“The Cat’s head began fading away the moment he was gone, and, by the time he had come back with the Duchess, it had entirely disappeared: so the King and the executioner ran wildly up and down looking for it, while the rest of the party went back to the game.”
Extract from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

This essay will analyse a particular set of new social movements (NSMs) characterised by their common origin in British DIY culture (see appendix). These include urban squatters, sound systems, new age travellers and eco-protestors. Particular focus will be given to the latter two. A more suitable description of these groups is found within their shared action tactic of the temporary autonomous space (see appendix-TAZ). They will be more accurately understood as different (rather than new) political (rather than social) moments (rather than movements), or DPMs. The analysis is undertaken with reference to the DPM’s relation to time and space. The temporal factors of relevance include unemployment, and the “unlabour” dimensions of protest. Another temporal factor is the biodegradability of the DPMs and the unappreciated necessity of this tactic. This relates to the perception of success/failure and leads to a new conception of the aims of the independent movements. The divergent groups are united by their relation to the spatial control/liberation matrix. The criminalization of trespass in the early 1990s serves to illustrate the government’s understanding of the essence of the DPMs over and above the sociological understanding of their nature. It will be argued that they seek (and are better positioned to seek) relatively limited liberations of particular public spaces rather than long-term inclusivity within, or control over, the state apparatus.

New? Social? Movements?

There are several things to consider with respect to the nature of the new social movements. Initially, are they new? Secondly, are they social? Thirdly, are they movements? Or, to put it another way, are the new social movements actually new social movements?

New?

The neoteric label was originally employed to describe the radical student protest culture of the 1960s and 1970s (see Appendix). Despite being ostensibly socialist (e.g. Lumley 1990), these campaigns were viewed as being fundamentally different from the previous class-based labour movements. An essential feature of their newness is that they were supposedly socio-cultural, rather than political (Tourraine, pg 80, Melucci, in Scott, 1992, pg 145). Structuralist theoreticians assert that the “new” movements are the product of a “new” society, one that is fundamentally different - the “post-industrial” (Scott, 1992, pg 141).

These critiques simultaneously retreat from Marx (Wall, pg 38, Boggs, 248) whilst bemoaning the revolutionary capacity of the NSMs (Scott, pg 66, 1990) . The workers movement is viewed as seeking a classic revolutionary seizure of power, especially of the means of production, whereas the NSMs are said to be merely seeking an extension of civil society (Scott, 1992, pg 142) and citizenship (Foweraker, pg 114). Boggs asserts that they have neither the “organisational or strategic presence” required to carry out large scale social change (Boggs, 247). Whilst these notions seem to be pointing in the direction of assumptions about the goals of the movements, they reveal the author’s failure to “find” the movements. Post/neo Marxists such as Boggs are looking for an almost human presence that does not exist. In fact, it is the lack of presence that defines and characterises the forces that have been labelled as NSMs. They are the embodiments of collective action, rather than an empirical entity (Melucci, pg 70-3). They are more reliably described as “clusters of performance”, rather than coherent groups (Tilly, in Giugni et al, pg 256). Lenses designed for the analysis of class struggle have always slid away from them, and they have been discarded as unworthy of further social theory (e.g. Soctt 1990).

These analyses tend to miss the labour (or, preferably, “unlabour”) forces at the heart of the NSMs. Macro level factors, such as unemployment, play an essential role in their construction, meaning, preservation and disappearance (eg Lumley, pg 51). Although initially identified as student movements, they have come to incorporate potentially any young person with little money and a lot of time on their hands. High unemployment levels are at the heart of the DIY culture. The noting of unlabour origins marks a severe break with post-materialist theories that link NSMs to rising levels of prosperity (Hetherington , pg 104, 106)) and, although it is refreshing to get away from the middle-class-dropouts cliché, it hopefully does not lead us full circle back to a simplistic depravation equals unrest formula. By highlighting the factor of unemployment, NSMs can be understood as the products of similar forces that helped to shape the earlier labour movements.

