Af & SolFed growing - sign of changing times?

Was just discussing this with Sorry (who surprised me by showing up at my house yesterday), there’s definitely been a shift towards class struggle, partly I suspect because the old media organs of the activist left have died/spent the money they’d been gifted with little to show, or have shifted to more analytical pieces, and not insignificantly, the remaining anarch media has been ganging up (Libcom and Freedom simply being the most regular). Even bits of Indymedia UK has shifted in the last month or so (Mersey firefighter coverage, NHS ambulances, NHS logistics) and finally denying the platform needed for the activistoids.

Climate camp was a disaster, Earth First not much less so. The Black bloc in Manchester wasn’t full of brick-throwers. All of this seems positive because it shows a shift away from travelling protest bands – a big question to ask is what people were doing when they weren’t at these things. If they were busy joining SolFed, Afed, forming community groups etc, then the shift is becoming a success.

i'm pro-organisation and all, but i haven't seen a reason to join the AF, SF or IWW , and i haven't really been around long enough to know if there's been a shift really. not a lot to say basically

Well they were looking for a turnout of 3,000 and got 6-700, which I would term fairly disasterous (apparently so would the caterers, who lost a great deal of money at both EF! and the CC). It was less visible because the people who were there were the hard core, so they got out as many as they'd hoped on the demo.

I think it will prove promising if the groups concerned - mostly AF and Solfed - can build from the co-operation we showed in Manchester. But that didn't come out of nowhere - we may take the piss out of each other in Manc, but there's a genuine respect for each other, which lets the piss taking be just a joke and banter. We've known each other for a long time and have managed to work together before. Plus we've both got groups in Manc, though Solfed's is bigger, which means there is already a basis to build from. It'll be interesting to see what happens in towns like Preston where we also both have a presence.
Maybe we should try and launch a northern class struggle network or something? I'd guess that between us we could muster around 35-40 people for that.
It also helps that some of us realise that there's not really that much between the two groups in practical terms.

UK class struggle groups can only dream of organising such a 'disaster'.

There's been quite a few encouraging strikes recently - the Exeter wildcat, Tottenham bin men, Whipps Cross Initial workers etc. which to greater or lesser extents have broken the pattern of one-day symbolic strikes without strong pickets. 200 people on a picket line down the road from me is pretty encouraging.

I think these events focus the attention of anarchists (and/or) communists and show there's still a class struggle going on. I don't think they have any effect at all on the size of revolutionary organisations though - let's face it that 200 person picket is the same as AF/Solfed/IWW combined, or not far off.

All that we in libcom can do with events like that is provide publicity from an already existing sympathetic infrastructure that won't attempt to take over the struggle (which doesn't mean we can't criticise/present ideas). That means articles, interviews, discussions where possible. Hopefully it increases access to this information and makes it easier to find. Increasingly we're able to "compete" with either leftist or commercial news sources - in that we get a lot of casual visitors trying to find out information about strikes in their local area, who otherwise would only have local/corporate/swappie publications to refer to (Exeter wildcat is a good example with hundreds of hits on articles within a couple of hours of posting).

The traffic our coverage of the anti-CPE movement generated, and the way that fed back into France - with people involved in the assemblies and French independent media using us as a resource to find out what was going on elsewhere in the country or even their own town, was I think the best thing we've managed to do so far (although it would've been impossible to do that without the infrastructure the rest of the site provides). On a smaller scale this has been happening with the Hunterston electricians, the Belfast wildcat etc.

This doesn't necessarily translate into more people helping out with the site though, nor does having a good website with several people working on it contribute to more ongoing struggles. I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was worth it, but it's not a measure of anything.

Except this misses the point. The purpose of "UK class struggle groups" is not to put on camping holidays for like-minded individuals, so that particular activity can't be used as a measure of success.

