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One of the more memorable periods in my political activism was with Worthing Anarchist Teapot.

I discovered the other day that evidence of this initiative can still be found on the internet, in archived pages published by the friend who was the main force behind it.

Her aim was to replicate in our English seaside town a project that had been quite a hit down the road in Brighton, namely to set up temporary cafés, offering free tea and coffee, in order to spread the word about anarchism.

The first entry in her diary is dated October 1 1998 and she records, defiantly eschewing the use of capital letters:* “some brighton anarchist teapot collective members came over and met with us to discuss creating a worthing teapot. lots of interest and ideas to share and we’re well on the way to having our own anarchist teapot now after it being a vague idea that we might act on at some point in the future, it’s now within sight of becoming a reality”.

You can read the full account for yourself if you like (the timeline starts from the bottom of the page) – basically we did manage to open a café in a couple of locations but only very briefly, as things kept going wrong.

An entry on December 19, still in 1998, describes an evening I remember very well indeed: “a couple of collective members spent an hour or two last night doing the rounds of any worthing pub that would let in anarchists! this was the anarchist teapot desperate attempt to raise funds. we managed to raise just over 30 quid from only four pubs (and one of them only had five people in it). so not bad really. and we had an amusing time arguing with pissed-up people. and were told by a middle-aged man: ‘ah, anarchy, that was popular when i was at school’”.

I tried this a decade later, with a different anarchist friend, and it did not work at all. Society (and pubs) had changed a lot in that time.

The New Year saw us adopt a new tactic. “16th january 1999. well, still no premises and no-one to stay overnight, so no prospect of premises for a while either. instead we’ve been taking the teapot to the streets (we did one today and two over christmas/new year). basically this means a wonky trestle table (but with a nice table-cloth!), a tea urn with a very fetching bright red insulating jacket secured with string, fliers, leaflets and zines, a few collective members, and a couple of donations tins. the ‘street teapots’ have been slow, attracting mainly the people who already knew about us. we have reached a fair number of new people though, so not all bad. it’s the suspicious look people give you when you offer them a free cup of tea that’s so disconcerting”.

We then carried out a special “occupation” of a town landmark that we called the “bandstand”, although it was really just some seating under a roof.

“13th february 1999. today the anarchist teapot squatted the bandstand in worthing town centre, declaring it a ‘free tea zone’. brilliant day! really busy and we gave out loads of tea and info to allsorts of people. overall a great response apart from two old ladies who came over tempted by a free cuppa, saw our literature and said ‘we’re not taking tea from anarchists’ before walking off!

“this was so much better than our usual saturday stalls. we had a big black anarchist flag flying, a huge brightly painted banner saying ‘free tea zone’, and lots of balloons. there’re benches in the bandstand so people could sit down and have their tea. all this made an eye-catching and welcoming area. we also had some vegan flapjack and choccy cake – though this didn’t last long! – and we got through two tea urns in about four hours. so … a great success, we’ll definitely be doing this again”.

I don’t think we did, in fact, but the street stalls kept going for a long time, albeit without the friend I have been quoting and, eventually, without the tea, because it was too much work for little purpose (at this point we became simply Worthing Anarchists). My friend Gil and I were the mainstays of this Saturday tradition for a decade and it only stopped when, sadly, he died at the end of 2009.

I also discovered in the internet archives the text of the little leaflet that we handed out to the good people of Worthing. I know that I basically wrote it, although others in the group may well have made amendments.

Here I have reinserted the capital letters, as I am sure they were there in the printed version!

Why we are anarchists

For many people in Worthing “anarchist” is probably a word which means very little. If anything, they probably think of violent anti-social trouble-makers, out to create havoc and chaos for no good reason at all.

In fact, the opposite is the truth. The term ‘anarchy’ simply means absence of government and anarchists believe that normal people, left to their own devices, are quite capable of running their own lives and local communities without the self-appointed leaders of Westminster, Brussels or Washington holding the whip hand.

We are currently experiencing a breakdown in natural community life because our self-respect and human values have been eaten away by faceless, money-driven industrial society.

Anarchists want to turn the world’s power structures the other way up. People must come first, not governments and profits.

Although anarchism does admittedly end in ‘-ism’, it is not one of those boring narrow-minded dogmas that most of us would run a mile from.

A love of freedom, truth, justice and nature are the broad planks that bond us together – within that there is plenty of room for diversity.

Anarchists are not the same as the ‘trendy lefties’ you may have come across in the past. For all their politically correct posing, these left-wingers have nothing worthwhile to offer ordinary people.

They still want us all to be slaves to a system – except it would be them and their mates in charge of us, not the current bunch of bastards!

You are going to hear a lot more about anarchism as the new millennium arrives. That is because anarchists are the only people left who have the guts to stand up to the all-powerful global tyranny of finance and business.

The political struggle in the next century isn’t going to be about this party and that party, left and right, tweedledum and tweedledee.

It’s going to be a battle of those who cherish freedom, hope, beauty, health, community and justice against the dark forces of greed, profit, war, technology, starvation and environmental destruction.

As anarchists, we know which side we are on.

Do you?

* This was, after all, just a few short months before the famous Carnival Against Capital in the City of London.

PS. I have added the “Why we are anarchists” text to the new “Real Anarchists” blog.