Joining forces on a UK-wide publication (was AF/Platformist split)

I'll say what I said in the last thread.

After a lot of internal discussions debates, proposals, etc several members, including myself have left. Consiquently there is now no such thing as Reading AF, and I believe Birmingham may now no longer exist. And ther are other individuals.

Most of those that left are persuing the creation of a paltformist organisation in the UK, that I personally hope works on very friendly terms with the AF. I can't tell you anymore about this new group because it's not properly established yet - when it is, you'll know more.

I still support the AF and everything. But this issue is still ongoing so begging people for tabloid gossip now is not helpful. Leave it be and people will explain themselves in a constructive way.

(im nto saying anything else)

Gosh! This is exciting. Particularly as the AF/NAN is being dragged into the discussion.

I suppose our own view is that we view organisations with much suspicion. As an affinity group we hold that a small group of guys - sat around a kitchen table - well oiled on good ale - are more capable of creativity and imagination than many an organisation.

And it's not true that we have "split" from the NAN. We've merely formed an Anarchist faction.

Like divorces all splits are painful and you should look after each other.

What is wrong with you?

David, At the moment my right knee is giving me gyp. But otherwise I'm OK.

His brain is addled from drinking all that Northern piss!

Hahahahaha.

Seriously, what is the point of a platformist split? It wouldn't be that hard to convince the AF to become a platformist organisation, if that's what you want, as it is already almost platformist anyway (heavily influenced by the platform). Creating a new group seems like a total waste of time.

Did this new split get off the ground or has it already folded (I'm betting on the latter)?

It's got a couple of reasonable-sized branches and good relations with Praxis in Glasgow I think, the people I know who are involved are pretty solid.

Well, just what we need -- yet another anarchist organisation! And can we expect yet another anarchist magazine/journal to appear as well? As if we don't have enough of those already...

Really, this is getting silly -- we have a multitude of organisations and magazines already -- why create yet more? Is there a Guinness Book of Records entry on "number of organisations within a specific national political movement" or something?

Is it really too much to ask for people to forget the 5% (or less) that divides them and remember the 95% (or more) which unites them? Can there not be room for Platformist groups in the AF? Can the AF not rethink its opposition to syndicalism so that anarcho-syndicalists can work in it like they do in the other sections of the IFA? Particularly given how many AFers are IWW members!?!?!?!?!

And maybe that way we can practice solidarity and mutual aid, make best use of resources and generally work together for our common goal? I have made suggestions ages ago that all the anarchist magazines merge into one really good quarterly to complement Freedom, but sadly no one discussed it:

http://anarchism.ws/writers/anarcho/movement/media.html

Black Flag would, I am sure, be into any such positive co-operation (we already work well with Freedom). It just seems silly not too. But I'm afraid that I'm being too practical for my own good...

the thing is, anarchism's SUCH a small 'movement' and has next to no representation at all. maybe when anarchism and class struggle are at high points should we worry about splitting off into smaller groups. but only once those groups are large enough. right now anarchism's not on anyone's agenda, surely the point is to try and get these shared views aired first.

By accident started to read this thread, but now I'm curious- can anybody explain in a nutshell what AF's opposition to anarcho-syndicalism is ?

Very briefly, the AF used to be a lot more hardline about it but the idea is that anything you can do in a union you can do outside one, and without the sell-out bureaucracy and descent into reformism unionism is prone to.

In practice though, organising people without unions is both more difficult (almost impossible in many cases) to sell to workforces and more precarious to operate in the current climate, so most AFers have a kind of dual operating system of outside and against in theory, and critically inside in practice. Though there’s a wide variation within the Fed itself, some remaining hardline and some being Wobblies etc.

AFers are free to correct me of course.

I agree with this.

The actual level of disagreement between AF and Solfed seems less than that within the AF (not really met many Solfed members), given that there are both members who are very skeptical of unions and members who are members of revolutionary unions. Trying to explain differences seems to come down to a sectarian history which is obscure to the majority of anarchists, let alone people who might be interested in anarchism, and is preventing us from realising our potential as a movement.

But given that any organisatonal mergers at the moment look less likely than further splits, at least getting ourselves together and working out a common strategy to get our ideas out makes sense. Its just madness to have Direct Action, Organise, Bread and Roses, Northern Voices, Black Flag etc putting out similar articles when we could be putting out one excellent magazine more frequently and on a bigger scale.

Someone sent me a copy of Northern Voices (winter 2007 I think) with an invite to a nana meeting. It had some very bizarre articles in it like one supporting the CofE!!

what about the question of why not a Solfed-AF merger (I think you're in solfed, right?)?

Various people are in both, or are Wobbly and Solfed, or are Wobbly and AF, basically they’ve ended up as semi-arbitrary dividing lines for defining an individual’s politics, but the hardcore in each, who are usually also the most active as secretaries, treasurers etc, would be pretty much impossible to integrate into one entity.

My current thinking on the matter (as though its definitive ) is that a limited mutual association – independent groups co-operating via an entity which allows for more efficiency in stuff like buying power, calling demos etc etc, is probably the most realistic idea.

Saii, have you actually read our aims and principles?

It never ceases to amaze me that we can say quite clearly that

and somehow it always gets forgotten.

