Less wailing, more gnashing
Rupture believes there is an urgent need for the expansion of the social centre network in the UK. We don’t discriminate between centres which exist in occupied squats (perhaps the best route for complete autonomy?), rented spaces, buildings owned by co-operatives, or by any other means. Many working in, or towards, social centres agree that although there are greater issues at stake in the world today we still need to be ready to replace capitalism – both now and in the future. Why yell for capitalism’s death knell, if we aren’t already making our own routes for change? Thus, the founding of inclusive, self-managed centres of social and creative activity is something which could form a large instrument for extensive social upheaval.
The first step to forming a new social centre is obviously finding a building to use. The current land-grab, with every Tom, Dick and Sally wanting to get a foot on the property ladder, and the consistent turning over of once-public institutions to private property developers is making this step increasingly difficult. To counter this trend, we want a push to have dormant or useless public institutions turned over to expand the social centre network.
Let’s start by hounding people out of Church! It’s one of the few acquisition and development forces to match traditional property developers who target wonderful red-brick school buildings and hospitals to transform them into loft-style luxury apartments. Go down a dark alley looking for empty buildings and chances are some Jesus-freak or other has been there before you and setup a home for their weekly gnashing and wailing. Let’s get serious; we need fairly sizable buildings, by fair means or foul.
Schools should stay in the realms of education; hospitals for curing ills and providing respite; churches are simply in need of new tenants; tenants who believe in their own power to change the world around them; who want to believe in each other rather than outdated dogma.
The desire to want to uphold certain worthwhile traditions and preserve cultural heritage make this plan sound less radical; but if you stop and think about it you’ll find that although social centres are usually in favour of total autonomy and are decisively anti-State, the ideas they want to promote are quite ‘normal’. Education, social and creative functions have their roots in common sense and a common sense of worth. At the risk of sounding extremely conservative, this is what could save Britain from becoming a passive nation of dumb idiots glued to the TV or out on the streets robbing each others’ bling.
However, the effect of social centres won’t be really felt until it’s a widespread movement. We think this means a steady process of converting properties which at this point in human evolution really should be surplus to requirements. After churches we can move onto other institutions in desperate need of some spring-cleaning: court houses, police stations, tax offices, barracks, town halls and prisons etc.
These selfish swine are keeping on to some lovely old buildings for their own self-serving activities. The sooner they are made redundant and replaced with something which works for and alongside the general populous the better. Then we can truly get on with the mammoth task of repairing all the damage these idiots have done in the first place. Me-speed.