Communique #3 Demonstrations, strikes and petitions: Marching towards change or disaster?

Some tentative and random draft thoughts about protest tactics.

The right to protest is a fundamental human right, which we in the UK often take for granted. In many countries, to demonstrate against the government, or against the interests of those in power, will result in arrest, disappearance or death. Our right to protest is not one that was kindly bestowed on us by a benign ruler; it was fought for and won over centuries. Yet, it is a thorny issue for the state which wants to seem democratic and yet cannot allow any dissent to actually threaten the status quo. This is why establishment politicians continually agree with the right to protest while at the same time chipping away at the logistics of how protests can actually be carried out. Hence, we are at the stage where a demonstration or march can take place, but the police must be notified, they must approve the route and they have the power to ban the march if, in their own eyes, it presents a threat to law and order. We therefore now have marches that are carefully stage managed and any deviation is instantly suppressed e.g. by kettling, police in riot gear etc. Demonstrations are so innocuous that their role as a part of a strategy of opposition must be seriously questioned.

Protest can take many forms, including letter writing, lobbying influential decision makers, petitions, rallies, graffiti, strikes, political organisations, street demonstrations, riots and revolution. The English have a significant history of radical protest which has pressured politicians into making changes – which they, of course, take all the credit for. Of late, possibly since the advent of Thatcher and arguably even earlier, I would suggest that we have not actually been very good at demonstrating, especially as constraints on demonstrations have become more binding.

In fact, we seem to be in a position where social media can achieve more notable victories than traditional political groups in single issue campaigns by, and this is the significant point, targeting specific individuals or companies on very precise issues. Social media has a degree of anonymity and involvement in campaigns does not actually require doing very much or making many commitments or sacrifices ...  unlike more traditional forms of protest. It is also a virtual world where many things are illusory. The English are often seen as not being a particularly political nation, which is unfair as it is more that we are sometimes unwilling to stand up and shout our very firmly held political beliefs in a still conservative society.

Despite the absurd, but inevitable, string of scandals and greed involving elected MPs, most people still have faith in Democracy (with a capital D), specifically voting for these very same MPs every 5 years. What the Left is failing to realise is that most people in this country are now comfortably well off and their personal situation is more important than social justice for everyone. This silent conservatism is not particularly new, but it has suddenly become much more apparent in the wake of the 2015 election.

There are a number of reasons for this, including the acceptance that personal wealth far beyond our needs is a good thing (whatever the source and whatever the cost or exploitation to accrue it); the political establishment and media’s unchallenged climate of fear of migration, crime, national debt etc.; the concept that anyone needing help from the welfare state is a scrounger; the idea that it is not the done thing to complain or protest – “mustn’t grumble”; and, most of all, people have been bought off with commodities, disposable income, and dreams of/and aspirations. This is spectacular society - where everyone should be happy if they personally own their own home, have a job, buy the latest gadgets and can go on holiday several times a year … but play no role in the society that has been created for them, not by them.

The beautiful irony is that a smokescreen obsession of the National Debt has been created, which everyone must pay off via austerity, regardless of the fact that it wasn’t accrued by everyone; and yet we have record levels of personal debt which barely warrants a mention because individuals are going into debt to buy more commodities and that is worthwhile debt.

So, do marches, demonstrations and strikes achieve anything? They obviously can be seen to be worthwhile because:

• They bring people together for a common purpose;
• Occasionally, they do achieve their aim;
• They are empowering;
• They create publicity for a cause;
• They can be part of a broader narrative of discontent and protest;
• They get people onto the streets as a community rather than cowering behind keyboards;
• They are indicative of intensity of feeling about an issue;
• The right to protest is important, and must be defended and maintained.

