Some Questions that need to be answered.
Groups with shared Campaigning issues
What do you need to build useful links?
When I was asked to give this talk, it made me think back on own experience as an activist. This talk is structured around the questions above. I'll give some of my answers which derive from my experience. As you listen, you should be asking yourself, what answers you would come up with.
My first political act was probably writing to a women's program on RTE in primary school to complain that girls in my class had to go to sewing class while the boys were allowed to go out to play football. In secondary school, like a lot of people at the time, I was worried about the threat of nuclear war and joined CND. Activism didn't begin until I went to university. I arrived at the end of the eighties at a time of recession, high unemployment and cutbacks. The government embarked on a program of introducing fee rises for third level education. I became involved in the student union organised opposition. I remember marching up O'Connell street with only about a dozen others, behind the TCD Student Union banner. Over the course of the next year, student opposition grew. There was a two week occupation of one of the college buildings, and student marches would end with us running up Kildare street, overturning barriers, sitting down and getting arrested. I was involved in two other, for me, important events, the protests against the fascists Historian David Irving (which lead me to be sued), and an ongoing struggle for women's abortion rights. Throughout this time with a group of friends I became interested in anarchism probably initially through reading Orwells, Homage to Catalonia. During the summers I'd work in London, live in squats and meet up with English anarchists and buy anarchist books and magazines which unavailable in Ireland.
I discovered that there was other anarchists in Dublin and joined the WSM. When I left college the recession was in full swing. One of the principals that I had come to believe through my college years was that you struggle where you are, as a student I was active in the student union. As a member of the unemployed I joined a small group called the Portobello Unemployed Action Group. These were pretty miserable years. There were only about a half dozen of us, we picketed and occupied, and generally got press attention, but little popular support.
Since then I've been involved in more campaigns than I probably remember. Some of the issues were Irish, such as the fight for abortion rights, through the X-Case and various referendums, the fight for Divorce, against the bail referendum, against extradition, against racism against Travellers and now racism against refugees. Some of the issues were local, such as campaign against the Water Charges and Bin Charges, or the support groups for strikes such as Pat the Baker and the Aldi strike. Some of them were international such as against the war in the gulf, against the imposition of the Death Penalty on Mumia Abu Jamal, in support of the Zapatistias in Mexico. And there were countless once off pickets in defence of prisoners or to protest some particular act of cruelty on behalf of some government of other.
Some of the issues were won, some were lost and many are still ongoing.
Anarchism; My Big Picture
My work on these campaigns has been motivated by my anarchism. Briefly put, I want the replacement of the current economic system, a system based on profit and hierarchy, with a system based on need and freedom. I don't believe the current system can be reformed to make it more human. In different ways, and on various levels, my campaigning work is aimed at creating the possibility of revolution. Revolutionary change is not as unusual as is often thought; in 1974 we had the Portuguese revolution, in 1977 Iranian Revolution, in 1979 Nicaragua, in the eighties we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union. What is rarer is the type of revolution that anarchist are seeking. That is a revolution that is democratic, that is organised by the bottom up, that rejects leadership of parties or individuals, that puts in place democratic structures with which to run society. For this to happen people have to believe that they the power to bring about change, they have to be able to organise effectively, they have to have skill and experience. They also need to have an idea not only of what they are fighting against, but also what they want to put in its place. In all the single issue campaigns, my aim has been first and foremost to win, to make the things a little bit more comfortable or a little bit safer for myself or for others. But also, the aim has been to gain skills for myself and for others, to generate self-activity and empowerment, to create the network of activists, to politicise communities and groups, to build peoples political ability and confidence. An anarchist revolution is a revolution created by the mass of society, it is a revolution that is created by many different people, different groups, and different organisations. I am interested in building links between different groups and movements, because it is through these links that the many different groups in society can operate as one to bring about mass change.
Shared Campaigning Issues
That's my big picture, you need to ask yourself, what's yours. If the question is how do we build links between different groups and movements, the answer has to be another question. Why do you want to build links? In each instance, what is your aim. I say in each instance because it should be recognised that there are many different levels at which links between groups can operate.
Before looking at the big picture, lets look at the smaller one, at building links between groups around a shared campaigning issue. Here, there are different levels of political unity, different levels of strategy and different levels of commitment.
