There’s a ‘call to arms’ presently coming from some of the more militant union bosses around the issue of the new coalition governments intention to reduce the public sector by half or more.  Battle lines are being drawn in the run up to the upcoming TUC conference, with trades council groups and other politically forward thinking organisations gearing up for a fight, and organising meetings. There is a lot of talk about building a campaign as big as the one that eventually saw the downfall of Thatcher and her Tory government. Some of the calls from many on the left however leave a lot to be desired. In fact they appear to be the type of ‘call to arms’ that we’ve become accustomed to ever since Blair’s New Labour government fiasco took to the front benches of the Commons. They are certainly vociferous, but who they are aimed at however is questionable, and the language used is simply divisive.

 An article in The Guardian on August 4th saw Tony Benn publicly stating his case.  ‘The Time to Organise is Now’ was the headline, and Tony, as always, put forward a relatively decent argument for defending ourselves against the potential onslaught from the Tory party and their ‘pet Liberals’.  There was however something blatantly missing.  There was absolutely nothing in his piece that mentioned the word ‘class’. In its place was the usual rhetoric of identity politics which has, and is, destroying the British ‘left’.Tony states: ‘The £11bn welfare cuts, rise in VAT to 20%, and 25% reductions across government departments target the most vulnerable – disabled people, single parents, those on housing benefit, black and other ethnic minority communities, students, migrant workers, LGBT people and pensioners.’ There is a major problem with this kind of statement. What if somebody does not, and many do not, identify with those groups mentioned?  Would it not have been easier simply to point out that anybody earning less than £25k is going to be brutally affected by the upcoming attacks on services and jobs?  The language used here is important because we are continuing to make the same mistakes that have drawn so many working class people to turn away from trade unionism and the ‘left’ in general into the arms of conservatism and worst still, the far-right. Many simply are willing to believe in Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ nonsense. One particular issue recently sums this argument up perfectly.  A white working class man, Ian Tomlinson, walking home from work gets caught up in demonstrations he likely knows nothing, or perhaps even cares about.  He is brutally attacked by a police officer, subsequently dies, and there is a media frenzy.  Sixteen months later, as we all know, the Independent Police Complaints Commission, Crown Prosecution Service and the Director of Public Prosecutions prove how little they give a damn about justice for the working class and declare the officer responsible for the man’s death will have no case in court to answer.  There is an outcry. For twenty-four hours at most, and then the public’s attention moves on elsewhere to the next big story. Where was the outcry from the left over this travesty?  Where were the inflammatory speeches by trade union bosses and calls to arms in defence of Ian Tomlinson’s ‘justice’?  There have certainly been some small and well placed gestures by some on the outskirts of the British ‘left’ to fight for Ian Tomlinson’s family, but the silence from the majority has been deafening. Perhaps it’s because Ian Tomlinson was neither disabled, a single parent, a member of a black or other ethnic minority community, a student, a migrant worker, or to our knowledge gay?  He was one thing however, as are many of the above mentioned groups the ‘left’ are so happy to use as ‘pin-up groups’. He was working class.  If the ‘left’ in this country want public support in the upcoming battles against the hideous Tory ideology we see before us, we need to remember the Ian Tomlinson’s of this world, cut the nonsensical divisive identity play and recognise that ‘class war’ is back. The country could embrace a massive fight back against the Tories despicable ideology.  If only we could convince the population that the ‘left’ really do care about ‘ordinary non identifiable’ working class people. Just like Ian Tomlinson.  There are long battles ahead and we’ll only win if we work united.  Why should Ian Tomlinson’s death NOT be the starting point of a united and robust return to mutual solidarity across the whole of the British ‘left’?  Why can’t we return to the simplicity of left wing politics and stand proud behind the slogan ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’. We believe we can. We believe we should.

The Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign

Buy the Ian Tomlinson Benefit CD .This compilation was put together by Norfolk Community Action Group as part of a benefit day for the Tomlinson family - profits from the CD raised will go towards Ian's family's campaign for justice.

