A year of our lives - 20 years since the great coal strike of 1984-1985
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the 1984/85 miners strike, arguably the most important working class struggle of the twentieth century. Some have seen the miners strike of 1926 and the subsequent general strike as a greater potential revolutionary movement. I wouldn't argue with that, for a brief period the state and the misleaders of the trade union movement held their breath, while the tanks were mobilised on the streets and the military took up position while workers followed the call for class solidarity. But the moment was short lived, in its revolutionary potential anyway, for the miners it was to last 9 bitter, betrayal and starvation filled months.

The 84/85 movement, however, posed a far greater physical challenge to the guardians of law and order, in terms of confrontation and mass movement of workers taking to the streets to challenge control by the state. In terms of rank and file control (at least initially) and involvement of the whole community, the offensive by the women of the coalfields and sometimes the children, establishment of miners support groups across industry and the labour movement, the world wide mobilisation of solidarity support and sometimes action, 84 was far more an actual movement, politicising vast numbers of people, both within and without the pit communities. (Of course 26 had its moments, derailing the Flying Scotsman, was unmatched by anything we pulled off in 84 for example).

The pit communities were ‘closed’ communities in the sense that, mining isn't a trade you just come to out of the blue. It is a profession passed on father to son, in many cases for generations (women and little girls had worked in some coalfields, but by the 1840s were prevented by legislation from underground labour, pit brow women continued into the 1960s). It carries with it, its own culture, its own view of history and how that has impacted upon the mining communities. When miners spoke on public platforms during the strike, of ‘the struggle of our fathers and grandfathers’ most academics assumed they were talking figuratively, but they weren't, they were talking actually, about the impact and perceptions of struggles which had gone before. The effect of this was to ensure mining communities were already highly politicised, with deep class perspectives and socialist traditions. It had been scarce ten years earlier the Edward Heath government broke its back on the miners strike, and twelve years since they had wrecked his incomes policy. So the miners and their families entered this struggle well aware of the scale of the challenge being mounted. Although some had taken some convincing at first, by March 1984 few were unaware that Thatcher was moving in to smash the social power of the miners by breaking their union in an all or nothing confrontation.

Almost universally the ‘left’ has cited the decentralised nature of the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) as a weakness. This is a strange view indeed, without the semi-autonomy of the miners areas, the strike in the form it was launched could never have happened. Behind the view is a notion that some how the miners could simply be ordered out on strike by a national leadership running a national union. They would never have worn that, which is in part why the old Area structure and strong branch autonomies remained.

Ever since Margaret Thatcher was elected it was clear her whole strategy at home would depend on being able to heavily defeat the unions. Most had responded to this perspective by staying out of sight and hoping she wouldn't notice them, with the miners she and her party strategists had long planned to take them on as a prelude to her whole social and economic programme; the miners had to be fought and defeated (most will perhaps be aware of the Myron Plan and Ridley Commission, strategies drawn up following the defeat of Heath to take on and defeat the miners in the future, using scab drivers, mass policing, an anti-strike movement and support for a nuclear alternative). A steady game of chess had been stalking the board for three years prior to the outbreak of the strike. The union leadership had been trying to forge a strategy which would take the miners as a united national body into conflict with this government, on our terms, but it had failed. Failed because although the miners were a militant bunch, and would fight on wages and conditions when they felt particularly aggrieved, they had never really been too arsed about fighting pit closures. Hundreds had closed over the preceding twenty years, the failure to fight this was only partially due to the collaboration of NUM leaders, the other was down to the ambivalent attitude of the miners to pit work.

We didn't actually like the pit, we didn't actually like working on god awful shifts, in crippling dust and heat in cramped and wet conditions. True we were all proud to be miners, but that didn't mean we liked working down the mine! So fighting for jobs, especially these jobs was never going to be a catchy slogan. NUM leader Arthur Scargill had disastrously tried to link the question of pit closures to pay rises together on a single ballot paper, in the hope that the desire for the latter would deliver up a mandate on the former. The members were furious and felt they were being conned, and the strategy backfired. The National Coal Board (NCB) for its part was also wrong footed, for a start they were not sure what the aim of a showdown was about. Most senior managers would agree the union was too strong and needed its wings clipping in a showdown, many would agree there was surplus capacity in the industry and it required fine tuning, perhaps a little surgery. Few on the NCB side would agree to any perspective of decimating the industry or stomping the union out of existence, the bulk of them had come up through the ranks, and themselves were generational pit folk, albeit ‘on the other side’.

What the bosses of the Coal Board hadn't realised was that this whole strategy was aimed at destroying the NCB as an organisation, and with it, most of them. For a time it looked as though, the NCB would concentrate on taking out ‘capacity’ (shutting pits) in areas were they figured they could get away with it, Durham, Northumberland, Scotland, Wales. Rank and file efforts to generate a major fight back on closures in these areas failed to move, with great residual bitterness. Polmaise in Scotland, Bear Park in Durham, Lewis Merthyr in South Wales all had tried to demonstrate the need for solidarity action and a national stand. At Lewis Merthyr pickets had started to be deployed around the country. At Hatfield Main in Doncaster the Women's Support Group was founded to lobby for support for strike action for Lewis Merthyr and the branch voted to strike. The Doncaster panel was calling for strikes in the entire Doncaster coalfield in support, but other parts of Yorkshire were hostile. The South Wales Area came out en masse and the strike was endorsed under rule 41 by the National Executive Committee, the way was open for South Wales to then picket out and call for support from the other areas. However the demand for a national ballot was acceded to and following the usual press propaganda war, warning of hell fire, and murder, the vote was lost by 61%. The NCB could continue its selective surgery without confrontation.

That was not the strategy however, and under Thatcher’s orders, industrialist Ian MacGregor was called in because Thatcher didn't trust the NCB chiefs to do the scale of closure and conduct the fight to the finish with the NUM. The US imported undertaker [originally brought to the UK by the Labour Party on the board of British Leyland] threw down the gauntlet in Yorkshire - Cortonwood would close in days, what are you going to do about it? The Yorkshire miners as a whole had been very reluctant to fight for miners elsewhere, it must be said, but now the challenge was at home, and it was clear this was a fight, initially yes for 50,000 jobs and 50 pits, but also whether or not the remaining miners would have any backbone, what sort of regime would remain for the survivors and would we have a union at all. Those things were worth fighting for. Again an area strike was called by pit delegates and at mass meetings throughout the coalfields endorsed at the pit head in a show of tens of thousands of hands, although there had also been a successful ballot in the Yorkshire Area three years earlier. Again the NEC approved the action under rule 41 and the Yorkshire pickets set off to call out their fellow miners in all the other areas. This time we would not respond to calls for a national ballot. Other areas joined the action, some very reluctantly and picketing and mass meetings seen strong arguments, especially in Wales were the miners had felt particularly let down by Yorkshire, but within a week 80% of the miners and 134 pits were on strike nation-wide. At the others despite calls to support the strike, and with the active assistance of Thatcher’s strike breaking teams and undercover agents, an anti-strike movement later an anti-union movement was developed.

What must be remembered is that this uneven response by key areas was not an accident, it had been designed to happen, and designed by the former Labour government.

The miners strike of 1974 had brought down the Tories and imposed a Labour government, but the miners had refused to call off their strike during and after the general election. The implication was clear to any government, strike action could shift governments, and it needn't be once every five years. Power resided elsewhere other than in parliament. The working class as a class had power if it wished to exercise it for political and class ends. Labour didn't like this any more than the Tories and had set up a think tank to design strategies to ensure this didn't happen again, just as the Tories had done in fact. Chief target of the strategists had been the centralising, unifying, feature of national pay bargaining. It meant that miners wages and conditions for the first time were debated on a single national table by a single national union body representing all the areas. It had ended area disparities and area inequalities. National pay bargaining had meant for the first time that a miner in the Scotland could be paid the same rates for the same class of work as a miner in Kent, or in any one of the far flung coalfield areas.

The eyes of the miners in all areas, and the strength of their resolve would be unified in one union around conference decisions. It had been this feature, brought about by the National Power Loading Agreement of 1963 which had cleared the way for successful strikes in '69, '72 and '74. It was this feature which Labour now moved to break. This it did by introduction of the Area Incentive Schemes, over the top of national conference decisions and against the decisions of national ballots. The Midlands and Nottingham in particular ignored ballot decisions and with the green light from NUM leader Joe Gormley, effectively a fifth columnist, the area incentive scheme was adopted, entirely unconstitutionally. Wages and conditions, as well as perspectives for the future, would now be locally coloured to a large extent. Area strategies would be seen as more important than national ones. Old fault lines, first established in the anti 1926 strike movement, the anti miners union of Spensorism which had been established in Nottingham, now opened up wider with the generous payments of incentives in selective areas. Nottingham and Leicester convinced themselves they had a long term future of their own, the other coalfields areas were not of concern. This "I’m all right Jack" attitude was crucial in dividing miner from miner and area from area, but it had been created as a political and social ploy, it wasn't some natural development.

Some have made the ballot the central issue of the strike. Of course it wasn't, but it is important to understand the degree to which the rank and file dictated tactics during this strike. Many in the leadership had seen the picketing operations and the semi-official nature of the strike movement as a temporary measure, a kick-start to get the thing rolling on a more official basis. Once the strike started, and the full design of the other side revealed, once we were able to let the activists hammer home the message of the gravity of this situation, once the bulk of the rank and file were fully convinced of the necessity to take this on, we could then call a national ballot. Wrong, although a special conference was convened in Sheffield, and a rule change had gone through conference to change the rule requirement for national action from 55% to 51%. The members now on strike could see no need for any ballots. They thought we in the leadership of the union were trying to sell them out, were looking for an excuse to call off the strike. So they instructed their delegates at pit after pit to vote against a national ballot and to continue the strike to victory. It was an entirely understandable reaction, but in retrospect a mistaken one. A national ballot at this stage of the struggle, with emotions running high and the bulk of the collieries at a standstill would without any doubt whatever have won a massive strike mandate. Of course this wouldn't have stopped the hardened scabs going in, nor stopped the reactionary forces operating in Nottingham trying to break the union and the strike, but it would have robbed them of their legitimacy, and taken some of the edge off the excuses put forward by other unions showing only lukewarm support or outright scabbing.

For a time, the pickets spreading out in brilliant manoeuvres from coalfield to coalfield and pit to pit, rolled all in front of them, the sheer buoyancy of confidence of the pickets won over by far and away the bulk of doubters in coalfield after coalfield. Even in Nottingham where only a minority, perhaps a third of miners actually actively supported the strike, men refused to cross picket lines and were, if not happy to go home, at least went home without too much fuss. Solidarity started to come through strongly on the railways, and among the seafarers. Some power stations started to realise that our jobs were literally their jobs too and took blacking actions. Thatcher’s reaction was the drafting of a de-facto national police force, which would be given its head to do anything it had to do to stop the pickets getting through, and to break up picket lines. The police were signed up as the NCB's own security firm to ensure scabs got to work on time and in one piece regardless of numbers and costs. Roadblocks and curfews were imposed and the striking villages were saturated with an occupying police force. Government strategies were then based around getting at least one scab into every pit in Britain. In Yorkshire, this would be the major diversion, along with the Orgreave steel coking plant. These police second fronts would stop the pickets in Nottingham and allow the scabs to work and coal to be produced. The bitterness of escalating violence and counter-violence is now legendary, but what it did was open up political ideas on class violence, on counter violence, and the justification for armed struggles. The IRA, for example, only lost sympathy during the strike when they failed to kill Thatcher and her cabinet. The scab herding taxi driver's death in Wales was seen and justified almost everywhere as a legitimate action which had simply gone wrong, a casuality in a war which had already claimed two of our pickets without any such fuss in the press. The hypocrisy over Libyan financial assistance for the strikers, when Thatcher was pouring extra oil in from every despotic country in the world, all were educations in the real class divide in world events.

