The Road Less Travelled: The History of Red Action

[Nigel Irritable]

Given your deep interest in this what are the many key differences in approach betwen the SA and TUSC then? What lessons have the SP learnt from the SA experience?

No idea. From the outside it looks mostly like they learnt that they'd rather work with the RMT then a bunch of other left groups. But as I've had no involvement in the English SP for more than ten years now, I'm not really in a position to give any useful detail about what they do in/for/as TUSC.

If you want to hear about what the Irish SP do in terms of community stuff, that's another matter.

 

[Nigel Irritable]

I see that the article on Red Action in "Against the Grain", the recently published and obscenely overpriced book of essays on the British left since 1956, is very positive in tone. It's basically a defence written by an ex member.

 

[belboid]

When we deem the time is right we will be more than happy to 'open the books' so to speak.

and when will that be? By which I mean, what conditions are required before you do so?

 

[Joe Reilly]

ou
And no, I don't think you owe me an answer specifically, but I do think you owe the people you've been advocating the IWCA approach to a balance sheet of that experience more than another exhortation or more chest beating about how you were right. That way, people might actually be able to use the IWCA to help develop something that does spread, that does last, etc. Which was after all what you were supposed to be about, wasn't it? Hence "pilot schemes"?

I refer you to the answer I gave earlier.

 

[Limerick Red]

.

 

[malatesta32]

What's prompted the making of the facebook page?

facebook, it seems, is one of the first places people ocme across the opinions of fascists, whether EDL, BNP, or the eeijit BF. it may seem silly or trivial to more, err, 'combat experienced' antifascists but digital media is a political space that needs addressing. though not the only place obviously. off back to the bear cave ...

 

[malatesta32]

[QUOTE="Red Storm, post: 13504172, member: 51483" Red Action were OK for street fighting but fuck all use for anything else."[/QUOTE]

total bollocks as anyone who has spent time going thru the RA archive would realise pretty quickly.

 

[Joe Reilly]

"positive in tone."

A positive outrage?

PS: author a member of AFA certainly, and certainly from that perspective a supporter of the RA strategy. Never a paid up card-carrier as far as I know.

 

[framed]

Regarding the facebook page: it's an attempt to contribute to the presentation of our organisation on social media and to record our own history, in the words of Red Action members and supporters. It's also geared to the increased interest from a new generation of anti-fascists in finding out more about the history, politics and method of Red Action and AFA in Britain. There's been a small but hopeful international knock-on with interest from working class anti-fascist groups in Europe, especially regarding the Beating The Fascists book .

 

[malatesta32]

when researching the anti-fascism book, i spent several afternoons going thru every issue of RA on the archive (to which we remain thankful to those who saved and uploaded the paper) as well as the longer stuff (we are RA etc) for specific examples of confrontations that RA had with the far right. i couldn't help thinking that a RA 'Greatest hits' compiled from their rather self-effacing and amusing reports could be an invaluable resource for contemporary anti-fascists to draw lessons from as well as inspiration. it would have certainly saved me printer from melt down.

 

[love detective]

'Red Action - left wing political pariah' by Mark Hayes for the 'Against the Grain' book is available here on the Red Action Archive site

It would be very easy to dismiss Red Action as a political irrelevance, especially since ‘revolutionary’ activism on the far left of the ideological spectrum in Britain has been characterised by an abundance of apparently similar, short-lived sectarian micro-groups. Red Action might easily be portrayed as a miniscule manifestation of the same genus – just another militant microbe in the sad story of socialist ephemera which, although achieving some notoriety in the 1980s and 1990s, followed an entirely predictable path toward political oblivion. Yet there is a significant sense in which such a dismissive approach would be inappropriate in this case because Red Action, despite its small size, managed, in some ways, to make a unique contribution to the politics of the far left in late twentieth-century Britain. Indeed it might be argued that there were elements of both theory and practice which warrant more sustained critical analysis.

