Edinburgh Anarchists

It may be the state broadcaster and utterly supine in the face of power, but the BBC has some very useful stuff on it. Among my favourites is In Our Time on Radio 4, where they take a Big Idea, something you may have heard of but not understood, and get experts to answer the question: what’s that all about then?

This week it was The Siege of Münster, which features in Luther Blissett‘s astonishing anti-authoritarian retelling of the Reformation, Q. IOT, available to download (but not for long), has sections about the Peasants’ Revolt, the surprisingly advanced democratic form in Munster and the Anabaptists’ reading of the New Testament leading them to demand all property to be held in common. (Not something you hear from modern Biblical literalists.) At the time of the birth of the merchant / capitalist class, this is early anti-capitalism (communism) expressed in the only language then available to the peasantry, that of the Bible

I can’t recommend Q highly enough, it’s both eye-opening and a rollicking good thriller. In my ideal world, more people read this than the Da Vinci Code.

In one of those happy coincidences, I discovered on the same day I heard this programme, that Luther Blissett (now writing as Wu Ming) have a new novel out in English translation.  deals with the “discovery” of the New World and I’m hoping that it does for that period what Q did for the Reformation – reclaiming history from the bottom up, and giving us new myths to replace those of Empire and Christendom.

History may be written by the victors, but we can still read between the lines.

Still the case, the miners' fight is your fight.

…that’s a headline you’ll see a lot in the next year. I don’t have any particular insight into the struggle, but I did come across this fantastic set of 4 Xmas Cards produced by a miners’ support group in South Wales. I have scanned them at the highest resolution I could and have uploaded the full set to the site (direct download link, ZIP, 2Mb).

As well as the haunting monochrome images, the cards have poems inside, written by striking miners and their families. If you find it hard to imagine just how strongly felt this dispute was, just read “Ode to a Scab”, or “Kids’ Questions”. Ever think that Margaret Thatcher deserves a bit of sympathy in her later years? Feel the despair caused by her deliberate policy to destroy the labour movement and this particular part of it.

And never forget that it wasn’t just her. She couldn’t've done it without MI5′s “counter subversion”, without the Metropolitan Police beating pickets for overtime, and without the willing lies of the media, including the saintly “impartial” BBC. (Was it them or ITN that re-edited their Orgreave footage to make it look like the miners charged first? Doesn’t matter I guess.)

(PS shout out to South Wales Anarchists who might be interested in this post.)

Poem by striking miner, inside a card

"Support the Miners" one of 4 Xmas cards produced during the Miners' Strike