Across the world, working people mobilised in solidarity with the British miners and their families. The scale of the operation is breathless, Tens of millions of pounds were raised and distributed through rank and file networks of women, and local support groups. Families fed, clothed and cared for 12 bitter months of struggle. Sympathetic councils suspended rents, kept school canteens open during holiday months, and did what they could, whilst on the other side the DSS stopped benefits and found ways to force real poverty on people's welfare entitlements regardless of age. The nature of this state started to be revealed in very real terms, and that wiped some mist from the eyes of many about places like Ireland, and what was going on there, the struggle of black people down in London and other places. Social roles were starting to be challenged. Women not only ‘manned’ soup kitchens and the welfare infrastructure but argued among themselves about strategy, pickets, slogans, marriage and kids and ideas in general. Would groups be ‘ladies’ or ‘wives’ or ‘women’? Sexual stereotyping, attitudes to gays, religious groups, everything which had been taken for granted was now no longer taken for granted.

Victory was within grasp, we could feel it and taste it. Thatcher and MacGreggor have both admitted as much. If the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers union (NACODS) had implemented either of its mass pro-strike mandates, if the dockers had continued their blacking actions just days longer, if the TUC had implemented its national conference decisions, we would have won hands down.

Just think of what that victory would have meant in political terms, in class terms in social terms, coming at the end of such a polarisation of class forces and determined action on both sides. Twice in ten years an industrial union based on a community would have smashed a government policy and almost certainly would have smashed the Thatcher government too. Think of the consequences of that. The other side, not just the Tories and their establishment, but the whole parliamentary circus, of Labour and Liberal trembled. That we didn't succeed was a consequence of conscious traitors in the trade union leadership, particularly in power stations, and steel works and among NACODS who saw and chose a side, consciously joining in to ensure the defeat of the miners. But it was also action by those individual workers who could not see the consequences, refused to see anything but their own selfish greed, which derailed us. At the end of the day, the dockers at Immingham, who allowed non union non dockers to load coal onto scab lorries, and in the process smashed their own dock labour scheme, and most of their jobs nation-wide. The power station workers who scabbed every day, and ultimately saw two thirds of their own jobs go with the closure of the coal fired stations. The coking coal plants like Orgreave that worked on through the cavalry charges and pitched battles at their gates. The blackleg miners in Nottingham and Leicester, thrown on the scrap heap and their own pits closed and communities decimated. The armies of female office workers, whose wages and conditions came from being part of the white collar section of the NUM. Whose allegiances and inflated self opinion however kept them working right through the strike, collecting money and donating flowers to the nice policemen only to discover if you don't need coal mines, you don't need coal mine HQs and blocks of offices, and finally joined the miners... on the dole queue. The scabbing steel workers in Scotland Wales and Yorkshire, all closed down and dead and buried. Scab mercenary lorry drivers spreading strike breaking, from the miners, through the dockers, and the print workers, through animal activists, through nuclear campaigners and presiding over destruction of social communities and solidarity and compassion.

Certainly it was a fight we had no choice but to undertake, a battle the working class will never forget, and one we certainly didn't deserve to lose, for these ordinary folk, not trained soldiers or wild eyed zealots, had laid everything flesh and blood and even life could offer on the line. They had no more to give. Visit the former pit communities today and you will still see the results of that defeat, although come to think of it, visit almost any workplace in Britain and you will see it too. We must never forget who were our friends and who were our enemies in that war, nor the need to start seriously looking for the means of taking our revenge. Yes we will cheer when Thatcher kicks the bucket, but it's the whole stinking system she fought for and defended which needs to go to the grave with her. That would be a lasting legacy for the pit communities of 84/85.

David Douglass
First published in Black Flag. Lightly edited by libcom for typos, grammar and some clarifying information such as full names and acronyms.

5,000 Zapatistas and thousands of supporters gathered in Oventik, Chiapas on the 8-9-10 August 2003 to celebrate a major step forward in the Zapatista's struggle for autonomy. The previous few weeks saw the rebels issue several communiques of major importance,

"It is possible to govern and to govern ourselves without the parasite that calls itself government."

Following the gutting of the Indigenous Law on Rights and Culture,

"the EZLN has decided to completely suspend any contact with the Mexican and government and the political parties, and the Zapatista peoples have reaffirmed that resistance is their primary means of struggle", declared a Zapatista communiqué. (www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/07/274932.html).
”Now is the time to put the autonomy, of the indigenous peoples into practice and to act on it throughout the entire country of Mexico. No one needs to ask permission to form their autonomous municipalities," declared Comandante Esther. "in the same way”, she continued, "we are inviting all indigenous Mexican women to organise themselves so that, together we can exercise autonomy and practise our rights which we deserve as women.”

The August event inaugurated five assemblies of 'good government' in Zapatista rebel territory, bringing an end to the five 'Aguascalientes', set up between 1994 and 1996.

"You are in autonomous rebel Zapatista territory; here the people govern, and the government obeys," read a sign al the entrance to the Caracol of Oventik.

A festive atmosphere prevailed, with the speeches by the Commandantes of the EZLN's General Command, and the introductions of the Autonomous Councils, interspersed with basketball tournaments and dancing late into the night. Delegates from each of the 30 Zapatista autonomous municipalities will comprise the five assemblies of 'good government' situated where the five 'Aguascalientes' used to be. Following the uprising in 1994 the Zapatistas have created their own systems of grassroots democracy, autonomous education, health care, justice, and production. In opposition to the Mexican government's 'Plan Puebla Panama', the Zapatistas have called for the implementation of the people's 'Plan La Realidad Tijuana':

"The Plan involves linking all the resistances in our country and, along with them, rebuilding the Mexican nation from below"

"AGAINST THE POWER OF MONEY"

The Zapatistas have declared their support at the world level for Venezuelan sovereignty, for the people of Iraq and for all those struggles in resistance against the power of money. The communique of July 19, 2003 declared:

“To the People of To the Peoples of the World: Brothers and Sisters: This is our word: FIRST - The globalization of power has demonstrated throughout the world that it has entered its most aggressive stage by making military war its primary weapon of domination. Nonetheless, the attack against the people of Iraq not only bore witness to globalization's true destructive nature, but it also provoked the greatest worldwide condemnation. in the history of humanity. Despite the fallen statues, worldwide resistance and rebellion have been maintained and are growing. The Zapatista rebellion is just one small part of the great demonstration of human dignity throughout the planet..."

The historic weekend in August also saw the public birth of the Zapatista Radio Insurgente - now accessible via Indymedia Chiapas http://chiapas.indyrnedia.org -transmitting frorn atop a Ceiba tree deep in rebel territory. DJ Marcos spun an eclectic bunch of disks, from Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's "Ohio" to the "Zapatista Hymn", via Mexican ranchero music.

"NOW IS THE MOMENT..."

Comandanta Esther-'s speech at Oventik in August struck a powerful blow for women's autonomy, in a traditionally patriarchal culture.

”It is no longer the moment to be silent or to humiliate ourselves in front of men. nor to ask them for the favour of respecting us. Now is the moment for acting on our own and for making men respect our rights. Because, if we do not do so, no one is going to do it for us. It is up to us now, men and women, to act and to carry on, in order to build our autonomy and to move it forward,"

One of the most fascinating of the recent Zapatista communiques was that by Marcos entitled "CHIAPAS: The Thirteenth Stele Part Five: A History" (www.indynriedia.org/uk/en/2003/08/275062.html ) This communique describes the operations of the Zapatista grassroots democracy, autonomous health and education services and other activities of the autonomous municipalities, such as questions of justice.

"The history of the rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities is relatively young, at is seven years old. going on eight. Although they were declared at the time the December 1994 siege was broken, the rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities (the MAREZ) still took a while to become reality. Today, the exercise of indigenous autonomy is a reality in Zapatista lands, and we are proud to say that it has been led by the communities themselves.
What I mean by this is that the EZLN's structure in some way "contaminated" a tradition of democracy and self-governance. The EZLN was, in a manner of speaking, one of the "undemocratic" elements in a relationship of direct community democracy (another anti-democratic element is the Church, but that's a matter for another paper). When The Autonomous Municipalities began operating, self-governance did not move just from the local to the regional, it also emerged (always tendentially) from the "shadow" of the military structure. The EZLN does not intervene at all in the designation or removal of autonomous authorities, and it has limited itself to only pointing out that, given that the EZLN, by principle, is not fighting for the taking of power, none of the military command or members of the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee can occupy a position of authority in the community or in the Autonomous Municipalities. Those who decide to participate in the autonomous governments must definitively resign from their organizational position within the EZLN."

"GOVERNING BY OBEYING"

The next communique "CHIAPAS: The Thirteenth Stele Part Six: A Good Government" outlines how Zapatista autonomy operates. (www.indymedia.org,uk/en/2003/08/275075.html)

"In order to see to it that, in rebel Zapatista lands, governing is governing by obeying, the 'Good Government Assemblies” will be, formed on August 9, 2003. They shall be seated in the 'Caracoles,' with one assembly for each rebel region, and will be formed by one or two delegates from each one of the Autonomous Councils of that region. The following will continue to be the exclusive government functions of the Rebel Zapatista Autonomous Municipalities: the provision of justice; community health; education; housing; land; work; food commerce; information and culture, and local movement...Perhaps a new world is being built…”

While naturally anarchists and libertarian communists balk at the term "government", whether ‘good' or 'bad', we need to look beyond the superficiality of the words used. It is arguable that the Zapatista concept of "governing by obeying", and their practice of "consultas" whereby major decisions are referred back to the grassroots village level for the final decision, are in practice very similar to the concepts of "recallable mandated delegates" and "the administration of things" which anarchists and libertarian communists have long urged. Of course, as Marcos himself admits, the Zapatista autonomous communities are no utopia, and elements of bureaucracy and hierarchy exist, but from what we know the tendency is towards more power residing in the hands of the indigenous peasant peoples at local level.

I can think of no better way to finish than to quote comandante Zebedeo who concluded the Zapatista communique on the Global Day of Resistance against the September WTO summit at Cancun thus

"And these have been our words, and what.follows is dancing and struggling. Viva world resistance! Viva world rebellion! Viva the poor peoples of the world!”

For up-to-date info about the situation in Chiapas, go to http://chiapas.indymedia.org published in Spanish and English, and also see the Zapatista section on www.indymedia.org.uk
The Zapatista solidarity groups in Edinburgh (www.edinehiapas.org.uk [email protected]) and London [email protected] welcome involvement.
Kiptik do invaluable solidarity work including the construction of drinking water systems in Zapatista communities. See www.kiptik.buz.org and contact [email protected]

How did you become involved with the AAP?

Graciela: I was an activist in Argentina for many years. After the dictatorship, from 1984 onwards, I was a human rights activist, a student in college. I organised in a pretty straightforward manner until 1990.

I was a Trotskyist at some point and then I realised that the Trotskyist party was really hierarchical and corrupted. I started also having political differences [with the Trotskyists]; I started not agreeing with the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and all that stuff, So, we started organising a non-hierarchical organisation, with many other people who were corning from similar experiences with parties.

I met with a group that was doing performances in the street, and I started incorporating the little puppets I was building with these performances. I started making them bigger and incorporating puppets into politics.

But in 1994, I left Argentina to go and work with a big street theatre company, Bread and Puppets Theater of the US, and I worked with them for quite a few years. At the same time, I was going down to Argentina to organise street performances, with the mothers and children of the Disappeared.

Finally, when the insurrection started in Argentina, I had no money whatsoever, so I couldn't go back at that point. It was very frustrating for me in December 2001 to be in Vermont just watching it on TV! Then I went with Bread and Puppets Theater to organise a protest against the G8 in Calgary. I heard, because a friend phoned me, that friends of my friend had been killed in a road blockade in Argentina. So I went back to Argentina and I helped organise a big puppet theatre thing to protest the killing of these two companeros. After that I decided I needed to devote a at more time to the struggle in Argentina, because there were many autonomist organisations, and I felt that this was a good time to do some organising. So that's how I started the project.

[b]How important is it that the movement is non-hierarchical? What have been the benefits of organising in this way? [b]

I think it's very important, because during the 70s all our organisations were extremely hierarchical, and some of them even militaristic. I think that because of these issues they separated themselves from the people. So when the repression started [the organisations] were on their own, and people didn't feel they were represented by them... They let whatever was happening to them, happen.

So now that we are organising in a non-hierarchical, horizontal way, we have no leaders, and it will be a lot more difficult to stop us now… One of the organisers was killed on June 26th 2002. Maybe in a normal sense you could think that he was a leader, because he was very committed to the struggle and he was very informed... Well, his disappearance -although it was very painful for us, and it had a huge impact on the organisation -it did not leave a hole. Immediately somebody else came... and we kept on going.

