The PSA Specialist Group on Political Activism held the following joint conference:

Conference Report

Civil Rights, Liberties and Disobedience:
Alternatives to Governance in the 21st Century

Loughborough University, 27-28 July, 2007
Convenors:
Alex Prichard, Michael Mulligan (Loughborough)
Dr Eric Herring (Bristol)

Report Compiled by Alex Prichard with the help of Uri Gordon

This conference was generously supported by the Centre for the Study of International Governance (CSIG), Loughborough University, the PSA Anarchist Studies Network, the PSA Specialist Group on Political Activism (SGPA) and CAMPACC. We would like to thank the first two for their financial support and to the Department of Politics, IR and European Studies for further support.

The conference was the third ASN conference in the past 12 months, but the first joint ASN/SGPA conference. The conference brought together activists and academics (not mutually exclusive categories) working on the politics of governance to discuss plural historical experiences, and the prospects for change and the best means by which to realise it, in the relatively novel political culture of the 21st century.

The conference attracted 14 high-quality papers and a further 26 participants. Promotional material, including back-issues of journals, were sent from Palgrave in the form of Contemporary Political Theory and Laurence and Wishart in the form of Anarchist Studies. AK Press also had a book stall.

Experiences were shared from a range of geographical locations, from the EU to Sri Lanka to Turkey, Israel to the former Yugoslavia, to global cyberspace, and all from a number of political perspectives – not all anarchist by any means. A distinct conference theme of the ‘flattening out of hierarchies’ emerged from the papers and each in some way discussed the effects and causes of power relations on the potential for human autonomy.

The conference opened with a plenary from Professor Simon Tormey (Nottingham) which looked at the work of Vaclev Havel in relation to post-totalitarian life. Professor Tormey argued that the decline of political engagement and the rise of mass society, the ‘silent disapproval’ of the ‘commonsense’ order of Western society is not matched by the very thing which ensured that the same features of totalitarian society was contested and brought down – overt ‘contestation’. In this regard this opening talk set the scene for the plurality of papers that were to follow by setting out the realm of contemporary political governance and the necessary emergence of ‘pre-political’ forces to set the tone and terrain of politics.

The first of four panels engaged broadly with the theme of governance in anarchy. Dr Stuart Price (DMU) argued for an approach to social forms which understood the role of the individual and the micro in real as opposed to discursive macro social structural processes. Taking revolutionary Spain and IWW activities in Leicester as his focus he argued that understanding the social context of the mediation of plural political contests is vital to understanding their potential. Dr Uri Gordon (Arava Institute, Israel) employed an analytical, political theory approach to the micro practices of power within anarchist and activist movements and suggested practical ways of overcoming inequality and unequal power distribution within non-institutionalised groups and between people with passionate concerns for the ‘flattening out of power’. This paper was a testament to the self-reflective practices of an anarchistic movement by a keen participant observer. Dr Andy Robinson (Nottingham) discussed a paper with many themes in common with the opening plenary. Juxtaposing two principles, the ‘social’ and the ‘political’, and charting these principles through contemporary logics of appropriateness, Andy illustrated how securitisation and a self-censorship society causes social closure and a deepening of the fear of the other which presages a market totalitarianism of social and political apathy and an increasingly problematic relationship with ‘outsiders’. He argued for a need ‘to stare contingency in the face’ and used Kropotkin’s work to help think through how the ‘social principle’, unhindered by the ‘political principle’, provides better forms of engagement and mutual aid. Clive Gabay (OU) again engaged with understandings of intra-societal relations and the ways in which aid agencies and regimes, by prioritising charity, reinstate ‘unequal exchange’ based on the unaccountable priorities of the ‘giver’. Arguing for an anarchist ethic of mutuality and reciprocity based on open negotiation and respect, Clive argued that an anarchist ethic would help realise the ethical content of exchange (gift or aid) in modern international society.

Day one closed with a plenary by Dr Ben Franks (Glasgow). Ben approached the issue of power and leadership within anarchist resistance movements and the concept of the vanguard from the perspective of moral philosophy. Ben juxtaposed liberal with Leninist approaches to the vanguard arguing that ultimately both have a logic of exceptionalism which sanctions the vanguard for ethical reasons. Franks argued for a prefigurative (as opposed to de-ontological or consequentialist) approach to leadership, making the case that immanent practice-based ethics ensures that what we actually do, as opposed to the way in which we rationalise it, becomes the yardstick for ethical analysis.

Day one closed with a few pints in the Swan and an excellent meal at the Thai Grand.

