www.saferspaces.exposed is being launched today, 17th October 2014, the day before the London Anarchist Bookfair, where the seed for the Solidarity Collective was sown in 2013. This seems an appropriate date to choose for our launch.
Hard copies of Document 1 will be available at the Bookfair. We hope for a successful Bookfair this year and that this contribution will result in serious debate and discussion, more awareness of the issues and some positive action to stop the cycle of physical and psychological violence that is tearing us apart.
The Focus E15 Mums, Steve Hedley & Social Exclusion
- application/pdf 187K
A Safer Spaces Policy
It is now a year since the attack on Ciaron O'Reilly at the Anarchist bookfair in London and close to a year since the attack on the Casa Bar in Liverpool.
"There is an element of the left working actively to undermine the basic right of this society that you be granted the presumption of innocence"
- RMT source
For a number of years, members of this collective have watched with dismay as political activists and organisations have been attacked in particular ways by particular groups of activists. These attacks have included threats and violence against individuals and their friends and supporters; public denunciation of activists as abusers, infiltrators or informers; harassment; disruption of public events. Those targeted have found their lives seriously disrupted, have experienced stress, trauma, depression and on occasion have even become suicidal. At the time of writing, these attacks are continuing.
Strategies and tactics that were once reserved for active fascists, like "No Platform", are now being applied to Socialists and peace activists. For example the incident at the Cardiff University Students Union Freshers' Fair on Tuesday, September 23rd 2014 and the attempt to ban the SWP at Edinburgh University Students' Association.
Some attacks have gone on to develop a more sinister edge. In at least one case, the personal movements of an activist who has been targeted are being passed on to a fascist group. In another incident, a photograph of an activist's child has been published online. In a number of cases, attacks have directly led to arrests on spurious grounds. All of these attacks share some common features: distortion of the truth, omission of key facts and downright lies. In many cases, no effort has been made to fully investigate allegations or speak to all the key stakeholders. In others, people have been placed under duress and pressured to engage in corrupt restorative justice processes, sometimes under threat of violence if they refused.
Threats: I will smash his face into the kerb - mp3 192K — Source: indymedia.org.uk
The Solidarity Collective believes there is a pattern to these attacks, most of which are being carried out, ironically, in the name of 'safer spaces'. The effect has been to undermine activist networks and to slowly grind down the morale of those who are motivated to take on the state and capitalism at both local and national levels.
Our aim is to provide information to assist readers to reach an informed understanding of the situation, and to be in a better position to make up their own minds as to the motivations and agendas that might be involved. We will also aim to use the facts at our disposal to offer a critical analysis and to shine a light on various attacks on groups and individuals that have happened since 2011. The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed that there has definitely been state involvement in the case of Julian Assange and Wikileaks with attacks - both physical and in cyberspace - on Wikileaks and its support base.
In the other cases, we do not know for sure if the state has been involved, but there are strong parallels in tactics — making unsubstantiated claims, blog posts purporting to be from victims and sock puppet accounts on social media platforms, for example — that, thanks to Edward Snowden, we now know to have been employed by GCHQ's JTRIG (Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group) to discredit activists and derail the left.
This is work in progress and to begin with we are focusing on one case, that of RMT Union leader Steve Hedley. In Document 1, 'The FOCUS E15 Mums, Steve Hedley and Social Exclusion', we consider how the continuing accusations of domestic violence against Hedley have caused ripples of disunity and fracture within a new grassroots movement that had previously been united and effective. In Document 2, we examine the allegations against Steve Hedley and the available evidence in some detail, as well as the related Rory MacKinnon incident and the attacks on the Morning Star newspaper. In future posts, we plan to look at the attacks on Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, the 'Comrade Delta' affair and the ongoing attacks on members of the SWP.
We had also planned to have a section looking at the attacks on 'unnamed activists', many of whom would not come forward publicly for fear of retaliation. However we feel the release of the report by Anonymous Refused via Tumblr.com offers a mature, thoughtful and inspiring personal reflection on the consequences of such attacks on individuals and groups and neatly covers this topic. We couldn't have put it better ourselves and we have included it on this site.
These attacks, many of which are ongoing, have resulted in bitter divisions in activist networks. We hope that the material on this website will contribute to the debate around such attacks and help us collectively find ways to deal with them in future, to prevent these situations escalating to the detriment of all concerned and to protect ourselves from the harm they are causing to the movement as a whole.
Anonymous Refused
For your safety and security...
