Recent Anti-Capitalist Struggles in the UK

the commoner, London collective

(October 2002)

Over the past decade, struggles in Britain have expanded substantially – both in terms of their aspirations and their organisational principles. These developments warrant a more detailed, comprehensive story than we can tell here. Our short article briefly surveys radical movements during the last few years in England, especially in London, our vantage point.

Our account emphasises ‘direct action’ activities which obstruct neoliberal agendas or which appropriate resources for alternative purposes – rather than protest campaigns which simply make demands. And we characterise various activities as anti-capitalist in the sense that they resist central aspects of the neoliberal agenda, in a period when capitalism offers no future other than relentless marketization of everyday life.

In the early 1990s the UK political scene suffocated from a sense of defeat by the Thatcher regime, especially since the miners’ strike ended in 1985. A cloud of fatalism weighed heavily upon every political discussion. The UK government continued its role as the neoliberal vanguard of Europe.

In the late 1980s such an atmosphere was somewhat shaken by struggles against the poll tax. As a socially regressive tax, it was based on residence rather than upon income, thus putting people into debt. In response, local campaigns organised direct action in housing estates, especially to prevent bailiffs from dispossessing new ‘debtors’. When this community movement culminated in a large national demonstration in 1990, police attacks in Trafalgar Square provoked a response known as the ‘Poll Tax riot’. The overall campaign stimulated the growth of socialist groupings in Scotland, as well as London-based anarchist groupings such as the Class War Federation, which continued to mobilise a small fraction of marginalised urban youth through the 1990s.

For a continental European perspective, the political scene in the early 1990s in a metropolis like London must have seemed both exciting and frustrating at the same time. It was exciting because London exhibited all the contradictions of modern capitalism: the financial district of the City, with its daily movement of trillion of pounds, located literally next to poor neighbourhoods of recent immigration from Bangladesh; high tech in the western suburbs, and sweatshops in the East End; racist police and fascist organisations intimidating immigrant communities, and organised anti-racist movements. Since the 1980s expanded financial credit had become an integral part of government strategy, towards individualising the working class as debtors and consumers. Stressed-out workers were desperately trying to pay off their bills and mortgages by working the longest hours in Europe.

Meanwhile government policies were designed to fragment the working class through "flexploitation". New laws promoted casualisation (precaritá) and privatisation, which helped employers to exploit labour in more flexible ways. Such laws weakened workers’ protection against dismissal. Privatisation increased the used of fixed-term contracts. The new laws restricted the scope for legal strikes, even prohibiting solidarity, i.e. strikes against any employer other than one’s own. This was especially important where the labour force was divided between employees of a company or public service and employees of its sub-contractors or of an employment agency. Not simply ‘anti-union’ legislation, the `no solidarity’ rule provided means for union bureaucracies to discipline and fragment their own members.

From 1986 to 1996, unemployed people faced a gradual tightening of benefit rules; increasingly, they were required to prove their search for work and to join so-called ‘training’ in letter-writing routines and work discipline. In 1996, they faced cuts in entitlements and were reclassified as ‘job-seekers’, who must accept any full-time job after three months on the dole, whatever the pay. Powers to `direct’ claimants to training, even to work for benefits as a workplace trainee, were increased. Local groups opposed such government harassment; they encouraged people to reject the pressures to accept low-paid, often casual, work or unwanted training programmes.

The London scene was frustrating because these contradictions, as well as the heterogeneity of the social composition in such places, had no political discourse capable of recognising different life-situations and aspirations, while pulling them together. However, in the early 1990s the archipelago of movements and organisations was heavily divided across ideological lines: on each side of the socialist/anarchists divide, numerous churches distinguished themselves according to "correct" interpretations of history (e.g. the 1919 Kronstadt massacre, the Spanish Civil War, etc.)

By the mid-1990s new struggles began to overcome fragmentation by recomposing forces across social and political divides. ‘Direct action’ acquired new meanings for two broad developments – social movements and the labour movement . Although they had distinct origins and different anti-capitalist perspectives, their actions eventually intersected in strategic ways.

An early sign of change was the movement against the government plan to construct many new roads. This plan formed part of the Trans-European Network (TEN), designed to make transport more efficient and so to intensify market competition among producers across Europe. New roads would enclose common spaces which people valued as wildlife reserves or as urban amenities.

In response, protesters set up encampments in woodlands due for destruction and physically obstructed construction equipment or even sabotaged it. As mainstream environmentalist organisations distanced themselves from such confrontations, anti-roads struggles stimulated a more independent activism, linked with support networks in local communities. Groups such as Earth First! not only catalysed such actions but also articulated a horizontal vision for revolutionary organization creating a non-capitalist society. Although direct action had many precursors in the early 1990s, more imaginative forms now gained a broader social base and new alliances, e.g. semi-rural populations. Moreover, the protests succeeded in deterring expansion of the roads programme.