Can they be seen as a negative tactic? Demonstrations can also be seen to be worthless because:

• The vanguardist organisation can alienate genuinely passionate people who give up after being bait for recruitment and grooming by left wing groups that puts ISIS to shame;
• A demonstration or strike can inconvenience people not involved so they also become disenchanted with that cause;
• A poor turnout at a protest can set a campaign back and lead to internal squabbling;
• They can just involve the same people with the same slogans so that others simply tune out the message and become deaf to the cause;
• The media will pick on tiny incidents to defame the whole cause e.g. vandalism of the war memorials;
• The police use public protests to gather information on activists or provoke violence;
• There can be a massive peaceful turnout which will hardly get any media coverage e.g. all the large local marches against hospital closures;
• They can, and most often are, simply ignored by the political establishment who will say that everyone had the chance to vote for a different party at the election;
• They may actually make matters worse e.g. a strike can result in a factory closing and people losing their jobs;
• You may end up on a march where you disagree with elements of the protest and end up with unfortunate bed-fellows e.g. I have been on anti-EDL demonstrations alongside radical fundamental Islamists who I abhor as much as right wing extremists.

So, where does this leave us, as individualist anarchists? Personally, I have not been on a demonstration for some time and the last one was about the state of the football team I support rather than anything overtly political. Protest marches that go from A to B, watched by bewildered pedestrians and bystanders, rather leave me cold and I cannot see the point, other than to galvanise those interested in the issue. If I hear the chant of “Who’s streets? Our streets?” one more time, by Left or Right, I will scream!

I have always thought that a more direct approach against those responsible for a particular injustice makes much more sense. Even the animal rights movement, which is quite rightly open to criticism, did directly target hunters, stores selling fur, vivisectionists, animal testing, circuses etc. rather than just simply traipsing up and down London streets. In their actions they created publicity for the cause and alleviated the suffering of animals. Of course, their actions were also manipulated by the media to become one of the negative elements of protest.

My stance on demonstrations against government policy is that we have absolutely nothing to demand of politicians; we only seek destruction of the state and government. Politicians do not care and they do not even need to care as they have the crutch of an electoral majority, however hollow that is with only 24% of the electorate voting for the party in power. I do not even expect them to care because their reason for existence is to promote their own well-being, and the political and economic class which supports them. In fact, it is actually easier to identify, define and confront an enemy that does not care rather than one which hands out titbits of hope, and expresses sympathy, to buy passivity.

Public demonstrations and marches are an easy way for the police and state to gather information on activists, plus it is like shooting fish in a barrel to arrest and charge them to hinder further activity. Demonstrations are a great way for the police to flex their muscles, try out new weapons and tactics, and, for some, a great excuse for a punch up. Among some anarchists and others, hatred of the police seems to take precedence over getting at the people who create the injustices; the police are simply carrying out the dirty work of government and big business. Of course, this means that the police are on the side of the establishment and this role needs to be challenged in whatever way individuals feel fit, but it is important to remember who the real enemy is. The politicians, business community and rich must be laughing their socks off at the sight of sheep-like protesters being kettled by hundreds of police, who manage to find hundreds of officers despite the cutbacks they whinge about.

We need to be much more imaginative in protest. Ridicule and laughter need to play a much more integral role in protest, and it must target guilty individuals rather than shouting to deaf walls. The Emperor really does have no clothes – and it just takes one person to point this out for others to realise the absurdity of those in power. There are some very creative people producing incisive and dynamic critiques of society, yet getting this playful creativity into praxis has always seemed problematic. A pie in the face to a politician beats a thousand placards on a London backstreet. In the insipid election, almost the only off-script event that will be remembered is the ukulele rendition of “Fuck off back to Eton”.

It is a daunting task, but the all-powerful media and global trade, which are ultimately far more powerful than politicians, must be exposed for their intellectual, resource and disinformation colonialism. The challenge is fighting something that, to all intents and purposes, often is illusory and even does not physically exist to us as individuals, and which weaves a bewilderingly complex network of connections.

