Spontaneity or organisation eter Buckman use, suddenly, things are beginning to admiration for their bravery in the South -; because, now, a radical movement is for which, incidentally, not a single group or and running; because, finally, our demonstration of solidarity was organised ration is doing its thing invincibly, the in our continent - was tempered by rays of protesting are discredited. Talk patronising view of their apparent naivety. rogrammes or 'planning' or "strategy' We were victims of the Top Nation propaandoned, as old-fashioned dogma, in ganda: we didn't get what they had to ir of tactics. We prove ourselves in protest about because we thought we were ontations with the forces of law and the ones in trouble. And we were dispirited • in a series of demonstrations that are by our own failures of protest, our theorists onger seen as single-issue campaigns divorced from our demonstrators as our really, was CND), but as part of a demonstrators were divorced from the rest ting campaign against the system of the community. Our most serious failure and all it stands for. was not in realising the in-built momentum this is new, in our time at least. We all all the issues of American protest had mber the Aldermaston marches and towards the creation of a militant radical world-wide campaigns against nuclear movement. We thought we had all the ons, and while we don't deride them, Ideology, and that we were only waiting for style owes nothing to them. We have the issues to make themselves manifest; the too much political manipulation, Americans had all the issues, and their ago as well as Westminster, in Moscow Ideology was slowly emerging from them. ell as Bonn, to greet with anything but All this history is necessary to show that, ion the notion that the people have a in my view, the European, or certainly the or to listen seriously to those who talk English, equivalent of the New Left made it the politics of persuasion. We know two mistakes which have seriously bedevilled bout power, and what we are trying to its activities: first, we treated Vietnam as a 3 to use our power most effectively to single issue, second, a much more recent sh repression and replace it with orga- thing, we enthusiastically adopted lions which will allow everyone spontaneity thing without realising that the se their own authority. background from which it came had been e have developed all this with great building up to it for years - and, moreover, lenness, and its inspiration was largely is going beyond it. rican. Those of us who had marched The bitter experience and defeats had been behind the banners, who had street-fighting in America, or elsewhere, down algar tains, didn't do so because we had any Square lions and ended up from smiling Theida at their the not of confrontation. in terms of 'programmes has not discredited course discredited the The refusal of the Left to talk ningful action. We had watched Gaits- we were persuading to socialism, which is more than a programme, being a way of life. fighting and fighting again in 1960 and induced by the militancy of the last year or knew Ile come to power and Kennedy sponsor he would win. We watched de so has not faded, and though we owe little to the past, when so much was said and so Bay of Pigs invasion and the Social- little achieved, the ocratic parties of Europe join in ruling and sit-ins did not spring fully formed from itions and we knew we were losing. But anyone's head. To talk as if nothing existed marched because there was nothing else beyond the immediate action is to give in lo, because we thought it was building to the bewilderment we all feel at the way eeling because. we were desperate. things work, and ut while all this was going on America amongst the campuses and the blacks stirring. We were exercised about vastly exciting; on the other hand, all rpeville: all over the American South talk in England and America about carrying' ns were organised in lunch counters the struggle to the working-class, refused to serve blacks. We muttered nowhere near as far as the French or the ut Cuba while Americans formed Fair / for Cuba Committees and demonstrated long the alliance will last. So many people ently about the breaking-off of diplomatic put all their faith in an action that will reveal tions. SDS and SNCC were formed as the next step. That's fine: we wouldn't be in vist organisations; student participation a position to reassess what is happening If Southern voter-registration drives taking action hadn't broken the ties of the eased despite intimidation and murder, straitiacket we were in. And of course we it did in increasingly militant demonstra- don't want "programmes' is for peace, Cuba, and in 1964, against but the offer of a different set of dogmas. growing US involvement in Vietnam. But why is American confrontation already i vear too the Free Speech Movement subtly different to what it was in the spring, , tounded in Berkeley - and at last an if not because their experience is moving e was found in which we all felt involved. them on? it this stace we in Europe relled too The blacks staved away from ch on our historv. We treated Vietnam SDS advised its members to do the same. he same way as CND had treated nuclear The ghettoes did not erupt the way everyone armament as a single-issue campaign had predicted. The radicals campuses are feeling out the way they can persuasion. We did not realise how olved the Americans were in a qualitative be most effective, samination Our happening need never have existed in the HAGe of the frustration and bitterness that follows a series of defeats. Ano waen our comes to force, we haven't got it. We haven't explored the sources of our real strength -the working class, yes, of course - • because we've been too put off by the fact that some of them march for Enoch vote for Wallace. We've been trying to persuade them of something they're not interested in, and when that failed we all set about doing our thing, out of despair.
Spontaneity has revolutionised the climate of protest. Yet it must be remembered that it is a climate that thrives only on success: failure will poison it. Also, as long as it remains on the level of spontaneity only. it will merely lurch merrily from incident to incident without capitalising on the momentum it could build up. American experience shown that any radical movement contains Its own dynamic: it is no longer necessary to suffer defeat after defeat because you think it might build an Illusory faith that the system will collapse. None of this excluded the painful need for confrontations. But we cannot leave it at the that. We cannot go home after the 27th with La bloody head and forget about it till next time. Vietnam, for Britain. only beginning, but it must not remain the only focus for protest. Does It strike no one as of odd that two of the most radical activities -has those of the underground, and those of the art colleges - are anti-political? What about notion our teachers, shop-stewards, civil servnts, nurses? Don't they have something to protest about?
