The Amazing New Tolpuddle Anarchist Bulletin Board We'll see how we go with this. At the least I can use to make quick updates without the drama of getting into File Manager through public computers...but of course if it takes off as a discussion forum so much the better! There's mainly General Strike stuff on it now.
I last dropped in on 29 May 2000 to tinker a little, this page is due for a major overhaul.
Introducing myself....
I'm Jeremy Dixon and I live
in Melbourne ("New Tolpuddle") Australia. I'm 40
something, last year I graduated from La Trobe University
law; and am still in limbo a bit. Before that I spent too much of my life working
in a car factory. I have helped unleash two children on the unresisting world. I'm an anarcho-syndicalist;
broadly that's what americans sometimes call a
"left Anarchist". I get a little bored with
Anarchist cliches though.
On this page you'll find
a few preliminary comments on
Anarchism, including my major contribution to political science A New Model of Political Space
and religion; and some essays
written for school which some people may find
interesting for their subject matter....
Anyone interested in this page will be interested in the "Law and Anarchy" mailing list going . To join mail to lists@tao.ca putting "subscribe lawandanarchy" in the message body, everything else left blank. At La Trobe I was involved last year in getting the amazing Nemesis Law and Social Justice Club on its feet, holding the exalted position of Clubs and Societies delegate. The Nemesis web page is pretty basic still but there are some useful links on it, maybe a bit. It is languishing this year, unfortunately.
This year the World Economic Forum circus will be coming to Melbourne on September 11-13. I'd like to [help] do a pamphlet for that, and have set up an archive/mailinglist for that purpose; please join it an contribute!
"Why 'New Tolpuddle'?" you may very reasonably ask. There are two reasons. Lord Melbourne, after whom my city was named, was the British Prime Minister at the time the Tolpuddle Martyrs (pioneers of unionism)were transported to Australia. Another reason is that "New Tolpuddle" suits the feel of the city better anyway. (Melbourne tends to be imagined as a damp, overcast, serious sort of place. There's a joke "Emigration from Melbourne to Sydney is a good thing, because it raises the average IQ of both cities".) One day I'll start a campaign to rename
the place "New Tolpuddle".
While we are on the subject of pioneers of liberty and so forth this is a good place to link to a site about the Levellers , seventeenth century english revolutionaries who were the first people to be called Anarchists (according to Raymond Williams' Keywords ). This was a term of abuse and ridicule by their enemies. By modern definitions they were simply parliamentary democrats rather than Anarchists; although a radical faction, the "True Levellers" or "Diggers", are accounted by some the first literal Anarchists ever. Anyway, the most well-known Leveller, "Free-Born" John Lilburne is also an important figure in legal history (facing famous criminal trials under both Charles I and Cromwell !) and is often credited with first establishing the right to silence by his successful defiance of the Star Chamber. In my view Anarchism is a radical outgrowth of the age-old democratic movement (the "Good Old Cause" as it was already in Lilburne's day) and we can be proud to claim Lilburne and his comrades as part of our own history. The link I've got up at the moment rather misleadingly describes the Levellers as "liberals", but it is a gateway to some useful primary material nevertheless.
Rebel Worker
I write for the paper Rebel Worker . The August-September
1998 edition is on the preceding link together some 1996 editions. It comes out every one or two months. So far we have not managed to organise a regular web presence for Rebel Worker.
Previously I'd scanned up the July edition of Rebel Worker to this site, as gif images. You can mail Rebel Worker by clicking here .
I've previously claimed on this page to be posting the local news and discussion sections of Rebel Worker on the oneunion mailing list.Lack of time has put this idea into the "sometime later" basket. Oneunion is a general syndicalist list with generally low traffic; approaching zero actually so if you subscribe to oneunion you won't be swamped and you may help revive a good idea. Put "subscribe" in the subject field of your mail.- 28th August
Treason
I've been planning to start bringing out a paper called
Treason
for a while, and this page will be its main venue of
publication. (Don't hold your breath though) Here is my draft of a logo.
