Accidental Anarchist Media Evaluation by tpr media consultants

July Coverage 2017

tpr media consultants

Accidental Anarchist Evaluation Media compiled by tpr media

Campaign duration: May to July 2017 TX date: 23 July 2017 (originally 2 July 2017), Storyville, BBC Four Vision tpr media was appointed to provide a targeted media campaign for the BBC Storyville documentary, Accidental Anarchist. The film explores ground-breaking ideas about how society might be transformed and brings them to life through Carne Ross’s personal journey from diplomat to anarchist. It explores the current state of affairs in the world and new forms of participatory democracy, including those found in Rojava, Syria. The campaign aimed to position Accidental Anarchist as an intelligent and engaging documentary and to drive an audience to it as well as generating debate. The total news reach of the campaign was over 13 million the media value was £602k – please see table for more details.

Campaign Objectives • • •

To raise awareness of Accidental Anarchist and drive an audience to the film To position Accidental Anarchist as an intelligent, engaging documentary and to generate debate To reinforce the reputation of its filmmakers

Key coverage tpr targeted traditional media and non-traditional media as well as current affairs outlets with a focus on sharable content. The campaign highlights ranged from a sympathetic double-page feature in the Observer by top writer, Andrew Anthony, to an authored piece by Carne on huckmagazine.com, a global youth magazine exploring radical culture and activism. At the start of the campaign, tpr media placed a scene-setting piece with Huffington Post UK which receives over 1 million visitors per day. This authored piece by Carne entitled ‘Ten Steps to Anarchism’ was designed to counter common misconceptions about anarchism and provide an accessible and informative reference point for the general public and journalists alike. Carne also wrote an inspiring article about anarchism in Rojava, Syria for Vice.com which featured on the website’s home page and was tweeted by the platform four times to its 434k followers. This resulted in a 60-second clip from the film featuring YPJ fighters being viewed nearly 1500 times on YouTube and was also tweeted by YPG main twitter account. Alongside this, tpr media arranged for Carne to record a ‘Viewsnight’ short film, positioning him as a modern thinker alongside the likes of former finance minister for Greece, Yanis Varoufakis, and former neurosurgeon and NHS campaigner, Henry Marsh. Carne’s ‘Viewsnight’ film was broadcast live on Newsnight on 1 August and presenter, Kirsty Wark, said live on air that Accidental Anarchist was available on iPlayer. The video podcast was viewed over 5,000 times on YouTube and was retweeted 466 times and liked by 526 people. Compiled and written by tpr media consultants www.tpr-media.com

August 2017

The documentary also attracted a wide-ranging previews, including ‘Sunday’s Best TV’ in the Guardian and ‘The Critics’ Choice’ in the Sunday Times. It was also featured and retweeted on the left-wing platform The Canary and given four stars by the Daily Mail. Listings magazine coverage ranged from the Radio Times to a feature in Total TV Guide. There were two powerful reviews in the i-newspaper and online (Jeff Robson) and the Guardian (Sam Wollaston) who described the film as “(a) … thoughtful, personal, fascinating, possibly important film.” Hopscotch Film’s John Archer and Clara Glynne wrote a ‘Behind the Scenes’ feature about the making of the documentary for Broadcast magazine. This was a targeted campaign, where individual pieces were pitched and placed strategically. tpr media created tweets around key clips from the film and shared them with media and production contacts

Observations and comments • • •

• • •

The documentary is an ideas-based film which reduced its mainstream appeal - we worked hard to tailor pitches for different outlets. Anarchism – participatory democracy – is widely misunderstood and to promote the film effectively, part of our remit, was to help redefine the term as Carne sees it. We sought out topical news pegs e.g. the first anniversary of the Chilcot Enquiry, to help promote the film and approached the Today Programme, Andrew Marr Show, the Economist and the New Statesman and dozens of political titles and broadcast outlets. The news agenda was dominated by big stories for much of the duration of the campaign, including the General Election and the Grenfell Tower tragedy. The Times comment pages would have taken a piece, for example, had it not been such a busy news week. The Telegraph also seriously considered taking an authored piece, but ultimately felt the subject would not resonate with its readers.

Compiled and written by tpr media consultants www.tpr-media.com

August 2017

Accidental Anarchist Media Analytics Total News Value 602.96k Total News Reach 13.23m

Accidental Anarchist Evaluation

Contents Broadcast Features Reviews Previews

Compiled and written by tpr media consultants www.tpr-media.com

August 2017

Coverage TV • •

Viewsnight on BBC Newsnight BBC World Service, Weekend

Features • • • • • • •

Observer Guardian Huffington Post UK Yahoo Vice Huck Broadcast magazine, Behind the Scenes

Reviews • • • • • • • •

Guardian Guardian.com i Paper Broadcast magazine, Critic’s Choice Total TV Guide The Herald, Scotland The Canary Irish Independent

Previews • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Radio Times TV Times Magazine Guardian Preview Observer Mail on Sunday ‘4 Stars’ The Sunday Times The Times Telegraph The Times, Catch-up Glasgow Sunday Herald Irish Examiner The Herald Scotland Social Media Highlights

Compiled and written by tpr media consultants www.tpr-media.com

August 2017

Accidental Anarchist Broadcast Newsnight/Viewsnight - 1st August 2017

BBC World Service - Weekend 26 August 2017

Accidental Anarchist Features

UK Nationals Client: Source: Date:

