The problem with Federations?

It's born out in what has actually happened. LEWG has achieved more as a tiny group in the few months it has existed than EWN seems to since it was revived, what 3yrs ago, and I put this down to strategy, and it kinda depresses me.
LEWG's strength is in its open nature, and it's something I'd defend because on practical terms it's meant in a short time were were able to do stuff, including a benefit, for the Tower Hamlets strike. I'm not aware of any practical solidarity or organising work EWN has done yet, in fact I'm not aware of anything beyond publishing Education Worker.

I think it makes sense for members of a federation who work in the same sector or are in the same union to form a fraction (as the trots call it) or network in order to better coordinate their work in that sphere.

It can complement but it cannot be a substitute for broader groups and networks open to those outside the federation.

by that logic SolFed has 50-60 people, which for a cross industrial group is also tiny, so there's no point in that either. neither SolFed nor the EWN is a paragon of anarcho-syndicalist organisation - it's currently a group of politicos in favour of it - so using them as an argument against the model is a bit disingenuous.

but like i say i think you have to define what you mean by 'open' and 'closed', since the political principles are very similar. if by 'open' you mean not a formal, dues-paying organisation then i definitely don't think that's a substitute to 'closed' organsations but a complement.

yes i think it probably is down to strategy, but also the nature of the group. my understanding is the LEWG isn't a formal membership dues-paying organisation, so comparing it to the EWN isn't comparing like with like. if that's the case yes it's open, but equally i don't think such groups are a substitute for formal, dues-paying (inter)nationally federated ones. i think forming them on a local basis may be a sensible strategy for the EWN to adopt, since it's a way for people to get involved in practical activity without the committment of properly joining a group. in the long term though i don't think a load of localised informal groups are a substitute for (inter)national networks of industrial militants.

i'm certainly not denying SF/EWN have problems, as an organisation we lack a strategy for development of the networks and so on, as we've tended to just say 'we want an anarcho-syndicalist union' then sit back and wonder why it hasn't happened yet. historically we've also failed to communicate, even internally, what we mean when we say the networks are 'unions in formation', when in the UK's absence of a tradition of politicised minority unionism it's far from self-explanatory. these issues have been recognised and discussions are under way as to how best address them. it would very much help if members who have criticisms such as those hinted at on this thread raise them internally as part of that discussion.

Thats not true though is it Joseph? AF members zigzagged to join the IWW only after an oppurtunity was missed around the EWN. The fact is that you neglect to mention that one position put forward was that membership of an industrial network can de facto be membership of the entire organisation. Referring interest in the networks with the response 'join SF then' is an ill thought out stratergy frankly and its been a major disagreement at conference for the last several years. As cantdocartwheels as already mentioned, people accept our politics more on the basis of action than simply having a correct line. And if you don't think were political, read DA or read the activities of some SF branches.

We seem to be attempting to carry out the functions of being an anarchist propaganda organisation and organising industrially and spreading our resources badly between the two. There is no requirment for an AF mark II. We should be leaving the bulk of the politics to the AF, and co-operating as much as possible to ensure they take the lead and we offer them as much support as we can when they do, while we prioritise industrially organising.

i almost entirely agree with this with a couple of qualifications, so i'm not sure how it's being presented as a counter to what i'm saying. maybe i'm not expressing myself well. my qualifications would be that 'leaving the bulk of the politics to the AF' doesn't mean being apolitical, and that i don't agree with the (possible) implication that locals can only be anarchist propaganda organisations (of course they are at present). locals should be the community equivalent of networks (i.e. groups of militants seeking to advocate and initiate direct action in their respective spheres).

i don't think we should focus on industrial organising, we should focus on practical organising - whether industrially or in the community (dealing with landlords etc). i think splitting the networks from the locals would make SolFed "an AF mark II" - a redundant organisation - whilst also restricting anarcho-syndicalism to the workplace, which would be a serious mistake imho. i think if we were clear that networks are intended to be groups of libertarian workers in a given industry and locals are intended to be groups of libertarian workers in a given locality, the whole idea of 'also joining SF' would seem a lot less off-putting to people interested in the EWN (or any other industrial networks we get going).