Political Unity
Within many political issues, one of the first questions asked is, how broad should the campaign be, should we be building links with people we may fundamentally be in disagreement or opposition with. For example, in the US anti-pornography campaigners built alliances with the religious right. In Ireland, the group who has been most targeted by the Public Order Act has been the fundamentalist catholic, pro-life group Youth Defence. Should a campaign against the Act, build links with these forces. The choices on offer are often not that stark. Can an anti-racist movement in Ireland incorporate those who support boarder controls within its midst? Given that Labour, Fine Fail, the PDs and Fine Gael have all at one stage or another been involved in governments that supported deportations, should an anti-racist movement include representative of these parties among its midst. On one hand, the argument is the bigger the better, the broader the focus, the more people are involved, the greater the impact. On the other, the broader the movement, the more dilute its politics, the weaker its arguments, the weaker its impact.
Strategy
Often the different political position of different groups is reflected in the different strategies they adopt. When I was involved in the Portobello Unemployment Action Group, our position was that the government policies towards the unemployed should be exposed so we focused on visible activity, on pickets and occupations. At the time many other groups, instead argued that negotiation was required, and so opposed anything activity that might lessen there respectability in the eyes of the government (who were often there funders). In this instance, although different groups shared a common campaigning aim, the different strategies adopted were incompatible.
This is not always the case, often a decision will be taken to build a broader umbrella movement, but to create space, within the ranks a more radical element. The broader groups focuses on media intervention, on lobbying politicians, on providing speakers for chat shows and articles for the papers, while the more radical group emphasises direct action, pickets and demonstrations. This was sometimes seen within the campaigns in favour of the various abortion referendums and operated to greater and lesser extent. At times the tensions between the two approaches made the usefulness of links questionable. Unity is not always strength.
Therefore, before building links I suggest, you have to know, why do you want these links? What do we hope to achieve? What is their purpose? Is there a point in building links between groups that have no interest in common? Is it meaningful to build links between groups that have opposing interests. Links should be seen as a tool, the link isn't the end-goal, but a means by which we get to the end. Some links are useful, some or not. Some have a meaningful existence, some only exist on paper.
Building Useful Links; Communication
Supposing therefore that you are clear about why you want to make links with other individuals, groups or organisations, what do you have to do to build meaningful links? Firstly, you have to consider information communication, what is the best way of communicating between elements in a network. Many NGOs, community groups or partnership organisations have offices and a permanent staff. Communication that is centred on these can be efficient but also can be problematic as the wider membership of the groups can be left out of the loop. In response to this some groups set up their own newsletter or paper, which is distributed among the membership. Increasingly websites and mailing lists are used to exchange ideas within and between organisations. For example, here in Ireland the Latin American Solidarity Centre a coalition of about five groups run a magazine and a mailing lists. Here the individual groups can shares with the others and with the general public the issue that are of current importance to them.
Building Useful Links; Strategy
The next level of communication is aimed at developing common strategies or approach. Here we are moving on from informing others about what we are doing and moving towards working with others on common projects. E-mailing lists are again useful, as are workshops and conferences. Areas of common interest are explored as are areas for joint action, tactics and approaches to resolving problems. Currently I am involved in a campaign that is aimed at defeating the imposition of a refuse tax in Dublin. The campaign will soon have to decide what is the best strategy to adopt in order to do this. Should the campaign be built around non-payment, should it we use it as an issue in the General Election, how should we building local campaigning groups. If the different elements of the campaign are to work together these questions will have to be resolved at a general meeting or conference.
Building Useful Links; Activity
Links are given life when activity is undertaken between the different groups. A common type of activity is solidarity activity, activity aimed at aiding one element in the network. After the Prague demonstrations a number of Czech, Hungarian, Pole, Danish and English activists were arrested. In a number of ways, the elements in the network worked to offer them support, appeals were sent out to activist mailing lists, sample protest letters were prepared, distributed and returned. Embassies, were picketed, in Ireland three different sets of people picketed the Czech embassy. We arranged for a Czech anarchist to come on a speaking tour of Ireland and made collections for legal costs at the meetings. As a result, all those in prison were released, though some are awaiting court trials. As can be seen from this example, the links between different elements in the network need not be particularly strong. The different Irish groups were responding to international calls but within Ireland, there weren't lines of communication.
Many of the Irish campaigning issues, abortion, racism, water-charges, bin-charges, the S26 collective, have involved coalitions of groups working together to organise leafleting, pickets, marches an demonstrations.
Building Useful Links; Trust
It should also be noted, that in some cases, campaigns that appear to be broad based are instead initiated and controlled by particular organisations (for example the Anti-nazi League owned by the Socialist Workers Party, Youth Against Racism in Europe owned by the Socialist Party). Links have to start somewhere, and usually it is when a particular individual, group, organisation or party, look for others to become involved in a collective endeavour. There is a difference between the initiating a campaign and manipulating a campaign. In the former, the links that are being formed operate in both directions, all elements within the network have equal role in the building the resulting campaign, in deciding its scope, its directions, the goals it will focus on and the tactics it will develop. In the case of 'front organisations' described earlier, the communication goes one way. The initiating group retains control, the others elements are not able to influence policy or strategy. This is a fundamentally dishonest and dis-empowering method of organisation.
