NO PASARAN!

by SWP Fri Mar 29, 2002 23:14

Monopolise Resistance? - how Globalise Resistance would hijack revolt...
"The protesters are winning. They are winning on the streets. Before too long they
will be winning the argument. Globalisation is fast becoming a cause without
credible champions." Financial Times, 17th August 2001

For the first time in decades, millions of people are actively questioning the existence of
capitalism. From the Mexican jungle to the streets of London, from the summits of Seattle and
Genoa to the factories of Indonesia, a broad alliance of groups, networks and campaigns is
mobilising people to take part in action directly challenging capitalism and its destruction of
communities and ecologies. Millions are beginning to see that another world is possible.

But there is no guarantee that capitalism will fade away as people see through it. The rich and
powerful would rather lay waste to the world than lose their control over it. They ve already
made quite a start. Our job is to stop them.

The anti-capitalist movement is at a key point in its development. Three years ago it hardly
existed. The next three years will be crucial. This is why we ve decided to make public our fears
that all this good work could be undone by people who have nothing to do with this resistance
but instead want to take it over for their own ends.

This pamphlet is an attempt to show why the Socialist Workers Party and Globalise Resistance
are trying to do just that. While working closely with respectable anti-globalisation groups, the
SWP/GR increasingly attack those involved in direct action, describing us - just as the gutter
press does - as disorganised, mindless hoodlums obsessed with violence. They are willing to
make these attacks so they can portray themselves as more organised and, therefore, the best
bet if you think capitalism stinks and want to do something about it.

They are nothing of the sort. They want to kill the vitality of our movement - with the best of
intentions, of course - and we need to organise better in the face of this threat.

Which is the other reason that we ve written this pamphlet. Direct action has achieved great
things over the years but - let s face it - sometimes the way we organise things is just crap. We
need to change that.

This isn t some stupid slagging match. As regular readers will know, SchNEWS is not in the habit
of attacking other groups. We just think these things need saying.

The opportunity for winning mass support for anti-capitalist ideas has never been greater. Let s
not blow it.

THE TWEEDLEDEE TENDENCY
As the anti-capitalist movement grows across the world, some people are beginning to tell us
that we need closer links with social democratic parties - the tweedledee of electoral politics and
often the very people organising the state s attacks on us - in the name of unity . We believe in
unity - but watering down anti-capitalist politics to gain a spurious unity with supporters of
capitalism is a betrayal that history rarely forgives. In-yer-face, on the streets anti-capitalism is
what gives our movement its vitality and attracts support for our activities - it s not something to
be played down, disguised or get embarassed about.

Over the last year the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and its front organisation Globalise
Resistance (GR) have been attempting to fundamentally change the nature of the anti-capitalist
movement in Britain. The SWP have got involved in the anti-capitalist movement for very different
reasons to the rest of us. Their main aim is to take control of the anti-capitalist movement and turn
it into an ineffective, pro-Labour pressure group so as to increase the influence and membership
of the SWP. They re not mainly interested in working with others they completely disagree with
the politics of just about everyone else involved. As they put it in Genoa, "Remember, we re the
only people here with an overall strategy for the anti-capitalist movement. So I want five people
to go out with membership cards, five to sell papers and five to sell bandanas." (1)

They see the anti-capitalist movement as made up of well-meaning but muddled people who will
not be able to achieve anything significant until they are led by the SWP. They want to lead us for
our own good: "Mass movements don t get the political representation that they deserve unless a
minority of activists within the movement seek to create a political leadership, which means a
political party that shares their vision of political power from below". (2)

But the SWP do not share the views of the movement they now claim to be a part of and want to
lead . They vote for the government. They oppose confrontational direct action. They vastly
overestimate the extent to which the Labour Party and trade unions represent ordinary people,
consistently arguing for anti-capitalists to moderate their activities to suit the prejudices of Labour
Party activists . They want to take us back to the days of ineffective
walk-to-Hyde-Park-and-listen-to-a-Labour-MP politics that the direct action movement in this
country was born as a reaction against.

There is a world of difference between winning people to anti-capitalism and watering down
anti-capitalism so as not to upset people in the Labour Party. If it was just a matter of the SWP
having pointless marches and shouting themselves hoarse inside police pens it wouldn t be a
problem - they ve been doing that for years and nobody s noticed. The problem is that they are
actively conning people attracted to anti-capitalism away from direct action and into
compromising with the Labour Party. All their activities are geared towards making our movement
less confrontational and less effective. And their way into our movement is Globalise
Resistance.

