mk->> Some of the other groups we've talked to have spoken a lot about being with a tight group of friends. And you've spoken about that with people that you've been involved with, having that kind of support and that confidence. Is this your experience?

JB->> Yeah, although it's funny. Because I move between worlds, it's not as strong as some of the other people in the group, although I've been there from the beginning. The group is very fluid, folks come in and out. Some of my closer friends have now left, in fact. So, it is a very tight group of friends, we work really well together. But, I don't spend an enormous amount of socializing together with them, partly because I've got a kid, I've got a job, I haven't got that time scale. It's not as close a group socially as I've worked in the past with some art groups. But I think one of the most extraordinary things about direct action is that process of when you're working at this level with people, the incredible levels of trust, and an empathy and an intimacy that you can gain very quickly by working on actions with people, which is very special, I think. So there might be people that normally it'd take several years to get to that level of trust with, but you're working on something where you really coalesce and come together much quicker. And it's a good diversity, I mean the group that's been working on June 18th, there are three generations, people in their twenties, people in their thirties, people in their forties, and even some people in their fifties working on it, which is fantastic. But the interesting thing is, we don't come from an intellectual culture and we very rarely actually sit down and talk. The level of reflection, self-reflection, there's no reflective space, it's something that we're constantly aware of. A lack. And it's something we really need to work on. Because, I've never really sat down with all these people and really questioned our politics, really questioned why we're doing this, really questioned, "What is this world we're trying to create?" I think that's a very English thing. I think it's an anti-intellectual society, and the direct action movement came very much out of a very impulsive desire to act and save the planet. Quickly! Now! So that space for reflection, it's like, "Oh there's no time for reflection!" And I think that's about maturity. I think it was an adolescent movement, and I think it's slowly developing a certain level of maturity. And I think after June the 18th there will be some kind of reflexive space, I think we're really going to try and work on that. But at the same time, it does enable a diversity to happen. I think for me one of the inspiring things is the fact that if you are basing your work on action, there's less chance for division, less chance for splinter groups, which always comes through words, through ideology.

mp->> What about networking with other groups? Has RTS done networking with groups of other kinds, and if so which kinds of networking do you think have been successful?

JB->> In this country or globally?

mk->> Either.

JB->> Yeah, it's interesting. You see, what is RTS? It's very difficult to define RTS, really. There is a clear kind of theory about the street and reclaiming public space, and a critique of the car, critique of capital through that, and so on. But as an organization, or dis-organization, it's very, very fluid. Constantly new people coming in and out. We have an office, but it's not got people in it that often. So, in some ways it's very unsustainable in that way and therefore very difficult to create the kind of networks which hold. But at the same time, I think of Harry Cleaver's metaphor of the water, the idea that a network has knots in it. And that you need knots to hold the strings together. And the networks of social movements like RTS, more anarchist movements that are happening at the moment on a global scale, it doesn't have knots in it because it's all very fluid. And that water is better, because water freezes and then it thaws, and then it moves. I think it is much more like that, than strict networks. What's amazing is that in 1995 there was one street party in Camden, and by the end of that year there's been, I can't remember now, I'm useless at numbers and figures, but ten, fifteen street parties all over the country. And then it started happening in the States, in Holland. This global network around the streets has emerged, but there's no coordination. If you said, "Give me a RTS contact in Austin, Texas," I could probably find it eventually, it'd probably take me a couple of weeks, you know? So, it's different. I think network may be a wrong word to use. And I think what we're doing is we're entering a whole new phase of social movements. I think we have to reconstruct the language to describe those, and I think network is not the right language because it suggests something fairly organized, fairly formalized.

mk->> EF! has been like that in the U.S., organizing around the idea that if you believe in and wish to promote the ideals and principles of EF! then you use the name. The only thing that's localized about EF! is that they publish a newspaper. But other than that, the groups are everywhere and they're very fluid and they move all over the place.

JB->> Well, RTS in a sense comes from that. We were EF! London for years. It was RTS but it was the London EF! contact. I think the irony is the myopic state, by bringing on the Criminal Justice Bill in 1994, which basically outlawed rave and outlawed free parties, and outlawed Travellers, and protests, and direct action, stopping building work, stuff like that. It helped unify these groups, and it politicized people who would never see themselves as political, such as ravers. And RTS in a sense said, "Well, up yours. We're going to continue and we're going to push that." We can see the power of that, to use that. And people do come just for a party. I remember being on an event, a tube thing: May Day. And I heard someone go, "Where's the sound system?" And people do come just for the dancing, it's very clear. But you can't be involved in RTS without seeing the power of the state, without feeling that you've taken over land, without experiencing the kind of freedom of disobedience in a sense. And I think tapping into that culture, that's what scares them most. We've looked at police reports and stuff about RTS, and it's always, "The sound system, gotta get the sound system. You can have your party, but don't let the sound system in." It's very interesting that they know the radical pull of the music. So, they're always going for the sound system because they know it draws a crowd. And yesterday [June 18th] was a classic example, where I could see the power of the samba band, and how you can really use that. And I think they're scared. When you make political action pleasurable, that's when they really will be afraid. I think there has always been that element, but I think it's been liberated by the fall of Marxism and the dissolution of a kind of Marxist agenda. It's opened up the way for very much this kind of politics of desire and pleasure. There was always a very strong Marxist critique against that. And I think we're more liberated to really fulfill that now than we ever have been before. And I think it also creates a space where you can have a much more utopian kind of outlook, because pre-'89 there was always a model that the critics could say, "Yeah, but it's not working in the Soviet Union. Look what's happened in the Soviet Union." So I think we're very, very lucky to be living in a time post-'89 which at the same time has been this extraordinary advance of neo-liberalism. I think I'm overly optimistic, but I do feel a great sense of optimism in terms of seeing some big global movement of change. I do believe it will occur in my lifetime. It's highly optimistic, but I do see things really moving very rapidly in a direction which is so threatening to the state because they can't understand it. Using the power of these kinds of autonomous networks and so on. A classic example is, I call it the Captain Cook theory. There was a big article in the Daily Mirror in February which had pictures, snap-shots of RTS people from the May 16th Global Street Party in Birmingham, and it said "Do you know them? Wanted." And it explained how the police were trying to find the organizers of RTS, and it quoted the police as saying, "It's incredibly difficult to infiltrate groups like RTS." When we look at it and say, "What? It's so easy!"

mp->> What's keeping them out? Anyone could come to one of those open meetings.

