WOMBLES and CAG

What's so wrong with saving a bus stop now?

WOMBLES are an voluntary, open and structureless collection of individuals with no membership basis. Therefore there should be no problem with Jack writing your communiques.

Ahhh I see now, saving bus stations=bad but of course

Saving bus stations is a perfectly valid thing to address....as long as it's not done in a CAG-handed fashion.

Pope -- I find Catholicism attractive.

Bear -- sometimes I defecate near trees

Let's not take this too seriously, eh? The thead in question is mostly about Britney, anyway.

FFS.

The worker's movement has been smashed, the planet's being destroyed, many gains of second-wave feminism are being rolled back, etc etc...

We have slightly bigger problems than whether CAG or WOMBLES members have larger penises. Just get a fucking tapemeasure, settle the question, and get back to fighting our common enemy. And no the common enemy isn't the fucking Judean People's Front.

If and when the WOMBLES can take a dump that doesn't involve ketamines, Special Brew and more cops than an Ikea store opening, then they can start to entertain the very notion of considering the possibility of the unlikely idea that CAG may have ever done something somewhere near to the ballpark in which one may not completely discount the suggestion that the implication that we are single handedly destroying capitalism may not be 100% true.

Until then, crass comments about bus stops just smack of the following:

(i) attempted intimidation

(ii) frustration

(iii) feeling threatened

If the WOMBLES wanna learn a lesson in building links with communities and members of the working class on issues we agree on (or rather, issues we both disagree with the state on) with a view to continued cooperation against state and capital initiatives, then they should look to CAG.

If they wanna continue banging their heads against the state bureaucracy with a membership mostly maintained by activists, junkie burnouts and undercovers while maintaining some abstract bourgeios principle of "openness" to the point at which they are almost unworkable, while making no actual gains against state or capital at all, then they should carry on as they are, on the understanding that CAG feels no need to feel the urge to participate in "mutual aid or solidarity" with them as a group.

Until then, just you wait and see, kids.

FFS, both of you. Stop whining and squaring up to each other. Maybe you get on each other's tits, but that's not a political difference. I'm pessimistic to think that sometime maybe soon we're going toi need all the solidarity we can muster to deal with the casual repression that will become everyday.

I don't understand what purpose my quote fulfils in your post. Is it for emphasis, kinda like "yeah, everyone re-read what he put!! This guy should be your new revolutionary pin up!!" or was it more like a "man, this guy's so lame, we're all part of the same struggle, especially people who think our enemy is the Death Star and front doors...I'm a liberal, y'know??"

Because alan, its silly to say the Wombles should look to CAG, they shouldn't, i know what you mean but other people on the forum don't. CAG is just our local group, wombles are a larger organisation even if they are shite to judge them along the same lines does not offer a reasoned critique.

Basically your just falling into RAW's trap where he avoids criticism of his organisation by implying '''oooh look we're a well financed glamorous group in london, and you just live in some town in east anglia''.

We shuld be pointing out the failures and shortcomings of wombles activisty method, their complete lack of a class based position, the political approach they support generally in terms of their branch organising as demonstarted well in this thread, and the flaws in specific actions. And the fact that they're callled the wombles and are largely a bunch of ketamine addled hippies.

Nah shut up I'm right.

The WOMBLES don't have branches. That would be, like, organisation maaaan. That's so dogmatic.

And my post was largely in response to Raw's attack on us "saving a bus stop". CAG's WOMBLES critique has already been done by Jack (in his own inimitable way) on the post that was a catalyst for this thread. I'm just defending our bus stop.

I'm with lazlo on this one, grow up the lot of you. Life is too short and we are too few. If you don't like each other, fine. Just co-operate on the events/issues you have in common and leave the other side to whatever they want to do in the meantime. Stop bitching at each other like five year olds in the process though it's just fucking embarrassing.

Well thats the problem isn't it mate. Most of the bullshit comes from a small gobby clique 'elite' from a garrison town and a certain London bookshop. The people who share the view

There is a reason why so many people who register here dont stay for long isn't there.