TPR Media Yellow News The Observer 09/07/2017

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Coverage is reproduced under license from the NLA, CLA or other copyright owner. No further copying (including the +44 (0)20 7264 4700 printing of digital cuttings) digital reproductions or forwarding is permitted except under license from the NLA, services@KantarMedia.com http://www.nla.co.uk (for newspapers) CLA http://www.cla.co.uk (for books and magazines) or other copyright body. www.KantarMedia.com

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Exdiplomat Carne Ross: the case for anarchism How a highflying diplomat and Middle East adviser lost his faith in western democracy – but put his trust in people power

Unlikely anarchist: Carne Ross, Copenhagen, July 2017. Photograph: Claus Peuckert for the Observer

Andrew Anthony Sunday 9 July 2017 08.30 BST

f you were to play a game of word association with the term “anarchism” what would be the likely responses? Perhaps the anarchy sign, with the capital A over a circle. Black flags. The turnofthecentury bombers immortalised by Joseph

Conrad in The Secret Agent. Or maybe Johnny Rotten singing Anarchy in the UK.

all

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What it would be unlikely to evoke is the image of an English diplomat, a veteran of the Foreign Office and the United Nations, a man schooled in the subtle arts of negotiation and persuasion. But that is the profile of Carne Ross, a former Middle East expert in the UK’s delegation to the UN, who is said to be the inspiration for a character in John le Carré’s novel A Delicate Truth. For Ross, as a new film shows, is now of one of world’s most active proselytisers for the virtues of an anarchist revolution. With anarchism hardly top of the political agenda, that may sound like a limited claim to fame, akin to being the world’s tallest pygmy. In fact, anarchist ideas are taking root everywhere from Grenfell Tower to Rojava, the Kurdrun area of northern Syria. Anarchism as a political outlook is rooted in the notion of direct democracy, a polity in which power moves from the bottom upwards. Many of those protesting at the Grenfell Tower fire argue that it was a symptom of a politics that goes in the other direction, from the uncaring top down to the unheard bottom. Ross not only wants to reverse what he sees as a failed kind of democracy, but believes the crisis of “neoliberalism” has created the conditions in which people are beginning to voice their disapproval of the status quo. “Aberrational political events such as Brexit, Trump and

I felt that the system I’d battled for and believed in wasn’t working

even the rise of Corbyn are functions of this frustration,” he tells me when we meet in a cafe 10 minutes’ walk from Grenfell Tower. The grandson of one of Bletchley Park’s wartime codebreakers, Ross had wanted to be a diplomat ever since he was a boy. One of his motivations, he says, was a desire to escape the English class system. “I wanted to live abroad in a relatively safe way,” he

explains. His accent is now faultlessly demotic, but he says it wasn’t always like that. It’s not just the accent that’s changed. His politics were once firmly grounded in the liberalism of first the SDP and then the Lib Dems. What really altered his way of thinking were two major events: the invasion of Afghanistan and the Iraq war, specifically the role of the Blair government in leading the country into conflict. In Accidental Anarchist, a new documentary that details Ross’s political transformation, the former diplomat speaks of his disillusionment with his job following a visit to the British embassy in Kabul in 2002. When he got back, he says in the film, he had lost his faith in the British project. “I felt that the system I’d battled for and believed in wasn’t working, capitalism, democracy, the western model, whatever you called it.” He took a year’s sabbatical and read about political alternatives. Meanwhile the war in Iraq started, following an active campaign by the Blair government to ensure that Britain took part in the invasion. In the film, Ross is damning of this decision: “They had deliberately misled the public by claiming that Iraq was a threat when it wasn’t and that there were no alternatives to war when there were. To lie to the public and to the servicemen and women you’re sending to war is the gravest of disservices… that’s the worst thing any government can possibly do.” Ross was a friend of the government scientist and weapons expert David Kelly, who took his own life after he was exposed for briefing a journalist about exaggerated claims in the government’s infamous “dodgy dossier” on Iraq’s weapons threat. It was a tragedy that personalised a much greater upheaval that had plunged Iraq into

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murderous turmoil. Ross went on to give evidence that explicitly contradicted the Blair government line in both the Butler and Chilcot inquiries and resigned from his job. His outspoken stand led Le Carré, who had befriended Ross, to say in the acknowledgments of A Delicate Truth that “his example demonstrates the perils of speaking a delicate truth to power”. The perils in Ross’s case were largely that he had to give up his ambition to become an ambassador, but not before taking the senior management exam to prove to himself that he could have made it to the top. “Here’s an egotist’s confession,” he says. “I didn’t want my colleagues to think I’d left because I failed that exam.” He passed on his second attempt. And then set up an NGO called Independent Diplomat, which advised nonstate actors, such as the government of Somaliland and South Sudan, before it gained independence, on how to conduct themselves in international diplomacy.

Sorry This video does not exist.

Watch the trailer for Accidental Anarchist here.

It would be wrong to construe from all this that Ross is a staunch noninterventionist. He loathed Saddam Hussein, but believed there was a better way of removing him than going to war. By contrast he believes the west abandoned Syria to its bloody fate by ignoring democratic forces and allowing Russia and Iran to prop up Assad’s lethal regime. “We worked with the Syrian opposition soon after the revolution with Independent Diplomat,” he says, “and their view has always been that the only way to stop Assad is to hit him militarily. He will only agree to discuss a transition to democracy when he believes himself to be under threat. “People have got very confused about intervention, regime change, humanitarian intervention – all these terms are bandied about. But in all international law and moral law theory, the defence of people getting killed is legitimate, whether it’s in Srebrenica or Bosnia or in Iraq or Syria.” He also supported intervention in Libya because Gaddafi’s tanks were at the gates of Benghazi and a massive war crime was about to be perpetrated. But on these points he is out of step with the majority in “progressive” politics, including Jeremy Corbyn and the leadership of the Labour party.

