A-Infos (en) Britain, The Anarchist Federation in Nottingham

There has been some interest since Saturday 5th May about who we are locally, what we do, 
and even what we own! The following tells you something about us in those contexts, which 
is why we’ll stress some things about ourselves in contrast to others. It isn’t intended 
to be a comprehensive statement of what we think and do, and so there might be elements we 
can clarify if asked. But we wanted to give our own perspective on this year’s May Day as 
soon as we had the chance. ---- Who are we in Nottingham? ---- We currently have 10 
members in the Nottingham group, which is formally structured around a fee-paying 
membership in full agreement with the ‘Aims and Principles’ of the Anarchist Federation 
nationally: http://www.afed.org.uk/organisation/aims-and-principles.html . Beyond that, as 
a local AF group we have autonomy to operate. We meet fortnightly formally, and informally 
in between times.

 Amongst our members locally are public-sector workers, students (HE and FE) who also 
work part-time, casual workers, and people in receipt of benefits. Those in full-time work 
are amongst the most active trade members in their workplaces. Those who are students are 
very active in their own and other people’s struggles, and actively supported and worked 
towards the recent public sector strikes and supported picket lines on the day. There have 
been suggestions on two blogs that these younger comrades are somehow misguided, or in it 
for kicks.[1] We find this all the more offensive coming, as we know it does, from 
education workers. However, we feel that it does rather typify the attitude of the left 
groupings in Nottingham towards student struggles. But first…
Who we are not! To set the record straight in relation to what was said on Saturday and 
about it since, we are not the anarchist movement in Nottingham. Not everyone who opposed 
Sir Alan Meale vocally or did so with placards held in front of him are in the AF. 
Furthermore, not all of them are anarchists! The AF takes neither the credit or blame for 
Saturday’s intervention. The intervention cannot be dismissed as stemming from one group 
or tendency.

In fact there are many more people in Nottingham identifying and working as anarchists 
than are in the AF. There are a variety of anarchist approaches in Nottingham but we work 
together regularly and on similar issues. To generalise – and not to try to put words in 
other anarchists’ mouths – from the AF’s perspective we mainly differ with some others on 
the need or otherwise to establish long-term anarchist organisations such as the AF (or 
the Solidarity Federation, the other major anarchist grouping, not represented in 
Nottingham as yet), in order to reach a revolutionary situation in the best way. So, not 
only does the AF in Nottingham not dominate numerically, it would not mean much to any 
anarchists in Nottingham if we did. Certainly not all anarchists present and making an 
intervention on Saturday were doing so because the AF were. Had the AF gone home when the 
majority of the people on the march did – i.e. before the rally –a protest would have 
taken place nonetheless by the non-aligned anarchists and the others.

What do we believe in? We are ‘anarchist communists’, also termed ‘libertarian 
communists’, or (more broadly, and especially in Europe) ‘social anarchists’. This means 
that we want to create a society without political authority and without money. We 
consider it the case that humanity can live without hierarchical political structures and 
that all resources should be shared equally. Furthermore, we consider the vast majority of 
what is wrong in the world as resulting from the unequal distribution of resources and 
their ownership by the few. This is not so different from the ultimate communist society 
that Marx envisaged. But we see the revolutionary process as what ushers in this society 
and consider the concept of a ‘transitional stage’ as counter-revolutionary, authoritarian 
and, more importantly, not necessary. Human beings are capable of running society without 
higher authority. This is one way in which we differ from Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyists, 
and even more so Maoists and Stalinists (a few of whom locally have told us over the years 
that we’d have to be ‘up against the wall’ ‘come the Revolution’). As such, we critique 
the state in the here and now as something that rather disempowers people, as opposed to 
supporting them. So we work to undermine government, whatever its colour, at the same time 
as fighting to defend public services (they don’t have to be run by the state, and would 
in fact be better run in an economy without money). All of this is addressed in more 
detail in our publications at: http://www.afed.org.uk

What do we think about democracy? Quite a few people called us ‘undemocratic’. There are 
two issues here, not necessarily related. The first concerns who had the right to make 
decisions about what would happen at Nottingham May Day 2012. That’s addressed in our 
other document and is not particular to the AF. Here we want to point out that we consider 
ourselves democratic but use the word differently from the way it is understood 
constitutionally within the trade union or party-political process. In fact, we consider 
ourselves more democratic because we make decisions by ‘direct democracy’. This is a very 
different thing from the representative democracy by which we are governed and through 
which trade unions operate at the level of a branch or town group and above.

