> But is this really it for the olympics? Is that all there is?)
Maybe it is. Perhaps there isn't as many people as you thought who oppose the olympics.

Also, perhaps people don't want to cause disruption. Perhaps they just want to do a protest march and some speeches. Anything wrong with that? Just because it isn't your cup of tea, doesn't mean don't have the right to do what they want, not what you want. Its a democracy, we don't all have to follow the anarchist way.

Listen alarmist, i get your frustration and understand where you're coming from. However it's not right to slag off counter olmpic network or the demo today without first telling us what exactly you've been organising to protest the olympics. There have been a lot of grassroots groups organising in defence of their homes, their livilihoods, their green spaces, their right to freely assemble, to self-expression. their have also been major actions and international campaigns against the corporate sponsers. Survivors from Bhopal have been in the UK for months now protesting against Dow and trying to get some justice for their lost and dieing family members. People have been imprisoned in London because of anti-olympic protest, assaulted, asbo'd, threatened with legal action, injuncted. There is plenty of information out there about these groups and i'm sure they would love to have anarchist support and involvement. there are of course anarchists involved in all these campaigns and struggles, many doing the tireless "backroom" stuff, that never gets mentioned but is so critical in any struggle. Personally i would love to see some of the types of protest that happened in vancouver happening in London, but will the anarchists step up to the plate and actually organise something, i doubt it.
Unless of course alarmist, you've got something planned, that so hot it needs to be kept hush hush. I hope you do.
Fuck the olympics.

i like your attitude, but i hope you won't be holding your breath for alarm to do anything.

they had a meeting a couple of months ago to decide whether to disband, being as they were failing utterly to acheive anything at all. most members either abstained or voted to give up. 7 people voted for it to continue, three of whom had never been to an alarm meeting before and knew nothing about the group. so it goes on.

mainly alarm is good at making and distributing fliers and the odd newspaper, and at criticising everybody else. oh and claiming not to run (but entirely controlling) a monthly piss-up for the boys called the red n black club.

hence the above "article", a prime example of why only 7 people could be bothered to vote for its continued existence.

they haven't organised anything against the olympics, that's not their style. they'll just bitch at the ones they have noticed have organised something. the stuff they aren't even aware of they'll obviously ignore.

most of the anarchists in london who have heard of them are deeply embarrassed by them.

I fully agree with the poster regarding a number of the stewards and other organisers - some of whom shouted at those who stopped for a little 'too long' to tell them to get back in line, and later refused to stop the march when told an arrest was taking place.

And the above argument is quite frankly ridiculous. Of course we're entitled to criticise them. OK, I don't have an Olympic ASBO. But today people from very many different groups came together for a common cause, and lots of us are active on a daily basis fighting the same shit - so why can't we fucking criticise? Instead of seeing it as their project, SWPers should have been be open to the different ideas of those groups. We of us didn't appreciate being herded into a park or shouted at for doing something that wasn't in the script.

Good article, btw, very accurate write up.

If that had been some sort of anti EDL thing there would of been 4,000 bangledeshi locals.

i'm sure the locals all have opinions on the Olympics and the local council services, cutbacks etc, but where were they?
the counter olmpyics network should of made some decent flyers in the local lanuages...cockney and bengali, and flyered the place.

Glad to see WAG/Alarm making they're prescence known, its they're turf, but all those old SWP cliche socialists... they ain't cool.
yuck.

is not a swapie group. its a network of lots of different anti-olympic groups.
Anarchists are well-represented in the organsing group and in many of the groups represented in the network. ALARM endorsed the call-out for yesterdays demo. All the groups involved were asked to provide stewards, so presumably all the stewards werent trots.
Thats not to say that there arent swpers involved of course.
And i'm not saying don't criticise, but if you think things could have been done differently or better, then do it differently or better.

however small or big - just do it and report it.

go for gold, silver or bronze.

And just what did the teenyboppers of Alarm achieve by screaming at the squaddies?. I always assumed it was a basic tenet of anarchism that soldiers could be won over to the side of the revolution, especially because of unemployment forcing many working class people to join the Army.That was hardly the case yesterday with Alarm who had the safety of distance and height protecting them from the soldiers who would have beaten the shit out of these kiddies if they had been face to face. Alarm did nothing serious around the Olympics over the last two years, jumping on the bandwagon at the end, just like the Trots they criticised. They know full well there was at least one steward there who was an anarchist and they put on their holier than thou more revolutionary than thou pose to campouflage the fact that they did FUCK ALL themselves before the demo. They insult the Counter Olympics Network who put in all the work and they insult those serious anarchists who worked with the CON
For Bakunin's sake grow up!!

