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strategies for change 149 Symbolic action is often undertaken in the spirit of purposeless purpose. Activists take heart from Mahatma Gandhi: ‘[w]hatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it’. Others argue that symbolic action offers a particularly good way of playfully subverting cultural norms and of ridiculing accepted standards. The execution of a statue of Christ by Spanish anarchists organized in a firing squad in the early months of the civil war is one example of an action at once ‘absurd and glorious’. 55 The attempt made in the early 1990s by London anarchists to levitate the Houses of Parliament was another. Goaman and Dodson cite activities like the London underground party and the proposal for a ‘Blatant Fare-Dodging Day’ by the Fare Dodgers’ Liberation Organisation. 56 Other symbolic actions include ‘prayers to the product’ – Sunday worship organized outside stores like Diesel in chichi areas such as London’s Covent Garden – and ‘reverse theft’: stocking stores with useable items recovered from refuse. The emphasis on building solidarity and protesting without hope of success lends symbolic action an essentially innocent air. Yet symbolic action can be provocative and aggressive. A general strike can be a symbolic act. Vernon Richards defended terrorism as a symbolic act. The well-targeted assassination of a dictator or tyrant, he argued, might not secure tangible reform, but could still reverberate positively around the world, boost the morale of the oppressed and send a powerful message to the oppressors. 57 Less obviously provocative symbolic acts can have equally profound effects. As Rudolf de Jong notes, the slogan coined in the 1960s by the Provos (Dutch anarchists) ‘the police is our dearest friend’ unexpectedly raised the ire of the authorities and helped create an atmosphere of tension, distrust and civil unrest. 58 direct action Carter and Franks agree that the concept of direct action has been used so indiscriminately – particularly by the media – that it is now almost meaningless. The confusion surrounding the term is probably due to the range of different activities the action supports. Yet there are two defining characteristics of direct action. First, it’s about empowerment, ‘about breaking from dependency on others to run our lives’. It is action taken ‘not indirectly by “mediators” or “representatives” … but directly by those affected’. Second, it is ‘action intended to succeed, not just to gain publicity’. 59 As Franks
150 anarchism: a beginner’s guide argues, it describes an act intended to present ‘a partial or temporary solution to a larger set of practices’. David Wieck offers this definition: If a butcher weighs one’s meat with his thumb on the scale, one may complain about it and tell him he is a bandit who robs the poor, and if he persists and one does nothing else, this is mere talk; one may call the Department of Weights and Measures, and this is indirect action; or one may, talk failing, insist on weighing one’s own meat, bring along a scale to check the butcher’s weight, take one’s business somewhere else, help open a co-operative store, etc., and these are direct actions. 60 Direct action is often associated with illegality and sometimes criminality. Since the nineteenth century anarchists have been known to support acts of simple theft – not only in the shape of fare dodging, but in the guise of bank robbery and shoplifting – as a legitimate part of anarchist campaigning. To the distress of anarchists like Guérin, the Bonnot Gang (usually credited with having thought of the idea of the getaway car before Bonnie and Clyde) firmly linked French anarchism to banditry. In Australia, the outlaw Ned Kelly achieved a similar feat, now often celebrated as a progenitor of homegrown anarchism. Yet because direct action is designed to solve a problem and because anarchists have difficulty showing how mere criminality fits this bill, it usually has an overtly ‘political’ character, even if it is illegal. Whilst direct actions are intended to move beyond symbolism, they may have a symbolic element. To give an example: in the 1960s anarchist anti-Francoists used small bomb attacks in their campaigns. Their actions symbolized a desire to topple the regime, but were intended to have a direct effect on would-be holiday-makers, creating fear whilst avoiding harm, and on the tourist industry that helped legitimize Franco’s rule. Squatting is probably the bestknown and most widely practised form of direct action, and one that anarchists are keen to encourage. Squatting can be used to further experiments in community living and as a form of protest. In the first sense, it is a form of practical anarchy, associated both with the problem of homelessness and the creation of alternative forms of community – co-operatives or, more recently, co-housing projects, where groups of people living in private residences share kitchen, laundry, workshop and child care facilities. As a form of protest squatting has recently been used by eco-anarchists. One example
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contents Acknowledgements vii intro
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acknowledgements A number of people
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chapter two anarchist rejections of
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chapter three anarchy We have alway
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Page 184 and 185: index Page numbers in italic denote
Page 186 and 187: index 177 Farrow, Lynne 119 fascism
Page 188 and 189: index 179 and state 30, 45-6, 50, 5
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