British anarchisms and the miners' strike.

Introduction

If that much disputed of terms, 'ideology', is defined in terms of the analyses of power, programmes for change and identification of agents capable of transforming social relations, as Marc Stears suggests (Stears, 1998: 293), and these correspond to distinctive institutions and organisational practices, then it is essential to talk of 'anarchisms' rather than 'anarchism'. As this paper demonstrates, although there are a number of shared characteristics between individualist (or lifestyle) anarchism on the one side and social (class struggle) anarchism on the other, the differences between them become pronounced in response to critical events, such as the miners' strike 1984-5. While anarchisms that prioritised liberation from class domination were the dominant forms of libertarianism in Britain at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth century, by the early 1980s, versions of anarchism based on liberal concepts of agency had come to the fore in Anglo-American circles.

This paper demonstrates how social anarchism developed practices that enabled it to regain prominence in the wider libertarian milieu, partly as a result of the use of its methods in support of the miners' strike. Latterly, however, this division between liberal and class struggle anarchism has weakened, as those formerly categorised as lifestyle anarchists have begun to contest capitalist social relations, while class struggle libertarians have become aware of the class nature of many of the forms of action formerly dismissed as 'liberal'. This paper is based on contemporary textual accounts of the conflict in the coalfields; and, as such, it tends to concentrate on the national organisations and journals, whose archives are publicly available. (1) One result of this is that certain texts are undated, and thus an estimated publication date has been used (indicated by an italicised 'e'). I would also like to thank my friends, colleagues and comrades, who have assisted with anecdotes from this period and helped to inform the direction of the argument. (2)

Divisions in anarchisms

A distinctive set of groups, ideas and practices identifies class struggle (or social) anarchisms. They share a professed commitment to four criteria: a complete rejection of capitalism and the market economy, which demarcates anarchism from reformist politics; an egalitarian concern for the interests and freedoms of others as part of the creation of non-hierarchical social relations; and a rejection of State power and other quasi-State mediating forces. The final criterion is that the means of social transformation must prefigure the desired ends. These four criteria, especially the last, are relevant to the designation of the agent of change to which a consistent anarchism should appeal (Quail, 1978: x; Franks, 2003: 18-20). These four principles recognise that capitalism is a hierarchical power structure, and also that the oppressed themselves, rather than a mediating agency, have primacy in overthrowing their oppression. Thus they conform to the formula proposed for the First International by Marx, and reaffirmed by libertarian socialists like Socialisme ou Barbarie and the Situationist International, that 'the emancipation of the proletariat will be the work of the proletariat itself' (Marx, 1992: 82; Socialisme ou Barbarie, 2004; Gray, 1974: 10).

Individualist anarchism, by contrast, appeals to the rational, self-interested and abstract subject derived from liberalism. For individualists, it is the abstract, rational subject, as identified in Kantian liberal political philosophy, that is the ultimate source of authority. Individualism, as a result, fails to take into account the hierarchical power relations embodied in contracts made between those with existing power (say, ownership of capital) and those who require paid employment in order to survive. (3) As Frank H. Brooks notes of American individualist anarchism, this egoism leads to the elitist implication that concentration on the individual's own self-emancipation leaves the unenlightened to remain exploited (Brooks, 1996: 85), and thus there is little that differentiates this form of anarchism from minimal state capitalism. (4)

Murray Bookchin argued that there is an 'unbridgeable chasm' between social or class struggle anarchists on the one hand and individualists (or those who Bookchin referred to as 'lifestyle' anarchists) on the other. His schema creates two separate anarchist camps. In the first are the individualists who, as in Brooks's account, privilege personal liberation such as 'psychotherapeutic, New Age, self-orientated lifestyles' (Bookchin, 1995: 10). Bookchin, more problematically, also associates 'post-modernism' with lifestyle, individualist anarchism (ibid: 19). On the other side, in Bookchin's model, are the social anarchists who emphasise organised 'opposition to the existing social order' and the struggle against capitalist class relations, often related to formal workplace organisation (ibid: 6, 59).

Among the most famous adherents to the individualism that Bookchin criticises are Max Stimer (1993) and Benjamin Tucker, (5) and more recently, Robert Wolff (1976) and L. Susan Brown (2003). It should be noted that Brown, who is one of the main targets of Bookchin's polemic, claims a distinction for her 'existential individualism', which she considers to be compatible with anarchist communism (Brown, 2003: 11-12, 125-8). But Brown's essentialism is not only epistemologically suspect: it also raises the criticism, derived from Rosi Braidotti, that such claims to neutral, decontextualised equalities ignore, and therefore acquiesce to, gender, race and class oppressions (Braidotti, 1993: 49-52.).

There is much to criticise in Bookchin's account of this division, (6) and the latter part of this paper will explore some of the ways in which groupings that Bookchin associates with lifestyle anarchism are often consistent with a coherent anarchism that foregrounds economic oppression. New social movements, like the environmental, anti-nuclear and women's movements, often eschewed identifying themselves with the discourse of the Left because it attempted to reduce their struggles to epiphenomena of the battle between employer and employee. However, the works of Harry Cleaver (1979), Maria Dalla Costa (1975), Michael Hardt and Toni Negri (2001) and John Holloway (2002) have attempted to reinsert the concerns raised by these movements into a more heterodox class analysis. Bookchin's division provides a useful heuristic device as a guide to the debates and separations within anarchism, as it rightly recognises the importance of the identity of the agent who brings change (Bookchin, 1995: 12-19).

