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Review: "Unfinished Business - The politics of Class War - A British
Road to Anarchism
"The Class War Federation is not another party seeking to gain power or
a new way of telling you what to do. Class war is what happens when
ordinary people have had enough of being pushed around and decide to
fight back."
So starts Unfinished Business, the book produced by Class War as a
definitive statement of their politics following their stocking
filler, Class War: A Decade of Disorder. This statement of populism
is followed by a list of "working class" resistance in Britain,
ranging from the 1381 peasants revolt up to the poll tax and prison
revolts of 1990. Finally there is a call for the destruction of wage
labour, capitalism and the state rounded of with a denunciation of
middle class intellectuals of the Left and Right.
Whereas Left wing populism has rooted itself in admiration for the old
Soviet Union, and the Right has cultivated a nostalgia for Nazi
Germany, Class War centre their populism on a British sense of
identity. Rather than relying on an imported ideology (which always
gives the intellectuals undue predominance) they are trying to
rekindle a radical ordinariness drawing on a sense of working class
identity rather than on formulae for saving the world. Very nineties.
In the revolts of the sixties and early seventies, the very process of
struggle opened up a series of problems which have shattered the
universalism of euro-centric socialism. The radical subjectivity of
Black Power, the Women's Liberation Movement and the Gay Liberation
Front erupted through the workerist gloss which dominated all
discussion of Revolution. Of course, this lead to a counter-offensive
by the state and its cultural organs -- universities offered courses
in Women's Studies, Black Studies, the New Left then participated in
the promulgation of insidious "identity politics" -- a veritable
perestroika of the political subject manifest both at the level of the
introduction of professional advertising to political campaigning and
the organisation of radical conferences. Increased individualisation is
shown in both areas -- the advertisers with their careful analysis of
the voting population based on analysis of consumption patterns
developed for target adverts at distinct segments of the population,
and amongst radicals a recognition of distinct interests within an
increasingly fragmented opposition.
This was directed by the states cultural organs. Television viewing was
fragmented with an increasing variety of channels. The local state
funded a variety of community groups stressing ethnicity. The Greater
London Council offered sinecures particularly from the Women's
Committee to ensure that well paid middle class women dominated the
discussion about gender. Meanwhile Gay capitalists from the Pink
Economy increasingly dominated such events as Gay Pride.
In the eighties the Leftist sects lost a lot of ground. Key cadres
left, sometimes taking leftists business with them (eg Pluto books cut
its links with the Socialist Workers Party and published a book about
Princess Diana), others preferred a state sinecure to unpaid party
work. Despite the "Beyond the Fragments" conference and the Debate of
the Decade at the end of the seventies, the left has been unable to
contain the disparate interests. This should come as no surprise as
within its ranks are those who have been championing identity politics,
using all manner of post modern theorisation to bamboozle the casual
reader with a list of continental writers who can only be read in the
original foreign.
It was in this context that the proletarian fundamentalism of british
autonomism emerged in distinction from the Left. From the mid
seventies a boisterous anarchist fringe used to gather at the tail end
of demonstrations using bad language and such slogans as "Two, Four,
Six, Eight, Masturbate and drown the state!" Not content with
ideological positions drawn from Kronstadt and the Spanish Revolution,
we saw it as essential to see the Left as counter-revolutionary in the
here and now. This meant confrontation with the Left.
Fascism/Anti-Fascism
Unfinished Business is peppered with quotes from Eclipse and
Re-emergence of the Communist Movement by Jean Barrot and Francois
Martin. This book, published in 1974 by Black and Red, became a
source book. It offered a critique that was rooted in a close reading
of Marx, it offered a Marx uncontaminated by Lenin or Trotsky --
"Communism is not a program one puts into practice or makes others put
into practice, but a social movement." This book also gave a
theoretical basis to a rejection of democracy and anti-fascism.
After the battle of Lewisham in 1977, where a demonstration against
the National Front led to riotous assaults on the police, the Anti
Nazi League was set up. Those of us who had seen the Left in action
that day knew exactly what they were up to. At Lewisham they had
called on people to stop fighting the police with crap like the police
are not the real enemy, and we should not alienate (middle class)
support. For many Black youth it was a good opportunity to strike back
at a form of organised thuggery much more significant than the Hitler
groupies. The Anti Nazi League wanted to control opposition to the
Nazis and funnel this opposition into voting Labour ("without
illusions" in the case of the SWP). The autonomist wing emerging from
anarchism saw clearly that the Left was the first line of defence of
the state and had to be treated as such. Things came to head when the
Anti Nazi League staged a meeting in Friends Meeting House featuring a
French anti-racist cop, and the Mayor of Bologna (in fact only his
deputy turned up). Tony Benn was also there. He had been active in
developing links with the Italian Communist Party during the period of
the Historic Compromise between the Italian CP and the Christian
Democrats. This was a declaration of war, in that the Mayor of Bologna
had called out tanks to attack workers and students on the streets of
Bologna. A contingent of forty occupied a corner of the hall, to the
dismay of the stewards. Malicious rumours were circulated about the
autonomists being fascists -- an old technique favoured by the CP
during the Spanish civil war. The meeting was heckled, but when four
women went to the toilet (in a group for protection) they were
physically attacked by some leftist men. Word got through to the body
of autonomists still in the hall, who then joined the fracas in the
corridor. Having thus been manipulated out of the hall the leftists
made a desultory attempt to attack us. There were fights in the street
later that night.
