     Anarchy in the UK, a personal view

This is my account of the anarchy in the UK festival
that took place in London in October of 1994.

The first thing to emphasise about anarchy in the UK 
festival is it's positive points.  It gave us a good 
opportunity to meet anarchists from many other countries, 
and to exchange on an informal level ideas and our 
experiences.  For people from Ireland which lacks any 
historical tradition of anarchism or any sizeable 
organisation it was heartening to see thousands of people 
who called themselves anarchists.

The good side was almost incidental to the event however.  
The cultural end of things appeared to go off well but the 
political end was always seconds away from complete 
disaster.  It was organised only in the most minimum 
fashion, space had been booked for meetings and one or 
two speakers obtained but beyond that things were 
chaotic.  There was no organised translation which meant 
comrades who were not fluent in English were completely 
left out.  A squat had also been opened to provide 
accommodation for the week.

This was the organisers fault, the main individual behind 
it, Ian Bone seemed to play no part in maintaining things, 
just paying the occasional royal visit to venues.  (He would 
stroll in, wave at a few people and leave).  To us it seemed 
that only four or five or the organisers made any effort to 
hold things together, the rest vanished early on.  This 
meant the international rally was held together by one guy 
who was running around trying to line up speakers and 
start a collection while chairing the meeting at the same 
time.  Most of the workshops never happened.  The events 
promised in the advance publicity for the most part, never 
occurred.

We expected this going over and most organised 
anarchists in Britain expected it.  This led to the decision by 
all the national organisations to boycott the event 
altogether.  This was a mistake as they lost the opportunity 
to address those attending the festival and it also made it 
difficult to make use of the venue that were organised for a 
concrete purpose.  To talk about the events we attended

The anarchist bookfair, an annual event which the festival 
was coinciding with was very successful.  Thousands 
attended this, the main hall and corridors were lined with 
stalls and their were meetings going on continuously.  The 
meetings themselves, although promising were dry and 
often irrelevant to those that attended.  There was one 
good meeting I caught the second half of with somebody 
from the French O.C.L. talking about his experiences of 
1968 in Paris.

I was told there were more people than ever at the 
bookfair, this was attributed to the festival.  One worrying 
thing was that despite this huge attendance the national 
anarchist organisations in Britain can only claim a 
combined membership of less than 200.  I presume at least 
some of the thousands that attended are involved in local 
groups but its clear that a lot of potential is being wasted in 
terms of making a national impact.

On the Sunday the only event that caught my interest was 
the "Levitation of parliament".  As a joke event connected 
with a week of serious meetings and activity this would 
have been fun.  The problem was the week was scattered 
with meetings that had nothing to do with anarchism, 
including religious ones on magic and paganism.  As a 
result I'm unsure whether this event was meant to be a 
media grabbing wind up or not.  Also in this context it had 
the harmful effect of re-inforcing the stereo-type of 
anarchists as oddball nutters.

A lot of people turned up for this, probably up to a 
thousand.  This was quite funny as the police were 
unprepared for such number and initially only 8-10 cops 
were to be seen.  They panicked at the sight of the growing 
crowd and called for re-inforcements so that over the next 
hour many vans arrived, sirens howling until we had a 
line of police facing us.  A helicopter and a few horses also 
arrived.  This ended with the burning of USA and British 
flags and then everyone drifted off.

On Monday I was helping in the organising of a workshop 
on using the internet (the global computer network).  
Fastbreeder BBS and Spunk Press had organised this, it 
attracted about 60 or so people.  It was good as a practical 
session, giving people information that they could use 
when they went home.   It was also good from a 
networking point of view as I got to meet many anarchists 
who I had previously only known through e-mail.  it was 
also the first demonstration of the possibility of doing 
something serious and worthwhile with the week.

