THE RECENTLY PUBLISHED BROCHURE ANARCHISTISCH RECHT EXPLORES ‘ANARCHIST LAW’ AS A COLLECTIVE TERM FOR FURTHERING CRITIQUES OF THE SOCIAL AND LEGAL ORDER ~ Thom Holterman ~ Anarchism can offer an excellent framework for fundamental legal criticism. Since anarchists critique capitalist society, which relies on oppressive laws to maintain its existence, the addition of legal perspectives can allow for decisive criticisms of the present social order. The two approaches do not exclude each other; instead, anarchists can advance legal criticism without compromise. This aligns with what is known as ‘positive anarchy’, a term borrowed from Proudhon. Fundamentally, it encompasses a view of society without oppressive power and refers to order, dynamism, and rationality, in addition to mutualism and federalism. Such views and ideas can also be found in Kropotkin and Bakunin. Here, I would like to emphasise Clara Meijer-Wichmann (1885-1922) in particular, as she was one of the first female jurists, challenging existing criminal law and the entire penitentiary system over a century ago. What I call ‘anarchist law’ here should be understood as a collective term with plural meanings. ‘Anarchist’ refers both ideologically to ‘anti-capitalist’ and sociologically/politically to ‘without coercion’. Referring to ‘law’ as anarchist law thus places the term into a forward-looking perspective towards a libertarian society. This future-oriented focus does not imply that it is new, or without a past. Forms of anarchist law have always existed, but have remained largely unknown. As is evident in my first contribution in the recently-published brochure Anarchistisch Recht, entitled ‘Law and Power in a Libertarian Perspective’, one of the sources of law is human co-operation. This is further elaborated in my second contribution, ‘George Gurvitch (1894-1965) and Social Law’, where his ideas of ‘social law’ and political pluralism are discussed. The third contribution, entitled ‘State, Law, and Legitimacy’, addresses the foundations of that ‘other’, libertarian society, by French libertarian activist, anarcho-syndicalist, and historian René Berthier. The fourth contribution comes from French libertarian jurist Anne-Sophie Chambost, a university lecturer in legal history specializing in Proudhon. She demonstrates that anarchist law already has a history. Her text is titled ‘Anarchist Thoughts on Law in the 19th and 20th Centuries’. In these first four contributions, anarchism and law are seen as converging. As already noted, this doesn’t preclude viewing the two phenomena in a divergent, mutually-opposed sense. Law that is used to maintain the existing capitalist society, which is precisely what anarchists are fighting against, is a main aspect of this opposition. The Armenian physician, activist anarchist, and author Alexander Atabekyan (1868-1933) makes clear to us that this has been the case for a long time. His contribution, the fifth, was sent to me in a German translation from Russian, published here under the title ‘Law and Supremacy’. The apparent divergence between anarchism and law can be put into practice or worked around in various ways. In the sixth contribution, I listed some of these anarchists’ ways: ‘Apart from the Law – On Illegalists, Direct Action, Take and Eat movement’. Finally, the seventh contribution is by French libertarian jurist and anarcho-syndicalist Pierre Bance, who once again comprehensively examines the ‘question of law in anarchy’ and encourages recognising ‘anarchist law’ as a key issue.   The post Anarchism and Law appeared first on Freedom News.