In representative democracy, an elected or otherwise chosen representative is empowered to 
make decisions on behalf of the people who elected them, and for a fixed term, without 
necessarily and routinely referring back to their electors. However much they sell out 
those electors, it is extremely rare for the representative not to survive this fixed 
term, because they are supported by other representatives benefitting from the same 
set-up, and also because being in powerful circles for any length of time enables them to 
build establish support structures even beyond that immediate bureaucratic circle. As 
such, they can effectively use this position to further their own personal, or their 
party’s, objective including in areas where they have no real mandate. We see this 
happening in trade unions as well as in parliament. Decisions are made by people who have 
had power handed over to them, however temporarily. In direct democracy, a delegate is 
mandated on specific issues only and must represent the people who have chosen them only 
according to that specific mandate. If they misrepresent or go overstep the mark, they are 
immediately recalled. We operate this system as anarchists and believe that it can be 
scaled up to regional and even supra-regional levels (there would be no ‘countries’ or 
borders in an anarchist world). That’s a crude summary. In reality, many decisions can be 
made just by consensus, and new technology makes it even easier for everyone to take part 
in decision making at every level. For more detail on democracy and the trades unions, see 
our pamphlet ‘On the Front Line’ at http://www.afed.org.uk

What we do. We engage in many broad-based campaigns and political activity – often doing 
donkey work with no reward for our organisation. But no one has criticised us on that 
front so we won’t start what would be a very lengthy list of activities. But if you 
haven’t heard of us until recently, that’s because we get on with stuff and aren’t 
especially interested in recruiting, or at least don’t prioritise poaching members from 
the hierarchically-structured left. We have no members locally who are from a 
party-political background, and very few nationally.

It was in the context of the founding of Notts SOS that we became more concerned with 
saying who we were. We wanted it to be a long-standing, inclusive campaign that would grow 
and grow and force the issue with the council. As such, it was essential that the vast 
majority involved were not stale hacks used to working in a stagnant relationship with 
other rival political organisations with a view to taking over the campaign. This is what 
we saw the left as being like. We wanted the people new to political organising (there 
were dozens of them at the start of SOS) to understand that people on the left ‘shift 
between registers’, shall we say, if not forced to show their hand. So we managed to 
establish a process at SOS meetings where people in left groupings would say which party 
they are in, if any, rather than pretend just to be in this or that union, as though they 
were hardworking but disinterested in political advantage. More straightforwardly, skilled 
operators on the left  will do things like force a vote so that, before the non-initiated 
know what is happening, some motion that benefits their political organisation will have 
become at the same time ‘constitutional’ and official, but also ultimately divisive. So 
that’s probably how most people who know us, know us. We have won respect for making it 
clear who is who and what is going on in meetings.

What is less well-known about us except through recent misrepresentation is our 
specifically anarchist activity and resources. Two of us established and remain involved 
in the Sparrows’ Nest library, which we call a ‘centre for anarchist culture and 
education’:  http://thesparrowsnest.org.uk Please contact us if you would like to ask 
further questions about the Nest and its relationship to the AF. In brief, the library 
collections and wider project are run by a collective, consisting most immediately of 4 
other people. Two are non-AF anarchists and two do not call themselves anarchists. The 
major activity of the project is collecting and curating books and archival materials 
relevant to anarchism in general, and historical materials related to local anarchist and 
broadly left activism. In the latter, we overlap with local radical historians ‘Peoples’ 
Histreh’, who also base their collection in the building.

We have never been a resource centre nor been considered or used as one (unless by the 
truly desperate!). Aside from thousands and thousands of books and papers, we have two old 
computers, an obsolete printer, and a badge-making machine which is used by activist 
groups of various kinds including trades union branches (it’s currently with a UCU branch 
on strike on May 10th). We do not have access to any trade union printing facilities that 
can be used for essentially unrelated political purposes by people with access to them 
through their position in a union – shall we say the NUT. Nor do we have any funding for 
our activities other than what we raise ourselves.