Obviously the piqueteras have been very successful. What are the practical aspects of organising in a non-hierarchical way, in a movement that has so many people involved?

It takes a lot of meetings! It’s not very dynamic sometimes, it takes a lot of time. People need to allow a lot of time for discussions and re-discussions...

I think the biggest challenge is all the old things that keep coming up. People are raised in a capitalist system, so although they might want to change, still, many times, stupid things come up, individualistic things. It's very important for us to allow time to discuss all the issues.

So any project that is done in the neighbourhoods - because more important than the road blockades is the organising in the neighbourhoods, all the micro-enterprises where people cover their own basic needs - that requires an enormous amount of meetings and discussions. It's not fast!

Is there any hierarchy of the groups? Do you have smaller local groups who send representatives to a central group? Or is it completely horizontal?

There are assemblies and groups in every neighbourhood where we are organised. Then there's what we call the "Coordinating Chair", People who go to this Chair have discussions and then bring back to the assemblies what the Chair has discussed. That's where we try to coordinate the different movements, because there are seventeen different groups working. So it takes a lot of going back and forth from this big coordinating organisation to all the little assemblies by neighbourhood. But the people who are elected to this Chair, you can tell them: "We don't want you to go anymore. We want so-and-so to start going now." So in that way we keep it non-hierarchical.

Have political parties tried to take over the movement?

When I talk about the autonomists, this is a sector of the unemployed workers, and most of the popular assemblies of Buenos Aires are autonomous too. But there was a time when the assemblies were a lot bigger, immediately after the insurrection of December 2001. Particularly the Trotskyist parties had a really nasty attitude towards [the assemblies], and they destroyed many of the popular assemblies because they evaluated that they were going to be right wing! So they would come with long lists of things that people had to vote for, and if they didn't then they thought that they were done. So that introduced a brutal amount of stress in the assemblies and it lowered the amount of people that participated. People who didn't have political experience just didn't want to deal with them, basically. So a lot of people left due to this.

In the piquetero movement, in the unemployed workers' movement, there are huge organisations of Trotskyists and other hierarchical organisations... The Communist Party also has representation there. Even worse than that, the Peronists have a lot, nationalist leftist groups and the Maoists also have a lot of representation, So there are some of us who are organised autonomously and some who are still organising in the old ways.

What role have the Internet and Indymedia played in making people aware of what's going on?

I would say that Indymedia was key in helping the movement organise itself... Normal people that are not within the movement do not access Indymedia and don't even know that Indymedia exists. But it was very important for us as a movement to have Indymedia there. Many times I think things didn't go even worse because the Indymedia photographers were there and the cops felt exposed by them.

What is the role of women in the piquetera movement? Have you ever come across sexism or other discrimination?

The role of women is very important. At the beginning of the movement it was 90% women who were doing road blockades and organising in the neighbourhoods. Now it's more evened out.

More than discrimination or sexism, what I see in the movement is that women are not yet empowered enough. They rely on the guys still for some of the stuff. Like I was present one day that there was a discussion amongst them where one of the women said, "We want to be the ones to talk to the press." The guys said, "Well, which one of you is going to talk?" And none of them wanted to. So many times I think it's more the problem of the woman who doesn't go and fight that space, than the guys telling them to shut up, There is some sexism, but I would say that in the autonomous movement it's not blatant at all. It's something that people problematise and discuss and think about.

How does your movement connect to other struggles worldwide, and in South America?

There's links with the landless peasants of Brazil, links with some other organisations in Ecuador, and in other parts of Latin America. I don't think that there's as much communication as there should be. I think we're struggling with that.

What do you think of the leftist governments in Brazil and Venezuela? Do you think there's any chance of working with hierarchical leftist movements in other countries?

I personally do not trust that kind of political system. I think we've had experiences similar to that in the past... I think there's quite a clear limit to how much they can progress towards social change, know a lot of people are very interested in this process but I'm personally not very moved by it.

On the Piquetera Tour, you use puppets to educate people about what's going on in Argentina. Do artists have a big role to play in the piquetera movement and the AAP? What other methods have you used to educate people through entertainment?

The autonomous movement is very interested in different ways of telling the story. So there's a lot of folk musicians connected with the movement. Also a lot of folks who do what we call "visual interventions": not necessarily performances like I do, but they will come up with huge sculpted figures, or they will paste a whole city with posters, or they'll do T-shirts at the road blockades for people to wear. There's a lot, I think, of artistic stuff going on around.

What have been your impressions of the anarchist/libertarian movements in other countries you've visited, especially here in the UK?

Unfortunately we haven't had a chance to really get to meet the movement... Our presentations usually last two hours, and people are so interested in finding out what we do, that we never have a chance to learn what they do!

So far, I wouldn't be able to say what I really think about them. They've been extremely cooperative and in solidarity with us. but I haven't seen the work that they've been doing.

What are your hopes for the future of the movement in Argentina?

I hope that it will be able to grow and expand: that that time will be given to us, which is not certain... I hope that we'll keep on working the way we are, and that we'll be able to reach more people.

Finally, how can people in the UK offer solidarity to the piqueteras?

I think the best way to offer solidarity is to organise in your own communities around your own needs. Because the problems of the unemployed of Argentina are the problems that people will have all over the world. Globalisation affects every one of us. and if it's not hitting too hard here now, it might hit really hard in the near future. If the aggression is globalised then the resistance needs to be globalised.

Find out more about the struggles in Argentina on the AAP's website - www.autottornista.org
{This interview of Graciela Monteagudo was carried out by Morag Forbes. Feel free to reproduce it in its original form, as long as you do so in a not-for-profit way, and acknowledge the author and the interviewee. If you want to publish the interview in an altered form, please ask first: manga_mog at hotmail dot com}.

Can you give a short introduction to anarchism in Ireland in the past few years?

Basically the libertarian movement has seen a major breakthrough in Ireland over the last three or so years. The basis of this has been a series of very broad libertarian island wide meetings under the title of the 'Grassroots Gathering' out of which numerous actions have now been organised. In the last few months, we have seen the emergence of city-based networks linked to this. The Mayday protests were organised by one of these, the Dublin Grassroots Network.

Can you summarise the main aims of your Mayday protests?

To expose the current policies of the European Union (EU) as racist, militaristic and attacking working people. The actual forms of the actions were secondary to this, but their main aim was to get as many ordinary people as possible out on the streets.

What was organised?

There were eight separate actions each aiming at highlighting specific aspects of the EU. These ranged from a critical mass bicycle ride, to no borders street theatre and picnic, to breaking open a private city centre park, to marching on the EU summit, to a Reclaim the Streets party. More detail on all of these on our website.

How were they organised? Did anarchists in Ireland work together?

They were organised by the Dublin Grassroots Network (DGN) which includes most if not all anarchists active in Dublin. Libertarians from other cities helped organise specific aspects (like food) or simply travelled to Dublin to help cut over the weekend.

Each event was taken on by a subgroup of DGN which fed back into a number of publicly advertised DGN assemblies. This meant the details of each event could be kept somewhat secret while involving a larger number in the organising work. Not of course fool-proof and were ‘infiltrated’ by journalists who ended up dishing out our leaflets.

Irish Indymedia gave a flavour of the anti-anarchist hype the media was peddling. It made the London hysteria seem tame. Why do you think the media did it? Are anarchists in Ireland such a threat to capitalism?

I wish we were! The reason for the media hype was clearly to frighten people away from the protests. There are probably several reasons for this, and one would be the threat of the growing libertarian movement. But this element should not be exaggerated, the state would have seen the republican movement in the 1970's and 1980's as a much, much greater threat. We have grown fast but we are still only a few hundred rather loosely organised activists and a couple of much smaller and more tightly organised anarchist groups.

How did your group respond to the media attacks?

We set up a media group with four mandated spokespeople and a similar number of others to help with background work. This was intended anyway but it meant we could quite quickly start replying to the various panic stories the government were planting in the press, As many of these were ridiculous (' Anarchist army plans bloodbath in Ireland') over time this worked in our favour as people began to support us because of the attacks.

We were able to get articles into many of the newspapers and live appearances on both national radio and TV to put across our position, Probably most importantly about a week before the summit we were on the 'Late, Late Show’ a TV chat show that almost everyone watches (even if no one admits to it). On the simplest level allowing people to see what an anarchist actually looked like made a lot of the media fear stories ('Anarchists plan gas attack that will kill 10.000’) seem ridiculous.

As well as countering the hype, this also enabled us to briefly explain what anarchists actually stood for and to get across that we were protesting at EU policies rather than either the existence or expansion of the EU. Of course many papers and journalists remained hostile to us, but the stuff they were writing contrasted so sharply with the stuff people could read and hear elsewhere that it became very obvious to most of the population that they were lying. This produced a large positive reaction towards us by those who recognised and rejected the lies for what they were.

Was the May Day media madness an isolated case?

We faced a very much weaker version of the same sort of stuff in the run up to our attempted March 1st direct action at Shannon Airport during the Iraq war1 . In that case we failed to get our media act together until the last moment and this had a very damaging effect on the number who turned out. We had 300 at Shannon, we had well over 3,000 marching on the EU summit.

What about the state. How did it respond to the protests?

In the last 36 hours it panicked and via the media revealed a de facto ban on one of our events, the march on the EU summit. Basically, they revealed they had ordered the Gardai (police) to attack anyone attempting to march to our assembly point and that the riot squad would occupy the assembly point in case anyone made it that far.

In the fortnight beforehand they also carried out a low-level campaign of harassment of DGN activists seeking to publicise the event. Over three days every door to door leafleting session we organised was stopped by police, who demanded to know the names and addresses of those taking part. This ended once we were refusing to give this information (we could have been arrested but were not) and because we were feeding details of each harassment to journalists. I don't think anything was published but on live shows our spokespeople mentioned it and the Gardai press office had to field queries on this.

How did the left respond to the media hysteria? Was there much solidarity or was it the usual opportunistic attacks?

The organised far left were pretty useless as were the Greens and Labour Party. Basically, the media was carrying on an anti-anarchist witch hunt complete with 'exposes' of some of our spokespeople (‘The anarchist leader who teaches our kids by day'). The left `responded' by suggesting that not many anarchists would take part in the protests! Obviously they felt that everyone except anarchists should have the right to protest! As might be expected the Socialist Workers Party were the worst, they went so far as to announce on radio that our march was cancelled and that everyone should go on theirs!

What happened on May Day itself?

There were several events but the one that attracted the most attention was the banned march. Basically, we announced a new form up point slap bang in the city centre outside the GPO. Several thousand people turned up there and we asked them whether we should just protest at the ban there or defy it and march on Farmleigh2 Overwhelmingly people wanted to march (as we expected) so we set off.

We actually covered about six of the 9km before the Gardai managed to form a solid enough barrier to stop us. As DGN had advertised a non-violent march we stopped some 100m from this police line. A section of the march then broke away to try and push through the police line, which most of the participants followed. Those who remained with the DGN banners formed up to prevent them being cut off and so that we could march back into the city centre together once their attempted breakthrough had been repelled. We had always made clear that we respected the choices of other groups to take more militant action which meant solidarity could be maintained between both blocs.

As there were two waters cannons and thousands of riot police waiting for those trying to push through, it was clear that the attempt would fail - but it was good they made the point by trying to do so. The police opened up with the water cannon that they had borrowed from the PSNI (RUC). This was the first time water cannon had been used in Ireland. Riot police also batoned protesters as they pushed them back down the road and a number of broken bones resulted.

We then all marched into town as a block with the riot police and water cannon launching limited attacks on our rear that were obviously designed to panic us into a rout so they could send in snatch squads. However, although some people defending the rear were arrested, we did manage to march all the way back into town as a single bloc.

Did the media have a negative impact on the May Day protests in terms of numbers? What about state repression?

No. The smear campaign was so crude that it resulted in a lot of sympathy for us. Getting people onto the media meant that we could announce details of many of our events. Finally, the attempted ban on the march meant that in the 24 hours before the protest our new assembly point and time was one of the first news items on many TV and radio shows.

State repression appeared to have a small effect at first in making some activists reluctant to engage in further public activity. But we still managed to distribute the 50,000 leaflets we had printed explaining the protest. And it clearly backfired as that it meant many people came out to defend our freedom to protest.