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“I’ve got respect for Jeremy’s position,” he says. “If you look at the global history of western intervention in the Middle East, it’s pretty disastrous. But that doesn’t mean you reject intervention in defence of people who are subjected to daily violence. This is mass torture and civilians and children being killed indiscriminately every day. And that demands a little bit more thought and detailed analysis of what can be done rather than just wringing your hands and talking about diplomacy, because it’s just not enough.”

Chilcot: Tony Blair was not 'straight with the nation' over Iraq war

Aside from advising the Syrian opposition, Ross has another interest in the country, namely the Kurdish run region of Rojava. Bordered by unfriendly Turkey

on one side, and maniacal Isis on the other, it’s not an easy place to get to or a comfortable one to stay. That Ross makes the journey is testament to his commitment in what’s taking place there. Rojava is run according to what Ross believes are anarchist principles: there are no hierarchies, even in the military, and political decisions are apparently determined by public meetings. The reason for this is down to a man who has been held in a Turkish prison since 1999. Abdullah Öcalan is a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which, ceasefires aside, has been waging a war of independence against Turkey since 1984. Read more

Öcalan used to be a communist but after being imprisoned by the Turks, and initially sentenced to death, he was greatly influenced by the late American anarchist Murray Bookchin, who combined an interest in ecology with libertarian socialism to create something that he called communalism. The imprisoned Kurdish leader drew heavily on Bookchin in developing his own political theory, known as “democratic confederalism”, which was adopted by the PKK in Rojava. There is an obvious irony, of course, in a leader such as Öcalan having the power to institute such a dramatic ideological about turn in a political movement that supposedly rejects topdown decision making. But the Kurds do appear to have brought about a level of participatory politics that goes far beyond a vote every few years. In the film, Ross cites Rojava along with Spanish civil warera Catalonia as shining examples of working anarchism. He also visits a commune in Spain and refers to the Brazilian experiment in the city of Porto Alegre, whose system of participatory budgeting has been praised by no less an authority than the World Bank.

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Carne Ross with members of the women’s militia in Rojava, Syria. The film is dedicated to Vijan, second right, who was killed fighting Isis a few months after this photo was taken. Photograph: courtesy Carne Ross

Nonetheless, the success stories of anarchism are few and far between. Why is that? “Those who have power have a strong interest in retaining it and have done a lot to suppress alternative modes of the economy or of politics. Power is a zero sum. We can’t all be more powerful. If people at the bottom are to be more powerful it means people at the top have to lose power and people don’t like giving up power.” That’s fine, as far as it goes, but it raises several questions. How is it possible to take hold of power without violence (and Ross is opposed to violent change, he believes it’s selfdefeating)? And if you do get power, how do you guard against elites emerging and subverting the process? The answer to the second question, according to Ross and many theorists, is that you ensure the “people” retain power through mass participation. But the problem with that proviso is that, by and large, most people don’t really like sitting around in meetings for hours on end listening to other people’s arguments and complaints. If representative democracy has one overriding advantage, it’s that we appoint other people to sit in the boring meetings we don’t want to attend. That may seem like a facile objection, but it’s surely no coincidence that direct participation of Rojava and Catalonia flourished in wartime, when the narrowed space between life and death lends urgency to the decisionmaking process. “Your point is very serious,” says Ross. “I’ve looked at this question very closely – it’s a serious reservation about anarchist models. But I genuinely believe people are apathetic because they feel there’s no point in participating, that nobody will bother listening to them and decisions are taken by a tiny number in Westminster.” He believes that if people had a say over the future of their local hospital or local school then they would show up, “however boring the meeting, because you really give a shit about it”. Perhaps, but after a while a certain kind of person tends to show up much more than anyone else, the kind that enjoy and flourish in meetings. I tell Ross about my visit to Christiania, the hippy commune founded in Copenhagen that prided itself on its participatory meetings. After a while, only the most dedicated inhabitants who were prepared to spend their Tuesday nights discussing questions of refuse collection and how to deal with alcoholism could be bothered to attend.

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Carne Ross at Marinaleda, Spain, a cooperative municipality that appears in the film Accidental Anarchist. Photograph: Storyville, BBC4

And that’s not to mention the fact that some people – the most articulate – have a natural advantage in getting their opinion across, while others like nothing more than preventing anything they disagree with from happening. Ross is familiar with both tendencies from his time working with the Occupy movement in America. In the first instance he says there are solutions. In Occupy they used what’s called the “reverse stack”, whereby the usual suspects, white men, are placed last in order of speaking and minorities and women go first. That sounds rather a crude system of identification, but Ross believes that over time these distinctions would fade as people got used to the idea that they had the right and power to speak. As for the second: “Whenever you get a public opportunity you always get a contingent of arseholes who show up. That’s what happened at Occupy,” says Ross. Again he thinks this is symptomatic of our current situation rather than reflective of the human condition. “People are so angry now that when they get the opportunity to talk they just rage. But if you continue with the meetings, that begins to stop and you’re left with the people who want to get on and work.” Except that wasn’t his experience in the Occupy movement, where he attempted to set up an alternative bank called the Occupy Money Cooperative. What, I ask, happened to that initiative? “It failed for lots of reasons,” he says, and explains there were legal problems with a national credit union and it was difficult to find decent advice because all the lawyers in New York were in the pay of the banks. “There was also a lot of hostility within the Occupy movement, which had a lot of purists,” he acknowledges. He had wanted to set up the cooperative bank by initiating a banking card that could reach the poor and marginalised, as well as everyone else, and be owned by all members. But there were only two national platforms in the US – Visa and MasterCard – and many within the movement were suspicious of working with such glaring symbols of capitalism. Ross was of the opinion that it was better to compromise and create something that actually worked.

