October 1997

Time and again at the Earth First! Gathering last summer the violence/non-violence thing came up, and every time it was skated around, obscured, or run past quickly in the hope it wouldn't catch us. And in a way it's not surprising. The Fluffy/Spiky Debate has become a clich, and is filed under The Great Unmentionables, along with Swampy.

But for something so supposedly overdone, it's left everything remarkably unresolved, a victim of several sidetracking devices that come up time and again. The main one recently has been "Is damage to property violent?". For a group whose sole purpose is direct action in defence of the earth, whose logo is a hammer and a monkey wrench, this is clearly not a real issue.

Being a group of people who like to think of themselves as autonomous, we are often really wary of imposing our views on other people. Witness how many good on-site organisers get labelled Camp Fascists (not that we don't have one or two who deserve the title). "I may be non-violent, but if you think it valid, well hey, that's your choice" This "anything goes" attitude was accepted as an uneasy near-agreement at the EF! Gathering. It is clearly bollocks on several levels. First and foremost, it IS an acceptance of violence-as-strategy. If we respect and tolerate the premeditated strategic use of violence on actions, and therefore as a movement, then we are a violent movement. This, in turn, actively excludes those who believe in non-violence. Thus "anything goes" is not the tolerant, inclusive attitude that it superficially appears to be. It actually means exclusion by discouragement instead of by discussion and consensus. It's the start of working on a violent agenda.

All of this begs The Big Question, the one too big for us to answer; What is non-violence? Not only is it impossible to say what it is, it's often pretty damn hard to come up with anything meaningful when asked what it isn't. People who I think of as non-violent get wary of using the label because it is so ambiguous, it might lump them in with people who won't cut a fence or push through a cordon. I think we can safely say that this movement does not generally regard damage to property as violence, and any big debate on this is going off at a tangent. Where we do get fuzzy is with damage to living things, particularly people. I've seen this vagueness used by those with a violent agenda to polarise a group into "either you obey the police or you try to kill them".

Non-violence doesn't have to mean passivity. Don't forget there's 'Direct Action' in Non-Violent Direct Action! We are about confronting that which is wrong, making them answerable and accountable, and taking back the power. If we are so right, then we just need people to really know the real facts and issues, and really know they can do something about it. As Terence McKenna says, "if the truth is told so that it can be understood, it will be believed". But if we use violence, we give the vested interests something more interesting to talk about. They get away with carrying on, and usually with a lot more support. And, at the end of the day, support is the only chance of lasting success: the changes that we know are needed mean that millions of people have to have a lifestyle change, and demand change. If that doesn't happen, we're all fucked. If our own methods prevent that from happening, we are not just killing our own movement, we're assisting everything we say we're fighting against.

If we're violent we lose the moral high ground. How can we complain to the police or whoever that their side is being violent and demand they do something about it when we aren't prepared to do anything about violence in our own people? We set ourselves up as deserving it "we had it coming". Unless our violence is justified and theirs isn't—"god on our side", anyone?

Non-violence doesn't mean waving a flower when they come to beat you up or pull you out of a tree. It does mean not wilfully injuring people. And it's not a strictly defined pseudo-religious attitude—of course people get hurt breaking a cordon or in fending off some vicious over-zealous security guard or police officer. It's important that we never ostracise people just for doing this. We must look at a bigger picture: Is it habitual? Are they proud of it? Is it being treated as big and clever?

There will always be individual outbursts of violence in any confrontational campaign, but this is different to tolerating it, and certainly different to using violence as strategy, believing it to further the campaign.

There is only one recent direct action campaign in this country that's used violence as its strategy; Northern Ireland. It's brought lots of publicity for them. Has it made people understand what's going on and make change? Has it even made the politicians ease the policing and listen up? No, it's brought the Prevention of Terrorism Act and a shoot-to-kill policy of campaigners, even when they're unarmed, and put troops on the streets. And see how every increase in police power and weapons gets used against everyone, violent or not. Hardly a victory.

We never get to see the people we're up against. We rarely even know their names. The police aren't against us, they're a tool used by those against us. And within the police, the ones in charge are not the ones on the front line, they'd never risk their own injury. They stay away, sending in as many ground troops as it takes. If we use violence as strategy, we give them the excuse to come in with bigger weapons against us, we enter an arms race with them. And seriously, considering the availability of weapons, armour and money on each side, who's going to win? We end up a group of mostly dead killers, with no-one giving a toss. Who actually really cares when they hear that a soldier or terrorist has been killed in Northern Ireland?

And, more to the point, see how this distracts from the issue. The one thing all wars and ongoing violent campaigns have in common is that they never get explained. How long was it before you actually knew anything about what Northern Ireland was really about? What do Hammas and Hez Bollah actually want? Did anyone in this country really understand the Bosnian stuff? It lets them get away with carrying on with the very stuff we're campaigning against, cos they can hide from talking about the issues by talking about the violence. This is why they orchestrate the violence at things like the RTS in London in April, the Criminal Justice Bill demo in October 94, the Poll Tax marches and the miners' strike. If they're worried enough to do this to do this to us, and spend millions on surveillance and infiltration, we must be doing something right. And so we must continue.

This is why they're working so hard to paint us as "terrorists". It took the wind out of the sails of the burgeoning animal rights campaigns in the 70s and 80s, and at least leaves them marginalised still, and it threatens us with at least the same. For all the debatable effects of the Swampy overkill, think how much damage it's done to the efforts to brand us as scary terrorist danger-to-the-nation psychos.

