Organisation dispute issue

It is unlikely that anything good will come of involving the police. Especially if the directly involved parties have not suggested this.

As for the rest it depends on the org’s internal procedures. Which I’m guessing aren’t up to much if you are posting about this on here. ;-)

Ideally some sort of mediation would happen.

The accusations sound like a shitshow. There needs to be a formal process for people to make their case, with evidence, to a suitably appointed and neutral group to consider - with the right of reply given to the accused.

EDIT: accusing someone in an "anarchistIc" group of being a fascist (or a transphobe) is a serious issue. These are not things to be tossed around lightly in a gossip campaign that follows a physical assault. Sensible organisations should have procedures for vetting people and flagging up issues of concern.

Dunno if that helps or not.

Moved the OP to its own discussion, because it is very different from the other thread.
Firstly, sorry to hear about this.
Secondly, agree with Fozzie, this is something your organisation cannot avoid doing.
In terms of social services, apart from anything else nothing which happened here is in the remit of social services (they deal with things like safeguarding of children and adults in the home, in care, etc). So the only relevant external agency is the police. And, obvious comments about anarchist organisations running to the police aside, the only way this would be relevant would be if the older person wanted to press criminal charges against the younger person. Even if they did this (which I couldn't imagine an anarchist ever doing), probably nothing would happen at all, but even if something did the worst thing that would likely happen to the younger one would be some kind of caution or community punishment. Either way, both of these people will still be members of the same organisation, and you will still have to sort it out.
But yes like Fozzie says hopefully you should have some internal procedure for dealing with conflict within the organisation. If not, you could probably borrow one from another organisation, like the IWW. This should include a formal process, with the features that Fozzie highlights. Also they should try to be as restorative as possible, and I would say that a key thing to consider that the get go is try to establish what both parties actually would want the outcome to be. As potentially there could be some common ground (unless both sides want the other side to be expelled from the organisation).
Anyway it sounds like a very messy and unfortunate situation. Good luck resolving it.

As above, your org probably isn't equipped but it'll have to make an effort anyway. One thing I would note is that physical assault should be an immediate suspension and involve some sort of restitution, no ifs or buts. I have to say sudden accusations of transphobia, ableism and fascism (!) against a person who's just complained about being attacked (without prior?) sounds a bit odd, but would need to be looked at seriously regardless. They are however separate incidents - the person who carried out the assault on a fellow group member does not get to avoid consequences even if the person they attacked does have dodgy views, and the latter should be taken on their own terms as a process.

One thing I would recommend, if at all possible, would be to take friendship circles and gossip out of the matter, which is super difficult in small groups. Is there anyone who'd be acceptable as a neutral third party to look over it?

Good luck with it Andy, sounds like an awful thing to have to deal with.

Is this a reference to events in 2016? https://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2016/07/pensioner-attacked-at-anarchist-hq.html

Unlikely as I believe the elderly participant in that has since died.

Probably best not to get into to the detail of this one while the organisation is trying to resolve matters.

Brian was never accused of anything like that, he was just a prick. And his take in that writeup was self-serving nonsense that doesn't deserve to be repeated in any context, let alone as an attempt to ferment gossip in a serious case someone's asked for advice on.

Violence between members in an organization is absolutely unacceptable and has to be dealt with immediately. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, there has to be some sort of discplinary process around that. Allowing violence between members opens up your organization to a dysfunctional internal life and/or bad actors who can take advantage of this.

There's no perfect organizational complaint process, but even an imperfect one is better than nothing. I wish you good luck in this situation.