A-Infos (en) UK, AFED, Organise - THE STATE OF ANARCHY (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

An important place to start is to say that our collective doesn't have a 
monopoly on anarchy in the Bournemouth area and that writing anything 
about the state of movements where autonomy is such a key feature is 
always going to be vulnerable to missing out things that others are 
doing but we can only write from our personal perspectives of what we 
know is happening, and always with the hope that we will find others 
locally with similar values and in the hope of connecting with others 
who are either already doing the work or looking for their people to start.

A common feature of how a lot of us in Bournemouth seem to have been 
drawn together is from finding widely advertised activist entrypoints - 
ranging from environmental groups, problematic vanguard groups, 
Palestine solidarity groups, as examples - and becoming burnt out or 
disillusioned when realising the power dynamics and rigid hierarchies 
had no space for people to engage autonomously and authentically. When 
faced with this, often it feels like being told that the only choice is 
between continuing to follow someone else's orders or dropping out and 
doing nothing, but instead many of us individually broke away to start 
the things that we wanted to see, even if that meant starting alone or 
in very small groups.

The landscape of anarchy in Bournemouth feels like it's shifted quite a 
lot over the last couple of years. The most known anarchist-encompassing 
event was the annual Dorset Radical Bookfair, which has been a useful 
space for networking with other interested folks and forged connections 
that have led to more sustained and consistent ongoing organising. Much 
of what has sprung up has been in response to local issues and things 
that didn't exist that we wanted to see, starting with a radical, 
ethical and non-hierarchical Community Pride which runs each year on the 
same day as our local corporate Pride, as well as projects that we tried 
out and ran consistently to get a feel for, like the fortnightly 
Revolutionary Reading Room and monthly prisoner solidarity writing group 
A Community Against Cages And Bars. Both these meetings are on a break 
until we have the capacity and desire to pick them back up, or someone 
else wants to bring them back, but they were ideas that we saw happening 
in other towns that we thought "we could try that", and it was really 
valuable for meeting new people and for learning together, even if 
ultimately we decided our energy was better spent elsewhere.

Our collective's main focus right now is our weekly Free Shop that runs 
every Friday, which in many ways feels different to the reading and 
writing groups before, because having something that brings so many more 
people together, that is out on the street, has so much more reach and 
has a constantly growing and shifting energy. Creating meetings that 
were so based in already having an interest in or understanding of 
theory or wanting to put that into practice largely felt like an uphill 
struggle to gain or maintain any momentum in our area because we didn't 
have the foundations really to start there, whereas being a consistent 
presence on our local streets has completely shifted that to bringing 
anarchist ideas to people who may have no prior interest in it, or may 
even feel negatively about it (often until having conversations or 
seeing it working in action). It's made anarchy far more visible and 
talked about in our local area, especially in Boscombe where we run the 
Free Shop. You see more anarchist stickers in the wild. We've gone from 
some of our neighbours being sceptical or annoyed about seeing anarchist 
flags as part of the Free Shop, to asking questions, to even being part 
of it.

We've had messages from folks who used to live in Bournemouth who get in 
touch to say that they're surprised to see more radical things happening 
here, and I think we're starting from a place of needing to build the 
basic foundations, but the beauty of that is everything is on a 
person-by-person level and the radical joy of getting to know new 
friends and comrades. The Free Shop has taught us a lot about mutual aid 
on a community level, but part of the anarchy that's happening here is 
behind the scenes, it's in the quiet relationships that maintain being 
able to do anything outward-facing - it's present in every individual 
relationship being made, it's in people taking time to unlearn 
propaganda together, it's people offering each other lifts or meals or 
to clean up or walk a dog or opening their home to each other when 
things are tough or just because we have no public community spaces here 
to use and we desperately need to take space and time together to build 
connections.

Being able to get a physical space to operate from would bring together 
different projects and parts of the community in a way that would make 
us all far stronger, which is probably why it's proving to be a hurdle 
that we currently haven't found a way to overcome but it's always 
something we're wanting to build towards. Groups around us following a 
more conventional path but with some radical leanings have said how much 
they like that we've just got out on the street and are doing what we 
want to do even without access to indoor space. By doing it in the most 
DIY way possible, without permission, without support, even when it 
brings us into conflict with anyone wanting to exert authority, it 
emboldens others to see they could do it and try new things too - it's 
far easier to know how to copy some folks getting out on the street than 
it is to know the bureaucracy of trying to get funding, getting a space, 
etc. The Free Shop will almost certainly be a thorn in the side of those 
instigating the very clear gentrification efforts around Boscombe at the 
moment because it's on the street, it can be messy, chaotic, it brings 
together big groups of people, and because it encourages other people to 
use the street as a shared space to spend time rather than just going 
from transaction to transaction. It is a worrying force for anyone who 
wants to control the space, including police, security guards, the 
council, and owners of the buildings. You can tell that you're doing 
something worthwhile when you're constantly coming into conflict with 
these forces but you have the support of the people in your community.

