Jack->> The bottom line is: people are more important than profit.

Will->> Everybody wants revolutionary change, don't they?

Ray->> But there are different ways of going about it.

mk->> That's what can split coalitions apart. People arguing over, I guess it's called fluffy and spiky here. How then do we get to a world where people are held as more important than profit?

Jack->> I'd say, it's action that sorts that one out. If you've got too much time on your hands, you get tied down in all the philosophical bollocks. Two examples. The Courthouse: When that was going on there was the politicos and there was the people who'd never been involved. And there was meetings and there was fucking the most full-on arguments and shouting going on. When it come to the eviction, all sorts of different people were on the roof. Then it was the police and the bailiffs against us lot, and that brought everyone together. When we got evicted, that was a really good party, and that really gelled people together, because they'd actually worked together to try and fight and stop the eviction going on. And another thing, when I did an interview with the Liverpool Dockers, they said before the strike, all the dockers would sit there and they'd argue about fucking Stalin, Lenin, ugh! Soon as the strike happened, day-to-day running was the important thing, "We need to win this strike." So, all that bullshit went away. I think it's that when you've got too much time on your hands, all these boring people sit on their intellect and fucking think, and publish all these boring little booklets and pamphlets, slagging off these people and that people. I just think you got to avoid it. And what SchNews try to do is say, "Go to this, go to that, read this book if you want to find out more, go to this webpage, go and see it for yourself, don't listen to us." But I don't think we should ever slag off Green Party, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, whatever our personal views. People come in at things at different points. You don't sort of start, "I'm political, right, I'm gonna mask up and start throwing bombs at the cops, and if you're not like that then obviously you're a scumbag and you haven't got a clue." It's trying to make people laugh, innit, and trying to come at things from different angles.

Ray->> There was an enormous amount of infighting, squabbling, and philosophical wrangling, and the whole reform versus revolution, fluffy and spiky thing. Those terms have now been stigmatized. The argument may not be couched in quite the same terms as 1994, but basically that was a heated debate going on in 1994, even as the whole urgency thing pushed everyone forward massively.

Will->> There's another thread to it, all those people being out of work for five years or ten years or fifteen years.

mk->> The effect of Thatcher's programs?

Will->> Yeah, if you don't work with each other, you got no chance, so you gotta work together because otherwise you're just left to rot.

Ray->> A lot of groups can come up with theoretical ideas of how the future might look, but these days you can just give concrete examples. People'll pick up on the positive aspects of that and come up with their own kinds of ideas.

Will->> I think if somebody had said to me five years ago, "There'll be loads of people in Trafalgar Square," or "There'll be loads of people in Birmingham," I'd of just like, "Oh yeah right, sure there will." But it's all sort of happened without any kind of real planning. Things are just happening by their own momentum, and people are part of that momentum.

Ray->> If the information gets spread around, people say, "Oh that's a really great idea." In something like SchNews or the Action Update, where you print events that are happening, people can go along and actually meet each other.

Jack->> I think it's the meeting people. Because, it's isolation isn't it? And all the big industries where people at least work together, whatever you think of mining and steel work and all that stuff, those people work together and they had bonds. And you go to a place like the Rhonda Valley now, where the whole mining industry's dead, and the whole of the social structure's collapsed. There's nothing to do, and there's big drug and crime problems. At least protest camps fighting back, there people really cook and share food together. They might be really crap at washing up and stuff like that, but it's the beginnings of helping each other out and working together. Even those basic things are really fucking important in a society where people have cars and sit at home and watch telly, and they don't even know who all their neighbors are. My one criticism always of the internet, it is great speaking to people around the world, but most people don't even fucking know their next door neighbors.

mk->> Do you think that people end up creating the reality that they want to live in during the actions you've been to? Then come to see there's possibility of a new reality actually happening?

Ray->> Once you experience something good, then you want more of it, don't you?

Jack->> The free party scene is certainly that. I remember there was a free party in some squatted place in the center of Brighton, and there was two girls there in high heels, all in the usual fucking stuff that everyone wears going clubbing. They were sitting there going, "This is fuckin' amazing, when does it end?" I was like, "Dunno, I s'pose when everyone goes home." They were like, "Why don't we hear about things like this?" I said, "Well, you're going to the wrong places, go to these pubs and chat to these people." They were used to paying their money and been fucking searched, spy cameras everywhere, being treated like shit, and no water in the bogs and stuff like that. We squatted the Bingo hall, and people said, "Where d'ya buy water?" And we said, "It's in the tap, we're not selling you stuff." And you hit that with people straight away. This is what SchNews is about this week. A few free parties that went on over the past couple of weeks got fucking really heavy police response. Where it's fifty quid to get it, two pound a packet of Rizlas, you have to pay for the fair ground rides, there's three rows of fences, security with head things, you know, filming everyone.

Ray->> Cops wandering around everywhere.

Jack->> Yeah, I mean, that's fun? That's people's idea of fun? If you showed them something else, "Let's all go and have a party in the field and, you know, throw out the rubbish at the end and bury your shit." And this is what, in a way, the CJA was all about, because Travellers and ravers were getting together on bigger and bigger scales, which culminated in Castlemorton, where there was thirty, forty thousand people. The Travellers were sort of in control, they were doing their little sound systems. And all the ravers were coming in, and then links were being made, you know? And that's what RTS have been really clever at. They thought, "Right, we'll fucking use music as a political tool to drag in ordinary people. We'll show them, this is a laugh!" But leaflet, you know, chat to people, stuff like that. That's what switches people's heads on: fun. Not dull left-wing papers.