I was on the march right next to where the man was stopped by police on the route and collectively the immediate response of all of the people on the march that were around this point, was to stop and put pressure on police to release him, with a number of people from whatever groups were nearest going close to surround the police, talk to them, take film, etc. Others also started to run back from further up the route to support this, as well as legal observers coming back. I didn't see anyone needing any persuasion from ALARM or any other group to do this and at this point no stewards were there asking the march to keep moving (although I agree stewards were persuading people to keep moving at the missile flats after the march had stopped there for a bit).

I share a frustration with A to B marches as the main form of action, and that there haven't been more imaginative actions planned as well as the short route; and that it is worth making this point. But as you have said that it was important to nevertheless support this protest - I am suprised the article seems to try and make the whole protest sound mostly negative and worse than it was e.g. by making out ALARM had to persuade everyone to stop and get the man released (when that it isn't true).

It is also unclear if you or your group has attempted to plan or organise any actions that are more imaginative, which is always an option?

If you want to know why this demo was so poorly attended, look no further than ALARM's attempts to visually brand this an an extremist event - therein lies another illustration of why the entire left still fails to capitalise on the PR victories the establishment keeps handing the radical movement on a plate

As it happens however, despite its failure to engage local communities, on one level the demo was an undoubted success, as it got worldwide mass-media coverage, sending its message out to an audience of hundreds of millions of people world-wide.

Distributing newspapers about the olympics at Stratford station and door to door on the local estates and houses over the last few weeks. The newspapers also advertised the demo.  http://www.soundthealarm.org.uk/alarm-paper-olympics/

Whilst distributing ALARM papers about the Olympics yesterday I chatted to quite a few local people. A couple of women asked the very good question of why we weren't going to Stratford, and I couldn't really answer them.

the demo didnt go to stratford because the police refused permission to go there.

So ALARM distributed THEIR OWN PAPER a couple of times before the demonstration, as if this adds up to any serious mobilisation for it. Before that they did FUCK ALL and did not take it at all seriously, jumping on the bandwagon at the last moment, EXACTLY like the Trots they criticise..The Emperor's New Clothes are revealed. Anarchists in London not in ALARM are seriously embarrassed by their juvenile antics.

 http://howupsetting.tumblr.com/post/28259119185/as-i-wrote-in-my-preceding-blog-the-start-of-the

As I wrote in my preceding blog, the start of the Olympics has seen the proliferation of dreadfully insipid puff pieces from writers who seemingly have a very shaky grasp on their own mind. The Observer today leads with yet another one which is unable to separate the event from the athletes and so sees the author dismissing his previous concerns as ‘curmudgeonly’ and ‘cynical’. What I find most hilarious about it is that this transformation is due to the Opening Ceremony, an event which pretty much had the sole purpose of being inspirational about Britain and had a massive budget with which to be so. It was never going to fail. Myself, I enjoyed it well enough but what I found curious was that it largely relied on pre-existing associations for its power. When I thought about it afterwards I realised that I had been far less impressed by what was actually happening on screen than by the machine-gun roll call of British achievements, whether that be our brilliant pop history, JK Rowling or the Industrial Revolution. This thought was bolstered by a friend who informed me that his Greek parents would have been hugely confused by much of it.

The part of the ceremony which did truly move me was the simplest - the procession of the athletes. The utter joy and excitement evident on the faces of the athletes was completely infectious and this more than anything resonated as a celebration of humanity, as the Morning Star put it. Yet as my heart was stirred by this I also felt great sadness at what could have been; at the trampling of this spirit beneath the jackboots of profit and elitism.

I get the sense from most of aforementioned puff pieces that they could have been written at any point over the past year by people who haven’t set foot in London, such is their banal predictability in trotting out the same PR lines. The Observer piece quite oddly suggests that the heavily-choreographed and controlled £27 million opening ceremony showed that London ‘was at ease with itself and its many contradictions’. Coming barely a year after the city tore itself apart, a city which is one of the most unequal in the developed world, that is quite the claim.