Introducing: The Occupy Money Cooperative

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0:00 / 1:56 Ross Carne explains the Occupy Money Cooperative.

For his pains, he says, he was “vilified in the most unpleasant way” by some in Occupy, who said that he couldn’t be trusted because he had worked for the UK government. “I had all this ad hominem abuse from these purists who do fuck all. They love to sit on their high horses and condemn everyone else.” That, of course, is the problem with working for “the people” – other people get in the way. Still, it’s easy to be cynical and do nothing, to ignore the obvious flaws of a sclerotic democratic system, and complacently accept that there is no alternative. Ross’s idealism is the kind that strains to find some means of politics that recognises the deepest emotions. “With the most important things to humans we have only the vaguest terms to communicate them: love, community, solidarity, meaning, purpose, spirit, soul – the feeling of them is certainly not captured by a vote or a GDP statistic. I believe anarchism promotes these things.” Perhaps it does, or perhaps it would if most people were as conscientious and motivated as Ross. What’s clear is that liberal democracy needs to reform and revive itself. Now relocated back in the UK, and continuing the work of Independent Diplomat, Carne Ross is doubtful about working to that end because it will help sustain the system he wants to see the back of, but realistically that’s exactly what he’s engaged in, which is no bad thing. In an age when so many on the left have retreated into the realpolitik of the international status quo, it’s refreshing to hear a genuinely progressive voice who wants to change things at home and abroad. His brand of anarchism has little to do with the anarchy of lawlessness or failed states. Rather, he wants to see a world in which we all feel we have a stake. I can’t see that a system of endless meetings will ever capture the popular imagination, but it’s an argument well worth having, and few will make it with more passion or intelligence than a middleaged white man who spent a large part of his career making the case for the British establishment. • The Accidental Anarchist airs on 23 July as part of BBC4’s Storyville series.

Independent Diplomat by Carne Ross is published in paperback by Hurst, £9.99. To order a copy go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99 Topics

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I used to believe in “the system”: the political and economic structure of what we might call western democracy and capitalism. I worked for it: for many years, I was a diplomat for my country. I resigned from government over the Iraq war. I began a political journey. I no longer believed in the system I represented. But what would work instead? To my great surprise, I came to think that anarchism is the answer. I never thought I would believe such radical ideas. But now I think it’s the only political philosophy that makes sense for today’s world, and the crazy ones are those who think that the current system will save us.

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individuals real people with needs just like our own not political labels. Corruption will perish when decisions are made in the open. 8. There cannot be a fair democracy without a fair economy. The wealthy will always get more of a say. The unfettered free market has permitted exploitation of the many

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by the few. The alternative government ownership has been proven to be inefficient and it’s no more democratic if a few are taking all the decisions. Instead, cooperatives bake equality into the business model. Everyone who contributes to the business gets a share, and a say. When everyone has a stake, the business thrives and offers its partners more than just a wage: it transforms into a shared enterprise. Cooperatives, particularly when working together across an economy, are as competitive as profit seeking companies. Think of John Lewis, or Mondragon, Spain’s tenth largest company which has helped to transform Spain’s Basque region. 9. It can start small, and build up. It requires effort and action, in contrast to the trivial act of voting over facile slogans every five years. It won’t happen unless we build it:

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democracy is a process, not a utopia. It will take work and learning and patience. New forms of participation local forums at schools, hospitals or the town will gain legitimacy, and power, when we show up and speak and listen. Old forms of politics will have to take notice and eventually step aside. Society’s tattered bonds will be re woven. 10. This is anarchism. It’s not chaos, a “war of all against all” or naïve idealism. It promises a deeper order created from the bottomup not imposed from the top down by government and rules. It’s radical democracy democracy returned to its roots: people taking decisions about the things that matter to them. Rather than a fractious

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bunch of individuals consuming and competing with one another, we can start to feel like a community again, with shared purpose, reinvigorated by a sense that, at last, change is possible, and it’s in our hands, and ours alone. Carne Ross is the subject of the forthcoming documentary film, Accidental Anarchist, to be broadcast on BBC4 Storyville on 23 July. A former diplomat who resigned over the Iraq war, Carne founded and runs Independent Diplomat, a non profit diplomatic advisory group.

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But why, and what is anarchism? These 10 steps can explain: 1. No one feels they have control over the things that matter to them: locally or nationally, let alone internationally. This frustration helps explain Brexit and Trump and the divisiveness and volatility of politics today. Advertisement

2. “Representative” democracy, where the few are elected by the many, is not working. Disillusionment with politics and institutions is high. Many people feel

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disenfranchised: no one speaks for them. Access to the few in government, the policymakers, is much easier for those who already have power and money. 3. Modern capitalism allows a tiny few to become grotesquely rich. For most, income and wealth have flatlined or declined while basic goods, including housing, are more expensive than ever. The majority is becoming worse not better off. The young do not expect to do better than their parents. On the contrary: facing decades of student debt and unaffordable housing, they can expect far less. Cities are being ruined by speculators who buy up housing, often to leave it empty, forcing residents out and gutting communities. 4. Modern work and life, in my opinion, do not offer meaning. Most work is boring and

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often repetitive. Material progress is important, but it’s not enough (and in any case is increasingly limited to a few). A lot of contemporary culture speaks of a deep hollowness. There is a profound yet unexpressed yearning for something more. Call it purpose, meaning, the things without names that matter most: the things the dying talk about. The hope for something better has withered. 5. Society is fracturing. The old are isolated. The disabled are left to the inadequate care of state (remember Gandhi: society is judged by how it treats the most vulnerable). Other races and immigrants get the blame. Envy and anger predominate.

