling on Labour Party activists
to adopt direct action - they are trying to convince anti-capitalists to
tone down their activities so as not to upset these people. When they
write that, “combining direct action with electioneering will not always
come naturally to those from a Labour background” (15) you know it’s not
the electioneering that will be quietly forgotten as they try to turn the
anti-capitalist movement into a sad left-wing pressure group.

Of course, there are loads of people who’ve got involved in
Globalise Resistance and the SWP because they really do want to
fight capitalism. It’s easy to mistake the glitz and big meetings for
effective organisation, especially when SWP members often simply lie about
their real beliefs when out recruiting.

But it’s not effective. It’s a sort of convenience politics - the same
everywhere, obsessed with market share, sometimes initially tasty but, in
the end, not much to it. The real world’s messier, less straightforward
and sometimes downright confusing - but it is the real world.

GETTING OUR ACT(ION) TOGETHER
Over the last few years the direct action/anti-capitalist movement
has developed enormously. People have been continually and
creatively adapting tactics to meet new challenges and changing
circumstances. Alongside big actions, people are increasingly
doing things locally, in their own communities. From the fight
against cuts in Hackney to the Vote Nobody! campaign in Bristol,
activists are building strong links with other people fed up with what
capitalism has to offer. This isn’t a retreat away from the big picture -
it’s building things solidly, connecting with the spirit of resistance you
find in estates and communities up and down the country, while never
forgetting how all our struggles - and the struggles of millions of people
across the world - are linked. We need to build on this. In the next few
years we’ll need all our resourcefullness if we’re gonna seize the moment,
build new alliances and involve new people in fighting this mad system.
We’ll

need to be bolder in promoting our ideas, more creative in involving new
people and clearer in getting our message across.

We haven’t got all the answers - and sometimes we’re own worst
enemy. Our aversion to hierarchy is healthy, but too often it just
means that there’s some inner circle making the real decisions.
This is not ‘non-hierarchical’ - it is often the very opposite,
excluding many people from participation. Ask yourself - how easy
is it for someone new to your town to get in touch with your group?
Do you have meetings where newcomers - and not just people from
your own social circles - are made to feel welcome and involved in
things? The easier we make it for new people to get involved, the
more we connect with the day-to-day struggles of people around
us, the more successful we will be. It’s really as simple as that.

Movements never stay the same for long - they either grow or fade
away. If we fail to continually improve the way we organise, there is a
real danger that people will turn their backs on direct action and be led
back into the dead end of electoral politics. We can’t allow that to
happen. The stakes are just too high. We want to win.

EXTRA BITS

SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY- SOME BLASTS FROM THE
PAST
The SWP have a long history of appearing revolutionary in the
abstract - while opposing effective action in real life.

In the late 1970s, the SWP formed the ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE (ANL)
to oppose the growth of the fascist National Front. Then as now,
the greatest attack on black people in Britain did not come from
fascist groups but from a Labour government implementing racist
immigration laws. The almost exclusively white ANL grew into a
movement of hundreds of thousands holding massive rallies and
concerts across the country where Labour politicians would be
invited to address the crowds. But, when it came to fighting state
racism, The SWP argued that the ANL should not oppose
immigration controls. The SWP refused to oppose state racism
rather than upset Labour Party supporters.

In September 1978, the ASIAN COMMUNITY IN EAST LONDON
asked the ANL to divert people from a big ANL carnival to the east
end to oppose a National Front march. The ANL refused. SWP
members argued that the ANL should not oppose the racist march
because “even such a movement on the empty streets of the city of
London facing 8,000 police might not have broken through and
beaten the Nazi marchers”16. The Asian community was deserted
by the SWP.

THE MINERS’ STRIKE OF 1984-85 saw miners, their families and
their communities fighting for survival against a determined state
machine and a militarised police force. The miners had enormous
support from miners support groups throughout the country but, of
course, the Labour Party and trade union movement refused to give
the miners the support they needed to win. Faced with the refusal
of other unions to back them, miners organised hit squads to
prevent scabbing by sabotaging scabs’ buses and physically
prevent scabs from breaking their strike. The SWP, supporting only
legal trade unionism, condemend the hit squads, arguing that “we

are opposed to individuals or groups using violence as a substitute
for class struggle” (17) and that “such raids can give trade union
officials an excuse not to deliver solidarity” (18).

