A Scottish Anarchist Black Cross

I'd be interested in setting up an ABC up here.
Post some more info i.e. a meeting to discuss it (could be done on here) what your ideas are for the such a group.
Also there was/is(?) a defendants group that was set up after the G8. Those people may be interested too.

x357997, the AF at present do have designated members supporting prisoners, if that answers your question. Also you have to look at groups like this can attract people beyond our numbers.

Were discussing creating one in Preston..more on that in the future though

Why doesnt the AF have a committee in each branch that organizes prisoner support and a national committee to coordinate?

Surely setting up an anarchist group would be a better first step than setting up an ABC?

yep; not sure if its a 'branch' as such, but there are several AFers and a couple of applicants in scotland. Some are heavily involved with the IWW, which is quite active in scotland.

"Right now as far as i can tell, there are no anarchist or class struggle prisoners in the UK. There are a couple of people who go in and out for pacifist actions, like smashing planes, but thats a bit different and they never serve very long so you have to be really on the ball. They also operate with the intention of getting pinched, so they have support networks ready.

Okay, different groups have their own pisoners to support, and they will continue supporting the prisoners that they know. What would be good is to have a network of prisoner support groups in Scotland. A recent prisoner-support action in Edinburgh drew more English protestors than Edinburgh or Glasgow protestors. Ths is a sign that we need more prison-support up here.

You are just plain wrong to suggest there are no anarchist or class struggle prisoners in the UK. There are so many who have been forgotten we have to prioritise

What would be a better question is why isn't there list of prisoners from IFA-IAF or the IWA for uk branches to utilise?"

Rather than asking that, why not propose a local prisoner for a blog on this website ? http://abcscotland.wordpress.com

Who? please post more info.

I was refering to ordinary punters whose crimes weren't necessarily political but whose punishment certainly is. Some of them become politicised in prison and end up becoming being persecuted for standing up for their rights, like John Bowden did, but most of them aren't ever politicised and are eventually released back on the streets. John said being contacted by ABC helped save his life. Prison nowadays seems to be intended to break the spirit of resistance within people, and prisons are usually a microcosm of the state that they are in.

I was a bit embarrassed as a Scottish anarchist that Leeds ABC came up and educated us about a prisoner in a Scottish prison, also resigned to the fact that nobody would come through from Glasgow for an Edinburgh demo. There are other high-profile political prisoners held in Scottish prisons such as Al-Megrabi, who when linked to McKie then every prisoner who was convicted using finger-print evidence should be retried at once.
Just now in Scotland prison-support is done by each group for it's own members with different levels of commitment and success, but we should be trying to support prisoners. By pooling that info on a single site it should be easier - hopefully a larger group of activists having someone close to each prison and at least one blog from inside each prison.

If being contacted by ABC saved Johns life then I think we should be contacting as many prisoners as possible. There is at least one prisoner at Glenochil who is on hungerstrike, I don't know who he is. He was sent there to do a course on violence before his parole only to be told the course was full for the next two years. The SPS are cutting back on staff and services and increasing profits to compete with the privatised prisons and it is resulting in a more repressive regime. The prisoner on hungerstrike probably isn't political but his cause is and we should be contacting him.

It costs £32k to imprison someone for a year. 98% of people inside for fine defaults or whatever owe far less than it costs to imprison them. Prison is criminal.

so not really anarchist or class struggle prisoners then?

so working class prisoners are class struggle prisoners? i'm just left a little unsure about what the ABC is for when it's aiming to

i'm genuinely a bit confused

thank you for that helpful response comrade. you may have noticed i'm not the only one on this thread who's unsure what this group is for ...

i'm open minded, but tbh it seems like you'd rather take petty swipes than answer honest questions ...

see this is what i don't get, i thought the ABC supported anarchist and class struggle prisoners, not prisoners in general, and this was how it distinguished itself from charities and liberal NGOs and the like?

now it's obviously a smear, but given as brighton ABC supports the unabomber (downplaying his actions), it's not entirely from thin air. of course in theory class struggle prisoners could be locked up for 'terrorism' so i'm not suggesting we should abandon all controversial prisoners, just not support primmo mentalists.

in order to 'get behind the ABC' i want to understand what it is and what it's for (obviously the state smearing you is bad) ...

http://www.anarchistblackcross.org/abc/why.html

so it's infrastructure for the anarchist movement? a movement too insignificant to have (m)any prisoners in the UK at the moment. how does this square with your dismissal of the AF and solfed? personally i'd have thought prisoner support for 'the movement' could spring up as and when we have prisoners, like the trafalgar square defendants campaign perhaps. i dunno, going by that abc quote it would seem building an abc prior to an effective anarchist group would be contrary to the abc's purpose. i'm trying to be constructive here, fwiw.

"i dunno, going by that abc quote it would seem building an abc prior to an effective anarchist group would be contrary to the abc's purpose."

ABC are by definition an anarchist group themselves, that is what the A stands for. Going by the bulk of the ABC literature I'd say they'd be glad to affiliate with an active local prisoner-support group over any bunch of dismissive-do-nothing pseuds, going by talking to ABC members and prisoners too. You know who I mean by pseud's , the sort of people who take cool names and then debase them with their prejudiced sniping.

"i'm trying to be constructive here, fwiw"
Don't try so hard and maybe it will come easier.

I have to say, I never chose to post this on LibCom, this place has a bad rep for cointel-trolls. It was reposted here so I thought I should join to defend the idea. That was maybe my mistake.

Self-important weirdo.

You honestly think the state gives enough of a shit about anarchists to bother cointeling us? Mentalist.

You've just outed yourself as a moron, if you click on almost any posters profile you will see what anarchist group they are affiliated to there is very little posted from people who aren't openly members of anarchist groups and known by other posters on the forum. Paranoid much?