Introduction to this

Since 2016 I’ve been going into poor and working class communities not dissimilar to those I’m from and doing what could in third sector speak be called consultation, my anarcho siblings might call it practising solidarity, some leftists might call it organising others may prefer agitating, a few might say it’s wasting everyone’s time. I for what it’s worth don’t have a clear definition, maybe all of those are correct, maybe there’s another word out there lurking underneath the pavement. Whatever the description it’s over now, last week I hung up those old spurs for a while, I’ve got a kid on the way, other projects beginning, and I needed to take stock and reflect on what I’d be doing for 20 plus hours a week for the better part of 6 years.

On this blog I’m going to be writing up my reflections, using notes and diaries that I’ve made along the way. When appropriate I’ll also check back in with those I’ve worked with to get some of their reflections, see whether they think what went down was useful for their communities in their attempts to resist capital and the state.

A fair amount will be breaking down many of the community accountability process that have formed the central practice of this work, but I’ll also reflect on other aspects, the meetings, the political education sessions, the ways in which gender and race have impacted the work that’s gone on. I won’t be aiming for thrilling writing, or exciting war stories, but instead I’ll aim as accurately as I can to reflect on what happened, what mattered to the communities and how they practiced radical politics in profoundly restricted circumstances, and what I as a self-proclaimed anti-capitalist community organiser got wrong and occasionally got right.

Any other housekeeping? Those I worked with gave verbal consent for me to write about the work, on the proviso that it’d be impossible for others to pin point which communities were being spoken about, and thus I’ll be anonymising everyone and disguising the parts of the countries the activities took place in. Given my fallibility at writing local dialogue, any quotes will have been squeezed through my internal translator, thus will be less grounded in the reality of the speaker, it was either that or watch me flail around trying to come up ways to present dialect which isn’t familiar to me. When I’ve do this I will have checked with the speakers that the articulations I have offered are accurate reflections, but perhaps nuance will be lost.

In the title of a film PT Anderson has never made, there will be typos, grammar, and spelling mistakes. I’m not going to get overly concerned with that, I self-published a book with a litany of those and that was after a handful of more well educated comrades had gotten their hands on the text. Hopefully my misdemeanours in literacy will not limit any readers understanding of what is being said, and if it does, well you can always ask.

Whilst I will undoubtedly make declarative statements, and assume opinion as fact on a semi-regular basis, none of what I write here should be taken as me thinking I know the answer to the questions those of us who organise in our communities and indeed workplaces ask ourselves on a daily basis. That level of hubris is anathema even to an ego as large as my own.

Whatever this writing offers, and whatever credit I might claim for the work or the writing, far more should be preserved for the folks who have invited me into their communities, their lives and their homes over these 6 years. Challenging me on my assumptions, energising me with their hope in the face of despair, and returning to participate in the active refusal of the conditions they find themselves in. They have consistently reaffirmed my position that truly radical and transformative politics has not only nothing do with political parties, and little to do with the NGO’s and leftist spokespeople that claim leadership in bringing justice and equality to the world. Today I feel that repairing the disconnect in the UK between social movements and poor and working class communities is at the heart of building transformation and dare I say it revolution. That this work is messy, contradictory, and holds no truck with ideological dogma, is in my understanding undoubtedly the case, but it’s possible and that understanding gives me hope.