As a related development in the mid-1990s, an anti-road protest in East London expanded its horizons into Reclaim the Streets. The RTS flag was coloured green-red-black, thus symbolically linking three political traditions. As a response to the enclosure and commodification of public space, RTS sought to reclaim this as space for community life and thus to build a sense of community. Their actions were carefully and secretly organised to occupy a major intersection or motorway with a sound system, which then helped to attract and unify a crowd. In the streets and squares liberated for a day, children played in sand dunes established under traffic lights, which had still functioning intermittent lights, reminding us of the ghostly presence of traffic jams. People were dancing and playing music. Meanwhile powerless police toured the liberated area as if they were walking in a casbah.

The late 1990s saw greater environmental protests, but these were not simply "environmentalist". Instead they explicitly attacked the capitalist appropriation of resources and space; they linked issues such as public space, democracy and community. For example, when RTS facilitated street carnivals, these were not just a new tactic to resist transport policies based on motor vehicles. They also provided a form of life politics in the here and now – an action which was decentralised yet coordinated, spontaneous yet organised.

In that broad sense, the direct action and environmentalist movement became a novelty of the British movement. It included a variety of small organisations, individuals and networks. Together they built high-profile direct action campaigns which attracted the sympathies of the public at large. For example, when McDonalds successfully threatened libel suits to intimidate its critics into silence, a small group known as ‘Greenpeace London’ refused to surrender. They continued to distribute a leaflet – accusing the company of worker exploitation, animal cruelty and environmental degradation – which drew much attention. This led to the world-famous ‘McLibel’ trial against two anarchists who defended themselves in court and sought to put the company on trial. This defiance generated more protest against the company in the UK and around the world, even efforts at trade-union organisation.

As another example, when the anti-roads protest successfully led the Conservative government to reduce its construction programme, some activists turned their attention to genetically modified crops. At this time, the first US shipments of GM grain were reaching Europe, and protesters raised public attention to the prospect that we would be ‘force-fed’ GM food. As a high-profile theatrical stunt, Greenpeace occupied such a grain ship in Liverpool and dumped a lorry-load of soybeans at 10 Downing Street. Supermarkets were picketed by local groups, e.g. of the national organisation Friends of the Earth.

In addition, several anonymous groups carried out surreptitious sabotage of GM field trials. Soon anti-GM activists decided to go public as ‘Genetix Snowball’, a ‘campaign of non-violent civil responsibility’. They openly identified themselves as individuals defending democracy against the complicity of politicians with multinational companies. Such actions eventually catalysed a mass movement against GM food, which symbolised neoliberal globalisation and industrialised agriculture. Throughout the country, local meetings voiced opposition and sometimes debated alternative futures for agriculture.

These protests overlapped with efforts by UK activists to link with others throughout Europe and beyond, through a ‘globalisation of resistance’. This effort was inspired by the Zapatistas in particular, e.g. their critique of ‘unfree trade’ and their horizontal models of organisation. Wider links were developed in 1996, e.g. at the Amsterdam EU Summit, as well as the Second Intercontinental Meeting against Neoliberalism and for Humanity, held in Spain. Similar protests and counter-summits were then brought to the UK, e.g. at the EU summit in Cardiff in 1997 and at the G8 meeting in Birmingham in 1998. Through international networks, some UK activists organised London events for the Inter-Continental Caravan, composed of mainly Indian activists who were touring Europe to coincide with the 1999 Cologne G8 summit. These protests were inspired or planned by People’s Global Action.

In parallel with the new social movements (described above), the mid-1990s saw greater resistance to casualisation policies. One of the last acts of the Tory government in the employment arena was an experimental workfare scheme, `Workstart’. It also created more menial ‘jobs’, even by subsidising employers who paid below a certain wage.