To summarise, we realise that unions cannot be used to create a revolution. Unions fulfill a role in the management of capital. But in the workplaces, they are often the place where workers are actually able to discuss, debate and start organising. We have to make sure struggles are controlled by those actually taking part in them. We support rank and file initiatives (that's in the principles too). We are NOT outside of and against.

We're currently debating our industrial strategy. It'll be made public later in the year. The view of many of us is that the IWW is the type of rank and file intiiaitive that strengthen s the struggle for anarchist communism.

As to the platformist "split", frankly I wish them well. I think it's a shame they chose not to stay in the AF, but hold no bad feelings towards them. I expect that we'll end up collaborating on projects in the future.

As far as I know there are no joint members now. Having said that, I'd happily be in an organisation with anyone in Manchester SF.

But what about collaborating on a media strategy? Everyone producing these different class struggle anarchist magazines with a lot of duplication seems a bit silly.

My politics fit with both groups, and I'd likely be a member of whichever if they were operating in my area (and likely will when I move) so it seems pretty silly for me and other anarchists i know who aren't in either for there not to be moves for a more united movement, and certainly less sectarianism.

Yeah this is what I've been kind of talking about with various people, probably needs a different lead than me though cos I'm always too snowed under to put the work in.

Sounds fuckin good to me.

I'm sure the AF would treat any such suggestions with interest. But with no offence to Saii, that wouldn't mean working on Freedom, for example. We believe that any publication should be under the control of the membership of an organisation (or possibly in this hypothetical situation organisations), not under the control of an independent editorial board.

anarcho's proposal seems a good one:

Clearly this does not necessarily mean consolidating under Freedom's editorial board, or any. Being under the control of the organisations would mean more collaboration and dialogue, which is certainly a good thing and which no-one seems to be hostile to.

I dont think theres any reason why this couldn't happen, comrades. Theres no reason for the individuals in the organisations who are interested not to at least put a proposal together for their respective conferences.

Why is it not even worth discussing though? Looking from outside both organisations it seems strange and I can't see any explanations other than sectarianism. Refer me to an old thread if needs be.

on a similar note I think it would be worth anarchist groups collaborating with libcom as a website as well, to make one decent paper, one decent mag and one decent website instead of loads of small, shit ones.

But why dont they go anywhere? Like I said, you can refer me elsewhere.

I cannot comment on AF, SF etc., but being around the situation here with our Anarchist Federation, (which suffered a defacto split), I have a few thoughts. But first a question / remark:

Knightrose said (more or less) that s/he realizes the role of unions in managing capitalism but also that rank and file unions can help in movement building and giving experience to people in self-organizing.

I think it would be fair to say that many anarchists/ anti-authoritarians who are involved somehow in workplace organizing (or supporting workplace struggles) are not only highly critical of the roles unions often play, especially where there are some official "social partnerships", or where union bureaucrats are deciding for and betraying the workers. They see directly from their own experience how this works. But hopefully people can see the difference between the urge to make rank and file, radical unions for practical self-defense and somehow uncritically accepting that unions in and of themselves are good things. As anarchists we need to be able to analyse the reformist structures and movements which work to strengthen capitalism. (I would add to this category many NGOs for example and certainly many government sponsored participatory democracy schemes.) That said, it would be helpful to distinguish between the concept of revolutionary unions and reformist ones because for outsiders this might be a more precise and clear division than talking about "anarchosyndicalists", who we know are divided into reformists and revolutionaries. Further, some people working in anarchosyndicalist unions are, I find, actually anarchocommunists.

Of course another question is that fact that some anarchists, once inside organizations such as unions, can slip and go back on some basic principles; we all read here about the non-strike clauses some of the Wobblies signed. Well, this type of compromising is not unique to unionists; we could talk about anarchists who are too cooperative with police and discuss whether this also just aids the police state or about dozens of such issues.

I'm not into unity at all costs, which seems to be the message of some here: if there are serious differences of strategy, better to split up, work effectively in groups with similar goals and modes of operation, and try to cooperate in areas of common interest when feasible.

I don't know whether synthesis federations have any chance of working, unless they just run a couple of common projects and agree to their limitations, or function as a very loose network. That said, people still may find they can work on concrete issues or projects despite differing views on organizational framework or lack thereof.

I don't know if what I wrote is relevant or not to the AF situation, but I suppose there must be something to it because such issues tend to repeat themselves in the movement around the world. The other issue which repeats itself is much harder to define in ideological terms and that is the matter of cliques. From what I see, some groups or federations fall apart because of concepts of strategy for action and development while others do not divide that way but rather divide into cliques of friends with affinity for each other or mutual disdain for others. Sometimes both factors work together.

I'd be interested to know from teh people who left why they thought they couldn't work within the AF and move it ina more platformist direction.

Well ideally, yeah. It's not like it'd be tremendously difficult to organise say, an editorial team which has mandated Fed members alongside independents, and turn over dedicated chunks of Black Flag (for example) to different groups in exchange for the security of financial backing/distro groups that would bring. The increased input could easily make for an on-time quarterly (or even bi-monthly) which was distributed right across the country and the only thing that would be lost content wise would be the dross.

How would you see that working in practice? I'm not asking for a full blueprint but what kind of input do you think groups could have?