What Community?

WHEN DISCUSSING POSSIBLE alternatives for effective organisation at 'community level', we should first recognise that most of us do not experience any sense of community where we live. If we get on well with people living around us it is sometimes at the expense of concealing our more extreme views about how society should be run and who should run it. As one woman put it at the ex-Class War meeting at this year's Anarchist Bookfair in London this October, people in my community think I'm mad!. This feeling of isolation from the very people we identify with in class terms is natural, because there can be no real community in a capitalist world, only different degrees of alienation. There are only 'communities of unfulfilled interest', if you like, be they defined by geographical area (such as a street, estate or suburb), or by interest, for example ones that are defensive or campaigning (e.g. refugees facing deportation, victims of male violence, employees fighting management), or creative (e.g. the 'artistic community'), leisure orientated (e.g. a football team and its supporters), or intellectual (e.g. a utopian reading group), or whatever. It is important to note is that these groups, unless deliberately structured to avoid it, are frequently as divided by competing and conflicting interests - e.g. white middle class woman organiser vs. Asian and working class users/'victims'; or football club directors vs. fans; or artistic patrons and artists with a commission vs. amateurs and radicals - as they are united by what brought them together.

Awareness

For example, a campaign in which ACF members were peripherally involved as part of their 'local community' was able to stop the siting of a Sainsbury's supermarket in their neighbourhood. It would have increased traffic and pollution, taken up part of a children's playing field and put local shops out of business. The campaign was strengthened by the awareness that at the same time Sainsbury's was taking on several almost identical campaigns in similar locations around the town, on the basis that it only needed to beat one of them to get a new site. However, the fact that two rival corner shops were initially behind the campaign kept a certain irony largely unstated; they had each acted to mobilise a largely fictional community in their own economic interests. They succeeded in keeping out of the area the supermarket which would have provided the community with cheaper, better quality food as well as jobs, so that they could both continue to compete for local custom. Transient propertyless elements, such as students and problem families renting accommodation, were not even aware of the campaign, let alone mobilised by it. And the campaign's major tactic was writing to local councillors, whom the shopkeepers already knew, being part of the propertied community etc. etc. Neither was there any attempt to link up with the campaigns in similarly targetted localities because, on the face of it, we had different interests from them. So now it is not ours but another community which has a Sainsbury's built on what was its only bit of grass and trees.

Community - a lost cause?

So how do we go about attempting to create community? And if it isn't really possible under capitalism, is it a waste of time? Of course not. Attempting to bring people closer to others with the same interests is important work for revolutionaries. People in our own communities are usually also working class, also oppressed, unfree or exploited either by ability, race, gender, sexuality or economics, and also either angry or depressed, or commonly both, that this is how shit things are going to be for the rest of their life. But it is sometimes other people that they see around them that they blame as readily as they blame 'the rich', 'the boss' or 'the state'. It is by raising and discussing such issues, not by minimalising and smoothing over apparent conflict, that community activity can be challenging, radical, subversive and a part of wider long-term change. After all, didn't we become anarchists and communists ourselves because of the painful truths we perceive in the world around us. Our problem is essentially that we don't meet many people day to day who have yet come to same conclusions. These very real practical and tactical difficulties faced by anyone attempting to organise in their local community have been borne in mind when making the following observations about three potential and existing community- based initiatives.

New Libertarian Initiatives - Some Observations:

The IWCA and Birmingham Newtown.

The alliance between Red Action and some other activists which produced the Independent Working Class Association (IWCA) placed involvement in community issues on its agenda from the start. Correctly pointing out that working class people were cynical about middle class leftists and councils intervening for their own political gain in community issues, they wanted to give 'the community' the chance to set its own agenda. In Birmingham's Newtown area the IWCA canvassed local people to determine what issues they wanted action on. Street crime, mugging and burglary were the issues which kept coming up, and so a public meeting on the issues was set up. The organisers escorted people to the meeting who were literally too afraid of muggers to leave their homes alone. In addition, IWCA members who did not live in the area kept in the background so that the meeting genuinely reflected 'local' and not 'political' opinions. The meeting was a huge success in terms of numbers and steps were taken to make the area safer. For example, access to alleyways used by burglars was blocked up, to the fury of the impotent council. However, the IWCA seems to have failed to address itself properly to reactionary ideas which they must have anticipated would also be expressed by some people in any crisis-ridden community. For example, the idea that the major problem is 'anti-social' elements. Activists in the IWCA surely know that crime is mostly committed by people with little or no alternative but a choice between misery on the dole and preying on the most defenceless people who live near them. Are these people not also part of the community of the area, or does community only extend to the law abiding. And exactly what type of activity is being taken against muggers? Failure to challenge such ideas and to simply accept community wishes just because the community is working class, can lead, as it seems to have done at points in Newtown, to what libertarians should recognise as a misdirection of legitimate anger. For example, we heard at the Bookfair from a macho-type involved in Birmingham that, "it just so happens that most of the muggers are black. You can't get away from that fact, even if the SWP call you a racist, because tackling the problem of mugging is what ordinary people want". 'Ordinary' people would exclude black people then? Of course this isn't what IWCA members believe -this was nerves and bravado making him speak without thinking straight - but it made a largely white anarchist audience squirm and it is hard to imagine that 'law-abiding' black people would be comfortable to hear muggers described in such thoughtless and insensitive language. We must never demonise the 'criminal', be they poor and desperate or cynical drug barons, in the terms used by the state, the cops, racists or vigilantes. Failure to address the problems of vigilantism as a solution to social violence is in fact a major problem with the Newtown initiative, from our point of view. For a start, it panders to the property ideology of the state, just like neighbourhood watch or grassing thieves up to the cops. But more importantly, just because we feel helpless in a violent society doesn't mean that a group of tough guys can sort it out for us. Self-activity is central to the libertarian agenda but peripheral - actually an obstacle - to patrols of self-appointed protectors of the weak who see their role as some kind of alternative law and order in Newtown. The message should never be 'the cops can't protect you, but we will'. This sounds all to much like the community control undertaken by paramilitaries in the North of Ireland, which has more to do with vanguardism and substitutionism, which Red Action support, than it has to libertarianism.