There is no doubt that Red Action was an organisation which caused, and to some extent courted, controversy. The political positions adopted by Red Action precipitated as much concern and consternation on the left as it did in those quarters where hostility was entirely predictable. Red Action’s leftist enemies were multifarious, and it would not be an exaggeration to say that the organisation was detested and derided by a variety of groups which, ostensibly at least, shared a similar position on the ideological axis.

A more carefully considered analysis reveals not only an extraordinary degree of practical commitment amongst activists, but a political position that reflected a relatively high level of theoretical sophistication, distinctive elements of which deserve much closer scrutiny as examples of ‘best practice’, especially for those on the left who stubbornly refuse to relinquish their commitment to the ideas of working-class emancipation and egalitarian social transformation.

 

[DaveCinzano]

I see that the article on Red Action in "Against the Grain", the recently published and obscenely overpriced book of essays on the British left since 1956, is very positive in tone. It's basically a defence written by an ex member.

That chapter is now up on the Red Action Archive:

http://www.redactionarchive.org/p/red-action-left-wing-political-pariah.html

 

[DaveCinzano]

That chapter is now up on the Red Action Archive:

http://www.redactionarchive.org/p/red-action-left-wing-political-pariah.html

Oh, and critique of the above here:

https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress...me-critical-notes-on-the-ideas-of-red-action/

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Oh, and critique of the above here:

https://nothingiseverlost.wordpress...me-critical-notes-on-the-ideas-of-red-action/

That's an interesting response, bar the dismissal of Red Action's views on anarchism on the rather silly grounds that they are similar to those of Hal Draper. No comments unfortunately.

 

[DaveCinzano]

(Apologies love detective for essentially duplicating your post - I am a bit as I did check both pages, and your post wasn't showing up for me on my tablet for some reason.)

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

Were RA left draperists? dialectician ?

 

[ManchesterBeth]

You mean shachtmanites. i don't think so. I generally call left schachtmanites draperists as shorthand but I've found that it tends to obfuscate matters so you know...

 

[Joe Reilly]

That's an interesting response, bar the dismissal of Red Action's views on anarchism on the rather silly grounds that they are similar to those of Hal Draper. No comments unfortunately.

Yeah, interesting, especially the bit about 'happily bombing working class civilians'. Over the years RA has been accused of near everything - from left and right - ['racist, sexist, M15 loving storm-troopers'] all water of a duck's back for the most part. So nothing new there. 'War criminals' might still raise the odd eyebrow though.

As for the accompanying idea that RA was in the pocket of SF/IRA - hollow laughter all round on that one.

 

[framed]

How could we possibly have formed our own views when we have the press releases and diktats of the SF leadership to regurgitate?

"Personally, I can’t see that much of a difference between treating the Sinn Fein leadership as genuinely representative of most working-class Northern Irish Catholics and treating whatever Imam you can find who most agrees with you as being genuinely representative of most working-class Muslims."

I am led to believe that it was written by a Dublin based 'anarchist', probably WSM supporter, so no real surprises contained in the piece. It's interesting though how intent some anarchists have been to try to slot Red Action back into the political hole of Trotskyism... and then employ the standard arguments of the Trots against Red Action.

The conclusion, as Hayes presents it, is that by foregrounding issues other than class, “Politics … becomes an exercise in special pleading with the working class divided, which inevitably undermined the possibility of effective, unified action” – a view that implicitly sees the working class as united (as well as straight, white and male) until identity politicians come along to divide it, rather than recognising that the class is already fragmented, and that struggles against racial, sexual, gendered and other forms of oppression are a necessary precondition for the possibility of class unity.

Check your privilege comrades...

 

[bluescreen]

Why the rolleyes? I must be missing out on a joke here, or something. The 'check your privilege' thing seems one of the least contentious propositions. And obviously it can be divisive in a destructive way. You know, if people are wilfully ignorant and don't check their privilege.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Perhaps the roll eyes are because RA argued against the idea of a homogenous working class (let alone one defined by sexuality, gender and ethnicity) in explicit opposition to what they saw as a shortcoming of much Marxism-Leninism.