JB->> Yeah, you come to the meeting, work out who's talking, you get involved, go down to the pub, get friendly with people, it's so, so easy. But my feeling is, there's a kind of apocryphal story about Captain Cook when he arrived, I think it was, on the Solomon Islands, the natives couldn't see the ships. It was so beyond their sense of reality that they just could not see the ships. So for me, it's like the police look at these completely fluid structures, and they're so used to pyramidal structures, they're so used to hierarchy, they're so used to orders and leadership, they can't see how the fuck such a "disorganized" group of people actually pull off something like yesterday. You're talking different levels of reality, and that's very powerful. That's why we have to stick to these kind of organizational principles. I don't see the danger, I think our generation's gone beyond that. I think a big difference from the '60s is that there's fewer people who want to take control, want to take power, who really want to become spokespeople and leaders. I think there is a shift. I'm sure that's probably not true all over the world, but I feel that in London anyway.

mk->> I was wondering if you wanted to talk more about the sense of the carnivalesque and the politics of pleasure. Yesterday, one of the things that was intense and powerful for me was how many people I saw laughing.

JB->> Yeah.

mk->> All the time, just laughing and laughing, and I kept on thinking about how when the Zapatistas came out in '94, there was a massive demo, 100,000 people, whose chant was "First World, Ha Ha Ha." Thousands of people shouting this all at once in the center of Mexico City. And just the thought of how powerful that must have been, the power of laughter. Cops know how to react to violence. But when they get people laughing at them, they're confused. I like the actions I've heard about where folks are going towards that sense of humor and laughter, how it welcomes instead of pushes out.

JB->> Yeah, yeah. I don't know where that comes from really. I suppose it comes from the rave. Well, that's not really true with the whole EF! movement really. Where does that come from, in this specific context? Well, it's the whole way we describe it, a carnival, a party. Immediately the description is asking for that kind of reaction. For me, what's important about the carnival is what we've always talked about in RTS. Revolutionary moments have often been described as carnivalesque. The Situationists talked about the Paris Commune as a big carnival. Several academics have talked about the first French revolution as being carnivalesque, and taking the Bastille being a great festivity and such. At RTS we've always said, "Let's have a détournment of that itself and say, Well the carnival itself is the revolution, and you can make the revolution through the carnival." And in a sense it's about re-capturing the revolutionary potential of carnivals, which are constantly recuperated. I mean, the beginning of Notting Hill was very revolutionary, or, what's the southern U.S. city that has carnivals?

mk->> New Orleans, Louisiana.

JB->> Again, it began as fairly revolutionary and became immediately recuperated by the bourgeoisie and is incredibly commercialized now. So, it's about trying to re-claim the carnivalesque spirit which is one of transgression, which is one where violence mixes with creativity, which is one where sex and death happen at the same time. It's really very much this moment where these opposites kind of unite. Also, what's interesting, I find, the traditional march is very much A to B, move straight, and the carnival is very much fluid. It spirals, it turns, there's no fixed point, there's no straight line. I think the form itself is a reflection of the way we organize as well. It's not this kind of straight, one target, go! It's very fluid, very chaotic, and yet has this kind of unity in the chaos.

mk->> We saw that yesterday with the groups, every time there was an obstacle, it just flowed around it in another direction. And again, maybe police are confused by that, they expect you to march from here to here. When you have so many alternative plans . . . .

JB->> Right. It's a different aesthetic, it's a different ethic. I think, if you look at an enormous movement, the anti-nuclear movement in this country in the '50s, '60s, early '70s, even in the '80s. For thirty years, a massive CND movement, huge actions, 50,000 people surrounding bases. But very much civil disobedience, very much, "Sit down." And I think what's completely different is the culture of action is very much taking direct action. Really, it's active. You stand up and you dance, you don't sit down and get truncheoned by police. I am very much for that. I have big problems with the idea of civil disobedience in terms of you become a victim of the state, a kind of sacrificial lamb. I think it's really problematic.

 

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• Harry Cleaver
  Autonomist, radical Marxist theorist, economist, teacher, & activist. Currently involved with Acción Zapatista in Austin, Texas.
  
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• Paris Commune
  After watching Napoleon III offer their city up to the Prussian army like a sacrifical lamb, the revolutionary workers of Paris rose up, armed themselves, and established the Commune, a worker-run communist society, on March 18, 1871. It was savagely & brutally crushed a few months later. It has since served as a revolutionary historical touchstone for generations of commies, socialists, anarchists & other radicals.
  
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• Notting Hill Carnival
  The Notting Hill Carnival has been taking place in London, on the last weekend in August, for the past thirty-five years. This great festival began initially from the energies of Black immigrants from the Caribbean, particularly from Trinidad, where the Carnival tradition is very strong, and from people living locally who dreamed of creating a festival to bring together the people of Notting Hill, most of whom were facing racism, lack of working opportunities, and poor housing conditions resulting in a generally frustrating situation. In recent years, it has been, like most good things, relentlessly commodified & commercialized by skeezy capitalists.
  
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