Why young people in the UK are returning to anarchism

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!’”

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-19^th 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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

“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 20^th 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 19^th century.

The late anthro­pol­o­gist and activist David Grae­ber argued in a 2004 essay that the 21^st 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.”

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.

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