DIY subcultures, such as the new age travellers, prefer to define themselves in terms of appropriated ethnicity instead of class. Their social basis is generally lower middle class (LMC- Hetherington pg 108). Factors such as high unemployment prevented many young people from replicating their parents experiences as members of this class. The limited entry that was available was subject to a high price. The assurance of a surplus labour force and the demise of union power renders all power to the employers (Lumley, pg 21). As in Lumley’s Italy, in such a time there is tremendous pressure on employees to conform. The price of this conformity was frequently too high. Furthermore, the LMCs have a characteristically low class consciousness. Furthermore, they are suburban, which in essence means the absence of locality, no-space (ibid, pg 110). These conditions inevitably preclude a rejection and a contestation, but it is a contestation over no-time and no-space and it is to be located on grounds other than class.

The grounds of rejection are often couched in terms of a cultural quest for ethnicity. Certain early American colonists who “went native” have been theorised as examples of a deliberate rejection of repressive civilisation (Bey, pg 11). Their movement entailed both a spatial relocation (the wilderness) and a temporal shift (into the past, away from the industrial age). The same movement is apparent in the new age traveller encampment. The rejection of LMC value system and materials entails a relocation of self-identification away from class and into the realm of ethnicity- be it Celtic, Amerindian, Gypsy, Irish Tinker, Circus-folk etc (Hetherington, pg 99). The traveller’s anti-biological ethnic appropriation is symptomatic of the general distaste for socialist metanarratives among the DPMs. The rejection of class implicates a rejection of the concept of class itself. The same rule applies with the rejection of society and thus the absence of an apparent revolutionary hunger for the mechanisms of social control. As Bey, spitting Baudrillard, writes, “Why bother to confront a power which is mere simulation?” (Bey, pg 16).

As a final brief note against the dichotomy implied by the neoteric tag, it is worth making the following points. Firstly there is a historical coexistence between the labour movement and environmental concerns (Wall, pg 17-19). Secondly, there is no automatic truth in presupposing their antagonisms. Cunningham details a range of eco/socialist agreements on agenda and asserts that the “environment vs. labour” conflict is a product of capitalist hegemony (Cunningham, pg 48, 51, 71). Thirdly, the post-industrial thesis negates the possibility of environmental protests in other societies (contradicted by Szabo’s Hungarian example- Scott, 1992, 175). The point to conclude is that there are differences between the classically understood workers movement and the NSMs, but these differences concern the word “movement” rather than the word “new”.

Social?

This section is intended to argue for the political nature of the NSMs. Melucci asserts that NSMs are “pre-political” in that they are culturally formed by an everyday production rather than pre-existing political conditions (Melucci, in Scott, 1992, pg 162). They are also said to be “meta-political” in that their demands cannot be met by conventional parliamentary politics and in that they are constituted by factors that transcend class based politics such as the environment, which affects people indiscriminately (Melucci, pg 97). This denies the existence of any true political content to the NSMs. The manifestation of Green parties is an obvious rejoinder. Furthermore, if you are to include the women’s movement within the category, these accusations can be completely dismantled. Feminism has clearly addressed both power inequalities and conventional party politics.

A greater misconception is the assumption of the universality of the effects of environmental degradation. To say that there is no class/political content to the environmental concerns is to assume an agenda based solely on futurist global environment predictions (e.g. the “global” in global warming). However, many eco-protests were concerned with more localised effects. For example, the Union Carbide accident of 1984 was first and foremost an environmental disaster (Klein, pg 336). Such environmental disasters initially and primarily affect the poor, and it is exactly their poverty which puts them on the front line of such events . From floods to famines, there is an economic and therefore power-related factor which mediates both occurrence and survival.

Politics does not just mean group-articulation in class terms or seeking to control the state. Social movements are political movements. The daily cultural production of the movement falls neatly into Aristotle’s definition of the political as “activities by which a way of life is constituted and maintained” (Magnusson, 292). If a simpler definition of politics is required, then we can describe it as the conflict for control of particular spaces and times. The fact that the DPMs seek to liberate, rather than autocratically control particular space/times, does not make them any less political. This point returns to Bey’s comment on the futility of confronting a power that is ultimately a simulation (Bey, 16), and, this time spitting Barthes, the irrelevance of voting or conventional political participation when you have tired of the spectacle (ibid, pg 17).