Cheers – Louis MacNeice

 

[Nigel Irritable]

Why the rolleyes? I must be missing out on a joke here, or something. The 'check your privilege' thing seems one of the least contentious propositions. And obviously it can be divisive in a destructive way. You know, if people are wilfully ignorant and don't check their privilege.

Why would you think either of those things?

 

[butchersapron]

Don't think this is from a WSMer at all. I think it's from an english anarchist-communist that used to post on here and that a number of people know quite well. (Establishing his political background in order to put some context is as far as i think anyone should be going with that btw - not suggesting anyone was looking to go further).

 

[framed]

Don't think this is from a WSMer at all. I think it's from an english anarchist-communist that used to post on here and that a number of people know quite well. (Establishing his political background in order to put some context is as far as i think anyone should be going with that btw - not suggesting anyone was looking to go further).

It's being punted around Irish political sites by WSM supporters, the person that forwarded it to me is from Dublin and he assumed that the author is a particular ISM'er who has been heavily promoting it...

 

[Nigel Irritable]

It's being punted around Irish political sites by WSM supporters, the person that forwarded it to me is from Dublin and he assumed that the author is a particular ISM'er who has been heavily promoting it...

I'm not sure that any of what's left of the WSM have been "heavily promoting it". The only one of them I saw posting it weird so in a "here's a bit of a curiousity about a dead group. Didn't the left used to be strange when I were a lad" kind of way.

 

[Joe Reilly]

I'm not sure that any of what's left of the WSM have been "heavily promoting it". The only one of them I saw posting it weird so in a "here's a bit of a curiousity about a dead group. Didn't the left used to be strange when I were a lad" kind of way.

What prompted the author who boasts in his introduction of not being sufficiently curious to ready anything by RA "in depth" (code for not bothering to do even rudimentary research) to write the critique in the first place? And why would you in turn describe it as "interesting" when all it is snootily dismissive and so lacking in originality it might have been hacked out anytime from 1985 on wards?

 

[Nigel Irritable]

And why would you in turn describe it as "interesting" when all it is snootily dismissive and so lacking in originality it might have been hacked out anytime from 1985 on wards?

"if their central analysis was that there was a crisis of both working-class political organisation and workplace organisation, why did they end up concluding that the answer to the Labour Party’s lack of relevance was to set up a new political organisation (the IWCA), but their answer to the decline of the trade union movement was to accept that workplace activity was essentially finished?"

"Hayes then moves on to another distinctive and controversial feature of the RA ideology: their uniquely high level of commitment to the cause of Irish Republicanism, and particularly for IRA bombing campaigns. This seems like a curious contradiction in their ideology: having detailed why RA opposed prioritising any issue other than class, Hayes then explains why they focused much of their activity on a national, rather than class, question."

"Before moving on to the conclusion, it’s worth noting a conspicuous absence in Hayes’ article: any consideration of the circumstances that led to the group’s winding up. I don’t want to rely on an argument from success or numbers – after all, if long-term stability and size of membership are treated as indicators of a healthy political approach, the Labour Party is far superior to any socialist or anarchist group that’s ever existed – but it does feel like anyone constructing a case for the merits of a defunct group should at least make some attempt to deal with why, instead of attracting new people and growing, it ended up stagnating and disbanding. Similarly, an indepth treatment of the Independent Working-Class Association project, especially an honest balance sheet that examined both failures and successes, would doubtless have a lot of lessons for anyone engaged in community organising projects today; such a study would definitely be worth a whole separate article at least, and I can only hope that one appears soon."

These points may have been possible to "hack out anytime from 1985 onwards", or at least from the disappearance of the IWCA onwards, but they are not ones that are often addressed with any clarity very often by advocates for RA or the IWCA. I find the questions raised interesting and would certainly find explanations interesting.

As for what the author was thinking, how the fuck would I know?

 

[Louis MacNeice]

"if their central analysis was that there was a crisis of both working-class political organisation and workplace organisation, why did they end up concluding that the answer to the Labour Party’s lack of relevance was to set up a new political organisation (the IWCA), but their answer to the decline of the trade union movement was to accept that workplace activity was essentially finished?"