WHAT A FRONT!
Globalise Resistance exists mainly to increase the influence of the SWP within the anti-capitalist
movement. It is only interested in activities to the extent that its brand recognition increases. For
instance, commenting on Gothenburg GR s full-time organiser and SWP member Guy Taylor said
"GR has gone down brilliantly, the words on the GR banner People before Profit, Our World is
Not for Sale were taken up and chanted by the whole protest!"(3) Globalise Resistance would no
more take part in an action without prominently displaying its banners and placards than an oil
company would give money to an environmental project without telling anyone.

In all important respects GR is run by, and in the interests of, the SWP - it is a front organisation.
This does not mean that all its supporters are SWP members far from it. the whole point of a
successful front organisation is that it involves people who wouldn t otherwise join the party
while at the same time being dominated by the party and existing to fulfill the aims of the party. A
really successful front organisation will have lots of non-party people involved in running it while
remaining politically dominated by the party controlling it. As a speaker put it at the SWP s
Marxism 2001 conference, "The united front is a way for a tiny minority to win over lots of
people Globalise Resistance is a united front."(4)

Soon after he attacked Reclaim the Streets in the press for being "part of the problem, not part of
the solution" George Monbiot was invited by the SWP to be a main speaker at a number of GR
rallies. This allowed the SWP to promote Globalise Resistance as a broad-based movement
involving well known figures like Monbiot. The important business of that tour was reported in
Socialist Worker: "On the Globalise Resistance tour 18 people joined the SWP in Manchester, 10
in Birmingham, 9 in Sheffield, 8 in Leeds and 4 in Liverpool". (5)

BRIGHTON 2001 - SEATTLE IN REVERSE
A clear illustration of the difference between the SWP/GR and anti-capitalists was their
opposition to any form of direct action against the 2001 Labour Party conference in Brighton.
Soon after returning from Genoa, Chris Nineham of the SWP/GR told a meeting in Brighton that "it
would be wrong to close down the Labour conference", arguing that attempting to blockade the
conference would "give the media an excuse to call us mad extremists" and "isolate us from
potentially massive support". Instead he called on activists to "give encouragement to those in the
Labour Party fighting Blair".(6)

Two years earlier in Seattle, hundreds of workers left a union march to join activists blockading
the World Trade Organisation. They waded through tear gas, pepper spray and police tanks to
join an illegal blockade that stopped the WTO in its tracks. It was a major victory for our
movement. What the SWP argued for at the 2001 Labour conference was a sort of Seattle in
reverse - instead of trying to get unions and workers to join the direct action they wanted the
direct action to stop so as not to upset the union leaders. in the face of calls for a blockade of
the conference they organised a non-confrontational demonstration aimed at "unit[ing] everyone
who hates privatisation and wants to push for real resistance from the union leaders"(7). Forget
taking action ourselves, they tell us - our job is to "place pressure on our leaders to fight"(8).

THANKS, BUT NO THANKS
The instinct for unity in our movement is very strong, even amongst people with very different
political outlooks. Some people see no problem with the SWP s involvement in our movement,
viewing criticism of their politics as splitting the unity we need to be successful. But this is to
misunderstand what the SWP are up to - if the SWP s aggressive selling of their sect s politics is
successful our movement will be significantly weakened. As an anonymous posting on the uk
indymedia site recently put it,
"Many have heard of the recent British history of direct action protest, and it was particularly
clear in Prague and Genoa how many have been inspired by it. How many are inspired by
non-confrontational protest marches to nowhere? I can tell you, only the equivalents of SWP in
all those other countries. So let s please keep up the momentum for creativity and change, and
not give it up to people who advocate going back to old, stale and useless tactics! This is no call
for disunity, it s a call for a movement not to commit suicide by default!"

But if we re gonna stop the SWP/GR from blunting the impact of anti-capitalist politics, we need
to examine what we re up to. Globalise Resistance advertised and organised transport for
hundreds of new people to Genoa - we did not. They organised dozens of public meetings
within days of coming back from Genoa - we failed to. Globalise Resistance have organised
large conferences designed to raise their profile within the movement - we have organised direct
action conferences in the past but nowadays, while rightly concentrating on actions, seem to act
as if these conferences don t matter. They do.

We want to kickstart a debate about how we grow. How do we meaningfully involve new
people in activities? How do we learn from our mistakes and pass on our experiences? How do
we get our message across faced with a hostile and manipulative media? In short, how do we
expand from a handful of relatively small autonomous groups into a mass movement organically
linked to everyone at the sharp end of capitalist exploitation and state repression?

WHAT IS ANTI-CAPITALISM?
The anti-capitalist movement involves a wide range of groups and diverse styles of campaigns.
But there are common principles that run through all our activities.