Movements?

The basic problematising of this aspect necessitates an analysis of the duration of a movement and the categories of success and failure.

Talcot Parson’s considerations for structural strains as causative of political opportunity, and the relative conduciveness of different systems with respect to protest, provide the basis for a sizeable amount of recent theorising of the more macro based factors in NSMs life cycles (e.g. Eyerman et al). Eisinger’s development of the political opportunity structure has been applied to tease out the conditions of emergence and disappearance/inclusion of green movements around the world (Wall, 116). Put simply, it refers to the relative openness or closure of political systems to the demands and agendas of protest movements, and the relative implications that this can have for, as an example, British parliamentary closure to green politics and the subsequent emergence of green protest politics (ibid). Tarrow’s introduction of RMT cost/benefit terms to the theory (see Appendix) widens the scope into the social actor perspectives, with interesting strategic conclusions about the relative costs of participation (Wall, pg 93). This cross-pollination also breaks up the theoretical structuralist/social actor dichotomy.

The parliamentary system of the Netherlands has remained unusually open to the demands of green protest (Wall, pg 189). There has been a great deal of structural inclusion, open dialogue and absorption of the protest agenda (ibid). For many theorists, this is an example of a successful movement (e.g. Eyerman et al, “success equals quick assimilation”, Eyerman, pg 4). Rucht equates this kind of agenda-setting with success (Rucht, in Giugni et al pg 205, 209). Similarly, Lumley denotes failure in the relative lack of political inclusion in Italy (Lumley, pg 102). However, according to the terms of certain eco-activists, the Netherlands represents a complete failure. The rapid political incorporation destroys the construction of a grassroots green movement (Wall, 189) and is better understood as a domestication of radicalism (Tarrow, pg 8). In the UK in the late 1980s, protest networks such as Friends of the Earth (FoE) became domesticated pressure groups within the political system. In the early days of the Twyford Down protest camps (see appendix), FoE were served with an injunction that prohibited them from returning to the site (Wall, pg 67). Due to their new existence as a recognised organisation, they were unable to participate any further without encountering prohibitive costs. Where the organised and recognised failed, the disorganised and unrecognised were able to succeed.

An understanding of success/failure judgements and the strategic relations between the powers indicates the concept of what is and what is not a movement. The best concept utilised, so far, for operationalising them, is that of the “biodegradable network” (Melucci, 229).

As the protestors took over Claremont Road, the eco activist group Earth First! (see appendix) dissolved into the wider anti-roads movement and its core “completely fell apart” (Wall, pg 88). At the peak of the anti-roads movement, the government was forced to abandon it’s road building programme and yet, at this point of apparent success, the anti-roads movement itself dissolved (Wall, pg 89). Many talk about the general failure of NSMs to sustain themselves, and EF! activists certainly saw their demise as a failure (Wall, pg 88-92). There was an apparent failure to influence policy, a failure to halt environmental devastation (Rucht, in Giugni et al pg 205) and, of course, the failure of each individual protest to block particular developments such as Twyford, Newbury and the M11 extension (see appendix). These “failures” echo Lumley’s sigh about the merely “tactical” victories of Italian student politics (Lumley, pg 102).

These notions of failure do not fully take into account the strategic necessity, the nature, nor desirability, of the biodegradable network. Within the wider movement, individual organisations can come and go without wider detriment- the social movement is bigger than the organisations it encloses (Scott, pg 161). Further to this, the general protest culture is wider than the NSMs that it encloses, and individual movements may also come and go without consequence. The short-lived nature of individual movements does not reveal their lack of significance (Tarrow, pg 8). Disappearance is not a symbol of failure but of the success of the DPMs and of the fact that actions shoehorned into the category of a “movement” are in fact temporary activities, signifiers of a deeper “unpresence”. The failure to block a particular road is not a failure at all. This reveals to us that we must extend our categories further. The Twyford Downs campaign was not an attempt to lay siege to the British government, or to a particular bypass but to the legitimacy of road building (Wall, pg 65) and, thus, to the legitimacy of space.