Forest Fields Independent Residents Association

The IWCA initiative has inspired other projects which are fortunately more influenced by libertarian ideas. In inner-city Nottingham the Forest Fields Independent Residents' Association (FFIRA)also hosted a huge meeting as a result of canvassing the area. The initiative was also a response to the recently established Partnership Council, set up by businesses and budget holders to get local consent for their own vested interests in the allocation of five million pounds of European money. Before FFIRA had even done anything, councillors were up in arms about their authority being usurped, and one of the meeting's organisers was practically challenged to a fight by a drunken local official. The politicians presumably realised that their inactivity in the area was being exposed and that dangerous self-activity by the residents was looking likely. A good start! As the organisers anticipated, what people most wanted to get off their chest was the state of the area - litter and dog shit mainly - and also the danger posed to children by shopkeepers selling cigarettes, drink and fire works to minors. Hardly the issues revolutionaries like to get their teeth stuck into, but what was wanted was a community-led agenda, not an ideological one (although hopefully converts may be made along the way!). Unlike the IWCA in Birmingham, The IWCA and their comrades in Forest Fields demonised neither 'irresponsible dog-owners' nor 'corner-shop owners' but suggested ways in which it could be pointed out that the community as a whole, of which the 'culprits' were a part, should put the blame squarely on the council (for example, for failing time and time again to provide litter and dog shit bins). Posters in shops and a demo at the councillors surgeries involving dog owners, dogs and dog shit are being planned! These activists have taken the initiative as part of their community, not on its behalf. And yet the fact remains that at the initial large public meeting when issues for action were agreed, only a handful of people put their names down on the contact list, and even fewer have turned up to subsequent meetings to put the plan into action. There is clearly a long way to go before may people will feel confident or inspired enough to take action themselves rather than leave it to politicians or radicals. Nonetheless, the campaign is still young and maybe it will generate activity interesting enough to establish a track record and prove itself worth getting involved with. Indeed, important pit-falls such as getting bogged down in single issues are already being addressed before they become a problem, and it is too soon to be despondent.

Community Confederations

Another idea was launched at the Anarchist Bookfair which attempts to take organising within area communities beyond localism and lifestylism. A discussion paper titled Community Confederations tells us that the "culture of protest is defeated.......but the state....cannot and will not stand against a vibrant alternative.......[that should] create practical examples of an anarchist way of life at street level...[initiating community gardening, transport, pooled resources etc.] .... and that the confederations should have a branch in every town and be linked through a national network". In itself the paper is badly thought out. No community based network can be organised on a town basis without becoming centralised and elitist, because it could not involved direct participation and free discussion but, as the paper virtually suggests, rely on an unimaginative system of elected delegates of some kind. We are stifled enough by democracy as it is, but on a town-wide scale?! At the meeting,however, the proposer suggested not that these groups should be in each town, but rather in every community - i.e. many in each town. This is an important distinction. Organisation of this kind, if it took of on a large scale, would mean that pockets of subversion would no longer be isolated by geography or the dominance of informal elites which thrive in unstructured groups, but be linked to their neighbours by geography and constant contact and comparison. Unfortunately, the discussion paper does not really depict the class make-up of towns in a useful manner, for it states that "this process could resemble a union for the community, reaching across generational, gender, ethnic and cultural barriers we now face, and dissolving the class divisions which plague us". Really this is rhetoric and not a plan of action. What kind of union would an area community have? What bosses would it negotiate with and what labour would its members withdraw? And how many communities are plagued with class divisions? Aside from a few students, teachers and social workers with stripped-pine dining tables, area communities in the inner cities contain working class people, communities in the suburbs are usually either white working class or lower middle class, the upper-middle class and the bosses live in big houses in private estates or in the countryside. The very fact that we have a common class interest in our working class communities is why there is any long term point discussing community organisation at all.