Anarchist histories

From Michael Bakunin's involvement in the First International in the late-1860s, through Rudolf Rocket's efforts to organise immigrant workers in East London into revolutionary unions at the turn of the twentieth century, to the revolutionary anti-State syndicalists of the current era, (7) anarchism (8) has been a part of workers' movements. As such, anarchism has developed critiques of capitalism that support class analyses. (9) Rocket's book Anarcho-syndicalism, for instance, demonstrates a commitment to the primacy of the industrial worker, the product of the new technology of capitalism, as the agent capable of bringing about libertarian social change (Rocker, 1991e: 54).

Rocker's vision is of the subjugated themselves negating the forces of domination, and thus being the primary agents in the act of liberation. This is one of the key elements of anarchism. In Marxist terms, the class becomes for itself through conscious efforts to subvert and overcome the dictates of capital (Cleaver, 1979; Class War, 1984ea: 2). In this respect, Rocker quotes his predecessor Bakunin, who identifies the overthrow of capitalism by the oppressed classes as fundamental to anarchism (Rocker, 1991e: 45). Nonsyndicalists like Errico Malatesta and Peter Kropotkin, who had been misrepresented as a pacific, saint-like idealist opposed to class-based revolutionary change (Woodcock, 1975: 171-2), were advocates of workplace organisation and supported the struggle of living labour over capital (Malatesta, 1984:113-6; Kropotkin, 1997e [1908]: 26-7).

Even in the nineteenth century, there was a significant division between class struggle (social) anarchisms and the alternative, individualist version of libertarianism. In the UK context, this latter branch of anarchism was associated with Henry Seymour, a 'disciple' of Tucker (Woodcock, 1975: 419). Seymour, who has the disputed claim to have edited the first anarchist newspaper in Britain, The Anarchist (1885), briefly collaborated with Kropotkin, but such was the difference between individualism and mainstream socialist versions that the partnership lasted for just one issue. Kropotkin departed to set up his own anti-capitalist anarchist paper--Freedom.

Kropotkin's Freedom supported Rocker's group, and by 1907 was producing its own syndicalist journal, The Voice of Labour, edited by the shop steward John Turner, a former colleague of William Morris (Solidarity Federation, 2001: 17; Baird & Baird et al., 1994: 20). At the same time, there was a considerable increase in agitation in British industry that took a syndicalist direction.

This intensified militancy did not originate from anarchist-syndicalists, but did confirm the relevance of such tactics (Dangerfield, 1997: 191; White, 1990: 104-5). The extent of syndicalist thinking in the more mainstream workers' movement was demonstrated by the document produced by members of the unofficial rank-and-file committee of the Miners' Federation of Britain (a forerunner of the National Union of Mineworkers). This plan, The Miners' Next Step, was a lucid proposal of federal organisation in order to wage effective class warfare (United Reform Committee, 1994e [1912]: 19). Even after the rise of Leninism in the Welsh coalfields, Albert Meltzer, a later class struggle anarchist, noted with pleasure that a small pocket of syndicalism continued there for decades (Meltzer, 1996: 309-10).

However, after the Bolshevik revolution, state communism began to dominate the non-social democratic wings of the labour movement at the expense of more heterodox forms of socialism. The apparent vindication of Lenin's centralised and 'disciplined' methods in the October Revolution (Lenin, 1975: 6), along with the use of Russia's financial reserves to provide a competitive advantage to revolutionaries who conformed to Lenin's strategy (Kendall, 1969: 249), marginalised alternative radical movements (Quail, 1978: 287). As Leninism and Stalinism dominated, the discourse of Marxism came to be associated with the increasingly odious rationalisations for totalitarian governance. Consequently, Glyn Rhys, an anarchist writing in the 1980s, commented, 'The more talk of class struggle the more Stalinist' (Rhys, 1988e: 26).

This is not to say that anarchism rejected the discourse and analysis of class; but there was recognition that, by the 1970s and '80s, this form of discussion was tainted with authoritarian connotations, which restricted its adoption and reception. However, there were anarchists, like Rhys, who regarded the struggle of the economically subjugated against their oppressors as being either the sole determinant, or at least a fundamental feature of, almost all forms of domination. Despite the hegemony of Leninism over the use of Marxist terminology, there had been a consistent, recognisable section of British anarchists that retained an insistence on identifying with the economically oppressed class. From the Second World War up until the 1980s, these tended to be, but were not exclusively, from syndicalist or quasi-syndicalist sections of anarchism, which, as a result, placed priority on radical action at the point of production.

This consistent syndicalist strand can be traced through the revolutionary industrial unionist section of the Anarchist Federation of Britain, which created the Syndicalist Workers' Federation in 1948. This became the Direct Action Movement (DAM) in 1979, and is now known as the Solidarity Federation (SolFed). There were (and are) other class struggle groups whose orientation was not confined to the syndicalist strategy of developing structures for waging industrial warfare at the point of production. Among the longest-running of these were Black Flag (1960-), Solidarity (1960-1992), Class War (1983-) and the Anarchist Communist Federation, now simply known as the Anarchist Federation (1986-).

