Welcome to the 20th anniversary issue of Organise!, for revolutionary anarchism as always.
After we covered the celebration of 70 years since the height of the Spanish revolution in 1936 within the pages of our previous issue, Organise! now brings you the other promised anniversary articles on the 1926 General Strike in Britain and the Hungarian revolution of 1956. Mass revolt against governments has happened before, and it can happen again if we can continue to build the anarchist movement in Britain and internationally.
In the more recent past, much has happened that the Anarchist Federation has engaged with practically and theoretically. We won’t dwell on the details in the editorial. Just look inside and read our open letter where we summarise some of what we do as the AF and ask some questions - we hope you will consider answering them. We also look back over the second decade of Organise!, amounting to some 25 issues since we published our first ten year review.
As we approach next year's local elections in Britain we know we have to endure the mainstream media bombarding us until we are sick with endless trivia about the two party race between Labour and Conservative. While this is happening, the warmongering and increasing repression of the State will no doubt continue unabated. The authoritarian marxist-leninist Left have no answers. The Socialist Party is in disarray once again, emanating from splits in the Scottish SP. The trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, supposedly anti-parliamentary (and with its claws firmly in the Stop The War Coalition), has cynically put itself behind the electioneering campaigns of Respect and has even stood candidates in council elections. Next year, will it yet again ask us to 'vote Labour without illusions' to 'keep the Tories out', because Labour is still closer to the workers? Any remaining illusions, including the worth of voting for politicians, have surely been dashed over the last decade of Labour rule. As anarchists always say, voting changes nothing. Supporting or lobbying politicians only encourages them, to the detriment of self-activity. The Anarchist Federation does not claim to have all the answers, but the anarchist tradition has been influential in many past revolutions and in contemporary struggles. Anarchist communism has endured, and it is growing internationally.
Now is the time for those who are identifying with anarchism in the environmental and anti-capitalist movement to take a serious look at organisation. Will real change come from the acts of small direct action groups or from the effect of our communicating more effectively with working class and disaffected middle class people, so we can 'do it' together? As the State increases its powers through repressive laws and surveillance we can expect the police to come down hard on clandestine direct actions of any kind. And in the future, the mainstream press may well choose to ignore the reporting of what governments will increasingly term 'terrorist' activities, further starving such spectacular events of the publicity they seem to depend on.
What is the difference between small scale insurrectionary activism and mass revolution? This question is an important one that the anarchist movement in Britain will need to answer in the next decade. The approach has got to be about gaining wider support for anarchist principles and aims amongst 'ordinary’ people who we know are being attacked and stand to gain so much by the ending, not reforming, of the capitalist system. We will certainly need more generalised support to defend social centres from future victimisation, which is bound to come. Propaganda is part of this, as is the radicalising work we can do in our workplaces and local communities. Anarchist organisations also help provide memory of gains and losses from the choice of certain tactics and strategies. We know what we want – the destruction of capitalism and a better world. But we are small in numbers and we will remain small unless we reach out. The AF believes that all this is done most effectively in anarchist organisations.