what's not true? my point is that with the exception of 'revolutionary unions' (something very few people outside the organisation know what we mean by since there's little tradition of politicised minority unionism in the UK, and we've not been very clear about in our propaganda, taking it as self-explanatory), our principles are fairly generic (opposition to capitalism, a list of bad things we are against, committment to class struggle). we neither have nor seek theoretical and tactical unity or a unified programme - it's a principled, practical unity we're after.

the AF members who joined the IWW apparently did so because they see the IWW as a means of industrial networking, and the IWW has no problem with members who openly disagree with it's constitution (A&P #7 certainly applies to One Big Union). i still to this day don't know how the approach was made and dealt with. as far as i'm aware it never came before conference but was fairly summarily rebuffed by individuals. maybe it was formally discussed in the EWN - i don't know. obviously just saying 'join SF' is completely unhelpful. we do have some members who don't think the AF should exist and all its members should quit and join us - if that was the subtext it's even worse, we're not competing sects but different organisaitons with different roles.

but we are not just an industrial organisation, anarcho-syndicalism also applies outside the workplace, so we organise in both industrial and local groups. now it would certainly help if we were actually clear on what type of organisation we're trying to be, and if all members of SF were in a network (even a few fairly general ones), as has been floated recently. i also think it should be acceptable to join SF to be primarily active in a network and not so much through the nearest local, since most of our members currently do the opposite, which is fine. that could have been one response to the AF.

i don't think i was a member when the AF approach was made, or it might have been when our local was inactive and i was out of the loop, but in my opinion their approach should have triggered an organisation-wide discussion about our role and theirs, it should have been clearly explained why SF has a structure of locals and networks (not because one is political and the other economic, but because both seek to function in a political-economic way in communities and industries respectively). i don't think this happened - like i say i don't know if it went through any democratic structures at all.

i must be coming accross badly for this to be a counter - i've been saying as much throughout: at present we're a political group and the way out of that is to take on a more practical approach, leaving a lot of the propaganda functions (e.g. 'Against Nationalism') and political activism (e.g. anti-ID cards, anti-militarism, participation in climate camp etc) to the AF.

The AF and EWN thing was never a formal approach from us to you. It was something that came up in conversation a few times - even on this forum somewhere - it also came up around the time when the two feds were either a similar size or we might have been the smaller of the two.

The last time it came up was when we held a joint day school in Manchester with Solfed on working in education. The contributions that Solfed members had made to the discussions were pretty inspiring, especially when talking about the kind of basic resistance they were organising at the university here. Towards the end of the meeting some of us asked if we could join the EWN and work together on this. The answer was that to do so we must first join Solfed.

So, even though I'd been wavering about the whole IWW thing, I then threw myself into it wholeheartedly. I'm now lapsed from the IWW, btw.

ok, thanks for clarifying. would it have helped if SF made clear networks are intended to be groups of libertarian workers in a given industry and locals are intended to be groups of libertarian workers in a given locality?

i mean presumably 'join solfed' was a sticking point because of the (real or perceived) nature of solfed. but it's a pretty grim situation where other libertarian communist workers who are largely in agreement with us and inspired by our actions feel unable to get involved.

If this was the situation, there'd probably be a lot more crossover between AF and SolFed membership than there is at the moment. As far as I can see, there's no real contradiction between the AF and SolFed's aims and principles (assuming that the "revolutionary unions" thing really is just a difference of terminology, it isn't entirely clear whether the view put forward by Joe K and other on here is shared by the whole organisation).

the reason it isn't clear is because we don't have a single document actually describing what one is, despite it being central to our politics. what i've been describing lately is very different to the 'revolutionary unions' of Strategy & Struggle and is based on the subsequent debate, but it still has the problem of trying to accurately represent the opinions of others. hopefully we'll now write something on it, rather than expecting people to just automatically know what we mean by a term that has no little to no tradition in the UK (and is confused by the IWW using the same terminology to denote their project).