Anarchists and the Prison Struggle:
Revolutionary Solidarity Not Empty
Rhetoric and Liberalism
by Mark
Barnsley
A while
ago I was irritated to see a well-known Anarchist magazine use prisoner support
work as an example of "single-issue" politics. The comment may have
been merely thoughtless, rather than anything else, but the fact that it
appears to have gone unnoticed, and certainly unchallenged, reflects the
poverty of current Anarchist thought in relation to the prison struggle, and
the marginalization of what was once very much a central issue for
revolutionaries in general, and for Anarchists in particular. While some Anarchists
may regard the prison struggle as just another single-issue, for increasing
numbers of working-class people, prison is a central part of their lives.
The
purpose of the British judicial and penal system is locking up working-class
people, something which it does exceptionally well. Almost no middle-class
people at all go to prison, and on the extremely rare occasions that they do,
they are given shorter sentences and treated markedly differently to
working-class people. The middle-class are happy to call for longer prison sentences
and the worsening of prison conditions in the safe knowledge that the
likelihood of them, or any of their friends and family, ever going to jail is,
just about nil (look at Billy Straw.) Because of their (real) class position
the people who dominate all political movements in this country (the
middle-class) see prison struggle as a marginal issue, and consequently the
movements they infest are in turn marginalized from it. This is currently as
true of the British Anarchist movement as of the left in general, and in
practice (painful to hear as it might be) the Anarchist movement are worse than
some in this respect.
Despite
what they may pretend, middle-class pseudo-revolutionaries still maintain most
of the anti-working-class prejudices held by their mummys and daddys. These
prejudices manifest themselves in all sorts of ways, and this includes their
attitudes to prisoners. It is no coincidence that the British left and
Anarchist movement has generally been far more comfortable in publicizing the
cases of prisoners who are incarcerated far enough away for them to be unlikely
to turn up on the doorstep. They may claim otherwise, but most middle-class
Anarchists seem to have innate prejudices when it comes to accepting that so
many miscarriages of justice take place, in this country, and few sincerely
believe that the State fits people up, certainly not as a direct result of
their political activism - that only happens in other countries.
At the
moment, there may be genuinely few activists in this country that the State
regards as a real threat (or at least a serious pain in the arse), something
which is a rather sad reflection on the state of revolutionary politics.
Believe me, if and when Anarchists become worthy opponents of the State they
will find it more than willing to play its part. Many working-class people have
found this out to their cost in the past, and whereas because of their class stature
the middle-class pseudo-revolutionaries are insulated from all this, working-class
people are increasingly feeling the repressive iron heel of the State on their
faces. Imprisonment is becoming a more and more central part of working-class
people's lives, few of us are without brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers,
sons, daughters, friends or lovers, who have not been locked up, and often for
fuck all. Sentences are getting longer, and it is getting easier and easier
for the Police and Crown Prosecution Service to fit people up.
The past
few years have seen a wave of increasing repression in Britain's prisons, but
despite many aspects of political struggle being at something of a nadir in
this country, the struggle against oppression in British prisons continues to
endure. Prisoners deserve support in this struggle. No isolated group of
individuals can win a fight against a vastly stronger enemy, and in here we are
as isolated as could be.
When it
comes to prisoner support work too many Anarchists are believing too much of
our own propaganda, which on this issue is at best wishful thinking, and at
worst downright lies. The truth hurts, but the fact is that, among Anarchists
in this country today, solidarity is a pretty rare commodity. I was part of the
Anarchist movement for 20 years before being fitted-up by the State, yet for the
first 4 years of my imprisonment I received little more than limited support
from a few individual comrades.
Anarchists
have long been big at encouraging active resistance in British prisons, yet
they are rarely able or willing to provide the solidarity and financial aid
required by prisoners who are brutalized and isolated for fighting back in
prison. This mirrors the attitude of the so-called 'revolutionary' left in
general, big on slogans calling for militancy and revolution, but left shocked
and wanting by even relatively minor acts of resistance. Like middle-class Anarchists
they view any individuals with the bottle to back up words with action as
dangerous lunatics. It is little wonder that many prisoners (like the working
class in general) regard politicos with suspicion, or even outright contempt.
While we
are told in some quarters that there have never been more Anarchists in this
country, the fact is that the organizations and structures that have
traditionally made up the movement are in tatters, and the whole movement
seems in ideological disarray, with many comrades so ashamed of the state of
things that they have had enough. Even the ABC, in which many Anarchists take
a part-time interest, has been reduced to a small number of tiny groups and
individuals, with little cohesion or direction, and seemingly without the will
to address their obvious organizational problems.
The
current disarray in the prisoners solidarity movement could not have come at a
worse time for those of us behind bars, for we are at a critical point in terms
of the British prison struggle. Battles are now taking place which will decide
the conditions of prisoners for many years to come. Inside, State forces are
intent on stripping away the concessions to humanity they were forced to make
in the 80's, and crush prisoner resistance once and for all, while outside the
Labour Government is escalating its attacks on working-class people through
the erosion of civil liberties and the building of an increasingly undisguised
Police State, locking up more of us than ever.
The
struggle behind bars is an intrinsic part of the wider revolutionary struggle,
and prisoners need organizations which are capable of delivering concrete
support and revolutionary solidarity, not empty rhetoric. If we are serious as
revolutionaries we need to build an effective prisoner solidarity movement
which will coherently oppose the increasing State repression, and which is capable
of effectively aiding prisoner resistance and even going on the offensive in
support of it. In the words of Anarchist prisoner Ojore N Lutalo, "Any
movement that does not support its political internees is a sham
movement."
Full Sutton Prison, February 1999