As most people who read Now or Never! are aware, the country recently had to endure the media focusing on an assortment of fascist half-wits and their muppets being paraded in front of the cameras, whilst being dragged up in front of the courts, both in the UK and in Austria. Yes Nick Griffin and Mark Collett who were found not guilty on various charges and are up for retrial, probably in August, and holocaust denying toff inadequate David Irving who was sentenced to three years, have all been spotlighted and granted air time, and it’s unlikely it’s given their lunatic politics anything more than a boost.

So is it just the state run media who play into their hands? Sadly not. We can look a lot closer to home at the so-called ‘left-wing’ to see a sad and scarily inept supposed ‘revolutionary’ organisation and its allies, who just can’t stop holding up billboards advertising the likes of the BNP.

Yes folks it’s our old friends the SWP and their assortment of beards and sandals that are the coalition of the UAF.

Now I can hear screams of sectarianism etc from a large audience as I write, but to be sectarian you need to have something in common, and quite frankly I find myself these days with more in common with the average BNP voter than I do with the SWP. And before you holler, I’m talking about the average voter as opposed to the lunatics who sell the BNP papers on the street.

How many people who have gone up to a ballot box and have voted BNP were previously life long ‘Labour’ voters, now disillusioned with the state of the left today? How many of these voters have serious issues they want addressing in their local communities, but have found the only organisation that takes up these are the BNP? And I’m not talking about the race issues we know the BNP pretend they are NOT feeding off, I’m talking the real blood and guts that nobody seems to want to address such as filthy streets and apparently unsafe estates and the lack of support for the elderly. The kind of issues the fascist leadership of the BNP have so cleverly and opportunistically sunk their gamy teeth into, as have their counterparts all across Europe.

Imagine watching this stuff going on, and the elderly couple or the out of work miner (yes them too) observing the nice man from the BNP apparently working hard for the community running up to election time...and then receiving a leaflet through the door, courtesy of the SWP and their allies stating ‘DON’T VOTE BNP, DON’T VOTE NAZI!

Mmmm. I’m sure the older person, who remembers WW2 is going to say two bloody words to being told the nice man from the BNP is a Nazi…as well as the implication that they are themselves ‘Nazis’ if they go out and vote for them.

‘FUCK OFF!’ are the two words that spring to mind!

This kind of literature is useless and often causes more harm than good. In recent years where exactly has it done any good? It hasn’t! In fact in most places that RESPECT have electioneered, alongside leaflet campaigns from the SWP and UAF, the BNP actually have succeeded in gaining ground. RESPECT themselves with that self publicist money making machine George Galloway; have had to depend on single issue politics in a predominantly Muslim area to actually gain any success. That, we can rest assured, will not be repeated at the next election, due to Galloway making his financially lucrative book signing appearances across the globe and his humiliating TV appearance recently (of which we shall mention no more) instead of campaigning, organising and fighting for each of the constituents who elected him.

It is not trying to get idiots like the RESPECT/SWP/UAF fiasco elected into the House of Commons people should be concentrating on; it’s keeping the fascists of the BNP out!

People no longer want to read the crap that comes through their letter boxes with promises and blame. They want to see the problems in their communities being addressed practically and in a hands on way. Anarchists need to be spending more of their time helping their local communities and people , as opposed to stopping the traffic by lying in the road campaigning for some issue the populace don’t have a clue about. All this does is piss the locals off when they are trying to get home after a hard days graft!

The leaflets not only alienate, they are insulting. While they accuse those who might deliberate upon voting BNP as out right Nazism the authors share platforms and podiums with an assortment of extreme right wing fundamentalists from the likes of Hizb ut-Tahrir and other lunatic fringes. Their hypocrisy is disgusting and is in itself only likely to increase the BNP vote.

