MAYDAY, MAY DAY!
CRITIQUING MAYDAY 2000 AS A POLITICAL 'RACKET'

 MayDay 2000's hype may be a bit wonky, but it's already as unavoidable as
 that of its predecessors - multiple glossy leaflets through the post,
 listings in all the movement press, stickers all round the Tube, the
 carefully tricked-up 'must go' ambience, though no-one you know can really
 think why. You should trust your own instincts a little more and the
 anarcho-herd's a little less - this one's a con, always has been.
         MayDay 2000 doesn't come out of Reclaim the Streets (RTS), Earth
 First! or anywhere else in the direct action / DiY milieu. It's prime
 movers are the Anarchist (Communist) Federation, old guard anarcho-Lefties
 more into promoting themselves and their ideology than revolution. Unlike
 June 18th and November 30th, it's not primarily a street event, it's a
 Lefty conference with the street party just used as a come-on to sell the
 conference and up their ideological cred.
         The story behind MayDay 2000 is one of manoeuvring and manipulation
 and the lesson is not to let yourself be used as cannon fodder in someone
 else's power games.

 SPLITS, SPOOKS AND SECRET BUNGS: MAYDAY '98

 The first MayDay conference was in 1998, held at Bradford's 1-in-12 Club,
 then the heart of the Northern Anarchist Network. Its leading lights
 presented themselves as open-minded and undogmatic in the last issue of
 Class War they had input into and their magazine, Smash Hits, claiming that
 as their own class struggle politics had failed, they were open to
 exploring new ways of changing society. Mainly because of their
 newly-forged alliance with striking Liverpool dockers, Earth First!ers and
 Reclaim the Streets were invited to Bradford MayDay and listened to
 indulgently.
         There was, of course, a lot more to all this than met the eye. The
 Greenies had been invited because workers turning to them for support
 instead of ouvrierists that had tail-ended them for months showed how
 exhausted and unattractive ouvrierist politics was even to industrial
 workers. Even Greenies could mobilise numbers, enthusiasm and activity that
 the ouvrierists could only dream about - and the dockers were mainly
 interested in allies that could get results, not just give lip service. The
 ouvrierists needed the Greenies to survive ideologically into the 21st
 century and, given this, their invite to MayDay '98 can be seen as just
 another cynical Leftist attempt to resuscitate their exhausted ideology.
         It's noteworthy who wasn't invited to MayDay '98 - the Class War
 Federation the Leeds lot split from and tried to shut down, Anti-Fascist
 Action who they split from when AFA got wise to their collaboration with
 local police and MI5 front Searchlight, and any other groups that knew
 about their collaboration with the State. The entire Northern Anarchist
 Network had been led by the nose for years by Searchlight asset Paul Bowman
 into a street war tricked up with local fascists that got all their pics on
 World In Action; local MPs whining for more secret state repression of
 'extremists', Left and Right; and surveillance cameras installed at the
 1-in-12 Club compromising everyone attending MayDay '98, amongst other
 events. Anyone principled enough to point this out was politically isolated
 and subjected to a vicious whispering campaign, not least using the
 networks laid down at MayDay '98.
         Most involved weren't so naive they didn't know this at the time.
 They were told. They pressed on with it because they put power before
 principle. Behind the Leeds lot stood a wealthy and influential
 anarcho-Leftist network centring on AK Press and Leeds-based Chumbawamba,
 flush from recently signing to EMI. Both Chumba's Alice Nutter and AK's
 Dean Plant knew Bowman well, Plant from early-1990s anti-poll tax
 campaigning. Chumba underwrote the Bradford conference, and the book fair
 and publicity there were largely down to AK, always keen to rack up another
 marketplace for their anarcho-wares. Plenty of the participants including
 RTS and Brighton-based eco-zines SchNews and Do Or Die were covertly bunged
 thousands of pounds by Chumba in an attempt to buy the direct action
 movement. Local Chumba beneficiaries in Leeds were primed with the 'tyranny
 of structurelessness' ideology the ouvrierists used to supersede rival
 'lifestylists' in the late-1980s in the hope that they'd establish formal
 structures in EF!UK so it could be easily taken over in classic Lefty
 style. EF!UK's anti-centralising ethic held, so the ouvrierists had to
 content themselves with secretly funding the cliques their proxies were
 publicly criticising in an attempt to tie strings to the direct action
 milieu that way. Certainly, we've never seen any of them critique Chumba or
 AK since 1998, nor have they published anyone else's criticisms of them.

