We Live Together, or We Die Together

If you’re in London, see you at 8 pm outside the British Museum.

We’re forming a human shiield, in solidarity with the peaceful, self-organising, happily co-existing people of Egypt. Like the majority of people of Egypt, we wish to be peaceful, calm, understanding and welcoming of other opinions. We wish to protect culture because it’s what links us to the past and the future. It’s our humanity’s memory.

We’re inspired by Mohamed El-Sawy’s idea – and statement, above – which led to secularists, Muslims, Christians and people who haven’t made their mind up about God, defending a Coptic Church from attack over the New Year.

We believe the statement to be true of the relationships between all people.

Inshallah.

Communiqué #2

The Really Free School is a collaborative project and will communicate collectively via communiqués released on this website only.

In the age of 24 hour rolling news that often portrays a distorted reality according to editorial guidelines dictated by commercial and political interests of an undeserved elite, we have decided to create our own voice, unconcerned with deadlines, enabling really free representation of the really free school.

All conversations and everything overhead in the space is to be considered off the record, unless consent for the quote in question is explicitly obtained from the quoted person. Quotes obtained in this way will be the opinion of individuals and not of the Really Free School-, ya dig?

Freeskool iz not a zoo.  We have unicorns to fly and kingdoms to destroy, and dinosaurs to stroke.

AJAB.

communiqué #1

January - February 2011

Surrounded by institutions and universities, there is newly occupied space where education can be re-imagined. Amidst the rising fees and mounting pressure for ‘success’, we value knowledge in a different currency; one that everyone can afford to trade. In this school, skills are swapped and information shared, culture cannot be bought or sold. Here is an autonomous space to find each other, to gain momentum, to cross-pollinate ideas and actions.

If learning amounts to little more than preparation for the world of work, then this school is the antithesis of education. There is more to life than wage slavery.

This is a part of the latest chapter in a long history of resistance. It is an open book, a pop-up space with no fixed agenda, unlimited in scope, This space aims to cultivate equality through collaboration and horizontal participation. A synthesis of workshops, talks, games, discussions, lessons, skill shares, debates, film screenings. Our time in this building is short, we have the next couple of weeks to zhumba, zhumba, zhumba.

Lets take education into our own hands. Propose a session, share your knowledge, extend your skillz, or just come down to 5 Bloomsbury Square, though the door is on Bloomsbury Way, opposite Swedenbourg House.

5 Bloomsbury Square WC1A 2LX

Reply to Donnacha because phone is playing up

Will be put in right place when I get to a computer.

//

Phone reply so small talk. I totally agree with first point. But that's really quibbles over method of consensus. For me though, the tyranny of a majority arises as soon as a vote needs to take place. In future society I believe that it could be eradicated. But that's philosophy, and debating that doesn't add to the discussion.

I don't think I made my second point clearly enough. When I said 'we are the bourgeoisie' I meant, broadly speaking, western Europeans. We are not going to give up our privilege for the sake of Chinese peasants. The working class didn't disappear, it is simply made up of people in countries with less reform and protection from capitalism. This is not anti-capitalist struggle it is a struggle trying to determine how big a slice of the profits of the real working class we (western Europeans) get. It is reformist struggle, not for the benefit of the oppressed but for the benefit of the oppressors. Reformist struggle is futile even if it's fighting for real reform such as an end to racist immigration laws or the use of sweat shop labour but when it transforms into the international bourgeoisie fighting amongst themselves whilst using the language of revolutionaries, it becomes an insult to those around the world who are actively involved in the fight against capitalism. My point is the connection needs to be made between these struggles and the wider struggles of humanity, that of the revolutionary struggle against capitalism, or the revolutionary discourse is mere self indulgent role play and as such it is irrelevant to the wider struggle what ideology people cling onto. My question is, are we (western europeans) really ready to give up our privilege or are we content with a picture of Pablo the happy coffee picker on our products, Maldon salt, some palestinian olive oil and a story to tell your grandkids about what a little Che we were. Consumer guilt offsetting as it were.