Well they've certainly got people looking at them, Im not sure for the correct reasons though.

Comrades,

Be you in the WOMBLES, CAG, or otherwise this thread should annoy you as much as it is really annoying me. The CAG group seem to have taken over this forum and having been using for internal jokes, for an intellectual wanking ground, which is very alienating for the likes of me, as opposed to using it as a vital internal organ of the broad class-struggle anarchist movement. This behaviour is not acceptable.

My partner is an ex-womble. She has criticisms to make of the organisation, just as many comrades within the WOMBLES themselves would also, but nonetheless I have met many committed communists who are members and former members, including my partner whose politics are very much based in socialism (altho they doesn't tend to use those kind of labels for herself).

I have criticisms of the WOMBLES, but so do that group's members. Undoubtedly there are liabilities within that organisation. The same however is true of just about any anarchist and communist grouping within the UK however. The WOMBLES are often singled out for criticism because of the incestuous nature of the London based movement, which often arrogates a role for itself as the national focus of the anarchist movement - hence people are often discussing the successes or failures of the WOMBLES et al, rather than, say, the Northern anarchist network, or the few comrades in Perth, or ASCA in Aberdeen, or the CAN in Cardiff.

The workers movement as my Glasgow comrade points out has been utterly smashed. We have incredible amounts of work to do right now to rebuild the armies of the revolutionary working class. Communism will not be brought about by saying that X group is just hippies who take horse tranquilisers. It will be built by comradely solidarity and a consistent revolutionary communist approach, a fact which seems have been entirely missed by CAG during their recent attacks and pranks levelled against the WOMBLES. I am no fan of the Earth First! network but it is not appropriate communist behaviour to say that they are hippies who live in trees, nor would I attack the AF because it's members are boring. None of these accusations are objectively true, and they serve only to put people's heckles up rather than promoting debate and discussion on tactics and political organisation in the spirit of solidarity and mutual aid.

This is what this forum should be used to promote. This is what we should be doing here and how we should approach criticism of other groups.

Raise The Red Flag!

:red: Nick Durie :red:

I've seen the WOMBLES write worse as a collective (something similar is up on the walls of Freedom in fact), but you're right he shouldn't have attatched your name to it without a disclaimer.

I've heard some perfectly valid critiques from members of CAG on the WOMBLES ethos before now, and I don't often speak to them. They are also not the only ones I've heard rumors about WOMBLES K and alcohol abuse from, it seems to be a 'common knowledge' rumor that they repeat rather than direct slander. It's something they shouldn't repeat without personal knowledge however if it is not in fact the case.

I don't care how this came about, you're probably both bending the truth. I'm just getting pissed off that it's cutting into what could be more productive time, hence the request for you both to back off and behave like the mutual aid icons you claim to be rather than the individualist egotists you are behaving like at the moment.

The tone of this article suggests you are lying, if you didn't care you wouldn't react.

You're contradicting yourself.

CAG generally feel they have nothing common with WOMBLES, which you seem to understand, yet you still revert to cliches like "we're too few". As far as I'm concerned, we are even fewer than you would think, since I wouldn't involve groups like the WOMBLES.

Firstly, it's bespectacled.

Secondly, quit with the glasses racism.

Thirdly, I wish I wore glasses. Then I could be as cool as Revol.

As for your visit to Freedom, it was more actually productive than I expected. I hope you understand our viewpoint a bit better as a result.

Fourthly, like Saii(mon) says, you do give a fuck what people think, way too much of a fuck really if you ask me. The fact is you're setting out to be a really high profile group (for better or for worse) and that means you're gonna have detractors, who use all sorts of media and tones to, um, detract. Get used to it. At least I'm not writing for the Telegraph.

But you're supposed to have glasses. That's not a dig at Revol is it?! Quit splitting the movement!

Dude it's not like anyone even has to work at "critiquing" this group.

Did I mention that without you, today's emotions would be the scurf of yesterdays?

YOU WHAT?

