JB->> What do I do and why am I doing it? Well, I've worked with RTS pretty much since its reincarnation which was in '95. I got involved in the M11 campaign, which for me was really the first time I'd ever taken direct action. Because my training and my career was really as an artist, and I was always looking for a place where art had a direct physical function. And I always felt that art had the imagination, but had an absolute failure of social connection and political function. Yet at the same time I felt that politics had that social political connection, but it had a failure of imagination. And so I was searching for this space where the poetic and the imaginative could come together with the political and really I found that in the M11. Seeing things like Claremont Road happen, which was this street of forty-five houses which was taken over by activists, squatted, and turned into an autonomous zone for six months, and barricaded. But every barricade itself was a work of art. The creativity and imagination there was absolutely extraordinary. But also within the direct action itself, I could see the kind of performative aspect, the theater, the whole importance of the image, in a sense. But unlike the media campaigns of Greenpeace, what was happening here was very much more. The main aim was to stop the work and the second aim was the image. And again that was inspiring. So RTS came out of that experience, really the experience of Claremont Road. We'd taken a street and for six months there was this kind of constantly festive atmosphere in Claremont Road. And after Claremont Road happened it was really a desire to somehow keep an element of Claremont Road going. And the idea of a street party was born. So from there, that's how I got involved really.

I came originally from an ecological background. In a way I was kind of on the deep ecology fringe of the movement, coming from New Age. In a sense, it's quite a good advert for New Age bollocks really. Because through art, I was very interested in Joseph Beuys, a German artist who talked a lot about social sculpture, the idea that the artist's material is society, and the artist's role is to help form that society through direct democracy. And he used a lot of what I now see as very problematic, but a lot of images of the shaman. So I kind of got really into shamanism, and through that got into ecology. Beuys also was one of the founding members of the Green Party in Germany, so there was this kind of mixture of spirituality, which fit in perfectly with deep ecology. But as soon as I began to struggle, it's very clear that you learn through action and that it wasn't just about ecology. The M11 link road was primarily about social space and trying to transform social space and the fact that this road was actually gonna destroy some fifty houses, houses that could be useful, could be renovated. And was going to destroy that community in terms of any quality of life. Through that experience, really, I began to very much connect social issues. And I think the history of RTS is very much that history, going from a very locally based campaign which had social elements and ecological elements, but was very much local, to a much more global critique and a global network. It's been a very interesting kind of move, from a very local to a global critique of capital. Although, we've always had a critique of capital. It's interesting that only today really, as we speak, in a more public way in terms of the media, it's being acknowledged that RTS is about capitalism. For me that's very interesting. The great success of June the 18th is that, the fact that we've put that on the agenda, that there's a movement against capitalism. And that's fantastic.

So, I came from that background. I still see myself as a kind of green anarchist, I suppose. I'm not looking for a society which is free of capitalism yet which is still ecologically destructive. I think the two are very clearly connected. But it's interesting, on a more subjective level, the M11 happened just at the same time as my partner got pregnant. And the whole nine months that I was on the M11 were exactly the nine months that my son was gestating. And he was born on the day of the eviction of Claremont Road. So, I wasn't actually at Claremont Road, I was with my partner. So, I think, talking personally, it sounds kind of wishy-washy, but that was suddenly when my political beliefs became real. When I talk to people about the fact that I think, ecologically, the planet will probably be destroyed if we haven't basically transformed the economic system, probably all life systems will probably be pretty fucked in about forty years. I used to always talk about that. But when suddenly this thought of my son was there, then it was like, "Yeah, he's going to be forty when that happens." And that really made a big, big difference. And for me the whole thing about art was always, "What's the most efficient political action you can take?" And that's why I stopped making art, because suddenly I saw direct action as being the most efficient political action that I could take. Do I see direct action as art? It can be. I don't think all direct action is art. It's difficult. At the moment I'm in a slight level of confusion about that really, because for me the importance is creativity. In a way I think the word "art" is problematic. I'd rather use the word "imaginative creative strategies." And I think direct action can have extraordinary creative tendencies.

 

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• No-M11 Campaign & Claremont Road
  The 3.5 mile M11 Link Road in East London destroyed 350 houses, including the home of local celebrity 93 year-old Dolly, who refused to leave the house she was born in. Parks, trees & woodland were also demolished. At an estimated cost of £350 million, the M11 Link Road was expected to cut 7 minutes off the commute of people who didn't even live in the neighborhood, & exemplified the absurdity and injustice of the government's road-building program. Claremont Road & the No-M11 Campaign represented a significant moment in the anti-road protest movement. It involved a powerful alliance of local residents, including children & elderly people, who experienced the M11 plan as not only an ecological threat but a social & economic injustice. Claremont Road became the main focus of the campaign against the M11 Link Road after a sweet chestnut tree was cut down in Dec. '93. In an attempt to save the ancient tree, it had become the first tree in the UK to be accepted as a legal mailing address & thus a residence. The road was squatted, & soon houses along the road were painted, art-work & sculpture filled the street, bands played, & an outdoor living room was set up complete with furniture. During the final eviction of Claremont Road in December 1994, bailiffs & police faced off against 500 protesters who utilized a range of non-violent stalling tactics: a concrete-filled car blocked the road, people locked onto the street, hung in nets across the road, buried themselves under piles of rubble, & crowded onto rooftops & tree houses. A 100-foot-high grease-coated scaffold tower atop one of the buildings was held by twelve people until the end of the eviction.
  
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• Joseph Beuys
  Innovative & provocative German artist. One of the original founders of the Green Party. Believed that "...creativity isn't the monopoly of artists. This is the crucial fact I've come to realise, and this broader concept of creativity is my concept of art. When I say everybody is an artist, I mean everybody can determine the content of life in his particular sphere, whether in painting, music, engineering, caring for the sick, the economy or whatever. All around us the fundamentals of life are crying out to be shaped or created."
  
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• June the 18th (J18)
  a.k.a. The Carnival Against Capital. Huge mass action of summer 1999, organized by RTS & a broad coalition of other groups including EF!, People's Global Action, etc. The significance of this event lies in the organizers' attempt to coordinate a global set of protests all for one date, to reveal & ignite "a resistance as transnational as capital." A number of different countries responded with everything from mass demonstrations to street theater, lockdowns to street parties.
  
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