Author: anarcomnet

We are proud to be involved in organising this event:

Saturday 27th May 2023. Details will follow soon. Stalls, talks, films at the CCA again.

This appears via our Czech Comrades in Tridni Valka:

Source: https://camaraderevolution.org/index.php/2023/03/26/communique-au-sujet-de-s-camarade-au-pronostic-vital-engage-a-la-suite-de-la-manifestation-de-sainte-soline/

On Saturday the 25th of March at Sainte-Soline, our comrade S. was hit in the head by an explosive grenade during the protest against the giant retention basins. Despite his critical condition, the prefecture deliberately prevented the emergency services from intervening at first, and from transporting him to a special care unit in a second phase. He is currently in a neurosurgical intensive care. He is still in a critical condition.

The massive outbreak of violence that the protesters have gone through led to hundreds of wounded, and many of them suffered serious physical injuries, as we can read in the various reports available. The 30 000 protesters came with the aim to block the construction site of the Sainte-Soline giant retention basin, which is a water-appropriation project defended by a minority for the benefit of a capitalist model that has nothing more to defend other than death. The violence of the armed wing of the democratic State illustrates it vividly.

In the sequence initiated by the movement against the pension reform, the police mutilates and tries to assassinate to prevent the uprising, to defend the bourgeoisie and its world. Nothing will dampen our determination to put an end to their reign. On Tuesday March the 28th and on the following days, let’s strengthen the strikes and the blockades, let’s take the streets, for S. and all the wounded and the imprisoned of our movements.

Long live the revolution.
Comrades of S.

PS: If you have any information concerning the circumstances of the injuries inflicted to S., contact us at: s.informations@proton.me

We wish that this statement can be spread as massively as possible.

“Beware the Ides of March” Shakespeare.

The ‘ides of March’ (15th) saw the largest number of people on strike in the UK for a generation, but blink and you may have missed it.  While French workers bring paralysis to municipal functions to defend pensions and conditions from attack, European class struggle’s western front is appearing strangely quiet.

Some Health Unions have conceded following firefighters earlier on in March.  Others have, like the teaching unions, paused for negotiations, while the UCU higher education union has sent an e-ballot asking whether its members wanted to consider a ballot on the strikes despite no new proposal on offer.  Similarly, education strikes have been called off in Scotland and Wales.

In February the postal workers union, the CWU, cancelled its planned strike action after a legal challenge. The union’s legal teams cited laws that are ‘heavily weighted against working people’.  What happened to the TUC’s call for rolling actions against new anti-strike laws let alone existing ones?

Could it be the union leaderships are just surprised they have institutionally survived this challenge so far and want to quit before it gets too scary?  The government’s tactic is clear: pacify those workers they think have the most public sympathy (health, emergency, teachers), to leave the most militant industrial workers isolated and defeatable.

Despite 8 months of escalation, lost wages and increasing hardship, effective coordination, including mutual commitment to hold out for settlement across trade and sectors that redresses decades of decline and refuses war austerity, has failed to materialise.

Instead the union bureaucracies, refusing tuppence, have marched their members to the top of the hill to settle for tuppence ha’penny.  The piecemeal staggering of action over days and regions has undermined momentum and confidence to a point where some will now, if reluctantly, accept this as a win.

It is a defeat and union leaders have been all too eager to walk in to the governments cul-de-sac.  The causes of the strikes – capitalisms austerity to fund war, have not changed nor has the increasing hardship and impoverishment of the working class. 

Momentum is being lost and unification has failed, exemplified most starkly in the division amongst health unions. Paris burns while Britain waits by the embers.

On capitalisms other western front, Russia’s borders with Ukraine, Putin’s widely anticipated new offensive has begun with embarrassing failures that undermine its ability to change momentum as the war passes its anniversary. Western officials and analysts suggest Russia lacks capacity, except in numbers, while cautioning that the situation could quickly change.