Posted by Anon on October 12, 2014
Part 1
The Focus E15 Mums, Steve Hedley and Social Exclusion
Posted by Anon on October 13, 2014
Part 2
The Burden of Proof
Posted by Anon on October 14, 2014
Timeline of events
Accusations against Steve Hedley
Posted by Anon on October 15, 2014
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Comments
Hide the following 11 comments
ridiculous
17.10.2014 13:09
How do you think generalising disagreements and conflicts which would otherwise stay specific and localised is going to "stop the cycle of physical and psychological violence that is tearing us apart"?
anonymous
not ridiculous at all
17.10.2014 18:11
I've read the information that's presented on the website and am also aware of some of the situations that are being referred to. This isn't a ridiculous analysis, nor are these 'a whole bunch of unrelated situations'. That's the point - it would suit those doing the attacking to isolate those being attacked and to assert that each of these situations is quite different from all the others, but the fact is that there are many links between them, both in the style of the attacks and some of the individuals and groups doing the attacking. So please don't dismiss it out of hand. Keeping things 'specific and localised' means keeping people ignorant of the wider picture.
annie
Ridiculous AND Insulting.
17.10.2014 23:39
New Internationalist Brigades.
Anonymous
Solidarity (with patriarchy) Collective
18.10.2014 01:57
(b)
"If the police have been unable to construct a case strong enough to take to the CPS, and the union executive has ratified the finding of the RMT investigation that Steve Hedley has 'No case to answer', then we simply do not understand how activists can justify hounding him on the internet, and hounding those who invite him to speak."
--> In other words - if the police don't push for prosecution, and a male-dominated union let's off a senior officer - then he must be innocent.
Do you know the statistics for the prosecutions for DV? Since when do we trust the police to deal with gender-based violence? And since when have unions been effective at confronting internal sexual violence?
Please don't rely so heavily on the lack of action by police to exonerate someone - otherwise almost every abuser would be exonerated.
Can we have some analysis on institutional power?
(c)
"If AWL's speculation is wrong and Caroline Leneghan's cause was not genuine but rather based on revenge over rejection or other factors, then the Focus E15 Campaign has done Steve Hedley and his family a massive disservice by issuing that statement."
--> Did you actually insinuate that Caroline's "cause was based on revenge over rejection"? After making all those references to rumours and insinuations etc? That's using conjecture to replicate some pretty horrible sexist dynamics - 'she's just jealous, that's why she said he hit her'. You might want to delete that.
Who cares whether Caroline only reported it after she found out Steve was seeing somebody else? Why should that undermine her claim? She can have lots of reasons not to have reported it beforehand. People don't report abusive partner for many reasons for very long periods.
(d)
"Also, by publicly attacking one of their supporters, they have diverted attention away from their own primary cause and have embraced social exclusion,"
--> How about you let Focus E15 decide what their primary cause is, rather than wading in and telling them what it should be? And how about you let them build intersections of struggle, rather than shutting them down?
(e)
You really have it in for the AWL, don't you?
I mean - I hate their 2-state position on Palestine and found them difficult in lots of contexts. But in terms of "guilty before innocence" - your text reads like anything tarred with the AWL brush must make it untrue.
(f)
"In his online statement, Steve noted that friends and family were being subjected to online abuse, including threats of physical violence as a result of Caroline publishing the allegations.
[...]
Such abuse and threats were an inevitable outcome of Caroline's post; she painted a picture of Steve as an abuser, providing very limited information and context."
---> "inevitable"!???! So posting anything, ever, about an abuse, will inevitable lead to friends & family being subjectd to physical violence?
Your claims it that Caroline's post made physical violence inevitable - so it's her fault?
Another impressive manipulation of "innocence" and "guilt"
(g)
This is a smear campaign. e.g. Why mention Caroline being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder? It's dropped in, with a clear implication that we can't trust Caroline because of this. You haven't dared to actually state that overtly - but leave it hanging for the reader to make the assumption.
(h) All these references to the police, really? Since when can you trust the police on stuff like this?
It's stuff like this that keeps me away from the Bookfair.
mika
Safe spaces scam is a result of British nanny state.......
18.10.2014 02:27
Check this out.........
OZ
Three questions
18.10.2014 11:07
2) Do you believe in freedom of association - that we should have some kind of choice who we associate with? If so then that must mean that groups have a right to exclude people - as in practise including some means excluding others. In which case - don't groups have a right to set up a code stating what behavoir is acceptable for them (eg a safer spaces policy), so long as anyone who disagrees has every right to leave?