 HOW THE FED GOT TO BE KING OF THE HILL

  he Anarchist Communist Federation have been around since the early-1980s
 and claim to be the bearers of a British anarchist-communist tradition
 dating back to Victorian times. If that doesn't sound Lefty enough to you,
 note how they could never bring themselves to unite with the Class War
 Federation--also anarchist-communists--just because Class War are livelier
 and less dogmatic than them. Despite this, they claim they'll work with
 anyone and the 'must go' hype around MayDay '98 called their bluff and
 forced them to Bradford. There are ACFers in south Yorkshire in with the
 Bowman clique who've behaved disgracefully towards other anarchists and
 even others within the ACF, but we think the Fed's main motive for getting
 involved was the backstairs influence and dosh, and they were prepared to
 play a 'long game' to get the lion's share of it.
         The Leeds / Bradford 1-in-12 Club lot certainly weren't up to
 holding the MayDay '98 network together. Their continuing collaboration
 with the secret state meant they couldn't even deal effectively with
 fascists on their own doorstep (the street war being make-work for the
 spooks), and a reputation for continually manipulating others for ulterior
 motives tainted them. As they'd said their own ouvrierism was bankrupt but
 actually believed the only point of the MayDay '98 network was to
 revitalise ouverierism, meaningful debate in Smash Hits was impossible and
 it collapsed. The ACF were happy to serve as a pipeline for news of Bowman
 and his cronies' indiscretions and eventually even politically-illiterate
 AK and Chumba got the point and shifted their patronage to the ACF who'd
 also--much against their nature and handicapped by their unwieldy and
 archaic ideology--been striking up informal links with RTS, just to show
 their patrons they could 'get the goods' that way.
         The ACF celebrated their ascendancy by unveiling their new
 collective identity as the 'Anarchist Federation' at the October '99
 Anarchist Bookfair. Lest you mistake this for the non-sectarian,
 all-inclusiveness the Leeds lot tried to sucker people in with at the start
 of the MayDay scam, this 'federation' is no more than the ACF under a new
 name. The ideology hasn't changed, it doesn't encompass more individuals or
 groups, though now those groups are expected to fall in behind them. The
 rival Northern Anarchist Network is denounced as ìMarxistî even though many
 are as anarchist-communist as the former ACF (eg. the ex-CWers in Leeds /
 Bradford) and they appeared perfectly happy to work alongside them for the
 previous two years. Chumba funding has given the Fed the opportunity to
 arbitrarily classify some groups as 'in' and others as 'out' regarding
 their own favour and through it, access to the anarcho-Leftist power
 complex. There have been other competitors for Chumba's patronage--the
 wannabes of the Scottish Anarchist Federation centred on the
 Neoist-controlled Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh (ACE - not!) spring to
 mind--but it was the sect formerly known as the ACF that were sneaky,
 subservient and rigidly ouvrierist enough to win the Chumba-dumbos and
 their political advisors at AK over.

 CRACKING THE WHIP: MAYDAY 2000

 Power is nothing unless it is exercised. Also at the 1999 Anarchist
 Bookfair, the Anarchist Federation first proposed MayDay 2000, a key mark
 of their ascendancy. Sure enough AK proxies the Solidarity Federation /
 Black Flag fell in behind them, as did the Class War Federation, no doubt
 glad to come in from the cold that Chumba's previous favour for their
 rivals in the North consigned them to.
         Tapping into RTS's international anti-globalisation network and
 putting a reductionistic ouvrierist spin on the anti-capitalist rhetoric
 RTS put about for J18, MayDay 2000 sent delegates to a post-Seattle N30
 meeting in Canada and proposed 1st May as the next world day of action
 against globalisation. Although International Workers Day is an attractive
 enough date for people from their ideological tradition and would boost
 their conference internationally, it was a significant departure from
 previous world days of action inasmuch as they'd been selected to coincide
 with dates the WTO were actually meeting. Even this practice had been
 criticised as giving those outside the country concerned no opportunity to
 act directly against the WTO meeting, but the choice of May Day eliminated
 even this direct action component, reducing the whole to empty protest.
 Later criticised for setting this arbitrary date, MayDay 2000 blamed some
 trade unionists in Canada for proposing it.
         Equally high-handed was their organisation of the conference and
 call for (futile) mass street action to boost it. A two-day programme was
 laid down to sell 'ordinary working class people' simple-simon anarchist
 ideas, then the books (AK's marketeering cut), then the cult heroes in the
 form of a Q&A panel discussion, then maybe a bit of excitement in the form
 of street action. Because they didn't have the resources to make all this
 happen without the assistance of activists from outside their own circle,
 MayDay 2000 had to make some display of openness - to the old RTSers,
 EF!ers, and the new DiY milieu generally. When this led to criticisms of
 the patronising 'mug and jug' nature of their own ideological
 proselytising, critics were told there wasn't time to discuss anything more
 than implementing the pre-decided programme, ie. more of the same
 quasi-Leninist arrogance. This objection didn't apply to the Neoist
 Alliance's Fabian 'Fuckwit' Tompsett, who wasted half a meeting absurdly
 arguing anarchism is fascism without being shut up or kicked out, but then
 this Holocaust denial apologist and secret state asset is a pal of AK and
 their Black Flag proxies and is honest enough to openly attack Greenies
 rather than concealing these sentiments enough to trick 'useful work' out
 of them. The sum total of all these criticisms was that the tag-line for
 MayDay 2000 was amended from 'anarchist' to read 'anti-capitalist', a
 measure of how carefully they were listening to them, especially when these
 were considered ìthe same thingî. It had to be pointed out to them that
 anarchists are also anti-State / anti-hierarchical. The obvious
 deficiencies of MayDay 2000's definition were shown up when overt Leninists
 tried to jump on their bandwagon. They excluded Workers Power as
 opportunists (ie. ideological competitors), but didn't exclude themselves
 for playing exactly the same game at RTS's expense.
         The conference is one thing--a cut-rate version of the SWP's
 utterly unoriginal 'Carnival against Capitalism' May Day conference, but
 otherwise indistinguishable from it--but the street party's something else.
 No doubt because Chumba saw street events like J18 and N30 as 'the latest
 thing', MayDay 2000 announced they'd be staging one on 1st May to the
 mainstream media, then presented this fait d'accompli to Earth First!ers in
 the expectation they'd organise it for them. They expect to claim credit
 for any ensuing disorder whilst all EF!ers will get out of it is cracked
 heads. There's also the small matter of such disorder achieving little--May
 1st being a bank holiday, there's no real target and N30 Euston shows the
 cops know how to contain and control this stuff now even if there were--and
 it being used to legitimise anti-terrorist legislation designed to end open
 civil disobedience in UK.