It was with huge relief, then, that I found myself at the Counter-Olympics demo in Tower Hamlets yesterday. Relief because I was surrounded by hundreds of people who cared deeply about their city and their country; people who went out of their way to wish the Olympic athletes well but did not let this stifle their critical faculties. Posters everywhere demanded ‘Sport for the 99%, not Profit for the 1%’ - these people were far from the ‘curmudgeonly’ moaners opposed to the entire thing, sports and all, that the media keeps portraying. No, these people had a very positive belief in humanity. They cared about social justice; they cared about public ownership of land; they cared about housing and living costs; they cared about militarisation and the wars which make the UK a target; they cared about poverty, exploitation and abusive labour practices; they cared about austerity and the use of mega-events to push its agenda. Again, I felt moved by the spirit on display - people who had given up their Saturday afternoons to make a stand and attempt to highlight some of the issues around the Olympics which the media is now furiously distancing itself from. The atmosphere was incredible - friendly and fun, with people beeping their car horns in support as they passed. There was an interesting observation to be made for those who keep wheeling out the attendance at the Torch Relay as proof of the UK’s unswerving love for the Games, as hundreds of people came out from their houses, pubs, cars etc to watch the march go past - not necessarily in support, but merely because something big was happening.

The march ended in Wennington Green with speeches from such inspirational organisations as War on Want and Defend the Right to Protest. I was thrilled that John McDonnell, one of the minority of principled Labour MPs remaining, appeared to speak of his solidarity for the cause.

The speaker who has most remained with me, however, was perhaps the most ineloquent - a woman from Critical Mass who had been arrested the evening before for peaceful protest. Clearly she was a last minute addition and was a little startled to be speaking before the crowds, yet she spoke matter-of-factly about the circumstances of her arrest - how she had been targeted for passing a bottle of water to a fellow cyclist who had already been arrested, how the police officer who arrested her claimed to recognise her as ‘one of that Occupy lot’. She then spoke of a visit to Critical Mass, some weeks earlier, of an Olympic cyclist (whose name unfortunately escapes me at the moment) who spoke to the organisation and led the members in a chant of ‘I am not afraid of offending my oppressor’. She led the gathered crowd in this same chant and I shouted it with passionate glee - not only as a message to the gathered authorities, the police who had flooded the streets in a clear demonstration of strength, the army guarding the Bow Quarter missiles - but as a message to those who wish to dismiss concern for London and the country as ‘cynical’ and ‘curmudgeonly’.

It was a beautiful day. As we left the Green and walked through a sunny Victoria Park, the ‘people’s park’ which now finds a large part of itself ticketed for entry, I felt almost euphoric. The human spirit is an incredible, resilient force, capable of great things even in the face of hardship and injustice. This is the real message of the Olympics and it’s a message which the Counter-Olympics demo shouted out loud.

how comes there weren't marches around stratford/hackney with locals 7 years ago leading up to this?

It is "you're" not "your", "come" not "come", and you need to put the word "any" in before marches. It would also help to have a capital letter on "how" because it is at the start of the sentence.

There weren't any marches because you failed to organise them.

ite im an anarchist or an 'anarcho-teenybopper' (cos apparently my views should be reflected on my age says the guy who identifies as somebody who became an anarchist at 17). im with alarm & i was there yesterday.
yes, the army come from the young workingclass just like us but like the police they choose to betray where they come from to fight instead for the ruling classes.
yeah on the one hand we could try & persuade them over to our side, on the other hand, they have chosen to be in a job where they go abroad (or stay home in this case for the olympics) to kill people because their governments have different idealogies.
the majority of young ppl who join the army aint forced into it either through poverty or compulsory enlistment, they choose to do this brutal, totalitarian job.
ps its useful to mention since youre calling us anarcho-teenyboppers in some smug, condescending way, nestor makhno who you identify as became an anarchist at 17.
also useful to note 'for the love of bakunin', bakunin would have wanted me & my family dead, hes a disgusting antisemite

I read that last comment twice. Total nonsense. Incoherent.

what didnt you understand? i reread it and i dont see anything incoherent about it? what part was it?

