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Mayday 2002 Planning Meeting

london mayday | 21.11.2001 01:04

Sunday November 25th
2pm
Fieldgate Action Resource Centre

(On the corner of Fieldgate St and Parfett St, London E2. Nearest tube, Algate East or Aldgate)

Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday

Mayday 2002 Planning Meeting

Sunday November 25th
2pm
Fieldgate Action Resource Centre

(On the corner of Fieldgate St and Parfett St, London E2. Nearest tube, Algate East or Aldgate)

Despite previous years of police-pen madness, chaos, and quashed dreams, a group of crazy people want have a go at Mayday again!! Anything can happen and it usually does, and the purpose of this meeting is to bandy around new ideas, move on from mistakes made in the past, talk about how we want to celebrate OUR day, get different non-activist people involved and actually enjoy ourselves! And have an ace indoor picnic at the same time. This will be as un-arduous and convoluted a meeting as can possibly be, there is a strong emphasis on making this whole process fun and empowering, something that our friends in blue and hacks in macs have tried to suck out of us. There are already some ideas flying about which were discussed at the Anarchist Bookfair, October. These are:

- Gameball (radical multi-sided game of street football)
- Festival of Alternatives (A week of skills sharing workshops, guerilla art exhibitions and film makings/showings, chow-downs, street parties and general DIY co-operative ace-ness)
- Mass Picnic (a hooge merry family-friendly nosh up in a public park/place, with lots of food sharing)
- Week of community based action (lots of decentralised, local, ingenious actions meant to arouse, empower and forge lasting networks for grass roots social change)

So bring your ideas, food to share, your mates and an open mind and let's be 'avin it!

Note: We are a non-hierarchical, anti-authoritarian collective and we want to co-operate with people who share our methods of working. That means no political parties or authoritarian (Trotskyist etc) groups. Everyone's welcome, but remember, this is not speakers corner and we won't ever have some kind of party line, steering committee or polit bureau, so we don't appreciate anyone trying to foist one on us.

Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Mayday Ourday Ourday Ourday Ourday Ourday Ourday

london mayday
e-mail: londonmayday@yahoo.co.uk

Comments

Hide the following 10 comments

Authoritarian anti-authoritarians

21.11.2001 09:53

It strikes me as being highly authoritarian to ban people from meetings without even hearing what they have to say. It is also very hierachical to decide before hand who can and cannot attend.

redscum

authority

21.11.2001 11:34

Surely you should know that destroying authority is intrinsically non-authoritarian.

to redscum

21.11.2001 11:43

I don't think it is authoritarian to have a meeting to plan something, and say that if you agree with the aims then you are welcome, but if you are opposed to the aims and ethos, (eg. non-hierarchical organisation), then you are not welcome.
If instead of a planning meeting, it was instead an open debate about something, then yes, it might be authoritarian to stop trots from speaking. But it sounds like the people organising the meeting are opposed to trotskyist thinking and ways of doing things, so it is perfectly acceptable to say you are not welcome.

Authoritarianism is a meaningless term under redsum's definition. But it is possible to say that some people want to organise in a non-hierarchial and decentralised manner, and they have a right to stop people (eg, the police and trotskyists) who might interfere and reduce the chances of this succeeding.
It won't be totally successful, and there will probably always be a couple of police and trotskyist infiltrators at any considerably sized meeting.

thms

To Thms

21.11.2001 12:05

What if the trots are willing to work in a non-hiericical way and do not wish to impose their methods etc on others? If people agree to abide by the wishes of the meeting then were is the problem. Surely the way to make Mayday 2002 as sucessful as possible is to make it as broad an inclusive as possible, to have as large a group as possible committed to make it work. This won't happen if your starting point is to exclude people.

I agree that some trotskyist groups are very difficult to work with and constantly seek to impose their own agenda. But is the way round this to act in the same sectarian manner as they do. Not all trots are like that in any case.

redscum

????

21.11.2001 13:23

surely all should be allowed to attend and speak for themselves? if anyone acts in a dictatorial manner in the meeting they can always be asked to leave...

at times like this we should ALL leave our baggage at home

loop

inanna

quite right too!

21.11.2001 13:27

If only these Trots would accept that building an open and inclusive movement depends on banning and purging them, then maybe we wouldn't have to!

Just one question. If someone new to activism comes along, presumably they'd be welcome. But what if, after discussion, they start to realise they agree with Trot ideas? What level of Trotness could they safely reach before they would need to excuse themselves from the meeting?

a nonny mouse

Missing the point

21.11.2001 14:45

It's a bit sad that a posting about Mayday only gets discussion about excluding authoritarian groups.
I had hoped to see a discussion of whether or not we should have a Mayday in London, personally I think that any big Mayday event in London will just be crushed again and people will eventually get dispirited and give up. Lots of decentralized actions would be really useful though, why don't we give London a miss this year? Lots of regional actions may be more useful. Any comments?

Miss Point

Mayday

21.11.2001 20:18

You'd be mad to let the Trots get involved with this. Remember Mayday 2000? In their rag the Shit Wiper, they said "the only anarchists present on the demo were the ones wearing police uniform". Bollocks to them, they'll only try and take over, and spoil it for the real revolutionaries. Or worse, they'd tell everyone to vote Labour with no illusins and then start complaining when Labour start bombing Iraqi babies or Afghan hospitals, the daft bastards.

Beehive Skinhead.

trots...

21.11.2001 20:32

If Redscum read the thang properly, he'd note that ALL are welcome as individuals, but party representatives ain't. What that means, as I read it, is that you're welcome to go along, to agree or disagree with points people make, but not to hi-jack the whole shebang or, God forbid, turn the event into yet another friggin paper-sellin' session. (Does anyone else find it as distasteful as I do that the SWP has seemed to use the deaths of fuck-knows how many Afghan civilians just another excuse to try to flog a few more copies?) The problem with Trot groups is that they CAN'T work "with" other persuasions; read some Lenin or Trotsky- it's all there. The only purpose of working on alliances or "Broad Fronts" is to take them over and steer them to the "correct" position on everything. Sorry if that sounds sectarian; some of my best friends are trots, as it happens. But the organisations suck.

Inch-High, Private Eye

London mass event not worth it? (re. Miss P.

22.11.2001 00:03

At the Anarchist Bookfair, one of the Londoners sugested that we should have a London Mayday event for London, and the rest of the country can do what they like. Someone from elsewhere said that she found it very valuble to have a mass event to come to in London, after a year of organising decentralised actions in her home town. The big crowd is a chance to feel some of our power. It's also easy for people to go along to who wouldn't organise their own decentralised action.

On the other hand, regional rather than local actions could get pretty big, and might be more relavent to people than a London thing. Ideally of course we'd have both.

I think the idea mass direct action, in the form of stopping something to happen, would be very difficult to pull off. Sept 11th has proved beyond all doubt that shutting down trading centres is only a symbolic victory, and doesn't make capitilism go away. I really like the ideas suggested for Mayday. Perhaps a planning meeting on IMC would be in order. I'll shut up now

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