If we use violence, or if we tolerate its use in the movement, we are handing over a vast armoury of weapons to be used against us and what we stand for. And even if we did somehow get the genie back in the bottle then they can do what they've done with the Welsh and Irish nationalists and plant a bomb, followed by a report that we claimed responsibility. Violence is a useless strategy to be used by so small a group. It would be its own undoing.

But there's more to it than this. Something bigger. Something beyond strategy and getting your way. It's about the kind of world we're trying to create. If we are so right why do we need to beat people down and scare them into not disagreeing with us? Isn't that the method of someone who suspects they might be wrong? Don't we have a better vision than that? Don't we trust people to recognise the truth? If we don't, we're doomed whatever methods we use.

But I have a belief in life. Surely our movement is motivated by a love of the earth, of the life that lives and will live on it. The petty jealousies of the violence-strategy groups like the Socialist Workers and Class War are as obviously playground-fight childish as they are fruitless. What genuine appeal or lasting solution is there in actions born of fear and malice? And what organised violence is there not born of these?

People advocating violence often say it's "working class" and that non-violence is middle-class wank. What about the "middle class" politicians and police chiefs who organise the riots and believe violence to help their cause? What about the "working class" police who dish out the violence? Class is not an issue in this. "Middle class" gets used as an insult, usually translatable as "patronising", "articulate", or "not full-on enough". The use of violence is not socio-economic. If you use underhand insults like "middle class", it betrays the fact that you have no case for your idea. To use an insult that questions the commitment and determination of people who consistently put themselves on the line for their beliefs is absolute bullshit.

And the idea that "the ends justify the means" just doesn't apply. We don't know what the ends will be, a goal is not the same as ends. And understand that the means determines the ends, means are ends in the making. What we're aiming for will be an ongoing way of life, not one final trophy. We have no real "ends", only ongoing means, a direction to go in.

One of the big lessons of the recent direct action campaigns has been to see the person inside the uniform. At Newbury, security guards were quitting from Day 2, several coming to join the protest. Every security guard and every police officer is a potential protester. Individual police are not The Law, they are just its servants. As Lenny Bruce said back in the 60s, "that's another big problem, the people who can't separate the authority and the people who have the authority vested in them. You see that a lot on the demonstrations, they have the concept that The Law and Law Enforcement are one. They're demonstrating against the Police Department, actually against policemen". We know how ludicrous it is when people generalise about what protesters are like, and it is no less stupid for us to generalise about security guards and police. If we recognise their individuality, it makes it harder for them to deny ours. And so their team spirit, the Us Against Them thing, starts to crumble. They start to hear us.

I know human beings are individual, I know they can all shine and do the right thing given the chance. Antagonising, generalising and especially being violent all stifle that chance. A lot of people joined the police cos they thought it would help the community and the country. A lot joined out of the same feelings that makes us go on actions. You needn't have had too different a life for it to have been you in the blue jacket. In a very slightly different world in which we're all as well meaning as we are now, it might not have been Keith Blakelock who died that night in Tottenham. It might have been my father. It might have been you. Shouting insults doesn't make them realise they're being used against the nation's interest. I find it strange how people can be all right-on and anti-war, saying that soldiers are just pitiable tools of a corrupt system and it should be remembered that they're all sons and fathers, but that the pigs are a bunch of bastards who deserve everything they get. Yes, they are used brutally against us, but the whole basis of our outrage is that we know such behaviour is wrong. We believe in better ways, and we act on our beliefs. We have to rise above. As Martin Luther King said, "the problem with an eye for an eye is that everyone ends up blind". Surely we are the people who see the bigger picture, who see ourselves as part of a bigger web of life.

Violence is not only a violation of someone's personal being, but is the spearhead of a whole different principle of getting-your-way. To use violence is not to convince anyone of the justness of your cause, it is to make them too scared to voice the fact that they oppose you.

As every child of a parent, every pupil of a teacher can testify; when authority threatens you in order to get its way, it doesn't change the way you think. It just makes you not say it in front of them and tell your mates what a bastard they are. Making someone do something out of fear and intimidation doesn't change the way they feel, and the moment your back's turned they'll start again.

Can't we, of all people, realise how centuries of violent repression haven't stamped out rebellion? Don't we know as individuals how each act of violence against us only galvanises our resolve?

As Joanna Wilson said, if we are to create a just and peaceful world, we cannot do it by means that are not just or peaceful. And more than that, a just and peaceful world is not some nirvana/heaven/reward. It is a state of society that will need maintaining, continuing. That can only happen through co-operation. You can't threaten someone into being compassionate. They have to see it's the best way.

Any "revolutionary" that says it'll all be OK once we beat down and/or kill off certain people is just trying to swap who's the oppressor and who's the oppressed. As George Orwell said, "nine times out of ten a revolutionary is just a social climber with a bomb in his pocket". Any revolution that excludes people, any people, is just a change of hierarchy. People advocating violence are not being more full-on, they're just working toward a much smaller, narrower vision of what the world could be, they're just fighting for a new injustice, a new oppression. Are we trying to show something better, or just put the same old fuck-ups in a new setting? We have to confront certain ideas as their adversaries, but we must confront the people with those ideas as their teachers and healers.

We spend so much time ridiculing people who can't think outside of hierarchies, but to advocate violence is to be unable to think outside of hierarchies. In the short term it makes certain people expendable, and in the long term wants a shift of power so we scare some people out of doing things that we don't like. Is that all we expect of humans? Is that the best world we can hope for? Is that all we're doing this for?