Not to mention the fact that whoever in the SWP Central Committee writes this crap needs to educate themselves on the differences between Nazism and Fascism.

If the idiots behind these leaflets really believe they have the slightest understanding of the views and realities of the average person living on a working class estate, some body needs to market ‘anti-trot ice-picks’ at cut price so we can put them out of their misery.

Anybody serious about combating fascism and cutting out the BNP cancer needs to walk away from the likes of the SWP/Respect and the UAF and get active in their communities. They need to take a serious look at why Griffin and his lapdogs have gained the ground they have in recent years.

They need to make sure they stop screaming ‘Ban the BNP, Ban the Nazis’ and resurrect the old tradition of NO PLATFORM!

We should oppose the idea of proscribing rightwing groups, because at the end of the day, we too will be shut down and targeted, but at the same time we should reserve the right to batter these idiots wherever and whenever they raise their vile heads, and make sure our streets are clear of these scum. And that goes for ALL bigoted racist organisations irrespective of what ‘ethnicity’ they belong to!

The ongoing tragedy that is all over our television screens at the time of writing is nothing short of obscene. TV stations and tabloids blurt out their sickening one liners and sound bites of ‘Anarchy in New Orleans’ and ‘Looters should be shot on site’.

 Whilst it is still unknown exactly how many people have died in the tragedy the government, through their corrupt and sponsored press, rather than accept their share of responsibility for the growing catastrophe, maintain an on going barrage of fuckwitted hatred and slanderous abuse toward those they are supposed to represent. Yes it’s them again folks…the poor and needy.

So what, we can hear you ask, has the government got to do with what’s occurred. Surely it was an ‘act of God’?

Whilst New Orleans and the rest of the region are no stranger to terrible weather conditions, reports were coming out at least a year ago about the need for government aid to reinvest into strengthening the waterways and levees in the canals leading from Lake Pontchartrain which protect New Orleans. The response from the Bush administration to a request for at least $78 million to fund the project was to splash out an extraordinarily stingy amount of $10 million. The excuse behind this? The ongoing cost of running the war of terror in Iraq.

 

Days before the imminent hurricane was to sweep into the region, public officials were seen on TV calling for people to ‘get on outta here today’! This led to the extraordinary scenes of hundreds of thousands of people jumping into their cars and heading out of the area to safety.

 

One thing the public officials didn’t address was how the majority poor were supposed to join into such a biblical rush for cover. Already poverty stricken and without cars or relatives to stay with out of state, what provisions were set up for the evacuation of the most vulnerable? None. This certainly was a New Testament case Bush style, of ‘get outta ya bed and walk’!

 

Three days into the event with the majority of the poor areas of New Orleans covered in water and thousands dead, the only help people could rely on was their own. Frustrated by the lack of help, people ‘criminally’ took whatever measures they could to stay alive; something the state so readily screams is nothing other than ‘looting’.

 

What is interesting about this whole sordid affair is that in 2005, the number of families living in poverty in Louisiana is close to double the national average. New Orleans has one of the highest poverty rates of any of America’s big cities. According to a report by Total Community Action, a New Orleans public advocacy group, nearly one out of three New Orleans residents live below the poverty level, the majority of who are Black. A spokesperson for the United Negro College Fund noted that the city’s poor live in some of the most dilapidated, and deteriorated housing in the nation. No surprise then that fewer than 40% of the residents in New Orleans and the surrounding area will have flood insurance to rebuild their lives.

 

The great rush to help the people of New Orleans is amazing to watch. After all it is happening isn’t it? Isn’t it?

 

Well four warships have been sent down to lend a hand…they should be their in about three days time! And one wonders of what use these warships will be.

 

One could almost be forgiven for believing that there are those who are rubbing their hands with glee at this appaling catastrophe.

 

‘Black, homeless, no place to go? Howz about a career in the Marine Corps son? You KNOW it makes sense!

