Warning: Solidarity can Seriously Damage Your Freedom

Saturday February 19th saw just over 1000 (300 if you listen to the BBC and 3000 if you trust the organisers magic attendance counter) march through Bristol city centre in protest against government public spending cuts ahead of the councils budget setting meeting on the following Tuesday. The event was organised by Bristol and District Anti Cuts Alliance.

Beyond Broken Windows: Anti Cuts Action in the West

On January 15th & 16th some anti-cuts activists from Bristol headed up to Manchester for the first Network-X gathering. The aim was “to establish a network that will allow libertarians to co-ordinate and support each others struggles” as part of the wider anti-cuts movement.

The decision was taken to form regional networks of anti-authoritarian groups fighting the cuts. As Bristol Anarchist Federation’s Anti-cuts Action Campaign has already been working on this for a while we hope to further this network. At present we have built links and are in contact with groups and individuals in Bristol, Bath, Gloucester, Stroud, Taunton, Hereford, Wiltshire, Cardiff, Newport and slightly further away in north Wales and Northern Ireland.

We don’t look to replace groups like Bristol Anti-Cuts Alliance and our affiliation form is winging its way to their secretary as I type. Our simple aim is to network with groups and individuals in the west to share ideas and mobilise for actions.

We support alliances such as BADACA and believe there are some great individuals working in them, their strong union links and ability to organise large scale mobilisations are vital to the anti-cuts movement. However they are all to often stifled with bureaucracy and party politics making them unable to mobilise at short notice and some within groups such as these abuse the platform to push their party line and show little interest in actually taking action.

The Facebook revolution has made it almost too easy to call demos, although it is great to level the playing field in this way, people are calling events and then not providing and propaganda/placards/banners etc needed, and as a result (like the recent Bristol EMA demo) protests are failing. Conversely where materials are provided and a demo properly organised the group calling the demo can take the opportunity to push their particular brand of politics and puts newspaper sales before fighting the cuts. We are also concerned about certain political parties who are moving to build power by hijacking organisations such as the NSSN and NCAFC.

Radical Workers, Unionist, Anarchists & Students on Bristol demo October 23rd