Accountable to whom?
"Anonymous Bob"
Recently, accountable actions have been suggested by some as the way forward for
the radical ecological movement. So, what exactly does this mean? The basic idea
is that we should do our illegal actions (criminal damage for example) in a
totally open way, providing our names and addresses to the authorities,
submitting to arrest and justifying our acts in court. Many people will remember
the accountable disarming of a Hawk jet destined for Indonesia and the
subsequent acquittal of the women responsible, while the Trident Ploughshares
2000 and genetiX snowball campaigns are probably the best known current examples
of this approach.
I remember reading an interview with one of the women involved in the Hawk
action where she talked about her time in prison on remand. She said that the
other prisoners had a lot of respect for her stand, for risking so much for what
she believed in, but what they couldn’t understand was why she didn’t trash the
planes then get away while she had the chance! I’d argue that that is the
reaction of most people to accountable actions, especially most working class
people. Vast numbers of individuals have experienced the police and the legal
system as brutal and corrupt institutions, and many families are devastated by
imprisonment. To suggest to them that anyone should voluntarily put themselves
into the judicial grinder, especially as a means of changing the system it is
there to protect, seems frankly insane — hardly the best way to help our
movement grow.
Privileged positions
From a more privileged position, accountably may seem more appealing — after
all, if your experience of the police has been mostly as your protector, you
might see accountable actions as a way for concerned citizens to force reform in
a basically sound system that has gone astray. The idea of giving yourself to
the police, of arguing your position in court legitimises their power and the
system that power protects. It respects their "right" to judge you and
your actions. This is fine if you basically agree with that system, but I think
we have learned better from our struggles. We have surely seen enough loaded
public inquiries, enough police and bailiff violence, enough beautiful places
trashed and enough of our friends sent to prison to see the state as our enemy.
While I appreciate that many of those most committed to accountable actions have
questioned deeply the military-industrial state we live under, accountable
actions seem to aim for support from the liberal middle class — ie some of those
who benefit from the way things are run at the moment. This obviously leads to
the bigger question of what kind of a movement we’re trying to build, and whose
support we’re looking for.
What kind of a movement?
The radical ecological direct action movement is aiming to create deep and long-
lasting changes in our society. This change must involve overcoming the forces
currently destroying the future and making the present a misery — ie industrial
capitalism and its protecters. It’s pretty obvious that the people running this
system aren’t going to do away with it just because we ask them to. The task of
creating such a change, and challenging those who currently benefit from the way
in which society is run, is an enormous project which requires the active
involvement of millions of people — people taking back control of their lives
and their communities through direct action, and creating an ecologically sane
society. Telling people to voluntarily give themselves in to those we fight
against will prevent us ever reaching such a point. Equally bad is the way
accountable actions help to split our movement, dividing us into
"nice" open people, and "nasty" covert people. It is a
favourite tactic of the cops to divide and rule like this. We sure as hell
shouldn’t be helping them to achieve this.
The problem of elitism
Many of our activities demand a level of commitment that excludes a lot of
people already (which is a problem we need to sort out), but accountable actions
seem to make this worse. Most ploughshares actions previous to the Hawk action
have resulted in very long prison sentences, while the current mass genetiX
snowball participants are facing heavy financial penalties through injunctions.
Like the injunctions served on various anti-roads activists previously, the only
people prepared to break them will be the young unemployed with less to lose —
it’s crazy to expect that people with jobs, houses or a family to support will
risk so much on an action which openly invites punishment. (A large group of
Devon people from diverse backgrounds intended to do an accountable genetics
action but decided against if for exactly this reason.) This all seems likely to
reproduce the spectacle of the few committed activists being cheered on by their
totally passive supporters. Similarly, the assumption that training is needed
before such actions and the symbolic nature of many accountable actions (eg only
pulling up a couple of plants rather than destroying the whole crop) shows a
pretty strange idea of direct action.
Odd though it might seem, this approach shares many ideas with terrorism — the
ultra-militant/committed elite who do actions that seem far beyond the
capabilities of their supporters and the use of acts of destruction, not as an
end in themselves, but as a means of influencing the state or public opinion.
One person I spoke to, closely involved with the Hawk ploughshares campaign,
said many of the groups and people seemed ultimately to have been disempowered
by the women’s action, feeling they could only support the heroes who did it.
Direct action is making our individual and collective desires into reality,
regardless of the laws that try to control us. It’s taking, occupying,
destroying or building — it can’t be asking or demanding.