Local Networking Initiatives

How do new people find their way into our movement and become empowered enough to organise actions? In the past this has happened mainly through protest camps, but nowadays a wider range of actions take place, not all of them so public. Also, some Earth First! groups have decided that they want to work as closed 'affinity groups', for reasons of security and trust, but see problems with this approach as it does not involve new people. For these reasons, and also to network with those already active on other issues, several 'networking initiatives' have sprung up around the country. Here's a profile of three of them - two of them are in the major activist centres of Brighton and Manchester, but the third, in Norwich, shows that it may also work in areas without a large activist base - it's up to you to decide whether the idea would work in your area or not.

Activist Network, Manchester

The 'Activist Network' meeting in Manchester was born out of neces sity last summer after EF! meetings became too large and dominated by announcements. At a Manchester EF! away weekend, we devised the Activist Network, to hive off the networking function, and free up EF! to organise actions.

The idea was to provide a forum for activists working on different issues to get together in the same place every month and discuss, debate and share information. We aimed to branch out beyond the EF! ghetto a bit and in this respect it's going OK. We have about 25-40 people there, and a good mix of generations and types of activist, with people from Groundswell (anti-JSA), Workers Power, Socialist Party, long-time anarchists, ISL, animal rights and us lot. We also aimed to have a different issue topic of debate speaker/video presentation to focus on every month, and that organisation and facilitation of the meeting should rotate. This is working okay too, with recent topics including medical research on animals, the Spanish revolution, and the millennium bug, although some meetings are more patchy than others. However, one are a we need to work on is our original aim of moving away from the original meeting structure to in clude a socialising element e.g. drinks, food, games etc. - this aspect is lacking energy to make it happen currently.

Other criticisms are a slightly inaccessible venue, and that it is not being used by all activists in Manchester as a networking tool - we don't think this is a problem with the format though, which we feel is good - it just needs more time and energy invested in it.

The Rebel Alliance, Brighton

The Rebel Alliance is a monthly meeting of non-hierarchical direct action groups based around Brighton. The original idea was to improve communication and practical solidarity between groups, and to provide an accesible way for new people to get involved. A good range of groups have got involved, including, Brighton hunt sabs, SchNEWS, the Kemptown Network, The Anarchist Teapot, Brighton Claimants Action Group, Brighton Animal Rights Coalition, The Student Autonomist Society, Brighton Class War, a local street theatre group, a genetics group and Molescomb Forest Gardening collective.

When the meeting has been well publicised up to a hundred people have turned up, with old faces as well as new people attending. The basic format is that each group has a few minutes to introduce themselves, provide an update on what they have been up to over the last month and to anounce any forthcoming events. The meetings have been confined to this - avoiding discussions and debate - and staying short, sharp and interesting.

After the final announcements have been made the "formal" bit comes to an end and people are given an opportunity to chat with people or groups they found interesting, or to have more in depth discussions about stuff that came up.

Established groups have picked up new members but - more importantly - people have begun to form new groups themselves. For example a Subvertising Collective and a Women's group, HAG (Hellraising Anarchist Girls) have already been formed.

By identifying itself as a forum for non-hierarchical direct action group s the Alliance has so far avoided any problems with authoritarian parasites - which is nice! Overall its been a really positive boost to activities in Brighton.

The next meetings are taking place at 7pm in the Hobgoblin Pub, London Road, Brighton on Thursday 18 March, Wednesday 28 April, Wednesday 26 May.

Direct Action Forum, Norwich

Norwich Direct Action Forum is a monthly open meeting for existing and potential activists to share ideas and information about direct action, with the aim of broadening the local network of people involved. The idea was to provide a point of contact for people interested in getting involved in direct action and to improve networking between existing local groups in a place where anarcho agitation and sub-cultural deviancy are very much minority activities. It was decided to focus on direct action rather than any particular issue and this was the focus of all the publicity we did. We talked to all the other groups we knew who might be interested (the hunt sabs, the sol fed 96 this didn't take long). We fly posted to fuck, this cost us about 25 quid in photocopying, we also made loads of A6 flyers put them in shops, cajoled big issue sellers to give them to likely suspects, handed them round the university. What we aimed to do with the first meeting on February 4th was create a welcoming space, and so we advertised it as including a video showing. Fifty people turned up which was about three times what we expected. However, that's only one meeting and it's only when those people start getting actively involved that we'll know whether or not it's a successful idea that warrants replication elsewhere. A bigger venue has been sorted out for March. Next Forum, March 4, 8pm, The Plough, St. Benedicts. Come along or contact Norfolk EF! if you want to know more.