Anarchism

The highlight of the Edinburgh festival for me was John Holloway launching his latest book Crack Capitalism (Pluto Press) in the city that was his home before he moved to work at the Autonomous University of Mexico.

John has spent recent years theorising about the meaning of revolution today. His earlier book Change the World Without Taking Power has stimulated discussion amongst activists the world over who, like John, reject the antics of revolutionary…

On 16 June, the Belgrade high court acquitted a group of six anarchists of charges that they caused a general danger to society by with throwing Molotov cocktails at the embassy of Greece. “The basis for acquittal is the legal, not political. It is not proven that the accused committed the crime,” said the judge Dragomir Gerasimovi.
The six members of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Initiative (ASI), Sanja Dojkic, 20, Tadej Kurepa, 25, Nikola Mitrovic, 30, Ivan Savic, 26, Ratibor Trivunac, 28…

Filmed in 2003, this DVD records a fascinating extended conversation between veteran anarchist Colin Ward and writer/film-maker Roger Deakin. Sadly both the protagonists are no longer with us, making this film especially poignant and valuable.

It’s more of an interview than a true conversation, with Deakin asking the questions and Ward speaking at length, always with energy and lucidity and barely a pause for breath.

Topics covered include Ward’s introduction to anarchism…

John Rety, former editor of the anarchist newspaper Freedom and good friend of Peace News, has died at the age of 79.

John had several passions apart from politics, including chess (“the most Bohemian player we are ever likely to meet”, said the late Bob Wade, former British chess champion) and poetry (“He ran the only truly democratic poetry reading venue, where anyone was allowed to get up and read one poem before a guest reader,” said poet Jehane Markham).

…

Colin Ward was the leading anarchist thinker and writer of post-war Britain. His was an anarchism that was at once constructive, creative and immensely practical. It drew critical, but sympathetic attention from many outside the anarchist movement. It still holds many lessons for the left.

Born in 1924 in London, Colin gravitated to the anarchist movement while serving in the army during the Second World War. Towards the end of the war, the anarchist newspaper Freedom (or War…

Tripp York has tried to remove the academic discourse from his dusted-off master’s essay to turn it into a readable book. This means the book is now short enough to read in one sitting, but limits both the breadth of discovery and the ability to argue a point.

However, York’s definition of Christian anarchism is carefully explained and argued and as good as any one might read from Vernard Eller (a member of the Church of the Brethren and author of Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy…

When I go, I feel revitalised, and reawoken, and really stimulated. I used to think maybe it was a bit lifestylist, and fetishist, but actually the level of debate and discourse I reconnect with when I go is really inspiring.
It’s actually more inspiring than any other forum I go into. I learn a lot. It could be more focused, but ultimately I feel I’m back with “my gang” and my mates. It helps keep things real and radical.
It reminds me to not make compromises, to keep believing…

It is testimony to the spirit of trust and unity created by the organisers of the recent Anarchist Movement Conference in London that it was possible to take a photograph of the 200-plus people who gathered for the final plenary of the gathering. Given that many of those present seemed to be the kind of people used to masking up in public, allowing a mass photograph felt like a significant departure.

The 6-7 June conference, held at Queen Mary & Westfield College in east…

The most firmly held myth of our time is that no society can exist without a government and that we need the state to protect us – including from environmental destruction.

Let’s begin by not confusing two terms. Anarchy is the condition of a society without a ruler. Anarchism is a rich nineteenth-century political philosophy. Anarchists are not against democracy, they want to deepen it and make it our servant, not our master.

While it does reject the idea of governments…

I would like to dissent from the celebration of May ’68.

In 1968, I was an editor of Freedom, the anarchist paper, at a time when the anarchist movement was growing rapidly. Anarchists were exploring the potential of nonviolence

Both the Committee of 100 and CND had moved a lot of people towards an understanding of what the state was doing secretly such as the regional seats of government which were placed to rule over the country in the aftermath of a nuclear war.

In…

You may or may not have noticed that since 10 June - for over five months - the people of Belgium have struggled on without a government.

Well, we say “struggled on”. The political deadlock in the country has been a factor in declining “consumer confidence” apparently (does this mean people are spending less on things they don't need, and borrowing less money that they can't pay back?), but otherwise the people of Belgium have managed to keep breathing, eating, feeding themselves…

“Peace News ... [is] always being accused of anarchism”, observed Nicolas Walter in 1963, and even today the charge retains much of its force.

Indeed, as Walter notes in this posthumously-collected book of his essays, the First World War - and the resistance to it “brought a permanent pacifist element into anarchism”, and whilst “[t]he campaigns for nuclear disarmament, racial integration and workers control do not belong to the territory of classical anarchism ... there is no doubt…

On 23 August, many anarchists will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution by electric chair of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two working class (male) Italian anarchist immigrants to the United States, whose fate seized the world's attention.

Peace News is marking the anniversary by addressing two of the issues raised by the Sacco and Vanetti case - the situation of immigrants in rich Western societies, and the question of violence in social change. Sacco…

On 23 August, many anarchists will mark the 80th anniversary of the execution by electric chair of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, two working class (male) Italian anarchist immigrants to the United States, whose fate seized the world's attention.

Peace News is marking the anniversary by addressing two of the issues raised by the Sacco and Vanetti case - the situation of immigrants in rich Western societies, and the question of violence in social change. Sacco…

Here's a quiz: who said this? “It is also a time when XXX - totally united around its goals and in support of its leadership - has an increasingly high profile ...” That's the second sentence of a recent press release (from organisation XXX). The language is reminiscent of that in the news-sheets of the (greatly missed) Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism which had several members in South London 25 years ago.

Clearly this is from some throwback to an earlier era, when…