Anarchists and admin
One day, after a successful revolution, in that bit of political theory where Marxism tends towards anarchism, the State will wither away and we will no longer have the government of people but the administration of things. Public administration would become concerned with technical issues rather than the coercion implied by laws.
I think this is too idealistic — it pretends that politics, at its heart an argument about how… Continue reading
Why does the left hate free speech? Interesting question…
Since the election of Donald Trump, a right-wing discussion point which had long been burbling in national press outlets such as The Times and the Telegraph has spectacularly jumped into the spotlight — why does the Left hate free speech?
In Britain, this question has over the last few years mainly revolved around a relatively tame phenomenon of intersectional struggles in universities, with the likes of Germaine Greer expressing bafflement… Continue reading
The edge of precarity: Squatting in England and emergency crisis planning
In recent decades squatting has been under near constant assault from a variety of ruling class actors. In 2012 the Conservative/ Liberal Democrat government banned squatting in residential properties for the purposes of living. Councils, Conservative and Labour alike, treat squatters as a public health issues and pressure property owners to fast track evictions. The (still) rising property market in London and other major cities has incentivised owners to use… Continue reading
G20: We won the battle, elites are winning the media war
Indymedia Germany has, as with most other branches of the free media project, been ailing over the last few years (including its UK counterpart, which closed for good in 2016). In the below analysis, members of the de.indymedia collective put G20 Hamburg into the context of the last two decades of media change and find a worrying trend — social media algorithms on State-friendly platforms are locking our stories… Continue reading
Forget the Judge Led Inquiry – Grenfell Needs a People’s Inquiry
The Grenfell Tower disaster shows British capitalism up for what it is. It is brutal slavery masked up with the grey, smiling face of liberal democracy. The mask slips sometimes and we get to see the full horror of our rich and powerful masters clamouring desperately to put it back straight as quickly as possible before riots break out.
The toffs at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea were… Continue reading
Case Study: Organising in a community mental health team
A member of the Bristol Care Workers Network reflects on their experiences organising in healthcare.
I work in a community mental health team in a large town north of Bristol. Morale in my team was low and this was being made worse by staff lacking access to training and supervision; supervision is important in mental health work because the emotional strain can be very high and because staff must sometimes… Continue reading
Case study: Charity chugging in the north-west
A Plan C member in Manchester writes as part of the group’s Worker Enquiry series of articles…
The job was simple. Working as a member of a major hospice and nursing charity street team my role would be to sign people up for regular monthly payments to the charity. These ranged from “as little as 4 pounds a month” to the tenner a month we were trained to open… Continue reading
Grenfell: Because they were poor
A member of the Anarchist Federation writes on guilt and the ever-rising death count in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire.
“The people who died and lost their homes – this happened to them because they are poor” ~ Akala, rapper and poet, local resident.
“Regeneration is a euphemism for ethnic and class cleansing” ~Kensington resident and writer Ishmahil Blagrove.
Guilty: Boris Johnson. When Mayor of London Johnson… Continue reading
John Bull believers face a rude awakening
Iain McKay writes on the collapse of the Tory economic plan and its dire “solutions” to the looming troubles of Brexit
On every level Thatcherism is recognised to have failed, from the broken housing market, to railways unfit for purpose, a dysfunctional labour market etc. Or more correctly, the reality is being admitted but the root causes are being carefully avoided.
But how have the electorate acted? Though there has… Continue reading
Solidarity and Empathy in the Summer of 2017
The idea that we are in competition with each other for resources is perhaps the most corrosive myth we’ve created. It damages our society like nothing else. The idea that we must beat someone to that house, a job, a lover or friendship is horrific. It reinforces and recreates the hierarchies that cause the contest in the first place. Over the last few days I’ve been frustrated to see examples… Continue reading →