THE CRIMINALISATION OF HOMELESSNESS AND POVERTY IS NOT TRULY ENDING—ONLY BEING RESHAPED ~ Tony ~ On 10 June 2025 the Government confirmed it will repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824 by Spring 2026 (you just can’t rush these things), and whilst the news was widely and justifiably welcomed by homelessness charities, we should sound a note of caution: we have been here before. The previous Government also said it would repeal the Act, only to announce even more reactionary laws to be put in its place. This time the Government says it will be replaced by amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill to include a new offence of facilitating begging for gain and an offence of trespassing with the intention of committing a crime, both of which are included under the 1824 Act.  Of course, the Crime and Policing Bill is already a thoroughly repressive piece of legislation, including so-called respect orders (which can be used to prohibit a wide variety of anti-social behaviour), youth injunctions (to be used against children aged 10 or over but under 18) and further restrictions on protests (prohibiting the wearing or otherwise using of an item that conceals a person’s identity, an offence of possession of pyrotechnics at protests, and an offence of climbing on a war memorial). Whilst most of the Vagrancy Act was repealed over time, the part of the legislation that makes it a criminal offence to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales remains in force (it was repealed in Scotland in 1982), thus continuing to give the police both the power and the discretion to arrest people and Magistrates the power to impose a fine of up to £1,000. According the Single Homeless Project, between April 2022 (when the last Government said it would repeal the Vagrancy Act) and June 2024 (when Parliament was dissolved), 177 people, including 148 men and 27 women, were arrested under the law. To be clear this means that when you are starving and you beg for food or money to buy food you can be arrested. When you lose your home and are forced to sleep on the streets you can be fined. When you cannot pay the fine you can be imprisoned. As always the victims of capitalism are the scapegoats. HOW WE GOT HERE An Act for the Punishment of idle and disorderly Persons, and Rogues and Vagabonds, in England, to give its full title, was part of the response of the ruling class to the rioting that followed the Napoleonic Wars. The price of bread increased but wages did not (I hope this does not sound too contemporary). As a result many agricultural labourers were plunged into poverty. Trade unions were effectively illegal (just 10 years later the Tolpuddle Martyrs were tried, convicted and sentenced to penal transportation to Australia for swearing a secret oath as members of a friendly society). Unemployment increased. The Corn Laws were enacted to impose tariffs on all imported cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley, thus increasing the profits and power of land owners. Unrest was widespread. The 1824 Act set a new model, which proved extremely influential around the world over the following centuries. Between the early nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, vagrancy laws were adopted or reformulated almost everywhere the British rulers colonised. Laws were adopted to cover a broad range of ‘offences’ and ‘offensive’ ways of being, including impoverishment, idleness, begging, hawking, public gambling, sex work, public indecency, fortune-telling, traditional religious practices, drunkenness, homosexuality, cross-dressing, socialising across racial groups, being suspicious, and many other activities as well. They were adopted for a range of purposes: to control labour and limit workers’ bargaining positions, including after the abolition of slavery; to define the boundaries of civilized, industrious, and moral society; and to “clean up the streets” and reinforce urban boundaries. Most overarchingly, vagrancy laws served as a practical and rhetorical means through which the discretionary power of the state, as enforced through the police and magistracy, was expanded. The Vagrancy Act 1824 comes from a largely forgotten era. Before the supposed Victorian values that so many reactionary politicians still like to espouse. A decade before the ‘new’ poor law which introduced the workhouses. Twenty years before Engels’ study of the Condition of the Working Class in England. Over a century before the welfare state. As for the offences of leaving properties empty, making rents unaffordable and reducing people to poverty, unsurprisingly no legalisation is proposed—but law and morality rarely coincide. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Photo: Matt Collamer on Unsplash The post Scrapping the Vagrancy Act appeared first on Freedom News.

ALGORITHMS, FACIAL RECOGNITION, AND TIGHTENING PROTEST LAWS SIGNAL A DEEPENING SURVEILLANCE STATE ~ Blade Runner ~ The UK is expanding its use of predictive policing and surveillance, framing it as a response to crime, protest, and public safety. But the direction is clear: more monitoring, earlier intervention, and more control over dissent. In early April, The Guardian revealed that the Ministry of Justice is developing a “murder prevention” system. The tool aims to identify individuals judged to be at high risk of committing lethal violence, based on data drawn from multiple agencies—social care, policing, education. The government has framed the project as a research initiative to improve risk assessments and early intervention. But its underlying logic marks a shift toward ‘precrime’—managing individuals on the basis of what they might do, rather than what they’ve done. The comparison to Minority Report—Philip K. Dick’s 1956 story, later adapted into a 2002 film—is hard to avoid. In both, people are flagged not by witnesses or evidence, but by prediction systems that turn patterns into verdicts. Dick’s vision included ‘precogs’—human oracles housed by the state—while today’s version relies on datasets and AI algorithms. In both, the future is treated as knowable, and the present is shaped around managing that future in advance. Notably, overall crime rates in England and Wales have been falling for decades. According to the Office for National Statistics, incidents have dropped from nearly 20 million in the mid-1990s to under 5 million in recent years. Homicide levels have followed a similar decline, with 594 recorded in the year ending March 2021—far below their peak in the early 2000s. Only 35 of those involved firearms. The relative rarity of such violence raises questions about why a predictive “murder prevention” system is being