About Random Blowe

Random Blowe is the personal and political blog of Kevin Blowe, an under-employed former community centre worker, campaigner and proud 'stopper' based in Newham in east London.

My politics were summed up recently by an old friend as 'anarchist fellow-traveller'. I think that's fair and if there is any 'point' to this blog (as the title suggests, it is largely random), it's to try to occasionally provide some balance to the poor quality of much of the anarchist commentary I read. Too often I've found that it fails to fall somewhere between the two extremes of dense, turgid analysis or profane, cider-fuelled ranting. Anarchists can be thoughtful and reasonable - dreamers, certainly, but thoughtful and reasonable nevertheless.

I am, meanwhile, an activist with the community-based anti-racist organisation Newham Monitoring Project, a member of the board of trustees of the custody-deaths charity INQUEST, have been actively involved in the Justice4Jean campaign and am currently providing support to the Ian Tomlinson Family Campaign. For over a decade, I was the secretary of the United Families & Friends Campaign, the coalition of relatives and friends of those who have died in the custody of the state. I was also a founder member of the 'NoLondon2012' anti London Olympics bid campaign, thus proving that not every battle can be won.

Somehow, I also manage to find time to write, travel, see loads of films, act as Treasurer of the board of the Trinity Community Centre in East Ham and as Treasurer of the Buwan Kothi International Trust (BKIT), which raises funds for projects in rural Haryana in northern India. In an incredibly short space of time, BKIT has raised enough funds to build a school named in memory of my great friend and comrade Gilly Mundy, who died in March 2007 aged only 36.

Gilly's death changed everything. It led to an immediate realisation how wrong The Who had been: dying before you get old is not something to cockily hope for, but something that could really happen and it was a reminder, to me and to his many, many friends, just our time is short.

We don't have the luxury of waiting, of just hoping that governments will ever change the world for the better, or that justice will simply prevail, or that climate change is the next generation's problem, or that someone else is bound to act on our behalf.

Whilst I enjoy writing for this blog, there are times when you can do, or you can comment, but not always both. As much as possible, I hope to focus on campaigning I am involved with, about my efforts to do as much as I can before I'm too tired and worn down to do any more...

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