 THE MOOT AND AFTER: WHAT'RE WE GOING TO DO NOW?

 W hen Anarchist Federation, Black Flag and Aufheben types went to the winter
 2000 EF! Moot to present their fait d'accompli, they left huddled and
 pasty-faced with it rejected as take-over tactics. EF!ers weren't prepared
 to accept their dictatorial, manipulative style, their elitist
 propagandising or their gesture politics demonstrations.
         Though it's good to see EF! can defend itself from this sort of
 attack (assuming future attackers will also need their co-operation), this
 incident has opened more fundamental questions about what sort of alliances
 and actions are appropriate as far as EF!ers are concerned in making
 revolution. People objected when MayDay 2000 took over the representation
 of a big street party, but must now question why anyone should presume to
 represent others motivations in participating in such actions (largely to
 do with immediate, non-ideologised, pleasurable experiences of one sort or
 another, IMHO). The point is that the majority of participants in any big
 event are largely passive, voiceless and directed - why this sort of mass
 action was so attractive to Leftist racketeers in the first place.
 Similarly, MayDay 2000 were so arbitrary in their selection of date to make
 it obviously empty symbolic protest, but don't most street parties border
 on this, protesting abstract 'capitalism', 'globalisation' or which ever
 buzzword is current (pick which ideologues you want to attract!) rather
 than specific manifestations where we can make concrete differences?
         Most EF!ers at the Moot decided to organise local street parties
 instead of supporting one centralised in London, not half an answer to the
 questions raised above. The anarcho-Leftists want power by winning converts
 from the current ruling ideology to theirs - no wonder they act like
 governments-in-waiting! Our role isn't to win converts, but to destroy
 power and make it possible for people to live free of it. We need to study
 what most immediately and concretely oppresses us we can destroy, then
 having done that, the next most immediate and concrete oppression, and by
 liberating ourselves we'll also liberate others. This isn't about an
 ideologically-imposed external 'cause', it's about our own lives and using
 our everyday lives as cover, just as the more avant garde German guerrillas
 did. We need to study the physical infrastructure and the legal / cultural
 infrastructure, how it relates and how we can pixie it most easily.
         Without mass actions, we don't need mass funding, a corrupting and
 corrosive influence on EF!UK from its inception. If people insist on big
 actions, funding should be limited to what participants can raise amongst
 themselves, from their own resources, rather than what they can whistle up
 clandestinely from one big donor. That way, some level of popular
 participation, accountability and transparency will remain - and it'll be
 harder for demos to get to a monster scale where some can pretend to
 represent the motivations of other participants. If Chumba want to fund the
 movement, they should do so openly and without the ulterior motive of
 propping up archaic and manipulative ideologies or bribing others to do so
 when this is never going to make revolution. They should look beyond what
 the direct action / DiY movement is doing at one important thing we are
 saying: we aren't prepared to lead, nor should any free person be led.
         Finally, EF!UK already has a rule of thumb not to co-operate with
 political parties - why they were sussed enough to refuse co-operation with
 the SWP over May Day. What's implicit in this critique of power needs to be
 bought out. If we rejected all representation, all peddlers of ideology and
 spectacle for what is immediate, we'd have picked up on the Leftist
 take-over from within all the earlier and defused the MayDay 2000 debacle
 before it became an embarrassment to our liberatory perspective.

 TOGETHER LET US END REPRESENTATION, SEPARATION, SPECTACLE, IDEOLOGY AND
 ILLUSION!

 GREEN ANARCHIST, BCM 1715, LONDON WC1N 3XX