Supporting Class Struggle PrisonersWHAT IS ABC?
Manchester Anarchist Black Cross is part of an international network of ABC groups. Our immediate aim is to support anarchist and other class struggle prisoners, whether in the UK or elsewhere.ORIGINS OF THE ABC
The Anarchist Red Cross was started in Tsarist Russia to organize aid for political prisoners captured by the police, and to organize self-defense against political raids by the Cossack Army. During the Russian civil war, they changed the name to the Black Cross in order to avoid confusion with the Red Cross who were organizing relief in the country. After the Bolsheviks seized power the Anarchist movement moved the ABC offices to Berlin and continued to aid prisoners of the new regime, as well as victims of Italian fascism and others. The Black Cross fell apart during the 1930s depression due to the incredible demand for its services and a decline in financial aid. But in the late 1960s the organization resurfaced in Britain, where it first worked to aid prisoners of the Spanish resistance, which had not in fact died after the civil war and were fighting the dictator Franco's police. Now it has expanded and works in several areas, with contacts and other Black Cross groups in many countries around the world, mostly in Europe and North and South America.
The ABC has sought to bring attention to the plight of all prisoners, with an emphasis on anarchist and other class struggle prisoners; and, through contact with and information about prisoners, inspire an anarchist resistance and support movement on the outside. We fund-raise on behalf of prisoners or defense committees in need of funds for legal cases or otherwise, and organize demonstrations of solidarity with imprisoned anarchists and other prisoners.
Contact ABC Manchester
ABC ManchesterPO Box 326
Manchester
M33 4YQ
UK
email: [email protected]
WHAT THE ABC IS ALL ABOUT...
We live in a society where a tiny minority own the wealth, the land, run the big companies and live in luxury on the backs of the working people who produce everything. They try to control our lives and keep us in line by every means possible – schools, the media, the DSS, drugs, Disneyland. If we obey orders, work hard, don’t answer back, we can live a reasonable life – until the next recession. We can help our bosses keep others down, like the police or bailiffs do, and get our rewards: power, wealth, security.
But for those of us not willing to work to keep our rulers in luxury, or those who try to take back any of the wealth that we have made, there is the justice system. Strike for a decent wage, steal to stay alive, resist the control and abuse in our lives, or break the bosses’ laws in any way and we face police, courts, prison.
Prison is the bottom line in control – their ultimate weapon. Prison means isolation, bloody punishments, divided families. It drives people to despair and suicide. The whole system is to split us up and isolate people who could set an example to the rest of our class. Likewise, if we step outside so-called normal behaviour, such as women who refuse to accept the role of wife and mother, anyone whose sexuality is so-called deviant, we may be stigmatised, tranquillised and ultimately imprisoned.
On the outside, fear of prison is built up to stop us from fighting back against the injustice in our lives and myths are created about prisoners to divide us from them. Most people are inside for trying to survive. In Britain, 94% of recorded crimes are against property. About one third are inside for non-payment of fines or taxes. Thousands are on remand. Many others are guilty of nothing more than being working class, irish, black, framed by the police. Full prisons give us the impression that the police are ‘cracking crime’ and reminds us who is in control.
Most prisoners are working class people, just like the rest of us. They are not all the mad beasts the papers would have us believe. The press hype up stories of ‘violent crime’ to give the existence of prison some justification and to divide us from prisoners. But the fact is that only a tiny percentage of crimes are violent or anti-social. It is also true that such crime is not prevented by prisons. The system we live in encourages competition, power relationships and self-interest. This system is also anti-social; while it remains intact there will always be violence. Calling the shoplifter, the person on the picket line and the rapist all criminals as if there were no difference between them, uses most people’s horror of anti-social violence against the vast majority whose offences are to do with property and resistance.
It should be up to us, in our communities, to deal with anti-social elements in our own ways; we don’t need their so-called justice system to control us in the name of fighting crime.
You’ll rarely see the bosses in court – no matter how many laws they might break or deaths they might cause. The rules are there for their own protection. Even if they do end up in court they can swindle millions and get suspended sentences or let out of prison after a few days. WE GET 25 YEARS.
Just as the class war goes on in our daily lives, it carries on inside prisons, too. Many prisoners resist the prison system – in their own cases, individually, or hundreds together as at Strangeways and throughout prisons in April 1990; fighting back with joy and rage to tear down the walls that surround them. Their battles inspire ours and ours theirs – it’s no coincidence that the Strangeways upsrising followed a day after the Poll Tax riot in Trafalgar Square; a banner on the roof read ‘No Poll Tax Here’.
At any time, any working class person can end up inside. We must support prisoners in their day to day fight for better conditions just as we support strikes and all forms of ongoing struggle. But we know you can’t reform capitalism out of existence: we need a social revolution that will tear down the prisons along with the rest of the framework of repression.