Information is an essential element. Many people are finding out vast amounts of useful information about the establishment, from Edward Snowden to the council worker whistle blower. The issue is how to disseminate this in a way that is both understandable and relevant to every individual. Social media and the internet have democratised the flow of information and ideas, despite efforts at cracking down on subversion, but the battleground must ultimately be the streets and doorsteps of those in power or it will be just be the harmless safety valve of Facebook keyboard warriors.

We must expect nothing, and demand nothing, of the media, politicians or the police - except lies and repression. They will stop at nothing to protect their interests, and will continue to buy our passivity until they need to use violence, whether or not violence has been used against them.

It is up to individuals to decide how to adapt these protests; anarchists can offer nothing but their own actions. We neither condone nor condemn any resistance to the state. We have nothing to justify and nothing to apologise for; in fact the whole anti-government protest movement needs to abandon its defensive posture. 

Street protests ARE an essential part of a whole strategy of opposition to government and of supporting the anarchist cause, but they must not be marches for the sake of marching, and they must evolve to target the real puppet masters, free of police constraints. The Left will want to be in the vanguard of the protests against government policy, while we just want to dance on the ruins. 

Boston ICA 1989 exhibition video for On the Passage of a few People through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972

This is the three part video that accompanied the Boston Institute of Contemporary Arts exhibition On the Passage of a Few People Through a Rather Brief Moment in Time: The Situationist International 1956-1972. Recuperation at its finest, though we should always pay strict attention to such Spectacular activities! :-)

Situationist International Part 1 of 3

Situationist International Part 2 of 3

Situationist International Part 3 of 3

Debord's 1959 film is perhaps more interesting:

On the Passage of a Few Persons Through a Rather Brief Moment In Time (English subtitles)

The Dutch Provos of the 1960s: an overlooked radical movement

It will be interesting to see the forthcoming documentary “Provo: The great anarchist happening of Amsterdam” when it appears on YouTube later this year. I enjoyed reading Richard Kempton’s “Provo: Amsterdam’s anarchist revolt” book, one of the very few English language sources on this quite pro-Situ phenomenon from c.1962 – 1967ish. 

It is easy to criticise the movement in hindsight, but it was very significant in the historical context of an incredibly conservative Netherlands in the early 1960s. For example, the “Happenings”, riots against the marriage of Princess Beatrix to an ex-Nazi and the White Bicycles seem now perfectly sensible radical gestures, but at the time they challenged ingrained concepts of right to freedom of expression, the Dutch royal family and private ownership. The Dutch Provos are an overlooked radical movement, perhaps because of the language barrier for English speaking anarchists, but also because it was so unique and preceded the more well-known May 1968 events.

(Provo—from Dutch, "provoceren," to provoke. Anarchist youth movement in Amsterdam, 1965-67)

A film for beatniks, pleiners, scissors-grinders, jailbirds, simple simon stylites, magicians, misfits, pacifists, potato-chip chaps, charlatans, artists, anarchists, philosophers, germ-carriers, grand masters of the queen’s horse, happeners, vegetarians, syndicalists, santy clauses, kindergarten teachers, agitators, pyromaniacs, assistant assistants, scratchers and syphilitics, secret police, and other riff-raff.

"Provo has something against capitalism, communism, fascism, bureaucracy, militarism, professionalism, dogmatism, and authoritarianism. Provo has to choose between desperate, resistance and submissive extinction. Provo calls for resistance wherever possible. Provo cannot pass up the chance to make at least one more heartfelt attempt to provoke society. Provo regards anarchy as the inspirational source of resistance. Provo wants to revive anarchy and teach it to the young."

Provo is coming!

Trailer here: Provo! The great anarchist happening of Amsterdam

Mark Corske’s earlier film, Engines of Domination, a critique of political power, is certainly worth a look.