UK defence secretary Ben Wallace claims that 97% of Russia’s effective military is now inside Ukraine, while his US counterpart says that “Russia is continuing to introduce large numbers of troops into the theater. Those troops are ill-equipped and ill-trained and because of that they’re incurring a lot of casualties.”

NATO strategists are using Bakhmut to fix Russian focus and bleed it white, as the Germans did with the French at Verdun n 1916.  Both Ukraine and Russia have staked their reputations on it.  The lack of dynamic is sheer bloody exhaustion on a mountain of workers corpses. 

The aim is to ferment Putin’s quarrelling forces, the Wagner machine versus the military establishment.  The impasse will most likely be broken by NATO’s technological tour de force once supplies have arrived on the battlefield, generating a replacement frenzy by the capitalist arms economy. 

Russian technology may be running short and its troops lacking in morale and quality, but as a cynical Russian proverb says “quantity has a quality all of its own”.  Any such break through would not be enough to end the conflict, so the cash machine and the meat grinder will continue hand in hand. 

Every diversion on both fronts, the class struggle at home and it’s bloody mirror in Ukraine is being thrown in.  Here, blaming small boats and refugees; blaming Gary Lineker and the BBC; blaming the sick, disabled and the just ‘had enough’ for failing Britain by not working.

Abroad, blaming Asia for not taking sides whilst blaming its largest economy, China, for taking sides, blaming Putin for being illegal.  Meanwhile we emerge from a cold costly winter not two steps forward but one step back, becoming poorer as the wealth of war profiteering reach new heights.

As revolutionists we stand by our perspective that peace begins with victory on the home front.  The effective collaboration of organised Trade Unionism with the state’s capitalist agenda is not a betrayal, it is their job! And in doing their job they also pursue the agenda of the war profiteers.

We know from the picket lines workers remain unhappy and call for them to refuse both the divisions and paltry compromises the union leaders are trying to sell them, to continue to fight for the outcome they wanted and for mutual solidarity with those still fighting. 

For rank and file coordination and escalation outside of the control of the Union structures.  Our prosperity and peace depend on it.

Article by Dreyfus

The recent furore over Gary Lineker’s tweet that has ignited a firestorm on the political right [and to a lesser degree on the left] after he suggested on Tuesday that the British home secretary, Suella Braverman, was using language reminiscent of 1930s Germany to promote a plan to stop asylum seekers who arrive on boats across the English Channel.

The right predictably attacked him for using his “celebrity status” to promote woke ideas with over 36 Tory supported by some Labour MPs demanding he be axed from the BBC.  The BBC reacted by dropping him from their flagship football programme Match of the Day.  This led to other co presenters and pundits as well as commentators refusing to take part or “fill in” for him.  The final straw came when numerous football players asked the Professional Footballers Association [PFA – Footballer Union] for advice on boycotting the BBC’s coverage and got the go-ahead leading to Football Focus and Final Score being cancelled while Match of the Day will show matches using Sky TVs coverage only.

Meanwhile some on the left have criticised Lineker for his wealth and being critical of Corbyn.

So why should we care much less support the BBC boycott? 

Firstly, we must understand that football is a sport supported by a mass of working-class people and even though football is now a game of money and corruption at the highest levels it still commands massive loyalty amongst the working class and to dismiss it is to dismiss the working class, something that happens far too often on the left.  We need to engage with the working class and for class struggle revolutionists this is of crucial importance because many on the left will dismiss it as it doesn’t fit their nice little boxes of how you should oppose the government/state.  Until we do this we will always be a fringe movement.  We have a much harder fight in the UK because the so-called leaders of our class are reformers and traitors whether politicians, union leaders or the left as a whole.

It is also important because for the past couple of years (here in UK) there has been a concerted effort to say anyone with human decency is “woke/snowflake” and an agenda is being pushed to try and turn people against this.  To most people the BBC was still the independent mouth of the media, a paragon of “democracy”, after all It’s “our BBC”… they’d never lie to us!

