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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.