After the New Labour government was elected in 1997, it extended the ‘job-seekers’ policy into a more ambitious programme, ‘the New Deal’, involving large-scale compulsory `counselling’ and job-search training, and a workfare programme for those who could not or would not take available jobs at the national minimum wage. Such measures provoked greater resistance from unemployed groups, which sought to undermine this ‘New Raw Deal’. Beginning before the 1997 election, some local groups, such as Brighton Against Benefit Cuts, occupied offices of employment agencies or of voluntary organisations colluding with ‘work-for-benefit’ schemes; some groups made links with radical trade-unionists

Through the 1990s many employers casualised their workforce with the help of neoliberal policies, e.g. anti-solidarity legislation (as described earlier). They found replacement workers to accept insecure and fixed-term contracts, thanks to the stricter conditions imposed on the unemployed. Sooner or later, some trade unions accommodated the casualisation regimes rather than resist them. The establishment, for the first time, or a national minimum wage law in 1999, and the introduction of a right not to be dismissed without good cause after one year’s service (compared to two years, previously) helped a minority of workers. But the second measure, if anything, gave employers more incentive to hire only on fixed term contracts. The combination of privatisation and anti-solidarity laws continued to divide and weaken the trade union movement.

Eventually a high-profile resistance came from within the labour movement, beyond (or even against) official structures of trade unions. In many cases trade-union officials attempted to limit or undermine the struggle, which therefore could continue only by adopting new methods and making new alliances. The foremost example was the Liverpool dockers. They put together an impressive coalition, both international and cross-issue in character; this put back on the agenda the issue of solidarity.

Briefly explained, the 1995-97 Liverpool dispute had its origins in the nationwide casualisation of the docks since the 1980s. In the Mersey docks this agenda was carried out directly, e.g. by altering contracts of the unionised workers, as well as indirectly by creating a separate workforce through employment agencies. Many dockers were still unionised and employed directly by the Merseyside Docks & Harbour Company (MDHC), but they were partly casualised; work timetables were flexibly adjusted to undermine their collective power and to suit the workload. When the fully casualised dockers revolted against their employment agency which had imposed compulsory overtime and low pay, the unionised ones went on strike in solidarity. All were dismissed and replaced by scabs.

The dockers now faced a management-government-union alliance, determined to break their resistance. Although their own trade union (TGWU) provided facilities and financial assistance, it refused to support actions against the employer. According to the national leadership, such support would be illegal under the laws which prohibit 'secondary' action, i.e. against an employer other than one's own. Yet these anti-solidarity laws provided a convenient pretext for the union to collude with management. Indeed, the union treated the dispute as a threat to its own authority. When the Liverpool dockers gained international support, e.g. from dockers elsewhere willing to block any ships going to or from Liverpool, trade-union officials sought to undermine such solidarity actions by dockers worldwide.

Within Britain, solidarity efforts were coordinated by the London Support Group for the Liverpool Dockers. This group made links to other dismissed workers, e.g. the largely Asian staff who had rejected casual contracts at the Hillingdon Hospital in London. Together they organized national demonstrations to support all struggles against casualisation. The dockers went on speaking tours and solidarity visits around the world, e.g. to May Day protests in Turkey, while making links to immigrant communities in Britain.

The Liverpool dockers also attracted support from direct-action movements, for several reasons. They had previously prevented the import of toxic waste, now challenged the anti-solidarity laws in practice, and pursued their struggle independently of trade-union officials. In September 1996 Reclaim the Streets (RTS) mobilized its supporters to join a Liverpool demonstration by the sacked dockers. When the Liverpool dockers sponsored a People's March for Social Justice in April 1997, RTS helped to attract the 20,000 people who marched and danced through central London, thus turning the Whitehall government district into a carnival space.

In practice, the Liverpool dockers went beyond their largely traditional rhetoric, e.g. about the right to a job. They struggle expressed aspirations for dignity through solidarity and wider community. Although they were mostly men, supported by their families, the dockers’ struggle catalysed wider involvement. ‘Women of the Waterfront’ went on speaking tours and challenged trade-union officials who colluded with management. In April 1997 in London the dockers’ community found themselves in the RTS-inspired carnival, where anti-capitalist youth made links with a new kind of labour movement.

Although the dockers eventually accepted redundancy payments in 1998, the outcome was not simply a defeat. Dockers' leaders emphasized that the struggle itself had been a victory for class and community solidarity. One shop steward questioned whether it made sense to demand 'the right to work' – in a period when capitalism could no longer provide the sorts of industrial jobs on which the labour movement had been built.

Whatever is now the fate of the ex-dockers or RTS activists, their activities created double synapses whose harvest remains to be reaped. A section of the labour movement reflected on how their work relates to environmental issues and discovered new ways to do politics. Environmentalists learned from the dockers through their historical experience that a strong union in the docks meant the capacity to reject cargos that do not meet basic standards.

In the late 1990s there was a nationwide radicalisation of trade unions especially in the public sector, e.g. teachers, social services, transport workers and fire-fighters. They increasingly advocated and organised strike actions, after a long period of relative deference. Although formal demands emphasised wages and conditions, impetus came from the threat of casualisation, e.g. through outsourcing and subcontracting. The Liverpool dockers were an early sign of this trend.