Only a few days ago The BBC has decided not to broadcast an episode of Sir David Attenborough’s flagship new series on British wildlife because of fears its themes of the destruction of nature would risk a backlash from Tory politicians and the right-wing press, the recent events shows that not only is the BBC not impartial but a state run broadcasting company but also how craven the they are, even more than the Lineker furore it shows that the BBC aren’t ‘neutral’  and on climate change they’re actively trying to down play the climate catastrophe.

What is happening now is a reaction to the “anti-woke” rhetoric put out there by the press/political parties etc and the general shift to the right that is taking the form around this. 

This is why it matters. It is also about how the state and media are sanctioning anyone who says anything that doesn’t fit their agenda while supporting those government fawners like Fiona Bruce as she defends domestic violence – when she described Stanley Johnson’s assault on his wife where he broke her nose as a “one-off”.  Despite condemnation from domestic violence charities and organisations the BBC defended her saying she was not expressing her personal views.

In the end this is not a football story. This is not a Gary Lineker story. This is a story about the government thinking it can silence criticism of its sickeningly inhumane policy of making applying for asylum essentially illegal. It is about the government using language that dehumanises and vilifies vulnerable people in desperate situations. Lineker called that out. The government objected. The BBC – fresh on the heels of censoring a David Attenborough programme for fear of government objections – behaved in a way that only amplified the point Lineker was making.

What Lineker said was important but no more important than what Joan Salter an 83-year holocaust survivor said in January when she confronted Braverman over the governments inhumane immigration policies. 

“The Holocaust began in a country where Jews and non-Jews had lived together in peace for generations. The small Jewish population – less than 1% – was so integrated into German culture that the majority looked upon themselves as Germans, with a variety of degrees of adherence to Jewish culture and traditions. So how did this relative harmony turn to hatred in such a short period of time? Through the use of language. The language of hate and division.

This was the method used by the Nazis to turn ordinary people, who went home each night to their wives and children, into the monsters capable of marching millions of Jews and other minorities – people just like them – into the gas chambers. It is what enabled ordinary soldiers to return to their wives and children, satisfied that they were protecting their country from social problems caused by people whom their government had convinced them were less than human”.

The government and the BBC want this to be a “Lineker furore”. It isn’t. It’s a callous and inhuman government furore.

We must take heart from the solidarity of the football community over this and build upon its foundation.

Article by Mikey Dredd

Anarchist and Radical Bookfairs

Glasgow – 27^th May (TBC)

Hull – 12^th August

https://www.facebook.com/events/758249155574985

Bradford – 2^nd September

https://www.facebook.com/events/662263585501697

Manchester – 4^th Nov TBC)

Picture with thanks to comrades at Tridni Valka

On the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we continue to argue that a new, if historically familiar, tendency is emerging – an internationalist revolutionary class struggle realignment, as a response to the reality of war and its existential threat. 

Our response is to continue building good relationships with revolutionary internationalist militants on this basis.  War will not cease without it.  This is not new, as the following article written in 2014 by comrades in AnarCom marking the Russian occupation of Crimea in the 100th anniversary of the First World War demonstrates:

1914-2014 – the Great War continues

“Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.”

― Edmund Burke

As the threat of war looms in Eastern Europe echoing the threat of a third World War yet to come, the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War One looms more as a lesson for our time than merely an obsession of academic geeks.

In 1914, a violent act of Slav nationalism took the brakes off Europe’s alliances and treaty systems driving rival power blocks into a devastating armed conflict that wracked Europe with its consequences for the century to come.

The current conflict is as much framed by treaties and timetables as then.  Russia wants its share of Ukraine before it slides into the framework of the EU and NATO and the stakes would be higher.

Before the current fog over the Crimea there were those in Britain who sought to revise the First World War and claim it as a source of national pride and dress up the death of 13 million as a price worth paying in a ‘just’ war. 

Were the millions of workers led into a war between ruling elites of bankers and aristocrats “lions led by donkeys” or true sons of freedom defending all that was good in Britain?