Even if you want to use "bums on seats" for things organised by "UK class struggle anarchist groups" as a measure, you're wrong on your own terms. I don't know exactly who organises the bookfair, but the turnout last year was definitely closer to 3,000 than 700. I don't like the bookfair that much (although I love the pub afterwards), but on it's own terms it's pretty successful, and certainly not a disaster.

libcom, run by a small number of people on their own time, right now, after three months of a massive restructure and nearly six months since we had a major security breach, gets c.4000 visits every day, over 80% of those from people visiting for the first time. This is quite a bit down on what we were getting pre-hacking, although there's been an almost exponential increase in traffic since September last year notwithstanding interruptions.

But the traffic to this website, or the size of the federations, or the number of people attending climate change camps aren't a measure of anything but the particular trajectory of those specific projects. What useful information do you get from comparing these things? Especially when the numbers are so low that no statistician would ever take them as a sample.

LibCom has certainly had a big development on my politics. If I was in the UK I'd join SolFed, which I wouldn't have pre-libcom.

Yes I think so. I'm not sure it's a resurgence - these are small scale. Although there was also the pensions strike, now NHS logistics, Gate Gourmet last year. It may just be that there's more people on this site and we're spotting them better tbh, rather than a real increase.

That statement is just so fucking insulting to the Manchester SF comrades.

So there I go, putting my foot in it again.
I was trying to express my concern that the smallness of our organised groups sizes means a lot of work rests on a few people. I'd hope that the groups grow to a size where that doesn't happen. I can't think of an AF group that is large enough where losing one or two people wouldn't put real strain on it. Some would recover in time, others wouldn't. In Manchester we were knocked for six when one comrade left the country, another found raising kids too much work and thus was unable to offer time to us and a third had some health issues. When that all happened in the space of around six months it set us back enormously. I seriously doubt any of the organised groups could cope with that. Which brings us back to JDMF's original comment. There is cause for optimism. But there's still some way to go yet.
And I'm sorry for causing offence to a group of comrades I feel great respect for.

Well the people referred to don't measure their political activity by the number of posts on libcom, in fact they don't post on here at all.

I think the underlying current of `class struggle`vs lifestyle anarchism is to be avoided.i have been involved in some way since the 80`s and the class struggle vs lifestyle phrase has plagued us all along.Indeed at this point when the `working class` has little obvious attachment to working class `identity`(whatever that is)it seems odd to suddenly push a class only line,or indeed as the international of anarchist federations does openly attack green,ecological or lifestyle anarchism.what exactly is lifestyle anarchism?i know of many class struggle types who have little understanding of how lifestyle changes can bring us closer to the society we want by living it today rather than after some revolutionary event.the global anti capitalist moevement has not dissapeared and class struggle anarchists who attack anything that is not workerist appear as crusty old men and women afraid of struggle moving out of areas they understand!.

the world is being destroyed by capitalists.the front line is the enviromental war currently being waged.the class struggle is not seperate from the eco struggle and its high time all talk of divides ended and high time `workerists` realised that it is industrial society and materialism that contributes daily to the polluting of our woorld.its great that sol fed and AF seem to be getting more interest but please dont see it as a move away from one thing towards a purer `class`ideology.Many people dont need to nail their colours to the class flag pole and if a revolutionary organising in her local communtiy or in eco-tage sees their anarchism as personal orientation towards life with no recourse to classical notions of class then all well and good.its later than we think...
no war but the class war/no war but the eco war.

Dear eco-anarchist,
Well said mate.
My problem with class-struggle organisation is that once they reach a certain size they tend to smuggle across the same values and the same practices of the organisations they someday hope to replace.
They also become pretty sensitive to differences of approach and fall back on harsh binarys: workerist/tree hugger, class struggle/arty farty.
It becomes easy to lose sight of the fact there are some fine comrades working away in all aspects of the movement.
Me? I'm not anti-organisation. My experience in the Trade Union movement taught me to be wary of groups of more than a dozen. If a member of a group can't buy his or her round then the group is probably too big.
Peter Good (TCA)