Class War: Difference between revisions

This article is about the organisation and newspaper Class War. See

Class War is a

The paper also gained further notoriety for it's regular and long running column "Hospitalised Copper", which would feature pictures of injured members of the police force, usually in riot situations. Class War explained that their intent here was to show that people could 'fight back' against the 'state' rather than be 'passive victims'.

Ramsgate Critical Mass when afiliated to Thanet Class War ran the headline 'Come and party at the Blakelocks Head (6 Broad St. Ramsgate) and openly sold tickets to raise money for Class War prisoners.

Bash the Rich Revels

Inspired by the

A third Bash The Rich event, scheduled to march through

The Class War Federation

A national conference was in held Manchester in 1986 and proposed that groups and individuals who produced and supported the paper should form "Class War" groups as part of a National Federation with common 'aims and principles'. This alliance was soon infiltated bt the Thatcher secret service and those lobbying for a National Police Force. Class War became identified as the enemy of the state and the profile of Anarchist grew in political circles as the opressive Thatcher Regan axis strangled world trade.

From here the Class War Federation developed, gaining particular prominence in the anti-

Frustrated at what he saw as "too much dead wood" in the organisation, Scargill left Class War in 1993, to be followed by founder Ian Bone.

Class War was then edited by

By 1996, with membership falling, Class War members from Bristol and Leeds launched a "review process" to examine the direction the Federation should now take. What had been begun as a rejection of the "stuntism" of Ian Bone or the high media profile of Secretary Scargill was now a rejection of Class War's perceived "violent" image which was seen by the 'Fluffy' as off-putting to women and immigrants.

Although claiming at the start of the process they believed the Federation's politics to be "sound", by summer 1996,

Class War voted to produce a special issue of the paper, the aim being to assess its history, role and direction, with a view to disbanding the organisation. This would be followed by a conference in London in 1997 to "reforge the revolutionary movement". Although there was clear concern at this (and some open opposition) from members in London, East Kent and Doncaster, real differences did not emerge until early in 1997 when a meeting to plan issue 73 was attended by only one Class War member from outside London. When it was discovered a "secret" meeting was being convened in February by certain activists, and that a similar meeting had already been held in Bristol, that the bulk of the organisation was unaware of, a split became inevitable.

This can only reflect the lack of leadership from a fragmentory group intent upon social change but reluctant to follow dogmatic traditions, especially those imposed by Lenininst moderators, seeking contol of any angry youth liberated by Bone and Skargill.

In

With editorship of Class War passing to London, London CW attempted to return the orgaisation more to its direct action "up and at them" roots (Bash the rich).

Arguments about the failings of those who had left CW to honour commitments to supply London Class War with computers and mailing lists caused further distraction. By 1999 those who had left Class War had held a conference (May Day in Bradford in 1998) and were producing a theoretical magazine, Smash Hits. Both sank without trace. Class War in London continued to produce a fiery tabloid, and when rioting broke out in the city of London on June 18th 1999, Class War members were again to the fore.

In

His website [1] develops this work onto the international stage. Douglass was also the author of Class War's second book All Power to the Imagination! (Class War, 1999) This stressed the need for the working class to struggle to improve its material conditions and strongly rejected "purist" Anarchist criticisms of trades unions, per se.

In the early 21st century Class War choose to stress the need to support not only Britain's political prisoners but prisoners in general. The case of Sheffield Anarchist Mark Barnsley, jailed for 12 years for defending himself from attack by drunken students, emphasised this. Class War used the growing attention given to May Day protests in the UK to organise their own actions against companies involved in exploiting prison labour. The supermarket chain Wilkinsons being a preferred target.

By 2003, Class War had one of the more popular anarchist