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But we need each other. Only relationships give life meaning. Alone we are nothing. Solitary confinement is punishment for a reason. 6. The need to take back control agency is at the heart of this crisis. Rather than discredited politicians, we need to decide the things that matter to us. 7. This means direct democracy, a return to the earliest practice where Athenian citizens took turns to debate and take decisions for the city. Today, in “participatory” models of democracy, everyone can take part. It’s already happening in towns and cities across the world. It works. When everyone gets an equal say, the resulting decisions on healthcare or schools are fairer: in one Brazilian city the number of schools quadrupled. Debate and discussion promote understanding as long as they’re practiced facetoface rather than online. The division and hostility of party politics can be replaced by a new and more tolerant culture of democracy that is created and sustained by its practice. In such forums, we start to see each other as

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Ten Steps To Anarchism Carne Ross HuffPost UK 18 July 2017

I used to believe in "the system": the political and economic structure of what we might call western democracy and capitalism. I worked for it: for many years, I was a diplomat for my country. I resigned from government over the Iraq war. I began a political journey. I no longer believed in the system I represented. But what would work instead? To my great surprise, I came to think that anarchism is the answer. I never thought I would believe such radical ideas. But now I think it's the only political philosophy that makes sense for today's world, and the crazy ones are those who think that the current system will save us. But why, and what is anarchism? These 10 steps can explain: 1. No one feels they have control over the things that matter to them: locally or nationally, let alone internationally. This frustration helps explain Brexit and Trump and the divisiveness and volatility of politics today. 2. "Representative" democracy, where the few are elected by the many, is not working. Disillusionment with politics and institutions is high. Many people feel disenfranchised: no one speaks for them. Access to the few in government, the policymakers, is much easier for those who already have power and money. 3. Modern capitalism allows a tiny few to become grotesquely rich.

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For most, income and wealth have flatlined or declined while basic goods, including

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housing, are more expensive than ever. The majority is becoming worse not better off. The young do not expect to do better than their parents. On the contrary: facing decades of

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student debt and unaffordable housing, they can expect far less. Cities are being ruined by speculators who buy up housing, often to leave it empty, forcing residents out and gutting communities. 4. Modern work and life, in my opinion, do not offer meaning. Most work is boring and often repetitive. Material progress is important, but it's not enough (and in any case is increasingly limited to a few). A lot of contemporary culture speaks of a deep hollowness. There is a profound yet unexpressed yearning for something more. Call it purpose, meaning, the things without names that matter most: the things the dying talk about. The hope for something better has withered. 5. Society is fracturing. The old are isolated. The disabled are left to the inadequate care of state (remember Gandhi: society is judged by how it treats the most vulnerable). Other races and immigrants get the blame.

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Envy and anger predominate. But we need each other. Only relationships give life meaning. Alone we are nothing. Solitary confinement is punishment for a reason. 6. The need to take back control agency is at the heart of this crisis. Rather than discredited politicians, we need to decide the things that matter to us. 7. This means direct democracy, a return to the earliest practice where Athenian citizens took turns to debate and take decisions for the city. Today, in "participatory" models of democracy, everyone can take part. It's already happening in towns and cities across the world. It works. When everyone gets an equal say, the resulting decisions on healthcare or schools are fairer: in one Brazilian city the number of

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schools quadrupled. Debate and discussion promote understanding as long as they're practiced facetoface rather than online. The division and hostility of party politics can be

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replaced by a new and more tolerant culture of democracy that is created and sustained by its practice. In such forums, we start to see each other as individuals real people with needs just like our own not political labels. Corruption will perish when decisions are made in the open. 8. There cannot be a fair democracy without a fair economy. The wealthy will always get more of a say. The unfettered free market has permitted exploitation of the many by the few. The alternative government ownership has been proven to be inefficient and it's no more democratic if a few are taking all the decisions. Instead, cooperatives bake equality into the business model. Everyone who contributes to the business gets a share, and a say. When everyone has a stake, the business thrives and offers its partners more than just a wage: it transforms into a shared enterprise. Cooperatives, particularly when

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working together across an economy, are as competitive as profitseeking companies. Think of John Lewis, or Mondragon, Spain's tenth largest company which has helped to transform Spain's Basque region. 9. It can start small, and build up. It requires effort and action, in contrast to the trivial act of voting over facile slogans every five years. It won't happen unless we build it: democracy is a process, not a utopia. It will take work and learning and patience. New forms of participation local forums at schools, hospitals or the town will gain legitimacy, and power, when we show up and speak and listen. Old forms of politics will have to take notice and eventually step aside. Society's tattered bonds will be rewoven. 10. This is anarchism. It's not chaos, a "war of all against all" or naïve idealism. It promises a deeper

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order created from the bottomup not imposed from the top down by government and rules. It's radical democracy democracy returned to its roots: people taking decisions about the things that matter to them. Rather than a fractious bunch of individuals consuming and competing with one another, we can start to feel like a community again, with shared purpose, reinvigorated by a sense that, at last, change is possible, and it's in our hands, and ours alone. Carne Ross is the subject of the forthcoming documentary film, Accidental Anarchist, to be broadcast on BBC4 Storyville on 23 July. A former diplomat who resigned over the Iraq war, Carne founded and runs Independent Diplomat, a nonprofit diplomatic advisory group.