March 1992. I was fed up with rubbish in England and decided to take one of my trips over to Ireland for a while and headed for Tipperary, where I heard a few mates were parked up on site. The location? The ‘Looney Line’ at the Horse and Jockey on the way to Thurles. I should have guessed by the endearing name of the site what it was going to be like! I arrived in the pissing rain up a country lane which was on the side of a peat bog. Fifteen or so vehicles and bender tents on the side of the road and half crazed site dogs trying to bite chunks out of each other..I was home. Thank God, away from the smack and alcoholism of site life in the UK and a potential new start in my mother’s country. The next morning I woke up under a truck with a Jack Russel chewing my sleeping bag, an empty bottle of Jameson’s by my side and a hangover to die for. Oh well, it must have been a good night.

By the end of the month I had built my own bender from scanked tarps and had furnished it good and proper. I had signed on at the local medical centre and had a steady income from the Irish state. Each giro day, 15 or so of us would climb on to the back of a flatbed truck and head the seven or so miles from site into the quiet peaceful village of Thurles, looking like a truck load of second world war refugee’s. Once the money was collected we’d mosey on down to our local giro day boozer….and payback half the money we’d ticked the week before, when we’d collected our last giros!

‘T’was a grand life indeed’. Special Brew for breakfast and a diet of potatoes three times a day. What more could you want? Occasionally we’d feast on the shopping that someone had ‘forgot’ to pay for and happily roam around Thurles drunk as fish without a care in the world and oblivious to the people around us. ‘It’s great here, nobody cares’, we used to say to ourselves. Even when we were pissed up and we stormed the local Gaurda station to release a mate who’d been arrested for drunkenly pissing up the side of a church, nobody seemed to mind. The fact that he’d been released the hour before only went to show what a great place it was we were living in.

One glorious giros afternoon as we were relieving the pre-giro tension by quaffing as much brew down us (on-tick) as possible I decided for some weird reason to rush out the door of the pub and stick my boot through the window of the shoe shop across the road. As soon as I’d done so a moment of clarity came across me in a ‘religiously epic’ kind of a way. I collapsed on the floor thinking ‘mmmmm, something isn’t right here’. I remember calling out to the Gaurds who were trying to grab my fellow ‘hero’s’ to leave them alone as it was me who’d committed the crime. Graciously they let them go and off I went to sleep it off in the local barracks.

The next day to my dismay(?) I was before the local circuit judge. The friendly Gaurd I was hand-cuffed to was telling me not to worry about the judge whose nickname was ‘six-month Reilly’. And somehow true to his word I was then pushed into a Gaurda car and being driven off to Limerick gaol to serve my six month sentence. I remember moaning in the back of the cop car about what the judge had said. I had shown him my Irish passport and told him I wanted to be treated like an Irishman. He’d replied ‘Oh, I thought you were English and was going to stick you on the boat home, but as you’re Irish you’ve six months!’ Ooops, what a prat!

Whoa the pity! Why me? What had I done?!

Several years later I returned to Thurles and to the ‘pub I used to frequent’. The people remembered me straight away and were brilliant. The man who told me he’d offered a few of us work but we’d declined, another who’d driven one of us to Cork because a relative was sick. Another who’d caught us shoplifting from his little corner shop several times and never reported us to the Guards, but instead had offered us ‘tick’ if we were skint. In fact a whole community of hard working people opened their arms to us numerous times, only to get a slap in the face. The shame of it.

Today I don’t live like that anymore and have no problem with travellers, only the ones like me. I was a prat , the rest of my mates, I can’t speak for them. What I thought was ‘living anarchy’ was a pile of shit and nothing but sponging and taking and upsetting those around me. I gave nothing to that Irish community so how was I ‘living anarchy’? If anarchy doesn’t embrace the community it’s not anarchy. If anarchy is shutting yourself away from people and trying to live ‘alternative’, that’s not anarchy. Likewise if anarchy doesn’t address the issues that affect people on your own back doorstep and is just activist ‘happenings’ about the next big cause, completely unrelated to your community, it’s not anarchy. It’s nothing but ‘hobby-horse’ politics in my opinion. My views on what ‘anarchy’ was had more to do with a golden can and lounging around pissed up. I was shall we say...’confused’! I could blame my views on getting my head whacked in by police in 1985, but that would be a cop out wouldn’t it.