Film here: Engines of Domination 

Communique #2 Driven to distraction: The spectacular allure of cars

We have created a society in which the car is essential because of, among other things, more people working far from where they live, facilities being centralised away from the community they serve, children not necessarily going to the school nearest them, fear of crime and of other people, and sheer idleness. Cars have become a necessity of life – most people simply cannot imagine life without one. In the past, the basics for survival were food, water and shelter … now they also include a car, a big TV, a smart phone, a conservatory and many other items that we really could do without.

 Cars become one of the family, like a pet. People work hard to continually trade up until they find the perfect car. They become a status symbol. Those who do not have a car crave them. The car is the perfect commodity fetish. The car is an absurdity.

The ubiquitous influence of automobiles means that their existence is rarely questioned, let alone challenged, rather like religious doctrine within the church. An anarchist society could be created without privately owned cars; in fact, I would suggest that it could be positively desirable to have communities where people live and work within walking distance of home, or use communal public transport if they need to travel further.

 The number of deaths in car accidents is at the lowest level since records began in 1926, due largely to safer manufacture, better driving, clampdowns on drink driving and safer roads. 1,713 people lost their lives in car accidents, which is almost half the number in 2000 when 3,409 died. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/annual-road-fatalities. Of course, this is not much consolation if a friend or family lost their life, or was injured, in a car crash. This in no way detracts from the spectacular nature of the automobile industry, from the advertising to the alienation.

If you don’t own a car or drive, people look at you as if you must be really very poor, too stupid to operate a car or a Luddite. While these assumptions may very well be true in my case, they are indicative of how ingrained car ownership has become in our collective psyche. I am sometimes a grateful passenger in a car, but would rather that the lift was not needed in the first place.

The ironic thing is that public transport has rarely been so clean or safe. It is accused of being expensive, but how expensive is owning a car (tax, petrol, insurance, maintenance, MOT, parking etc.). For regular users of public transport there are always cheaper weekly, monthly or annual passes that bring the cost down. Public transport removes the need for a lot of car ownership.

There may be a place for some community owned cars, so that doctors and other essential services can directly get to where they are needed. If there was a society where most people walked or used community public transport, there would be no traffic jams and the public transport would be faster than current cars. Technology would ensure that public transport was fast, safe and reliable, with services when and where required.

At present, if you want to cycle, then roads are dangerous places. As people don’t need to do a test to ride a bike on a road, cyclists often become a hazard for all users. The chaos of roads leads some to cycle on paths which is ludicrous and endangers pedestrians. People who actually want to walk anywhere have other obstacles, such as poorly maintained footpaths and even no footpath at all in a lot of rural places. By freeing the roads of privately owned cars, cycling would be a desirable form of transport and the roads would not need to be so intrusive on our everyday lives.

Driving a car on a commute requires constant attention, whereas the person using public transport can just look out of the window, read, do work or actually interact with other human beings! It would be interesting to know how many of those people who scoff at the very notion of public transport actually use it.

It is the alienation caused by cars that I find the biggest criticism – people often never talk to their neighbours as they step out of their front door and get into the car to do everything. If you walk past a row of cars on the road, just look at the isolated faces trapped in the steel, plastic and rubber. Some people look like zombies who have had all the life drained from them, while others seem to think no-one can see them and treat the car as a room in their house! Home to Car to Work to Home to Shops to Home. Our cities have simply become car after car after car.

The demand for more and more roads to facilitate car use has destroyed many of our communities. Roads cut swathes through our towns and countryside, with rarely a whimper of questioning. Our communities have been criss-crossed and divided by roads, making it harder for people to interact except by car.

Also, the building of roads needs vast amounts of resources, from building materials to policing and technology, to keep the traffic flowing. And yet, one accident and the whole thing grinds to a standstill.