Nonetheless, by the mid-1960s, class struggle anarchists were deploring the increasingly liberal dominance of the anarchist movement. According to the working class militant Stuart Christie, the rise of the counterculture, with its pacifist leanings, meant that anarchism was 'side-tracked by the new left, anti-bomb, militant-liberal-conscience element away from being a revolutionary working class movement' (Christie, 1980: 31). By the time of the miners' strike in 1984, anarchism had minimal influence on--and in--working-class structures of resistance. The experience of the miners' strike, however, played an influential role in resurrecting class struggle anarchism in Britain. The main anarchist groups, as a result, developed a more robust and coherent conception of the agency for libertarian social change, and helped to create social structures more consistent with the anti-hierarchical principles of anarchism. (10)

Despite the differences between social and individualist anarchists, by the late-1970s and early 1980s, the iconography and targets of the two traditions were the same: both rejected the State; both used the language of 'resistance', self-activity and the symbols of revolt. Hence there appeared to be room for consolidation and cooperation. The coalescence could be viewed in one of the main anarchist newspapers of the time, Freedom, the product of the Freedom Editorial Collective. Freedom lays claim to being the linear successor to Kropotkin's paper of the same name; and indeed, a year after the miners' strike, it produced an edition celebrating the 'first century' (Freedom centenary edition, 1986, vol. 47, no. 9: 3). (11) It pursued a line, along with its regular contributor Donald Rooum, similar to that espoused by Brown: that individualism and social anarchism were 'not in disagreement' (Rooum, 2001: 14). (12) Freedom, as a result, included articles from both individualist and class struggle trends, although it continued to be associated with the former and viewed with some suspicion by many from the latter (Meltzer, 1996: 311; Class War, 1985ea: 4). However, with the miners' strike, the division between the two groups concerning the nature of the agent of change became increasingly prominent.

Locating anarchisms in the miners' strike

Although the miners' strike had a marked influence on libertarian movements, anarchist involvement had little overall impact on the direction of the dispute. The poster for a recent conference on the miners' strike (13) well illustrates that alongside the miners, their partners and families, the dominant political players were unconnected with anarchism: namely, the trade union leadership, as represented by Arthur Scargill; the left wing of parliamentary social democracy, as represented by Dennis Skinner MP; and the Leninist tradition, as characterised by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) banners. Many of the most important texts on the miners' strike, such as Alex Callinicos and Mike Simmons's The Great Strike, Raphael Samuel, Barbara Bloomfield and Guy Boanas's collection The Enemy Within, Jonathan and Ruth Winterton's Coal, Crisis and Conflict, and Martin Adeney and John Lloyd's Miners' Strike, make no mention of anything that could be labelled 'anarchist involvement'. While Leninist political movements are acknowledged--albeit not always flatteringly--such as the Revolutionary Communist Group and the aforementioned SWP (Patton, 1986: 218; Winterton & Winterton, 1989: 83), anarchism, by contrast, almost entirely escapes comment but for one notable exception. In an odd paragraph in his autobiography, the chairman of the National Coal Board (NCB), Ian MacGregor, reports that:

   Right across the central coalfield the pickets' numbers
   were swelled by hundreds who had caused further trouble.
   A sinister mob of almost-uniformed anarchists--led by a
   woman--appeared at one stage and caused a great deal
   of damage in Yorkshire.

   But at the core of most of the trouble was a hardened
   group of miners who had obviously been trained well in
   advance in the techniques required to force dissenters
   into line. We had reports of these cadres, mainly young
   miners based in the Doncaster area, being created and
   trained--but we did not realize how effective they could
   be until the battle for Nottingham was in earnest.
   (MacGregor, 1986: 199)

There are two features of this quotation that are pertinent here. The first is that MacGregor is associating the picket-line direct action with the arrival of a shadowy group of anarchists; and second, that this is in turn concurrently placed next to the autonomous actions of miners, referred to as the 'hit squads'.

These tactics, of which MacGregor disapproved, involved the use of force aimed specifically at those whose actions imposed the power of capital and the State. Tactics of resistance were supported by, and consistent with, class struggle anarchism, but were largely rejected by the individualist tradition, as they would involve coercion against other, albeit more powerful, 'individuals'.

While overt formal anarchist influence on the strike was minor, an alternative way of envisioning 'anarchism' is not through its self-identifying institutions, but by its principles and form of tactics. Here, as Meltzer notes, there are clear parallels between the supportive structures built by the strikers, their families and their supporters, and the methods extolled by class struggle anarchists.

Yet, as he explains, although the strikers and support groups were organised on principles consistent with anarcho-syndicalism, this was not the result of a collective memory of past, syndicalist-structured struggles in the coalfields, nor was it due to the 'amount of help we could give' (Meltzer, 1996: 310).

The coalfields' women's groups exemplify some of the principles of class struggle anarchism, in which oppressed subjects create anti-hierarchical social practices. These allowed greater opportunities for women to develop new skills (Bloomfield, 1986: 159-60).

