First, we simply need a whole different mindset to understand the problem. With a problem as complex as climate change the solution is going to be complex as well. And with the sense of crisis, it is natural we want to believe in magic bullets, which will let us carry on as usual. But we’re only going to get climate change under control if we tackle the root causes. The movement against climate change can’t just be a scientific or technical pursuit. It’s about how we organise our economies and societies. And this is about politics and democracy.

Understanding how we get out of this mess requires us to understand how we got into this mess, which to paraphrase several hundred years of history, is about how a market economy emerged across the globe through a fairly bloody mercantilist and colonial economy based on enclosure and dispossession of land and the plunder of resources. It is also about understanding that the founding myth that grew out of this is infinite growth, and that our economy is now exhausting the finite carrying capacity of the biosphere and threatening our survival. And commentators from Herman Daly to Joseph Stiglitz tell us we need to restrain this market economy and bring it back within this capacity.

False solutions

Understanding the problem is not just about being against the market, or being anti-capitalist. A movement against climate change also needs to be anti-authoritarian, anti-racist and anti-patriarchal. This means challenging the domination and oppression of certain groups over others, and tackling the massive gender inequalities and racism that characterise our world. Think about the role of young women in developing economies making endless consumer products, or African countries acting as resource baskets or toxic dumping grounds for the West. As the social-ecologist Murray Bookchin said, people will stop exploiting the environment when people stop exploiting each other. We need to empower and educate around these root causes. And in the run up to Copenhagen one of our main focuses should stress that market solutions are false solutions.

Second, this isn’t a movement against carbon, but one for greater equality and justice. In the West we have to acknowledge the huge ecological debt that we owe to the world. As James Hansen, NASA’s chief scientist points out, Britain alone is responsible for a lion’s share of current high concentrations of greenhouse gases from coal burning in the industrial revolution. Repaying this debt means fighting for justice for the world’s poor.

Here’s the terrible irony. The poorest that have the least responsibility for the problem have to deal with the biggest impacts, while the richest can shelter themselves from the greatest consequences. Think about what is dubbed the first climate-change war in Sudan, toxic dumping in the Ivory Coast, or people living in caravans in Hull – two years after the 2007 floods. As the sci-fi writer William Gibson said, ‘the future is here, it’s just unevenly distributed’.

What’s worse is that the poorest and most affected have least access to decision making to try to do something about their plight. And the opposite holds true. Try dumping some toxic waste or building an incinerator in a wealthy area and see what happens. And if you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the rich know that their interests (keeping rich) are better served by pushing the problem somewhere else, usually overseas, rather than preventing it in the first place. This is why it’s going to be so difficult to get a global deal based on equality over the next few years.

Finally, and this is where it gets difficult – there is no environmental crisis, the crisis is the environment. As long as we see something called ‘the environment’ separate from us, we have something to use, abuse, sell, commodify, and when it’s broken, ‘we’ can fix ‘it’. While it’s separate from us, the problem is not caused by us. This has been the long-standing tendency every since the Enlightenment to objectify nature as something separate from humans in order to dominate and exploit it, rather than to see it as something we intrinsically depend upon. So how do we get out of this mess?

Green austerity

To begin with, we have to see that environmental protest is not really about the environment. It’s about democracy. We need a stronger, more direct version of it. So how would this work? It depends upon having a bigger idea of democracy, that direct democracy equals government plus people. In contrast, our liberal democracies are so riddled with lobby groups that there is no sense of a common good, only the private interests of those with money to shout the loudest. We need an equal seat at the table for everyone – especially frontline communities who are the ones really struggling against climate change. And more participatory democracies are more resilient as they are more responsive to unexpected problems as they occur, less reliant on the whims of leaders, more trusted, and as they involve everyone, decisions are better.

We also need to make sure that the way we respond to climate change creates a more open and equal society, not a more closed and repressive one. One worrying trend here is that our fascination with the environment has brought a fascination with austerity and rationing. Sure we have to consume less, this will restrain the market economy. Campaigns like 10:10 are a positive start. They allow us to feel empowered and take responsibility for the problems in our society. But let’s be healthily critical of it too. The kind of new green austerity drive that is fashionable these days makes us see the individual as the great solution rather than seeing the bigger picture. In this scenario, consumers are distracted and pacified, hunting out fair trade lattes while the global elite is let off the hook to yacht around the world, and plunder the world’s resources. And it is exactly the self-controlled and obedient eco-consumer that the market needs to keep on growing. It needs individuals obsessed and distracted with their own green egos rather than making connections with others or organising collectively.

