Yesterday, there was the AGM – the Annual General Meeting at LARC, the London Action Resource Centre. Usually, it would not concern me, because the place is too far away to be of any practical relevance to organise here and now; for that, we have our run down, broken ACE, the Autonomous Centre of Edinburgh.
But yesterday, there were two friends of mine expelled from this political space, and this pisses me off, because both are honest and trustworthy in personal and political affairs, and in my opinion, this expulsion raises serious questions and doubts about the politics of that space.
This is so horrible, and disappointing, and disillusioning. About a month ago, I was at the ESF, and particularly the Beyond ESF and it was such good fun, and I really felt like “wow”, I want the whole world to be like the “Beyond ESF”, where people take care of each other and help each other out, resist together against repression, have fun and show solidarity and appreciation towards each other.
Now, I feel so fucking bad and empty about my politics, for fucksake, don’t these guys and girls not notice that they play the game of the SWP? That they divide our movement amongst their accusation lines instead of laugh and just shrug off the differences and really start listening to each other?
Why can’t we just bash the fucking socialist party types instead of our own friends?
Because it is GR, G8 Alternatives, the SSP politicians, the SWP, StW, and all these front groups who are most dangerous, they actually do the job of intimidation, repression and harassment far better than the police, particularly professional in how to make protests the least effective, unnoticeable to the public and most boring, but also in deceiving the social movements.
Only where they fail the police in Britain show their true face, otherwise, they can hide behind their mask of friendliness.
Well, the reasons for the exclusion seem to be more complex, and there has to be a distinction between underlying fears & issues; compared to the accusations brought forward, which are mostly not connected, it seems.
Anyway, I am happy and proud to say, that so far any person expelled from ACE, has been done so in connection with physical attacks and threats against somebody.
In London, the situation seems to be very different, and the accusations focussed more around political differences, anyway, their centre looks less like a rubbish dump and actually is a good resource centre compared to our freezing hellhole.