"What happened to the street energy of 2011?" ... unfortunately I think it was terrorised out of existence by the state... So many people were jailed after the August unrest that poor communities are afraid to do anything. The student movement was demoralised by a mix of kettling and failing to stop the fees. UK Uncut was disrupted massively by the March 30 arrests, which reduced their appeal as a form of safe protest. Occupy couldn't respond effectively to the massive repressive operation to shut them down. Also, I think the media spin on the August unrest took away the massified public's taste for street politics. Numbers have been way down for everything since then.

"the demo didnt go to stratford because the police refused permission to go there"... and here, exactly, is the problem... the police were in control of what the event did. People didn't dare to stand up to the police and assert their basic democratic rights (let alone anarchy). And if they'd asserted their rights, the police would have resorted to extreme repression. And this is why the movement is such a failure - we can't do anything useful because the police won't let us, and we can't stand up to the police because they're too strong.

More broadly, this is a crisis of activism since about 2000. Marches no longer influence the state (if they ever did) because of the lack of social forces behind them. Strikes have been shut down by precarity and anti-union laws. Civil disobedience/NVDA is now much higher-risk than before and can't be sustained as "serial activism" the way it once could. Street insurrection is threatened by a whole wave of new surveillance and repression technologies. Underground action is similarly threatened. As a result, there is a surplus of power on the side of the system. Since it isn't afraid of any of the available responses being used, it can do what it likes without danger.

The real question is, how do we get out of this dead-end?

The following would be possibilities:

1) we need some kind of indirect retaliation to "punish" the police when they suppress events - making suppression more costly.

2) we need new tools or tactics which stop the police being able to suppress protests. For example, revive white overalls against kettling, or use weapons strong enough to bust holes in police lines.

3) we need ways to get into high-security spaces or do things in public, without so much risk. (Example: remote-control drones, facial prosthetics).

4) we need a much larger movement - and we need guarantees of numbers BEFORE we call for action. Only call an action when there's a guarantee of 10,000 people there.

5) we need to concentrate on building sustainable communities of resistance. We should put most of our activity into building alternative communities. Once they're built, the basis will be there for bigger protests and greater disruption.

6) we can't hit the system through protest anymore - from now on, effective action will be clandestine.

I have no idea which of these is the best response. I'm just sure we need something new - our current repertoire is exhausted, and that in turn is why we aren't getting numbers.

> The real question is, how do we get out of this dead-end?
Basically, the police are professionals, they do this shit for a living. We're part-time amateurs without a clue where to begin. We need to hire professionals like the village did in The Magnificant Seven.

1) we need some kind of indirect retaliation to "punish" the police when they suppress events - making suppression more costly.
Maybe we can all get arrested and put in prison. They would mean they would have to feed us which would cost more.

2) we need new tools or tactics which stop the police being able to suppress protests. For example, revive white overalls against kettling, or use weapons strong enough to bust holes in police lines.
Perhaps we can build a tank. Lots of ideas can be found on the A-Team such as a vehicle that shoots watermelons at the police lines using compressed air.

3) we need ways to get into high-security spaces or do things in public, without so much risk. (Example: remote-control drones, facial prosthetics).
The mission impossible films have some good ideas on this. Or get some training similar to that used by Jason Bourne.

4) we need a much larger movement - and we need guarantees of numbers BEFORE we call for action. Only call an action when there's a guarantee of 10,000 people there.
Gotcha... I'll sort that one out - should be easy. Why not 100,000? I'll make it a cool million just to be on the safe side.

5) we need to concentrate on building sustainable communities of resistance. We should put most of our activity into building alternative communities. Once they're built, the basis will be there for bigger protests and greater disruption.
OK, I'll get the million people, you sort this out. Should be easy - end of the week?

6) we can't hit the system through protest anymore - from now on, effective action will be clandestine.
Cool sounds ace. I'll be like an international uncover operative. Can i be called Jason Bourne?

> I have no idea which of these is the best response. I'm just sure we need something new - our current repertoire is exhausted, and that in turn is why we aren't getting numbers.
With you in charge, I feel this will all be implemented with a hitch.

Not helpful..

Hey "keep em coming", at least I'm coming up with suggestions.

