Rob Ray
Articles by East Anglia-based anarcho-syndicalist, journalist, ginger and editor of Freedom newspaper, Rob Ray.
Colin Ward
I can't claim to have known him but I did visit Colin shortly after Talking Anarchy - a book entirely made up of a fascinating exchange between him and David Goodway - was brought out. I suspect mine was one of the last published interviews he gave as he was already getting very frail by then.
The interview itself I reproduce below, forgive the somewhat florid style I was still getting the hang of things...
DEBENHAM is one of the prettier villages in Suffolk, with immaculate little white cottages overlooking clean roads bedecked with flowers.
Christians vrs Atheists: Who's killed the most?
One of the recurring themes of evangelical Christianity is that atheism means people have no reason to look after each other, supporting the allegation that it led the deaths of millions during the 20th century. Disregarding for a moment the reality that wars are caused by elite power conflicts and generally have little to do with religious belief or a lack thereof, I thought I'd check out who led some of the more famous wars and genocides in history...
Starting with the most famous of all:
The Holocaust
Leader: Hitler
Deaths: Between 11 and 17 million people
Unfortunately, this is a bad start for the religious, Hitler was a devout Catholic who drew on his religion as a justification for what became the Holocaust.
John Rety 1930-2010
I'm sad to announce that John Rety, ex editor of Freedom and poetry editor for the Morning Star, died last night after a heart attack.
John is today best known for his role in London's poetry scene, as co-founder of Torriano Nights, but he played a lasting role in the British anarchist movement from his arrival in the country in 1947, throwing himself into its various publications, including a lengthy stint as the editor of Freedom newspaper.
The return of "class warfare"
Recently we've been seeing a long lost phrase creeping back into the media - class warfare. Sadly, they're only talking about the opportunistic ranting of Gordon Brown.
What they definitely aren't talking about are the ever-nastier attacks of rich against poor, where the most vulnerable find their safety nets cut, their schools shut down and their public transport turned into a giant monopolistic cash cow while front line public services are quietly gutted for saleable meat.
Initial impressions: Royal Mail Strike
Reports coming in from picket lines suggest a solid response from postal workers, with near 100% turnout in Bromley By Bow and Nine Elms, London, few in at Bristol and similarly tiny numbers crossing lines at Middlesborough.
Photographers have been down at Mount Pleasant and Bromley by Bow sorting offices, where they report good spirits from the strikers despite the early start and very few people crossing the picket lines.
The anarchist International
This thread got me thinking yesterday about how little decent information exists on the IWA — the biggest anarchist project of all time.
Having had a think about it, I decided to go back to the Wikipedia article which I'd had a go at a couple of years ago, which other than the exceedingly small IWA site itself, is the first thing to come up on a search.
Fools and their "gold-plated" pensions
Public sector workers have been fools. No more so than private sector workers, for sure, but it has been a breathtaking level of foolishness across the board which has led to the imminent extinction of the entire concept of final salary pensions*.
First they came for the staff of the weakest private sector companies
Then they came for the strong
Impressions on the commute
For the last three months I've been spending a good portion of my time in commute-land, a rattling, faded bastion of middle-class conservatism and low-level lebensraum crammed into the 08.30 from Norwich to London.
Hopefully, this is soon to come to a blessed end and I can start waking up in a London bed, with London traffic and London impoliteness to look forward to as I make the jump from Suffolk buh to City cynic. Which makes this a good time to have a think about exactly what I learned on the trip down.
I think first and foremost I learned that commuting is a practice best reserved for the world's middle-management, as punishment for the shit they subsequently impose on the rest of us.
Propagandist - what the papers said about anarchism and G20
In the absence of a realistic threat to the status quo from Islamic fundamentalists, the state has tentatively been trying to paint anarchists as a parallel and growing internal threat to the nation.
Despite minimal evidence, the conjecture of the police that a major anarchist atrocity is inevitable has been taken almost verbatim by the mainstream media and was pushed even further during the G20, with several ludicrous stories appearing about what the movement might get up to appearing.
Rob Ray picks some of the best for Freedom.
Daily Mail
Not, for once, the most hysterical voice around – an honour which must go to the Evening Standard. However their suggestion that activists ‘pelted police with bottles as they tried to save a dying protester’, echoed uncritically from the police report by every other major paper, was among the most vicious libels to appear.
Acpo chief, you're one low-expectation-having motherf*cker.
A quote piece by the Times from Sir Ken Jones, head of the Association of Chief Police Officers reminded me of Chris Rock's most famous, and funny skit.
Sir Ken was responding to a lightweight rebuke over protest policing tactics from the under-fire "Independent" Police Complaints Commission when he remarked: "I saw some of the footage last week of whole groups of officers being hemmed in. Nobody wants to talk about that now. Those officers behaved really well, they acted with restraint.”