As the women involved explain, they began to take the lead in their communities where, previously, they had played a more subservient role (Q. Currie in Brogden, 1986: 188), creating, as the journalist Jean Stead reported, not just support services such as soup kitchens, but also forming the picket lines and representing the strikers and their wider aims to outside audiences (Stead, 1987: 59, 62; Samuel, 1986: 29).

The links developed between support groups often went beyond the formally isolated villages and provided new forms of contact and communication (Knight, 1986: 125; Hume, 1986: 133). As the NUM paper The Miner noted late on in the strike, 'a major feature of the strike is the constant link-up of causes as people identify with each other's struggles'. (14)

New links were formed, such as those between oppressed minorities (both in terms of ethnicity, citizenship and sexual orientation) and the striking miners. The women's groups' actions also illustrated that the traditional view of the revolutionary agent--as the fixed, objectively identifiable (white, male) working class at the point of production--was too restrictive.

The miners' strike of 1984-5 not only highlighted some of the developments that would enliven British anarchism in the subsequent two decades, but also illustrated the divisions in British anarchism at the time.

The primary split was on the different conceptions of the agent for change. On the one hand were the largely individualist groupings around Green Anarchist, Peace News and Freedom that were largely apathetic or antipathetic to the struggles in mining areas; and on the other were the class struggle groups, in particular Black Flag, Direct Action and the then only recently set up Class War, which were largely supportive, although in often different ways.

Individualist anarchism in the miners' strike

For individualist anarchists, the decontextualised rational egoist's autonomous choices take priority, and thus individual contractual relationships are the guarantor of sovereignty (Wolff, 1976: 12-14, 72). As a result, individualists had an ambivalent response to the miners' struggles. Unsurprisingly, Peace News covered, in depth, the anti-nuclear campaigns, Stop the City (when groups would meet up to harass totems of commercial power through direct action), anti-apartheid protests, and the oppression of Papuans by Indonesian troops. It did not, however, have its first article on the strike itself until the end of May 1984, at least five issues after the start of the strike (Curtis, 1984: 10-11). Even an essay on Margaret Thatcher by David Ratovisky in the previous issue failed to mention the miners (Ratovisky, 1984: 12). By July and August, however, articles started to appear covering fundraising for women's strike-support groups, and generally promoting financial assistance for the miners' struggles (Peace News, 1984: 18; G. Crass, 1984: 13; Platt, 1984: 10-11). These items were brief, and were met with hostility by some of the readership who, for instance, deplored the miners' 'violence' and the pollution caused by mining (Lowe, 1984: 17; Haslam, 1984: 17). 'Violence' was often conceived of in liberal terms, where the disciplining of a workforce through redundancy and pay-cuts was considered uncoercive and 'non-violent', but resisting such managerial authority was cast pejoratively as 'violent'. Thus, pacifism and individualism often went hand-in-hand. Support from Peace News was largely restricted to fundraising for the charitable good cause of the suffering miners--a form of social action little different from 'ethical consumption', adding credence to Samuel's hypothesis that the miners were viewed as victims in need of sympathy, rather than as models of resistance (Samuel, 1986: 35).

Green Anarchist had a similar degree of ambivalence to the miners. In comparison with social anarchists and even the mainstream press, it barely covered the miners' strike. This was at a time when The Sun, not a newspaper noted for its news coverage, carried at least two stories a day on the strike--and often on the front cover. (15) Even the show-business stories were given an anti-striker, pro-scab spin. (16) This is not to say that Green Anarchist completely ignored the strike. By August 1984, it referred to the miners' strike as being an example of 'growing pockets of resistance' (Green Anarchist, 1984a: 2), and by the third issue in November 1984, its editorial also backed the miners, in particular expressing sympathy for the strikers who had died. There was, however, no mention of what substantive form this support should take (1984b: 2). Here, as in Peace News, the strikers were not inspiring figures but subjects requiring paternalistic, charitable support. Direct action, while it was covered in Green Anarchist in relation to other campaigns, was not connected to the miners' struggle (1984c: 4; 1985d: 5).

The exceptions in Green Anarchist were the explicitly class-conscious articles by Tarquin in issue 3, and by a member of the Class War 'newspaper collective' in issue 4. Tarquin describes the attacks on the unions as a method to further subjugate the economically oppressed, and extols the readers to support the miners and their families, whose struggle is a way of resisting NCB and government control (Tarquin, 1984: 3).

The member of the Class War collective considered many of the miners' methods to be inspirational and consistent with anarchism (member of Class War, 1985: 6-7). These articles, however, were in the minority in Green Anarchist. Even these 'social anarchist' authors acknowledge Green Anarchist's 'doubts [about ...] Marxist theories of class' (Tarquin, 1984: 3) and its 'pathetic' liberal reformism (member of Class War, 1985: 6). These criticisms against the periodical were supplemented by other social anarchists, who claimed that Green Anarchist 'ignores class' and 'ignores the miners' strike'; one letter-writer bitterly asked, 'Where are the Green anarchists when it comes to giving support to workers on strike?' (Campbell, 1984: 18). (17)

Few articles by individualists voiced any support for the miners, and the individualist economic analysis of Richard Hunt, one of Green Anarchist's editors, indicates one of the reasons why. It advocates the Thatcherite policy of 'cutting taxes', on the grounds that it 'redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor' and allows small business to prosper (Hunt, 1984: 8). Hunt's version of anarchism is aligned with economic liberalism. This places primacy on capital's law of value over those values created by the oppressed themselves. Two years later, another Green Anarchist editor, Alan Albon, cemented this maintenance of managerial propriety by opposing support for strikers at the print-works at Wapping, on the grounds that the newspapers they printed were 'racist' (Albon, 1996 [1986]: 73), thus leaving Rupert Murdoch, who had ordered and profited from this racism, in an even stronger position.