UCL, Consensus and the Student Movement.

I haven't had the Internet for a while, and it seems I went in too hard and threw up all over the UCL occupation blog without taking the time to think about it.  Funnily enough, someone moderates comments on the leaderless, free speech movement website.  So here is what I wrote in response to a UCL socialist trying to claim anarchist ideas as their own, by describing them without naming them.  (minus a few typos and grammar I spotted once I posted, ranting and spelling at the same time is a skill I am yet to master)

//

Anarchists use consensus decision making rather than voting in order to foster environment where every member is encouraged to participate in decision-making, take initiative and fill the various roles responsible for the smooth functioning of the group.

In contrast to the quantitative rather than qualitative model of decision-making practiced with a vote, in which the major concern is the number taken to win a majority as appose to the issue itself, consensus is a process of synthesis, bringing together diverse elements and blending them into a decision acceptable to the group as a whole. Creating opportunities for self-empowerment and reducing opportunities for corruption.

A decision made by the entirety of the group has the benefit of the committal of the entire group. When each member of a group partakes in a decision each view is valued, developing trust between members and a stronger proposals that in turn are developed by the group into the best possible decision.

It is true that anarchists are anti-authoritarian, opposed to political authority in the sense that they deny anyone the legitimate right to issue commands and have them obeyed. That does not mean that all anarchists reject all forms of authority. Bakunin for example, accepted the authority of technical competence on a basis of voluntary consent: if I am to accept the authority Sam the tech guy in the matter of twitter, my decision to act on his advice is mine and not his. Malatesta also believed it inevitable that a person with superior understanding and ability to carry out a given task will succeed more easily in having his opinion accepted, and it is all right for them to act as guide in their area of competence for those less able.

Avoiding leaders is necessary to avoid concentrating power in the hands of a few who might dominate a group, or in the case of democratic socialism, a new elite of bureaucrats, administering in their own interests rather than in the interest of those they are supposed to serve, encouraging dependency and conformity by threatening to withdraw their aid to those who do not tow the party line and by rewarding those they favour. This does not mean that anarchists believe there is no need for (for want of a better phrase) ‘leadership roles’. To avoid having power concentrated in the hands of a few entrenched leaders, leadership skills are encouraged in every member of a group and all roles are rotated. This is accomplished by holding skill-building workshops and by encouraging and supporting people to be self empowered, especially those who are generally reserved.

In fact what distinguishes anarchists from socialists is that, unlike Engels, we believe it possible to organise production and distribution without authority, without compulsion, based on free agreement and voluntary co-operation. This method of organisation has been developed by anarchists for many years and, as Donnacha so eloquently pointed out, is called direct democracy. In contrast to the ridiculous notion forwarded by Eliot Hoving that anarchism is a rejection of democracy, anarchism is the absolute embrace of democracy. The current political orthodoxy is more polyarchy than democracy. Direct democracy, as advocated by anarchists is classically termed ‘pure’ democracy for obvious reasons. Unlike socialists and liberals, anarchists seek, like Plato, in democracy the genuine resolution of equality. Everyone has an equal claim to be free.

These conversations are all old news, as is this movement. “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great events and characters of world history occur, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add; the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce”. Reading Marx, his supplement to Hegel’s notion of repetition and his diagnoses of the fall of the german ancien regime as a farcical repetition of the tragic fall of the French ancien regime it is easy to draw parallels with the student movement of the 1960′s. In retrospect, much of the ideas and tactics were profoundly anarchist in character, although those professing them would probably not have self-associated as such. We even have Laurie Penny as a farcical reoccurrence of Ulrike Meinhof.