During the campaign of MASS RESISTANCE TO THE POLL TAX
in the late 1980s, the SWP insisted that only the unions would be
able to beat the tax. Dismissing the mass non-payment movement
in Newcastle, for instance, they said that “In a city like Newcastle
the 250 employees in the Finance Department are more powerful
than the 250,000 people who have to pay the poll tax” (19). Chris
Harman, the current editor of Socialist Worker said at the time that
“on the council estates there are drug peddlers, junkies and people
claiming houses under false names. These people will complete
the registration forms to avoid attention from the council” (20). If the
SWP had had their way, there would have been no non-payment campaign and
the poll tax would not have been defeated.

FIGHTING PRIVATISATION
In June 2001 Brighton’s refuse workers went to work to find that
their employers, the French multinational SITA, had imposed
increased workloads that were impossible to deliver. When the the
160-strong workforce protested they were sacked. The workforce
occupied the depot.

This is the sort of dispute that makes the left go all wobbly at the
knees with paper sellers flocking to the picket lines to tell the
workers ‘how to organise’ - and ‘why not join our party while you’re
at it.’ But what happened was something entirely different.
Within a few hours, people from the Anarchist Tea Pot were down
at the depot with food and blankets. Other activists helped design a
leaflet with the workers to give out around town.

The next morning, SITA brought in casual employment agency
workers to scab against the strike. It didn’t work. Supporters of the Free
Party successfully persuaded the agency workers that if they scabbed they
wouldn’t be welcome anymore at Brighton free parties! Then someone using
good old-fashioned direct action skills locked onto one of the trucks for
five hours, preventing the rest from moving. As one striker put it, “This
fellow is crazy but what he has done is much appreciated”. Next, activists
picketed recruitment agencies that were advertising the sacked refuse
collectors jobs - within a few hours they had all pulled out. Thursday
morning was spent with scouts on bikes looking for scab trucks while 30
people sat in a park waiting to spring into direct action.

By Thursday evening, SITA had caved in. All the workers were
reinstated, getting full pay for the time they were on strike. As
GMB official Gary Smith told SchNEWS at the time, “We had
enormous public support from the local unemployed centre, direct
action people and loads of different communities who are fed up
with their services being run for profit. We should take inspiration
from this fight, because it shows that when people get together we
can stop privatisation in its tracks.”

THE OKASIONAL CAFE
Squat cafes and community centres are a great of getting people
involved away from the intimidation from the police and authorities

that you would expect to get at an action. In Manchester, the
Okasional Cafe is a squatted social centre that has been appearing
occasionally for the past four years in different buildings around the
city. It’s a friendly, accessible place where people can get to know each
other, start working together and build up trust. On election day this
year, it was the base for a Manchester anti-election day of action with
street theatre, free food and music.

More recently, people from the Okasional cafe heard about a film
called Injustice dealing with deaths in police custody - wherever the film
was due to be shown, the Police Federation would threaten last minute
legal action and the cinema would be forced to pull it. Some people from
the cafe decided to get in touch with the film makers and offer the squat
as an alternative venue in case this happened again. Sure enough, a local
cinema was soon forced to pull out of showing the film because of threats
of legal action and the Okasional cafe stepped in. Activists shepherded an
audience of about 100 around the corner from the cinema to watch the film
in the cafe. People who wouldn’t normally come to the cafe were told that
they were in a squat and what else was going on there. After the film
there was food and a discussion with the families of victims of police
killings and the filmmakers about their campaign for justice.

AVIN’ IT IN HARINGEY
The Haringey Solidarity Group from north London have been
involved in radical community organising for years. Originally set up to
fight the poll tax, they decided to carry on after the tax was defeated.
Since then they have been involved in everything from supporting local
workers’ struggles and fighting casualisation to keeping an eye on police
surveillance and the exposing the cost of corporate regeneration of the
borough.

“We are a group of local people who feel things need changing and
we don’t have much faith in politicians and other so called leaders
to do it for us. Things will only get better for ordinary people when we
decide what is best for us. It is not for some boss or so-called leader to
decide what they think we need. We believe in doing things for ourselves
wherever possible and we try to encourage others to do likewise.

“We also feel that when ordinary people fight back against the
system - be that your boss, the local council or some multi-
national company - they need to be supported. So we agreed from
the birth of Haringey Solidarity Group onwards that, where
possible, we would work with and support local campaigns and try
to get them to support us. By this we don’t mean taking over a
campaign. We mean sharing skills, giving each other confidence to
do things and learning from each other’s successes and failures.
People need to feel confident before they can even think of starting
to fight back themselves. We know this may be a slow process but
it is far better than starting something up and telling people what
they must do. We don’t want to just become the new set of
leaders.”

FIGHTING CASUALISATION THE SIMON JONES MEMORIAL
CAMPAIGN
Simon Jones was killed in 1998 on his first day as a casual worker
at Shoreham docks - another victim of Britain’s casual labour
economy. His death would have been brushed under the carpet like
hundreds of others - except this time a campaign of direct action
was set up to support Simon’s family’s fight for justice.