The debate is a smoke screen to hide one of the greatest mass murders in history.  It’s hardly surprising that those who want to celebrate the generals and spirit of Empire and claim the war as ‘just’, are the privileged great grandchildren of the ‘donkeys’.

The current conflict has the same roots as its historical predecessor – a conflict between elites, the gangster capitalism of the Russian oligarchs versus the free market plunderers of the neoliberal European club. ‘Just’ or ‘unjust’ is the new smokescreen again.

International conflicts between or within states only have one lesson, and that is those of us with no real stake, workers on both sides, die, lead or driven by the donkeys, to preserve their power, profit and privilege. 

The lessons now as then are the same – we die, they pillage, and their pride is our shame.

Article by Dreyfus

Demonstrations outside hotels housing asylum seekers have gained traction after an asylum seeker was filmed sexually propositioning a 15-year-old girl. Despite the man being arrested the ultra-right, who were aware of his arrest, capitalised on it and stirred up a violent protest outside a hotel housing asylum seekers in Knowsley, near Liverpool, despite the man in question not being a resident of the hotel. A police van was set on fire and projectiles were thrown at police by crowds of locals stirred up by those on the ultra-right such as Patriotic Alternative. Demos have now been organised by the ultra-right in various locations and its now possible that what happened in Knowsely could occur up and down the country.

Some were predicting this sort of thing would happen and it is not really surprising in a sense considering that significant numbers of asylum seekers have been placed in under-resourced, working class areas where there are political voids – all it takes is resentment in these places and instigation by the ultra-right to light the spark.

It is definitely the case that the concerns of these deprived working class communities should be taken seriously and listened to, but the ultra-right cannot be trusted at all and have a divisive and racist agenda. People should be aware that as usual these bigoted reactionaries are opportunistically trying to gain politically from the situation. And it should be noted that we should not be generalising about asylum seekers – a group of people should not be blamed for the behaviour of one person or a minority. It’s also an important fact to take note that sexual misconduct, abuse and misogyny is rife on the far- right and that there has been a long list of white men convicted of sexual abuse and paedophilia throughout the various far-right organisations. All sexual abuse is wrong and has nothing to do with ethnicity or race. It’s also the case that in an atmosphere of anti-refugee and racist hysteria, it is definitely possible that false allegations can be directed at asylum seekers and immigrants.

We also need to be aware that the underlying problem here is capitalism – which is why asylum seekers are here in the first place and why people born in this country are suffering due to the deliberate inequality, poverty and austerity and rising inflation and why ordinary people are deliberately deprived of resources and a decent quality of life – a dire problem faced by the working class internationally. It is for this reason that asylum seekers and immigrants are scapegoated – by the bourgeois media, culture etc as a diversion to point the finger at those from overseas who have legitimate reasons to be here and who have escaped from the most dangerous and repressive places on the planet, and escaped the brutality and murder of the border regime on the European mainland and around the Mediterranean and are just people trying to get on and live their lives, look after their families and who want the world to be a decent place. The far-right and the bourgeoisie and its media happily stoke up this hysterical scapegoating to gain from this and it is the ruling class who runs the show to their own class advantage, they are the ones to blame for our suffering.

It’s the far right who help the ruling class and their capitalist system, which feeds off of the misery of the international working class, dispossessed and oppressed, which includes asylum seekers and immigrants,  as well as those of our class who are born here. It is the far right and their ultra-nationalism (capitalism taken to an extreme) that robs workers through exploitation and punishes the poor with austerity and the inequality of the class system. Nationalism has always been and will always be an anti-working-class ideology that divides the working class for the benefit of the ruling class. And it is the rich who create inflation with year on year profits – In order for profits to keep increasing wages and hours have to be cut and prices have to be raised, the rich all the while making obscene profits and hoarding everything, including most of the land and resources for themselves – so nationalism can’t us help at all and all nationalists actually defend the very system that causes us harm. Nationalism also deprives us of our freedom by enslaving the individual and robbing us of our autonomy for the benefit of the state, and again therefore the rich rulers who control it.

