Introduction

This book contends that anarchist thought and action have at times positively informed professional social work.

The introductory essay, by Martin Gilbert, outlines some ideas in the literature of radical social work, suggesting that the profession has had a radical tradition, underlying its aspects of oppressive social control.

Within that tradition, he contends that anarchists have made a significant, if hidden, contribution. Martin starts by mentioning some of this theory, progressing to record how libertarian ideas and methods of working, helped him to organise groups; and networks in mental health services. Martin shows the stages of such development, its pitfalls, and what can be seen as repeatable results. Empirical material is drawn on, that will be of value to social workers, as well as those who want to organise a group.

These are 'dispatches from the front line'. A common motif running through all the essays here is the authors' isolation and tenuous position within the structure, following their challenge to the hierarchy. Sometimes they are welcomed, at other times protected by sympathetic managers, mostly under threat.

Martin challenges hierarchical thinking through informal group work. Even during his social work training, Mark Newns makes a challenge to rigid patterns of thought, with his radical critique of the discipline, but found support from his tutor. Mark then goes on to similar defiance in Liverpool, West Suffolk, Stevenage and other places. He advocates a holistic approach.

Peter Good's classic account of the Calderstones hospital dispute exposes the unions' / management's unspoken deal not to rock the boat, which keeps the hierarchies in place, and unchallenged. Developing the outrageous technique of 'Imaginative Industrial Action', Peter confronts their self serving complicity and called the bluff on the union bureaucrats' empty claims to represent the interests of staff or patients.

John Evans similarly brushes up against local vested interests and council nepotism. Doreen Frampton records how hierarchies and vested interests close ranks and wage psychological warfare against whistleblowers.

If there is a common plea behind all the pieces here, it is for the creation of political space and tolerance for these fragile early blooms to flourish.

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