For the neoliberal project, a prime instrument has been the ‘Private Finance Initiative’. Through PFI, the government subsidises companies to build and/or to run new facilities for schools, hospitals, transport, etc. It blackmails local authorities by offering funds only if such arrangements are accepted. This agenda not only provides corporate welfare, but also allows the government (national or local) to reduce its responsibility for local services. In response, since the late 1990s local campaigns against PFI have united a broad range of constituencies, e.g. linking trade unionists with community groups. The PFI threat has added impetus to strikes which make conventional demands. More recently, national trade unions have taken up the PFI issue, linking it with casualisation and the degradation of public services.

Street protests

The strategy of appropriating public space reached its highest point in Britain with the J18 ‘Carnival Against Capitalism’ in the City of London on June 18 1999. Organised by networks around RTS, this event was part of a world-wide mobilisation inspired by People’s Global Action. It coincided with the G8 summit at Cologne, where protests were severely constrained by the police. By contrast, in London thousands of people reclaimed the Square Mile of the financial district, grinding it to a halt. Some City workers joined in for part of the day or, bizarrely, ‘dressed down’ in order to blend in with the protestors.

J18 was seen as a preparatory step to the Seattle demonstration five months later in November. The protests there and the WTO’s debacle inspired further resistance in the UK. However, imaginative street protests did not continue as before, and there was no strategy for turning a series of protests into a sustained movement.

Such a task faced several difficulties. Although the British press had given the street protests favourable coverage, some journalistic reports started to demonise the protestors. Behind the scenes, the police made clear to key organisers that they would face systematic harassment if they continued to organise street carnivals. The police started to use "kettle tactics" – i.e. by fragmenting participants in these demonstrations, surrounding groups of them, and effectively detaining them in the street for hours; these tactics undermined the organisational principle of remaining mobile and unpredictable. This became a serious problem at the May Day 2000 event, where RTS had invited the public to do some guerrilla gardening at Parliament Square.

More fundamentally, there was no strategy for turning a series of protests into a sustained movement. The greatest successes of direct action – e.g., in stopping new roads and GM crops – implicitly drew upon nationalist identifications with the countryside, but the limitations were rarely discussed as strategic issues. The important link with casualisation had a logical link with the precarious employment of many people in social movements, but capitalist ‘work’ was rarely discussed as a strategic issue. Paradoxically, some anarchist networks (around RTS) adopted Left-wing practices of the sort which they had criticised, i.e. ideologically ghettoising themselves and scapegoating others for the limitations of protest actions

Around the same time as May Day 2000, a group of media activists within RTS created the idea of a news service independent of corporate-orientated news. The Indymedia model was already developing worldwide, providing instant reports on protest activities. On May Day 2000 Indymedia UK was launched and has since expanded its network. It is now working towards launching its own radio programme.

In recent years the Home Office has progressively changed the regulations and procedures on refugees. These changes make it more difficult for anyone to claim asylum in a legal manner. Just as the government had renamed the unemployed as ‘job-seekers’, so it renamed refugees as ‘asylum-seekers’. The previous system of cash allowances for refugees has been largely replaced by a `voucher’ system for food purchased in supermarkets, forcing refugees to live on 70-80% of the already very meagre social assistance levels for UK citizens. Many refugees are placed in detention centres – prisons in all but name – sometimes for a year or more, while awaiting an appeal or before being deported. The new rules supposedly distinguish between ‘authentic versus bogus’ refugees, yet clearly the government aims to deter all refugees, while making available those here as cheap and insecure labour for UK employers. It also aims to downplay injustices in the countries from which people flee, e.g. by deterring solidarity activity.

In response, campaigns against detention centres and deportations have emerged throughout the country. Often these campaigns are led by schools attended by the refugees’ children. They provide bail to detained people. Protesters also attempt to prevent deportations, e.g. by encouraging refugees to resist and by dissuading airline staff from cooperating with the authorities – often with success.

Moreover, the Home Office went even further with the March 2002 White Paper. This removes all rights from asylum-seekers, and announced an increase in now-called ‘removal centres’, where whole families can be imprisoned starting 2003. This plan has provoked a public outcry by various human rights and community groups, as well as some important sections of the mass media. They emphasise the inhuman conditions for children and pregnant women in particular. The struggle against detention centres is also linking with the struggle against privatisation because the detention centres are operated by private businesses.