pursued now. At the same time, police forces face severe financial pressure. The Metropolitan Police is planning to cut 1,700 officers and staff to cover a £260 million budget gap. Other forces face similar cuts. But rather than scaling back, policing is being reorganised—away from visible presence and toward data-driven surveillance, algorithmic profiling, and anticipatory enforcement. The Crime and Policing Bill 2025 reinforces this direction. It allows police to access DVLA-held driver licence records for law enforcement purposes. While the Home Office denies any link to facial recognition, civil liberties groups have raised concerns that this access could be repurposed—effectively turning the DVLA database into a foundation for real-time identification. Combined with surveillance networks already active in shops, housing estates, and transport hubs, this lays the groundwork for a more integrated system of biometric tracking, with limited transparency or oversight. These tools are disproportionately deployed in working-class areas and are consistently shown to disproportionately misidentify Black and Brown individuals. In August 2024, following a series of racist attacks across England, Prime Minister Keir Starmer proposed the expanded use of live facial recognition technology (LFR) as part of the government’s response. Civil liberties groups, including Statewatch, condemned the move, warning that it would further entrench surveillance and racialised policing. In an open letter, over two dozen organisations argued that the UK risks becoming “an outlier in the democratic world” by embracing a technology with no explicit legal basis, widespread inaccuracy, and discriminatory impacts. Critics noted that the government’s response to racist violence focused not on addressing its causes, but on expanding state power over already over-policed communities. The focus of policing is also shifting. As street crime continues to fall, more attention is directed toward protest, dissent, and the perceived risk of unrest. UK military operations abroad—most recently joint airstrikes in Yemen—raise the likelihood of retaliatory attacks. Surveillance systems originally developed for counter-terrorism are now being used to monitor social movements and suppress political disruption. Recent protest laws support this shift. The Public Order Act and related legislation criminalise slow marches, locking-on, and disruption to infrastructure. These laws were drafted in response to climate protests from groups such as Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion. Often operating without strong ties to other struggles—like labour, housing or anti-racist organising—these campaigns were easier to isolate and criminalise. The resulting legal framework now stands ready for broader use. The surveillance and predictive systems now being assembled are being designed not only for the current moment, but in preparation for what comes next. Whether in response to renewed austerity, military escalation, or widespread resistance, these tools are positioned to contain unrest before it surfaces. What’s emerging is a model of preemptive policing—structured around behaviour, association, and predicted risk. Individuals are reduced to data profiles, tracked not for what they’ve done but for their statistical proximity to disruption. Suppression is exercised in advance.  Risk scoring, biometric surveillance, and protest restrictions are being embedded into law and infrastructure. These powers are built to be extended—to trade unionists, migrant organisers, housing activists, and anyone seen to disrupt the smooth functioning of a society of control. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Image by Rasmus The post How the UK is shaping a future of Precrime and dissent management appeared first on Freedom News.

ASSISTED SUICIDE SHOULD NOT BE ILLEGAL – BUT THE LIVING AND DYING BOTH DESERVE A BETTER WORLD ~ Ryan Essex ~ The UK Parliament is tomorrow set to debate and vote on new legalisation on assisted dying, which would “allow adults who are terminally ill, subject to safeguards and protections, to request and be provided with assistance to end their own life”. This will be the most recent bill in a series of efforts to legalise assisted dying for close to two decades. If passed, it would undoubtedly be a step in the right direction, but it arguably doesn’t go far enough. To receive approval for any assistance, a judge and two doctors would have to approve the request and the person would need to be terminally ill with less than six moths left to live. Yet the government should not restrict people’s ability to make decisions about their own life, including the choice to end it. I can appreciate why assisted dying may not be the right decision for all, like abortion. However, this legislation still limits people’s right to choose. We should also be deeply suspicious of any process that requires the approval of two doctors and a judge. Science undoubtedly provides the best chance of understanding the world. In this respect, I hold a similar view to Bakunin who was happy to defer to the authority of the bootmaker when it comes to boots. At the same time, however, the question of assisted dying is not as much a scientific or medical question as a moral one. Then there is the argument that such restrictions are simply ineffective and result in more harm than good. Assisted dying has been accessible for a number of years abroad. It is estimated that at least one person a week travels to Switzerland from Britain to access assisted dying (at a cost of over £10,000 per person). There are also growing DIY efforts to provide people with the choice of how and when they die. In saying all of this, I still feel uneasy. We live in a deeply imperfect world, where people are oppressed and commodified. What we value and who is valued is perverted by the state, capital and other forms of domination, tied to one’s ability to be a ‘productive’ member of society. For many, this makes it very difficult to continue living. For this reason, from an anarchist standpoint, it is not enough to simply assert that agency or (individual) freedom should take precedence over all other concerns. At the same time, we need to build solidarity and support one another. Legalising assisted dying is one thing, but in the face of so many dehumanising forces, the much harder part is to build strong communities, and make the world better for both the living and the dying. Dr. Ryan Essex is a researcher at the University of Greenwich who is currently writing about the link between anarchism, health and bioethics. The post It’s my party and I’ll die if I want to appeared first on Freedom News.