A message from the collective.

Dear Comrades,

We have just received the following message from the venue:

“Unfortunately it looks like there are no plans to re-open the Corn Exchange anytime soon, especially early August.

We are looking at bringing forward our repairs to the main roof so rescheduling to next year will seem to be your best option at present.”

The Corn Exchange staff are our friends and their well-being is important to us as is that of our attendees, they also have to labour under a dead weight of politicians and bureaucrats, which doesn’t help.

So with a heavy heart we are calling off Anarchy in the Sticks 2020. Up to last week we were still taking bookings, believing we could run it safely. We were especially excited about hosting Ellen Clifford of DPAC to talk about her new book ‘The War on Disabled People: capitalism, welfare and the making of a human catastrophe’.

We may run smaller events later in the Autumn, in particular we’d like to revive the Love, Anarchy, Solidarity series as soon as possible so keep an eye on the website. If you’ve paid, we can hold it over till next year or pay you back.

We don’t readily admit defeat, we remain revolutionary class struggle anarchists and one day we may call upon you to hold the barricades, to run through fire and take out fascist tanks with home-made explosives – but not today.

Read books, stay angry!

The DRB Collective.

History of the Irish in Britain Representation Group by Patrick Reynolds.Part six; 1986

lipstick socialist

Patrick Reynolds was one of the founders of IBRG and played a key role in its history. He is now writing up that history and putting it into the context of radical history in Britain and Ireland in the C20th.

IBRG Membership Card 1980s

 Islington IBRG in early January 1986 wrote to all the national and local radio stations in London asking them to provide the Irish community in London with a radio programme. The Irish were then the largest minority community in London with 235,782 Irish born people living in the capital, and an estimated half million second and third generation. The IBRG stated  ‘we understand your charter includes making provision for London’s various Minority communities, and we would like to know what you are planning for London’s Irish community.’

The second campaign by Islington IBRG was on “Fair Employment in N. Ireland” where they wrote to all the…

View original post 13,283 more words

Insurgent Makhnovists: Down With Fratricide (1920)

Robert Graham's Anarchism Weblog

Nestor Makhno and the Insurgent Army

In May – June 1920 the Makhnovist Insurgent Army in Ukraine was fighting the Czarist counter-revolutionaries and the Bolshevik Red Army, which was seeking to consolidate the burgeoning Bolshevik dictatorship. This is a manifesto issued by the Makhnovists, appealing to the Red Army soldiers to come over to the side of the anarchist social revolution.

Makhno, wife and comrades c. 1920

Down With Fratricide!

Brothers in the Red Army! The stooges of Nicholas kept you in the dark and ordered you to fratricidal war with the Japanese and then with the Germans and with many other peoples for the sake of increasing their own wealth; to your lot fell death at the front and complete ruin at home.

But the storm cloud and the fog, through which You could see nothing, lifted; the sun began to shine; You understood and were finished with fratricidal…

View original post 269 more words

The lethal bigotry of Piers Morgan

It’s time the word Piers was deliberately eradicated from common usage. Fucking stupid toff name, if he had any sense he’d be embarrassed about it.

Anarchasteminist

Content warning: This blog will discuss transphobia, cancer, HIV/AIDS and Piers Morgan.

Yesterday (31st of July 2020) Piers Morgan, disgraced former Daily Mirror editor and current morning TV talking head, decided once again to wade into the topic of trans health and identities, with a Tweet objecting to an American Cancer Society announcement on cervical cancer screening using the phrase “individuals with a cervix”, responding “Do you mean women?” Morgan responded to criticism that his initial intervention was transphobic, claiming that he was “ask[ing] why the word ‘women’ is being deliberately eradicated from common usage in case it offends people“. The lack of the word “why” in his initial tweet aside, it’s worth interrogating this a little further. Why do medical services use phrases like “individuals with a cervix” or “people with cervixes”? Is the purpose to deliberately eradicate another word from common usage or avoid…

View original post 554 more words

“Tracksuits, Traumas and Class Traitors”

Long awaited book now out by our good friend DP Hunter. Sadly you won’t be able to pick them in Dorchester at the bookfair in August but you will be able to order them online.

Peregrin

“Tracksuits, Traumas and Class Traitors” available now from the Class Work Project

---

“Tracksuits, Traumas and Class Traitors” is about the ways in which economically and socially marginalised people practice abolition on a daily basis. It’s about the fight for dignity in the face of unrelenting contempt. It uses some of the authors own experience living in poverty throughout his first 25 years, as he goes in and out of prison, the care system and homelessness, and how he and his fellow travellers navigate trauma and each other.. It’s about the violence of white supremacist patriarchal capitalism, and the ways in which this violence hurts our bodies and minds. It’s about love, care and solidarity being the everyday revolutionary practice from below.