As a further attack on solidarity and protest in general, the government obtained the Terrorism Act 2000, at a time when ‘terrorism’ was hardly a political issue. This broadened the definition of terrorism -- to include simply 'the threat' of 'serious damage to property', in ways 'designed to influence the government' for a 'political cause'. In effect, that law created new crimes of association, suspicion and anticipation. It potentially stigmatizes a wide range of legitimate political activity as 'terrorism', which then becomes subject to attacks on civil liberties, such as detention without adequate legal representation; anyone can be held

without charge for up to 7 days.

Its definition of ‘terrorism’ was also extended to activities in other countries. On that basis, the Home Office was authorized to ban any organisation in the UK. Such bans aim to deter support in the UK for resistance to oppression elsewhere. Several organisations linked with UK immigrant communities were officially banned, e.g. the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). Such organisations are deeply rooted in communities, so the ban implies the criminalisation of entire communities. In response, several thousand (mainly Kurdish) demonstrators in Whitehall defied the law, e.g. by wearing T-shirts proclaiming ‘I am PKK’. Perhaps disorientated, the police tried to ignore them. Protesters have linked the various communities which are threatened by criminalisation, e.g. immigrant groups and Indymedia.

After the 11 September attacks in the USA, the UK government further obtained the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (ATCSA) 2001. This went much further in legalising police harassment of ‘suspected terrorists’. This extra law serves to terrorize dissent and to promote paranoia. Overall its measures establish a permanent state of emergency – in our minds, as well as in law. As well as non-UK citizens, a much wider range of people can be arrested and intimidated, merely on grounds of suspected or anticipated activities. In particular, non-UK citizens can be interned for an indefinite period, with no recourse to a normal courts. Since enactment of the ATCSA, several Muslims have been subjected to such internment, some of them refugees. In response, protestors have demanded their immediate release and have highlighted the more general threat to the right of habeas corpus.

Just as the government repression labels refugees as a threat to the people, so the resistance campaigns oppose such measures and link refugee rights with civil liberties in general. These are among the many strands contributing to an impressive anti-war movement, coordinated by the Stop the War Coalition. Its protests started even before the first US attacks on Afghanistan.

The mass demonstration of November 2001 drew about 100,000 people, a large number by the standard of London’s mobilisations. This event was important not only for the turnout, but also for its composition. For the first time, a mass demonstration in London went beyond the usual suspects – Leftwing organisations, peace groups and trade unions. It also attracted community groups, especially from the Asian communities, many arriving in coaches from all over the country.

The traditional convergence point in Trafalgar Square became not only a place to have a traditional rally, but a commons on which communites link up and flourish. Perhaps echoing the spirit of the Reclaim the Streets, Muslim groups "reclaimed" a large section of the square and turned into an open-air mosque. At the fringes they were distributing dates and apples to the people streaming into the square, a gesture that was particularly appreciated if you were not part of the Muslim community.

While some victories have been won, and some barriers have been erected against neoliberal agendas, some participants may consider their efforts as failing to achieve the ambitious targets which they had originally set for their struggles. Nevertheless, in retrospect, such struggles opened up a public debate around fundamental biopolitical issues of everyday life: how do we travel from A to B and why, what agriculture we support, what food do we want to eat, what is the nature of work we do.

The practices, aspirations and organisational means of these movements have given meaning to the slogan, ‘No Issue is Single’. They have highlighted and extended links among struggles which would otherwise remain separate.

Further recomposition of the fragments seems to be on the horizon. In the last anti-war national demonstration on 28^th September 2002 in London, the number were impressive -- at least 400,000 people are a very large number in the British tradition of protest, showing a growing movement of opposition. Moreover, the broad composition of the demonstration confirmed the current trend towards the formation of new political subjects – resulting from encounters among diverse "backgrounds ", from the building of bridges across issues and beyond given ideologies, as well as from the recognition of the other as part of a wider movement. This is the path created by a heterogeneous multitude that is trying to transcend itself while creating a new political community.

the commoner, London collective

SOME WEBPAGE ADDRESSES

Brighton Against Benefit Cuts, http://www.muwc.demon.co.uk/

Campaign Against Criminalising Communities, http://www.cacc.org.uk

Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, www.carf.demon.co.uk

Commoner, http://www.thecommoner.org

Earth First!, http://www.eco-action.org/efau,

Do or Die http://www.eco-action.org/dod

May Day 2000, http://www.freespeech.org/mayday2k/readings.htm

Mersey Docks Dispute (1995-97), http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3843/dockhome.html

National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns, http://www.ncadc.demon.co.uk/

People’s Global Action, http://www.agp.org

Reclaim the Streets, http://www.reclaimthestreets.net

Stop the War Coalition, http://www.stopwar.org.uk