I'm not sure if you're just trolling, pissed-off at the suggestion that existing methods are failing, or just trying to lower morale by dismissing anything that's suggested. But I'd like to hear your suggestions of how we go about reviving activism.

The ramble from Some Next Anarchist proves my point as regards ALARM. Complete incoherence and lack of understanding on the if you like indirect conscription of working class people to the Army. It's not the actual age of people involved in ALARM I'm getting it, it's their immature behaviour. Yes, a lot of people have become anarchists in their tens but many have shown far more maturity than those in ALARM
And as regards Bakunin, irrelevant and inaccurate.

please can you tell me what was incoherent that you didnt understand?
we aint gona show solidarity to a group of people who fight for the ruling classes, i dont see the army much differently to the police except they usually execute their brutality abroad instead of at home, why should we display any support to them?
if you dont understand what im saying, its your fault, im pretty sure i been clear with what im saying

also it aint inaccurate, he accused jews as responsible for the majority of the worlds problems

Firstly the demo - re: stewarding - I was told personally by one of the SWP-ers heading up the counter olympics network (officially or not, he seemed to be in charge the most) that "they need anarchist stewards, because we need people who are good at standing up for themselves against the police". Laughable, as the police and the stewards colluded to keep the march as much of a walk to the park as possible. As a result we felt like the organisers had misled us, and were rightly pissed off about it.

RE: the incident with the marcher being searched - I was one of the first, if not the first person to approach the man when he was being stopped by the police in the first place. Luckily some legal observers (LOs), as well as other members of Alarm, were right behind me (well the LO's took longest to arrive actually!). The police liaison was trying to get us all to move on, as they would release him in a minute. We refused and said we could wait for that minute then, if need be. The crowd and LO's kept up the pressure and the man was released after a very brief (and not very thorough-looking) search. Because we were there (the crowd I mean, not just Alarm members or LO's), it was a potential flashpoint, and I think that's why the police let him go. The stewards, as usual on these demos organised / commandeered by the left, showed no solidarity at all. And this was after what the SWP-er had told me at the meeting about standing up to the police!

Lastly on the demo - It was a typical A to B march. I personally wasn't really expecting anything else. Lots of great people and good groups were on the march. Many of them had done a lot locally and taken great risks to do so, and I commend them. The stewarding let them down as well.

Going over a few other points on the comments thread - re: Alarm - half the people at the AGM decided they wanted Alarm to continue. The problem for us I think is that the rest of the scene has seen some of the old hands drop out (some because they don't want to work in Alarm, some because they don't want to do anything at the moment, for various personal reasons) and they've assumed none of us are doing anything. The remaining and new members are not so well known on the scene, and so perhaps this is why people here - 'Anonymous person protesting yesterday', for instance - have said 'oh I didn't see anyone from Alarm there' etc - maybe we weren't with the banner at that moment (like when we were with the guy being searched) and you don't know who exactly is in Alarm anymore! Sorry we're not famous enough on the anarchist scene to be recognised by you but there you go, tough shit.


Lastly, Alarm broke down for a number of reasons - external and internal - we had a lot of shit to deal with last year as a group, which I won't go into here - but both the old schoolers still involved and the newbies are determined to build something good and fresh from now on.

As for the Red & Black Club - for 'amused' to describe this as a 'boy's club' shows one of two things - either you don't attend, and you don't have any idea of the inner workings of the collective, and you are making ill informed judgements for some reason or another, or you yourself are unable to see (deliberately, or unconsciously) the contributions made by women and the attendance of women every month. Because there are a lot of us involved! For you to say that we're not tells me YOU have the problem, not us.

And while I would be happy to have Red & Black Club under the Alarm banner if that were appropriate, not all the people involved in putting Red & Black Club on are in Alarm, it wouldn't be fair on them to do so. And we don't want involvement with one group to be a pre-requisite to involvement with another. Seems fair to me.

I wrote comment no. 27, I am not the original poster. Thought it would show up more clearly than it did. Soz.