1 A DETERMINATION TO RESIST CAPITALISM PRACTICALLY
Our movement is firmly based on the principle that direct action is central to opposing capitalism.
Capitalism is a very practical thing, you don t overthrow it by proving that it s not very nice - you
take actions to prevent its destruction of communities and ecologies. This means occupying
offices, destroying jet fighters, shutting down docks and blockading summits. It means creating
social centres out of derelict buildings, holding parties on motorways, defending picket lines and
trashing GM crops. It means going beyond words and making resistance part of everyday life.

2 TAKING A LEAD FROM MOVEMENTS IN THE SOUTH
Capitalism is responsible for enormous, and growing, inequality in the world and it is the peoples
of the world s south that suffer most. The income of the richest 20% of the world s population is
at least 75 times greater than the income of the poorest 20% (it was 30 times greater forty years
ago). Third world debt, enforced by the military might of the United States, Britain and other rich
countries, is simply a racket to keep this inequality entrenched. Every day, 128m flows from the
poorest countries in the world to the banks of the rich countries.

Our movement has always been inspired by the struggles of peoples in the south, the majority of
humanity, against capitalism. Massive social movements such as the Zapatistas in Mexico,
Narmada Andolen Bachoa in India and Movimento Sem Terra in Brazil are fighting life and death
battles to defend their communities from capital s never ending quest for profit. In recent years
strike waves and popular protests have been seen from Argentina to Korea, Nigeria to Indonsia.
We support and learn from these movements. We see our struggle and theirs as one and the
same.

3 BUILDING PRACTICAL ALLIANCES WITH OTHERS
Our movement encompasses a wide range of groups and campaigns with overlapping activities
and ideas. We are a movement of one no and many yeses. While there are constant discussions
and disagreements amongst people, our organic, decentralised way of organising minimise the
extent to which abstract ideological debates prevent us from working together. New ideas are
tested in practice in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

The media and others are keen to pigeonhole anti-capitalism as a cultural phenomenon defined by
lifestyle, dress and age. The direct action movement in Britain has roots in various communities,
noteably the anti-road camps and campaigns of the 1990s, but the portrayal of our movement as
a sub-culture minimises the extent to which anti-capitalist ideas have taken root in many parts of
society. For instance, it is simply not true to say that this is an anarchist movement - anarchists
play an important role, but so do socialists, greens, communists and loads of people who wouldn
t call themselves any of these things.

People are always developing new, practical links with others fighting capitalism - strikers,
anti-racist campaigners and others both here and abroad - based on mutual respect and a
shared determination to challenge capitalism in all its forms. The way we organise allows us to
minimise the state s targetting of individuals as leaders and encourages new ideas and tactics to
develop in a way that would otherwise not be possible.

4 SHOWING A HEALTHY DISREGARD FOR LEGALITY
The law has always been used as a weapon to prevent effective opposition to capitalism. From
the anti-union laws preventing picketing to the Terrorism Act outlawing free speech, from the
Criminal Justice Act stopping people dancing, squatting and protesting to the Public Order Act s
attacks on basic rights of assembly, laws are constantly brought in to attack us. We d be mad to
treat these laws as anything but an occupational hazard to be got around - we certainly don t let
them dictate what we do. Opposing capitalism within the law is like playing a game of football
after deciding you re not going to kick the ball outside your own half. It doesn t work.

This doesn t mean it s okay to go around attacking and robbing people everywhere - that s what
capitalism does. It means recognising that the state and its laws are there to defend the capitalist
system and we shouldn t be surprised when it does exactly that. It means showing that we will
not play by capitalism s rules of legitimate protest because they are their rules, not ours, and if
we play by them we will lose.

5 BREAKING WITH THE OFFICIAL MOVEMENTS AND PARTIES THAT HOLD OUR STRUGGLES
BACK
The wealth of the richest 358 people in the world is more than the annual income of nearly half
the world s population; 800 million people in the world are severely malnourished or starving; a
tenth of children in the poor countries of the world die before their fifth birthday. We use these
sort of facts to illustrate how obscene a system capitalism is. But the sheer scale of this
obscenity raises an important question - not so much how do we get rid of capitalism but rather,
if capitalism is so obscene, so wasteful, so against the interest of humanity, how come it still
exists?

The answer, of course, is that lots of people want it to. Many people in Britain and other rich
countries are able to live in relative affluence as a result of the millions that capitalism keeps
flowing in from the south. It has been estimated that if UK consumption were matched globally
we would need eight planets to provide the resources needed. The cheap commodities
produced by slave labour in the south, the massive debt repayments to the north, the
manipulation of world markets by the rich countries and their institutions such as the World Bank,
World Trade Organisation and International Monetary Fund contribute to a higher standard of
living for many people in the rich countries. It s not just merchant bankers and multinational
directors that gain from Britain s financial power - many middle-managers, professionals and
others benefit significantly.