Dan Chatterton & his Atheistic Communistic Scorcher

The Slow Burning Fuse

On the 25th of August 2020 it is the 200th birthday of Dan Chatterton, publisher of Chatterton’s Commune, the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher

Chatterton – or ‘Old Chat’ as he sometimes styled himself – published every few months a paper called ‘Chatterton’s Commune, the Atheistic Communistic Scorcher’. He provided all the content. This is one of the more legible copies. Some others were, in essence, handwritten.

The British Library has a full set of ‘Chatterton’s Commune’, which continued publication for more than a decade. It seems that Chatterton himself took care to deposit copies at the Library, where they were – and are – well looked after.

The circulation of the ‘Commune’ seems to have been very small indeed – perhaps no more than a hundred copies.

Chatterton wrote all the articles, did the typesetting, printed either on very coarse paper or on tissue paper in the most rudimentary of fashions, and…

View original post 18 more words

Compendium of Marx’s Capital – new ACG book

Anarchist Communist Group

The ACG is pleased to be publishing the first English language print edition of Carlo Cafiero’s summary of Karl Marx’s Capital.

Capital, Marx’s epic work, describes in detail the capitalist system and how it functions. The anarchist Mikhail Bakunin saw the importance of Marx’s Capital, to the extent that he put any rivalries with Marx aside and immediately embarked on the first Russian translation.

But Capital is a notoriously hard read…

The anarchist communist Carlo Cafiero, rather than translate it, wanted to popularise Marx’s work in order to make it easier to read and be better understood by those who didn’t have a university education or weren’t so well versed in economics. In other words, his Compendium was aimed at ordinary working people.

Cafiero’s Compendium is a gateway to understanding the contents of Marx’s Capital.

This edition, translated by Paul M. Perrone, contains an ACG introduction and a biography of Carlo Cafiero.

Compendium of Capital is available direct from from the ACG.
108 pages Price £7 + £1.40 postage
Visit our publications page for details on how to order your copy.

See ACG website also for new edition of Rebel Rose.

Heckler Online Edition No.17

Here’s the 17th online crisis edition of the Heckler.

PLEASE NOTE – For the best viewing experience, we recommend that you download the PDF of the Heckler from DropBox to your PC/laptop/phone.

Here’s another online edition of the Heckler which is a bit of a mix… There’s the front cover which can be seen as a simple call to arms but also a prompt for certain anarchists to have a think about what they mean by anarchism. This relates to the issues discussed in the piece on the face mask ‘debate’. As well as this, there’s an examination of the ‘masterplan’ for Basildon town centre plus plugs for Crops NOT Shops, our sister project Alternative Estuary and the latest online edition of D.i.Y.CULTURE.

As for when we can get back to producing and distributing printed editions of the Heckler, we seriously haven’t got a clue. If we do produce anything…

View original post 22 more words

FLAME THROWER

TYNESIDE ANARCHIST ARCHIVE

We have a treat for you all today. As far as we are aware the following has not been scanned before. ‘Flame Thrower’, produced 1986 in London, was, we believe, a one off issue of this 24 page free newspaper. Some interesting articles and graphics inside that reflect the period, including an early ‘constructive criticism’ of Class War which came at a time prior to them developing into a stronger national federation. Also included is a much copied (at the time) interview with the Animal Liberation Front, etc, etc.

We give a massive thanks to Newcastle’s ‘Canny Little Library’ who have enabled us, with their generosity, to now have the ability to scan A3 newspapers, broadsheets, etc such as the below.

As ever, the PDF of the paper is below picture.  Enjoy and share…

PDF file here….  Flamethrower pdf

View original post

Anti-Police Brutality Flyer for Demos and Protests

Sprout distro

We’re happy to share the following flyer that compiles a set of principles for solidarity in the streets alongside some practical tactical advice. The flyer features the text “5 Principles for the Anti-Police Brutality Movement”, a series of graphics and text outlining some ideas for staying safe in the streets, and a blank space
for folks to write a legal support number. Please share and distribute widely!

Text and graphics by Can’t Touch This NYC, Unity & Struggle, and the Comité Boricua En La Diáspora.

Download PDF
5 Principles For The Anti-Police Brutality Movement

Written by Can’t Touch This NYC

1. We will respect a diversity of tactics in the streets, as they reflect a diversity of political perspectives within our movement. We will not physically prevent fellow demonstrators from taking actions they deem necessary.
2. While we may debate and disagree, we will not denounce fellow protesters in public statements in a manner that exposes them to state repression. We will not denounce protesters for engaging in self-defense or property damage.
3. We refuse to cooperate with politicians in legitimizing the repression of other parts of our movement. We will not accept this as a condition for dialogue with city officials.
4. We refuse to help police repress our movement. We will not help police identify and prosecute protesters, nor hand protesters into police custody, nor provide general intelligence on our movement.
5. We will avoid posting and circulating sensitive visual information on social media, as police use social media to collect incriminating evidence against protesters. We will not collaborate with the media to make such information publicly available.