At the end of the day it is the class traitors of the far right who obsequiously serve the interests of the ruling class and that means racist scapegoating as a diversion to defend capitalism and divide the working class – this can only be at our grave expense and very much to our detriment as a class, simply continuing and worsening our misery and turning worker against worker. Instead, what the working class needs is to unite as much as possible against the ruling class and the far right and resist capitalism, wage the class war for itself and by itself, build autonomous alternatives from below and strengthen our communities in solidarity with each other as members of the international working class – rather than dividing and weakening ourselves to the advantage of the rich – then we will be genuinely getting somewhere and fighting for ourselves and our class interests – rather than going against them and being bootlickers for the bourgeoisie.

Nationalists and fascists are reactionaries who want to turn the clock back for their own political gain and power – they cannot be trusted and are anti-working class. They must be resisted now more than ever before. The far right is awash with power-hungry class traitors, weirdos, wrong uns, nonces and sexual abusers who want to use ordinary working-class people for their own ends and the working class will gain nothing from trusting them, especially as things now are so desperate for the working class. The far right have no real solutions and will stab workers in the back as they always have when gaining strength, they have nothing to offer the working class but division, hate and class betrayal and class defeat.

Article by Tom Hughes

New AnarCom flags ready for the picket lines!

Brianna Ghey was just 16 when she was found, stabbed to death on Saturday the 11th of February. Two 15-year olds, a boy and a girl, have now been charged with her murder, denied by police and government as a hate crime. Despite police claims that there is no evidence of the motive being hate-fuelled, Brianna’s friends have repeatedly said that she was harassed by gangs and received threats over her gender identity. Vigils in protest have been held across the UK, and other parts of the world, in her memory. 

Ghey has been harassed by the media and through accounts online, deadnaming her and promoting further violence against transgender people. Articles have been quick to attack activists for saying that this attack leaves blood on the hands of TERFs and governments who promote violence against transgender people. At the Anarcom Network, however, we ask how this murder is any different to the state-sponsored murder of other trans people. The backlash against those seeking justice for Brianna demonstrates clearly what society we live in, and who is at fault for it. 

Governments have rolled out severe anti-trans laws in recent months. Both Sunak and Starmer say that ‘biological sex matters.’ Last July, the Conservative Equalities Minister, Mike Freer, stepped down, accusing the government of funding a ‘culture war’ against transgender people which he ‘fundamentally disagreed with.’ There is no government that stands to protect transgender people. 

Under the current conservative government, the only transgender health clinic providing support to minors has been shut, and plans to ban private transgender healthcare have been drafted. Brianna Ghey herself received private hormone replacement therapy, using DIYHRT; not from private healthcare providers, but through online pharmaceutical orders, this treatment of transgender people clearly demonstrates the aims of those in power – eradication. 

Everyone is familiar with the photo of the nazi book burning, but how many people know what books are being burnt in the photo? The books are from the German Institute of Sexology, which contained books written on transgender healthcare. This nazi burning set back transgender healthcare by around 100 years, and similar attacks are being conducted today. In Florida, libraries are being looted and stripped of books, so that they can be confirmed to be in accordance with state views. Don’t Say Gay bills are only getting more brutal in the US, and more anti-trans healthcare bills are currently being drafted and passed through congress. Other western countries are following suit – the UK is only growing stronger in its anti-protest and censorship laws. 

Brianna Ghey was a politically active young woman whose transgender identity was hidden by the media until it could no longer be kept secret. Upon the reveal, media outlets released a torrent of transphobic bile, all the while asserting that her murder was not hate related. The AnarCom Network stands with all transgender people against state and individual violence and the growing government funded culture wars taking place. Brianna Ghey must be remembered as a victim of the culture war, and as a reminder of why we must stand against hatred, wherever we see it. 

Mermaids – UK charity supporting trans and gender-diverse children, young people and their families.

Mindline trans + – Emotional and mental health support helpline for anyone identifying as trans, non-binary, gender variant, and their families, friends, colleagues and carers. Their phone line is open Mondays and Fridays, 8pm to midnight. Ring 0300 330 5468.

