Anarchy 51/The catchers in the Right
The catchers
in the Right
One of the basic tenets of anarchist evangelism (if they aren’t mutually exclusive terms) is, common with that of the church or any other body, to catch ’em young. In the anarchist case this applies more in practice than in theory, simply because anarchist characteristics—open-minded questioning, dislike of authority, a capacity for honesty—are essentially youthful qualities. Not all the young possess them, alack, but they tend to be lost rather than acquired with age. They are a bit more common, though, than a discouraged anarchist might think; it’s just that those who possess them have a healthy suspicion of any organisation and are, logically, unlikely to form themselves into that notorious paradox, an anarchist organisation.
There are, however, other hunters out. In 1960, three incognito social workers were sent to three different towns “to make contact with unattached young people, to discover their interests and leisure-time activities and, following this, to help in whatever way seems appropriate”. The project was organised by the National Association of Youth Clubs, and the unattached is an account of these people (“unattached”, as might be expected in a NAYC project, meant unattached to any official organisation; nobody seems to have expected that the unattached might be perfectly happily attached to each other), and how the workers fared in “Seagate”, “Northtown” and “Midford”, finding, and establishing relationships with, the unattached in, mainly, coffee bars (an apt subtitle might have been: “With Net and Notebook Through Darkest Gaggia-land”). The principal value and delight of the book is that it is an amazingly real piece of evidence (about the unattached and the workers); almost as good as a novel—if not better in parts; the bald sketching-in of characters which nevertheless reveals very clearly the real people behind them, and the in-spite-of-itself moving description—written in best casebook manner, not unsympathetic but asympathetic—of the sad and inevitable disintegration of the Seagate group.
The workers, although not at all painfully impaled on its horns do give some indication of being faintly aware of the dilemma that haunts (or should) everyone whose job involves mental welfare: whether to encourage basically healthy mental attitudes whenever they are found, regardless of the conflicts this will lead to in a sick society, or whether to so amputate and adapt them that they will fit neatly into society as it is. The workers all speak of rebellion against “adult values”, “authority”, “society”, but never stop for long enough to even brieflynevertheless, the workers’ own experiences of “adult” attitudes and social conditions obliquely support the unattached’s resentment and distrust. The Northtown worker’s horrifying description of the factory she worked in, and the Seagate worker’s difficulty in finding “adults with an attitude sufficiently tolerant and understanding to accept the group for what it was without wishing to impose change or insist on conformity to narrowly defined standards just for the sake of it” both speak eloquently for themselves.
The workers themselves all achieved a fair measure of identification with their unattached. Surprisingly so since they didn’t know what to expect. The Seagate worker—age 22, played jazz piano, liked drama—met up with a vague but cohesive group of intelligent middle-class rebels, many of whom had thrown up “lifeless, secure and comforting” office jobs, and only worked casually when they were short of money. Their ambitions were to become actors, artists, writers, models. The worker dismisses these as being “centred around highly-paid occupations”, but goes on to say, “Paul W., who felt he was being creative at the arts college was the only one during the three years that the worker heard admit to enjoying his work”. The Seagate project was perhaps the most successful. Under the worker’s guidance, the group produced an Ionesco play. At Midford, on the other hand, as befits a more rural community where unavoidable social mixing between age-groups produces a more conservative attitude in young people, the worker—a 28-year-old schoolmaster—seems too stolid and humourless. While the Seagate worker can talk almost non-judgementally of a girl being “sexually generous”, the Midford man writes: “Mavis . . . has been involved with a great many local boys. Jean (an older, outside person) talked to some of this group recently and told them of the dangers of leading this sort of life. They bluntly told her she didn’t know what she was missing.” He also mentions “rescuing” girls from “compromising situations with local boys” (did he, like the Peter Sellers’ headmaster,