In the 1980s there was concern about the pollution caused by cars. While the pollution caused by driving one particular car may have been reduced by better manufacture, tighter environmental legislation and less harmful fuel – the key word is “reduced”. Of course, as living standards rise around the world, more and more cars are being produced and driven. It is harder to find anywhere where you cannot hear cars, however quiet they are supposed to have individually become. Even the Department for Transport website states:  
“Climate Change is recognised as one of the greatest environmental threats facing the World today and it has long been appreciated by governments that reducing the impact of the motor vehicle has an important part to play in addressing this threat.” http://www.dft.gov.uk/vca/fcb/index.asp

Of course, there is also environmental damage in providing the resources to manufacture cars, plus shipping them around the world and producing more roads. The new UK government are sceptical, at best, about anything to do with the environment. Car emissions still cause pollution and cars create noise. There is also a never ending and often caustic demand for parking; streets which are publicly owned are lined with these metallic nuisances.

Also, cars make us apathetic and lazy. We will not use local shops because it is easier to go to the supermarket in the car; we won’t use public transport because it is easier to get in a car and drive there; we have no consideration about anyone else because when we get in our car we are cocooned from the rest of the world. Road rage is merely the tip of the selfishness that cars imbue.

Government is essential for car domination. Without the myriad of legislation and taxation/expenditure, the road network would collapse and driving would become chaotic. Does anyone seriously believe that people would not drink and drive if they didn’t have to; or speed, or park anywhere, or drive without insurance, or stop when they had an accident?

Car manufacturers are among the leading global multinationals; they do not want to dominate the market, they want to dominate the world. They strive to be beyond government with a Transatlantic Free Trade Area (TAFTA) / Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) that frees them of shackles of any regulation, accountability or responsibility.

Car advertising has always been at the forefront of spectacular advertising. If something needs advertising it is because it isn’t really needed and you have to be persuaded of its value to you. Since 1945, this persuasion has always been a lifestyle choice because there could easily be one standard design that would be safe, reliable and affordable … but that is not how capitalism works. The central idea is to sell a product that will fit in with YOUR lifestyle, even if basically all cars do exactly the same thing, and look similar. This is why it is unusual for celebrities to advertise cars, because then you would associate the product with them, rather than with you.

The car industry, with its entourage of prostitutes, is still a male dominated sector; even the cars are masculine in their harsh metal make-up. The need for speed, and the analogies with sex and sexuality, have often been remarked on. 

Today, the advertising is more subtle, but this is made up for by the mind boggling array of accessories that can be bought for a car! The irony is that most cars are almost the same as each other, but personalising and accessorising seem ways to overcome this basic problem – they do not, and merely consolidate the spectacular allure and the need for further consumption. More depressing still is the glamour that is associated with fast and expensive cars; this mystique is a varnish put on by spectacular society to make us desire the unnecessary and believe that we must all strive to achieve such glamorous ideals.

We must be able to safely walk around our communities to understand the environment we live in. Cars have dictated how our villages, towns and cities operate. It would be so much better to have a community that is developed around human needs and those of the wider environment, including the natural world. Psychogeographical exploration of our cities is a part of this understanding, but this has become sanitised by the access for cars and technology that just shows us where everything is without the need for the vital process of self-discovery.

There is an alternative to private car ownership, but it is not in the interests of those who control our lives to even acknowledge this. Cars are not sexy - they are ugly, dirty, noisy, anti-social, polluting emblems of a selfish, greedy and ego-maniacal society that denies real community. And yet, it is not the car itself that is the biggest problem, it is the impact on our everyday lives. I don’t hate cars so much as what they represent. We can dream of a better society of individuals, in harmony with nature, working together to build a cleaner, better and more exciting world without cars.

Spectacular recuperation - an app for psychogeography!