The point is that 10:10 has to become 80:50 (80 per cent cuts by 2050). And the key question is, apart from wishful thinking, how exactly do we make the move from individual tinkering to structural change? Clearly there is one vision here that is, where we all contribute equally and peacefully. But we also have to be aware of more sinister paths. As good eco-citizens are we sleepwalking into future green prisons, where the EcoRepublic, as the late philosopher Val Plumwood called it, forms a khaki green, quasi-police state using restrictions to save us from climate change? Is the price of having a future, bondage by new green chains?

Resistance is fertile, not futile

So what’s the way through, avoiding both the hair-jumpered utopianism of The Good Life and dreadful totalitarianism of films such as Children of Men? As the old libertarian rallying cry goes ‘be realistic, demand the impossible’. While we need austerity in our high street spending, this is no time to ration our creativity and dissent. We need the beautiful, uncontrolled energy and potential of everyone unmediated by the state or the market. We need to see through the banal and easy green belt tightening pledges of celebrities and politicians. Sure, use low energy light bulbs or put your TV on standby. Definitely consume less. But also organise in your local community, plant some vegetables in unused land, occupy the council offices until they meet recycling targets.

The proud and long tradition of nonviolent civil disobedience in this country will be crucial in our ability to navigate the next few decades. Taking direct action has never been so urgent. Remember the old Earth First! saying: ‘the earth is not dying, it is being killed’, and those killing it have names and addresses. And resistance is fertile, not futile. When we protest, we learn, when we come together we sharpen our understanding, we strengthen civil society organisations that can push governments into decisive action. Citizens have always stood up against injustice, pushed laws and put their liberties on the line to make our democracy stronger not weaker, our laws more, not less, just. So make your role models ‘freeborn’ John Lilburne, the Suffragettes, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King, not Bob Geldoff, Bono or Ed Miliband.

Protest is not about saving the planet. It’s about saving democracy. To resonate with people it has to use cherished values like equality, freedom, and be about a better deal for the poorest here in the UK and abroad. It’s about getting the growth obsessed market, the drudgery of the wage, bloated governments and careerist politicians off our backs. It’s about challenging nasty right-wing populism. Otherwise what exactly are we saving the planet for? So get passionate, get active, get uncontrolled, and get equal. Consume less, and organise more. Ration your central heating, not your desires.

Paul Chatterton is a member of the Drax 29. He is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Masters Programme \’Activism and Social Change\’ at the University of Leeds, and co-author of the book \’Do it Yourself: a handbook for changing our world\’.

In the room next door a projector hangs from the ceiling pointing to a huge screen for film showings. There is a home made bar selling local organic ales and fair trade wines. Most of the floor space is taken up by a stage on which local bands play every weekend. In the far corner you can lounge in a comfy area decked out with a mini library and free shop – ‘take what you want, leave what you don’t’ is the motto there. Out in the yard there are lettuces and tomatoes growing, which are used in the kitchen.

‘What’s this place?’ you might well ask. Welcome to the Common Place social centre, and your first glimpse of the UK’s autonomous social centres network.
What’s it all about?

So what are ‘autonomous social centres’? In essence, they are volunteer-run, self-managed, not-for-profit spaces for radical politics, debate and action alongside affordable entertainment, food and services. They provide a huge variety of activities: radical-cinema screenings, information services, bookshops, free shops, self-defence classes, cafes, bars, gig spaces, language classes and support sessions for migrants, asylum seekers and refugees, solidarity products from around the world (Palestinian olive oil, coffee from Zapatista autonomous villages), welfare and benefits advice, free computer access and ‘hack labs’, libraries and reading groups, and political meetings, action planning and talks.