We do plenty at the Sparrows’ Nest in addition to running a library, however. We also host 
talks and discussion meetings on anarchist-related politics and working class history. 
Work in support of asylum seekers and other stateless and homeless people has been done 
from there. We also engage in community activism in St. Ann’s. For example, we have hosted 
meetings on workfare and the EDL at the Chase Community Centre which members of local 
socialist parties have taken part in, have leafleted extensively about the EDL, again 
including with local socialists, have worked with a non-aligned local community newspaper, 
provide a refreshment stop for an annual guided history walk run by other local history 
types, and co-organised a radical education group at the Chase.

We are not particularly interested in recruiting people we work with to the AF. Unless 
they decide that they agree and would abide by our Aims and Principles, in which case they 
are most welcome. We also have a blog, which we don’t keep as up to date as we could 
because we are often too busy doing things to write about them: 
nottsblackarrow.wordpress.com. And a web page: http://www.afed.org.uk/nottingham

Finally (you’ll be pleased to hear) we are going to list and very briefly answer a couple 
of charges levelled at us, and relevant in the May Day context, that we have had to dispel 
and disprove over and over. If someone would like us to elaborate, we can.
1/ Anarchists can’t distinguish between the Labour Party and people who are in the Labour 
party. Not so, or we wouldn’t enter into alliances with Labour Party members in bodies 
such as SOS, Stop the BNP etc. What we have done is consistently opposed people speaking 
on platforms that represent such groups on behalf of the Labour Party. This has been 
accepted SOS policy since Vernon Coaker got opposed at the meeting where SOS was launched. 
It’s a perfectly coherent position, shared by many non-anarchists in SOS.
2/ Anarchists wanted Notts SOS to boycott May Day. We did not, or we wouldn’t have 
attended ourselves. We opposed the SOS logo being used in support of a platform including 
the pro-Cuts Meale. By this point most non-aligned people had left SOS, so it was a tough 
one to fight and we lost.

3/ Anarchists reject democracy. No. We opposed ‘bourgeois democracy’ and ‘representative 
democracy’. The first is what is given to us by the state to pacify us and leave other 
channels of political expression closed. We’re pretty sure that the working class has 
worked out the problem with that for itself. On representative democracy, see above.
And now a couple of things that they accuse us of which are true of us, which makes us 
wonder why they think they need to ‘expose’ us, because we state them all the time.

1/ Anarchists think that the Labour Party is as bad as the Tories or ConDem alliance. Yes, 
we really mean it, literally and not as rhetoric. In fact, we are worse off now after the 
Blair years than we were under Thatcher. Even the Tories are neither clever nor evil 
enough to have achieved this without Labour’s help before them. The Left is in denial 
about the Labour Party’s inherent class treachery. The party doesn’t even pretend that it 
will do anything other than ‘cut a bit less deeply and a bit more slowly’ (nice phrase, 
whoever came up with that). Think what would they would do in reality if re-elected?

2/ Anarchists think that the Labour Party can’t be won back for the working class. 
Absolutely. We can’t think in what version of 21st century material reality it is even 
conceivable that this could happen. Labour is in a transitional phase in which it hopes to 
extricate itself from needing the unions at all because of their money. It has been run by 
champagne socialists for decades now and they are as resourceful and ruthless as they are 
inherently ruling class. Give it up, comrades ‘without illusions’, and reconsider what 
territory it is worth fighting for.

There are other truisms and fallacies – such as anarchists won’t make demands of the 
state, anarchists have a love-hate relationship with the welfare state, and an ‘anarchist 
federation’ is a contradiction in terms. These haven’t been raised in the present context, 
although we are happy to discuss them. Just don’t believe everything you hear! You’ll find 
us far more honest about our own shortcomings than the people we expose are.
We do plenty more work that is a positive and constructive contribution to the wider 
struggle, including contributing to our organisation nationally. If you would like to know 
more about us locally, please contact us at nottingham [at] afed.org.uk

[1] [Nottingham AF is] ‘dominated by two or three long-time activists with a smattering of 
newer and student members around the edges. This could be a political weakness in some 
circumstances but it does mean that AFed have young and energetic activists on the 
ground’: 
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2012/05/06/anarchism-anti-cuts-movement-and-working-class-politics-reply-anarchist-federation; 
‘some were simply young and drawn by the exhilaration of direct action’: 
http://www.workersliberty.org/blogs/pete/2012/05/06/2012-mayday-demonstration-nottm-afed-throw-tantrum.
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