I have only just become aware that there is an app on the Apple store that allows you to take part in a dérive as an element of psychogeography. While still not sure if Drift is actually a spoof, surely it would defeat the whole purpose of dérive! The Spectacle is yet again rendering the most radical of gestures harmless and then selling it back to us, increasingly in the most blatant ways. The dérive, as we understand it, is important as a revolutionary tool because it undermines the inevitability and monotony of modern capitalist urbanism. Recuperation by capitalism is largely inevitable, but it is important that it is realised and suppressed.

http://www.brokencitylab.org/drift/ 

This would hardly be the first Situationist intervention into the world of Apple apps. I am not sure of the wisdom of détournement in a company where that ridicule can so easily be turned on its head, but it is certainly cause for non-complicit interest.

https://visualmaniac.com/en/visualmag/tech/situationist-situation-status-banned-3414

Notes on dérive:

http://www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/si/theory.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive

AntiClockWise: Your Dreams Are My Nightmares

AntiClockWise was a pro-Situ anarchist zine that ran from to 20 issues from c.1989-1992. It was very much a punk collage production in the days before the internet became omnipresent and omnipotent, and when home computers were a rarity. Images were cut from magazines and newspapers, or were drawn by supporters; text was typed on a manual typewriter; headings were produced by Letraset kindly supplied by a friendly stationery shop in Liverpool. Production was a literal cut and paste approach using ample glue sticks (with tongue doggedly sticking out of the mouth) and sneaky out of hours abuse of photocopying machines in various workplaces. After stapling together, issues were posted out to interested groups and individuals, and were sold in left wing bookshops. The number of copies produced for each issue ranged from 250 to 600, so it was hardly a threat to the Murdoch empire! Most of all, it was great fun to cobble together and I was able to meet some wonderful people ... some of whom I still know 23 years after the last issue.

As I limp past being 50, the fire still burns and the modern world strikes me as more spectacular than ever. The recent election and the fallout for the Left has made me want to revisit AntiClockWise, and the Situationist spirit, to develop some of the themes it embraced - football, sexual identity, architecture and unitary urbanism, working class culture, commodity fetishism, the cult of personalities, transport, art, work, holidays, glamour, intellectual property etc.

Alas, the heady days of collage, photocopying and posting out publications seem have passed me by, but perhaps a blog is one way to continue the critique of modern society and also seek out alternatives.

The blog will host general thoughts like this and more detailed articles will be written as a Communique (Communique #1 was about why I do not vote).

I would welcome contributions and will be happy to promote like minded publications.

AntiClockWise - the zine that doesn't know where it's going ... and doesn't really care!

For anyone wanting to find out more about Situationism there are lots of books readily available (but generally quite expensive) or the texts can be found free on websites such as this one:

 http://library.nothingness.org/articles/SI/

Spectacular Times

AntiClockWise was very much influenced by the Spectacular Times pocketbooks produced by Larry Law in the the 1970s and early 1980s. These are still a great introduction to the ideas behind Situationism.

Thankfully, these have been digitised on various radical archive websites as PDFs e.g.

https://libcom.org/library/spectacular-times-larry-law

http://nntk.net/main.php?g2_itemId=251


Law also contributed to the production of the great video Are You In A Bad State? though sadly died before it was released; however, this is available as a DVD from Active Distribution

http://www.activedistributionshop.org/shop/dvd-s/1242-are-you-in-a-bad-state-1987.html

Blast from the past: Front covers of the original AntiClockWise 1989-1992

Communique #1 Why I don't vote

Communique #1 Why I don't vote

[This is the text of something I wrote before the UK general election of 7^th May 2015. It outlined some of the reasons I do not vote.]

 I am an anarchist and see no role for the state in a truly democratic decentralised society.

In an election I have to vote for one party even though l probably disagree with many of their policies. I will not back any political party because I find at least some of the policies of each party utterly repugnant. In any case, all of the parties with any hope of getting elected have become so similar that it is often difficult to distinguish between them. Even if I was to vote, ALL of the 4 main parties support policies I find utterly abhorrent e.g. varying levels of privatisation of the NHS, HS2, Trident etc. and they have no care at all for environmental issues etc. To vote for someone or some party that supports policies I personally find absolutely immoral is irrational and illogical.

The Conservative Party managed to head a government by simply getting 36.6% of the people who could be bothered to vote, just 24% of the electorate. I cannot see how that is representative, fair or democratic.