It is from people like this - stuck between those at the top and the millions of workers, carers and
unemployed with no security or privileges at the bottom - that the Labour Party and, to a large
extent, the trade unions draw their membership. While there are working class people in the
Labour Party and trade unions they do not determine these organisations political standpoint.

The Labour Party has always played an important role in sabotaging, undermining and holding
back effective opposition to capitalism, acting as a safety valve for capitalism, allowing people to
feel they have a choice, without anything changing. A recent survey revealed that only 15% of
Labour Party members see themselves as working class. This is not a party of the toiling masses
- it is a thoroughly pro-capitalist organisation that is backed and funded by major corporations.
From supporting the corporate takeover of our public services to arming third world dictators,
from incarcerating asylum seekers to criminalising opposition with the Terrorism Act, the Labour
Party has shown itself to be not misguided or wrong-headed or badly led but, quite simply,
capitalism s government of choice.

The unions today are little better. They are major financial institutions in their own right, holding
assets of over 1,000m. Unions are now more interested in providing financial services for its
members the better off, the better than fighting for their members and facing the prospect of
having their assets sequestrated. Less than a third of British workers are in unions and those
that are tend to have more secure jobs - every other trade unionist is a professional and over a
third have degrees while only one in five casual workers and 6% of workers under 20 are in a
union. A middle aged manager with a mortgage and a private pension is more likely to be in a
union than a teenage casual worker on the minimum wage.

This isn t to say that we don t support strikes and other actions by workers - far from it. The
direct action movement occupied and blockaded docks during the Liverpool dock dispute and
Reclaim The Streets have taken action in support of striking tube workers. In contrast, almost all
significant strikes in the last few years - the Liverpool dockers, the Hillingdon hospital workers,
the Tameside care workers, the Dudley hospital workers - have been denied the support they
needed to win by their own unions.

As privatisation kicks in we can expect to see thousands of workers, like the SITA workers in
Brighton (see page 15) taking action to defend basic services against profiteering fatcat
companies. These actions will only win if they are based in local communities and take the sort
of action that unions, usually more concerned with staying within anti-union laws than defending
jobs or services, all too often tell their members to avoid. Anyone with an ounce of anti-capitalism
in them will be supporting these actions - and hopefully helping them to win.

VOTE LABOUR WHERE YOU MUST
The SWP reject all these principles. While using the language of direct action, they take part in it
as little as possible. Handing out leaflets in Bristol becomes an action . A book launch in London
is preceded by a widely advertised action that involves shouting slogans outside McDonalds for
half an hour. While paying lipservice to the idea of direct action, the SWP prefer legal, ineffective
demos - preferably with Labour councillors or MPs - everytime because they are more
unacceptable to the Labour Party supporters they are trying to win to their party.

The SWP believe that the struggles of peoples in the south are far less important than trade union
struggles in Britain and other richer countries. They believe that third world debt is peripheral to
the world economy and that workers in Britain and other richer countries are more exploited than
workers in the third world (9). The Zapatistas, they reckon, are "not in a position to provide
political leadership for the movement that has celebrated their example" (10). No, that s a role that
the SWP have reserved for themselves (and since when did the Zapatistas want to lead us
anyway?).

But what most clearly differentiates the SWP from anyone with a spark of anti-capitalism is their
support for the Labour government. The SWP have always voted for the Labour Party. At the
last election they stood Socialist Alliance candidates in a minority of seats but instructed their
members to vote Labour in the majority of seats. In the same publication that they say "a vote for
Labour is a vote for continuing inequality, poverty, privatisation and slavish devotion to the
market" (11) they announced that "our approach in the coming election should be vote Socialist
where you can, vote Labour where you must " (12).

The SWP would have us believe that the Labour Party and unions are full of closet
anti-capitalists who can hardly wait to take to the barricades with us - as long as we behave
ourselves. When they tell us that "many who were on the anti-capitalist demonstrations or
sympathised with them will also be members of the Labour Party" (13) and "anti-capitalists have
to build bridges towards these outraged Labour members" (14) you know that they re not calling
on Labour Party activists to adopt direct action - they are trying to convince anti-capitalists to
tone down their activities so as not to upset these people. When they write that, "combining
direct action with electioneering will not always come naturally to those from a Labour
background" (15) you know it s not the electioneering that will be quietly forgotten as they try to
turn the anti-capitalist movement into a sad left-wing pressure group.

Of course, there are loads of people who ve got involved in Globalise Resistance and the SWP
because they really do want to fight capitalism. It s easy to mistake the glitz and big meetings for
effective organisation, especially when SWP members often simply lie about their real beliefs
when out recruiting.

But it s not effective. It s a sort of convenience politics - the same everywhere, obsessed with
market share, sometimes initially tasty but, in the end, not much to it. The real world s messier,
less straightforward and sometimes downright confusing - but it is the real world.

