I was looking for some way to contribute something back to the Communes Network in a way that was more than just ‘living it’. I saw what we were doing as a viable way to live and wanted to encourage more people to give it a try Continue reading Digging & Dreaming
We had always known (Worried?) that when we finally moved to the Mill the nature of the group would change. Maybe subtley, maybe in fundamental ways… Continue reading All That Way for This
No-one wants to think about planning a funeral. Most of us are fearful, vulnerable and unprepared because we organise a funeral so infrequently. A painful & confusing task…. Continue reading Four Funerals and the Odd Wedding
However interesting the actual carpentry work was I started to become frustrated with the almost inevitable ‘William Morris’ conundrum. That the sort of people who could afford what we were making were not really the sort of people I wanted to work for. Continue reading Architecture and Anarchy
A number of different strands of what we had done before and what our needs were when we had moved into the Mill came together at the end of the 1980s and led to the setting up of Altham Harwood Centre Continue reading Seeing the Wood and the Trees
By far the most often quoted political statement at PIC was Emma Goldman’s “If there won’t be dancing at the revolution, I’m not coming.” Continue reading Give the Anarchist a Dictionary
…for the best part of 20 years or so at People In Common I pooled income with other members. The big difference being that there were no ‘blood ties’ to motivate sharing of income – income pooling was ideological. Or it was and it wasn’t. Continue reading Swimming in the Income Pool
I remember talking about how we might finally move from our terraced houses in Burnleywood to The Mill at Altham. I had one fantasy that we could do the removal….. Continue reading Doing up the Mill (Part 6) – Moving in
…we were pushing the boundaries of what was possible in social organisation. Consciously taking risks with each others lives and lifestyles and like all entrepreneurs sometimes we hit on something that worked, sometimes we didn’t Continue reading Developing Co-operation
I thought that as I had covered Sex & Rock ‘n Roll in other posts I’d better say something about ‘drugs’. While alcohol was most definitely our most common recreational drug…… Continue reading A Bene, a little bit of dope & sherry by the pint
