Why young people in the UK are returning to anarchism

Amid brazen abuses of state power and growing inequality, anarchist principles have been creeping back into the mainstream. Jak Hutchcraft talks to some of people the leading the charge.

There’s a board­ed-up venue on a busy road in Brighton. Wedged between an Oxfam and a Card Fac­to­ry, it has no fan­cy sig­nage, no clear indi­ca­tion of what goes on inside, or if the place is even open. But on the boards cov­er­ing the win­dows there are some words:

For a social sys­tem based on mutu­al aid and vol­un­tary co-oper­a­tion: against all forms of oppres­sion. To estab­lish a share in the gen­er­al pros­per­i­ty for all – the break­ing down of racial, reli­gious, nation­al, gen­der and sex bar­ri­ers – to resist eco­log­i­cal destruc­tion and to fight for the life of one earth.”

I’m at the Cow­ley Club – Brighton’s anar­chist coop­er­a­tive social cen­tre and music venue. Inside there’s a book­shop and café area dis­play­ing titles like Prison: A Sur­vival Guide, A Primer on Anar­chist Geog­ra­phy and Crass Reflec­tions. Fur­ther into the room there’s a huge mosa­ic mur­al that says Mutu­al Aid & Coop­er­a­tion, next to a wall plas­tered in posters say­ing things like END SIEGE IN GAZA, and The Only Good Fas­cist is a Dead Fas­cist. A notice board to my right is full of pam­phlets and fly­ers about fox hunt­ing, frack­ing and upcom­ing punk shows. This vol­un­teer-run venue was opened in 2003 and hosts gigs sev­er­al times a month, as well as organ­is­ing work­shops and talks, offer­ing a free library, run­ning a food bank, and prid­ing them­selves on being a base for projects ded­i­cat­ed to grass­roots social change.”

We also cre­ate a space where dif­fer­ent anar­chist groups can organ­ise, like hunt sabo­teurs or any oth­er kind of local anar­chist group, if they want to plan direct polit­i­cal action,” Flo­ralis, one of the vol­un­teers, tells me. The 27-year-old ded­i­cates her time every week to the book­shop, café and library, as well as work­ing full-time else­where. It also means just pro­vid­ing a warm space for peo­ple and feed­ing peo­ple that are hun­gry.” The space is named after the city’s own Har­ry Cow­ley, who was a key fig­ure in fight­ing fas­cism in the 1930s, as well as organ­is­ing and cam­paign­ing for the home­less and dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties in Brighton.

Far-right activ­i­ty has been esca­lat­ing in the UK over the last few years, with the government’s anti-protest bill and ris­ing anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric fuelling hate from the top down. The Labour par­ty oppo­si­tion have been large­ly tooth­less after the fail­ure of the Cor­byn project, lead­ing a lot of peo­ple to leave the par­ty or aban­don West­min­ster pol­i­tics alto­geth­er. On top of that, there’s the government’s response to the pan­dem­ic, which ignored advice from health pro­fes­sion­als and focused on giv­ing lucra­tive con­tracts to their cronies. This put social care and duty into the hands of the peo­ple. In this set­ting, anar­chist val­ues have emerged in unex­pect­ed – and even main­stream – places. One of which was the mutu­al aid response to the pandemic.

Some­one sent me a link to the One Show on BBC. You know, real­ly glossy, hap­py-clap­py pro­gram,” anar­chist writer Dr Jim Don­aghey tells me over the phone from his home in Belfast. You very rarely see any­thing polit­i­cal on there, but they invit­ed one of the peo­ple who set up the COVID Mutu­al Aid UK net­work onto the sofa to have a chat. They’re an anar­chist and they were sit­ting there talk­ing about the prin­ci­ples of mutu­al aid. Every­one was nod­ding along like, This is great. Every­one help­ing each oth­er, that’s fantastic!’”

Top to bottom: Photos taken by Meline Gharibyan at the Cowley Club

There were 4,300 mutu­al aid groups set up by vol­un­teers dur­ing the pan­dem­ic to help pro­vide food and the oth­er essen­tials to com­mu­ni­ties all over the UK; from Lon­don to New­cas­tle, west Wales to Glas­gow. It’s esti­mat­ed that these grass­roots projects had up to three mil­lion vol­un­teers at their height, and four in ten cen­tres are still active. By the end of 2021, the Tories tried to hijack them, call­ing the response com­mu­ni­ty-run Con­ser­vatism.” How­ev­er, Dr Don­aghey – a self-described punk anar­chist who works in acad­e­mia” at Ulster Uni­ver­si­ty – explains that mutu­al aid is actu­al­ly a core tenet of anar­chism. One that’s all about peo­ple help­ing each oth­er on a demo­c­ra­t­ic basis to make sure needs are met, and not wait­ing for the state to come in and do it for them.” The phrase was first coined by late-19th Cen­tu­ry Russ­ian anar­chist and anthro­pol­o­gist Peter Kropotkin. In Mutu­al Aid: A Fac­tor of Evo­lu­tion (1902) he states that it is present and essen­tial through­out human his­to­ry and the ani­mal king­dom. “[It] is deeply inter­wo­ven with all the past evo­lu­tion of the human race,” he writes.