3) You state that "Our aim is to provide information to assist readers to reach an informed understanding of the situation, and to be in a better position to make up their own minds as to the motivations and agendas that might be involved.". In that case, would you be willing to include the other side of the story on your website - for example by linking to the first-hand accounts of those you criticise? I understand that it would not normally be fair to ask anyone to put time into making viewpoints other than their own available. However, you have called for balance and for people to be informed, and have also complained about people making accusations without allowing the accused to defend themselves. In which case, would it not be a good gesture to share, for example, this statement:
Anon
A answer to question three
18.10.2014 14:56
Chris
Bin the leaflets and put the boot in
18.10.2014 16:31
Bin the leaflets
Put the boot in
Intersectional Violence
Newsflash: Manning & Assange workshop at Bookfair NOT attacked
19.10.2014 10:06
ADVERT FOR WORKSHOP:
Free Chelsea Manning!
Support Refuseniks and Whistleblowers!
Workshop at the Anarchist Bookfair
Saturday 18 October 12-1 pm
Room 2.40, 2nd Floor Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
All welcome. Crèche and full disabled access tube.jpg Mile End or Stepney Green
Join speakers from Payday and Queer Strike:
How Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange's whistleblowing on war crimes and corruption has been vital to our movements for change. How can we defend them and other whistleblowers? How Chelsea Manning‘s action sparked the lgbtq and anti-war movements’ blowing the whistle on San Francisco Pride?
If you cant’ attend, please send us a message of support for Chelsea Manning and we’ll send it to her.
Organised by Payday men's network & Queer Strike
Manning & Assange supporter
Neither ridiculous nor insulting...
19.10.2014 12:23
"What is or is not the jargon is determined by whether the word is written in an intonation which places it transcendently in opposition to its own meaning; by whether the individual words are loaded at the expense of the sentence, its propositional force, and the thought content. In that sense the character of the jargon would be quite formal: it sees to it that what it wants is on the whole felt and accepted through its mere delivery, without regard to the content of the words used." (3)
Safer spaces instantiates just such a contentless discourse, where merely to mobilise the terms 'survivor' and 'perpetrator' is to invite exclusion and social death on the latter. The formal designation, the loading of words, already presupposes the outcome of so-called 'accountability'. Stalin's show trials were cartoonish in comparison, but the proper name for this presupposition of outcome is *totalitarianism*. Kafka is a closer model than Stalin. The ever-present but never-specified charge of 'perpetrating' weighs like a nightmare on the minds of the living. "Fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism." (4)
This is a critique that has emerged from within the feminist tradition and cannot simply be dismissed as 'apologism' (more contentless jargon, presupposing its results). See for instance Lies Journal's critique of the politics of safety:
"The spatial politics of safety organizes the urban landscape. Bodies that arouse feelings of fear, disgust, rage, guilt, or even discomfort must be made disposable and targeted for removal in order to secure a sense of safety for whites. In other words, the space that white people occupy must be *cleansed*." (5)
If this critique exposes the white supremacy of 'safer spaces', the important critique of the fetishism of consent in the recent Bamn magazine lays bare how a feminism fixated on consent is not only blind to social structures of gender-determination, but itself structurally coupled to the state via its valorization of the autonomous liberal subject (6). Here, 'consent' serves as the contentless jargon which authenticates the arbitrary, false, and violent designation of 'perpetrator' and 'survivor'. 'Consent' mediates the authority of the absolute. Without the autonomous liberal subject, consent cannot serve this function, without serving this function, the intersectionalists are deprived of the moralizing core of their crusade.
I concede that this new tyranny is constructed with the best of intentions. But is that not always the way? When the intersectionalists raise the battle-cry "something must be done!", NO, rather we must THINK, deeply and critically about what monsters are born in the course of fighting them.
(1) Bordiga:
(2) See Anonymous Refused's piece for a detailed discussion:
(3) Theodor W Adorno, The Jargon Of Authenticity, 1964.
(4) Theodor W. Adorno, Else Frenkel-Brunswik, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford, The Authoritarian Personality, 1950.
(5) Jackie Wang, Against Innocence: Race, Gender, And The Politics Of Safety:
(6) Tanya Serisier, Is Consent Sexy?, Bamn magazine:
Kulturkritik
To be fair..
19.10.2014 15:16
it's worth pointing out that there are some extremely damaged comrades among our movement who have made some mistakes, like in any movement - what's needed is not more denunciations, tumblr-page lunacy (from both 'sides') and obsessively documented / bordering on the kind of things one normally encounters in the conspiracy theory movement but some understanding, and some good, secure, non-sectarian support networks that respects the specific needs of individual comrades so we can help our comrades heal - that is what genuine Safe Spaces are about.
As for all the documentation in the original post - well there is much of it, and then so much counter-information too, which makes it impossible for any kind of total analysis or critique to be made so soon.
There are also far too many more pressing matters internationally that need attending to right now so forgive us if we reserve our analysis / crtique for the time being.
Intersectionalist Insurrectionists