Space

If politics has been characterised as concerning control, then it would be more thorough to speak of the control of particular space and particular time, of control over the uses and concepts of space and of time, and the relevance to social movements. The buzzword-concept of the NSM’s desire for the extension of civil society (Scott, 1992, pg 142) is partially extended by Melucci’s notion of the search for intermediate public spaces within civil society (Melucci, pg 227). For Melucci, these public spaces would enable the movements to more fully participate in their “double existence” of being, on the one hand, submerged/invisible networks and, on the other, of being temporarily visible mobilisations (Melucci, pg 228). Here, he appears close to a satisfactory understanding of biodegradation, but is forced away by a few odd assumptions that require problematising. In the first place, he fails to fully outline the relationship between the occurrences in his dichotomy. Does the submerged/invisible network produce the occasionally visible mobilisation, is it the other way around, or do they produce each other in a bio feedback loop? Secondly, he admits that the “invisible, submerged network” perspective is created by the unique position of the political/professional standpoint (Scott 1992, pg 162). Therefore, it does not necessarily exist “on the ground” or seen from below, it’s just that those in an elevated or powerful position are ignorant of its existence as a banal formation in between its appearance as a temporary/extraordinary formation. The “invisibility”, then, of the banal or everyday network depends exclusively on the absence of strong public spaces. To say that the goal of the NSM is to achieve this contradictory position is not as appealing as it may have first appeared. Given the current state of play, a strengthening of public spaces (i.e. a general freeing-up of public institutions such as the media or the universities) sounds exactly like the type of assimilation which would equal the death, rather than the “victory” of the DPMs . Although EF! activists may dream of Ecotopia, the real goal of the NSM, in fact the only tangible truth of the NSM, lies exactly in the strategic, temporary and occasionally visible moments, of and for themselves.

The campaign against the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 brought a number of different actors together. The Act criminalised trespass. This made many forms of political demonstrations illegal, giving police greater power to shut down and prosecute free parties and giving landlords a faster process to evict squatters. The Act also repealed the 1967 caravans act, which was to have an effect on local council’s responsibilities and attitudes towards new age travellers. It was drafted in response to a largely contrived, media-led, outcry against ravers and travellers and presented as a final solution to the enemy within. If it was perceived by the new-formed coalitions as a personal attack, then its effect was as intended.

While social theory continued to treat them as separate movements or deviant subcultures, the government had already identified them as one larger, more diverse group, or, rather, one group of activities. The criminalising of trespass reveals their understanding of the nature of these activities. What urban squatters, free party sound systems, travellers and eco protest camps share in common is the active and recurrent “reclamation”/liberation of space bounded by temporal considerations- the freeing of specific space/time. The travellers transform fields into living spaces and seasonal festival sites. Squatters transform dereliction into domesticity. Sound systems transform disused warehouses into free party zones. Earth warriors transform building sites into battle/peace encampments and spaces of protest etc. This creation of autonomous and temporary public spaces (Eyerman et al, pg 4) is reminiscent of Gerald Winstanley digging into St. Georges’ Hill in 1649 (Berens 34-51), of the liminal phase of ritual activity, of the birth of a carnival or brief post-war utopias. If the NSMs are really clusters of performances instead of coherent groups (Tilly, in Giugni et al, pg 256) then this is the central performance, the main act. It is the activity that links Claremont Road to Castlemorton (see appendix), the meshing of urban reclamation, peace camps, party and protest. Redefining trespass as a criminal activity, as opposed to a mere civil offence, is a direct hit. The salvo was complemented by welfare reforms- initially the Job Seekers Allowance and, under New Labour, the New Deal (Wall, 189). As mentioned above, these NSMS, or groups of activities, are produced to a large extent by unlabour factors, and depend on the physical availability and mobility (a fortnight at a time) of the unemployed youth. Under the New Deal, unemployment levels began to drop almost overnight. What is seldom mentioned is that out of the 557,300 people signed onto New Deal, twenty nine percent disappeared entirely from the books (DFEE figures ). They did not take up taxable, National Insurance Number jobs, nor were they relocated onto schemes. They did not all leave the country en masse, although this is what a large amount of travellers were forced to do to survive (Hetherington pg 128, 129, 161). They simply stopped signing on, took their names from the paperwork and vanished from sight. First, the removal of free space, and then the removal of free time. Only visible through temporary mobilisations (Melucci, pg 228), the various actors are seen to vanish. This is not simply a defeat. It could be argued as a strategic withdrawal into the wilderness, outside of modern space/time, as a realisation of Bey’s appeal to “psychic nomadism”, of always occupying an autonomous zone (Bey, 14).