Necessity

However, the Community Confederations' idea that autonomous community projects should be established and resources shared should not be dismissed as readily as it might be in some quarters. On one level, the idea of sharing garden forks, bikes, child care etc. appears useful only as a point of middle class liberal/ecological principle when there is a class war to be waged out there. It can be, usually correctly, dismissed as life-stylist. But this is a valid view only if the people involved in it are a/middle class and b/have the economic choice to spend their time distributing propaganda rather than weeding a communal vegetable patch. The reality of life for many people, even for some people with jobs, is that they are malnourished, freezing in winter, unable to get access to even essential transport and health care, or an education worth their children turning up at school for. It is not the duty of anarchists to fill this gap, because it is the fault of the state. But informally and increasingly alternative lifestyles, involving shared and created resources, are being sought not just by idealists but by semi-political people just trying to survive. As the leaflet points out, we might just want to extend this into the areas where we live not only as an example of anarchist ideas, but to help us survive and fight in the long term. After all, no one dismisses squatting as 'lifestylist', be it by punks or homeless families. More often than not it's a necessity. The author of Community Confederations doesn't believe that it is going to take more than this to change the world permanently and meaningfully, and he is wrongly dismissive of the need for revolution. When speaking about the idea at the Bookfair, he suggested that organisations such as the ACF had a place within this network, as its theoretical backbone, or something along those lines. Whilst we do think we have some good ideas, we don't see it as the role of revolutionary organisations to act as gurus. Such situations need hard work, new ideas, and coherent explanations arising from everyone's experience, not outside experts! We are individuals in our area and interest communities too, but we are also in a groups trying to start the process of real change now. The point is that if such community based initiatives thrive - we start fixing up communal cars, teaching each other languages, performing music, brewing communal beer or whatever, and all without payment or exchange of any kind, and a collectivity empathy and practical support could reduce crime perpetrated by working class people against each other - we should also raise our sights to a society when this will be the norm and there will be liberty and equality as a matter of course.

The Culture of Resistance

What we feel is needed is the creation of a culture which is more dynamic and innovative than traditional forms of democratic and hierarchical political struggle, but more analytical and honest about the nature and causes of the problems which the working class experiences than the vibrant, but essentially reformist, counter-culture which our capitalist society has become so adept at accommodating. This revolutionary culture, the 'Culture of Resistance' which the ACF talks about in its propaganda, was not our invention. It has been discussed by revolutionaries since the struggles of our class moved beyond the work place and the stifling 'one union' mentality and took on more varied forms and possibilities. Class War have recognised its importance before and it is also a phrase used by the African-American anarchist organisation Black Autonomy, and they both seem to mean the same thing by it as we do. But only in pockets has subversion managed to be both dynamic and ideologically coherent, which the 'Culture of Resistance' has to be.

The 'Culture of Resistance' essentially embodies two things. Firstly, we have said that there is no community but only unfulfilled communities of interest. Revolutionaries should engage in these communities, as they typically already do, as people sharing the experience or supporting those who do. Such campaigns as we are involved in or initiate at community level are not less important because they are reformist either, because these days 'reforms' can mean the difference between health and illness, warmth or hypothermia, sanctuary or persecution, and not infrequently life and death. And, as well as taking on hard graft, we should raise issues and ideas honestly and straightforwardly as members of the same interest community. We are good at the former, but rarely effective at the latter. As people sharing such experiences we should not be shy of raising the issue that poverty, discrimination etc. are part of a wider state strategy to weaken our class, take up our time and energy, and stop us making choices about what we actually want in an ideal world, i.e. one in which we can all flourish, not just exist. Secondly, we need to establish new forms expressing revolutionary ideas and subverting existing culture, working with our political groups and also the allies who we meet in the campaigns and communities described above. Then we can spread our ideas in ways which will appeal to people bored or cynical about conventional forms of protest and recognising that, as the Community Confederations author also points out, the state has learnt to deal with demos, leafleting etc. Newly emerging and creative forms of protest and subversive activity, such as Reclaim the Streets, can teach us to be unpredictable and unexpected in our tactics. But in addition we have to put the case for changing the political world, and not settle for learning to survive it. And we must also attempt to inject our politics and outlook into established arenas which are conventionally safe from subversion - by-passing and sabotaging the tedium which local councils impose on area politics; distributing liberated erotic literature in local libraries; participatory art forms in school playgrounds at lunchtime; drowning out Salvation Army marching bands with sound systems, or whatever. It only remains to stress how important it is for us to critically reassess the ways in which we engage in our communities. The fight is too readily channelled into being either boring, ineffective or elitist, and potential communities are smashed or divided before they become collectively self-active. We must be more creative and subversive, and organise well enough to get one step ahead of the advocates of tedium and authority. We must encourage networks of dissident groups linked by their communities of interest or locality, with input from groups and individuals who have been thinking about revolutionary activity specifically, to create a revolutionary culture which is both self-active and liberating for the individual and has ability to sustain itself and prove successful.