A similar pattern was discernible in Freedom. While class struggle anarchists writing for the paper promoted 'practical solidarity and increased militancy in resistance to the state' (Denis the Menace, 1984: 3), the individualists (some of whom were on the paper's Editorial Collective) were more hesitant, using their criticisms of Arthur Scargill's politics, the bureaucratic structure of trade unions and a newly-discovered belief in majoritarian democracy in order to equivocate (Freedom Editorial Collective, 1984: 1; Brown, 1984: 3; Stuart, 1984: 3). Colin Johnson, a member of the five-person Editorial Collective (Stuart, 1984: 3), went so far as to argue that anarchists should completely reject supporting the strikers or anyone associated with Scargill. In addition, he proposed that increased militancy would help the capitalist class, since it would 'do very nicely from a good shake up in the stock market' (Johnson, 1984: 1). In short, Johnson's individualism regards the strikers as impotent to bring about change and no longer sovereign in their actions, since they are under Scargill's leadership. This is in contrast with class struggle anarchism, which places an emphasis on the revolutionary class's/classes' power to alter social conditions.

A cartoon by Rooum, a regular contributor to Freedom, has his comic-strip character, Wildcat, (18) celebrating the fact that miners will be losing their jobs, telling a caricatured Scargill, 'pits are difficult, dangerous, unhealthy ... You don't really want to work in such places' (Rooum, 1984: 8). This was a point shared by a Peace News correspondent (Fettes, 1984: 20), and by Johnson: 'Anarchists should question the validity of supporting a man [Scargill] whose vision is limited to ensuring that the children and grandchildren of his members are condemned to working down the mine' (Johnson, 1984: 1). Rooum and Johnson seem to suggest that miners were unaware of the dangers and unpleasantness of their job--ignoring the perhaps more obvious (and less patronising) reasons for the collective action of the miners. As Geoff Ingarfield, a critic of Freedom's editorial line, recognised, the strikers were resisting the government's and employers' power to decide and control the rate of exploitation, and to discipline the workforce (and local community) through poverty and redundancy (Ingarfield, 1984: 5). Further, the strike's failure did not mean that no one worked in 'unhealthy, dangerous pits', but on the contrary, that coal production was dispersed to such places as Eastern Europe or China, where there are, as Slavoj Zizek notes 'no strikes, little safety, tied labour and miserable wages' (Zizek, 2000: 40). The individualist, decontextualised view of agency led to acquiescence to dominant power relations.

Class struggle anarchisms and the miners' strike

Class struggle anarchists were--and remain--critical of union hierarchy and Scargill's ideological commitment to authoritarian forms of government. However, they recognised, contra both the individualists and Bookchin, that radical acts are not formally democratic (Short, 1984: 5), and that strikers were directly engaged in contesting hierarchical power, regardless of Scargill's personal views or the bureaucratic nature of trade unions (Ingarfield, 1984: 5).This was a view underlined by a Direct Action Movement (DAM) member from Hull, who lambasted Freedom for living in an 'ivory tower', and failing to 'affirm basic anarchist principles: solidarity, class struggle and the battle against the state' (Hull DAM/IWA, 1984: 7).

By contrast, the social anarchists' publications were much more fully committed to the strikers. During the conflict, more than half of the pages of several issues of Direct Action, the newspaper of the anarcho-syndicalist DAM, covered the strike (for instance, Direct Action, no. 19, October 1984; Direct Action, no. 22, February 1985; and Direct Action, no. 23, March 1985). While anarchists had disagreements with Scargill's politics (Meltzer, 1996: 310; DAM, 1984C: 4), they recognised that miners and their supporters were largely in control of the strike, which was a conflict about reasserting some power over their lives.

   The strike was not the work of NUM Generals, but was
   built by rank and file miners and has been sustained by
   ordinary miners and their families up and down the
   country ... This isn't Arthur Scargill's war. This is a fight
   by the miners and their families to protect their livelihood
   and communities. (DAM, 1984b: 1)

DAM was involved in raising funds and providing resources for miners' support groups (DAM, 1984e, 2; Andrew, 1985: 7), joining the picket lines and organising a congress and other events aimed at encouraging wider industrial action in support of the miners (DAM, 1985: I; Rochdale DAM, 1985: 4).

