Forward Union
14th April 2007, 08:55
I found this on Ian Bones personal website and just wondered what people here thought.
http://www.btinternet.com/~sa_sa/tristan_da_cunha/images/tristan_da_cunha.png
In 1937, as part of a Norwegian scientific expedition, PETER MUNCH visited Tristan Da Cunha. He was surprised to discover that the form of social organisation on the island was ANARCHY… And had been for over 100 years.
There was no government, police, money or headman/woman. Munch wrote, ‘The principles of freedom and anarchy were firmly established in the Tristan community as a social order based on the voluntary consensus of free men and women. In such a community not only is authority, control or any kind of formal or informal government considered unnecessary and undesirable but is felt to be a menace and a threat to individual rights.’
The inhabitants of Tristan were not a self-selected commune who had gone there to establish utopia. They were of all races and survivors of shipwrecks or ex-whalers who had washed up there over 100 years. That anarchy became their natural form of social organisation and persisted against all efforts of the British government to undermine it is all the more remarkable.
Andrea Repetto, an Italian who had been shipwrecked on Tristan in 1892, was one of the few Tristans who could read or write. Seizing there chance the British government addressed all communications to Andrea Repetto, ‘Head Man ‘or occasionally ‘governor’. For twenty years they never received any reply ’til the mail was discovered unopened. Repetto explained that as there was no head man or governor on the island so no one felt able to open the mail!
In astonishment a government spokesman wrote in 1903, ‘There is an extraordinary state of affairs in this civilised century that there is no form of authority and the Tristans are curiously averse to any individual being considered to have more influence than the rest.’
Munch reported there had NEVER been any crime and no fist fight in living memory.
The Tristanians were not anarchists who’d read their Bakunin - they found anarchy to be the natural form of social organisation though they would never have used the word themselves. Yet the Tristanians have proved of remarkably little interest to anarchists - maybe because we are too used to failures to recognise success!
http://www.btinternet.com/~sa_sa/tristan_da_cunha/images/tristan_da_cunha.png
In 1937, as part of a Norwegian scientific expedition, PETER MUNCH visited Tristan Da Cunha. He was surprised to discover that the form of social organisation on the island was ANARCHY… And had been for over 100 years.
There was no government, police, money or headman/woman. Munch wrote, ‘The principles of freedom and anarchy were firmly established in the Tristan community as a social order based on the voluntary consensus of free men and women. In such a community not only is authority, control or any kind of formal or informal government considered unnecessary and undesirable but is felt to be a menace and a threat to individual rights.’
The inhabitants of Tristan were not a self-selected commune who had gone there to establish utopia. They were of all races and survivors of shipwrecks or ex-whalers who had washed up there over 100 years. That anarchy became their natural form of social organisation and persisted against all efforts of the British government to undermine it is all the more remarkable.
Andrea Repetto, an Italian who had been shipwrecked on Tristan in 1892, was one of the few Tristans who could read or write. Seizing there chance the British government addressed all communications to Andrea Repetto, ‘Head Man ‘or occasionally ‘governor’. For twenty years they never received any reply ’til the mail was discovered unopened. Repetto explained that as there was no head man or governor on the island so no one felt able to open the mail!
In astonishment a government spokesman wrote in 1903, ‘There is an extraordinary state of affairs in this civilised century that there is no form of authority and the Tristans are curiously averse to any individual being considered to have more influence than the rest.’
Munch reported there had NEVER been any crime and no fist fight in living memory.
The Tristanians were not anarchists who’d read their Bakunin - they found anarchy to be the natural form of social organisation though they would never have used the word themselves. Yet the Tristanians have proved of remarkably little interest to anarchists - maybe because we are too used to failures to recognise success!