From then the spirit of confrontation with left continued. The annual
CND rally always offered a good occasion. Sometimes we would take the
head of the march, we would never go where political groups were meant
to be. The CND was simply a leftist front building up electoral
support for the Labour Party as the ANL was used before. We knew that
the Labour leader Clement Attlee sanctioned the dropping of nuclear
weapons on Japan in 1945 and at each rally we wanted to attack the
current Labour leader, who then had to be protected by the police. At
other meetings such leftist politicians as former energy minister Tony
Benn came under attack. This hypocritical scumbag who was personally
involved in importing Namibian Uranium called us a product of
Thatcherism.
This was the background for the emergence of Class War. As the
autonomist wing of anarchism sharpened its attack on the Left, more
traditional wings of anarchism did not know what to do. They found
that their ideological grip was being weakened over the influx of
post-punk youth. Sometimes they joined in the fascist smears organised
by the media and the left, sometimes they treated as irrelevant
councilists. However faced with the increasing irrelevance of
syndicalism particularly amongst unemployed youth who had no great
desire to become industrial workers, they tried to go with the flow.
But they always kept most of their ideological baggage even if it was
kept for Sunday best. Class War however developed through a process of
innovation -- taking up Lucy Parsons slogans to hold the Rich
personally responsible "Now is the time for every dirty lousy tramp to
arm himself with a revolver or a knife and lie in wait outside the
palaces of the rich and shoot or stab them to death as they come out."
This was rhetorical and no rich people were assassinated.
This first phase of Class War reached a crunch in the crisis of autumn
1985. First off there was a riot in Handsworth, Birmingham. When
Douglas Hurd, the current Home secretary visited the area next day he
was attacked and had to scurry away. A week later Brixton erupted in
riots after the police had bust into a Black woman's house and shot
her in the back (she has not walked since). Class War produced its
next issue with a Black man carrying a petrol bomb with the slogan
"The working Class Strikes Back". This was a challenge to identity
politics echoed by the Tory election poster in 1987 picturing a Black
Person -- Labour say he's Black, We say he's British. The paper
appeared on News at Ten. The media were ready to set class war up,
with the Guardian publishing lies that Class War was set up by former
leading NFers. Plans to organise a march in Brixton the next weekend
were sabotaged by the Left. The state was scared that a new wave of
riots would spread the country as in 1981.
Then a week later still, the cops barged their way into another Black
families house and pushed a woman to the ground. She died. The
Broadwater Farm Estate, Tottenham became the scene of one of the most
important uprisings. Guns were used on the police, and a police
officer was stabbed to death. This created an ideological necessity
for the police. Their day to day operations are based on maintaining a
myth of police invulnerability. In the sixties when Harry Roberts
killed to policemen a national hunt was mounted for him with his face
spread over the front of the newspapers for several weeks. He was
eventually cornered camping in a wood. Here again the police had to
reassert themselves with a campaign of terror on Broadwater Farm which
exceeded anything they did against the miners during the previous
miners strike.
The police stole people's clothes ("for analysis") and prevented Giro
cheques reaching those on benefit. Children were kidnapped and kept
incommunicado, their parents not knowing where they were. The truth
was that despite the rhetoric Class War could not deal with the new
state offensive. Suddenly the state was going to take everything a lot
more seriously. Having kicked its way into the headlines, Class War
discovered its position was exposed.
"A revolutionary organisation is like a bank."
It is from this point that Class War became succeeded by the Class War
Federation, a retreat. Unfinished Business represents a summation of
that retreat. Under the guise of fostering a positive working class
identity they attempt to resolve a problem -- the destruction of the
original English culture and identity. and its recreation in the late
nineteenth century around the Royal family. This is seen at the heart
of the British nationalism. Their book is careful to avoid dealing
with the changes being wrought by the development of the European
Community, in particular that a unified Germany must seek a disunited
Kingdom if it is to succeed in uniting Europe as a continental empire.
It is this which underlies the growth of Scottish nationalism, and
such things as the readiness of the government to ban the Ulster
Defence Association and the normalisation of Northern Ireland. Class
War simply see this as increasing "resistance from within". Class war
put forward the view that while racism and sexism are used to divide
the working class, "Other People's Nationalism" is equated with
Identity... and they do not want to limit or deny this.