   Class War, which is the eponymous newspaper of a non-syndicalist
   class struggle anarchist grouping, was also
   uncompromising in its active support for workers in
   struggle, even if it, too, had criticisms of formal union
   structures and its leadership (Class War, 1984eb: 3-5). It
   promoted a range of activities, including the direct action
   methods of the hit squads that targeted the police, the
   NCB and scabs. These autonomously structured groups
   were beyond the traditional control of the trade union
   (although their activities were carried out by trade
   unionists) (Class War, 1984eb: I, 3). A further tactic
   advanced by Class War was 'open[ing] up a second front
   in the cities to back the miners' (Class War, 1984ec: 3),
   stretching the sites of resistance from coalfields to the
   general control of social and community life, and thereby
   invoking a wider view of the agent for (potential) change.
   For Class War, the strikers were not innocent objects of
   pity, as Freedom and Green Anarchist portrayed them, but
   active subjects of resistance who succeeded in wounding
   the agents of the state. (19) As such, the alliances,
   organisational forms and innovative tactics used by the
   strikers and their wider communities provided examples
   that anarchists considered to be inspirational and
   consistent with their principles (Class War, 1984ec: 3).

Among the tiny section of those miners who self-identified as class struggle anarchists was Dave Douglass, who was a member of DAM at the time of the strike, and later become involved with Class War (Class War, 1997). Douglass was also one of the Doncaster miners who were involved in the hit squads so detested by MacGregor. (20) Douglass has been critical of some revolutionary socialists, including a number of class struggle libertarians, (21) for mistaking the leadership of a union for the way workers (especially strikers) manipulate and use the organisation in order to meet their collective needs (Douglass, 1991: 11), and for the defeatism implicit in their accounts of what both unions and miners can achieve (Douglass, 1999: 81; Douglass, 1992: 2). Instead, Douglass stresses the links between anarchism and workers' struggles, and promotes workplace concerns to the wider anarchist milieu. At the time of the strike, he was one of the main movers in organising 'the biggest industrial gathering initiated by direct actionists since the industrial rank and file movement of the early 1960S', which met to 'improve the effectiveness of the miners' strike' (Rochdale DAM, 1984: 4).

Its physical as well as financial support for the strikers resulted in class struggle anarchism receiving a warm reception in coalfield communities: this, in turn, gave anarchists an enormous lift in confidence. In a slightly rose-tinted account, Class War reported:

   The miners' strike started in 1984 and the paper and its
   followers reacted swiftly ... and called for direct physical
   support for the miners. Class War alone supported the direct
   action of the strikers. Readership soared not least in mining
   areas ... miners queued 20 or more for the paper at the
   big Mansfield demonstration in 1984. Class War was now
   a paper with readers and supporters well beyond the
   wildest expectations of its first producers. (Class War, 1991:
   3-4)

Although Class War was one of few groups to unhesitatingly support direct action by the miners, and even with readership 'soaring' in a few mining areas, it was still barely noticeable. Nonetheless, the strike increased Class War's self-belief, as its members believed that it confirmed the pertinence of a number of key features of anarchism that differentiated it from individualism and orthodox Marxism.

For individualists, the strike and its eventual failure spelt the end of social anarchism (Stuart, 1985: 6-7), and further retreat from agitational politics. For instance, the direct action assaults in Bedford, November 1984 (PNR, 1985: 5; PNR, 1985e: 7) and Edinburgh, December 1984 (Class War, 1985eb: 7), which had involved targeting institutions relevant to the miners' struggle, were criticised by John L. Broom in Freedom. He wrote, 'The idiots who went on the rampage in Edinburgh on December 20th ... probably did more damage to the cause of anarchism in that one day than all its enemies managed to accomplish in a year' (Broom, 1985: 3). Freedom's editors agreed--'we are beginning to feel you are right'--and as a result, Freedom began to disassociate itself from such disruptive activities, and thus its prominence within the anarchist movement declined, to the advantage of the more consistent class struggle groupings. The Edinburgh protest, in contrast with Freedom's assessment of it, was criticised by Class War not for aggression, but for being too pacific: 'a pantomime' with 'the dismal spectacle of a "die in"'. Class War, instead, sought more aggressive tactics in the style of the miners at Orgreave (Class War, 1985eb: 7).

The additional confidence given to class struggle anarchism was a result of the new types of alliance and forms of struggle that were consistent with libertarianism, but usually rejected by Leninism. Leninism, as Todd May explains, takes a largely strategic and positivist approach to understanding the class struggle, in which the correct political leadership could objectively identify the revolutionary agents and therefore the appropriate places to seek alliances (May, 1994: 20-1).

Hence, the Leninist tradition regards the formal trade unions and organised labour as constituting the prime site for solidarity. Thus Scargill's initial strategy was to seek support primarily from within the Trades Union Congress. (22) This was a stratagem that Callinicos and Simons still affirmed in their analysis of the strike (Callinicos & Simons, 1986: 253).

By contrast, consistent anarchisms recognise that repressive practices exist far more widely than in the workplace, and thus that the potential agent for liberation is not confined solely to the point of production, but is more fluid, including partners, families and the wider communities. (23) These diverse and fluid revolutionary subjects change in reaction to capital's efforts to neutralise opposition and assert its control, consistent with the view of agency implicit in the anti-hierarchical principles of class struggle anarchism and heterodox Marxism.