A Culture of Movements.

At this point, it seems pertinent to assert the reasons for considering these divergent groups as one set of activities, rather than breaking them down into their constituent parts. Before commencing with this justification, it is worth pre-empting the standard charges. Namely, anthropologists are shy of any non-indigenous systems of classification. The accusation of presuming that a group is “a bounded and homogenous entity” is a common weapon. The previous concepts of the individual movements or subcultures (such as “new age traveller” or “raver”) are, arguably, open to this charge. Some internal policing does occur- e.g. tensions and accusations of incompatible difference between crusties and travellers (Hetherington, pg 58), or between eco-warriors and green protestors (Wall, pg 56), but this is more the result of individual personality clashes than of genuine boundaries. Personal issues such as drug dependency are often the source of such conflicts, for example dope smoking travellers against heroin addicts on site (eg Hetherington, pg 61). The possibility of movement between groups and of being a “member” of more than one is a characteristic factor of the DPMs. Shifting the locus of definition to a general set of shared activities (the temporary autonomous space) rather than a “group identification”, prioritises the non-bounded heterogeneous aspects.

In the context of the “old versus new” dichotomy, Wall blames the post-structuralist trend that privileges discontinuities over continuities, for clouding the waters (Wall, pg 38). Such analytical tools are of great use when applied to the correct areas but are less suitable when discussing that which is characterised by its spatial and temporal fragmentation (Tilly, pg 310). For example, theories based on membership (such as the difference between the organised/disorganised member or the collapse of the organisation/movement- Giugni et al, pg 270) apply a misplaced analysis. The NSMs do not have a union-style membership structure. In many ways they are similar to the modern night clubs, which are generally a member’s based club in name only. NSM “membership” is based on participation (e.g. Lumley- violence as solidarity test, pg 69), and, once action ceases, the actors cease to be activists and the movement disappears. It is not a spectacle to be dissected in order to reveal its levels of mystification, nor is it a cohesive object in anything but the analytical category attached to it. Here Rucht’s description of the NSMs as “loosely coupled networks” becomes useful- the NSMs are just not particularly structured (Scott, 1992, pg 165). In this respect, it is arguable that an analysis of continuities is more readily applicable than an emphasis of discontinuities. The operational continuity is the temporary autonomous space (after Bey). This permits the analysis of several movements within the same framework for the purpose of discussing the successful action of biodegradation and re-theorising the diverse movements as a radical culture of disappearance.

Radical Culture of Disappearance.

Hetherington describes a continuity between the road protest camps and earlier peace camps (such as Greenham) as being “spaces of resistance expressed through a sense of reclaiming” (Hetherington, pg 118). The reclaimative aspect, the taking-back of space, is a common thread among the various campaigns and activities of DIY culture. For some it harks back to the Diggers and their plans to restore Creation to its former condition (Berens, pg 37). If you include contemporary folk band The Levellers, or Emmet Grogan’s contemporary Diggers, you have a variety of groups who all seem to be reaching into the past for authenticity (Hinckle, in Rush et al, pg 213). In No Logo, Klein devotes an entire chapter to “No Space”, in which she describes spontaneous illegal street parties as an aggressive reclamation of space from the corporate world (Klein, pg 81).