That evening that was what was billed as an "International 
Anti-fascist Rally" in the LSE.  I arrived a bit late for this, in 
the middle of a contribution from two French anarchists.  
There were two interesting speakers Larry O'Hara who 
talked about the connections between the fascists and M15 
(British secret police) and Lorenzo Evins a black anarchist 
from the USA who talked about the need to combat racism 
and not just concentrate on fascism.  Some New Age 
Travellers also spoke from the floor about the physical 
attacks they have been experiencing lately and appealing 
for help in finding out who was behind these attacks.

A number of problems also arose at this even however that 
were to be repeated for all the major meetings.  Their was 
no effective chairing so that some speakers were allowed 
to ramble on for as long as they liked, even if they were 
drunk.  On a couple of occasion drunks were also allowed 
to interrupt from the floor, and a stupid dialogue then 
ensued between the speaker and the drunk over some 
personal matter which many of us could not understand.  
When it came to taking contributions from the floor at the 
end the chair did not see some people until he was shouted 
at by others for 'ignoring' them.  These problems meant 
that the meeting lacked direction or focus and so came 
across as somewhat farcical.

I spent Tuesday having informal meeting with different 
anarchists I had met so far.  This activity was the most 
useful of the week.  Other people reported that the various 
workshops they had read about in the brochure had not 
taken place.

On Tuesday evening London Class War held a meeting in 
one of the festival venues but independent of the festival.  
They had been giving out a leaflet denouncing the festival 
during the week and predicting that far from shaking the 
world it would not even shake a bar table.  The meeting 
started off well if very basic, with a concentration on the 
need for anarchists to be organised.  However in response 
to questions one of the speakers went on a 20 minute 
macho rant were he tried to convince the audience that the 
test of being working class was getting drunk and getting 
into fights.  He also claimed that he knew someone from a 
wealthy background who become working class by going 
out with a skinhead women and getting I love Britain 
tattooed on his arm!  Despite the promising start it 
appeared this meeting had also become infected with the 
bizarre atmosphere of the week.

On Wednesday and Thursday we attempted to go to 
workshops that had been advertised in the program.  
These were to be held in the Cool Tan a large squatted 
building near Brixton tube station.  Only two  of these 
actually took place and apparently many of the workshops 
advertised never happened.  One that did take place was 
an impromptu one on 'organising the rest of the week'.  
Organisation had more or less collapsed at this stage, none 
of the organisers for instance turned up for this.  The 
reason the workshops had not taken place it transpired 
was that space and topics had been booked but no 
arrangements made to find someone to lead off or facilitate 
the discussion!

On Thursday we decided the best thing to do was to 
arrange a series of meetings ourselves in the Cool Tan for 
the Friday so we spent Thursday producing and 
distributing posters to advertise these.  On Thursday 
evening I spoke at the International rally which was 
terribly organised.  Only one speaker (Lorenzo) had been 
got in advance and all but one of the organisers had 
abandoned the meeting.  The remaining guy was running 
around trying to arrange speakers and a collection as well 
as chairing.  He was putting on a great effort but its 
impossible for one person to hold together a meeting of 
that size (200+ people) and it also appeared he lacked 
experience of chairing as he was unable to deal with the 
constant interruptions of a couple of drunks from the floor.

Earlier on Thursday evening there had been a picket of 
Brixton police station against the killing of a Black man by 
the police earlier in the week.  (He had 'fallen' from the 
balcony of a flat being raided by immigration police).  Well 
over 100 anarchists turned up for this, many of them 
masked up, some even wearing balaclavias.  The picket 
was somewhat farcical being almost completely white 
despite being in the centre of Brixton a London suburb 
where many Blacks live (and that was the front-line of the 
inner city riots in 1981).  It had been called by the trotskyist 
Socialist Workers Party.  About 12 of there members 
marched around in a circle in the centre of the picket 
chanting 'No Justice, No peace', obviously somewhat 
freaked by the surrounding mass of anarchists.

On Friday we turned up to find the room we were to hold 
the meeting in had no lighting, no windows and no 
electricity.  It had a couple of punks asleep in the middle of 
the floor.  So after waking them up and explaining that a 
meeting was starting in  bout five minutes we wandered 
around and managed to dig up enough mats and chairs for 
people to sit in, a long piece of cable and a bare light bulb 
with some clear plastic struck around half of it.  It looked 
OK if not beautiful by the end.