One thing did make us all laugh on my visit back as we told jokes and stories around our pints of Guinness,

‘Remember the time you lot raided the barracks to free ya man, but he had already been released? That was grand! You should have seen the face on the Guard when he came to the pub, white as a sheet he was….he’s still a fucking gobshite! Bloody Gaurda!’

The police….isn’t it funny? No matter where you go, and in what community you find yourself in, doesn’t everyone just love em?!

Every town has them don’t they, the sad bastard gossips who have nothing better to do than to poke their noses into other peoples business, causing pain and demolishing peoples lives. I’m sure you know some of them and possibly are even one of them and don’t even know it! I know I’m not perfect in that respect but I try. My drinking and drug taking have often left a trail of shit for people to clear up which I hold my hands up to and say, yes I’ve been a prick a lot of the time, but I’m trying.

What is so terrible though is their seem to be so many of them in the so-called radical community, people who  don’t even have the guts to say things to your face or admit they too are full of crap a lot of the time. The people who are involved in campaigns or radical projects that appear only to be involved for an ego boost and are constantly making you aware of who they are and what they’ve done. Others are just sad fucks who talk the talk but live off the money left by mummy and daddy and never will really have to do a days work in their lives. They just whine and moan at the state of the world and other people, when really they should just take stock of themselves. Most of the time they seem to have there own underlying issues they haven’t dealt with.

So what’s behind this issues rant?

Recently I have been receiving accusations that I’m not a libertarian due to events that occurred ten years ago, which was a period of serious turmoil in my family. Apparently I ‘deserted’ my wife with a 5 year old and a baby of six months. I also apparently took £500 quid, all my family’s money and disappeared to Ireland to have a party.

The problem is when gossip starts; you end up with fucking half truths because you only get one side of the story. In my case my wife had developed post-natal depression and refused to get help for it and started forming a relationship with someone else, and then kicked me out (which is the bit these people don’t get because she says differently). I took the money that was in the bank which was £200 quid as I had nowhere to go and my ex-wife’s uncle is a millionaire who regularly contributes to members of his family. Me I had NADDA! Even my ex-wife’s mother said it was a good idea to do so (I bet she didn’t tell them that!).

I went to Ireland to stay with close friends as I had nowhere else to go and was back in about a month with serious depression and a dependency, hoping that I could sort it out with my wife who had already moved her new boyfriend in. If that weren’t the case why the fuck would I have come back? I was also not a particularly mature 24 year old and could possibly have done things differently. But it was ten bloody years ago and none of their fucking business anyway!!

Today my wife still hasn’t been treated and causes chaos wherever she goes (apparently this is my fault because of what I did. WOW! I’m so powerful!) and I have had custody of my children since 2000 after three years of battling to get them. My kids are happy apart from the effects their mothers illness has on them and the gossip these sad twats are throwing around. They are growing up to be fine Libertarian lads with a great sense of community spirit and a healthy disrespect to oppressive bastards, whoever they are.

I have another mate who recently got a serious kicking and hospitalisation for beating up his ex partner. Only problem was when the woman was telling everyone all the gory details which led to his hospitalisation, she forgot to mention he was trying to physically prevent her from throwing herself off a multi-story car park at the time. Information that might have made a difference perhaps?

This shit also goes on in Libertarian politics between groups on a national level. The animosity that is so prevalent between anarchist groups is as bad now as ever it was. The gossip and bating that is constantly bandied about is frightening and what the hell must it look like to outsiders?