Spectra – Peer-led trans services accessible to all trans and gender-diverse people, including 1-2-1 health advocacy support, and counselling, peer mentoring, referral and signposting to relevant partners, talks and workshops and monthly online and in-person social groups. 

Stonewall – UK charity campaigning for LGBT equality.

Article by ACN member

Communities nationwide are worried about a lack of transparency, meaningful progress and a willingness from service professionals and authorities to accept responsibility with regards to their failings on recent and historic CSE cases.

There has been a growing sense of miss trust and anger which the far right has capitalised on and identified as a propaganda/recruitment tool.

This had led to some survivors’ stories being hijacked by the far right (often against their wishes) in order to spread discrimination and recruit others into their ranks, thus further exploiting survivors.

Local communities are vulnerable to this, as many people are desperately looking for answers and assurance that lessons have been/will be learnt.

The far-right narrative aims to push accountability in the wrong places with many groups claiming that sexual abuse is a racial issue and that the whole Muslim community are complicit in. They also focus solely on white girls and disregard the horrific experiences of young people from other backgrounds, cultures and ethnicities. The far right also ignore male abuse survivors.

Perpetrators of CSE are often in a position of power to the victim (movie star, millionaire, football coach, family member, religious leader, famous musician, social media influencer, TV personality, role model etc the list goes on). A key theme in many recent CSE case (eg so called “grooming gangs”, Benny Bennell and historic CSE cases in UK football and the Jeffery Epinstien scandal) is that victims were often extremely vulnerable and from complex backgrounds with little to no role models and an absence of primary caregivers such as parents.

It is not ethnicity or culture that determines how perpetrators identify their victims, it is usually class. Young people from working class backgrounds have less access to services, and due to labelling and stereotyping, tell-tale behaviours are usually brushed aside as bad behaviour. Further to this, working class young people are segregated from wider society which makes them extra vulnerable to been targeted. Authorities in the UK have long discriminated against and failed to listen to vulnerable working-class young people, which often mean things such as CSE can be missed, this is well documented.

It is important to remember that most sexual abusers in the UK are white, and also that CSE cases affect young women and men of all backgrounds and cultures.

Muslim survivors of CSE have mentioned that because they are often ignored, this can add to the shame they already feel in coming forward and seeking justice against the perpetrators. They can often feel that no one will listen or care about them as the media focus has been on white victims of such abuse.

There has been systemic failure of services to safeguard young people country wide. For example, recent CSE cases in West Yorkshire have been subject to a review into the failures of authorities. The interim report has been released and is conducted by Dr Peel.

The Peel report states that service professionals, including the police, pinned blame on two of the victims that came forward. Service professionals felt that the victims were merely behaving in an over sexualised manner and went as far as to record the girls’ statements about the abuse but took no action blaming certain behaviours on the service users.

Victim blaming, bias/labelling and lack of action feature predominantly in CSE cases, as does lack of accountability and poor decision making.

Such instances are completely unacceptable, for any professional to brush off potential safeguarding issues by blaming the victim is not good enough. This absolute failure in safeguarding has allowed prolific CSE cases to continue and has led to some perpetrators escaping justice.

Many far-right groups often claim to march against “grooming gangs”, but they will not address the large number of convicted paedophiles in their ranks or their casual misogyny towards women.

The majority of far right “protests” on grooming gangs are not grounded in legitimate community problems, and they should be labelled for what they often are…a far-right fascist march with the intention of targeting Muslims and other minority ethnic groups.

Survivors need genuine change and to be involved where possible in the conversations and reflections so that we can build a more cohesive structure that doesn’t just ignore the concerns of the people that have been affected by this issue. It is not just policy change that is needed, but indeed a change of culture among professionals too.

We stand with ALL survivors of CSE, and we won’t sit by and let the far-right further exploit survivors for their own selfish gains.

Love and Solidarity to all victims of CSE abuse.

Article by (Anon) CSE survivor and FLAF member.