The docks where Simon was killed in were shut down, the
employment agency that sent him there occupied. When it was
clear that nothing was going to get done, the campaign occupied
the Department of Trade and Industry, shut down a bridge outside
the Health and Safety Executive and blockaded the Crown
Proaecution Service. Eventually, the state agreed to prosecute the
company involved.

This victory would not have been possible without direct action.
Dozens of local union branches gave money to the campaign which
they saw as fighting for the most basic union right - the right not to be
killed at work. But while union activists kept telling the campaign how
they fully supported the campaign’s effective tactics, they also said
that they couldn’t do that sort of thing for fear of breaking union laws -
they saw the direct action movement as being able to take the action it
couldn’t. As one union activist put it, “Nowadays, unions are just too
scared to do this sort of stuff. I wish that wasn’t so, but it is. Let’s
hope that changes.”

GET YOURSELF CONNECTED…
One way of breaking down barriers and encouraging more
cooperation between people is to have a regular get together for
different anti-capitalist groups in an area. In Brighton the Rebel
Alliance is an irregular get together of the various direct action/non-
hierarchical groups in the town. Groups such as SchNEWS, Hell Raising
Anarchist Girls, Anarchist Tea Pot, Simon Jones Memorial Campaign, animal
rights and permaculture groups, etc are given a couple of minutes to say
what they are up to. This allows new people to see what’s happening
locally and decide what they want to get involved in. It’s also a great
way for everyone to meet people they might not normally come across,
exchange information and discuss what’s going on in the big bad world
beyond your own campaign or group. Similar stuff happens in London with
CItY and in Manchester with the Riotous Assembly, where each meeting has a
topic with speakers and films as well.

Hard core activists are probably used to waking up to in-depth
discussions about globalisation, so it’s sometimes easy for them
to forget that there are few places where new people who don’t
happen to be mates with activists already can listen to what we
have to say and discuss stuff with people who are involved. You
can use these get-togethers as opportunities to discuss
fundamental issues - for example the violence/non-violence debate
has old political hacks crying into their beer/herbal tea but for new
people it might be the first time they’ve had the chance to discuss some
of the arguments.

WATCHING THEM WATCHING US
We all know that the mainstream corporate media is controlled by
people who don’t exactly take kindly to anti-capitalist ideas. We

have our own media - hey, you’re reading it! - and there’s never
anything stopping people getting together to publish a newsletter,
stick up a website or whatever. From small, local newsletters to
the worldwide Indymedia sites - the Italian Indymedia site alone
was getting over a million hits a day during Genoa - we certainly
have ways of getting our message across.

But that doesn’t mean we can avoid the mainstream media
altogether. It’s certainly true that journalists can stitch you up,
misrepresent what you say and try to make you look like an idiot,
and in the past people involved in actions have often refused to
have anything to do with the media because of this. The problem is
that nowadays our silence is being used by groups like Globalise
Resistance and self-promoting academics to speak ‘on our behalf’.
So whereas in the past we could often let our actions speak for
themselves, it’s now quite important to consider talking to the
media - so that someone else doesn’t come along and claim to
speak for you.

So how can you get your message across? Well, when Justice?
set up a Squatters Estate Agency in Brighton a few years back to
advertise local empty property to potential squatters and draw
attention to homelessness in the town, there was an incredible
media interest. Everyone from Australian TV and the German press
to Radio 1 and Newsnight were desperate to hear what was going
on. Luckily enough, Justice? had had a media training day a month
before, learning how to deal with dodgy interviewers, so were able
to prepare for the onslaught quite well. “We got half a dozen of us
together, went through the basic points we wanted to make - so
many empty homes, so many homeless people, why? - and did
the interviews sticking to those points. Because there was a group
of us, no one got seized on as leader - and it was great being able
to beat MPs and government ministers in discussions by keeping
to the basics.”

RESOURCES
RECLAIM THE STREETS PO Box 9656, London N4 4JY Tel 0207
281 4621 { HYPERLINK http://www.reclaimthestreets.net
}www.reclaimthestreets.net

EARTH FIRST! PO Box 487, Norwich NR2 3AL Tel 01603 219811
{ HYPERLINK http://www.eco-action.org/efau }www.eco-action.org/efau

PEOPLES GLOBAL ACTION Helping to coordinate international
days of action { HYPERLINK http://www.agp.org }www.agp.org

HARINGEY SOLIDARITY GROUP PO.Box 2474, London N8 Tel
020-8374 5027 { HYPERLINK http://home.clara.net/hsg/hhome.html
}http://home.clara.net/hsg/hhome.html Check out
the leaflet What can we do in our local area?. Also produce The
Agitator - a directory of autonomous groups.