GETTING OUR ACT(ION) TOGETHER
Over the last few years the direct action/anti-capitalist movement has developed enormously.
People have been continually and creatively adapting tactics to meet new challenges and
changing circumstances. Alongside big actions, people are increasingly doing things locally, in
their own communities. From the fight against cuts in Hackney to the Vote Nobody! campaign in
Bristol, activists are building strong links with other people fed up with what capitalism has to
offer. This isn t a retreat away from the big picture - it s building things solidly, connecting with
the spirit of resistance you find in estates and communities up and down the country, while
never forgetting how all our struggles - and the struggles of millions of people across the world -
are linked.
We need to build on this. In the next few years we ll need all our resourcefullness if we re
gonna seize the moment, build new alliances and involve new people in fighting this mad system.
We ll need to be bolder in promoting our ideas, more creative in involving new people and clearer
in getting our message across.

We haven t got all the answers - and sometimes we re own worst enemy. Our aversion to
hierarchy is healthy, but too often it just means that there s some inner circle making the real
decisions. This is not non-hierarchical - it is often the very opposite, excluding many people from
participation. Ask yourself - how easy is it for someone new to your town to get in touch with
your group? Do you have meetings where newcomers - and not just people from your own
social circles - are made to feel welcome and involved in things? The easier we make it for new
people to get involved, the more we connect with the day-to-day struggles of people around us,
the more successful we will be. It s really as simple as that.

Movements never stay the same for long - they either grow or fade away. If we fail to
continually improve the way we organise, there is a real danger that people will turn their backs
on direct action and be led back into the dead end of electoral politics. We can t allow that to
happen. The stakes are just too high. We want to win.

EXTRA BITS

SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY- SOME BLASTS FROM THE PAST
The SWP have a long history of appearing revolutionary in the abstract - while opposing
effective action in real life.

In the late 1970s, the SWP formed the ANTI-NAZI LEAGUE (ANL) to oppose the growth of the
fascist National Front. Then as now, the greatest attack on black people in Britain did not come
from fascist groups but from a Labour government implementing racist immigration laws. The
almost exclusively white ANL grew into a movement of hundreds of thousands holding massive
rallies and concerts across the country where Labour politicians would be invited to address the
crowds. But, when it came to fighting state racism, The SWP argued that the ANL should not
oppose immigration controls. The SWP refused to oppose state racism rather than upset Labour
Party supporters.

In September 1978, the ASIAN COMMUNITY IN EAST LONDON asked the ANL to divert people
from a big ANL carnival to the east end to oppose a National Front march. The ANL refused. SWP
members argued that the ANL should not oppose the racist march because "even such a
movement on the empty streets of the city of London facing 8,000 police might not have broken
through and beaten the Nazi marchers"16. The Asian community was deserted by the SWP.

THE MINERS STRIKE OF 1984-85 saw miners, their families and their communities fighting for
survival against a determined state machine and a militarised police force. The miners had
enormous support from miners support groups throughout the country but, of course, the Labour
Party and trade union movement refused to give the miners the support they needed to win.
Faced with the refusal of other unions to back them, miners organised hit squads to prevent
scabbing by sabotaging scabs buses and physically prevent scabs from breaking their strike.
The SWP, supporting only legal trade unionism, condemend the hit squads, arguing that "we are
opposed to individuals or groups using violence as a substitute for class struggle" (17) and that
"such raids can give trade union officials an excuse not to deliver solidarity" (18).

During the campaign of MASS RESISTANCE TO THE POLL TAX in the late 1980s, the SWP
insisted that only the unions would be able to beat the tax. Dismissing the mass non-payment
movement in Newcastle, for instance, they said that "In a city like Newcastle the 250 employees
in the Finance Department are more powerful than the 250,000 people who have to pay the poll
tax" (19). Chris Harman, the current editor of Socialist Worker said at the time that "on the council
estates there are drug peddlers, junkies and people claiming houses under false names. These
people will complete the registration forms to avoid attention from the council" (20). If the SWP
had had their way, there would have been no non-payment campaign and the poll tax would not
have been defeated.

FIGHTING PRIVATISATION
In June 2001 Brighton s refuse workers went to work to find that their employers, the French
multinational SITA, had imposed increased workloads that were impossible to deliver. When the
the 160-strong workforce protested they were sacked. The workforce occupied the depot.

This is the sort of dispute that makes the left go all wobbly at the knees with paper sellers
flocking to the picket lines to tell the workers how to organise - and why not join our party while
you re at it. But what happened was something entirely different.
Within a few hours, people from the Anarchist Tea Pot were down at the depot with food and
blankets. Other activists helped design a leaflet with the workers to give out around town.