The much-used term of reclamation indicates a prior possession, claim or control of space displaced by time. On the surface (and in the propaganda material) what has been lost is the public space. Whether it has been lost to cars, concrete or corporations depends largely upon the critical orientation of the group or event in question. The arbitrary nature of these critical orientations is revealed rather amusingly in Wall’s note that the main drive towards an anti-roads campaign in the early days of Earth First! was due to the influence of Karen Noble, an activist who was attractive, affluent and also particularly anti-roads (Wall, pg 62). Wall’s critical realist perspective allows him to highlight the strategic targeting of green groups around “points at which concerns can accumulate” (Wall, pg 132). In other words, it was easier to protest roads than the ozone layer because, well, you can’t have build a protest camp on a hole in the sky and, even if you could, where would you put the tunnels? To avoid becoming lost in the (more explicitly) political reasons for various critical orientations, it seems fair to momentarily consider the free parties and Hetherington’s displaced LMCs. One could advance an argument that squatting a disused warehouse and holding hedonistic raves inside of it is the ultimate expression of post-industrialism and that the participants are reclaiming a specific labour-space which has been lost to them through progressive economic exclusion. However this would obscure the largely situational and opportunistic nature of the free party scene, which is rarely given to selecting symbolic locations. That kind of point is better made by RTS or the peace camps. What is being reclaimed is the autonomy of those particular spaces. They are dead zones within the urban landscape, pointlessly boarded and hoarded away from any free use. The manipulation of urban dereliction is more a consequence of the practice of pirate economics, one of Bey’s identifying factors of the RCD (Bey, pg 15). Pirate economics involves living off the surplus of overproduction (ibid), but it also involves a particular criminal niche that includes breaking and entering for the purposes other than burglary (as well as the petty trade in narcotics- Hetherington, pg 51).

According to Klein, RTS is not about escapist hippy ideals of discovering freedom from the modern world mindset on the road, it is about finding freedom here and now (Klein, pg 317). Yet the act of liberating a space for a limited time, frees the space itself from the here and now, from this controlled time and this controlled space. Environmental protestors, in the instance of protest, live in another time and space from society (Magnusson, pg 76). Thus, the talk of reclamation is, generally, just talk.

Before concluding, it is worth hinting at the collective cultural possession of the DPMs through the lens of the Bey’s Radical Culture of Dissapearance. Bey alludes to the popularity of colourful military uniforms and the shared view of music as a source of revolutionary social change (Bey, 15). While these are both entertaining and general, it would entail too much effort to try to defend their universality. He is closer to safety when he outlines their elements of refusal- they are said to be against schooling, against work, against Church, against “home”, against family and, most significantly, against voting (Bey 17). That this is not a factor of the influence of anarchism but of healthy postmodern apathy (boredom with the spectacle) reveals the slippery heterogeneity of associated values. The manifestation of the individual actors as a collective group within the activity of the autonomous time/space reveals not only the postulation of a free/empty “alternative” but an apathetic (i.e. nonchalant, unspecific, non-dynamically-targetted) rejection of other alternatives. Hirschman’s notion of a radical discontent with rational consumerism (in Foweraker, pg 12) succeeds on some levels but fails in proposing an articulated and universal level of active, self-aware disenchantment. While it is not the intention to cast them as essentially nihilistic or negatory, there is an attraction in, for example, Klein’s chapter headings- No Space, No Choice, No Jobs, No Logo. Williams defines the LMCs as less of a political/economic class and more of a “structure of feeling” (in Hetherington, pg 108). We might then characterise the DPMs (in a large part the lost heirs of the LMCs and the rejecters of the LMC cultureless culture) as an “unstructure of anti-feeling”, their cultural modes being defined by their opposition, located within their disappearance, like the vanishing smile of the Cheshire Cat.

Conclusion.

