Whatever happened to the AWG

This is a text of a recent talk I gave in Ireland on the 
recent demise of  an English anarchist group called the 
Anarchist Workers Group.  Some of you might be interested 
in it.  I am a member of a small Irish anarchist 
organisation called the Workers Solidarity  Movement (WSM).  
This article by default will also tell you  a bit about our 
politics.  

SOME TERMS

DAM Direct Action Movement - Anarcho_syndicalists, British
     section of the IWA.

The emergence of the Anarchist Workers Group at the start 
of the 1990's was something the WSM welcomed.  Most of the 
people involved initially with the AWG came from the South 
London branch of the Direct Action Movement.  At least one 
founder member of the Anarchist Communist Federation (ACF) 
was also involved initially in the AWG.  This meant they 
also had a branch in the North of England made up of people 
from Manchester and Liverpool.

Our welcoming of the AWG was mainly based on a number of 
reasons.  Their experience within DAM had led them to 
reject Syndicalism, specifically as a rejection of DAM's 
policy of seeking to build revolutionary trade unions.  
They also accepted the basis of the Platform of the 
Libertarian Communists, i.e. they wanted to build an 
organisation which would have a high degree of theoretical 
and tactical unity.

On Ireland they took a firm anti-imperialist line, and 
actually took place in activity around this.  No other 
anarchist group in England had done so at the time and if 
anything the other organisations have retreated on this 
issue since.  On a more incidental level the AWG seemed not 
to be suffering from the Trot-phobia that prevents most 
English anarchist groups taking part in anything but their 
own fronts or local groups where no other left tendency is 
represented.

Now just over two years later the AWG no longer exists.  In 
the course of those two years they published four magazines 
and grew from 12 to 30 members, before shrinking back down 
to 10.  Last May the survivors changed the name of the 
organisation to Socialism from Below and decided they were 
going beyond anarchism.  What I want to talk about is why 
this happened and what can we learn from this experience.

The WSM is in a unique position to do this as not only do 
we have the benefit of hindsight but we also have the 
advantage of having all their internal documents and 
bulletins.  In addition WSM members including myself 
attended two of their national conferences.  On two 
occasions a couple of their members came over to Ireland 
and in addition one of their members was an ex-member of 
the WSM who visited Ireland on a regular basis.

The AWG got off to a promising start although the first 
issue of Socialism from Below trod on many toes 
particularly in its excellent analysis of all that was 
wrong with British anarchism.  Alongside it a pamphlet 
called "In place of compromise" set out a strategy for 
anarchists in the trade unions.  This represented an 
advance of other anarchist positions at the time which 
either ignored the unions (Class War), attempted to build 
alternative unions (DAM) or rejected any participation in 
the unions (ACF).  In place of compromise in fact shared 
many common features with the WSM policy on trade unions.

The problems of the AWG fell into two major categories, 
political and organisational.  I will deal with the 
organisational end first.  Throughout its short life the 
AWG never managed to regularly produce internal bulletins 
or keep the members informed of decisions made by the 
national committee.  People had to be forced to act as 
national officers e.g. Treasurer and nearly always resigned 
after 6 months of half doing the job.  As a result subs 
were never regularly collected from the members and money 
from sales of Socialism from Below was rarely recovered.  
Leaflets and publications were being constantly produced at 
the last moment , sometimes resulting in serious if 
humorous mistakes.  One leaflet on abortion for instance 
included a call for "Free women on demand".

This was a disastrous way for an organisation to operate 
and left many members confused and demoralised.  Yet no 
real attempts were made to sort the mess out, instead at 
every conference new people would be forced too manage the 
mess.  Any attempt to discuss solutions was brushed off as 
"An organisational solution to a political problem".  There 
was a political problem all right, the failure to treat 
organisation as a serious task in itself.

The political problems of the AWG came from a number of 
sources, some to do with the background of the members some 
connected with the general climate at the time.  I will 
deal with them one by one.

Anarchist Theory
The AWG was aware like ourselves of the fact that anarchism 
as a set of ideas is a bit impoverished.  Its core ideas on 
the state, the Russian revolution and the role of a 
revolutionary organisation are the best on the left, if 
perhaps they lack development.  However on imperialism, 
women's oppression, racism and a host of other issues there 
is either no theory or one that has been lifted from 
somewhere else in the hope that no-one will notice.

In addition most anarchist organisations do not seem to 
mind.  Within all the British anarchist groups 
contradictory positions are held by different people and no 
attempt is made to resole this fundamental problem.  
Instead blind activism is substituted in the hope that if 
you are busy enough the holes will not show. This is fine 
until you met up with another left organisation.  In this 
case you bailed out and left it to them, this perhaps 
reached its high point with the anti-poll tax and anti-war 
campaigns.  The anarchists incapable of challenging the 
trots on their domination of the existing groups or 
campaigns instead set up their own.

This was an obvious problem, the AWG's solution to it 
however degenerated from the comical to the dangerous.  
Initially a load of areas were pin pointed and commissions 
set up to develop theory in these areas.  None of these 
commissions completed their however as most members were on 
two or three of them at once.  They collapsed under their 
own workload.  Individuals still had a strong commitment to 
theoretical work so it settled out that informal groups 
would meet socially and discuss a particular set of ideas.  
As there was seldom an internal bulletin there work did not 
reach the organisation as a whole.

This resulted in the rapid unofficial promotion of a small 
group of people to the "leadership" of the organisation.  
By June of 1990 this resulted in a National conference 
where almost all the motions had come from this small group 
and it was obvious to us that the rest of the membership 
could not follow a fair proportion of the arguments or 
realise the full effect of what was being debated.  On at 
least one occasion a motion was passed despite their being 
serious factual errors in the argument of those arguing for 
it, errors that no one else picked up on.

Internal education
The AWG because it was not afraid to face the Trots on 
their own ground succeeded in winning over several members 
of other left groups, including at least two SWP branch 
committee members.  These people had however come from a 
background where anarchists were presented as a group of 
middle class wallies without two ideas to rub together (If 
this sounds familiar it should) or as dropouts, incapable 
of dealing with modern society and wishing for a return to 
living on the land.  Within the AWG however there was no 
formal educationals on the anarchist tradition but a fair 
few articles slagging off green anarchists

At the last conference I was shocked to discover that one 
person who had been in the AWG for over a year knew by his 
own admission virtually nothing about the anarchists in the 
Spanish revolution.  Not surprisingly many of these ex-
trots came to believe that the AWG must be a radical 
departure from anarchism for it seemed radically different 
then what they had been told anarchism was.

