Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 01:01:23 +0000 (GMT)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Scott=20Hamilton?= <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Perplexing Scott


 
Hi Nate,

I would be delighted if those who held to Negri's
views on imperialism joined in the sort of activities
I described. I would argue with these people, over a
beer after a demo, or on the e list, that they were in
fact contradicting Negri's views by taking part in
some of the activities, but I would not in any way
seek to shut them out of the activities. In the same
way, I argue with the Maoists in the AIC - I say that
their support for the AIC as a United Front within the
Popular front which is/was the broad anti-war movement
contradicts their formal political position - without
seeking to banish them to the wilderness.

I don't see any barrier to anarchists being involved
in anti-imperialism. The myth on this list that says
that anti-imperialism equals Leninism is simply
untrue. The example of Rosa Luxembourg shows that one
does not even have to support national liberation
struggles to be anti-imperialist. I've noticed that a
number of anarchist groups and publications - the
North East Federation of Anarchist Communists and the
journal Onward, for instances - are talking now about
anti-imperialism and/or national liberation struggles.
I have sold anarchist pamphlets and distributed the
(free) NZ anarchist paper thr-AT-ll inside the AIC.
(Before reading this stuff, many of the members
thought that anarchism was either a spiky hairstyle or
an extreme form of neoliberalism.)

Your point about religiously-motivated protesters is a
good one. I have polemicised within the AIC and also
its sister group in Christchurch against what I saw as
a sectarian attitude to these protesters. Here's a
piece I wrote on the subject. It's on the AIC website
in the leaflets section under the title 'AIR #1':

PACIFISM AND ANTI-IMPERIALISM

In some parts of the anti-war movement in Aotearoa a
division has appeared between people who regard
themselves as ‘pacifists’ and others who see their
politics as ‘anti-imperialist’ and ‘anti-capitalist’.
Pacifist activists sometimes think that their beliefs
stop them from embracing the confrontational tactics
and revolutionary viewpoints that anti-imperialists
favour.

The anti-imperialists, for their part, often take the
pacifists at their word. One example of the division
was seen recently in Christchurch when some pacifist
members of the broad anti-war grouping Peace Action
Network (PAN) argued that anti-imperialist chanting
made marchers too ‘confrontational’ for them to
tolerate. In Auckland, similar objections have been
made to the Anti-War Coalition’s slogan ‘Stop the US
War’. 

If we look at the rich history of anti-war activism in
Aotearoa, however, we can see that pacifism has often
gone hand in hand with anti-imperialism and with
direct, confrontational action. A good example of this
pacifist anti-imperialism can be found in the
opposition to that most costly and preventable of all
conflicts, the Second World War.

Early in 1940, when the Labour government of Michael
Joseph Savage was considering introducing conscription
to the army, pacifists from organisations like the
Methodist Church and the Quakers joined with left-wing
trade unionists, Communists and anarchists to form the
Peace and Anti-Conscription Council (PACC). The PACC
enjoyed considerable early success, holding large
public meetings against conscription in Christchurch,
Wellington and Auckland, but was damaged when both the
Labour Party and the corrupt leaders of the Federation
of Labour declared it a ‘subversive organisation’ that
ought to be forcibly suppressed.

By the end of 1940, many anti-war activists were being
arrested and imprisoned by the Labour government. A
year behind the barbed wire of a hastily constructed
‘detention camp’ could be the punishment for ‘crimes’
like putting up posters or speaking in public against
the war. Many imprisoned pacifists showed a defiant,
confrontational attitude that infuriated camp guards
and government Ministers. Hunger strikes, refusal of
labour duties and secret political meetings were
rewarded with solitary confinement, bread and water,
and extended terms of detention. Some pacifists pushed
confrontation to the limit: in 1944, for instance, a
trio of Christian anti-war activists staged a bold
escape from a camp in the central North Island. Chris
Palmer, Merv Browne and Dave Silvester eluded police
and army searchers for weeks, managing to travel to
Wellington and carry on their anti-war agitation
there. In a leaflet that began ‘We Have Escaped From
Detention’, the trio made it clear that their struggle
was directed against not only war but also capitalism
itself. Consider the following passage from the
leaflet:

The stand we have taken…is an emphatic protest against
a system which breeds war, a system that demands as
the price of its existence that millions of young
lives must be destroyed by the beastliness of war,
instead of being committed to develop to the full in
some peaceful, creative work.

Palmer, Browne and Silvester were only three of the
hundreds of pacifists who did time for opposing
imperialism during the Second World War. One of those
jailed, A.C. Barrington, emerged in time to stand as
one of four anti-war candidates in the 1943 general
election. Barrington chose to stand for parliament
because an election campaign was virtually the only
legal avenue for anti-war propaganda in 1943. 

Despite the protection that his candidacy ought to
have provided, Barrington suffered some censorship:
when he tried to circulate a leaflet naming the key
points of his election platform, the authorities
insisted that one sentence was, election or no
election, unpublishably dangerous. Barrington was duly
forced to remove ‘Immediate Independence for India’
from his leaflet.

Of course, India was in 1943 still a British colony
struggling for the statehood that finally came in
1948. Clearly Barrington’s call for immediate
independence was a classic piece of anti-imperialism,
comparable in its spirit and in its implications to
current-day slogans like ‘Hands Off Afghanistan’ and
‘Independence for Palestine’. Barrington’s
anti-imperialist position offended the warmongering
Labour government in 1943 in the same way as
opposition to imperialism in the Middle East offends
Helen Clark’s warmongering Labour-Alliance government
today. Anti-imperialist pacifists like Barrington,
Browne, Palmer and Silvester provide an inspiring
example to all anti-war activists today.

Cheers
Scott



===="Revolution is not like cricket, not even one day cricket"

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Everything you'll ever need on one web page
from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts
http://uk.my.yahoo.com


     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---