The last student uprising produced, amongst much else, Daniel Guerins book on anarchism, Mustapha Khayatis The Poverty of Student Life, the Urban Guerilla Concept, and most notable to this discussion, Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendits Le Gauchisme, remede a la maladie senile du communisme (a sustained polemic against Bolshevism, both Leninist and Stalinist, focussing particularly on the repression of the anarchist opposition during the Russian Revolution, and also the exact same topic being debated here about the need to avoid leadership and party since the latter inevitable lead to the ‘freedom to agree with the party’). We get Laurie Pennys book that will be entitled something like ‘The day I changed the world’.  Excuse me while I throw up.  Don’t be surprised if it ends up next to Katie Price on the bookshelves.

The student movement is set to die twice, and this time it is farcical. Face it, in an international world we are the bourgeoisie fighting a self-interest cause and, unlike many in the previous student movement, although quite happy to discuss global warming at a dinner party we drove too, drinking Australian wine under the patio heater, we are no more willing to give up our privilege than the CEO of some big bank thus making all this nonsense nothing more than a bourgois study. We are not fighting for the emancipation of the real proletariat, and unless we admit that, history will remember us as a farcical kitten fart on the list of kerazy things the privileged get up too whilst at uni, alongside joining a socialist society, sleeping with a stranger during fresher’s and sleeping during an exam due to all night partying.

For people who want to actually understand anarchism a good place to start would be the pamphlet produced by the Anarchist Federation, which can be found at …

http://www.afed.org.uk/publications/pamphlets-booklets/163-introduction-to-anarchist-communism.html

An anarchist reply to the SWP (they are notorious for inaccurate diatribes on anarchism) can also be found at

http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/marxism-anarchism-reply-swp

As can many other interesting articles written by anarchists.

BAE on campus.

I protested against BAE on campus, before hand the student paper asked me some questions.  Here is what I wrote.

You have launched a vocal campaign against the BAE recruitment at university grad fairs - how popular has student unrest against the grad recruitment been on campus?

I only recently learned that the Engineers were to be forced to attend a talk by BAE systems, as a result I have not had chance to network with the student activist groups.  I am sure I am not the only UCL student concerned that the arms industry are allowed to take up lecture time in order to try and attract undergraduates.  I must stress that unlike most graduate fairs, attendance for second year Engineering Students is mandatory which I see a gross misuse of power bordering on coercive persuasion.  My emails to the lecturers involved were ignored.

University of London students have been relatively quiet in their anti BAE protests compared to elsewhere in the UK - why do you think this might be?

I don't think this is necessarily true.  The get BAE off campus campaign launched by Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) was only launched very recently, two weeks after the launch students kicked off the campaign at the Guardians London Graduate Fair staging a 'Die-in' at the front of the BAE stall and handing out leaflets, waving banners and otherwise generally disrupting the stall.  It was a commendable and hugely successful action which greatly raised awareness of the campaign and the surrounding issues whilst simultaneously hindering BAE's efforts to attract graduates.  

How would you respond to critics of the protests who have deemed them 'counter-productive and misguided'?

Institutional analysis is discouraged by those who's needs the institution serves.  Throughout history voices of dissent are marginalised; the challenging of favoured truths does not get much of a hearing in Mass Media which makes actions such as the one at the Guardian London Graduate fair vital in propelling human civilisation forward.  BAE sell arms indiscriminately around the world.  It has military customers in over 100 countries. Its profits are made by sales to oppressive regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, by poverty that is fuelled when countries such as Pakistan and India waste money on arms, by civilian deaths in West Papua, as Indonesia bombs them with weapons made in the west. The campaign against the arms trade recruiting on campus is an eminently crucial one with tangible and attainable objectives.  The fact that in 2008 E.ON pulled out of their tour of universities demonstrates how powerful student protests can be.  Add this to the fact that BAE are struggling to employ recent graduates and you have a weakness in the system presenting an opportunity to increase the pressure for ending the arms trade.  

Do you feel that by welcoming BAE to talk at UCL we have take a step back from the anti-arms trade stance of the student body during the disarmUCL campaign?

