Anarchist Writers

A brief overview of the conference - The May Day weekend saw hundreds of anarchists from all over Britain (and beyond) travel to the small town of Bradford in Yorkshire, Northern England. A local anarchist social centre, the 1in12 Club had organised (for the second year running) a weekend of activities under the title of 'Reclaim Mayday'.

Alongside and as part of the weekends events a conference 'MayDay '98' had been called by a number of groups and individuals including those members of Class War who had decided to wind up the organisation.They had published a final issue of Class War explaining why they took this decision.

Events organised by the 1in12 Club included a May Day march and rally in the centre of Bradford which included live music. A play about the life of Durruti ran throughout the weekend as did a number of punk and folk gigs at the club itself On the Saturday night 'Fundamental' played a major gig at the nearby college, also as part of the weekend. The 1in12 Club which is located in a four story mill in Bradford City Centre was packed day and night.

Apart from the social events political meeting were happening in the evening and the MayDay98 conference during the day. Some 250 people paid registration into the conference and spent the morning and afternoons discussing the future of the revolutionary movement in groups of twenty or so. The aim of these discussions was not to debate out position papers and reach conclusions but rather to provide a space for people to exchange opinions and experiences.

The final afternoon of the conference saw a report back from each of these groups. From this it became apparent that these sessions had been very successful, more so then many had anticipated and almost every groups said a similar event should be organised in the near future. It was felt that although the differences remained that had existed before the conference the format of the meetings had broken down many barriers and allowed an honest and sincere exchange between groups and people that previously had problems talking to each other.

Immediately after this session there were some 10 focus groups where people who wanted to organise practical future activity went to. I however had to return home before hearing of the outcome of any of these.

Form a personal point of view it was clear that the conference had given a number of quite demoralised older activists a considerable uplift. The British anarchist movement despite the fact that there are many very committed, and experienced activists with good community and work place contacts is very un-organised and prone to sectarianism. There is little doubt that the conference will have helped to tackle the psychology of this sectarianism. Those groups who choose to boycott it lost a great opportunity to learn how to relate to people with whom they disagree on relativly minor issues.

However it still leaves out-standing the central question of anarchist organisation. This is not a failing of the event as it was never designed to answer this question (and indeed emphasised in advance this was not what it was about). Nevertheless it needs to be said that it is the responsibility of those who attended to initiate organisation(s) that are capable of arguing for anarchism and helping the wider class to organise in a libertarian fashion. This perhaps is the next step

First published on A-Infos 5/May/98

The view from Ireland

For anarchists in Ireland, Britain is the most accessible country with an anarchist movement, both in terms of travel and language. Anarchism in Ireland was pretty much non-existent until the start of the 1970's and still only involves a handful of people on an organised basis. This is one of the reasons why over the last ten years I've travelled to Britain on over 20 occasions specifically to attend anarchist events. Please forgive in advance the fact that my comments below are quite critical of the state of British anarchism. I hope this perspective, from outside your movement, offers a constructive view.

The Bradford conference was overall a very positive event. It was a welcome departure for the 'know it all' sectarianism that I have come to associate with national organisation in Britain. By this I mean a tendency to at best ignore and all too often insult any anarchist analysis that disagrees with the line or activity of your particular national organisation. Bradford was a very serious attempt at teasing out the problems of the movement by some 250 people, there has been nothing comparable in the last decade involving so many people in Britain. (The only other attempt, the London 'Anarchy in the UK' meeting in the early 90's might have has a similar aim but lacked the organisational commitment to construct a meaningful discussion).

So as a first step Bradford was great. However it can only be seen as a first step. I've taken part in Anarchist and libertarian events outside of Britain and Ireland also in this period, (in France, Italy, Spain and Mexico). I also happen to have excellent access to the internet and so have followed from a distance events in many other countries. It has to be said that in comparison the anarchist movement in Britain is remarkably unorganised, divided and demoralised. In most other countries the number of people organised in the anarchist movement has soared over the last decade, 300% increases being typical. In Britain the numbers in formal organisation have at best stagnated and may well have decreased.

For the older activists, Bradford was, at least in part, a therapy session for those who have been partly burnt out and demoralised by this failure to grow. Several people I talked to after the first day complained about the first sessions being dominated by 25 - 35 years olds whose main and repeated contribution was 'we tried that and it didn't work'. The therapy aspect obviously worked though as everyone agreed that by the second day, once this had been gotten off peoples chests, enthusiasm set in. Certainly at the closing session the one message that did appear to come out again and again was that people had found an unexpected energy at the conference.

The unfortunate thing is that such positive feelings do not amount to all that much in the aftermath of such events and so its all too easy to dismiss them as irrelevant. The gains of Bradford were not after all tangible things like new ideas or radically new methods. Once the euphoria of the closing sessions fades some people are bound to feel disappointed with this.

Conferences like the Bradford one have an important role in bringing people active in the movement together in an atmosphere where they can discuss there differences in a constructive fashion. However they are not 'the answer' to the problem of organisation. There is a desperate need for British anarchists to take the idea of transforming society seriously and break out of the localism and stagnation that has held back the movement in the last decade. I'll leave the question as to whether this is best done by transforming the existing national organisations or creating new ones as an exercise for the reader!

Not too sure where this was published, it may have been my submission to the post-conference booklet? Further Information on the conference at http://struggle.ws/inter/mayday98.html