A link between any group or organisation should also be seen as a form of relationship. In order to survive there must be a level of trust between the groups. Much of the work in building links is based around developing working relationships in which the various elements can trust each other and will not act out of self-interest in a way that will reflect badly on the network as a whole and on the elements that make it up. Often links are not formed because groups can not be trusted to follow the democratic mandate of the campaign.
Types of Links
From the examples I've been citing, it becomes obvious that links between groups and organisations vary. They vary in terms of the strength of the link, the level of resources allocated to it and the time scale within which they operate. The strongest type of link is probably that between members of a particular political organisation. Here individuals share a common political position on a wide range of issues, they carry out activities together, and they meet each other on a regular basis, normally once a week and are committed to the organisation over a long period of time, often a lifetime. At the opposite end of the scale, individuals come together for a once off picket, say for example the picketing organised to protest the US sanctions against IRAQ. Here people are unified on this issue. Though they more than likely are also generally leftwing or liberal, these other political positions are generally not communicated or developed. They are together only for an hour or two. They support this particular tactic but again there is no working towards a continued strategy. The links formed are brief and weak, they meet, protest and go home.
In between these two extremes a range of networks exist. There are the single issue campaigns, which meet regularly sometimes over a few months, sometimes over decades. Politically there is agreement over the one particular issue that defines their group.
There are also the linkages between groups. An example of this is the Zapatista Encounter Network. Jan 1st 1994, in Chiapas, Mexico, there was an uprising of indigenous people, organised into a group called the EZLN. As has happened following other central American uprising, though out the world, support groups were set up aimed at preventing the worse excess of the Mexican State. In response to these support groups, the EZLN put out the call, 'be a Zapatista where-ever you are'. What they were saying is, we don't want support groups, looking towards Chiapas, instead we want groups of activists following our example working within there own countries. The Zapistas called a general conference in Chiapas. The issue under discussion was not just what was happening in Chiapas and in Mexico, but what was happening in the world in general. This was followed by another conference in Spain. At the conferences the individuals from different counties met each other, shared experiences and build relationships. In between the conferences, few formal networks were set up, but informally the individuals and groups kept loosely in touch, mostly through e-mail. A significant section of people organising the current wave of anti-Globalisation protests have occurred in London, Seattle, Prague, Washingon and next month in Quebec and in Genoa in July are people who first came in contact with each other through the Zapatista Encounter networks.
Here you have a network that is loose and informal, that is based on a shared opposition to neo-liberalism and that varies over time, increasing in intensity as the next meeting of world powers arises, falling away in-between.
The point of these examples is to argue that it is not that one linkage is better than another, as such, but that some links are more appropriate means to achieve particular end.
Conclude
Finally how do you campaign for wider goals? One approach is to broaden a single issue campaign scope from a single issue to a wider goal. This is a problematic approach because it assumes that those involved in the particular single issue share a wider goal, when in reality most of them don't. A single issue campaign can be successful within its own terms, but often because the unity that exists is only on those terms. Changing the goals, can destroy the co-operation.
Another approach is to try and build links between the single issues.
For me, this what the role of a political organisation is. It is to look for areas of common interest when these aren't immediately obvious, to bring experiences from one area to another, to show how issues that are seemingly different are in fact a product of similar economic pressures. In fact this is almost the definition of a political organisation, a group of people who share the wider goal and work together to achieve it. I am not counterpoising single issue campaigns to political organisation. It is not a case of being for one or for the other. I should also point out that I'm not proposing that there should be one organisation that works for all of us. Unfortunately, the word political organisation is often identified with the political party, the idea that there can exist one organisation, which will lead the way. Political diversity is not a problem for anarchists. Rather, I am proposing that if the wider goal is your concern, it is through political organisation that you will meet people who share that concern. It is through political organisation that you can share experiences in different campaigns and maximise your resources in terms of times and energy. A political organisation should work to develop peoples skills, in public speaking, chairing, writing articles. These skills can then be brought back in the various campaigns.
Finally what you get from a political organisation is support. You are working with people towards the same goal - and you suffer the defeats and victories together.You get on with the next job at hand and your working together for the prospect of better society - towards a better future for humanity.
You don't get that from a campaign - and once the campaign is over your back to being a single individual in a fucked up world.
To conclude. Most of this talk has been about building networks, but part of that process, is the building of organisations. I'm not talking about any one particular organisation, but of building an organisation that reflects your particular beliefs. Organisations are the cement, that join the building blocks of campaigns together.