Continuing our series speaking to comrades about what being in the ACN means to them we speak to Ash from Manchester
What drew you to revolutionary activism?
That’s the cart before the horse! I wasn’t ‘drawn’ to ‘it’! As a queer teenager in the late ’70’s I found myself ‘illegal’ and in a life and death struggle. The early Thatcher years of the AIDS pandemic. Coming together as lesbian, trans, queer, or simply being young, didn’t feel like a choice, it seemed to present itself to me out of necessity.
Why would that need to be revolutionary when you were seeking equality under the law?
The answer is in the question! We were virtually underground. Most in our communities actually were underground, genuinely clandestine. Those of us who weren’t were not going to be left to die. Being allowed to be ‘under’ anything else to me seemed ridiculous. The state, church, system, wouldn’t even let us bury our dead! It wasn’t difficult to feel the whole rotten shop was in need of burning down!
But why Class Struggle Anarchism?
There’s another kind?? I’m not obsessed with the word anarchist. As for Class Struggle, ie anti-capitalist internationalism, without that it’s just liberalism. I demand to be free, not request it. I’m equally happy with libertarian communist. Basically, nonhierarchical community over Capital. By that I mean capitalism – the wage labour slave system that you can sometimes survive in but never escape. Being truly human and accepting exploitation by the bosses are not compatible.
And you believe that’s possible? Isn’t that just too idealistic – Utopian even?
Wow! The day we give up on a humanity with ideals is the day I guess I stop being human! There has never been a time where people haven’t imagined a better world without poverty or exploitation. That ‘thin red line’ of resistance that has always shown itself. Communities of struggle. For me, those who believe that this system that is driving us to global annihilation through war, poverty and climate change works are the utopians.
You talk of ‘community’, what do you mean? What might a different society look like?
We all have an experience of its potential in our daily lives. Our humanity constantly asserts itself. Struggling and consequently incomplete. I would say the abolition of greed and scarcity, inclusion and direct involvement, mutual aid in the safety of social solidarity. When I’m asked this question, I usually say look at the relationships and communities around you that you have chosen or are able to create. They’re opposite of all the relationships we are expected to see as normal in the 50 years most of our waking life is spent trying not to become homeless or hungry. Friends, neighbours, family. Places of voluntary engagement like community centres, sports, cultural and social groups. Charities, food banks, choirs etc We know what it is to be in non-hierarchical or exploitative relationships.
After 40 odd years of activism, what do you think is most different now?
Urgency. 40 odd years ago class struggle here was a continuous unbroken tradition. My parents were the children of miners and council workers. Change had always been sought, always needed, always believed in. Despite the Cold War there wasn’t the sense that time is running out as there is now.
It is no longer a future dystopian fantasy to imagine that the generation which will witness our extinction is already here.
Interview by ACN
AnarCom Network 