Tag: LondonHackspace

Organising in the 21st Century: What’s Beneath the Surface?

Let’s talk about how we actually organise, in grassroots movements, in radical alternatives, and yes, even in the broader currents of #mainstreaming. Like a river system, the real action is often happening under the surface in tributaries and undercurrents that shape how power flows and decisions get made. We can roughly split organising methods into two broad categories:

The Horizontals (our grassroots tradition) is often celebrated, but rarely understood in practice. These organising streams look flat, but dig deeper, and you’ll find varying, often opaque, forms of power and coordination.

  1. Organic Consensus

This is rare and usually fleeting. Think early Rainbow Gatherings, decisions emerge from shared myths, rituals, and a communal “vibe.” Beautiful when it works. Fragile and easily co-opted when tested.

  1. Bureaucratic Consensus

Common in large activist spaces. Looks democratic on the surface, but often masks actual power structures. Over time, it leads to ossification and burnout. See: late-stage #climatecamp or current versions of the Edge Fund.

  1. Opaque Affinity Group

A small group is running things behind the scenes. You don’t know who they are, how to join, or how decisions get made. Common in alternative media and radical tech, including late-stage Indymedia and many “open” collectives.

  1. Invisible Affinity Group

Stuff just magically happens. This is common in the early, energetic phase of projects like #climatecamp, #londonhackspace or early #indymedia. It feels great, until burnout hits, or when trust gets broken.

  1. Open Affinity Group

Rare, but promising. A visible and accessible group makes decisions transparently and encourages participation. The tech crew at the Balcombe anti-fracking camp is a good example. This takes real work to maintain, the tendency is to slide into opacity or bureaucracy over time.

The Verticals (the legacy paths) are forms of organisation more familiar, and more obviously flawed, but still dominate much of the institutional and party-political terrain.

  1. Democratic Centralism,

    SWP-style top-down “consensus.” Power is concentrated, often corrupt. These groups make noise, absorb new blood from the fringes, but produce little meaningful change.
  1. Bureaucratic Democracy

The #NUJ model. Predictable, structured, and slow. This can create space for long-term work, but is often reactionary and sluggish to adapt to new challenges.

  1. Career Hierarchies

Trade unions, legacy NGOs, the Labour Party, in theory democratic, in practice dominated by careerists and backroom deals. These can be captured by opaque or invisible affinity groups, as #NewLabour demonstrated.

In the water of social change and challenge, reading the river, what you see on the surface rarely reflects what’s going on underneath. Almost all meaningful organising for social change happens through opaque or invisible affinity groups. The more stable and formal infrastructure, the parts that stick around, tend to fall into bureaucratic or hierarchical forms. And when those structures merge with the #mainstreaming, they’re usually co-opted by careerists and institutions seeking stability, not change.

We live in turbulent times, enjoy your ride down the choppy river, just make sure to understand the currents below. Know what you’re paddling, and where it’s likely to carry you. As some currents are much more useful tan others for the change and challenge we need to happen.

Looking at #DIY projects

Looking at failures offers lessons: the importance of balancing sustainability with integrity, the necessity of regenerating core culture in growing communities, and the need for healthy conflict resolution to prevent ideological capture. In each case, the projects burned bright for a time, flashes of what’s possible when people come together to build outside the #mainstreaming. But without tending to the human side of organizing, even the most vibrant initiatives unravel.

The #VillageButty project was a vital social hub for London’s boater community, a floating space where people gathered, share stories, and maintain the traditions of life on the waterways. It served as a beacon of #boaterculture, offering a place for community events, music, and collective organizing. However, the project’s survival depended on a delicate balance: generating enough income to sustain itself while remaining true to its grassroots ethos. Commercializing too much risked alienating the people it was meant to serve, while staying purely community-driven made it financially precarious. We struggled to navigate this tension. Attempts to expand and bring in outside funding diluted the project’s identity, and without enough internal cohesion, the balance tipped. The Butty lost its anchor, and despite the clear need for such a space, we failed to keep as a centre of the #Londonboater community.


The #LondonHackspace was a cornerstone of the DIY and maker scene, a living example of what can be achieved through collective skill-sharing and open collaboration. Initially stewarded by an invisible affinity group, people who quietly maintained the space and nurtured its culture, it flourished as a haven for experimentation and tech creativity. But success came with growing pains. As membership surged, the core collective was overwhelmed, leading to burnout and disengagement. The influx of new members diluted the shared values that had held the space together. Without that core cultural glue, informal trust-based governance gave way to rigid bureaucracy. Conflict, once mediated through affinity bonds, spilled out in toxic online discussions, poisoning real-world interactions. The space itself became drained of energy, losing its spark. It became a lesson in how scale can crush solidarity if care isn’t taken to regenerate the social fabric that makes spaces like this thrive. It failed.

The #HiveDalston started as a promising experiment in community space, a potential sanctuary for grassroots organizing, creative expression, and radical thought. The idea was to create an open, collaborative environment, but without a shared vision or clear conflict-resolution practices, ideological fractures emerged. Political differences, personal agendas, and unspoken tensions built up over time, eventually boiling over. Instead of addressing the underlying issues, one faction seized control, remolding the project in their image. What was meant to be a space for collective liberation became just another battleground, mirroring the very dynamics it had hoped to disrupt. The Hive became a cautionary tale of how personal politics and a lack of structural care can fracture communities. We failed.

I need to add #socialhub and the #Fediverse, maybe #ActivityPub, #resistanceexhibition to this list.