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"From what I saw, this political transformation enjoyed widespread support from all: Kurds, Arabs, women and men, young and old. Why wouldn't it? The whole point is to give everyone a say in their own government." In addition to ensuring complete equal rights for women, the feminist politics of Rojava aims to break down domination and hierarchy in every aspect of life, recasting social relations between all people regardless of age, ethnicity or gender, with the aim of achieving an ecologically and socially harmonious society. In terms of historical comparison, this project resembles most closely the short period of anarchism witnessed by George Onvell in Republican Spain during the Spanish civil war in the late 1930s. But the representatives of Rojava also reject the label of anarchism, even if much of the inspiration for this revolution came originally from an anarchist thinker from New York City, Murray Bookchin. The political heart of the Rojava project is in the local communal assemblies, in which local people take decisions for themselves about eve1ything that concerns them: healthcare, jobs, pollution ... boys riding their bikes too fast around the village, as one woman complained about at an assembly I visited. Women and men are scrupulously given an equal voice. Women co-chair every meeting and every assembly. Non-Kurdish minorities, mostly Arabs but also Syriacs, Turkmen and Assyrians, are also given priority on the speaking list; at meetings I witnessed, interpreters were provided. This is self-government, where decisions for the village are taken by the village or region. If decisions cannot be made solely at the local level, representatives attend town or regional assemblies, but these representatives remain accountable to the communal level and may only offer views that are approved locally. It is a very deliberate attempt to keep decision-making as local as possible - a rejection of the top-down authority of the state.

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hen I started out in my career as a diplomat I never imagined that I would one day call myself an anarchist. I used to believe in what

might be called the "western model" - representative democracy, where the many elect the few. But it was my 15 years of experience as a government employee that eventually led me to have a radically different

view. I became a diplomat in 1989. For a while, I wrote speeches for the Foreign Secretary where he would tell the world what Britain thought about places like Africa or the Middle East, or climate change. As my fingers tapped out what would become his words, I began to believe them. I started to talk about how "we" - Britain saw the world, not what I really thought about it. My crisis of faith came with the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Until shortly before, I had been Britain's expert on Iraq's WMD at the United Nations Security Council. I knew the issue well. As I heard Blair and Bush explain the war to their ignorant populations, I realised that they were lying. I knew this because "we" had concluded many times that Iraq was not a threat. It might have had some WMD, but we knew nothing for certain. That had been our internal assessment for the four-and-a-half years I had worked on the issue.

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public school, isn’t it?). Then he’s in New York, posted in 1997 to the UK mission to the UN, where his responsibility was mainly Iraq and its alleged weapons of mass destruction. He was one of the good guys, he thought, working for the establishment to make the world a better, safer place. And he ends up in wartorn Syria, where he finds – perhaps surprisingly – a kind of paradise. Or a stable, successful democracy anyway, he believes. Specifically, he is in Rojava, or Syrian Kurdistan, in the north, where he is not working for the British government or the UN; he is with the people who govern, and those people are the people. And he is with the local defence militia, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), an army that fights Isis, and has lots of women but no military ranks. Ross likes what he sees. Because he sees anarchy. In its proper sense: no hierarchy, selfgovernment, decisions made by the people, no state. Between Whitehall and Rojava, there is a hell of a lot going on in Ross’s life and in the world, in this thoughtful, personal, fascinating, possibly important film – not least his transformation from diplomat to accidental anarchist. “So you were part of the genocide of my people,” an Iraqi told him on hearing that Carne had been involved in imposing sanctions on his country. Carne couldn’t disagree and felt only shame. The journey takes in 9/11, which Carne witnessed from his Manhattan window; Afghanistan, which he witnessed from the ground; the Iraq war, which changed his life as well as changing (and ending) the lives of many others; the death of a friend, David Kelly; and Chilcot, at which Carne testified. It leads him, after resigning, to set up an NGO whose purpose is to make diplomacy fairer. It also takes him into the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement; to visit Noam Chomsky and revisit Orwell; and to Spain in the 1930s and more recently, where one village still lives pretty much under the principles of anarchy. And it leads him eventually to the banks of the Tigris, where he crosses from Iraq into Syria, in order to see successful anarchy in practice. Does it really look that brilliant in Rojava …? Hey, that’s not important – it is cooperative, trusting and fair, OK? And the Iraq war was definitely wrong. Are you watching, Tony Blair? What, one man’s journey through tumultuous recent global events, with links to revolutionaries from further back in time, is not enough for one weekend? Hey, no problem, have another: Performance Live: Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere (BBC2, Saturday). It is Paul Mason’s journey this time, in which the former Channel 4 economics editor and current Guardian columnist retraces the route from the optimism of the Arab Spring and Occupy, when technology was enabling the people to bypass the traditional power bases (including Mason’s own media), to the crushing of those revolutions, Syria and Trump. Mason reaches further back than Ross’s Catalonian anarchists – to the Paris Commune of 1971 – to link what’s happening today with the past. It is also very personal (nicely selfaware, too) and very political, as you’d expect; theatre to cheer and raise a fist to, or dismiss as lefty looniness. Oh yeah, theatre; this is