Listen...I often disagree with these mischievous young anarchists in Colchester....

...but they are also very dear to me!

And when you talk of your little 5 strong 'visit' to them...and when you talk of your "restraint in not hitting them...I hear the language of the bully and the abuser.

For fucks sake!

This is really upsetting!

Its only a bunch of mischievous kids on a bulletin board!

I was with the wombles in the Carlini Stadium in Genoa.... at least then we were fighting the state, and not threatening some suburban kids anarchy group!

What the fuck?

Well I basically agree with Nick.

Does anyone want to comment on this quote?

In my opinion, endless abusive jokes about 'womble' behaviour are only justified if we do see this board as basically an internal 'jokes and wanking space.'

If, on the other hand, enrager is intended to be a libertarian/anti-authoritarian resource then clearly there does need to be more respect shown.

To Jack and others I'd also point out that the blurred line between the casual abuse and the accurate political criticism directed towards 'the WOMBLES' maks it easy to just ignore the whole lot, and I think the issues are too important to be ignored. It's easy to say you have 'nothing in common' with non-class struggle anarchists, but I'm afraid that's just wishful self-justifying thinking. The AYN, Freedom and enrager itself would not exist if it was not for the wider (class and non class struggle) anarchist movement -- the fact that people like Jack use all of these resources suggests that they are conncted to the widr movement.

Jack, I think he means we're using a wider infrastructure that depends on non-class struggle anarchists to operate, and that if you claim to be completely separate from "the movement" the claim is undermined by continued use of shared resources. The decision then is to admit that you're reluctantly tied into a wider movement with which you have little agreement due to the need for infrastructure, or to disassociate entirely with it.

yeah, what he said.

Reading over raw's earlier post I do also have to agree with barry that it comes across as unneccessarily threatening.

We have largely been thrown together by participating in waves of protest (eg stop the war, mayday, eco and other stuff). When these waves ebb, as they are doing now, the common causes that bind us are weaker and we start to focus on the differences. As movements decay, people turn on each other and abuse and threaten each other.

Let's not, eh?

But maybe we're all now too entrneched in our positions to back down?

Bloody patriarchy...

Who needs COINTELPRO when we can do it ourselves!

Yeah well, like I always say about unresolved anger issues...

Precisely.

No.

What movement do you speak of?? A movement to me means a group of people cooperating and making definite progress at roughly the same space on roughly the same issues (or more importantly, issue). I see none of the above in the British anarchist 'scene' (a more apt description).

Woah Lazlo, how right!!

You theiving get! 'Anarchist scene' is (C) Woodbine, June 2002

Replace 'movement' with 'protest wave' and my meaning still stands.

This would seem to be the crux of the problem, that despite a common adherence to non-heirarchy, anti-war, pro-green anti-GM pro-workers anti-bosses pro-mutual aid anti-capitalism ideologies, you are so blinkered as to assume the WOMBLES are of no use to you.

I repeat, your problem with their lack of a developed view of class politics does not equate with their having no function. They are a valuable resource with a number of bodies we can potentially use where we have common causes. If you have a problem, start a debate and encourage them to read deeper theory so they can build a class conciousness into their efforts, don't just fling insults and what could well be baseless accusations about their recreational habits.

I'm all for your politics Alan, what I have a probem with is your hostility to co-operating with people with similar less classist politics when we have the same aims. We are too few, it's a cliche because it's repeated often. You have what, seven members? That can do fuck-all and you know it. Add the WOMBLES, Norwich Anarchists, Ipswich Anarchists, Theatre of War, Cambridge action network however and you get enough for a noisy, potentially successful demo on a range of class based subjects.

Until we have the Trade Unions on side, and have built up enough working class support, we have to work with what we've got, and try and influence them towards our way of thinking. Even if we end up not needing them, it's always worth keeping them on-side because these people often end up in interesting positions, and not having them think we're a bunch of sectarian tossers they fell out with once is useful.

It's all about tactics, and understanding how our potential resources can be used as they exist now.[/i]