“I think I’ll get involved in anarchism as I just love squabbling about who should have done what. They really appear to be having such a ball! Who cares about the political message I’m not hearing! I want to be one of these folks”.

The bitching and gossiping which goes on constantly stops people going to actions and demos. ‘Such and such organised an event so we aren’t going!’ Meanwhile the whole reason for the action is forgotten about and people end up suffering more because we haven’t got our shit together.

One of the many things Norwich Anarchists can be proud of is that this is pretty much extinct in our group. We all come from different organisations and leave our colours at the door so to speak. This is however precisely the kind of example we should be passing on when we go back to our main organisations though isn’t it? It seems to me that if we don’t then we are doing ourselves out of building an anarchist alternative that so many people are desperately looking for. While that is happening, the bastard state is ringing its hands and laughing at us, and divide and rule is merrily dancing around the fuckers.

I know you don’t want any advice from me but fuck you, you bought the paper! A little less gossip and more attention to our own rubbish will in the long term benefit our whole movement. Otherwise we are nothing more than an ageing movement of sad acts, bitter at what could’ve been if only the other fucker had done it!

Why not save the anger for those who really deserve it and move forward?!

The rest of them? GET A LIFE YOU SAD INADEQUATE FUCKERS! YES, YOU ARE GETTING OLD, ARE LESS ATTRACTIVE TO THE OPPOSITE SEX AND ONE DAY ARE GOING TO DIE! DEAL WITH IT!

One fine afternoon a couple of months ago, I found myself staring out of the window of a city pub, wondering why I was so bored and lacking any excitement in my life.

The beer tasted crap, I was listening to the same drunk nonsense I’ve been listening to (and partaking in!) for the last ten years.  You know how it gets, public house politician’s moaning and whining about how bollocks their lives are, and how they have all the answers if only they were in power.  If only they would get off their arses and do something to change the situation, that would be a start!

While stuck in my negative bullshit state of mind, an amazing site appeared bobbing along outside the pub window.  Suddenly the pub was transformed, and people you’ve seen in the same chair for years but have never spoken to before were full of conversation.  What was this sight of wonder and boredom shaking excitement that threw my local into born again fascination?  TWO POLICEMEN ON THE BEAT!

“Well did you fucking see the like of that before…” and “my god, I’d never believe it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, OI!  Copper!  Get that fucking tit off ya head...” rang out from the excitable throng.

The change in my environment was amazing and everyone had a view to share at this awesome occasion.

One quiet spoken old man in the corner could’ve cut the air with a knife when he piped out, “About bloody time too, sort them bloody refugees out...”  Mmmm, I felt a battle of wit’s coming on.

I let him argue his case.  For about half an hour.  We covered everything from the golden age when you could leave your back door open without getting ripped off, to how “it’s the refugees who are the reason to our entire problems...” bollox.

We’ll, I’m not renowned for my tolerance of bigotry, but punching a sixty-five year old from the dark ages, I draw the line at.  So I did what I love doing the most, I wound him up.

I told him I was converting to Islam, had a big house in the country, and was intending to move my black wife’s family, all sixteen of them, over so as we can bring more “colour” to the community.

The quiet, little old man suddenly erupted in frenzy.  With shouts of “Nigger lover!” and “Jew loving communist!” the table we were drinking at tipped over and this bastion of passivity and knowledge launched at me, knocking me and eight or so half drunk pints of Stella to the floor.

The old man was standing over me on the floor, foaming at the mouth about hoe all “Jew lovers” should be gassed, when the door bursts open and two familiar faces appeared and grabbed the old boy by the arms.

“Well, well Patrick, there you are.  Let’s get you back to the hospital, they’re missing you...” one of the policemen snorted, as they lead him out to a police car that appeared outside.

When the landlady said she’d known Patrick for twenty years, and that he used to be a policeman..the pub erupted in hysterics!

Amazing what happens when the filth turn up!  Hours of entertainment!!