The next morning, SITA brought in casual employment agency workers to scab against the strike.
It didn t work. Supporters of the Free Party successfully persuaded the agency workers that if
they scabbed they wouldn t be welcome anymore at Brighton free parties! Then someone using
good old-fashioned direct action skills locked onto one of the trucks for five hours, preventing the
rest from moving. As one striker put it, "This fellow is crazy but what he has done is much
appreciated". Next, activists picketed recruitment agencies that were advertising the sacked
refuse collectors jobs - within a few hours they had all pulled out. Thursday morning was spent
with scouts on bikes looking for scab trucks while 30 people sat in a park waiting to spring into
direct action.

By Thursday evening, SITA had caved in. All the workers were reinstated, getting full pay for the
time they were on strike. As GMB official Gary Smith told SchNEWS at the time, "We had
enormous public support from the local unemployed centre, direct action people and loads of
different communities who are fed up with their services being run for profit. We should take
inspiration from this fight, because it shows that when people get together we can stop
privatisation in its tracks."

THE OKASIONAL CAFE
Squat cafes and community centres are a great of getting people involved away from the
intimidation from the police and authorities that you would expect to get at an action. In
Manchester, the Okasional Cafe is a squatted social centre that has been appearing occasionally
for the past four years in different buildings around the city. It s a friendly, accessible place
where people can get to know each other, start working together and build up trust. On election
day this year, it was the base for a Manchester anti-election day of action with street theatre,
free food and music.

More recently, people from the Okasional cafe heard about a film called Injustice dealing with
deaths in police custody - wherever the film was due to be shown, the Police Federation would
threaten last minute legal action and the cinema would be forced to pull it. Some people from the
cafe decided to get in touch with the film makers and offer the squat as an alternative venue in
case this happened again. Sure enough, a local cinema was soon forced to pull out of showing
the film because of threats of legal action and the Okasional cafe stepped in. Activists
shepherded an audience of about 100 around the corner from the cinema to watch the film in the
cafe. People who wouldn t normally come to the cafe were told that they were in a squat and
what else was going on there. After the film there was food and a discussion with the families
of victims of police killings and the filmmakers about their campaign for justice.

'AVIN IT IN HARINGEY
The Haringey Solidarity Group from north London have been involved in radical community
organising for years. Originally set up to fight the poll tax, they decided to carry on after the tax
was defeated. Since then they have been involved in everything from supporting local workers
struggles and fighting casualisation to keeping an eye on police surveillance and the exposing
the cost of corporate regeneration of the borough.

"We are a group of local people who feel things need changing and we don t have much faith in
politicians and other so called leaders to do it for us. Things will only get better for ordinary
people when we decide what is best for us. It is not for some boss or so-called leader to decide
what they think we need. We believe in doing things for ourselves wherever possible and we
try to encourage others to do likewise.

"We also feel that when ordinary people fight back against the system - be that your boss, the
local council or some multi-national company - they need to be supported. So we agreed from the
birth of Haringey Solidarity Group onwards that, where possible, we would work with and
support local campaigns and try to get them to support us. By this we don t mean taking over a
campaign. We mean sharing skills, giving each other confidence to do things and learning from
each other s successes and failures. People need to feel confident before they can even think
of starting to fight back themselves. We know this may be a slow process but it is far better than
starting something up and telling people what they must do. We don t want to just become the
new set of leaders."

FIGHTING CASUALISATION THE SIMON JONES MEMORIAL CAMPAIGN
Simon Jones was killed in 1998 on his first day as a casual worker at Shoreham docks - another
victim of Britain s casual labour economy. His death would have been brushed under the carpet
like hundreds of others - except this time a campaign of direct action was set up to support
Simon s family s fight for justice.

The docks where Simon was killed in were shut down, the employment agency that sent him
there occupied. When it was clear that nothing was going to get done, the campaign occupied
the Department of Trade and Industry, shut down a bridge outside the Health and Safety
Executive and blockaded the Crown Proaecution Service. Eventually, the state agreed to
prosecute the company involved.

This victory would not have been possible without direct action. Dozens of local union branches
gave money to the campaign which they saw as fighting for the most basic union right - the right
not to be killed at work. But while union activists kept telling the campaign how they fully
supported the campaign s effective tactics, they also said that they couldn t do that sort of thing
for fear of breaking union laws - they saw the direct action movement as being able to take the
action it couldn t. As one union activist put it, "Nowadays, unions are just too scared to do this
sort of stuff. I wish that wasn t so, but it is. Let s hope that changes."