Increasingly, they have become a base for organising on key local issues such as asylum rights, destitution and the loss of free spaces, community facilities and affordable services. Some centres, such as George’s X Chalkboard in Glasgow, produce and distribute community newspapers. Not surprisingly, a wide range of people make use of them – students, migrants, seasoned campaigners, the unemployed, parents with children and many others.
There are around 20 such spaces in the UK. Some are squatted, some rented and some co-operatively owned. They describe themselves as ‘autonomous’ to stress that they do it themselves, without help from government, lottery grants, political parties or individual benefactors. Some are based in city centres so as to be accessible to people from different communities; others have grown out of activities in specific communities.

Social centres haven’t just emerged from nowhere; they have grown out of a long tradition of similar experiments in other times and places. In the 1980s ‘autonomy clubs’ came out of the confrontational anarcho-punk movement and an angry youth generation alienated by Thatcherism. The 1990s brought another wave around squatted projects that were part of the resistance to the poll tax, the 1994 Criminal Justice Act and the Tories’ road and airport expansion programme.

By the late 1990s, a wider global anti-capitalist movement emerged, which, faced with the increasing difficulties of squatting and land speculation in the UK, attempted to establish more permanent social centres where activists could put down roots and develop resources for action. A number of centres were also inspired by Italy’s militant and longstanding centri sociali movement, which has been occupying abandoned factories and community centres since the 1970s.

Many centres were set up to try to counteract the ‘buy buy buy’ consumer mentality and the carpet bombing of our cities by corporate brands. The Common Place, for example, does a fry-up brunch followed by political films every Sunday afternoon, all paid for by donation.What is significant about these activities is that while they may often plug gaps in welfare or service provision, they do so not by helping the state but by defying and challenging it, by promoting an ethos of mutual aid, solidarity and self-management – the old socialist and newer punk attitude that ordinary people can organise their own lives without asking the state or depending on big corporations.

Honest, complex and messy

Autonomous social centres share no single objective. Many are hubs for local activists and campaigning, providing resources for skill sharing, meetings, national gatherings and fundraising. Words like ‘anti-capitalist’ are sometimes used. But what does this mean in practice?

What you won’t find are Leninist vanguards plotting to overthrow state power. You are more likely to find a politics inspired by the Zapatista movement in the Chiapas state of Mexico, stressing the need to challenge all forms of dominating power. Instead of blueprints there is an honest, complex and messy politics that reflects the openness of these spaces.

As Jim, from the Common Place, puts it, ‘The people who congregate round here are people who want to get their hands dirty; they are not about pure politics. It makes you face up to loads of things you don’t normally consider.’ Social centres are about what is called deliberative democracy – places of debate and discussion, not places where you go to be told what to think.
Many of those who started social centres were inspired by the big moments of national and international resistance (the 1990 poll tax protests, Seattle in 1999, Genoa in 2001, the anti-war march of 2003) to make the ideas behind these mass mobilisations mean something locally. For them social centres are about reaching beyond the activist ghetto and mixing the more confrontational and short-lived politics of direct action with something more permanent for organising and educating and getting involved with local people and their concerns.

‘This place has become a bit of a hawk in the storm,’ says Andy, from the London Action Resource Centre. ‘Things flourish and wax and wane and we kind of stay in the midst of it.’ Anna, from the same centre, describes how ‘we felt we could really do with some kind of a long-term, permanent place where we can put down some roots and be seen and be visible and be proud of what we were doing.’ In this sense social centres are also a political response to that very basic – and ancient – need for space.

So how are social centres organised? This boils down to how to manage your own affairs – which for these places means getting to grips with direct democracy and self-management, and a rejection of hierarchy and discrimination. In practice organising is very flexible and experimental and there is a necessary willingness to accept mistakes. Most have regular open assemblies, which use consensus tools and are the sovereign decision-making bodies at which decisions get made, problems get responded to and people can bring suggestions or requests. Anyone attending can propose an event such as a gig, meeting or film night, link up with like-minded people – and just do it. That can be really empowering.

Reaching out

How can social centres reach out, however, to someone who’s not a seasoned activist and may feel intimidated in a new and unfamiliar space? One approach is by offering activities and services that are relevant and useful to what’s happening locally, as well as providing opportunities for discussion and action on big issues. Some of the events taking place recently in centres across the UK have included film nights on asylum and destitution arranged by the No Borders network, organising meetings by the Camp for Climate Action, seed swaps organised by the Permaculture Association and various UK tours on everything from saving the wilderness in Iceland to getting involved in this year’s G8 demonstrations in Japan.