The state repression is not however over. Over 30 were arrested and many have been denied bail by a court specially set up to try them despite the fact they are facing very minor charges. Right now DGN are working on their release and demanding that all charges are dropped.

Has the May Day protests and hype increased interest in anarchism?

Yes although as yet we don't know how long lasting this will be. Beyond this interest though the several thousand people who choose to take part in a libertarian organised event will mostly have had a positive impression of doing so.

What lessons did you gain from the experience?

Don't be afraid of using the media, it is not a question of getting accurate articles published but of getting enough accurate information so that those sympathetic to our position can at least recognise it. Even some of the ‘exposes' were quite good in this respect, they simply served to polarise the situation so that while right wingers would hate us more those who had problems with the current set up would recognise what they had in common with us. By the end even the most hostile media found it necessary to include quotes from our press releases.

But don't rely on the media for getting your message across. The media were very interested in talking to us about the potential for violence, they had almost no interest in talking about why we were opposing the direction the EU is taking or what our alternative was. In getting across these long-term ideas the 50,000 leaflets we distributed were essential. Printing these consumed the bulk of our fund raising in advance of the protests.

Secondly make sure you are trying to explain yourself to and mobilise all working people and not just the much more limited number of activists. Internally we had quite a bit of debate about whether this was possible but in the end the number who turned out for the Farmleigh march, 95% of whom were not members of anything, demonstrated that we could indeed reach a least a small minority. This small minority is something to build from in the future.

Thirdly that state oppression can be used as a way of mobilising people in itself. In particular through Indymedia we could inform activists of each step as it happened and our response to it. This and the media hype meant that by the time the state moved to ban the march quite a head of anger had built up that we were able to tap into. This probably doubled or trebled the number of people who turned out.

Fourthly, while for tactical reasons it can be wise to limit the tactics you intend to use, you can still maintain good relations with those who wish to carry out more militant actions. Above all else making it clear that you won't condemn those who choose to carry out more militant but separate actions is essential to this. Of course, this is a two-way process and those who favoured more militant tactics also worked hard at maintain a sense of solidarity and common purpose.

Has the media commented on how wrong its pre-May Day hype was?

It would be more accurate to say that the media fractured in advance of May day and has remained fractured since. Some continue to run ludicrous stories and insist that the massive security operation somehow stopped their worst predictions coming true. A minority have published articles that we could almost have written ourselves. Indeed, one journalist who was soaked by the water cannon reportedly joined in the chants of 'fuck the police' as we marched back into town.

There is little point in imagining you can win all or even most of the corporate media over. What you can do in some cases is get enough counter information into the media so that many people become aware that the scare articles are just that and so stop taking them at face value.

What now? What are anarchists in Ireland planning to do next?

In the short term we will be active in mobilising a no vote to a racist referendum being held June 11. After this George Bush is in Ireland for an EU summit at the end of June and we are already mobilising to disrupt this. A busy month is ahead,

And what about next year's May Day?

I don't think we should get too hung up on always pulling some sort of spectacular on May day. Apart from anything else this can make it seem to those outside the movement that this is all we are about, That said I’m sure we will continue to take part in the union marches and organise our own events like RTS.

But I think in the longer term the real question is how do we turn our success in mobilising around the global issues of the Iraq war and the EU into mobilising around local issues in the workplace and the community. Building a real movement that can withstand state repression over the longer period requires this.

• 1Libcom note - see article in Black Flag #223 https://libcom.org/library/direct-action-against-war-battle-shannon-airbase
• 2Libcom note - Farmleigh House is is the Irish state's official guest house. It was the venue for the EU summit in 2004.

The last issue of Black Flag had an article on the "Independent Working Class Association" (IWCA) called "Fighting on Home Turf Community politics and the IWCA." As the article noted, bar the Haringey Solidarity Group, there is "no compatible anarchist organisations doing the same sort of work." For that reason it was good to hear about the IWCA. Sadly, however, the author shied away from critiquing the IWCA and, in particular, its electoralism.

Yes, many anarchists do "feel uneasy" about the IWCA standing in elections and it is a shame that all the author did was to state they were not going to "rerun arguments about elections." I think that we should be discussing why anarchists "feel uneasy" about electioneering and, more importantly, discussing alternatives to it. This is nothing to do with dogma or sectarianism. It is to do with understanding how we can change the world for the better while, at the same time, avoiding the mistakes of the past. It seems incredible that some anarchists are participating in an organisation using tactics which have failed time and time again. I know that most Marxists tend to ignore evidence and history in favour of a blind repetition of the conclusions a couple of dead Germans drew 150 years ago from a short period of British labour history, but I thought better of anarchists.

I won't go into why anarchists reject electioneering in any depth. History shows that it produces reformism. Whether it be the Marxist Social Democrats before the First World War or the German Greens, the experience of organisations using this tactic have confirmed the anarchist analysis. All it produced was a slow and slippery decent into reformism, hidden behind radical rhetoric. Unsurprisingly, Lula in Brazil who has now joined that large pantheon of leftists who betray their voters and implement capitalist policies.

Even if radicals managed to get into office with their politics intact, they would soon face economic and political pressure to conform to the capitalist agenda. Any radical administration would face pressures from capitalists resulting from capital flight, withdrawal of support. Politically, the pressure is just as bad. We must remember that there is a difference between the state and government. The state is the permanent collection of institutions that have entrenched power structures and interests. The government is made up of various politicians. It's the institutions that have power in the state due to their permanence, not the representatives who come and go. So real power does not lie with politicians, but instead within the state bureaucracy and big business. Faced with these powers, we have seen left-wing governments introduce right-wing policies. So we cannot expect different politicians to act in different ways to the same pressures.

Every supporter of electioneering argues that they will be an exception to this sorry process. They can only appeal to the good intentions and character of their candidates. Anarchists, however, present an analysis of the structures and other influences that will determine how the character of the successful candidates and political parties will change.

Parliamentarianism, moreover, focuses the fight for change into the hands of leaders. Rather than those involved doing the fighting, the organising, the decision making, that power rests in the hands of the representative. The importance of the leaders is stressed. Politics become considered as parliamentary activities made for the population by their representatives, with the 'rank and file' left with no other role than that of passive support. Instead of working class self-activity and self-organisation, there is a substitution and a non working class leadership acting for people replaces self-management in social struggle.

An Alternative

Those libertarians in the IWCA are correct to argue that anarchists should work in their local communities. However, anarchists have done and are doing just that and are being very successful as well. The difference is that anarchists should be building self-managed community organisations rather than taking part in the capitalist state. That way we build a real alternative to the existing system while fighting for improvements in the here and now.

That can only be done by direct action and anti-parliamentarian organisation. Through direct action, people manage their own struggles, it is they who conduct it, organise it. They do not hand over to others their own acts and task of self-liberation. That way, we become accustomed to managing our own affairs, creating alternative, libertarian, forms of social organisation which can become a force to resist the state, win reforms and become the framework of a free society.

This form of community activity can be called "community syndicalism." It means the building of community assemblies which can address the issues of their members and propose means of directly tackling them. It would mean federating these assemblies into a wider organisation. If it sounds familiar that is not surprising as something similar was done during the campaign against the poll-tax.

The idea of community assemblies has a long history. Kropotkin, for example, pointed to the sections and districts of the French Revolution, arguing that there the masses were: "accustoming themselves to act without receiving orders from the national representatives, were practising what was to be described later as Direct Self-Government."

He concluded that "the principles of anarchism . . . already dated from 1789, and that they had their origin, not in theoretical speculations, but in the deeds of the Great French Revolution" and that "the libertarians would no doubt do the same to-day " (The Great French Revolution, vol. 1, p. 203, p. 204 and p. 206)

A similar concern for community organising and struggle was expressed in Spain. While the collectives during the revolution are well known, the CNT had long organised in the community and around non-workplace issues. As well as defence committees in various working class communities to organise and co-ordinate struggles and insurrections, the CNT organised various community based struggles.

The most famous example of this must be the CNT organised rent strikes during the early 1930s in Barcelona. In 1931, the CNT's Construction Union organised an "Economic Defence Commission" to study working class expenses such as rent. The basic demand was for a 40% rent decrease, but also addressed unemployment and the cost of food. The campaign was launched by a mass meeting on May 1st, 1931. Three days later, an unemployed family was re-installed into the home they had been evicted from. This was followed by other examples across the city. By August, Barcelona had 100,000 rent strikers (see Nick Rider, "The Practice of Direct Action: the Barcelona rent strike of 1931" in For Anarchism, edited by David Goodway)

In Gijon, the CNT "reinforced its populist image by... its direct consumer campaigns. Some of these were organised through the federation's Anti-Unemployment Committee, which sponsored numerous rallies and marches in favour of 'bread and work.' While they focused on the issue of jobs, they also addressed more general concerns about the cost of living for poor families. In a May 1933 rally, for example, demonstrators asked that families of unemployed workers not be evicted from their homes, even if they fell behind on the rent." The "organisers made the connections between home and work and tried to draw the entire family into the struggle."

However, the CNT's "most concerted attempt to bring in the larger community was the formation of a new syndicate, in the spring of 1932, for the Defence of Public Interests (SDIP). In contrast to a conventional union, which comprised groups of workers, the SDIP was organised through neighbourhood committees. Its specific purpose was to enforce a generous renters' rights law of December 1931 that had not been vigorously implemented. Following anarcho-syndicalist strategy, the SDIP utilised various forms of direct action, from rent strikes, to mass demonstrations, to the reversal of evictions."

This last action involved the local SDIP group going to a home, breaking the judge's official eviction seal and carrying the furniture back in from the street. They left their own sign: "opened by order of the CNT."

The CNT's direct action strategies "helped keep political discourse in the street, and encouraged people to pursue the same extra-legal channels of activism that they had developed under the monarchy." (Pamela Beth Radcliff, From mobilization to civil war: the politics of polarization in the Spanish city of Gijon, 1900-1937, pp. 287-288, p. 289)

More recently, in Southern Italy, anarchists have organised a very successful Municipal Federation of the Base (FMB) in Spezzano Albanese. This organisation is "an alternative to the power of the town hall" and provides a "glimpse of what a future libertarian society could be" (in the words of one activist).

The aim of the Federation is "the bringing together of all interests within the district. In intervening at a municipal level, we become involved not only in the world of work but also the life of the community... the FMB make counter proposals [to Town Hall decisions], which aren't presented to the Council but proposed for discussion in the area to raise people's level of consciousness. Whether they like it or not the Town Hall is obliged to take account of these proposals." ([url=http://libcom.org/library/black-flag-210]"Community Organising in Southern Italy", pp. 16-19, Black Flag no. 210[/url])

In this way, local people take part in deciding what effects them and their community and create a self-managed "dual power" to the local, and national, state. They also, by taking part in self-managed community assemblies, develop their ability to participate and manage their own affairs, so showing that the state is unnecessary and harmful to their interests. In addition, the FMB also supports co-operatives within it, so creating a communalised, self-managed economic sector within capitalism.

The long, hard work of the CNT in Spain resulted in mass village assemblies being created in the Puerto Real area, near Cadiz in the late 1980s. These community assemblies came about to support an industrial struggle by shipyard workers. As one CNT member explains, "every Thursday of every week, in the towns and villages in the area, we had all-village assemblies where anyone connected with the particular issue [of the rationalisation of the shipyards], whether they were actually workers in the shipyard itself, or women or children or grandparents, could go along. . . and actually vote and take part in the decision making process of what was going to take place."

With such popular input and support, the shipyard workers won their struggle. However, the assembly continued after the strike and "managed to link together twelve different organisations within the local area that are all interested in fighting. . . various aspects [of capitalism]" including health, taxation, economic, ecological and cultural issues.

Moreover, the struggle "created a structure which was vets different,from the kind of structure of political parties, where the decisions are made at the top and they filter down. What we managed to do in Puerto Real was make decisions at the base and take them upwards." (Anarcho-Syndicalism in Puerto Real: from shipyard resistance to direct democracy and community control, p. 6)

Even more recently, the Argentina revolt saw community assemblies develop. Like the sections of the French Revolution, they were directly democracy and played a key role in pushing the revolt forward (see "From Riot to Revolution", Black Flag, no. 221).