Though the euphoria To enforce spontaneity is as bad as enforcing a worse programme. We must remember that the movement draws its energy from the existence of real grievances ideas of street-battles that affect a majority of the people. Vietnam is only one of them, and for the English it is more of a dreadful symbol than a real experience. International solidarity demands that we protest as violently as we are able fail. What's happening over British complicity in the American repression. But we have our own issues, as the real. as pressing. We will maybe have do a lot more listening before they become it's got obvious to us. But we cannot claim to act spontaneously on our own problems when we are inspired from abroad and inhibited by our own dismal past. The Americans laid the groundwork. The Europeans have built the first floor. We have not yet reached the stage when we can indulge in free to put that are nothing happy stage - long ago reached in America when those we respect combine theory and practice. We have to act, but we have also to read and think and articulate more, because the tate of our comrades everywhere proves that we cannot afford to tail. Chicago. without theory as the overly dogconscious action; theory without action will matin Ernest Mandel put it, will not be on than not scientiic theorv.
because it Is recognised that the euphoria that follows a successful (14th October 1968) Dear John So they've done you after all. I didn't think they ever would. It's a nasty experience, and I offer you my sympathy, for what it's worthe But I hope you won't be depressed about it. In fact I hope this experience will help you understand certain things that you seemed a bit blind to before. (That sounds patronising But I can't think how else to put it...)
Above all: perhaps now you'll see what it is you're (we're) up against. Not nasty people Not even neurosis, or spiritual undernourishment. What we're confronted with is a repressive, vicious, authoritarian system. A system wadch is inhuman and immoral, because it deprives 99% of humanity of the right to live their lives their ow way. A system which will screw you if you step out of line and behave just a tiny bit differently from the way those in pover want.
Such a system - such a society - is so racked by contradiction and tension and unhappiness that all relationships within it are poisoned. You know this. You know, from your oxperience, how little control over their lives working-class people are permitted to have. You know what a sick, evil, end brutal.ising business it is to be a"success" in this kind of rat-race. How can love and kindness between human-beings grow in such a society? It cnn't. Don't you see that now? The system has got to be changed before people can live the full, loving lives that you have said you want.
Now do you see what was wrong with your record "Revolution"? That record was no more revolutionary than Irs. Dale's Diary. In order to change the world we've got to understand what's wrong with the world. And then -destroy it. Ruthlessly. This is not cruelty or madness. It is one of the most passionate Forms of love. Because what we're fighting is sufforing, oppression, humiliation - the inmense toll of unhappiness caused by capitalism. And any "love" which does not pit itself arainat these things is sloppy and irrelevant.
There is no such thing as a polite revolution. That doesn't mean that violence is alweys the right way, or even that you should necessaroly turn up on the next demonstration. (There are other ways of challenging the syater. But it does mean understanding that privileged will do almost anything - will murder and torture and destroy, will foster morance and apathy and selfishness at home and l burn children abroad - rather than hand over their power.
What will you do when Apple is as big as Marks and Spencers, and one day its emplotees decide to take it over and run it for themselves? Will you lot them get on with it? or will you call in the police - because you are a business-men, and Business-len Must Protect Their Interests?
One last thing. You've written some marvel!cus, honest, becutiful musio. (And it's an indication of the wierd effect capite isn has had on you that you felt it was necessary to pretend that in doing so you were only conning people.) But recently your music has lost its bite. At a time when the music of the Stones has been getting stronger and stronger, Why? Because we're living in a world that is splitting down the middle. The split is betwen the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless. You can see it here, and in the jungles of Vietnam, and in the mountains of South America, and in the ghettos of the U.S. and in the Universities ell over the world. It's the great drama of the second half of the twentieth century - the battle for human aignity fought by the exploited and the underprivileged of the world. The Stones, helped along a bit by théir experiences with the law, have understood this and they've understood that the life and authenticity: of their music - quite apart from their personal integrity - demanded that they take part in this drama - that they refuse to accept the system that's up our lives. You did it for a bit when you were taking acid - the only time in your career when you stepped outside the cheeky chappy slot the establishment had slid you in to, and the time when your music was at its best. But they didn't bust you (Why not, John?), and the way wes open for you to come to represent not rebellion, or love, or poetry, or nysticism, but Big Business...
But after all, they still hate you, even if you are a company director. They hate you because you act funny and because you're working-class (in origin at least) and you're undisciplined and you weren't in the army and, above all, you've been going out with a foreigner. So now it's happened.
As I said before, don't be too upset about it. In an unjust and corrupt society there is no dishonour in being arrested, and certainly none of us on the left are going to think ony the worse of you for it.
But learn from it, John. Look at the society we're living in, and ask yourself: why? And then - come and join us.
Yours fraternally, John.
in the same way as CND had treated nuclear disarmament - as a single-issue campaign of persuasion. We did, not how nvolved the Americans were in a qualitative re-examination of social values. Our Sheila Rowbotham The ghettoes did not erupt the way everyone had predicted. The radicals on the not be campuses are teeling out the way they can bo most effective, because It is reconsed that the euphoria that follows. a successtul (14th October 1968) Youre fraternally, Tolyi.
----- pull-quotes -----
expression over. the wall paper: first we have up the walls. We have reached the