The general election is a vote for someone to represent your interests in Parliament; it is not about local issues despite what many people voting often seem to think. The person elected will probably be a member of a major political party and their loyalty will be as much to the party as to the area they serve. In a debate or vote in Parliament, they are much more likely to toe the party line than represent the best interests of their constituency and the constituents who voted for them.

Do not forget that MPs have allowed themselves a 9% pay rise. How many other people got anything like that? These people have cheated, stolen, lied and abused their outrageous expenses system … and still they say they are not paid enough! I suspect that many people who do not vote are not apathetic, they are just utterly disillusioned in the political process of electing representatives.

Private business and global trade are far more powerful than politicians now, and their vested interests will always win. So much of our society has been privatised that the real power lies in the hands of these private companies and a handful of individuals, who are mostly mates of the politicians, and we certainly will not be allowed to vote for or against them!

Professional politicians are just seeking a career and power, and power usually corrupts as we have seen in case after case. Yet politicians just say that it won’t happen again … and still we see that Parliament is full of thieves and scoundrels, and may have played an intrinsic role in covering up systematic child abuse and even murder etc. I simply do not trust anyone who wants to be an MP.

Politicians are only interested in us every 5 years when they want our vote. How many times has any politician come to ask if I need anything or am happy with them? I actually had to research who my MP was as I have never seen them mentioned; in fact her greatest claim to fame seems to be that, somewhat incredibly, she did not know the difference between the National Debt and the National Deficit!

I have the opportunity to vote for an MP for Devizes. In the 2015 general election the Conservative won with a whopping majority of 20,751. The MP, Claire Perry, got 57.7% of the vote. UKIP came 2nd with 15.4%; Labour came 3rd with 13%; Liberal DEmocrats came 4th with 8.1%; Green Party came 5th with 5.8%. I just fail to see the point of voting when it is a forgone conclusion what the outcome will be.

It is much more important to actively take part in politics through community or campaigning groups rather than delegating your individual political will to a careerist politician. No-one can represent you better than yourself. No person is good enough to represent another – anyone who thinks that they are should be treated with the deepest suspicion. The mentality of anyone who thinks they are in a position to represent anyone else has always intrigued me.

Voting legitimises the system. If you take part in this sham, you have to accept that the party with the most votes deserves to win and accept all of their policies. This is absurd. Many people say that if you do not vote then you have no right to criticise the decisions made by politicians; I utterly disagree with this interpretation and firmly believe that if you do take part in the electoral process then you should abide by the outcome and actually have less of a legitimate case to criticise the politicians that you voted in.

Democracy is the tyranny of the majority. Most people just vote for their own vested interest, not what is best for their community or even the country. This is why the Conservative Party remain in control – there are too many people who have made a tidy profit in shares in sold off companies that belonged to all of us and the government had no right to sell.

You may vote for a party on their policies, but there is absolutely no guarantee that those policies will be fulfilled. Politicians will lie, cajole and cheat to get your vote - it is their raison d’etre. You may vote also for a party and suddenly see it in a coalition with another party you despise … how many people voted Liberal Democrat and were aghast to see they had created a Conservative government in 2010?

I am told to vote for someone I have never even met.

Parliamentary democracy is the politics of compromise. It is a safety valve to stop people making real change. The system wants you to keep voting to give you an illusion that you are actually meaningfully participating in society so will accept the status quo. We have no option to vote for real change – to get the butchers out of parliament.

If I elect an MP in London they can easily get to Parliament every day if needed, but what if my MP is in Cumbria where they are expected to deal with local issues as well as represent people in Parliament. How is that fair?

I have one vote – the same as everyone else, but I or anyone else may have differing levels of political ignorance, yet all get the same say. The person who has read up on all the parties and studies the political system gets the same say as some redneck or religious bigot. A person who works hard and contributes to making their community a better place has that same one vote as a person who does nothing.