Unsurprisingly, the politicians were aghast at the people actually wanting to make their own decisions even going so far as to label them "undemocratic." Faced with real democracy, the politicians quickly tried to concoct a general election to place the focus of events away from the mass of the population and back onto a few politicians working in capitalist institutions. And, of course, the left went along with this farce, helping the bourgeoisie dis-empower the grassroots organisations created in and for direct struggle.

Conclusion

These examples all show the possibilities of "community syndicalism." They show anarchists creating viable libertarian alternatives in the community. In contrast to the dead end of electioneering, they involved people in managing their own affairs and struggles directly. They did not let a few leaders fight their battles for them within bourgeois institutions. Moreover, it allowed revolutionaries to apply their ideas in practical ways which did not have the same de-radicalising and reformist tendencies as electioneering.

Ultimately, the recent turn to electoral politics by the left is (as it always is) a sign of weakness, not strength. Such a strategy of building alternative community organisations is much harder than trying to get people to vote for you every few years. It would be a shame for anarchists to follow the left down the well-trodden path to opportunism and reformism. The left is declining, politically, morally and organisationally. We should be talking about how we can create a libertarian alternative which has practical ideas on how to apply our ideas in the here and now. But it seems that some libertarians seem happier to join non-anarchist groups than try and develop a genuine anarchist approach to the problem of spreading our ideas within our class. Hopefully these examples from our past will provoke a wider discussion on where to go now.

First, perhaps you could say something about yourself and the organisation you are part of?
This interview was done with Sh. And St. of the Durban-based Zabalaza Action Group (ZAG), Joe Black of the regional Anarchist Black Cross (ABC), who is the ZACF acting regional secretary, and Michael Schmidt of the Johannesburg-based Bikisha Media Collective (BMC) who is the ZACF acting international secretary. Joe and Sh. They are also involved with Zabalaza Books (ZB), while Michael is also involved with the ABC. The collectives we are members of are among the founding collectives of the ZACF. Some of them, like ZB, originated as underground collectives a decade ago in the twilight of apartheid.

Does it involve blacks and whites? What class/social background is the typical member?
The Federation's groups are made up of both blacks and whites who are majority Working Class, some of whom are unemployed or students. Current membership is pretty equally divided between black and white, but there are far more black people living in "squatter camps" and townships who have expressed a genuine interest in anarchism than white people living in suburbs. A typical member would be in their early 20s, casually employed and male. We expect female membership to climb as our community projects prove their worth and also hope to attract indigenous, Asian and coloured activists. (NB: "indigenous" refers to Bushmen, Griquas, Khoekhoen and other self-described "yellow" First Peoples who lived in SA before black people arrived).

Has there been much of an African Anarchist tradition/movement?
Long under the whip of hyper-extractive colonial regimes, the development of the entire spectrum of left-wing revolutionism in Africa has been slaved firstly to the late or very narrow development of an industrial working class in a handful of countries - and secondly to the development of national liberation struggles.

In the first case, it was only countries such as South Africa, Algeria and Egypt where colonialism established significant settler populations (many of them labourers from Europe, or indentured labourers from India and Asia) to run sophisticated economies based on mining, commercial agriculture and their associated infrastructure. It is no accident that it is in these countries that anarchism first gained a foothold more than a century ago, finding its highest expression in the IWW-influenced revolutionary syndicalism of the Industrial Workers of Africa (IWA, founded 1917) and of the Indian Workers Industrial Union (IWIU, founded 1919) in South Africa. A notable exception to the trend is in the then-Portuguese colony of Mozambique, where it appears that an anarcho-synndicalist trade union federation allied to the powerful Portuguese General Confederation of Labour (CGT) flourished into the late 1920s in the complete absence of a domestic communist party. The situation in the other main Portuguese colony of Angola is likely to have been similar (a possible contributing factor to the choice of a red-and-black post-colonial flag?), but this is an unstudied history.

Two factors contributed to the decay of the "first wave" of revolutionary syndicalism & anarcho-syndicalism in Africa. Firstly, as with other Anglophone countries (former British colonies), the lack of a specific anarchist organisation crippled revolutionary syndicalist organisations in meeting the challenges of Bolshevism and of emergent petit-bourgeois black nationalism (the ANC for instance), so the Industrial and Commercial Union (ICU, founded 1918) that the IWA and IWIU gave birth to spread as far afield as Zambia and peaked in 1927, but collapsed in ideological confusion thereafter.

Secondly, from the early 1930s, much of Africa started to fall under fascism: Mozambique, Angola and other Portuguese territories under Salazar's regime after 1927; Libya, Ethiopia and Eritrea under Mussolini in the late 1930s; Morocco and Spanish Sahara under Franco's Spain from 1936; Algeria, French West Africa (and Madagascar?) under Vichy France during the war; and Belgian Central Africa under Rexist Belgium during the war. The post-war acceleration of national liberation struggles thus took place in an anarchist vacuum - but in a condition of largely Soviet or Maoist seduction and patronage, while parts of Africa remained under fascist control into the mid-1970s (Angola and Mozambique).

In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the winding down of several struggles (notably against apartheid), anarchism resurfaced in the revolutionary syndicalist IWW of Sierra Leone, the anarcho-syndicalist Awareness League (AL) of Nigeria, the anarchist movements that lead to the formation of the Workers' Solidarity Federation (WSF) in South Africa, and more recently, the Anarchist and Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM) of Zambia, anarcho-syndicalist networks in Morocco and Burkina Faso, the Anti-Capitalist Convergence of Kenya (ACCK) that was started by anarchists and socialists, and the ZACF that followed on from the WSF.

What did you think of the book "African anarchism" by Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariwey? Do you think that is a good starting place to find out more about African Anarchism and its history?
The book is good in describing the anarchic elements of some traditional African societies that existed before colonisation, and is a good starting point but is limited because the anarchist movement has only really resurfaced in Africa (with the exception of the Awareness League) just prior to the book being published, and the socio-political climate has changed quite dramatically across the continent since then.

The collapse of apartheid and the end that brought to cross-border conflicts in Namibia, Angola and Mozambique in particular, the defeat of the old US client regimes like the former Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) and proxy forces (like UNITA in Angola), and the exit of dictators like Daniel Arap Moi of Kenya and Hastings Banda of Malawi has brought the Cold War in Africa to an end. But the raping of the DRC by trans-national corporations, under the cover of military conflict between nine countries, the exposure of the fraud of electoral politics through the corruption of new "democratic" regimes like that of Frederic Chiluba of Zambia, and the last-ditch scorched-earth stance of "socialist" dinosaurs like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe have kept tensions high. Adding to this is the smooth sub-imperialism of South Africa's Thabo Mbeki and his neo-liberal "New Partnership for Africa's Development" (NEPAD) that has ushered in a whole new era of struggle on the continent. The greatest strength of the book "African Anarchism" was its critique of the monster that was African socialism and of the current obstacles - and opportunities - presented for the development of anarchism by the thug rule and chaos that is governance and business on the continent.

Its greatest weaknesses are, however: firstly an exaggerated over-emphasis on the libertarian traditions of some tribes which makes it seem to look in a primitivist direction for its anarchist inspiration (seemingly because of a lack of knowledge about syndicalist antecedents); and secondly a lack of a proper analysis of and description of at least the Awareness League itself, if not of other current African anarchist movements where its knowledge is understandably more slender.

Is there much interest in Anarchism in Southern Africa? Has this been reflected in the size and influence of your organisation?
There has definitely been a growing interest in anarchism in Southern Africa recently, but this has not yet been reflected in the size of the ZACF which is still in its embryonic stage. However, we are more concerned with spreading anarchist ideas and practices than building an organisation. The approach the ZACF has taken towards membership is that it recruits on a by-invitation-only basis those we have worked with for probably at least a year within the social movements, those we know are convinced and active anarchists. This is a totally different approach to the old WSF's open-door "if you're interested, you're in" policy that contributed to its ideological and practical weakness.

The greatest popular interest we experience in the poor communities where we work (and where many of us live) is not so much in the expression of anarchist (anti-)politics, but in its practical application: non-sectarian, horizontal, directly democratic community projects like food gardens and book-and-tool lending libraries. To put it simply: our practice is our strength and our attraction. But as an organisation, we remain a tiny, if very active, player in the radical and progressive social movements that sprang up in around 2000.

Has the failure of African authoritarian socialism played a role in rise of the interest in Anarchism? Or did the collapse of Stalinism in Eastern Europe play a greater role? Or was it a case of better politics coming out on top?
The concept of "African socialism" as defined by continental so-called liberation leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Amilcar Cabral, Agostinho Neto, Eduardo Mondlane, Ahmed Ben Bella and others (including interested outsiders like Frantz Fannon) has been hugely influential in the mal-development of the continent, both ideologically and economically. Some post-liberation countries experimented initially with a form of statist decentralisation, notably Libya under Muammar Gadaffi and Tanzania under Nkrumah while on the opposite side of the spectrum were the hyper-authoritarian Marxist regimes of the likes of Mengistu Haile Mariam's Ethiopia.

The primary external "socialist" influences (based on direct military/political/economic investment) were the old USSR and to a lesser extent Cuba, China, North Korea and East Germany. The collapse of the Soviet Bloc had a big impact on the sustainability of the fascade of "socialism" across much of the continent. Some regimes, like that of Mengistu, have collapsed. Others like Frelimo in Mozambique, have transformed themselves into bourgeois-democratic regimes. Still others like Zambia under Chiluba have capitulated wholesale to neo-liberalism. The evaporation of funding from foreign "communist" states was instrumental in provoking the collapse of unsustainable African "socialism". Lacking sustained anarchist/libertarian/syndicalist mass organised traditions, the continent has not proven a rich environment for the revival of anti-authoritarian organisations. Where they have arisen, it has perhaps been only in part because of the ideological vacuum created by the collapse of the validity of "socialism", and perhaps more because of specific local conditions: in Sierra Leone, it was the pitiful working conditions in the diamond mines that gave rise to the IWW section there; while in Nigeria, leftist oppisition to military rule helped forge the Awareneness League.

In South Africa, the legitimacy crisis of the reformist SA Communist Party (SACP) and the erosion of worker gains by neo-liberalism have helped spur some interest in anarchism. But levels of interest and involvement in anarchism on the continent are extremely low (by comparison to Latin America or Eastern Europe, for example) and should not be overemphasised. The "best politics" has yet to even gain a significant foothold, let alone "come out on top".

How does the 'liberated' South Africa look now? Has the ending of Apartheid seen any major changes?
There are significant structural, legal, economic, political and social changes - but also a widening wealth gap that for many black inhabitants means very little has changed in real terms. The scattered black homelands and their duplicate bureaucracies (including their armed forces) have been consolidated into a unitary state.

A new human-rights-based constitution and the scrapping of all overt racially discriminatory laws has established a bourgeois parlimentary democracy in which the ANC is by far the dominant party with a 2/3 majority that they hope to consolidate in this year's general election. Less overt racial laws, those that are class-based and biased in favour of big business, have, however ensured that the black majority remains landless, impoverished tenants in their own country. The country's protectionist economics - reinforced by sanctions isolation - has been replaced by an open-door policy that has allowed cheap imports to flood the country, leading to the loss of some 1-million jobs since 1994.

Probably the hardest-hit is the clothing manufacturing sector that has long been a stronghold of workerist organising, as well as organised agriculture. Wildcat strikes have been most marked in the motor manufacturing sector, and in the late 1990s there were a spate of blockades of arterial roads by radicals in the transport sector. Labour battles between progressive and reactionary unions lead to a few murders in the ports and mining sectors. Unemployment stands at perhaps 40%, but we will discuss labour in more detail later. While the laws dividing people along colour lines have changed, inequality and the wealth gap are increasing. Some 75% of all SA homes lack food security and one can find children suffering from malnutrition-related diseases like marasmus and kwashiokor on the doorsteps of our cities. HIV/AIDS has taken a huge toll and thousands of child orphans now find themselves the heads of their households, caring for their infant siblings as best they can. Some 62% of all blacks, 29% of all coloureds, 11% of all Asians and 4% of all whites currently live below the poverty line, a dramatic increase during the "decade of democracy". Some 3.5-million have been evicted from their homes since 1994, often at gunpoint, while millions more have had their water and electricity cut off by municipalities who are far more interested in cost-recovery than the health of their residents. Many black people have commented on how life under the old apartheid regime was in some ways better in that there was more job security and there were state subsidies in services, which have been eroded by the neo-liberal GEAR (Growth Employment And Redistribution) economic policy of the ANC, which is a home-grown structural adjustment programme that even surprised the IMF and World Bank with its austerity.