The fact that students are forced to attend is not a 'step back', it is an obscenity, a disgusting use of an Educational Institution for an immoral industries profit.  The disarmUCL campaign although a great victory, only scratched the surface of UCL's involvement with the arms trade.  It should be noted that the UCL SECReT international centre for PhD training in security and crime science claims to have a "shared vision" with investing companies such as BAE Systems, Thales and Lockheed Martin.  According to BAE CEO Mike Turner that is to, “achieve sustainable and profitable growth well into the future”.  This shared vision of an expansion in arms dealing relies on an expansion of war, a greater number of dead and more schools, homes and communities wiped out, severely undermining human rights, security and economic development at global, regional, national and local levels.  It is not only individuals, but organisations who have responsibility to make ethical choices.  Giving space to arms dealers be it through forcing students to attend forums such as this or through back doors such as SECReT is the moral equivalent of allowing drug dealers or sex traffickers to go about their business on campus with the university abetting; providing a room full of impressionable students for them to indoctrinate.  It is inexcusable that society funds the skills and technology and provides the platforms required by arms dealers, rather than those urgently required to tackle climate change.

Lies!

The MET commissioner during a press release claimed there was “no record” of the cavalry charge on protestors.  A clever twist of words, the cavalry charge in question was on the parents, friends and family who had come to find out why there was a kettling of young children and not on the initial protest.  I wonder if there is any record of primary aged children and pensioners chanting “Shame on you” at the mounted officers.  Two people were trampled during this unprovoked attack.

The paltry excuses used for the kettle seem to warp the space-time continuum.  The police had lined up ready to kettle the students including mounted officers and vans placed across the road.  They had no intention of allowing the protestors to go past parliament.  The abandoned van was claimed to have been following the protestors, yet magically appeared unmanned at the front.  Knowing Bob Broadhurst was in charge, the seasoned activists saw this coming and left the march as soon as we saw the police mobilising, stopping for coffee.  This allowed us to watch from the outside as the frustration turned to a little bit of teenage rebel behaviour.  The fires were not lit while people were marching; they were lit when they had been falsely imprisoned wearing nothing but a school uniform in the freezing cold. The people trapped in the kettle included students, tourists and builders working on the road. Police baton charged the kettle indiscriminately on several occasions; the twitter reports from inside the kettle show just how many people were injured.  Outside the kettle, section 60 was abused, laws broken regularly through intimidation.  I myself needed to be quite forward with the fact I knew my rights when I was threatened with arrest for refusing to give my name on Horseguards Avenue, a blatant attempt at intimidation others less aware of the law would easily fall for.  Basically police oppression was rife as per usual.  Only two reported police injuries (which may or may not be a direct result of a protestors action) compared to the hundreds of protestors injured shows the direction of the violence.  Cameron should look closer to home when he claims, “People obviously have the right to peaceful demonstration but there is no place for violence and intimidation”.

Clegg continues with his lies, using the tired argument of an extremist hijack, outside agitators.  This was comical when Porter first used it.  The latest riot porn is of a teenage boy still in school uniform kicking an abandoned police van.  Far from hardcore violent extremists it is pretty standard teenage behaviour where I come from.  I would venture that given that situation in other parts of Britain, that van would have been alight in minutes.

Patrick Kielty summed it up in his twitter note to protestors a while ago; “No petrol bombs. No balaclavas. No plastic bullets. In Belfast that's a Rave not a Riot. See me after”

My favourite quote came from an officer explaining that the kettle was needed in order to arrest “the leaders of the anarchists”.   Despite the oxymoron here, the thinking is that as the students seem to be ignoring the socialists that so often try to hijack popular protest to inflate their paltry numbers, the students must be organised by anarchists.  The truth of the matter is that this is a grass roots movement with people making their own decisions.  Autonomy rules.  Centralised power is not a requirement.  A great example of this was that the police did not stop the van from being set alight, a group of young girls dressed in school uniform surrounded it and suddenly the consensus was that it was a bad idea. People did finally find a use for all the socialist paper boys, they were mugged for bonfire material.

In other news, I am at the UCL occupation and all is well.  Check the blog.

https://ucloccupation.wordpress.com/