In the appendix, there is evidence of some confusion in the section
about Ireland. They "quote" themselves from Chapter 1, -- but as it
happens this paragraph is not in Chapter 1. Perhaps it was edited out
of the main text. they say:"What we must understand is that in the
face of often brutal oppression nationalism gives working people
something. This "something" is identity, pride, a feeling of community
and solidarity and of course physical self defence. We need to combat
capitalism and its nationalism with something as strong i.e. - with
our identity, pride, community, solidarity, history, culture and
inspiration of the international working class. To achieve this
effectively will require courage, imagination and determination. To
challenge nationalist ideas means doing more than saying they are bad,
we must prove that fighting for our class is better than fighting for
a country."
This occurs in the middle of a muddled apology for Republicanism. CW
suggest that "The situation is similar to what we expect to find in a
revolutionary situation in Britain and elsewhere, a shifting set of
political, military and social alliances." In fact the situation is as
far from being revolutionary as Yugoslavia or the Lebanon. What is
remarkable is that Ireland has shown a maturity of class struggle
despite loyalism and republicanism. Eg during the seamen's strike
Belfast seamen occupied the ferries and were only removed when cops
with machine guns turned up. Republicanism is as "revolutionary" as
social democracy was in Europe during the forties when it organised
underground armed cells to fight the Nazis/German occupation forces -
i.e. not revolutionary at all. A willingness to use violence is a poor
guide to political soundness. In Britain an illusion has been fostered
of an effete middle-class preventing a "virile" working class from
expressing itself. From this the question of violence has been tied to
the assertion of masculinity. This is of course bollocks as regards
revolutionary strategy. O.K., organisations like the British National
Party offer white working class male youth the opportunity to "be real
men" and this is symptomatic of the self-contempt which this society
induces in working class boys. But whether such youth are manipulated
to defending "their" country, or defending their "class", neither is
revolutionary. What is needed is to overcome the self-contempt which
means unraveling the mish-mash of conditioning and breaking free of
identity politics. Identity politics appeared from women-identified
women, Black and Gay identities. It based on a liberal pluralism which
offers alternatives. But these alternatives turn into ghettoes, with
an implicit demand for the re-assertion of white, male, heterosexual
identities. This has been the outcome of twenty years of reaction.
Such newspapers as The Sunday Times can popularise an attack on
Political Correctness, and this is readily picked up by so-called
revolutionaries. This is not a call for a return to navel-gazing
consciousness raising, but a call to action e.g. actually dealing with
gender issues instead of talking about them.
CW's reactionary views on class are most adequately illustrated when
they talk about two Irish working classes, one catholic and one
protestant. When this is compared with the anti-religious actions
performed by anarchists during the Spanish revolution, which are held
up as a model for dealing with religion, it is obvious that Class War
are just taking the piss. In a largely secular society like England it
is easy to slag off religion. It is a different story in Ireland
(where presumably they haven't lost their original culture or
identity). People there are killed for their religion -- which is not
so much the pious piece of interior consciousness as it is presented
in English society -- but a social fact around which identity is
organised. As Class War are only interested in Brits and not Other
People, this is an irrelevance. Faced with an earthquake in terms of
national identity stemming from European integration Class War have
produced an ideology of class around an unstated nationalism. Thus in
Heavy Stuff 5 in an article they say "If a united Europe is
inevitable, it at least offers the potential to develop a European
working class with a genuine internationalist outlook. . . . More than
ever the struggles of other workers within Europe really will be our
struggles." (page 6). So presumably the struggles of workers outside
this new superstate will remain secondary and unimportant. Thus
despite all their calls to set the agenda they still tail end the
state, only this time a Euro-state instead of a Brit- state.
Communities of Resistance
At the end of September, CW organised the Communities of Resistance
Rally in that familiar venue, the Friends Meeting House. From the
chair they made it clear that they did not want an ideological debate
but wanted to concentrate on practical struggles. This fitted in with
their general policy of exercising hegemony over the other various
anarchist movements. Having abandoned a central ideological structure
they have been able to link up with activists involved in a range of
spark off points where riots and the like have erupted across Britain.
Much to their chagrin the other Anarchist groups are obliged by their
ideology to turn up, but have little say. As the guiding hand behind
the rally, CW can take the credit for any ideas that come up and work,
and also distance themselves from less successful ideas.
It was certainly useful to hear people talk about the struggles they
were involved in up and down the country. And the calls for less
thought and more action are certainly worth consideration. The
speeches from chair however reflected a shift from sociology to
business studies. There was less talk about getting across to those
alleged ordinary people, and more about product. For a moment
lulled into sleep by the dull melody of the speakers voice I drifted
into a reverie -- I was at a quality circle meeting with some low
grade manager giving us a pep talk about how we must work harder. The
illusion was shattered by a burst of applause and as I regained
consciousness it was the exceedingly long beard of the man across the
room which reminded me of where I was ....
Nat Turner
From Here & Now 13, Glasgow, Autumn 1992