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Accidental Anarchist: Life Without Government review – discovering an unlikely paradise in Syria One man’s journey from Whitehall to selfruling societies. Plus: political theatre in Paul Mason’s Performance Live: Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere

Carne Ross in Marinaleda, Spain. Photograph: Dirk Nel/BBC/John Archer

Sam Wollaston Monday 24 July 2017 06.00 BST

ou know those stories you sometimes get in the papers about Syrian refugees being offered places at English public schools, or doing brilliantly in their A

levels and getting into top British universities? Well, this Storyville documentary Accidental Anarchist: Life Without Government (BBC4, Sunday) is pretty much the opposite of one of those stories. Carne Ross’s journey starts at Whitehall, working for the Foreign Office (that’s kind of a

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‘It was a moment of profound disillusionment’ NEW FACTUAL STORYVILLE

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number one WMD expert, and for him to be belittled as he was, was terrible. ‘I don’t think he was murdered [some suspected a cover-up], but he was humiliated, and to humiliate a person so they kill themselves is as bad.’ Carne, who now runs Independent Diplomat, a nonprofit organisation that advises governments and political groups, was inspired by a trip to Rojava, an autonomous self-governing region of Syria. ‘I felt tremendous political solidarity – what they’re doing there is what I believe in. It’s a sincere effort to build inclusive government, and it’s moving to watch.’ Despite having stuck his neck out and rebelled against the establishment, he doesn’t feel he has lost friends due to the film. ‘Two things have happened. One is I was vindicated by the Butler Report and then Chilcot. And, also, I never made it personal. I’d certainly blame Tony Blair, but I never held my colleagues responsible. ‘I recently lunched with the British ambassador to the UN. He and I joined the Foreign Office on the same day, and he ended up as Blair’s Private Secretary during the Iraq War. Our paths were diametrically different, but we get on well. We both care about the future of the world.’ Martina Fowler

Ask Carne Ross whether he’s an idealist, and he laughs. ‘Oh, absolutely! It’s a pity more people aren’t. I’ve always hoped for a better society, because I feel we can do much better than how we are now.’ His film, Accidental Anarchist: Life Without Government, is a heartfelt critique of the state of global politics and the deepening rift between those with power and those without. Carne joined the British Foreign Office in 1989, the same year the Berlin Wall came down. It felt like the dawn of an era of peace and prosperity, but the piece describes how, over 15 years later, he became disillusioned with his work, resigning in disgust over the Iraq War. He was later called to give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry – and turned whistle-blower, saying officials did not regard Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) programme as a threat to the UK, the reason the then PM, Tony Blair, cited for going to war. ‘The officials who set up the Inquiry treated me badly, and [Sir John] Chilcot was pretty frosty too, I guess because I’d been rude about the Inquiry in public. ‘I felt very vulnerable, that the Government might prosecute me. And when we were filming about Chilcot around Whitehall [in London], I still felt this kind of air of hostility towards us.’ He escaped prosecution, he believes, partly because of the fate of his friend, weapons expert Dr David Kelly, who was questioned aggressively by a Foreign Affairs Select Committee in July 2003, and was found dead, from presumed suicide, in woodland near his Oxfordshire home just days later. And we see Carne visit his grave. ‘It was distressing, because the last time I’d been there was for his funeral, which was a weird jamboree of the press and politicians. There was a real sense of political drama, combined, for me, with true upset for his family. They have suffered terribly. ‘It was a moment of ‘Humiliated’: WMD expert profound disillusionment, David Kelly is grilled by that the Government he was the Foreign Affairs Select so loyal to would treat David Committee in 2003 like that. He was Britain’s Total

12 TVguide

Former diplomat Carne Ross on frustration, dark forces, and his search for a new kind of democracy Blamed: Tony Blair, the then Prime Minister, sent soldiers in to Iraq over WMD in 2003

Dawn of a new era: Carne Ross (main picture) joined the Foreign Office the same year the Berlin Wall came down

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The truelife journey of Carne Ross, presenter and subject of Accidental Anarchist, the latest in the Storyville documentary strand, was as dramatic as anything a TV screenwriter could dream up. As he explained to camera, he’d enjoyed a gilded career at the Foreign Office. But his experiences as a diplomat in Afghanistan and his friendship with Dr David Kelly, the weapons expert who committed suicide at the height of the Iraq WMDs furore, left him disillusioned with the British government and “topdown” power structures in general.

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Popular will Now running an NGO, he seeks to support projects where policy is not imposed from on high, but arises from genuine popular will. Professing his admiration for the anarchists of the Spanish Civil War, he visited a village in Spain where homes are built and owned communally and a Kurdish enclave in Syria where local assemblies make the decisions. I didn’t agree with all his conclusions, but this was a heartfelt testimony from a remarkable man. If we’re to avoid making the same mistakes over and over, we need

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Postcapitalism is already here, according to a film and play shown by the BBC [VIDEOS] JULY 28TH, 2017

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There’s a postcapitalist fuse that connects people as far apart as Mexico and Syria. And the BBC recently aired a couple of broadcasts that suggest the future is already here. BBC Four aired the insightful film Accidental Anarchist: Life Without Government, by former British diplomat Carne Ross, as part of its Storyville series. The day before, meanwhile, BBC Two broadcast author and journalist Paul Mason‘s play ‘Why it’s Kicking off Everywhere’, which covers similar themes. Both the film and the play raise important questions about moving towards a postcapitalist world, particularly for those who live in ‘conventional’ societies but seek a more progressive future.