I have sympathy for the decent people involved in organising the demo. IT was a crying shame how it ended up being taken over by the trots ad made into something pointless. But it's also true that anarchists let that happen by not getting involved and mobilising or organising other stuff. ALARM were actually going out and advertising the demo in the local area. But what about all the other anarchist groups and individuals? Maybe I'm wrong, but it feels like people were scared off touching the olympics by all the tabloid hype about asbos, special olympics laws (which really don't target protest at all just commercial competition), and the bullshit scare stories about rounding up known activists before the games. The media did a great job of over-hyping the security to scare everyone off, and large parts of the activist "scene" seemed to buy it and even play into their hands. So the CON organisers went along with all the police demands, but other people didn't even turn up. Sometimes people are much too ready to cry state repression and we end up over exaggerating and just putting people off. When we talk about injunctions and asbos like we're in a police state can we remember the people going on the streets in other countries under the threat of real live bullets. I think "fuck pigfuckers" is half right, people have been "terrorised" off the streets but more by their own paranoia than by the pigs. The exception being the actual rioters in august who did get harsh sentences but often because they had no legal support and pleaded guilty. So one thing that might help get energy and numbers up, at least as a small start, is to stop playing into the hype about "repression". It's only playing their game.

it's a boys club which tolerates the presence of some women, as long as they behave correctly.

half of those attending voted to keep alarm going? that means only 14 people bothered to attend, and only 7 wanted alarm to continue!

alarm controls red n black, everybody who pays any attention knows that much.

keep doling out those newspapers and pretending you are different from the trots etc who do exactly the same. meanwhile others will actually organise shit for you to criticise and lie about.

it's not like you can do much more is there, with your tiny numbers...

You can disregard all the hard work women have put into running the Red and Black Club over the past two years if you want, as well as the hundreds who have attended and had a wicked time. That is your opinion and you can keep it. Doesn't change a thing. We don't miss you :)

i don't disregard the work of the women at all. i just think they're mugs for doing it. it takes more than the presence of some women to stop a project being macho manarchist nonsense, you know.

thatcher's a woman, the tories were still a boys club even when she led them.

you don't miss me because you don't know me, you don't know what you are missing. also, i and others like me don't fit in your wierd little clique, we are too fond of thinking for ourselves and we refuse to pretend that getting pissed and handing out papers is ever going to change anything in any worthwhile way.

To look on the bright side, amidst the sniping and apparent personal grievances, there are actually some important questions and interesting points on this thread. Wouldn't it be amazing if we could focus on them? Call me a crazy optimist, but i know comrades from lots of different groups and persuasions and i often find that if we concentrate on points of substance (what we believe, what we want to achieve, and sharing ideas about how to do stuff) instead of preconceived slurs (calling each other "manarchists" "juveniles" or whatever) then we anarchists often have more in common than we might think!

Thanks for your sane input.

Best to ignore Nestor Marknov and anarchista on this thread. They clearly have personal grievances to air which appear to tinged with ageism or outright sexism, and underpinned by class prejudice, and which are derailing an otherwise interesting thread. There are better places to air your dirty laundry/underlying prejudices than on a public indymedia discussion, but then you might have to be brave and put your name and/or face to it, and perhaps some people don't want to do that.

As for what to do next - I do agree with the comments that some activists have become overly fearful of repression - I've met a lot of otherwise rational people lately who believe the police will arrest you for simply your anti t shirt or for handing out anti-olympics propaganda.

We read through the actual law in an Alarm meeting, and found that these specific new powers re: displaying anti-olympic material only apply to commercial interests. But really that's quite an obvious thing to do, and doesn't explain why not other anarchists appear not to have done the same (or maybe they have - surely they have - enlighten me please if so).

I think the huge wave of action we saw last year, which broke and then ebbed away, has left people wondering what to do next. Everything else in comparison seems a bit shit. And the last student demo, where we were kettled in a moving 'sock' formation by the cops, and demonstrators violently yanked out the crowd and roughed up by cops, really demoralised the students and others on the demo. There hasn't been a decent one since.

Obviously the riots followed by deeply repressive sentencing has put a lot people into a state of shock, and wondering what can be done next. The state has shown itself to be pretty damned ruthless.

All this happening in a country where the general consensus seems to be 'the police are ok, at worst a necessary evil'.

I think once the Olympics are over, and they've run out of circuses (first Royal Wedding, then Jubilee, then Olympics - anarchists have been through a lot this past year, with all these heady cries to nationalism, no wonder we're feeling sick!), and people realise there is no more bread (they spent it all on themselves, and on the circuses...)... then the militancy will rise again.

