Internal meetings in an anarchist group

Frequency and location

A new group or one engaged in a lot of activity should meet at least once a week, at the same time and day. As soon as possible you should try and find a regular venue for meeting that is not someone's home. You'll want a space that's private enough for you to have strong disagreements in and where only the members of the group will be while you are using it. In Ireland this means most groups use private rooms in quiet pubs that are glad for the additional customers on quiet nights!

Decision making

Arguments about how best to reach decisions are fundamental to anarchism. What I have found works best is to allow plenty of time for discussion in the hope of being able to reach a consensus. Only when it becomes obvious that this is not possible should you move to a vote. If time permits it may make sense to postpone making a contentious decision to the next meeting to give people a chance to think things over (and calm down!).

Conduct of discussion

Even with a small group its normally a very good idea to have someone to chair the meeting. Being able to chair a meeting well is quite difficult , in particular you need to be very careful not to abuse your position in a strong argument. But its also important that the same person does not chair every meeting. Perhaps the best way is to have a list of everyone willing to chair and each week take the next person on the list.

Basically a chair should

• try and arrange the room so that everyone sits in a circle and make sure you are seated where you can see everyone
• if there are new people there start off by going around the circle and getting everyone to say their name
• at the start of the meeting ask people for items for an agenda and then stick to that agenda. If people start speaking on topics rather then the one under discussion interrupt them politely and tell them you are adding that item to the agenda
• ensure everyone has an equal opportunity to speak
  • generally it's a good idea to ask people to put up their hand when they want to speak and then to take a list of people waiting. In most situations its a very good idea to put people who have not yet spoken to the top of this que.
  • if the discussion is just taking place between a few people and in particular if it is just between two it is often a good idea to suggest going around the circle and giving everyone a chance to speak
  • pay attention - people who are less confident about speaking will often indicate that they want to speak in minor way (eg briefly half put up their hand). A good chair will spot this and encourage them to speak
  • control yourself - while the chair can speak in debates you should try and speak the least and always put yourself at the end of the que. There is nothing worse then a chair who feels they are entitled to comment after every single speaker. Be very strict with yourself
  • don't allow people speaking to insult other people in the room. If they do interrupt and make it clear that this is not acceptable
• if the discussion is going around in circles with the same people making the same points again and again you should point this out and ask if people want to continue the discussion or
  1) Move to a vote
  2) Postpone the discussion to later in the meeting or the next meeting
  if there is any disagreement on what to do you should call an immediate hand vote on whether or not to continue the discussion and then on what to do with the discussion.
• if it appears a decision has been reached (ie everyone is agreeing) then write down what you think the decision is then read this back to the meeting.
• if it appears a vote is necessary then make sure the exact question to be voted on is written down and then read this question back to the meeting before taking the vote. This is very important in case there is later disagreement over what exactly was decided.

Agenda

If its know who is chairing the meeting in advance it may be a good idea for that person to start the meeting with a suggested agenda. In any case the agenda should almost always include

• minutes of last meeting
• correspondence to be dealt with
• decisions that have to be made
• other issues people want discussed
• AOB at the end for minor things people want to mention or things they have 'just remembered'

If there is any disagreement over the order of the agenda then this should be quickly discussed and voted on at the start of the meeting. If the chair thinks there is a lot to get through it may make sense to set a maximum amount of time that can be spent discussing particular topics right at the start of the meeting.

Minutes

Someone should be responsible every week for keeping minutes of the meeting and preparing these to be read at or distributed before the next meeting. Minutes need not be very detailed (you don't need to write down what everyone says). They should include

• a list of who attended the meeting
• a list of topics discussed
• a list of decisions reached for each topic, this should be a copy of what the chair reads out
• a list of who has volunteered to do what
• a list of items to be discussed at the next meeting

Further comments

It is important that meetings start on time and end before or at the time they are advertised to end at. Certainly they should end once they have reached the advertised time and somebody needs to leave.

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A basic guide to anarchist organisation