Legacy

Those who were active in the strike found new areas for self-expression, including editing strike bulletins, developing strategies, engaging in public speaking or performing at various benefits or social clubs (Samuel, 1986: 29). (24) Strikers who did not formally participate found new outlets for their energies, such as gardening and fishing: as Samuel notes, 'the pleasure principle did not disappear even in the harshest of winter' (ibid: 12).The strike, despite its numerous extreme hardships, (25) provided a glimpse of wider anti-hierarchical and liberatory social moments (ibid: 32-3). It is here that some correspondence between some forms of lifestyle and social anarchism can be found.

The creation of values and forms of practice that reject the standards of capitalism and other forms of control can create a recognisable lifestyle which is clearly antagonistic to dominant power structures. As Douglass explains, for many of the strikers, their experiences of resistance in the struggle against management, and the enjoyment of life away from the dictates of work, made it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for them to return to the pit. Partly in jest, Douglass talks of them taking on the 'alternative lifestyle' of the new-age travellers (Douglass, 1999: 55)--a form of nomadism that would be rejected by Bookchin as individualist.

Nonetheless, their resistance to the capitalist imperative to perform paid employment, and their example of alternative forms of living distinct from those of the dominant ideology, made the new-age travellers targets for severe oppression (Douglass, 1992: II). The savage police attack on the 'hippie convoy' in 1985, which culminated in the 'Battle of the Beanfield', drew analogies with the previous assaults on striking miners (Green Anarchist, 1985: I).

Transport became an increasingly resonant arena for struggle in the 1980S and 1990s. The control and function of roads in the capitalist economy became a site of conflict. Government saw the roads as being primarily a means to transport commodities, especially coal to the power stations, thereby bypassing the unionised rail network.

The State's ability to control the movement of dissent along the same highways was one of the key characteristics of the strike. A special issue of The Miner highlighted the liberty of protestors to travel as one of the fundamental rights that the 'Freedom March to Nottingham' was to secure. (26)

The growth of the anti-road struggles continued to contest this prioritisation of commodity transportation over public space. As the critical Marxist magazine Aufheben explains, rather than being tangential to class conflict, the anti-road campaigners of the 1990s were another facet of class struggle. Anti-road protestors, through their 'creation of autonomy, disobedience and resistance', were interfering with the dictates of capital and the State (Aufheben, 1998: 107). Such actions shifted the location and identity of the class conflict from the immediate point of production and the industrial proletariat to other locations and other subject identities.

Further, the categories of anarchist that Bookchin decried for 'lifestylism' began to recognise the importance of the struggle against capital. The neo-situationists and those influenced by post-modernism and critiques of technology (Bookchin, 1995: 19), who appeared in groups such as Reclaim the Streets (RTS) and the British sections of the radical ecology movement Earth First! (EF!), were prominent in developing links with workers in struggle. (27)

These activists, as Seumas Milne notes, could identify with the miners' resistance from a decade (and more) earlier (Milne, 2004: 21). They did so without trying to position one form of struggle as having greater importance than another, or as being more central to a strategy of liberation. This autonomous form of network-building was adopted in relation to the striking Liverpool dockers and London Underground employees, who rather than leave it to the TUC bureaucracy, built up alliances with RTS and EF! as well as with autonomist and libertarian Marxists.

In these movements, anarchists were no longer peripheral as they had been at the height of the Leninist ascendancy; rather, they were now a distinctive part of anti-capitalist networks. One example was the March for Social Justice in April 1997, in which 20,000 people participated, which was based on groupings autonomously creating networks of support, with no group or form of oppression taking priority (Do or Die, 2003: 23).

This form of organisation has been more largely evidenced in the large-scale alternative globalisation protests in which anarchist groups have been prominent. These alliances include groups that, prior to the miners' strike, would have been associated with pacific-liberal lifestyle politics, such as environmentalism, anti-nuclear and counter-cultural civil rights.

However, the provocative events in the City of London on 18 June 1999 (known as J18) and in the Mayday protests in London 2000-3, have seen members of such groups assault the structures of corporate finance as well as the State, challenging the dictates of the law of value in ways that were anathema to Freedom by the end of miners' strike.

Conclusion

Since the miners' strike, liberal anarchism has declined, while class struggle anarchism with a commitment to anti-capitalism has, concomitantly, risen. This can be seen not only in the provocative targets of the anarchist sections of the alternative globalisation movements, but also in the extent to which Freedom has altered both in terms of its editorial board and its content. The newspaper is now more consistent with class struggle (or social) anarchism--despite the continued involvement of Rooum and his Wildcat cartoon. (28) The reengagement of anarchism with industrial struggles has had a marked influence on the interests and forms of political activity of British anarchist groups. Libertarians gained greater confidence to search out routes of solidarity. The eventual defeat of the miners also put in place a reconsideration of agency and organisation within libertarian movements, which has had a noticeable impact on the tactics and structures employed and endorsed by consistent libertarians. Although liberal anarchism has largely declined, this is partly due to the recognition by those formerly categorised as such that contesting capitalist social relations is a dominant factor in their forms of resistance. Similarly, class struggle libertarians have become aware of the class nature of many of the forms of action formerly dismissed as 'liberal'.

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Notes

(1.) The British Library (Kings Cross), the British Newspaper Library (Colindale), and the National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh).

(2.) I would like to acknowledge and thank Trevor Bark, Ian Bone, Lesley Stevenson, Mark Ward and Rowan Wilson for their assistance in the writing of this paper, either in providing data, in correcting some of my grammatical solecisms, or in indicating areas for greater structural cohesion.

