Why We Want You to Join

We want people to join the Anarchist Federation!

Working together makes us stronger. New people bring new ideas and keep us fresh. They bring understanding of areas of struggle that we haven’t thought of before. New members make it possible for us to distribute our propaganda further. We already produce 2,500 copies of Resistance each month (sometimes more) – we’d like to double that! We can be more effective when we are involved in struggles and campaigns. For new members it means meeting with like minded people, realising we’re not alone and being able to work more effectively as part of a group project.

If you want to join us, there are a few things you need to know first...

There are two things you need to do

1. Agree with our Aims and Principles - they are published in Organise and most of our pamphlets. They are also on the web. It's probably best if you've read Beyond Resistance too as it's something of a manifesto of ours and broadly represents our collective views.
2. Be prepared to work with us. That's a bit of a variable one. What we mean is that we aren't interested in having lots of 'members' who don't do anything. But "working with" is pretty vague, so ... Here's an example of member & group activities
   
   The Manchester group meets every two weeks. They go out and distribute Resistance and organise as part of Defy-ID. They occasionally edit Resistance and group members write for it from time to time. They are also quite active in the local IWW group. They take an active part in our union meetings at work and in organising against Academy schools. They're trying to organise a benefit gig for the G8 campaign and get together a CD to raise money for the Defy ID Campaign. Some, obviously, do more than others - it's all a matter of what you can do.

If you want to join then it's important that you meet someone in the AF first. That's how we find out if you do basically agree with us and also how you find out whether you really want to be part of the AF. It's a two way process of getting to know each other, not an "interview".

Once you are a member you have exactly the same rights as anyone else. That means you can be an editor of one of the papers (Organise and Resistance), have a vote when it comes to decisions, can go along to delegate meetings and conferences and vote (We'll explain what they are in a minute). It means you can do one of the many jobs we need to keep the AF going. Or, of course, you can do none of these! It depends on your confidence and skills. However, we really do encourage new members to take on things.

You can also come to our summer camp and if you want you can work for us at the various festivals that are on around the summer. We work for an outfit called the Workers Beer Company at Reading and Leeds and others. It raises most of the money we need and gets us into the festivals for free with our friends and comrades. You also get to pay dues! Sadly as we live in a capitalist world we need money to do stuff. The lowest rates are £2 for unemployed people, £3 for those with a paid job. It goes up depending on how much you earn. We reckon 1% of wage or salary is reasonable – but obviously people with kids aren’t expected to pay the same as those without. Finally, you also get to be on our internal email list (if you want).

How we organise throughout the year

Delegate meetings and conferences are a very important part of our life as an organisation. As you can gather we have agreed policies and principles. We try to co-ordinate what we are doing and to work together as well as we can. To do this we need to meet together to discuss things. We don't have a central committee to tell us what to do. So once every three months we get together. The national conference is usually at the end of April. At Conferences we spend some of the time on routine business, but there is also plenty of time for discussion of our views and activities. This year the theme will be theoretical and practical unity. All members should try and get to conferences. We try to make decisions by consensus, but if that fails we vote. Sometimes we decide that we need more time to think things over, so we are prepared to wait. It may not always be fast, but it does mean everyone’s opinions are valued.

National delegate meetings (NDMs) are held during the rest of the year. They are to allow routine business to take place and decide on day to day matters. We also try to work in some discussion at these. Conferences last for two days, NDMs last for one day and we try to hold them in different parts of the country each time. One NDM is at the Summer Camp, plus there's always a good social evening (or two) during the annual Conference weekend, so we do manage to mix 'business' with pleasure whenever possible!

If you want any of our pamphlets you can download them off the web, most are on this site but if you want the real thing let us know and we’ll send them to you.