Anoth­er key anar­chist belief is one of abol­ish­ing the police and prison sys­tem. Despite being seem­ing­ly one of the more extreme and divi­sive ideas, it’s also made its way into main­stream con­ver­sa­tion in recent years. In the wake of the hor­rif­ic mur­der of George Floyd in 2020, and the count­less oth­er videos of police bru­tal­i­ty against peo­ple of colour in the Unit­ed States, Black Lives Mat­ter adopt­ed #DefundThe­P­o­lice as one of their focus­es. In the UK, with Sarah Everard’s mur­der in 2021 and the jail­ing of ser­i­al rapist and for­mer offi­cer David Car­rick last month, many have been ques­tion­ing police pow­er. Recent fig­ures show that one in 100 police offi­cers in Eng­land and Wales faced crim­i­nal charges in 2022 alone, fur­ther adding to pub­lic dis­trust. On BBC radio in Jan­u­ary even the Con­ser­v­a­tive police and crime com­mis­sion­er, Don­na Jones, called for the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police to be bro­ken up” fol­low­ing the lev­el of cor­rup­tion and gross mis­con­duct that has come to light.

How much mon­ey would you need from the Arts Coun­cil to set fire to a police car, every night, for a one-month run at the Fringe?” Liv Wyn­ter shouts at the begin­ning of their anti-police play How To Catch a Pig. For every insti­tu­tion we burn to the ground, let some­thing grow in its place.”

Liv is a play­wright, per­former, anar­chist and abo­li­tion­ist from Lon­don. They use their per­for­mance and cre­ativ­i­ty as a way to share their ideas, whether it’s through their punk band Press Release or DJ col­lec­tive Queer House Par­ty. The DIY [punk] scene is full of a lot of neolib­er­al­ism and peo­ple like fuck­ing Wet Leg say­ing, fuck the Tories’ every oth­er day, but it’s not actu­al­ly doing any­thing,” Liv tells me on a video call. How To Catch a Pig brings peo­ple togeth­er who are organ­is­ing. We invite peo­ple along to meet­ings, we hand out police inter­ven­tion guides and stop-and-search inter­ven­tion guides.”

There are per­cep­tions of anar­chists as vio­lent, and anar­chy as chaos. With Liv’s speech about burn­ing cop cars in mind, I ask them if these per­cep­tions are fair. To me, it’s an it’s not going to be easy’ moment,” they say. The rev­o­lu­tion is not going to be a super sim­ple thing. It’s going to be long and hard and dif­fi­cult, and the police are going to get big­ger and stronger, and you’re going to have to take a gun to the gun­fight, know what I mean?” As Sarah Lam­ble writes in her book Abol­ish­ing The Police, abo­li­tion shouldn’t be treat­ed as a sin­gu­lar or rev­o­lu­tion­ary event but as an ongo­ing process – a way of life and a col­lec­tive approach to social change.”

Top to bottom: Photos of 'How To Catch a Pig' taken by Jake Ollett

Through­out his­to­ry, social change has been led by hard fought bat­tles. Whether that’s women’s rights, gay lib­er­a­tion or the civ­il rights move­ment, both vio­lent and non-vio­lent direct action has been used to vary­ing degrees to win what­ev­er free­doms we enjoy today. Flo­ralis got into anar­chism through read­ing about the activism of Mar­tin Luther King Jr, Mal­colm X and the Black Pan­thers as a teenager. 

I grew up as a per­son of colour in quite a white town. I got into a lot of activist his­to­ry because I was expe­ri­enc­ing racism but I did­n’t under­stand what was hap­pen­ing to me.” As a non-bina­ry per­son of colour, she explains, being an anar­chist is part of her iden­ti­ty. If you go around Brighton, there’s a rea­son why most trans­gen­der peo­ple you meet are anar­chists,” she explains. It’s because we as a com­mu­ni­ty have helped our­selves more than our gov­ern­ment has helped us. If we wait around for some­one else to pro­vide for us, then we are sim­ply not going to survive.”