The folks we know who are consistently living anarchy here are queer, 
trans, disabled, neurodivergent folks, migrants; people who get targeted 
by the far right, people who are tokenised in activist spaces not built 
by those communities, and so it means that our anarchy is 
intersectional. In our actions we're fighting for every kind of 
liberation, including the ones that we've seen forgotten or ignored in 
other spaces (like animal liberation), and hope that by doing that Total 
Liberation will become the norm in anarchist spaces so no one feels 
unwelcome or like their liberation struggle is being sidelined. Because 
we're from marginalised communities, we get involved in organising for 
those movements locally, especially if there are grassroots groups 
springing up like Crips Against Cuts or Trans Liberation, and bringing 
what we want to see to those movements by maintaining our anarchist 
autonomy, radical values, and making clear that we are engaging both as 
anarchists and individuals from those communities - that we aren't 
separate from them and dealing solely in 'solidarity' but that we are 
also directly affected. The dynamic of that is obviously really 
different than organisations and political parties using grassroots 
organising to promote and recruit. I often think of meeting folks for 
the first time at broader protests, and quietly warning them about the 
Socialist Worker's Party's history and continued patterns of behaviour 
when the clipboard gets passed around, seeing them cross out their 
details from the mailing list, and them thanking me and saying they 
definitely would have ended up at their meetings otherwise. I find it 
strange to imagine an alternative branching reality where such friends 
end up pouring their energy into selling newspapers and finding their 
own replacement for when they inevitably burn out (as was my past path), 
instead of the fortunate reality where we have genuine affinity and we 
materially influence each other's lives in a positive and consistent way.

The state of anarchy here is wanting for everyone to know that 
reciprocal, horizontal relationships do exist because the landscape here 
is that you are really likely to encounter political parties or liberal 
activist organisations as your first experience of activism or 
community, but you don't need to settle for top-down structures, 
constant compromises with capitalism, or the soulless grind of waiting 
for some leader to engineer whatever kind of revolution they think you 
need... You can start living in a revolutionary way now by finding 
people you genuinely care about and who you have shared values with. 
Look after each other, and build the capacity for that sphere of care to 
extend outwards to more groups like yours until we're all connected. If 
you're around Bournemouth, part of that might be connecting with us if 
you want to. If not, build something, people will find you. Everywhere 
we need as many different radical things as possible and to support each 
other, and we're excited to see where things in Bournemouth go next.

Bournemouth is facing massive challenges and crises because of fascist 
anti-migrant organising, but already being part of radical community 
makes that feel less frightening than it otherwise would, and anarchy is 
already a big part of combatting the far right narrative because our 
neighbours know us already, they've had almost a year of us being out on 
the street with anarchist flags showing up with free food and books and 
clothes for everyone so it's harder for the far right to have a hold on 
the area we operate in, and also more generally for them to be talking 
about 'antifa' in the scaremongering way that they like to because we've 
always proudly claimed that label in the work that we're doing. It feels 
like quite a scary time right now - to quell what's happening with the 
far right, it's going to need consistent and brave work within our 
communities, speaking out against fascists instead of hiding or staying 
silent, and choosing actions that may feel more risky in the short-term 
for all of our collective safety in the long-term. If you can, get out 
of the house and onto the streets, the power of being with your 
community is healing. We all get to shape the state of anarchy that's 
happening around us but none of us can do this alone.

If you want to start out by connecting with local groups online:

(Instagram)
@bournemouthanarchists
@bournemouthantifascists
@bournemouth.community.pride
@bournemouth_crips_against_cuts
@trans_liberation_bmth
- Dorset Radical Bookfair

But if you can, come see people in person any Friday afternoon, on the 
street next to or opposite the Costa on Boscombe highstreet, 2.30 til at 
least 5.

River

https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2025/12/12/the-state-of-anarchy/
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