Class War

Template:Template other Class War was a British anarchist political organisation and newspaper established by Ian Bone in 1983. It first gained attention due to its invocations of violence against the ruling class, and rose to prominence within the British left during the 1984–1985 miners' strike and the 1990 poll tax riots. The organisation went into decline during the 1990s and ultimately dissolved in 1997, although a small splinter group continued to publish its newspaper in London until the mid-2000s. An incarnation of Class War was later registered as a political party to contest the 2015 United Kingdom general election.

Establishment

The first government of Margaret Thatcher oversaw a period of rising unemployment, economic recession and widespread rioting in the United Kingdom.Template:Sfnm After a military victory in the Falklands War, Thatcher was re-elected in 1983, causing a rise in pessimism in the British left and leading to a revival in the British anarchist movement.Template:Sfn Around this time, the anarchist Ian Bone was publishing the community newspaper The Alarm, which he used to expose political corruption in Swansea's local government.Template:Sfnm In 1983, he moved to London and joined a local autonomist group, to whom he proposed the establishment of an anarchist tabloid newspaper aimed at gaining a wider readership.Template:Sfn

They began publishing the Class War newspaper, which immediately attracted attention for its celebration of workers assaulting police officers.Template:Sfn Class War positioned itself as the antithesis to Thatcherism and the prevailing social order of the 1980s, glorifying workers' solidarity, praising communism and encouraging violence against the rich. This caused a new Red Scare to take hold in the British press, which began writing of an "anarchist menace" as a threat to the British establishment.Template:Sfn

Class War broke from anarchism's previous association with lifestylism and liberalism, which had typified the years of the anti-nuclear movement in the United Kingdom.Template:Sfn Class War mocked the anarchist pacifism and middle class character of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).Template:Sfn According to Albert Meltzer, the newspaper came as a culture shock for the older generation of anarchists, who initially believed it to be a parody of anarchism; correspondents of Freedom denounced the paper's advocacy of violence as "nihilist" and "Marxist".Template:Sfn

Actions

Stop the City

In September 1983, Class War joined the Stop the City protests, carrying out small-scale acts of sabotage in the City of London and organising publicity stunts designed to frighten the ruling class.Template:Sfn

Miners' strike

The 1984–1985 miners' strike accelerated the growth of the British anarchist movement, with Class War reasserting the centrality of class conflict in anarchism.Template:Sfn Class War saw the miners' strike as a potentially revolutionary force, with the capacity to bring down Thatcher's government.Template:Sfn David Douglass, a representative of the National Union of Mineworkers, concurred with their analysis and joined Class War.Template:Sfn

Class War subsequently broke out of its narrow anarcho-punk subculture, forming ties with miners in Doncaster, and publicly supporting strike actions in their newspaper and with financial aid.Template:Sfn The miners returned the solidarity, buying the Class War newspaper in large numbers.Template:Sfn At its apex, Class War circulated between 15,000 and 20,000 copies.Template:Sfn The miners' strike was ultimately defeated, causing a debate within the anarchist movement about the effifacy of trade unionism.Template:Sfn

Bash the Rich

In 1985, Class War organised a series of political demonstrations under the slogan "Bash the Rich".Template:Sfnm They marched through the rich neighbourhoods of Kensington in May and Hampstead in September,Template:Sfnm proclaiming themselves the "future executioners" of the local wealthy residents.Template:Sfn In Hampstead, they were confronted by a large police presence and quickly forced to disperse.Template:Sfnm The demonstrations were criticised as "politically inept" by the wider anarchist movement, and Bone himself admitted that the marches had been "disastrous" for Class War.Template:Sfn

Reorganisation

The conflicts of the mid-1980s precipitated a reorganisation of the Class War collective. Between 1985 and 1986, they established a national political organisation: the Class War Federation (CWF).Template:Sfnm Although Class War had a significant number of supporters, the CWF itself remained relatively small, peaking with only 150 members.Template:Sfnm From 1987 to 1988, the CWF organised a punk rock concert tour called Rock Against the Rich, gaining the support of Joe Strummer.Template:Sfn At its Manchester conference in 1990, the CWF completed its transformation into a fully-formalised organisation with membership fees and a constitution.Template:Sfn

Poll tax riots

Due to Class War's emphasis on community organising and rebellion against the ruling class, it soon became associated with riots, which it promoted and participated in.Template:Sfn The British press held Class War responsible for the poll tax riots of 1990,Template:Sfn characterising them as "outside agitators".Template:Sfn Class War quickly exploited the publicity surrounding it; one member, Andy Murphy, received international attention after he publicly defended the rioters in a television interview.Template:Sfn Although critical of Class War, sections of the mainstream left admitted that their left-wing populism had attracted new supporters to radical politics.Template:Sfn

Decline and dissolution

This poll-tax riots marked the apex of Class War's political influence, after which it went into a period of decline.Template:Sfnm By the mid-1990s, the CWF had begun to collapse under the weight of its organisational challenges.Template:Sfn In 1992, John Major's government announced the closure of many of Britain's remaining coal mines. Class War attempted to support protests against the closures, but the demonstrations quickly dissipated.Template:Sfn Ian Bone and many of its other leading members left the organisation, while in 1993, Tim Scargill broke away and founded a small splinter group which he called the Class War Organisation (CWO).Template:Sfn

By this time, much of the British anarchist movement had come to believe that Class War's anti-establishment agitation was no longer productive. Previously-sympathetic anarchist groups now criticised Class War for its underdeveloped political programme, lack of long-term strategy, and self-imposed social marginalisation.Template:Sfn British anarchists found that Class War had failed to answer a series of organisational, practical and political questions, which they now aimed to resolve.Template:Sfn This gave way to new anarchist political organisations, most notably the Anarchist Federation (AF), which refined Class War's anarchism into a specific theory of anarchist communism and a tighter model of organisation.Template:Sfn Many members of the CWF began to push for its dissolution, hoping that it would lead to closer collaboration with the AF and the Reclaim the Streets movement.Template:Sfn

At its 1997 conference in Nottingham, the majority of members voted to dissolve the Class War Federation, while a minority of London-based activists remained determined to keep it alive.Template:Sfn In the newspaper's 73rd issue, the Leeds-based editorial collective announced the dissolution of Class War, stating that the small organisation had "outlived its usefulness".Template:Sfn The final issue ended with a declaration: "Class War is dead... Long live the class war!"Template:Sfnm Meanwhile, the London group announced that it had purged its less militant members and continued publishing new issues of the newspaper until the mid-2000s.Template:Sfn Despite the split, both factions of the former CWF continued cooperating with each other, working together in campaigns against the 1997 election, the monarchy and the Iraq War.Template:Sfn

Contemporary revival

File:Class War 20150620 Queen Victoria Street.jpg

Class War at the Anti Austerity demonstration, London, June 2015

In the 2010s, Ian Bone revived Class War as a political party. Their activities included a weekly protest about "poor doors" outside One Commercial Street in Aldgate, with Action East End and Freedom News. These protests ended in partial victory in November 2014. Group member Lisa McKenzie was found not guilty under joint enterprise for causing criminal damage.

In the 2015 United Kingdom general election, Class War stood seven candidates which received a total of 526 votes. The party was voluntarily deregistered with the electoral commission in July 2015.

External links

• Class War covers gallery at Libcom
• Class War archive at Libcom
• Class War archive at Sparrows Nest