The Eclipse network’s second gathering took place over four days between 28th and 31st August this year, wherein we tried to hammer out the nitty gritty of the various organisational stuff we didn’t get round to back in February, or indeed online throughout the intervening months. This time, we were hosted by the wonderful Crabapple housing co-op in Shrewsbury, camping among the trees and fields, and enjoyed a surprisingly rainy interlude between heatwaves.
The venture was yet again another exercise in networking between collaborators, with infrastructure pulled in from not just the hosts, but also neighbouring radical housing co-ops and trade unions, alongside facilitation from returning Tripod, food from Radical Routes, and vegan cooking and catering supplies provided by both Cambridge’s ‘Soup for my Family’ and SKIFA up in Scotland. As before, the gathering was entirely funded by members’ donations.
This gathering was smaller than the one before, and there’s probably a few reasons for that. Firstly, the almost obvious issue was setting it over the bank holiday – it was an attempt to avoid clashes with all the other summer stuff, but potential attendants always have other life stuff on during these holidays. Secondly, this gathering’s agenda was always going to more technical, dry, and unexciting than the honeymoon period of the Eclipse relationship – a necessary evil though. But thirdly – and the biggest factor – was that we should have got all this over with much earlier in the year; it was naive to think that comrades from across the anarchist spectrum would just get on from the beginning, without us putting in enough time to work out how to work together; over those six months, theoretical and organisational disagreements had already simmered and bubbled over, and our collective lack of process for facilitating these had led to almost half of our initial crew dropping out.
Other outstanding issues from February, we addressed this time round: on the one hand, we purposely kept the agenda less busy and overstuffed, being more generous with time during breaks, meals, and open sessions to allow flexibility and opportunity for connections and informal decisions to flow more organically. And secondly, we had a dedicated children’s space, holding creative approaches to childcare, offering opportunities to children to learn beyond the confines of traditional education, with frequent exploration of the local forest.
But, turns out that for every problem you solve, new ones pop up; Tripod – our facilitation crew, who members praised so highly before – met much more conflict and distrust this time, and highlighted potential tensions with Eclipse’s need for not just local but UK-wide organisation, and also tensions between our stated values and the ways we actually seem to operate. As a result, we need to build skills in facilitation, and have more tough questions to resolve, going forward.
But there was good, too: the food was great; the site was beautiful; our hosts gracious and comradely; the evening anarcho-singalong was joyous; and the work party we provided to the hosts on the last day seemed useful. Even though the atmosphere was particularly fraught on day one, things smoothed out after, and we made proper progress towards a collective mission:
The Eclipse is a network which is broad, accessible, and builds the anarchist movement. Membership and affiliation are accessible to individuals and groups, respectively.
Formal decision-making involves both affiliated organisations and individual members, using consensus where possible. We have working groups focused on specific projects, tasks or themes, accountable to the general assemblies. These are as follows:
- Accessibility
- Communications
- Connectivity
- Conflict Resolution
- Finance
- Gatherings
- General Assembly
- Radical Education
- Signal Rules
- Strategy
The Eclipse holds in-person gatherings annually, focused on skilling up and networking, but will also include a general assembly to make major decisions. The Eclipse also holds another three general assemblies, quarterly and online.
So what’s the next steps for Eclipse?
- We’ll start work on a series of proper actions and co-ordination for next MayDay
- We’ll have a first online general assembly in Winter 2027 (date TBC)
- Our in-person gathering will take place in May of next year (date TBC)
- We’ll renew a call-out for new membership
That should be more than enough to get on with.
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