Just like Flo­ralis, every­one I spoke to had their own per­son­al entry points to anar­chism that doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly involve pour­ing over polit­i­cal his­to­ry or the­o­ry books to get to grips with its core val­ues. Music, espe­cial­ly punk, is a gate­way for many. Dr Don­aghey co-edit­ed Smash The Sys­tem! – a book exam­in­ing the rela­tion­ship between anar­chist punk and resis­tance, cov­er­ing bands, activists and anar­chist move­ments from Croa­t­ia to Chi­na. Among its inter­views is Asel Luzarra­ga, a Basque musi­cian and author who was framed and con­vict­ed of ter­ror­ism by the Chilean gov­ern­ment after writ­ing blogs dis­cussing Chilean state vio­lence against the indige­nous Mapuche people.

If we wait around for someone else to provide for us, then we are simply not going to survive. Floralis, 27, volunteer at the Cowley Club in Brighton.

Clos­er to home, black met­al band Dawn Ray’d have been fly­ing the black flag since they came togeth­er in Liv­er­pool in 2015. Anar­chy comes from the ancient Greek word Anarkhia, which just means with­out rulers,” vocal­ist and violinist/​vocalist Simon Barr tells me. I think that’s a won­der­ful expla­na­tion of it, because it does­n’t mean chaos. It does­n’t mean vio­lence, nec­es­sar­i­ly.” He goes on to say that it’s actu­al­ly cap­i­tal­ism that is inher­ent­ly vio­lent. “[Cap­i­tal­ism] uses vio­lence to steal resources from around the world. It moves and destroys and kills indige­nous pop­u­la­tions that are in the way. Vio­lence is all around us all the time. You might not be suf­fer­ing it your­self, but it is hap­pen­ing. So I think that when some­body lash­es out and breaks a win­dow or punch­es a fas­cist in the face in a city cen­tre, is that as bad as the crimes against the earth and the crimes against peo­ple that we see com­mit­ted by the rul­ing class constantly?”

Despite their mil­i­tant views, Dawn Ray’d recent­ly appeared on the cov­er of Ker­rang! – the biggest rock mag­a­zine in the UK. I’ve been very care­ful on this new record to be as polit­i­cal­ly direct as I can, lyri­cal­ly,” Barr says. We try to live these ideas in our day-to-day lives, to the best of our abil­i­ties. We haven’t watered down our beliefs at all. For a lot of peo­ple the appeal is the mil­i­tan­cy, I think.”

[Anarchy] doesn't mean chaos. It doesn't mean violence, necessarily. Simon Barr (pictured left), Dawn Ray'd

It hasn’t been a smooth jour­ney for the three-piece, how­ev­er. The black met­al scene has had a prob­lem with fas­cism and neo-Nazism since its begin­nings in Nor­way in the ear­ly 90s. In Britain there have been direct links between black met­al musi­cians and far right ter­ror­ist groups such as the Order of the Nine Angles. We played an anti-fas­cist ben­e­fit show and we took a pho­to­graph with an antifas­cist action flag out­side the venue in Lewisham. That pho­to [pic­tured above] blew up,” says Barr. We got a load of abuse online. A load of death threats. Like, hun­dreds and hun­dreds of neg­a­tive respons­es to that.” Instead of spook­ing them, though, it made the band dou­ble-down on their val­ues. Their new album, To Know The Light, doesn’t leave much to inter­pre­ta­tion, open­ing with the call to action: Fuck the police, tear down the pris­ons, fuck the state, dis­rupt its mech­a­nisms. Rup­ture its fab­ric, action now!”

As the back­lash to Dawn Ray’d’s pho­to illus­trates, mod­ern polit­i­cal ten­sions often play out on the mod­ern bat­tle­field of social media. How­ev­er, a lot of anar­chist mes­sag­ing is being pro­lif­er­at­ed in print, car­ry­ing on a long tra­di­tion of anar­chist news­pa­pers in the UK. In Lon­don, I meet up with George and Ori­ana, who are part of Dog Sec­tion Press – a not-for-prof­it pub­lish­er who put out count­less books and who run a quar­ter­ly news­pa­per called DOPE. With a read­er­ship of around 30,000 (for con­text, that’s more than The Spec­ta­tor) main­ly in Lon­don, Bris­tol and Man­ches­ter, DOPE is giv­en to street ven­dors for free to sell for £3 a copy, which has earned it a nick­name of the anar­chist Big Issue.” This rais­es £360,000 annu­al­ly for the ven­dors, many of whom are vul­ner­a­ble, home­less or liv­ing below the pover­ty line.