We gave two talks, one on the IRA cease-fire and the other 
on what sort of organisations anarchists need.  We 
followed this up by a workshop in which everyone talked 
of their experiences in campaigns and how anarchists 
could reach out and work alongside other people.  About 
40 people turned up to one or all of these sessions and 
considering the haphazard arrangements everything went 
very well.  It also proved that despite appearances there 
were a number of well motivated and serious people at the 
conference, they were just hard to find in the general 
bedlam.

The police

The week started with a minimal police presence, I suspect 
they knew of the chaotic and confused nature of the 
organisation of the festival and so expected no one to turn 
up.  So the first reports were just of them being places 
where you would expect them, like the squat opened to 
provide accommodations for people from outside London.  
All this was to change over the course of the week.

On Sunday 23rd the event happened which started to get 
the police worried.  This strangely enough was the 
'levitation of parliament'!! but it was obvious the police 
had grossly underestimated the numbers that would 
attend.  I arrived on time at 2:00 by which there were about 
100 anarchists and 8 police.  Over the next hour the crowd 
grew and the cops panicked calling in re-inforcements 
which arrived sirens howling.  Soon we were faced with 
about 200 police including a circling helicopter and some 
riot horses.  Everything was peaceful however, the high 
point being an attempt to pull down one of the union jacks 
so it could be burnt.  In the end the flag burning went 
ahead with ones people had brought themselves, including 
a union jack and a stars and stripes.

On Monday 24th about 200 people took part in an 
occupation of part of the M11 road under construction 
around London.  There has been a long running campaign 
against this.  The security guards got rough with a few 
protesters breaking cameras and ripping clothes but there 
were no serious injuries or arrests that I heard of.

On Wednesday 26th I took part at a meeting to discuss the 
poor organisation of events to date.  At this I was told that 
the cops were now taking photos of everyone entering or 
leaving the accommodation squat.  The excuse for this was 
the death of an Italian anarchist there the previous night, 
various rumours attributed this to suicide or a drugs 
overdose.  They had also taken to randomly stopping and 
searching people leaving any of the venues on their own.  
Later that evening I was waiting for a meeting outside one 
of the venues (Conway hall).  It's on one corner of a square 
which has a park in the middle.  A full cop van repeatedly 
circled the park with all the cops staring out the window at 
those of us outside the door.

Saturday was when things got out of hand.  There was a 
CND march in London that day and the organisers of the 
festival suggested as many anarchists as possible show up 
to march as a block in the march.  On Friday evening the 
Police had gone on local TV to say anarchists were 
planning a riot in the city centre the next day and that 
shoppers should stay away.

I turned up early to find about 2000 marchers assembling 
including maybe 150 anarchists.  There were also 25 riot 
horses, cops on the tube station roof with riot gear, cops on 
all the overlooking office block with cameras, lines of cops 
blocking every visible road junction and bizarrly two 
police launches on the river.

As the march started I joined the rest of the anarchists 
around three black flags towards the centre of the march.  
Some had masked up because of the cameras but the 
atmosphere was non-hostile, we were partially 
intermingled with CND pensioners and children.  Some of 
the CND crowd had been made nervous by the police 
scare stories of the night before but by the time we set off 
they were happily chatting to us.

As the march proceeded we passed about 20 cops frisking 
two anarchists against a wall.  Some people wanted to try 
and rescue them but we were so obviously outnumbered 
that most just kept walking.  Seconds later we passed a 
spot where about 200 police were assembled on each side 
of the road in padded jackets, boots and wearing gloves.  
As we reached this spot the cops on the left started to walk 
through the march, as if they were crossing the road.  As 
they got to midway however they started grabbing any 
marchers who looked like an anarchist i.e. punks, crustys, 
people masked up or those carrying flags.  There were so 
many cops they had lifted about 100 people straight off. 
12-15 German anarchists realising what was happening 
linked arms.  The cops from the right rushed in, punching 
them in the stomach until they let go and dragged them off 
too.  This was the only resistance put up due both to the 
surprise nature of the attack and the fact we were 
outnumbered at least two to one.  One grey haired old 
women from CND did punch a cop but they ignored her.  
Those of us who had escaped arrest continued on in 
shocked silence, there was little we could do except choose 
to get arrested as well.