In Britain, the government cuts are yet to bite - last year was really only the intro, most cuts will be imposed over the next two years - and I think we'll see things change when they do. The change to squatting laws haven't come into effect yet either (September) - I mention this cuz I think this could affect many more 'ordinary' people in the future, i.e. people who are made redundant, and can't meet their mortgage repayments, and find the police turn up with the bailiffs ready to chuck them out of their homes or arrest them.

Globally, the recession rages on, and gets worse by the day...it's difficult to see how this *won't* affect us in Britain in the near future. I think as a result, people will start resisting again.

All this got a bit macro as you can see. I don't have any answers as to how we, as anarchists, will act (as divided as we are, on this thread, is there much of a 'we' anymore?)

alarm mk1 was a fucked up group with fucked up people - don't know if alarm mk2 will fare any better. For it to succeed it really needs to distance itself from if former incarnation, and all the hangers-on. It is really a very destructive environment.

I don't know the background to the boys club criticism, but there is certainly massive issues within the london anarchist scene which alarm people form a part of.

Any social scene based on a lack of politics is always going to remain just that - a social scene - private, privileged and highly individualised to the point anarchism and anarchist politics has no role and little purpose.

So far alarn mk2 has sought to replicate its former self. Maybe the people involved are still finding their feet and it is the only way they know how to proceed. This could be fatal for them.

In response to the questions asked by the author of the original piece, below is the text to a document presented to the 2nd alarm meeting (over a year ago). Perhaps this time people may want to actually read through it.

- / / -

Below are proposals of how Alarm could develop:

1. Proposal of content of preamble, statement of intent
We put forward our proposal for an initial preamble/statement of intent. This can be built on, developed and fleshed out with more in-depth explanation. The purpose is to outline a brief introduction of the group.

"Alarm is a network of anarchists from diverse backgrounds who are committed to building a strong anarchist movement in London, to work together towards the overthrow of capitalism and destruction of the state, to be replaced by a classless society based on free association and mutual aid.

Alarm actively seeks to:
- promote anarchist ideas
- engage in confronting capitalism in all its forms with a view to its eventual destruction
- challenge the institutions of the state in all its forms as the antithesis to a free and open society
- support social and political struggles from an anarchist perspective
- Encourage the development of a combative anarchist movement that will work towards the self-organisation of the working class as means to revolutionary social change
- provide an environment of mutual respect and solidarity based on equality and comradeship
- organise events activities and actions based on the above criteria"


2. Propose establishing a core purpose of Alarm: to make Anarchism a viable political alternative

Involves extensive propaganda and outreach work to 'sell' anarchist politics to the general public. The aim will be to win over as many people as possible. This will help make the anarchist movement a mass movement, and prevent us from existing in an activist ghetto or as mere counter-culture.

We should position ourselves as being organised, positive and constructive i.e. be seen to be active in practically applying anarchist theory to current issues; housing, healthcare, education (childcare!) etc as well as just 'fucking things up' (though that is also important...)

We need to make the group accessible to the new generation inspired by anarchism: and it's in danger of becoming a clique rather than a movement. We need to be more modern and agile in communicating the message


3. Proposal to have clear-set goals:

Short-term goal - to provide a distinctly revolutionary anarchist space within the anti-austerity/anti-cuts movement.
Mid-term goal - to build a mass anarchist movement which is self-sustaining
Long-term goal - be at the forefront of militant activity during periods of social unrest and change

Having a short-term goal will provide a sharp focus to our work, rather than exist in a political abstraction. The anti-austerity movement provides us with an excellent opportunity to reach out to as many people as possible, to emerge publicly as a political force. Providing a revolutionary perspective within this movement will give us an added dimension beyond other anarchist groups and help us combat the reformist nature of the anti-cuts movement.


4. Propose taking a defined approach to fascist/nationalist politics

Fighting fascists not only on the streets but politically, through counter-propaganda, debates, discussions, the circulation of anti-fascist literature etc, all aimed at the general public. The aim is to do this pre-emptively, in order to create a strong anti-fascist, anti-nationalist, anti-racist, sentiment among people.



5. Propose having a clear media strategy

Either have one designated person (subject to recall) or different people chosen by ALARM who will respond to media requests if necessary and represent the group to the media. Also have a blacklist of media organizations whose politics we oppose.