Will->> It's what the cops can't stand, as well. They can handle people marching along with banners, and shouting and a bit of scuffle. But when they see everybody enjoying themselves, they really hate it.

mp->> I just wanted to know what your experiences lead you to believe are some of the best ways to materially go about changing the conditions of the world around you?

Ray->> Very difficult question.

Will->> That is a thing that I feel is happening, like with SchNews perhaps, is that people have come together. I never went out of my way, "Ooh, I'm going to go out and find all these people, want to put a newsletter together." And we've all just come together without any pre-planning, we haven't all thought, "Oh, I'll go out and search so-and-so because with them I can do this and that." It's just more or less come together of itself.

Ray->> On the one hand, you're looking at specific injustices and trying to sort them out, in whatever best way you can. And in the process of doing that you find other sustainable ways of living that are such a vast happier improvement on the way things are being done at the moment, really.

mp->> So it's kind of trial and error? You stumble onto something, and you're like, "Wow, this is really great."

Ray->> It is a lot of trial and error, yeah. You experience something and then someone will give you some information, and you think, "Oh, yeah, that's good. It doesn't quite fit in with the local conditions here, so we'll re-jig it a bit and put our own experiences into that and improve on that particular idea."

mk->> It just seems like sometimes also, you find a method that works, but the minute you find that it works, the powers-that-be that you're using it against . . . .

mp->> They figure it out.

Ray->> I reckon RTS are probably thinking about that as well. It's a certain arms race thing, isn't it? Like, with animals, the eagle gets sharper claws and better eyesight, so the mouse or whatever gets better camouflage and only goes out at certain times of day. The same is true fighting the powers that be. It depends what sort of timescale you put on things as well, I think. If you think the planet's going to be fucked in the next thirty years, well obviously you're going to have to come up with some fucking very, very good ideas quick smart. But if you're thinking in terms of a bigger time scale than that, then, a lot of talk recently has been about how to get groups together to do things for forty, fifty, sixty years, without them being fucked over and people getting burnt out. That's a really tricky question.

Will->> Well, it's keeping small, isn't it? It's the fact that it's small groups and it isn't like, "You've got to do this." It's coming from yourself.

Ray->> You were asking earlier on how SchNews works. More or less, people in the office can do two or three different parts of the operation.

mp->> So there's tasks or jobs that need to get done, and then people just take those on?

Ray->> Yeah. And that's through being friends, the fact that there isn't a raging row.

mp->> I've wondered about that actually quite a bit in terms of the structure of collectives, and what can make a collective work successfully. And whether it is actually necessary to get along with and be friends with the people you're working with.

Will->> It's necessary.

Ray->> Of course it is! Because that's what you're trying to design, isn't it? You're trying to make a situation where the people who you meet with on a regular basis are people who you like who don't do despicable things and therefore you can trust and respect them.

Will->> Because if we didn't have that sense of fun and not forcing people, "Oh you're part of our group, you must do this," we'd just be like the enemy, if you want to use that term.

Ray->> Anarchy to me seems to be about being really flexible in the way you think and approach things, willingness to change. Otherwise once you start getting inflexible and dogmatic about things, then you're fucked basically. Because stuff changes so fast.

Will->> I always feel anarchy can involve democracy as well. I mean, what we have when they say the "democratic" nations, we know what they really mean. But, anarchy itself, the kind of anarchy that we have I feel is democratic as well, really democratic, 'cause we can all say our pieces, and we don't have to do it if we don't want to. And we're not dressed in black capes with curly mustaches.

mk->> Right, right. This is the whole politics of pleasure thing, that it's more a pleasure of politics, that politic action can be pleasurable, erotic, creative.

Ray->> That's what life's about isn't it, taking the steps to make life as enjoyable as possible.

Will->> You can have fun, you don't have to cause harm, and something positive can come out of it as well. It's not just selfish.

Ray->> Then you get the governor of the Bank of England saying, "We need more unemployment," because people who've got jobs are scared of fighting back, and the unions have long since been crushed.

Will->> Over here now it's accepted by our government that we need two million unemployed all the time to keep inflation down.

Ray->> And then you try and fuck over the people who are unemployed. Set a ludicrously low minimum wage and stuff.

Will->> And I think that's something we've got to move away from is the whole work ethic, that everybody's gotta be working all the time, all day, just so they can eat and have a roof over their head. Because with technology and all that, there isn't that work, and after two thousand years of everybody working their bollocks off to get some kind of comfort, they're saying "Oh, hey, you can't have a rest now, 'cause we want more profit, we want more power," and the whole thing about technology and the industrial revolution and everything like that was to make life easier, but....

mk->> That's what they're always telling people, "If you do this things will progress, things will get more comfortable, you'll get a new television, and new refrigerator."

Will->> "If you get this electric can opener, you'll have five minutes more with your children." But it doesn't work like that, does it? This is a thing that's happening in schools in this country, children are just being trained on how to get a job, or how to sign on the dole if you don't get a job. And they're doing away with sport, with music. There's no idea that fun is an integral part of being a human being. Which really it is.

 

• up to the top
  
• back to What is your vision of the world you want...?