As a supporter of the IWCA - both as an organisation and a strategy - this is my take on the above. I'm sure others are quite capable of providing their own account.

With the collapse of the post-war social democratic consensus, and the emergence of New Labour committed to neo-liberalism, the Labour Party was (and still is) dead as a vehicle for working class political representation (let alone anything more radical); therefore something different - a new organisation - was and still is needed.

With the defeat of the miners and the NUM, the body of anti-working class industrial relations legislation and the widespread reorganisation of work itself, the workplace as a site for effecting political change no longer exists; that is why the miners and the NUM had to be defeated. But the need for collective protection, representation and advocacy at work still does; therefore unions continue to be needed.

In these circumstances, a small organisation such as the IWCA, would seem to have made the right call, i.e. organise where people live in their communities - the place where they have little or no collective voice across the whole of their lives - rather than the workplace -somewhere which by turns may not actually exist, be temporary, be precarious or even already organised.

This is not the same as saying that IWCA activists did not involve themselves in trade union activity (and taking the IWCA's politics into that activity); they did...just not as IWCA activists and not as an organisation.

So as a small exemplary organisation - that is an organisation whose purpose was to provide an experimental example of how and what to do - the IWCA targeted the identification, the promotion and the realisation of working class interests at a community level, alongside a direct attack on the Labour Party who laid claim to/relied on the lie that they were pro-working class...only they use the language of 'ordinary people' or 'hard working families'.

Given the resources at the IWCA's disposal and the small c political conservatism of virtually all those on the left who could have developed the experiment, I think the IWCA did alright. In Oxford it helped a community change some things for the better. Wherever it was active it gave Labour a fright. And it did both of these things in a consistently progressive manner. Indeed it strikes me that something similar will need to be tried again, if reactionary alternatives to the exclusion of the working class, are to be resisted.

Cheers - Louis MacNeice

 

[chilango]

Like Nigel Irritable I look forward to reading some kind of reflection by the IWCA on their experience. I'm not going to "demand" it though. I'm sure they'll put it out there when they're good and ready.

From my own perspective, my engagement with it has been fleeting involvement with a project that never really took off and idle, limited, support from the comfort of my chair so I don't really have the right to make anything but the most hesitant of observations.

I do think the IWCA ran into a couple of major obstacles, and ones that will face any similar project.

The first is the existence of "working class communities". Both class identity and community have been under sustained assault in the last couple of generations, and have fractured somewhat under this pressure.

As I've repeatedly argued on these boards much of the w/c identifies, and is identified as, middle class on fairly superficial grounds. We need to get around this.

I'm sure that I don't need to talk of how communities as a "thing" are being undermined (gentrification, increasing transience of residents, and so on). I spose its a parallel process to the casualisation of the workplace leading to "precarimmunity" or some such nonsense.

Still, the iwca remains correct to have this as a starting point IMHO.

The other major obstacle, in common with any activist project, is activism.

As long as any project relies upon activists to sustain itself it faces burnout, hobbyism and the myriad of problems we all know so well. If the w/c communities in question pick up the project and run with it, on a sustainable, generalised manner then we get past this.

Till then, we face some uncomfortable truths.

 

[Spanky Longhorn]

I agree with you about class identity Chilango, I think that although a majority of working class people still identify as working class - the fact is many of the working class people more likely to engage in political/community activity in many parts of the country do not identify as working class or at least don't identify primarily as working class.

Where I think however there are still real opportunities to promote working class self activity and confidence building as well as a renewal of community spirit are through

1: social, cultural, and sporting activities - FCUM, the IWCA sports club, music scenes etc

2: struggles to solve immediate problems around housing, wages, work crime etc - which requires the formation of proper active and small p political communities that do not have class as their primary identity even if class politics are inherent in what they do - but which also often collapse as spontaneously as they arise even if successful.

Having said that I think your wrong about community per se in my experience there are still strong communities up and down the country which do organise together - it's just generally around such practical activities (street parties, burglaries, allotments whatever) that trying to show horn wider politics into their activity is a uphill fight and probably frankly not worth the effort at the moment