6. Propose building links and networks with other anarchist/autonomist groups in a systematic way

Sending chosen delegates regularly to their open meetings and campaigns to represent ALARM and to report back. Offering practical help and solidarity as and when we can [DOES NOT have to be money] on behalf of the group and not as individuals. The aim is create a strong network of like-minded groups based on support and solidarity. Especially cement our relations with alternative media groups like Indymedia, Dissident Island, Reel News and Resonance, and work with them more closely.


7. Propose a periodical break-down of work

This is to make our work smooth, systematic and well-apportioned. Divide the year into four, with each quarter organised around one event called/organised by Alarm as a minimum expectation. This provides a continuity of activity. We meet at the end of each period to assess our goal and to plan for the next period.




Notes on decision making
Voting and consensus decision making (cdm) are, simply put, tools used to reach a decision. They have on occasion been elevated to a position of ideology. Their use has also been employed to promote and reinforce particular ideologies. The worst kind of decisions are those made for ideological purposes - this includes deciding how we make decisions!

Both cdm and voting have their good and bad points and both are open to abuse, manipulation and outright misuse. Both can be very destructive when used badly. The point about how decisions get made it that it should include as many people in the process as possible and that everyone feels they have contributed in an effective manner.

In reality what gets decided is only useful if it actually gets carried out, properly and productively. The point then is not so much what the methodology is, but that any decision is transparent, democratic (everyone has equal input) and actually implemented (within the set criteria of the group). And that people are held accountable for making them (they must be able to explain and justify their actions as carried out on behalf of the group).

All of this involves commitment and a degree of trust. It also involves a lot of hard work.

First, alarm has never been a 'fucked up group'. That's just baseless lies, from a faceless no one. Maybe it's not the group for you, but there is no need for such hyperbole. There are a great bunch of people around us, and we're just doing our thing and trying to promote our ideas as best we can.

Secondly, whoever posted about Alarm's plan - well, yes, we know that exists. But I thought we were talking about where the anarchist scene (nee movement) was going, in the UK in general, not just one group's internal plans?

do you think those 7 proposals are useful to you as a group? Do you see yourself implementing them as a means of developing a concrete political agenda and creating a constructive political organisation?


If not, why not?

the initial 7 proposals were written by a woman who was driven away from alarm by the behaviour and attitude of several male members of the group.

An example: When an alarm meeting was convened to discuss the above proposals, an alarm male said that we shouldn't be discussing these things and that it was pointless for the meeting to continue. When it was pointed out that the purpose of the meeting was to explicitly discuss these proposals the male along with four other alarm males got up and walked out of the meeting.

This kind of behaviour towards a female alarm member, who had the audacity to present ideas to the group, is something perhaps people within the group are not especially good at addressing.

..... was to fuck-up the media spectacle the govt spent billions of OUR money trying to broadcast to hundreds of millions world-wide. Granted this demo may have been just one tiny fly in a massive State-capitalist ointment, but the kind of coverage the Critical Mass arrests and this demo achieved would cost millions if you tried to buy that coverage using conventional marketised PR techniques

Hi D

I'm sorry your female friend had a bad experience. However, it didn't quite cut that simple did it? It wasn't about whether or not your friend is female. The proposal you and your friend drafted wasn't accepted. I'm saying this as a female myself.

The last alarm meeting you attended, in May this year, was long after this happened. Perhaps a year or more. I thought it was water under the bridge then, but maybe not for you?

You know you can always come and talk about it with us, at the next meeting if you like. I think you're on the list still, details will be on there.

i don't think you have understood. She was forced out by the behaviour of several male members of the group. Why they chose to act in the way they did is a problem for alarm. The fact that any women feels she can't participate in an anarchist group because to the actions of several male members is a problem for alarm. (This goes way beyond not accepting proposals btw).

It wasn't addressed. You really need to speak to this women about what happened.

some of us sincerely believe that the personal is political.

also, some of us think that when a group is called out for shitty behaviour which may include threatening or dominating behaviour, expecting those subjected to it to attend a meeting of your group is unrealistic, disrespectful and frankly ridiculous. why would we want to expose ourselves to that? even if there is only seven of you. it is your responsibility to take action on the matter, not ours.