The idea is that these activities and events are used to try to get people actively involved in both campaigning and in the centre, putting mutual aid and cooperation into practice. It can be as simple as organising affordable food and entertainment, or skill sharing and free classes in self-defence or bike maintenance. These kinds of activities are urgently needed in overpriced cities where spaces to hang out without feeling hassled to shop are almost absent.
Social centres have also been active at responding to the needs of the most marginalised and precarious members of the community. Several centres offer free support and advice to these groups as services are cut back by the state. Common Conversation at the Common Place in Leeds, for example, has been offering free conversational English lessons every Saturday for two years, while the Migrant English Project at the Cowley Club in Brighton emerged as a response to government cuts in ESOL languages courses.

The Kebele social centre in Bristol is one of a number that have set up a housing co-operative to offer affordable accommodation; it is looking to set up a community co-operative to increase its involvement with the local community. A few places also run wholefood shops with the aim of trying to make them affordable to ordinary people. Examples include the FareShares food co-operative at the 56a InfoShop in south London and Leith Wholefoods at the Autonomous Centre for Edinburgh (ACE). The latter operates under the slogan: ‘Run by skint people for skint people.’ ACE has also run Edinburgh Claimants for several years, offering support with benefits, housing and debt problems, and is now involved in a new network, the Edinburgh Coalition against Poverty.

The problems

Managing these kinds of projects isn’t easy. First, there is the familiar issue of a small group of people doing most of the work and failing to get others to go beyond simply using a place rather than getting involved in actually running it, Alongside this problem goes a recurring pattern of burnout, exacerbated by the ever-present precariousness of existing on a shoestring.

The issue of how people self-police each other’s behaviour in a free and consensual space is also difficult, as too is that of how to deal with people who simply exploit the effort and commitment of others. There is a risk of activists becoming building managers rather than focusing on activism and campaigning. And then there are race, class, education and gender divisions, the ever-present alpha males who dominate meetings and the problem of informal hierarchies emerging when consensus decision-making processes are employed and the most confident, articulate and well known can get their way. Harassment by state agencies and the police is also a constant threat to the centres.

The biggest issue, however, remains that of accessibility and inclusivity. As a response to the negative stereotypes about ‘radical’ social spaces and anarchist squats, there is now a preference for a more inclusive look, using familiar signs such as coffee machines, art exhibitions and reading areas, which attempts to strike a balance between a commitment to radical politics while at the same time being appealing to new people. This desire to reach out is about realising that big spectacular moments of resistance aren’t enough on their own to change the world.

Moving on

The anti-capitalist ‘movement of movements’ that reared its head at Seattle in 1999 has matured and moved on in the past decade, and autonomous social centres have moved on with it. While those involved in setting up such centres still have that urge to take on global capitalism in spectacular fashion, there has been a shift to a more rooted activism that is connected to daily struggles and organising around the material needs of the most disadvantaged. There is now a major focus to move beyond the comfort zone of the activist subculture into the wider community, and to make connections between radical activism and local struggles.

Their main political strength of the centres is that their activities demonstrate to a wider public the real possibilities of providing and managing our own spaces and services. Many of these centres are living examples of how we can all resist property speculation, privatisation and the domination of big business. But one of the questions they raise is whether anti-capitalist groups can develop attractive and feasible local alternatives that make sense to people who are not themselves politicised or activist.

Autonomous social centres are unusual political animals – positioned somewhere between 19th-century co-operative mutual aid societies, 20th-century radical social movements, and 21st-century local welfare providers. They represent a novel, more locally-grounded direction for political activists, based on activities that stress mutual aid and solidarity and a rejection of hierarchy. These kinds of political projects are always going to look messy and incomplete. This is, to a very large extent, their point – they aim to reflect and to harness, rather than try to subsume, the different ideas, viewpoints and energies of the wider society.