In all likelihood your vote will simply be cancelled out by someone voting for another party – this is the inertia of voting. If your choice does not win, the whole vote was a waste of time anyway as it will not count towards anything else in the prevailing first past the post system. In most cases, more people will vote AGAINST the winning candidate than FOR them.

The voting system is so open to abuse it makes voting worthless – postal votes can be completed by anyone; to vote at a polling station you just need the polling card which could easily have been fraudulently obtained.

Some say that people struggled and died so that we all have the vote. I believe those people fought to make a real change, not just for some half-hearted right to vote every 5 years and an allocation of about a dozen crosses in their lifetime. If they really did make all those sacrifices just so that they could have a choice of who rules and controlled their lives then they were sadly misguided. Some people also say that it is our civic duty to vote, but the politicians are decimating our civic communities. We all have a civic duty but that is to support our families, friends, neighbours and community, while respecting other people and the environment we all share.

The non-voters watch as the politicians’ lies and promises mount and the government good-news machine rolls into action, while quietly repeating the anarchist slogans ‘If voting changed anything they’d make it illegal’ and ‘Whoever you vote for, the Government always gets in’.

Welcome to the return of AntiClockWise!

Welcome to the return of AntiClockWise! 

AntiClockWise was a pro-Situ anarchist zine that ran to 20 issues from c.1989 until c.1992. Produced before the advent of the ubiquitous internet, it was cobbled together using Letraset, images cut out from other publications and text typed on a manual typewriter. The literal cut and paste pages were photocopied on the sly in various locations and merrily stapled together, before being posted out to interested individuals and left wing bookshops. 25 years on, this all seems incredibly old fashioned, but it was a lot of fun and was a time when thousands of people were also producing zines.

AntiClockWise was produced as a part of The Museum of Modern Alienation and had the slogan of "Nihilists, one more effort if we are to be revolutionaries!" which is a slight re-write of a quote from Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life in which he says "Nihilists, as de Sade would have said, one more effort if you want to be revolutionaries!"

The foundation for AntiClockWise was basically an internationalist anarchist stance, acknowledging the works of the Situationist International. I still hold these beliefs and think that they are perhaps more relevant than ever. It is important that we are willing to take the best parts of class struggle and lifestyle anarchism, but be constantly critical of their ideologies too. 

AntiClockWise believes that there is no role for the state and government. There IS a role for essential services to be run by workers collectives for the benefit of all (council communism), while seeking the abolition of so much unnecessary work so that everyone can enjoy the pleasures of free time. Debord's Spectacle has become more even more invasive through the use of technology, the triumph of international consumerism and the alienation of individuals. Most importantly, AntiClockWise champions the individual within its vision of an anarchist society. 

Most people in the UK are happy with their lot. Whether this happiness is real or spectacular is open to interpretation. The outcome of the general election of 2015 was of no consequence to us. It showed that there are a silent majority of selfish and self-centred people who are comfortably well off - they are willing to generously donate to emergency appeals and volunteer in their communities, but begrudge welfare and immigration because the media have told them these things are bad. The silent majority confounded the polls because they have no need to make their opinions heard - the things they want are readily to hand. The Left are now in a panic about what to do next - move to the left to create some anti-austerity party or move to the right to be similar to the Conservative Party who won the election. 

AntiClockWise has nothing to demand of the political establishment, except its destruction. It is time to return to the fray and contribute to the creation of an alternative to consumerist capitalism. AntiClockWise is not afraid to taste the unpalatable, reject what was thought to be permanent, erase the indelible, and develop an understanding of spectacular capitalism while cheering on anarchist praxis. 

Laughter is our greatest weapon in fighting a ludicrous world. Time is the enemy, pleasure is the aim. 

This blog will hopefully be a place to critique modern society and seek ways to escape it, even if it cannot be destroyed. It will be a place where a good old rant will be commonplace. Contributions are positively encouraged on any topic.

AntiClockWise - the zine that doesn't know where it's going ... and doesn't really care!