The police had shut down every tube station on the way 
into Trafalgar square.  Every road was blocked by a double 
line of police, normally with more polices videoing the 
marchers from the top of a van.  A helicopter circled the 
march.  Trafalgar square was completely ringed with 
police, every road off it had a triple line of police across it, 
with a line of vans behind them.  The entrance to the park 
at one end had several ambulances, backed up with their 
doors open.  At this stage there were no more than 20-30 
anarchists left.  Leaving the march I passed line after line 
of full cop vans, one line consisting of 26 vans.  Somebody 
had indeed been planning a riot!

I walked to the London greenpeace bookfair in Conway 
hall about 2 miles away.  As we approached it we noticed 
another 6 police vans parked down a side street.  When we 
got there we discovered an ad-hoc defence campaign was 
being set up and that police vans were outside all of the 
festival venues.  Of the 100 or so hauled off from the march 
most were just held (and searched) till the march got out of 
sight.  Some 30 were arrested and of these only two were 
charged (one for assault!!!) and the other for possessing a 
knife.  They were released after several hours.

Of course as an anarchist I expect this sort of behaviour 
from the police.  I've also nothing against people defending 
themselves from or having a go at the police providing in 
doing so they have the general support of those around 
them  (i.e. I'm not into a small group provoking a riot to 
get other people heads bashed).  I've written this account 
both for the information it contains and for those who see 
the police as a neutral body following some sort of rules of 
fair play.

Was there anything we could have done to stop the arrests.  
Probably not, we were massively outnumbered, they were 
about 3000 police along the route of the march, 
outnumbering the anarchist contingent at about 20 to 1.  
They had 2ft+ truncheons, padded clothes, horses, riot 
shields, helicopters, vans (they drove these at speed 
through crowds during the Poll Tax riot) and presumably 
plastic bullets if they wanted them.  As the arrests show 
we had nothing that even they could consider a weapon 
(I'd guess the knife was of the Swiss army variety rather 
than a two foot machete).  Those who attempted non 
violent resistance were beaten up feet from me.  Even if the 
rest of the march had come to our aid we were still 
outnumbered and many of the marchers were young 
children or pensioners.  This time the police had us cold.

The march was the last event of the festival I attended and 
really it was typical of it.  The week was characterised by 
lack of organisation and communication.  For the most part 
those that had come from other countries were left out in 
the cold by the organisers with one or two exceptions.  
Because of the boycott by most of the British anarchist 
groups there was almost no voice other that the counter 
culture there.  I suspect for anyone for whom the week was 
their first exposure to anarchism it was a disaster.  The 
impression you would be left with was of drunken lunatics 
into looking different but incapable of organising a piss up 
in a brewery.  One member of the Solidarity Federation I 
met asked me if thought the conference would put British 
anarchism back ten or fifteen years.

On the other hand it was an opportunity to meet a lot of 
motivated people many of whom were involved locally in 
activity.  There were opportunities to address many people 
at the major meetings and even set up your own fringe 
meetings.  We did this with some success considering their 
were only two of us there.  That perhaps is the main 
tragedy of the week, despite the sloppy organisation a lot 
of it could have been turned around into a political event 
rather than a theatre of the absurd.  But none of the British 
organisations tried to do this.  The fact that they were 
unwilling or unable to do so suggests that they are just as 
much ghettoised as the organisers of the event, just in a 
different ghetto.

Andrew Flood
Andrew Flood

anflood@macollamh.ucd.ie
Phone: 706(2389)

