Cowley Club
Encyclopedia
The Cowley Club is a libertarian social centre in Brighton
Brighton
Brighton is the major part of the city of Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, England on the south coast of Great Britain...

, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 opened in 2003. It provides resources and meeting spaces for groups and individuals active in areas such as workplace and unemployed struggles, international solidarity, animal liberation
Animal liberation movement
The animal-liberation movement, sometimes called the animal-rights movement, animal personhood, or animal-advocacy movement, is a social movement which seeks an end to the rigid moral and legal distinction drawn between human and non-human animals, an end to the status of animals as property, and...

, ecological defence, feminist and queer activism and opposing the arms trade. Its political identity is close to anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...

 or libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism
Libertarian socialism is a group of political philosophies that promote a non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic, stateless society without private property in the means of production...

. It also houses a vegan community café, a bookshop, and free english lessons for migrants.

The Cowley Club is named after local activist Harry Cowley, and is part of the UK Social Centre Network
UK Social Centre Network
The UK Social Centre Network is a grass roots initiative to establish a network between self identified radical independent social and community centres in the United Kingdom. There is no single policy statement but clearly a general desire to improve communication and co-operation between the...

. In their study of the social centre
Social center
Social centers are community spaces. They are buildings which are used for a range of disparate activities, which can be linked only by virtue of being not-for-profit. They might be organizing centers for local activities or they might provide support networks for minority groups such as prisoners...

 movement in the United Kingdom, academics Stuart Hodkinson and Paul Chatterton characterise the Cowley Club as a similar type of collective-ownership initiative to the London Action Resource Centre
London Action Resource Centre
The London Action Resource Centre is a meeting centre and planning area for several protest groups, including Queeruption and Indymedia in London. It also functions as a planning and information centre for Peoples Global Action. It was originally known as the Fieldgate Action Resource Centre...

 (LARC), "with the added dimension of a housing
cooperative". Chatterton depicts the club as one of a number of resurgent social centres in the 2000s.

History and organisation

The Cowley Club is a cooperative
Cooperative
A cooperative is a business organization owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit...

. As such, assets and control are collectively owned, the idea being that those using the centre share the responsibilities and work that comes with running it. The centre is collectively owned by "shareholders", and run as a base for those involved in grass-roots social change and those sympathetic to such activities. It is run entirely by volunteers — no-one is paid, and no private profit is made.

Funding was raised via a mortgage
Mortgage loan
A mortgage loan is a loan secured by real property through the use of a mortgage note which evidences the existence of the loan and the encumbrance of that realty through the granting of a mortgage which secures the loan...

, loans from cooperative organisations such as Radical Routes
Radical Routes
Radical Routes is a United Kingdom-based co-operative federation. The organisation provides support to housing and worker co-operatives as well as social centres. This support is given in the form of mutual aid...

, and loan-stock (loans made by individuals on a five-year basis). The building purchase was completed in February 2002, then the lengthy renovation began. Much of the property was in disrepair and volunteers worked to renovate it. Subsequently, volunteers are organised into groups to take on various aspects of running the centre — there are collectives for the café, bookshop, kids club, cleaning, finances, maintenance and entertainments. There are monthly general meetings for overall co-ordinating, which have the ultimate responsibility for decisions taken.

According to a report in The Argus
The Argus (Brighton)
The Argus is a local newspaper based in Brighton and Hove in East Sussex, with editions serving the city of Brighton and Hove and the other parts of both East and West Sussex.-History:...

, the centre was intended to provide "cheap, wholesome food during the day and a member's bar in the evening", as well as "drop-in advice sessions, children's activities, community meetings and a local history archive." It was both critiqued and defended, along with other legal social centres, by articles in radical direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...

 journal Do or Die. A critical article called it "a posh looking bar", noting that "If meetings do take place in The Cowley Club, for example, and run into bar time, those attending the meeting must sign in to the club". The anonymous author maintained there was a danger in enterprises such as the Club "springing up on the back of the direct action movement, they will divert activist time and energy into an essentially non-radical and liberal project". It was defended in a second article as providing a stable base under collective control for a range of activities, a base which squatting is currently unable to provide on a long term basis.

Principles

The principles of the centre are summed up as being, "For a social system based on mutual aid and voluntary co-operation; against all forms of oppression. To establish a share in the general prosperity for all – the breaking down of racial, religious, national and sex barriers – and to fight for the life of one earth."

Harry Cowley

The Club is named after Brightonian Harry Cowley
Harry Cowley
-Biography:Born in 1890, and working as a chimney sweep, he became involved in grass-roots social activism from the 1920s until his death in the 1970s. He helped organise the unemployed, moved homeless families into squatted buildings after both world wars and was a key figure in confronting...

, a chimney sweep
Chimney sweep
A chimney sweep is a worker who clears ash and soot from chimneys. The chimney uses the pressure difference caused by a hot column of gas to create a draught and draw air over the hot coals or wood enabling continued combustion. Chimneys may be straight or contain many changes of direction. During...

 who was involved in grass-roots social activism
Activism
Activism consists of intentional efforts to bring about social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing...

 from the 1920s until his death in the 1970s. He helped organise the unemployed, moved homeless families into squatted
Squatting
Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied space or building, usually residential, that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have permission to use....

 buildings after both world wars, was a key figure in confronting fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

 in 1930s Brighton. He also campaigned for cheap food, mobilised pensioners, was involved in running social events and social centres and generally organising whatever was needed to provide practical aid for the poor and disadvantaged of the town. His actions were based in local neighbourhoods and outside political parties. The centre was named after him as a sign of its aim of furthering this tradition of grass-roots organising and class solidarity. The Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company
Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company
Brighton & Hove Bus and Coach Company operates almost all bus services in the city of Brighton and Hove in southern England. The company was established in 1884 as Brighton, Hove and Preston United Omnibus Company and has been part of the Go-Ahead Group since 1993.The company currently operates a...

 has named a bus after Harry Cowley.

Related topics

  • List of anarchist communities


Further reading

  • Chatterton and Holland (2003) Urban Nightscapes: Youth Cultures, Pleasure Spaces and Corporate Power (Critical Geographies). Routledge
    Routledge
    Routledge is a British publishing house which has operated under a succession of company names and latterly as an academic imprint. Its origins may be traced back to the 19th-century London bookseller George Routledge...

    . ISBN 0415283469

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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