We have a sec­tion that talks about work, a sec­tion that talks about lib­er­a­tion, and a sec­tion that talks about prison. The rest of the arti­cles are all sorts of things,” Ori­ana, who designs the mag­a­zines, explains as we sit upstairs in Whitechapel’s long-stand­ing anar­chist book­shop Free­dom. Ori­ana often works with estab­lished artists such as Sheffield artist Phlegm, who spe­cialis­es in huge, sur­re­al­ist street murals of Bosch-esque crea­tures and impos­si­ble machin­ery. Beau­ti­ful things are not just for rich peo­ple,” she adds. They’re for everyone.”

Top to bottom: All photos courtesy of DOPE

We try to include time­less ideas,” George adds. Sad­ly, so many of the things that were being fought 100 years ago are still com­plete­ly rel­e­vant now. Prop­er­ty, hous­ing, prison, work, all of these anti-cap­i­tal­ist strug­gles are still com­plete­ly rel­e­vant. The prob­lems with police, land­lords, of own­er­ship in gen­er­al, all these big ideas are time­less.” The sit­u­a­tion and imbal­ance between boss­es and employ­ees is also arguably worse now than it was fifty years ago. With zero-hour con­tracts, lack of job secu­ri­ty, automa­tion and mass strikes (includ­ing a total strike at the NHS for the first time in his­to­ry), the strug­gles that peo­ple were fight­ing at the turn of the 20th cen­tu­ry are very much alive today.

This idea of recur­ring strug­gles is echoed by Jay Kerr, an anar­chist from Lon­don who runs the anti-sweat­shop cam­paign No Sweat. He tells me over the phone that he feels he’s fight­ing an old fight, not a new one. The big brands exploit­ing peo­ple in devel­op­ing coun­tries and the glob­al South is just an exten­sion of what hap­pened 100 years ago in the east end of Lon­don. A lot of the solu­tions are sim­i­lar too, in terms of work­ers get­ting togeth­er and organ­is­ing and fight­ing for bet­ter wages and con­di­tions and stuff.” He goes on to cite Emma Gold­man, a sweat­shop work­er-turned-anar­chist rev­o­lu­tion­ary who took direct action against sweat­shops in the late 19th century.

The late anthro­pol­o­gist and activist David Grae­ber argued in a 2004 essay that the 21st cen­tu­ry will be one of anar­chist rev­o­lu­tion. He con­tex­tu­alis­es anar­chism in our mod­ern polit­i­cal land­scape, and lauds the pos­i­tive changes in anar­chist action and thought. He also high­lights the miss­ing details” in the vision, such as con­crete alter­na­tives to con­tem­po­rary leg­is­la­tures, courts and police, and also how an anar­chist polit­i­cal vision will be accom­plished in a non-author­i­tar­i­an way. Aca­d­e­m­ic texts aside though, anar­chist beliefs are mean­ing­less unless they’re put into action in the real world. Whether that’s pro­vid­ing food and refuge for those who need it like the Cow­ley Club, active­ly fight­ing fast fash­ion like Jay at No Sweat, or pro­vid­ing an exam­ple of how the world could be, like the mutu­al aid projects still dot­ted all over the UK. For the peo­ple I spoke to, activism comes first and the­o­ry comes sec­ond. There are huge obsta­cles fac­ing those try­ing to change things, but none large enough to quash their fight for a bet­ter tomor­row. To quote David Graeber’s afore­men­tioned essay, It is clear­ly a long-term process. But then, the anar­chist cen­tu­ry has only just begun.”

Top to bottom: All photos taken by Meline Gharibyan at the Cowley Club

Whether you’re an anar­chist or not, with the social unrest, the cost of liv­ing cri­sis, the cli­mate cri­sis, the brazen abus­es of pow­er we see and the grow­ing inequal­i­ty, it’s hard not to feel that the cur­rent sys­tem is fail­ing us. In the recent edi­tion of DOPE, a writer called C” describes us as being entrenched in a kind of zom­bie cap­i­tal­ism: No one real­ly believes in it, it’s no longer real­ly alive, but still it stum­bles on, refus­ing to die.” 

With that in mind, is it any sur­prise that peo­ple are look­ing else­where for answers? Is the sys­tem actu­al­ly work­ing for any­body but the super rich right now? And isn’t it up to us, the peo­ple, to make the world a fair­er, kinder place? In the past it might have been easy to ignore the issues that anar­chism tack­les head-on, such as employ­ment, inequal­i­ty, oppres­sion and police cor­rup­tion, but in 2023 these issues have come to knock at all of our doors, loud­ly and more urgent­ly than ever before.

Fol­low Jak on Twit­ter.

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