It is with heavy hearts that the remaining members of Leeds Anarchist Federation have decided to disaffiliate our local group from the Anarchist Federation. It is a decision we have considered for some time, given the affinity we still feel for AFed, its politics, and many of its members. Our experiences within AFed have helped shape our ideas and practice on a very personal level, and will not be forgotten. Nonetheless, we have reached the point where we all felt we had to make a fresh start. At our final meeting, on the 20th of July 2014, the six members in attendance (John, Simon, Matt, Mel, James and Jason) voted unanimously to disaffiliate from AFed and reconstitute ourselves as an independent group. The decision was made after extensive discussion and debate within the group, following the failure of our motions to the final AF Conference in 2013.
We want to be clear that we do not consider this an ideological split. Our core politics have not changed. We are still anarchist communists, internationalists, revolutionaries, and libertarians, committed to fighting oppression and hierarchy in all its forms and ultimately to building a new world in the shell of the old. But for us, the Anarchist Federation itself has ceased to be a useful tool in building the sort of movement we want to see. Whilst many groups continue to do good work in their local areas, the lack of an overall strategy, of a framework for working together at the federal level, leaves us feeling that in the end the organisation as a whole isn’t suited to our needs as revolutionaries. We’ve been left feeling that our involvement in AFed increasingly detracts from our day to day struggles and organising rather than moving them foreword. As such, we have chosen to part ways.
We hope that this will not be seen as an attack on the Anarchist Federation or its membership. We still admire and respect our friends and comrades within AFed. We hope we can maintain friendly relations with other local groups, and want to continue cooperating towards our common goals. It’s just that at this point, the formal links we share through AFed do little to advance our collective interests as workers or as revolutionaries. If anything, they increasingly feel like a burden. It is in the spirit of free association, therefore, that we have made this decision. We expect that many within the broader organisation will disagree with our choice. We only ask that you respect our freedom, as an autonomous group of autonomous individuals, to make it.
Going foreword, we have decided to continue organising for resistance in Leeds and West Yorkshire, under the banner of Red and Black Leeds. We hope that through RABL we will be able to continue to engage in discussion, debate and common action with the AFed and the broader anarchist movement, whilst developing new strategies and analyses to guide our political practice. The struggle, as always, continues, and we want to continue to support and publicise the many worthwhile projects and initiatives that AFed local groups are currently engaged with, from solidarity networks and community organising to speaking tours and propaganda work. Ultimately we want to help to build a stronger, more united, more outward-looking anarchist movement that can begin to really fight back against the ever-intensifying attacks of the ruling class. We remain,
Yours in comradeship,
R.A.B.L. (formerly Leeds Anarchist Federation)