The racist white ultra-right has gone into a significant decline following the failed pre-1994 election Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB) invasion of the Bophuthatswana bantustan and the last-gasp election bombing campaign. The current treason trial against the Farmer Force (Boeremag) is demonstrating how weak and pathetic the white right is, despite grandiose plans of blowing up dams and seizing control of the armed forces - all of which came to naught. Still, racism is a deeply entrenched reality in many farming areas where black labourers have been murdered, tortured or shot at, often for the mildest of supposed infractions. On the other hand, studies have shown that most murders of white farmers are criminally and not politically motivated. Right-wing vitilantism and murder has become a problem, both with the black/white Spots of the Leopard (Mapogo a Matamaga) organisation in the northern provinces and the PAGAD Muslim/criminal organisation in the Western Cape, but both seem to be pretty quiet now.

The main thing to recognise is that the mainstream right-wingers, both white and black, are now all in parliament. And not a single parliamentary party is opposed to neo-liberalism. So for many black. coloured, Asian and indigenous South Africans, their historical experience of marginalisation, joblessness, poverty, malnutrition and racism is unchanged, perhaps even deepened.

The ANC has been the government for a while now. What are they up to? Have they played the same role as Blair's "New Labour" in introducing neo-liberal reforms under a "socialist" label?
You have hit the nail on the head. The ANC remains a member of the Socialist International - yet President Thabo Mbeki is a self-described Thatcherite. The ANC still talks at its public rallies of its "national democratic revolution" - and in the boardrooms about market fundamentalism. It has fired on peaceful demonstrations at home - and cosied up to noxious dictators like Gadaffi, Suharto, Mugabe, Musharraf, Kabila and Castro abroad. These contradictions are supposedly resolved by what the ANC claims is a "developmental state" theory.

Now clearly, the party has to deal with the basic provision of infrastructural services in order to do three things: encourage foreign direct investment; secure their voter base; and improve the overall skills levels of the black working class so as to ensure a significantly large domestic market and a skills base to enable manufacturing to take the economic lead from primary industries like mining, agriculture and fishing. The ANC leadership has embraced the neo-liberalism that has meant stupendous wealth for some 300 black dynasties-in-the-making, the 5% of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange that represents "black empowerment".

It was mid-way through former President Nelson Mandela's term that the ANC shut down its quasi-socialist pretensions (the Redistribution and Development Programme, RDP) and instead wholeheartedly embraced GEAR. It is important to recognise that the ANC does not rule alone (a common misconception abroad, we find), but in cahoots with the Zulu chauvanist Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the anti-communist Pan Africanist Congress (PAC). In the Western Cape at provincial level, it has even been in bed with the retread New National Party (the old apartheid government). These alliances of convenience have tilted the overall political balance of the ruling clique in the direction of centre-right, which is despicable, given the decades of socialist rhetoric that motivated millions of South Africans (and their foreign allies) to back the "liberation" movements against apartheid.

Today, the ANC is a blatant capitalist party (although like Lula in Brazil and Chavez in Venezuela, it talks left while acting right). As mentioned above, they have introduced GEAR, which calls for cuts in social spending, privatisation, the casualisation of labour etc. With the socialist rhetoric of the past discarded, the ANC is revealed to be true to its orignial class interest: it is the party of an emerging bourgeoisie, of chieftains and technocrats from the black middle class who wanted to have a bigger slice of the capitalist pie.

And what about the Communist Party? What is their role?
The Communist Party alongside COSATU - which is the biggest trade union organisation in South Africa - is in an alliance with the ruling ANC, the Tripartite Alliance. The SACP basically toes the ANC party line and uses their influence to gain votes for the ruling party, and in return high-ranking SACP party officials have seats in government. The rank and file of the SACP is pretty inactive with many members abandoning the party to join the social movements and other members who don't like the direction the party is taking being expelled. The role of SACP in its own view is to provide a "critical socialist engagement" with the ANC regime, but its critics say its real role is to provide "red cover" for the ANC's anti-working class policies.

On the other hand, despite the fact that key ministers are communists - police (which glories under the name Safety & Security, SS), public works, public enterprises, the office of the presidency, water affairs & forestry - the SACP clearly is a subservient organisation. This was shown by the ANC forcing SACP deputy general secretary Jeremy Cronin to apologise for warning about the possible "Zanufication" of the ruling congress, meaning it was starting to take on the dictatorial attitudes of Mugabe's ZANU-PF party. We characterised the spat as one between "Cronin capitalism and crony capitalism"! Cronin himself, a loyal Stalinist (and don't Stalinism and Thatcherism go well together?) booted a real Bolshevik, Dale McKinley, out of the SACP for, essentially being too communist. McKinley is today spokesman for the Social Movements Indaba, the umbrella of the social movements within which the ZACF works.

With the end of Apartheid and an ANC government, how is the Trade Union movement shaping up? Are they fighting for their members or agreeing to "modernisation"?
As mentioned above the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) is in alliance with the ruling party. Although it is the most progressive of the four big labour federations, it no longer fights for the interests of the rank-and-file; instead of organising workers for struggle they prefer to negotiate with bosses behind closed doors. Like the SACP, the high-ranking COSATU officials are also using their positions to get comfortable seats in government and to canvas for the ANC.

With the fall of apartheid workers on the shop floor have been dissuaded from taking militant action, and a once strong fighting union has become a lapdog for the ruling elite. One of the main compromises made by COSATU is its endorsement of a Labour Relations Act that, while supposedly guaranteeing more labour rights, in fact places so many mediation obligations before aggrieved workers that it is extremely difficult to embark on a legal strike.

Also, COSATU is party to NEDLAC, a cross-class labour/government/business policy forum that tends to lock it into agreements with the rulng class. Then there is the growing practice of organised labor investing in capitalist companies or investment schemes, leading to possible conflict of interest problems if labour disputes arise at the companies invested in. In addition to this, the forced amalgamation of COSATU's more radical and powerful unions (chemical, and transport in particular) with defunct and backward ones (paper & pulp, and another transport outfit, respectively) created mega-unions on paper, but diluted the radicalism and effectiveness of these progressive redoubts of organised labour. This, combined with the erosion of internal democracy by the imposition of "democratic centralism" to silence comment from the floor, the expulsion of revolutionary leaders and shop-stewards and the bugging of union offices by suspected ANC internal intelligence agents have neutered the power of COSATU.

This also lead to an anarchist change of tactics away from the anarcho-syndicalism represented by the Workers' Solidarity Federation (WSF), that we shut down in 1999 in order to reorient ourselves more towards building serious militants outside the compromised unions. That said, it was the opposition to privatisation by the SA Municipal Workers Union (a COSATU affiliate) that helped spark the new wave of resistance to capitalism. The unions may be hamstrung at the moment, but the bite of neo-liberalism is taking its toll on the shop-floor just as much as in the township streets, so we believe it is only a matter of time before they experience a resurgence of rank-and-file militancy.

What about Trotskyist groups? Are they an issue? What relationship do they have to the popular struggles and to your organisation?
As was the case in Brazil, France and elsewhere, the first "communist party" in SA - the one that refused to accept Lenin's 21 conditions - was founded by anarchists and syndicalists. The second, Bolshevik party named the Communist Party of South Africa - Communist International (CPSA-CI) - today's SACP - followed the global trend in the late 1920s by purging itself of all its libertarians. In SA's case, most of those who were purged became Trots, including the former anarchist Thomas Thibedi. Trot groups have ever since maintained a continuous - if fractious - presence in the Western Cape in particular and Johannesburg to a lesser extent.

Today, there are something like nine different Trot factions: put three Trots in a room for a day and you have a new international; leave them there for a week, and you'll have three different internationals! Seriously, though, they form the largest part of the non-SACP Left (excluding the African socialists), followed by anarchists, then autonomists and lastly a few very secretive Maoists (we won't even speak about that nutty Spartacist cult!).

Unfortunately, certain individual Trots carry quite a lot of influence within the new social movements and have recently attempted to get the social movements embroiled in the upcoming elections (a tiny outfit called Keep Left wanted members to vote ANC - because that's where the working class is!) - but this was strongly opposed by anarchists, autonomists and even some Trots and the odd Bolshevik who thought it premature to try and turn the social movements into a political party. Others have tried to take credit for work that we anarchists have done. One such example is of a group who took photographs of a ZACF community library and vegetable garden and then allegedly tried to use them in their name to secure funding from overseas.

What are the current important issues and campaigns in Southern African? Can you tell us more about, say, the anti-eviction, anti-water privatisation and anti-electricity cut-off campaigns?
In about 2000, several new anti-neo-liberal resistance strands (those opposing the payment of apartheid foreign debt, or the privatisation of municipal water, for example) united to form a constellation of new radical and progressive social movements. After holding the fort for several years in a political wilderness where criticism of the ANC/SACP was virtually unheard of (maintaining a propaganda initiative and running the Workers Librrary & Museum in Johannesburg as an independent working class space), the anarchist movement got directly involved in the new social movements, helping found the Anti-Privatisation Forum in Johannesburg.

Today the movements embrace an estimated 200 000 supporters across SA - as compared to the SA Communist Party's largely inactive 16 000 paper membership. it must also be pointed out that it was our comrade B and the late comrade Mandla of the ZACF collective, the Shesha Action Group (SAG) in Soweto who started Operation Khanyisa, meaning "light", the operation that illegally re-connected some 25 000 homes in Soweto. These "guerrilla electricians" are literally heroes to the millions of poor people who have had their light s cut off by state power supplier Eskom since 1994. In the Western Cape there has been an ongoing struggle against evictions since about 1998, when banks began to repossess houses that they had sold to poor communities. They then try selling them back, either to their original owners or to others, at a higher price.

In addition to this there have also been private-public partnerships set up by the government to collect debts for the banks. On the other hand poor communities are struggling to put food on their tables let alone repay debts to the banks for houses that have already been paid for. This led to the formation of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign, which has affiliates across the Western Cape/Cape Flats. The fight against water privatisation has recently taken off in Phiri, Soweto, which is being used as a testing ground to see how successful the installation of pre-paid water meters will be, before installing the meters in other communities. This has led to the formation of the Anti Pre-Paid Water Coalition, which is made up of various activist groups and individuals involved in the struggle against privatisation in general. Namely amongst others the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF) and the Soweto Electricity Crisis Committee (SECC).

What tactics and strategy do they use?
In general there is a tendency to use both legal means and direct action means. On the legal front, the movements take the companies, councillors etc. responsible for, for example; evictions in the Western Cape or electricity cut-offs in Gauteng, to court. The biggest success so far of this tactic is the reversal of the government's attitude towards the provision of anti-retroviral drugs following a sustained court battle with the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC).

The social movements also do research and try to bolster public support via marches, demonstrations and media blitzes. More importantly, they also take direct action, which has proven far more effective both in delaying or stopping evictions, cut-offs etc. as well as in building public support for the social movements. In areas of the Western Cape the Anti-Eviction Campaign (AEC) has successfully resisted evictions by anticipating when they are going to take place and then burning barricades, physically defending their homes and chasing the sheriffs of the court. In Gauteng, where there has been a massive number of electricity and water cut-offs because people have not been able to pay their arrears, there have been campaigns by the SECC and APF and others, including anarchists, to literally go door-to-door illegally reconnecting thousands of households electricity and water. Unfortunately, because the workers responsible for installing pre-paid water and electricity metres are always guarded by heavily-armed private security contractors the campaigns have not been successful in stopping the installations altogether.

These tactics have of course led to increased state and capitalist repression and the toll is weighing heavily on the social movements in terms of having to find money to post bail, pay lawyers etc, a task for which the ABC and its project, the Anti-Repression Network (ARN) was set up in August 2002.

Does the legacy of Apartheid impact on the spread of anarchist ideas or collective struggle? Does racism hinder the development of class movements? Are there any problems with ethnic divisions (Zulu, Xhosa, etc.)? How do you combat these divides?
Apartheid has definitely had an impact on the spread of anarchist ideas in that for so long the majority of people in SA only had access to a limited "Bantu education", which has created high levels of illiteracy and the availability of anarchist material was very scarce even to those who could read.