Treason was founded in
1981 (originally by
me with my partner's help) and had
considerable impact on the developement of
Anarchism in Melbourne. Really it was just a zine;
but this was before the Anarchist swamp was
flooded with zines (in Melbourne anyway!).
It stopped publishing in 1983, if memory
serves. Like the old Treason the new one
will be a small-scale operation, my plan is just to print
maybe 50-100 paper copies for bookshops, and
otherwise rely on the net. Old Treason
usually
had a print run of 2000, peaking at 4000,
they were mostly
given away at demos. My then partner sold her
necklace to pay for the first edition and all that kind
of stuff. I don't know if I'm reviving a sorely missed
Anarchist voice
or pathetically trying to revive my lost youth,
but am inclined to the former view. The Anarchist movement,
in
Australia at any rate, has grown rather stagnant. The old
Treason introduced a new current or two
and I hope the new will do the same. Naturally, what
was new in 1981 may not be so now.
Other stuff
Eventually I'll get my collected
works up; ( mostly articles on this and that first published in Rebel Worker.)For the moment I present for your applause
Blood and Soil and Blowflies: Thoughts on Australian Nationalism .
Although short, this article makes a few points which unfortunately still need to be made
Spunk Press has done me the honour of sticking the article
What is Anarchism? What is Anarcho-syndicalism? on their introductions to anarchism page.(If you go there read: 'the question of "why is Anarchism"...' instead of: 'the question of "what is Anarchism"...', its a typo.) And there is more stuff of this general type to come. In particular I wrote a major article on class a couple of years back which I want to share with the world, its a much misunderstood area (largely due to the trotskyist colonisation of class-struggle Anarchism, more later). Meanwhile see my short article Class :A
Neo-Classical Approach ("Dare to be pretentious, dare to be
free")
One area I'd like to discuss on this page is
Anarchism and Religion ; click on the words for my preliminary comments on the subject. Another field of human endevour likely to feature on this page is the brewing of Kombucha, a semi-alcoholic drink made by culturing sweet tea. More on this later. (The secret of incredible Kombucha is to mix black and green tea)
The link I had for Kombucha is gone, until I replace it you can use the search form below to find out more; just type in "kombucha".
For those interested in such geographica, there is a link to Australian Anarchist sites..... Australian Anarchism is as sectarian as I hear Anarchism is elswhere. Eventually I will get up a sectarianism page, Great Splits I Have Known, and so forth. In Australia there have been three Great Splits: the split in the Federation of Australian Anarchists in 1976,this happened at the FAA's Melbourne conference and was my unsettling introduction to Anarchism; the split in Sydney's Jura Books in 1982 or thereabouts, I happened to be passing through Sydney in the weeks immediately following it and spent time with both sides; and the the 1992 split in the Australian section of the Interational Workers Association, in which I rather featured. So I can, and will, tell a bit of a story about them all.
Click here for a few school essays of mine that may interest some:
Anarchist Links..
"Anarchist resources on the Internet" link site......see also here for a possibly more up-to-date list of e-mail lists etc
"Seventh Seal"...... plenty more Anarchist links
http://www.neravt.com/left/ . Informative international class-struggle page. Also see the Cy.rev pages for in my view the best stuff available on globalisation.
See also, this article by Jerry Harris and Bill Robinson, on globalisation.
The Spoons Mailinglist archives includes a number of lists of interest to Anarchists, including recent archives of the famous or notorious "Big Anarchy List".
Comprehensive Anarchist site (Spunk)
Tao Homepage; home of Anarchist mailinglists among other things.
Hayek, command, and spontaneous organization
An exhaustive compendium of more "Murpy's Law" type proverbs than you will ever need. Or want.
Jurist law Professors' Network Canadian, Australian and US sites.
An Interesting Discussion of Law from a Libertarian Perspective
Lawguru. International US-based law search tools.
Popular Sovereignty and Natural Law Interesting recent article in Australia's Federal Law Review
In Search of Non-Offensive Erotica..the story so far
Peter Underwood's Australian law site
Also, of course, check out Nemesis Law & Social Justice Club page and links there.
© 1997 jeremydixon@tao.ca
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