GET YOURSELF CONNECTED
One way of breaking down barriers and encouraging more cooperation between people is to
have a regular get together for different anti-capitalist groups in an area. In Brighton the Rebel
Alliance is an irregular get together of the various direct action/non-hierarchical groups in the
town. Groups such as SchNEWS, Hell Raising Anarchist Girls, Anarchist Tea Pot, Simon Jones
Memorial Campaign, animal rights and permaculture groups, etc are given a couple of minutes to
say what they are up to. This allows new people to see what s happening locally and decide
what they want to get involved in. It s also a great way for everyone to meet people they might
not normally come across, exchange information and discuss what s going on in the big bad
world beyond your own campaign or group. Similar stuff happens in London with CItY and in
Manchester with the Riotous Assembly, where each meeting has a topic with speakers and films
as well.

Hard core activists are probably used to waking up to in-depth discussions about globalisation,
so it s sometimes easy for them to forget that there are few places where new people who don
t happen to be mates with activists already can listen to what we have to say and discuss stuff
with people who are involved. You can use these get-togethers as opportunities to discuss
fundamental issues - for example the violence/non-violence debate has old political hacks crying
into their beer/herbal tea but for new people it might be the first time they ve had the chance to
discuss some of the arguments.

WATCHING THEM WATCHING US
We all know that the mainstream corporate media is controlled by people who don t exactly take
kindly to anti-capitalist ideas. We have our own media - hey, you re reading it! - and there s never
anything stopping people getting together to publish a newsletter, stick up a website or
whatever. From small, local newsletters to the worldwide Indymedia sites - the Italian Indymedia
site alone was getting over a million hits a day during Genoa - we certainly have ways of getting
our message across.

But that doesn t mean we can avoid the mainstream media altogether. It s certainly true that
journalists can stitch you up, misrepresent what you say and try to make you look like an idiot,
and in the past people involved in actions have often refused to have anything to do with the
media because of this. The problem is that nowadays our silence is being used by groups like
Globalise Resistance and self-promoting academics to speak on our behalf . So whereas in the
past we could often let our actions speak for themselves, it s now quite important to consider
talking to the media - so that someone else doesn t come along and claim to speak for you.

So how can you get your message across? Well, when Justice? set up a Squatters Estate
Agency in Brighton a few years back to advertise local empty property to potential squatters and
draw attention to homelessness in the town, there was an incredible media interest. Everyone
from Australian TV and the German press to Radio 1 and Newsnight were desperate to hear
what was going on. Luckily enough, Justice? had had a media training day a month before,
learning how to deal with dodgy interviewers, so were able to prepare for the onslaught quite
well. "We got half a dozen of us together, went through the basic points we wanted to make -
so many empty homes, so many homeless people, why? - and did the interviews sticking to
those points. Because there was a group of us, no one got seized on as leader - and it was
great being able to beat MPs and government ministers in discussions by keeping to the basics."

RESOURCES
RECLAIM THE STREETS PO Box 9656, London N4 4JY Tel 0207 281 4621
www.reclaimthestreets.net

EARTH FIRST! PO Box 487, Norwich NR2 3AL Tel 01603 219811 www.eco-action.org/efau

PEOPLES GLOBAL ACTION Helping to coordinate international days of action www.agp.org

HARINGEY SOLIDARITY GROUP PO.Box 2474, London N8 Tel 020-8374 5027
http://home.clara.net/hsg/hhome.html Check out the leaflet What can we do in our local area?.
Also produce The Agitator - a directory of autonomous groups.

THE INDEPENDENT MEDIA CENTRE www.indymedia.org or http://uk.indymedia.org for the British
site. Indymedia began life at the protests in Seattle against the World Trade Organisation and
now has sites all around the world. This network of collectively run media outlets is "for the
creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth".

THE SQUATTERS HANDBOOK Available for 1 + SAE from Advisory Service for Squatters, 2
St.Paul s Road, London N1 2QN Tel 020 7359 8814 www.squat.freeserve.co.uk

THE PORK-BOLTER have produced a How to set up a local newsletter
PO Box 4144, Worthing BN14 7NZ. www.eco-action.org/porkbolter

THE ACTIVISTS MEDIA TOOLKIT 2.50 inc p&p (cheques payable to Oxyacetylene) 16b Cherwell
Street, Oxford OX4 1BA www.toolkits.org.uk

VAMPIRE ALERT! A short leaflet produced by anarchists in 1999 alerting people to the SWP s
decision to become involved in anti-capitalist activities. Available at www.leedsef.org.uk

THE TYRANNY OF STRUCTURELESSNESS by Jo Freeman. A seminal essay from 1970 about the
debate over small/unstructured group organisation that has been raging from the 70s till today.
Available for 1.50 from AK Distribution, PO BOX 12766, Edinburgh EH8 9YE or at
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html