However, after the fall of apartheid and, with it, the "Suppression of Communism Act" as well as the rise in access to information and availability of anarchist materials, it is a lot easier and safer to spread and implement anarchist ideas. The problem of illiteracy still exists (mostly amongst the older generations) as well as there being a lack of anarchist materials available in the indigenous languages of SA.

Regarding the issue of racism, there has been a definite decline in racism in general with people of all "race" and "ethnic" groups being involved in the new social movements, but there are still lingering ethnic tensions and an increasing level of xenophobia against immigrants from other African countries, which is being fuelled by state and corporate media propaganda in attempts to divide us along new lines and scapegoat sections of the working class for the problems whose root lies at the doors of capital and state. One way to combat this is, during conversations, to challenge people when we hear racist or xenophobic remarks and try show them the roots of these prejudices and how working and poor people have more in common with each other, whoever they are, no matter their place of origin or skin colour, than they do with any person of a higher class who may have the same skin colour or place of origin. Another way is through participating in educational workshops that, for example, use economic policies such as NEPAD to show or highlight the ways that people across the continent are faced with the same neo-liberal onslaught and use these opportunities to promote class-consciousness and internationalism.

What are the current political discussions are they having? How do they differ from, say, those in the West? Are they linked to any political parties?
Recently there has been discussion as to whether or not the Anti-Privatisation Forum in Johannesburg should participate in the upcoming elections, as was suggested by the Trotskyist leadership. Last year [2003] the APF held a four-day long elections workshop with all its affiliates to debate the pros and cons of participation. Initially certain people proposed to turn the APF into a political party which would run in both National and Local elections, but as one might have expected, this lead to internal bickering amongst the Trot leadership as to whether or not it was the right time to form a new "workers' party" and in the end it was decided - by them - only to run in the provincial (Gauteng) election.

This was opposed outright by the anarchists and other libertarians present who argued for a boycott of the election altogether (national and provincial) and were able to attract a rather large amount of support from other affiliates although the majority proposed a spoilt vote. There are a lot of "political parties" involved, but all are extra-parlimentary (many only because of their small support base, not because of any principled oppositon to bourgeois political forums). Some are African socialist, some Trotskyist, some even tactically support the ANC (including the Trotskyist "Keep Left"!) and others are unaligned working class community organisations, whether progressive or conservative.

Our social movements probably differ from those in the global North in that our focus is on how we combat the effects of living under neo-colonialism (rather than how to prevent its export, though opposition to NEPAD is growing in importance). Issues such as womens', environmental, unionist and gay rights have so far not yet fully integrated with the mainstream movements whose focus is largely anti-privatisation, anti-neo-liberalism, anti-militarism, anti-repression and anti-debt - and in favour of community control, freedom of speech and association, radical land redistribution, free water and lights and housing and farm labourer's rights. But there are international links between, for instance, the Landless People's Movement (LPM) and the Landless Movement (MST) in Brazil, with which our Brazilian anarchist comrades in the FAG for instance engage at grassroots level.

How does your organisation take part and influence these movements and the unions? What role are anarchists and/or anarchist ideas playing in them? Do your ideas find an audience?
Members of our organisation participate in these movements on the ground in the form of direct action as well as arguing for anarchist alternatives and ways of organising within the social movements. Having previously had anarchists involved in the media committee of the Anti-Privatisation Forum (APF), we have now abandoned those positions in order to involve ourselves more with the base of the movements, particularly in the towships and the inner cities. This has to a certain extent decreased our "official" visibility although anarchist principles are still being put forward both within the communities from where the social movements draw their base as well as when we participate in workshops organised for the social movements. This has also resulted in accusations from the mostly Trot leadership that we are not involved in struggles but simply "parachute in" when it suits us. But we make no apolgies for not being movement "leaders" and focusing our energies instead on our own social projects: the ARN, our township community libraries and food gardens, and the syndicalist Workers' Council.

The latter, a Durban-based ZAG project, is our only direct organisational engagment in the union environment, but other ZACF members are also involved in the cleaning workers' struggle at Wits University for instance, while others are fighting relatively lonely battles in mainstream unions. Generally, we find that people respect those who take initiative, work hard, stand by their promises and fight for the rights of others. It is on this basis alone that we have any audience at all. But it is a small audience standing against a high tide of the neo-liberal attrition of worker rights, both blue- and white-collar.

What have you learned from your participation in such struggles and organisations?
Clearly, the most important lesson is to put your muscle where your mouth is. We have to be directly involved in all radical and progressive grassroots movements.

Secondly, and encouragingly, the appearance of self-described anarchist groups in the black townships and squatter camps - initially totally without our input or influence - is an exciting validation of the attractiveness of anarchist ideas, even where no materials are available and no tradition exists!

Thirdly, that these anarchists who directly experience repression and exploitation are themselves incredibly innovative, and have devised forms of struggle, service and organisation (without any prior knowledge) that are widely used and respected by anarchists, libertarians and syndicalists across the world, a further validation of the global movement's ethics, ideas and practices.

Fourthly, that it is out of these auto-convened anarchist organisations, built by and for the poorest of the poor, that a genuinely fresh, libertarian revolutionary movement will emerge.

Lastly, we learned to be aware of opportunists and people using the social movements for their own ends (and to recognise that our own interactions could lead to patronage and political control if we were not careful to defend the autonomy of these groups). Oh, and of course, never trust a Trot!

What aspect of anarchism have you found most useful in practice?
The most useful practical aspect of anarchism is its universal appeal to the hearts and minds of positive-thinking people, regardless of their ethnic, political or cultural origins. our social projects are deliberately non-sectarian, provided you play according to libertarian principles, you can participate, and if you participate, you benefit. The practical mutual aid displayed by these projects tackles head-on, with vigour and enthusiasm one of the greatest plagues afflicting the working class in SA: a sense of hopelessness and dependency. The ethic of anarchism gives community members purpose and class pride, showing them that they can achieve great things - if only they listen, help, share and co-operate with their neighbours.

Finally, mutual aid is strengthened by egalitarian decision-making that teaches people to be tough and flexible at the same time. All this gives anarchism and our projects an appeal that has even intrigued and delighted conservatives in the communities. Our first garden & library project has aready been featured in a Canadian film on water rights in South Africa and has attracted a volunteer youth group which helps out at weekends. The ability of anarchism to transcend the ghetto/museum that anachists themselves have kept it in for so long is inspiring!

Where in Africa is your influence particularly strong? How do you spread the message?
As an organisation we are only active in South Africa, which is therefore obviously where our influence lies, concentrated in the cities and townships of Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. We have recently established contact and begun to develop a relationship with comrades from the Swaziland Youth Congress (SWAYOCO) who although influenced by Marxist/Leninist ideas (all they have been exposed to) are very interested in anarchism and are keen to work together and learn more about our organisation and our politics. In this case we spread the message through travelling to the region to make direct contact with interested comrades, giving them literature to read and engaging in political discussion in an attempt to influence their struggles in an anarchist direction i.e. pushing their pro-democracy struggle forward so that they have more revolutionary aims than simply substituting a monarchy with another form of government.

Other than that, we know our materials have proven influential in establishing the Anti-Capitalist Convergence Kenya (ACKK) and in initiating a group in Uganda. We have no ide what influence we have in Zambia following the collapse of the AWSM, with the AL in Nigeria, or with the leftist rebel forces in southern Sudan who approached us for information about anarchism. We have several propaganda avenues: our theoretical journal "Zabalaza" (Struggle) is aimed at an activist readership, while the ABC's "Black Alert" is the voice of its Anti-Repression Network (ARN) and is aimed at a social movement readership; then there are our ZB and BMC pamphlets which are both sold via the Workers' Library & Museum in Johannesburg and available in downloadable form for free over our Zabalaza website (http://www.zabalaza.net) which is a propaganda tool in its own right and boasts an interactive forum to which we encourage Black Flag readers to contribute; then there is the anarchy_africa e-mail discussion & news list which is open to all interested people around the world; and finally our Red & Black Fora, which are workshops for anarchists, and other libertarians.

We obviously have a presence on all major marches as well, and post news to the autonomist-run Indymedia SA, but our best propaganda is still our social projects like food gardens and community libraries.

Are the issues of Southern Africa similar to those in the rest of the continent? What is the situation facing the continent in general?
South Africa has a very specific condition that makes it distinct from the rest of Africa. As the continent's most powerful economy, it is also its most important sub-imperialist power, acting as a sort of regional policeman and continental viceroyalty on behalf of British imperialism. The distinction of the UK as our imperial power is as important - and neglected - as the recognition that Brazil is the sub-imperialist power in Latin America, operating on behalf of US interests. Remember, even if the UK is junior to the US, post-colonial Britain continues to dominate relations in Anglophone Africa, which include four key regional economies: Egypt in the north, Nigeria in the west, Kenya in the east and South Africa in the south. The only other imperialist power that wields quite as much influence in Africa is France, but France had only one key regional economy, Algeria, and lost much control there after "liberation", leaving it with the purely extractive raw material/cheap labour pools of the Francophone west.

As the main continental sub-imperialist power, post-apartheid SA has: pushed the neo-liberal New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD); restructured the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) as the neo-liberal African Union (AU); invaded its neighbour Lesotho in 1998 to falsely "restore democracy" (ie: crush a pro-democratic mutiny and claim it was a coup attempt); hugely expanded its own multinationals like Anglo American into the interior, often as buy-ins to privatisation; and advanced exploitation by, for instance, enclosing huge areas of northern Mozambique by pushing peasants off the land and settling white racist commercial farmers there. SA's infrastructure, economy - and armed forces - make it a formidable capitaladversary to the working classes of our neighbours north of the Limpopo River.

So the SA situation is intimately tied to being in the sub-imperialist centre on the one hand - and on the other to having a large industrialised working class with a very recent insurrectionary history. The class in SA also has an appreciation of the promises of communist liberation fresh in its memory - while it stares down th> barrel of ANC-driven neo-liberalism. Otherwise, the wars in central Africa (DRC and southern Sudan in particular) are winding down, while West African regions like Sierra Leone (where until destroyed by the civil war, there was a 3 000-strong IWW section) and Liberia continue to bleed.

Still, the DRC "peace" deal has foolishly endorsed rule-by-the-gun by simply recognising all combattants as legitimate claimants to a slice of the pie. This, the continuing attracting of plundering countries like Angola and the DRC of diamond and oil wealth by foreign (and African) multinationals, and the continued presence of interahamwe Hutu militia in the Great Lakes region make it appear that central instability is likely to continue for some time. And when the guns fall silent, there is still class rule, so no true peace.

There is only one remaining colony - Western Sahara, which remains under Moroccan occupation - so the dynamics of national liberation are long faded. Essentially, we all face the same neo-liberal enemy today, but many of our neighbours do it without basic human rights, infrastructure, the means of living beyond a Medieval average age of 40 - and without any libertarian revolutionary tradition within living memory.

What links do you have with other libertarians? In Africa? Worldwide?
In Africa we have had intermittent contact with the Awareness League in Nigeria although this is hard to maintain, as is the case throughout the third world, due to the lack of access to communication. We have also recently established contact with the ACCK in Kenya and anarchists in Uganda as well as members of the SWAYOCO in Swaziland.

Internationally the ZACF is a member of the International Libertarian Solidarity (ILS) network and has links with other ILS affiliates across Latin America, North America, Europe and the former USSR. Historically, our closest international links have been with the Workers Solidarity Movement (WSM) of Ireland, with the Swedish Workers Central Organisation (SAC), with both the CNT-AIT, the CNT-Vignoles and the Francophone Anarchist Federation in France and the CGT in Spain.

In recent years, closer ties have been established, often via the ILS, with the Northeastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC) of the USA/Canada, the Anarchist Communist Federation (FdCA) in Italy, Rebel (Auca) of Argentina, the Gaucha Anarchist Federation (FAG) and their associates in Brazil, Tinku Youth of Bolivia, the Uruguayan Anarchist Federation (FAU) and the CIPO-RFM of Mexico. We are in contact with the Cuban Libertarian Movement in Exile (MLCE) in Mexico and in France, with the Iranian underground and the Iraqi exile movement -and with numerous other organisations - including ABCs - spanning the globe from Costa Rica to New Zealand, from Chile to Russia.