(3.) For an ethical critique of this form of liberal contract-making, see G. A. Cohen (2002).

(4.) See, for instance, Tucker's arguments on the beneficence of free markets in 'Capital profits and interest'. For a wider discussion, see Brooks (1996: 76, 79-82).

(5.) Brooks describes Tucker's newspaper Liberty as 'probably the most significant individualist anarchist journal in the world' (Brooks, 1996: 75).

(6.) Bookchin, for instance, identifies direct democratic decision-making with social anarchism, while he equates consensus and/or the rejection of organisational structures with egoism (Bookchin, 1995: 17, 60). However, many tactics consistent with social anarchism do not utilise such formalised organisation. Bob Black (1997) has written a lengthy, and occasionally contradictory, polemical study that draws out some of the inconsistencies in Bookchin's approach. See also Brown (2004).

(7.) See the International Workers Association, online at <http://www.iwa-ait.org/>

(8.) For the sake of convenience, I will be including autonomous Marxism and libertarian communism under the title 'anarchist'. See, too, Cleaver (1994). In an act of self-promotion--and for a fuller discussion of the main characteristics of class struggle anarchism, see Franks (2005).

(9.) The centrality of Marxist analysis to anarchism has also been recognised by others including Sefin Sheehan (2003: 57-72) and Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer (1984).

(10.) For examples of the importance of prefiguration, the means reflecting the ends, see the quote by Guillaume in Kenafick (1984: 7); Avrich (1987: 7-8, 29); and Organise! (1992) no. 26, April-June, p. 20.

(11.) Some, like Black Flag, cast doubts on Freedom's claim, pointing to the hiatus in production of more than a decade, from 1933-44, and the change in editorial policy away from anarchist communism (Black Flag supplement no. 3, [undated 1986R] p. 2).

(12.) Note, too, that Freedom's definition of anarchism (January 1983: I) makes no explicit reference to opposition to capitalism or advocacy of class struggle. This is in contrast to anarcho-syndicalists such as Christie and Meltzer (1984: 21) and DAM (1984a: 9).

(13.) 'The Miners' Strike Twenty Years On: Challenges and Changes' conference, Northumbria University, 11-13 July 2004.

(14.) The Miner, 7 February 1985, p. 4.

(15.) 'Pit War', The Sun, I3 March 1984, p. I.

(16.) See, for instance, the profile of Paul Shane, who played Ted Bovis in a popular TV 'comedy' Hi-de-Hi!, who was quoted as saying he wanted a strike ballot, The Sun, 1 April 1984, p. 8.

(17.) Accusations of insufficient support for the miners appear to be employed as a way of dismissing opponents, since the same author accuses Class War (a rival class-struggle grouping) of the same thing. The group's publication, Class War, although lax at the start of the strike, perhaps due to a long run-in time before publication, later dedicated around half of each issue to the miners' struggle, so this allegation against them seems ill-judged.

(18.) No relation to the British libertarian Marxists who also use this name.

(19.) See Class War, 'Victory to the Hit Squads' edition, undated, p. 4:

Have you ever noticed how in Leftie papers they only ever print pictures of miners being beaten up by the police. They never use pictures which would cheer us up of the police being given a good kicking ... They always portray us as passive victims of police violence ... Just occasionally they will say that people fought back against the coppers--but this is only when they've been attacked first and had to use self-defence. By contrast, the editors of Freedom saw little to celebrate in the actions of the miners. They rejected a query asking for images of successful resistance: 'Images of us winning? Do you want us to bury our heads in the sand?' The editors, Letters Page (1985) Freedom, vol. 45, no. 5, p. 3, May.

(20.) The Miners" Strike (2004) BBC2 television programme, 27 January.

(21.) For instance, the Anarchist Communist Federation, and especially the British group Wildcat: see Wildcat, 1992.

(22.) See, for instance, The Miner, October 1983, p. 7; see, too, the NUM (1984) 'fact sheet'. In the last two decades, the NUM had given and received support from other unions during industrial disputes (Taylor, 1984:273, 282, 310).

(23.) For a wider discussion of this from an autonomist Marxist perspective, see Bowring, 2004; Cleaver, 1979; Hardt & Negri, 2001; Witheford, 1994.

(24.) The Wintertons suggest that the number of independently-produced strike bulletins was surprisingly small, and this might have had an adverse effect on maintaining solidarity (Winterton & Winterton, 1989: 142).

(25.) See, for instance, Coulter, Miller & Walker (1984) for a detailed account of state oppression, and Sutcliffe & Hill (1985) for information on the assault on the economic welfare of miners and their families.

(26.) The Miner, special issue (1984) 16 April, p. 2.

(27.) See, for instance, the RTS report on the link-up with the Underground workers and the Liverpool dock strike, online at <www.rts.gn.apc.org/prop16.htm>, accessed 2 July 2004.

(28.) A discussion about Freedom, which included some of its current editors, on the Urban 75 online bulletin board, largely confirms this turn; see 'The future of Freedom, fortnightly anarchist newspaper' at <http:// www.urban75.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=80485>, accessed July 4, 2004.