THE INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE { HYPERLINK http://www.indymedia.org
}www.indymedia.org or
{ HYPERLINK http://www.uk.indymedia.org }www.uk.indymedia.org for the
British site. Indymedia began life at the protests in Seattle against the
World Trade Organisation and now has sites all around the world. This
network of collectively run media outlets is “for the creation of radical,
accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth”.

THE SQUATTERS HANDBOOK Available for £1 + SAE from
Advisory Service for Squatters, 2 St.Paul’s Road, London N1 2QN
Tel 020 7359 8814 { HYPERLINK http://www.squat.freeserve.co.uk
}www.squat.freeserve.co.uk

THE PORK-BOLTER have produced a ‘How to set up a local
newsletter’
PO Box 4144, Worthing BN14 7NZ. { HYPERLINK
http://www.eco-action.org/porkbolter }www.eco-action.org/porkbolter

THE ACTIVISTS’ MEDIA TOOLKIT £2.50 inc p&p (cheques
payable to Oxyacetylene) 16b Cherwell Street, Oxford OX4 1BA
{ HYPERLINK http://www.toolkits.org.uk }www.toolkits.org.uk

VAMPIRE ALERT! A short leaflet produced by anarchists in 1999
alerting people to the SWP’s decision to become involved in anti-
capitalist activities. Available at { HYPERLINK http://www.leedsef.org.uk
}www.leedsef.org.uk

THE TYRANNY OF STRUCTURELESSNESS by Jo Freeman. A
seminal essay from 1970 about the debate over small/unstructured
group organisation that has been raging from the 70s till today.
Available for £1.50 from AK Distribution, PO BOX 12766, Edinburgh
EH8 9YE or at
{ HYPERLINK
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html
}http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html

REFERENCES
1Chris Nineham speaking at SWP/GR meeting 18th July 2001,
Genoa convergence centre 2 Socialist Review (SR) January 2000 3
Quoted in “eyewitness account from Gothenburg” at

www.brightoncollective.org.uk 4 SWP speaker at Marxism 2001 5
Socialist Worker (SW) 17th February 2001 6 All quotes from
posting at www.uk.indymedia.org 7 SW 1st September 2001 8 SW
15th September 2001 9 Alex Callinicos at Marxism 2001 session
on Is third wolrd debt central to the world economy 10 International
Socialism Journal (ISJ) winter 2000 11 ISJ Spring 2001 12 ISJ
Spring 2001 13 SR January 2000 14 SW 8th September 2001 15
ISJ Spring 2001 16 SW 30th September 1978 17 SW 25th August
1984 18 SW 11th August 1984 19 SWP speaker at National Action
Conference against the Poll Tax, quoted in Lorna Reid, Poll Tax:
Paying to be Poor 20 Speaking at the Socialist Conference 1988,
quoted in ibid.

This pamphlet has been put together by people involved in direct
action from a number of organisations and groups. It grew out of
discussions led by SchNEWS and people involved in direct action
in Manchester at the Earth First! gathering held in Derbyshire in the
summer of 2001. After this, it was discussed amongst people from SchNEWS,
Reclaim the Streets, Earth First! and others. Needless to say, everyone
didn’t agree on everything - but everyone did agree that we needed to say
something along these lines.

One problem people mentioned a lot was the use of ‘us’, ‘we’, ‘the
movement’ and so on when describing people involved in direct
action and anti-capitalism. This isn’t meant to sound exclusive -
you can’t ‘join’ the anti-capitalist movement - it’s just
kinda difficult to write about things any other way.

SchNEWS is a weekly direct action newsletter written by activists
that has been providing information for action since 1994. Every
year we publish a book compiling these newsletters, other material

and a comprehensive contacts database.

Our website at { HYPERLINK http://www.schnews.org.uk }www.schnews.org.uk
has a database of over 700 active groups and a party and protest section
with details of hundreds of events across the country. The website also
has a DIY GUIDE providing loads of practical information on how to run
campaigns, do occupations and so on. If you’ve got something to
contribute, get in touch.

Published by SchNEWS September 2001
Paper copies of this pamphlet are available for two first class
stamps and a SAE from SchNEWS, PO Box 2600, Brighton BN2
OEF. It should also be available on our website very shortly.
Phone 01273 685913
{ HYPERLINK mailto:schnews@brighton.co.uk }schnews@brighton.co.uk
{ HYPERLINK http://www.schnews.org.uk }www.schnews.org.uk