Postcapitalism is already here, according to a film and play shown by the

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Below are some of the places and communities that feature in the two productions.

Rojava Rojava is a multiethnic region in northern Syria, with a largely Kurdish population. After Syria became a war zone in 2011, communities in Rojava soon decided to defend and govern themselves. And the Democratic Society Movement (TEVDEM) led this social revolution based on the ideology of democratic confederalism. The Kurdishled selfdefence militias of the YPG and YPJ are – as a key part of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – among the most effective ground forces in the war against Daesh (Isis/Isil). And as Carne Ross observes:

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In terms of historical comparison, this project resembles most

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closely the short period of anarchism witnessed by George Orwell in Republican Spain during the Spanish civil war in the late 1930s.

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Indeed, the YPJ (the allfemale selfdefence militia) is very much reminiscent of the Mujeres Libres (Free Women) in Spain during the 193639 civil war.

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"The Most Feminist Revolution the World Has Ever Witnessed." Full video: https://t.co/QbwjB9Yu8f @VICE @carneross #YPG #Rojava pic.twitter.com/DEDPIV20mx — Rojava Defense Units (@DefenseUnits) July 25, 2017

Greece In 2015, Greece saw the leftwing Syriza win power on the ticket of rejecting Troika demands for more austerity. But the new government preferred to negotiate terms that satisfied no one. So it’s

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perhaps no wonder that a grassrootsorganised parallel economy persists to this day. Greece has always boasted an interventionist anarchist movement. One visible feature of this is the network of squatted refugee centres found across the country, but mostly in Athens. One such centre is Hotel Plaza in central Athens. As well as a playground for refugee children, there are 126 rooms that include a dining room, a kitchen, a bar, a storage room for food, a healthcare centre, a roof garden, a classroom, and a library. The centre also runs its own blog. Others squatted centres include Orfanotrofeio and Hurriya in Thessaloniki. And there is EL CHEf, a food collective set up in 2008 at the height of the economic collapse and now providing food for both homeless people and refugees. Another example of mutual aid in action is the ADYE health clinic. This operates from a squat and provides patientcentred healthcare free of charge to the communities that live in the Exarchia district of Athens. Since 2015, the majority of the patients treated there are refugees. One of the ADYE clinicians explains:

ADYE is a selforganized structure, all decisions are taken by a majority within the Assembly. We have a horizontal structure, we are all equal, there are no leaders or presidents

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Spain 2011 saw the rise of the Indignados and the 15M (May 15) antiausterity movement, which in time became a vast but decentralised movement. According to Occupy.com, around 8.5 million Spanish people participated in this movement. And in 2011 alone, more than 21,000 protests took place across Spain and helped to inspire the Occupy movement. 15M evolved from the mass protests and strikes to set up of hundreds of local assemblies. But some of the 15M activists went on to be elected in new initiatives, such as leaders of city councils. In contrast, striking miners distanced themselves from the Indignados and took up non lethal arms like “homemade rocketlaunchers, catapults and shields”. Meanwhile, the squatting scene in cities across Spain, together with the anarchosyndicalist union CNTAIT, continue to act as a hub for political activism and community cooperation.

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Mexico Neither Ross’s film nor Mason’s play could cover every revolutionary movement in the world. But one that is definitely worth including is the Zapatistas of Mexico, whose example reportedly influenced (and links with) the revolution in Rojava. Since 1994, the Zapatistas have openly fought for the right of Mexicans to govern themselves how they see fit, and not how political and economic elites see fit. They’ve also been slowly developing a system of direct democracy in a number of communities in southern Mexico. And they’ve done it independently, without the permission of national elites. In the first months following their uprising in 1994, when they demanded “work, land, housing, food, health care, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace”, the Zapatistas reappropriated up to 1.7 million acres of land from large landowners. And since 1994, they’ve made numerous achievements. They’ve created five zones, or Caracoles, that boast their own education, healthcare and justice systems; as well as cooperatives producing coffee, creating handicrafts and rearing cattle. They have built two hospitals, 18 health clinics, and 800 community health houses. And they run 300 schools, with 1,000 teachers, and a centre for secondary education. They may have a much lower profile than they previously had. But they very much exist. And in December 2012, they reminded people of their existence by marching in their thousands, peacefully and in silence, through nearby cities. They then went back to building and strengthening their alternative political system.

Postcapitalism and the wider scene But what happens within ‘liberal democracies’ when postcapitalist solutions overtake conventional capitalism? Paul Mason argues:

Our longterm aim should be to push more and more economic activity [to be] done outside the market and the state…[requiring in part the end of] reliance on wages for work.

But he adds that the state should continue to provide housing, healthcare, education, and transportation. So perhaps at some point, we will begin to see a society where people enjoy far more leisure and learning time, instead of being defined by wage slavery.

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Mutual aid Social revolution, like that practised by the Zapatistas or in Rojava, tends to happen when people are directly faced with authoritarian forces and lifeordeath injustices. But in ‘liberal democracies’ like Britain, you can find thousands of examples of mutual aid every day. Just go to any village or any working class community. And in the end, the ‘fuse’ that connects people is not an ideology, but simple human kindness and empathy. Get Involved! – Organise a showing of Accidental Anarchist in your local community centre. – Read The Leaderless Revolution by Carne Ross, PostCapitalism by Paul Mason, and more Canary articles on Rojava and the Zapatistas. Also see more from us at The Canary Global; visit our Facebook and Twitter pages; and join us if you appreciate what we do. Featured image via screengrab

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