At their best, they are amazing reminders of human possibilities. As Jane from the 1 in 12 Club in Bradford puts it, ‘I think it is important to maybe not ask the big “Why are we here?” Maybe it is just a big exercise to see what the collective imagination can dream up.’ Social centres certainly don’t have all the answers, and they don’t offer a unified political plan. Their real potential is in their desire to break out of the activist ghetto and connect radical politics with their wider communities – which together can develop skills, ideas and action for positive social change.

Details of UK social centres can be found at www.socialcentresnetwork.org.uk. The new book What’s this space? Stories from social centres in the UK and Ireland was published under a Creative Commons licence in May 2008 with funding from an ESRC project. It features stories and analysis and can be downloaded for free or ordered by emailing socialcentresbooklet@riseup.net
Photographs by Cecilia Anesi, taken at the Bowl Court centre in London

Squatting

Squatting is usually the cheapest housing option and there are residential squats in many cities. Squatting is still legal and squatters have legal rights if they can show evidence of residence in an unoccupied building. However, it can also be a rather temporary solution, especially if the landlord decides to skip the niceties.

Low impact development

An option at the more affordable end of the self-build scale is a low impact development (LID). A roundhouse made from wood and mud (cob walls) with a grass roof, such as Tony’s at Brithir Mawr in Wales, only costs £3,000 to build. It is also self-sufficient, using solar and wind power for electricity and a wood stove for heat.

Lammas Low Impact Initiatives is establishing a low impact village in Wales. Working with Pembrokeshire’s innovative LID policy, Lammas plans a settlement of 20 small holdings on 175 acres. The eco-village will showcase a range of highly sustainable building and living solutions, with the Stage 1 planning application to be submitted in April 2007.

Lammas is a co-operative industrial and provident society (IPS) and is launching public shares in the project. These offer everyone the opportunity to invest in building the low impact movement as the money raised will help fund not only the Pembrokeshire development but also a network of projects across the UK.

Low impact buildings are generally constructed out of onsite and waste materials. The Brighton Earthship, for example, is entirely heated by the sun and was made from tyres rammed full of earth, with waste cans and bottles filling the gaps between the tyres.

Housing co-operatives

Such solutions offer more than just low cost alternatives. Key to their aim is to reinvigorate a sense of community in the ways in which we live. Not everyone has the time or desire to build their own home and finding land in urban areas can be problematic.

With this in mind, housing cooperatives are increasingly popular in British cities. They allow collective management of a property by the tenants and for the building to be owned in common. To raise the money to buy a building housing co-ops also become IPS’s that issue public loan stock. A long running example is the Cornerstone housing co-op in Leeds.

Co-housing

Co-housing is an arrangement whereby private dwellings are organised to encourage collaborative living while maintaining individual space. The houses share communal facilities such as workshops, open space, a playground and often a community building where residents can meet and share meals as they wish.

Cars tend to be kept to the edge of the site to create a more ‘people friendly’ space. The design thus encourages, but does not impose, interaction and community ties. The Springhill cohousing project in Stroud is one example; another is being established in Lancaster.

Diggers and dreamers

A good place to start with any of these options is to read Diggers and Dreamers: The guide to communal living, which lists most ongoing communities in Britain.

Community control

What is crucial to all these examples is that the control of the property remains not just with those living in it but with the wider community. These approaches challenge the profit-generating process of private ownership. This ability to control the spaces in which we live ranges from collective management to democratic ownership.

A tenant management organisation is where tenants form a management co-operative, a committee or a not-for-profit company to make an agreement with the property owner. This agreement can include taking care of maintenance in return for reduced rent or direct payment from the owner.

A more radical approach to ownership is to establish a community land trust. Land is moved permanently from private ownership into a trust for the benefit of the community. As the land can never then be sold, its value and appreciation does not threaten its use for community projects such as agriculture, workshops or residential dwellings. It is a form of democratic ownership by the local community, who consequently are able to use it in sustainable ways (see, for example, Stroud Community Agriculture.Paul Chatterton set up a housing co-op in Leeds and is involved in setting up a co-housing project in the north of England; Larch Maxey lives off-grid in a wooden chalet and is a co-founder and core group member of Lammas; Jenny Pickerill is building an eco-house – see www.autonomousgeographies.org