The second day began with a panel analysing activist movements in a range of contexts and from a range of perspectives – none of which were anarchist in ideological leaning. The papers were also far more empirical and historical than those of the first day. Dr Adriana Sinclair discussed the legal strategies and successes of the disarmament group Trident Ploughshares. Adriana illustrated how, following the acquittal of a small group of activists for substantially disabling Britain’s Trident nuclear capacity, the legal process worked to shut down the possibility of both bringing international law into domestic courts, and putting trident on trial. Adriana argued that given the system’s reactionary modus operandi, activist innovation, as opposed to imitation, must always be paramount in thinking strategically. Zinthiya Ganeshpanchan (Loughborough) discussed the ways in which a strong women’s movement for the recovery of the memory of the ‘disappeared’ in Sri Lanka has come to set the tone of political action and responses. In the north east where the movement was heavily traditional and social in its approach, the political response was maternal and conciliatory. In the south where the movement aligned with the labour movement the military response was security-based and justified accordingly. The lesson Zinthiya drew from both analysis is that the political process itself has largely destroyed civil society: the labour movement excluding the women’s movement and the war state and emergency regulations allowing the state to ignore their demands. Professor Chris May (Lancaster) turned to cyberspace. Two things stood out. First, that the scarcity of information is caused by property rights protection. Secondly, and paradoxically, Chris illustrated how large multi nationals are quite happy for their software to be traded on the black market in emerging markets so that they can capture ‘first use’. Open source movements here campaign for stringent copyright. This paradox in western and non-western societies causes and better helps us understand the social response of ‘open source’, and Chris argued that the ethos of openness and levelling of power in cyberspace is a direct response to the activities of those who seek the opposite. Finally, Dr Thomas Davis (Oxford) argued for a more nuanced understanding of the fortunes of ‘trans-national civil society’ and sought to show how in reality the contemporary movement is far less prominent than it has been in the past. Thomas also illustrated how the ‘movement’ has contributed to its own down fall (particularly in the championing of nationalist movements) and might do so again without a more historically and geo-politically reflexive account of its actions.

The fourth panel opened with Tony Bunyan, director of StateWatch, whose presentation critically examined the emerging nexus of state politics on the European level. A feature that stood out was the political culture predominating the panoply of NGOs, lobbying groups and public relations firms active in Brussels, who effectively stand in as "civil society" and obscure the EUs democratic deficit. Dez Fernandez then surveyed some important recent developments in the human rights situation in that country, and in particular in the Kurdish areas. He underscored the use of anti-terrorist legislation to criminalize any expression of dissent against the official Kemalist ideology sanctioned by the military-dominated state. We should use this opportunity to express our support and solidarity with Dr Fernandez, who has lost his job and received death threats as a direct result of speaking out and uncovering facts about the involvement of Turkish state and security forces in human rights abuses. Alex Fitch, who is active with the Campaign Against the Criminalization of Communities and studies contemporary radical politics, then presented the activities of CAMPACC, which supports refugees and migrants in the UK against arbitrary targeted by the state and police. The approach taken by CAMPACC was presented as a new approach to resistance and governance for the twenty-first century, with a stress on the rejection of utopian blueprints in favour of a struggle to win concrete achievements for justice and human rights.

The fifth panel took on three particular theories of governance. Dr Matt McCullock (Loughborough) argued that the 1974 Yugoslav constitution provides an interesting alternative to liberal and Soviet constitutionalism since it is based on an analysis of real political entities and individuals as opposed to abstract individuals or the absolute nature of the social. The Yugoslav via media is promising for its structure if not its achievements. Alex Prichard and Michael Mulligan (Loughborough) argued that modern retreats to nineteenth century theories of sovereignty threaten, by failing to recognise particularly Rousseau’s exceptionalist and theological ethic, threaten to take us back to and justify overt imperialism. The paper argued that sovereignty fails as a theory of political order analytically, ethically, politically and legally. Finally, Dr Eric Herring (Bristol) illustrated how the Iraqi case of Western peace building that promotes competition and self-help creates exclusion. Given the military exigencies in this case, and the demands of foreign investment, peace building is failing because its market imperative overrides local autonomy by excluding organised labour and the force with which it is imposed undermines the very stability Iraq needs in order to achieve its autonomy.

The conference was followed by an Anarchist Studies Network (www.anarchist-studies-network.org.uk) meeting which 15 conference delegates attended. Minutes for this meeting can be found on the ASN website.

Post edited by: Eric Herring, at: 2007/09/04 20:15