The analytic category of new social movement is a misleading tag bound up with irrelevant concerns for ideology and permanent change in social power. It misses the action tactic of the temporary autonomous space as the true location of meaning and existence. The activities characterised as NSMs are better understood as a different type of event rather than as a new version of an old event. They are explicitly political, being as they exist at the moment of the seizure and liberation of enemy territory, rather than in the everyday cultural production of the actors that effect the liberation and are, in turn, liberated for a
brief time. They are ante-social, rather than social, in that they are located outside of society and in that they involve an attempt at the pre-social “wilderness”, defining themselves in native/ethnic terms over class terms. As stated in a footnote above, this is fertile ground for possible future research. They cannot be correctly considered as a movement because their success is achieved through disappearance and is inherently biodegradable. The common notion of a political movement implies long-term aspirations and the ultimate goal of inclusion or revolution. With the groups and events under consideration, it is possible to observe a series of moments, rather than movements. It is in these moments that meaning is found and, thus, culture produced.

The “unlabour” factors relate the DPMs to older movements, but they are distinct in their replacement of class with ethnicity. The DPMs are also more convincingly understood as a cluster of specific performances (the temporary liberation of space) than as a coherent social group. When various actors begin to articulate themselves as individual groups within the wider culture they leave themselves open to one of two options. The first is inclusion within the policy making apparatus (as in the case of the Netherlands) that leads to a crippling of their ability to exercise direct action techniques (as in the case of FoE). The second option is strategic disappearance into the wilderness, either literally or figuratively. The DPMs can be readily theorised at the level of this disappearance-strategy and of the shared tactic of trespass. This is because it is a shared performance amongst the various smaller networks and also because it is the level on which they were outlawed. The act of large-scale disappearance in the wake of the Criminal Justice Act and the New Deal should not be viewed as a failure. The DPMs are prone to disappearance at the point of successful “tactical victories” as much as successful “tactical bombings”. Thus, they are seen to only exist truly in the temporary mobilisation of the TAZ (see appendix). Another interesting aspect for possible future research could be the ritual structure of the TAZ or an analysis of TAZs as a phase of wider social liminality.

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Appendix

NSM- New Social Movement. Encompasses the earlier SPC, as well as later campaigns such as the peace movement, eco-protest, RTS and, occasionally, the women’s movement.

DIY culture- a loose term used to indicate a variety of different scenes- the squatters (Melucci’s urban autonomists), the sound systems (Jamaican style rave culture), so-called new age travellers, peace camps, eco-warriors and so on. Similar to the NSM concept in that it indicates an overlapping set of activities, but located specifically to the post-punk subcultures of the UK. There is a distinctly Blue Peter kind of rainy-day 1001 Things to Make and Do edge to these activities, a definite sense of making your own entertainment but not asking permission first.

SPC- Radical Student Protest Culture. 1960s and 1970s, particularly Europe and America, often orientated towards a criticism of the conflict in Vietnam. Highlights include the Paris uprising and Tariq Ali’s New Left attempt to storm the American embassy in London. Frequently socialist, occasionally Maoist, ideology.

TAZ- Temporary Autonomous Zone. The TAZ is a guerrilla operation that liberates an area of space and/or time and then dissolves before it can be crushed (Bey, 3) like the Cheshire Cat fading away before his executioner.

DPMs- Different Political Moments.
RCD- Radical Culture of Disappearance.
LMC- Lower Middle Class
RMT-Resource Mobilisation Theory. A cost-benefits analysis of people’s motivations and group behaviour.

EF!- Earth First! are/were a militant environmental protest group that specialised in non-violent direct action.
RTS- Reclaim the Streets is often regarded as having been recently formed by a clandestine group of organisers. In fact the first RTS action took place in London in 1971, with another successful event two years later (Wall, pg 28). Similarly, the first Stop the City anti-capitalist event took place in 1983 (ibid). Although Wall claims RTS for Earth First!, this is a tenuous heritage. RTS is more commonly understood as the event itself, rather than its (dis)organisers. It involves a combination of a rave, complete with sound systems etc, and a non-violent direct action in the style of Critical Mass.

Twyford Downs (1992-3), Newbury (1995-6), M11/Claremont Road (1993-4)- The sites of anti-road protest camps to block motorway extensions and bypasses

Castlemorton (1992)- “Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel/ Or just 20,000 people standing in a field”- lyrics from “Sorted for Es and Whizz” by Pulp.

 

Copyright 2005 Steve Cake.