What do you make of the discussions in overseas anarchist groups?
There is a clear growing maturity in the analysis and debate emerging from the global anarchist movement. No longer do we hear so much the old sub-cultural "smash the state" sloganeering. In particular, we believe, must be commended the in-depth analytical work of relatively new organisations in Latin America like the CIPO-RFM of Mexico, the Gaucha Anarchist Federation (FAG), Cabocla Anarchist Federation (FACA) and Insurrectionary Anarchist Federation (FAI) of Brazil, Tinku Youth (TJ) of Bolivia and the Libertarian Socialist Organisation (OSL) and Rebel (Auca) of Argentina. Their reaction to the collapse of the IMF/World Bank "golden boy" economy of Argentina in particular has been hugely refreshing - probably because it is based on sound community activism. Their bruising critique of the fake-left dream of Lula's Brazil, Chavez' Venezuela and of course Castro's Cuba, allied to their critique of the US-driven neo-liberal expansionism of the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (ALCA), and their instigation of the Encounters of Latin American Autonomous Popular Organisations (ELOPA) give us all cause for hope, despite the death threats and petrol-bombs hurled at them.

In Eastern Europe, to all intents and purposes part of the global South, the collaboration of groups like Autonomous Action (AD) of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Armenia and others in the "Abolishing the Borders from Below" network again is giving rise to dynamic new voices speaking with experience of real struggles. In Europe, that part of the International Libertarian Solidarity (ILS) network located there (we are also a member) has been breaking down sectarian barriers between anarchist organisations. Notable is the establishment of the journal "Afrique XXI", a French-language anarchist analytical magazine covering Francophone Africa, as "Zabalaza" covers Anglophone Africa.

In North America, the example of the North-Eastern Federation of Anarcho-Communists (NEFAC) has sparked off a resurgence of regional anarchist organisations that are tackling real issues like race, class, terrorism, the war industries, organisational modes, workplace militancy etc. head-on and unashamedly. We find NEFAC's "The Northeastern Anarchist" a keen and relevant journal.

As a global movement, our weakest links seem to be in northern Africa and in Asia, but perhaps that is just a problem of linguistic barriers because we keep hearing about anarchist organisations in Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, the Philippines etc.

What do you think of the western anarchist movement? What do you think we can learn from each other?
The first thing to recognise is the historical strength of the global Southern anarchist movement. This is neatly introduced in Jason Adams' "Non-Western Anarchisms: Rethinking the Global Context" and will be dealt with in great detail in an upcoming BMC book that we hope will totally rewrite anarchist history - and give it the currency it deserves.

To put it simply, the movement in countries as diverse as Mexico and China, Brazil and Cuba, Mozambique and Argentina, Chile and Uruguay was at one time far more powerful than any other revolutionary tendency, putting anarchist strength in Spain in the shade.

The second thing to recognise is that we need each other and can and must learn from each other. Internationalism is not about having exotic posters on the walls of one's meeting-place, but rather in having an ongoing interaction on anarchist ideas and struggles across the globe.

The third thing to recognise is that the Western anarchist movement comes with a lot of baggage that we new Southern movements find arcane and foreign. This is expecially true of the Anglophone movement, inheritors of a crippling sense of defeat, chaos and ivory tower defesiveness that is totally unustifiable in the light of the real post-1939 anarchist history - and out of touch with the challenges posed by neo-corporatism (neo-liberalism). That said, we are delighted to see that the North is awaking from this sweaty bad dream and strarting to locate its organisations at the very epicentre of anti-capitalist struggle again.

As someone in an organisation from a so-called "developing" region, what do you make of the recent vogue of "primitivism" in the anarchist movement in places like the United States?
Anarchism is NOT a backward, primitivist ideology. And it is most expecially totally oposed to the neo-fascist and genocidal implications of lunatic theories such as "deep ecology" and "voluntary human extinction" that tend to grow out of this illusion that if only we would return (or allow ourselves to be culled/bombed back) to the stone age, all issues of dominance would be automatically resolved.

As we are sure you in the UK are aware, the fraudulent logic of this line of neo-Malthusian thought lead to the green fascism of the periodical "Green Anarchist" lauding the sarum gas attacks on a Tokyo subway by a millennialist cult. Anarchism developed out of the real, sometimes bitter, sometimes glorious struggles of the industrial working class (and to a lesser extent the peasantry), not out of the dreams of middle-class opium-eaters who foster a forlorn hope of a return to a mythical golden age.

We are frankly disgusted that the right-wing masturbation that is primitivism can be considered by any to be anarchist in any way, shape or form. It is frankly not only un-anarchist, but anti-anarchist.

Racism must be a point of concern for you. How would you say your approach differed from, say, anarchists in North America? Does the different social set-up change mean a different analysis and practice?
The fault-line of racism (closely duplicated by class) is the fundamental reality of South African life after three centuries of white supremacist rule and deliberate under-development of the ruled, whether indigenous, Asian, brown or black. This is an inescapeable fact and one that has troubled, challenged and enlightened our movement right from the start when we were essentially two underground organisations in the dying days of apartheid.

In formulating our draft full constitution, which will hopefully be adopted at our congress later this year, the constitutional working group had a long debate over the very real differences between those collectives of ours like the ZAG and its Sowetan counterparts, the Shesha Action Group (SAG) and the Black Action Group (BAG) on the one hand that were largely black and township/locally based - and those like the BMC, the ABC and ZB on the other hand that were largely white and suburban/regionally based. The minority view was that these should be recognised as "frontline" and "service" collectives, respectively, a divide that would recognise the race/class divide so as actively to confront it (usually by cross-membership of collectives and cross-participation in projects like publishing, food gardens etc).

The majority view that won out was that to underscore these divisions meant to tacitly retain them by maintaining a "division of labour" between our collectives. Whatever the ZACF congress finally decides, it is likely and preferable, that the orientation of the ZACF of the future to these compex questions will be determined more by those working class people who have a direct experience of racism. We would say that our overarching approach as revolutionaries is class struggle - but that in the SA context this so closely replicates a struggle against white supremacism that the two have to work in tandem, without the class issue absorbing or downplaying the importance of race.

As a "multi-racial" organisation that has deliberately united activists from divided backgrounds, our main difference with the Western anarchist movement is that we do not feel the need for separate organisations for people of colour. We must say that we welcome the founding of ethnic organisations such as the Anarchist People of Color (APOC) network in the US, or the Popular Indigenous Council of Oaxaca - Ricardo Flores Magon (CIPO-RFM) in Mexico - where such organising appears to be crucial to establishing the validity of anarchism in marginalised communities.

But in a majority black region where we have for too long been separated, racially-specific organisations would send out totally the wrong signals to the oppressed classes. In future, the ZACF may decide to establish a working group to deal specifically with this issue, but to be honest, for the moment, with significant black support, we are more concerned internally with the low level of women's participation.

Your organisation is influenced by Platformism and anarcho-syndicalism. Do you see an conflict between the two? What attracts you to each of them? What do you reject in each tradition?
Firstly, it must be clearly understood what "platformism" is and what it is not - then where it fits into the anarcho-syndicalist approach to mass popular libertarian communist organisaton. There is far too much confusion in anarchist ranks generated by a debate that arose in response to the chaotic and ultimately ineffective anarchist response to the Russian Revolution by most of those on the ground at the time.

The Platform was merely a re-statement (at a time of confusion generated by the defeat of anarchism by Bolshevism) of the fundamentals of anarchist mass organising that had been established in the libertarian communist majority of the First International and in the mainstream of the anarchist mass movment ever since. It was not a novel invention by a bunch of disgruntled Ukrainians, but a wake-up call for a return from chaotic individualism to the mass organisation that had made the movement a global force to be reckoned with in the first place. The tradition to which the "draft" platform (it was a discussion document, not a blueprint, after all) recalled the movement was to an anarcho-syndicalism infused with the anarcho-communist vision of a world without bosses or borders (not even between field, factory or community), for which it goes without saying, clear and firm principles and directly-democratically-agreed collective practices were and remain an absolute necessity. So let us be clear: "platformism" is NOT a different type of anarchism, but merely as GP Maximoff pointed out, a re-statement of the internal coherence required by anarchist organisations in order to be the engine of working class revolution.

In other words, platformism IS an organisational form, NOT an ideology. There is only one ideological type of anarchism, although it is a broad tradition: international revolutionary class-struggle anarchism, which embraces workplace, community, militia and other organising. Anything else, any "personal liberation" theory, is not only sub-revolutionary, but non-anarchist.

So to answer your question: there is absolutely no conflict between anarcho-syndicalism and platformism (although a union that is open to all workers may have difficulty being entirely platformist, while with an anarchist federation it should be easy). The conflict is between the genuine mass anarchist tradition and the pale, atomistic liberal fakes that masquerade as anarchist in much of the Anglophone world.

Do you draw upon any specifically Southern African ideas, struggles or movements today or in the past to inform your anarchism? If so, what are they?
Our current ZACF draft constitution locates us squarely within not only the southern African revolutionary syndicalist and anarcho-syndicalist tradition discussed already (the IWA and IWIU especially), but within the anarchist (anti-)political tradition of the Socialist Club (SC), founded in 1900 in South Africa by Henry Glasse, of the Revolutionary League (LR) of Mozambique, founded in the early 1900s by exiled Portuguese anarchist Jose Estevam, and of the Industrial Socialist League (IndSL) of South Africa in the period of the Russian Revolution.

In later years, we recall the syndicalism of the 1970s defined by activists like Rick Turner, murdered in 1978 by what is believed to have been an apartheid death-squad. Often today when talking to people who are not familiar with anarchism we liken the anarchist principles of horizontal self-management and co-operation to the tactics used by the United Democratic Front of the popular insurrection of the late 1980s, which is well known and was very successful in contributing to the fall of apartheid. There is nothing specifically South African about the UDF but that the tactics and strategy it adopted were proven through the struggle to be the most effective, namely: rank-and-file workers' and community councils, workers militias etc. all of which are anarchist in principle although the people involved had probably never heard of anarchism.

Our inspiration in the present are the radical and progressive social movements, where they follow on in that libertarian tradition. Thus, domestically, our traditions are those of revolutionary syndicalism, specific anarchist organisation, popular insurrection and community control combined into a seamless whole. It is important to note the reasoning behind our name: Zabalaza means struggle; Anarchist Communist is not just our political orientation, but taps into the respect that a true egalitarian communist vision still commands in SA; and Federation for our structural form.

Your Zabalaza Books webpage (www.zabalaza.net/) is a great resource. Why did you decide to put so much energy into it? And how popular is it?
The site seems to be very popular amongst anarchists in the global North/West who have much better access to the Internet than in Africa and we often get encouraging remarks both through e-mail and in person when we meet comrades from abroad. But the ZB pages and their associated links have also enabled us to reach out to anarchists in Africa, Eastern Europe, the ex-USSR and Australasia in particular. Why do we do it? "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."

What plans has your organisation got for the near future?
Our immediate plans are to extend our community libraries and food gardens into other parts of Soweto and Sebokeng (a township further south of Soweto) and to strengthen our Workers' Council in Durban. Next up is the holding of our first full congress at which our full constitution will be adopted. We will invite all interested anarchists in the region to our congress as observers, and plan to invite other autonomists and libertarians on the second day for joint discussions on how we engage with the radical and progressive social movements.

Congress will chart our way forward for the rest of the year. We would also like to set up offices in both Durban and Johannesburg, which are our main areas of activity, and we are looking into buying photocopiers for both regions in order to be able to increase our output of anarchist material and further their circulation. A printing press would be ideal but this is out of our reach financially. In addition we would like to put more focus on translating anarchist literature into indigenous languages and we would also like to try and get people from all the regions in southern Africa that have an anarchist presence together at a "no-border" camp, for possibly the first time in African history.

Finally, what message do you have for anarchists in the west?
If there is a single message we could get across it would be this: drop the liberal individualist baggage and get down to the real nitty-gritty of anarchist organising in your workplaces and your communities. Ignore the flakes who claim that organised anarchism is an oxymoron. Let your actions be your propaganda because people watch what you do more readily than they listen to what you say. Class War: Just Do It! Oh, and if any of you have any old printing presses to assist us with our anarchist printing project (to which the Swedish SAC has already contributed funds), please consider donating them to us.