REFERENCES
1Chris Nineham speaking at SWP/GR meeting 18th July 2001, Genoa convergence centre 2
Socialist Review (SR) January 2000 3 Quoted in "eyewitness account from Gothenburg" at
www.brightoncollective.org.uk 4 SWP speaker at Marxism 2001 5 Socialist Worker (SW) 17th
February 2001 6 All quotes from posting at www.uk.indymedia.org 7 SW 1st September 2001 8
SW 15th September 2001 9 Alex Callinicos at Marxism 2001 session on Is third wolrd debt
central to the world economy 10 International Socialism Journal (ISJ) winter 2000 11 ISJ Spring
2001 12 ISJ Spring 2001 13 SR January 2000 14 SW 8th September 2001 15 ISJ Spring 2001 16
SW 30th September 1978 17 SW 25th August 1984 18 SW 11th August 1984 19 SWP speaker at
National Action Conference against the Poll Tax, quoted in Lorna Reid, Poll Tax: Paying to be Poor
20 Speaking at the Socialist Conference 1988, quoted in ibid.

This pamphlet has been put together by people involved in direct action from a number of
organisations and groups. It grew out of discussions led by SchNEWS and people involved in
direct action in Manchester at the Earth First! gathering held in Derbyshire in the summer of 2001.
After this, it was discussed amongst people from SchNEWS, Reclaim the Streets, Earth First! and
others. Needless to say, everyone didn t agree on everything - but everyone did agree that we
needed to say something along these lines.

One problem people mentioned a lot was the use of us , we , the movement and so on when
describing people involved in direct action and anti-capitalism. This isn t meant to sound exclusive
- you can t join the anti-capitalist movement - it s just kinda difficult to write about things any other
way.

SchNEWS is a weekly direct action newsletter written by activists that has been providing
information for action since 1994. Every year we publish a book compiling these newsletters,
other material and a comprehensive contacts database.

Published September 2001

by revolutionary socialist Thu Apr 04, 2002 19:15

ONE OF the most exciting developments of the new anti-capitalist movement is how it has brought together all sorts of people with differing views about how to change the world. This has been seen most recently in Britain with the Globalise Resistance counter-conference tour. Environmentalists, socialists, anarchists and many others have come together to discuss how to take on the power of the corporations.

Yet a minority of groups and individuals have been highly critical of socialists, particularly the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). A leaflet handed out by a few anarchists at some of the counter- conferences accused the SWP of being "vampires" and parasites of the movement. "The SWP has a long history of seizing on every new 'issue' or movement and trying to dominate it, recruiting who they can and then moving on to the next big thing," the leaflet said.

Yet let's take a closer look at what the leaflet is saying. It accuses the SWP of involving itself in every issue or movement. Absolutely. We are proud of being involved in many issues, whether it is the anti-capitalist protests in Prague, Nice or Davos, building support for London tube workers or the Dudley hospitals workers fighting privatisation, for the Vauxhall workers fighting for jobs, or against racist attacks.

We want to involve the widest numbers of people as possible in each campaign. But we also want to connect up the different struggles against different horrific effects of the system in order to make the fight against capitalism more effective and powerful. Every campaign, no matter how big or small, brings people from different political backgrounds together against some aspect of the system. Some of those involved are influenced by some of the myths thrown at us daily in the media, which always tries to present issues as if there were no connections between them.

Many people and groups will have contradictory ideas about the world, and about how we take the movement forward.

So some people involved in the developing anti-capitalist movement, for example, passionately condemn Third World debt but do not necessarily see a connection between debt and war. As socialists we always try to make the connections. So we argue that the military might of NATO acts as debt collector for institutions like the IMF and World Bank.

The capitalist system which condemns millions to die because of debt repayments and austerity measures imposed by the IMF and World Bank is the same system which has given us slavery and racism, sexism, inequality and war. We see the need to fight the whole organisation of a society where a tiny minority own and control all the wealth and what gets produced. The anarchist leaflet also accuses the SWP of trying to control and direct the "resistance of the oppressed". It says that a revolutionary party as is "much our enemy as the bosses".

Instead the movement should have "no leaders giving us orders, just mutual aid and solidarity between groups and individuals". But in every new movement there is a battle of ideas about which direction the movement should take.

So in the anti-capitalist movement individuals have already come to the fore as "thought leaders" who have taken the movement forward. People like Susan George, Naomi Klein, Walden Bello and José Bové have become widely known as symbols of resistance. The aim of a party like the SWP is not to lecture people from on high or to deliver change on behalf of people.

It is to organise the most militant sections of society so that we can convince and involve even wider layers of people in the struggle to change the world. We want a network of militants and activists who argue for socialist ideas, organise in their workplace, colleges or schools, and push for struggles to go further against the system.

We are for democracy and debate inside the movement, but we also see the need to be organised in order to centralise our forces to fight against the real vampires-the capitalists.