Last year's anarchist bookfair ended in the now legendary, if not almost noteworthy mini-riot which saw several arrests and Holloway Road closed for several hours. The events of the evening appeared to begin when a bunch of folk dragged a beaten up old sound system into the Wetherspoon's pub next the bookfair, cranked it up and refused to turn it off.
The sound system was eventually quietened (with some handy help from a comrade present in the boozer), and the protaganists left the pub.
Then the old bill turned up, ordered the pub to close and then needlessly arrested someone. What happened next is fairly eay to imagine as 300 mostly pissed anarchists swarmed out of the pub to confront the old bill.
This is what we know.
the void has been contacted by one of the sound system scamps and they have agreed to give an interview by e-mail. Asking only to be known as Tarquin, this is what they had to say:
(Tarquin has asked us to express that these views are his and his alone, he does not represent any group of individuals and may not exist altogether)
the void: so Tarquin, how did the idea to do this come about?
Tarquin: The night before a bookfair a bunch of us were sitting around bemoaning the fact that nobody ever seems to do anything anymore in London. The scene's been pretty stale for a while and people rarely take chances anymore, and when they do are often subject to trial by internet afterwards.
We began discussing the possibility of doing something around the bookfair .. I don't know, to liven things up a bit I guess.
Personally I felt somewhat galled by the thought of Wetherspoons (a company not far off McDonalds in terms of symbolising the worst of capitalism) making a fortune from beer sales on the back of the bookfair.
Wetherspoons seemed a natural target and we discussed the idea of taking a sound system into the pub, just to make a bit of a point I suppose, I guess we found the idea quite funny.
the void: Did you consider the views of the Wetherspoon's punters at the time?
Tarquin: Not really, no more so than the shoppers in Tesco's were considered the other mayday, or people driving home from work are considered when we block a road. Of course we never expected things to work out the way they did.
Our intentions were good natured and I for one hoped that the pub's regulars would see the funny side ... which initially some of them did (well, one or two).
But to continue, we made this vague plan, late at night after the drinks had been flowing freely ... don't think for a minute that alcohol didn't play quite a large part in the events that happened, because it clearly did.
The next morning, hung-over and a bit frayed the consensus seemed to be perhaps it wasn't such a good idea. Then we started drinking again, and then the subject came up again.
The idea developed a life of it's own, we had everything we needeed close by and after a while, well once something starts to itch that much you have to scratch it. We spoke to several people and sought their counsel at the bookfair itself and the response was actually pretty good, so eventually we thought fuck it, let's just see what happens.
the void: So what, in your view happened next?
Tarquin: Well we bundled the bits and pieces into the boozer and began to wire it together. Surrounded by people as we were, we were hardly discreet.
the void: So some people saw what you were about to, did any of them pass comment?
Tarquin: If all the people who claimed to have been 'sat right next to us' afterwards on indymedia and elsewhere really were then the rest of the pub must have been deserted. But to answer your question, yes, several people saw what we were doing and no-one made any kind of negative comment.
the void: So you turned on the sound system?
Tarquin: That we did, and it sounded fucking dreadful. For the first few seconds people seemed vaguely bemused, even amused ... but then the bar stopped serving. Now that was a pretty obvious move that we should have anticipated, but there you go.
The crowd turned ugly pretty quickly and in the moment, with the whole pub looking at us it was hard to know what to do. Someone turned it off, one of us turned it back on again. Then someone smashed a speaker, we were still operational and had a back up, but I remember looking at one of my friends and one of us said something daft like "this isn't really working is it?"
We decided to leave.
the void: and what happened next?
Tarquin: We took the equipment outside and started to pack up. Then a cop car turned up. A couple of old bill were chatting to the pub manager outside. I actually thought that was the end of it, but I think it's pretty clear that this was when they told him to close the pub ... a fucking stupid decision.
the void: why?
Tarquin: They made the choice between having a bunch of happy drunken anarchists in a pub or 300 angry drunken anarchists in the street, and unless they were really looking for a scrap then that was a pretty stupid thing to do.
To carry on, another cop car turned up as people started to slowly file out of the pub. Some young guy shouted something at one of the cops, I didn't hear what and he was immediately quite violently arrested. That's when it all went off, an angry crowd surrounded the police chanting "let him go". Until re-enforcements turned up in the form of tooled up TSG, the cops completely lost control of the situation, attempting to nick anyone who moved and lashing out unscrupulously. Everybody knows how thing's went down from there on.
the void: So in the aftermath, how did you feel about people's response?
Tarquin: Well I'm pretty thick skinned, but there were many over the top things said, by people who clearly didn't see a lot of what happened. What did upset me, was the out and out abuse towards squatters and travellers, often under the ubiquitous banner of 'lifestylers'. At times indymedia was reading like the scum, circa 1987.
It made me realise that the there is a bigger schism in the movement than I imagined, and it distresses me to know that there are so many ingrained prejudices towards those who choose to adopt an alternative lifestyle, and by that I mean myself (though I'm pretty conventional these days) and my friends and family.
Having said that the people I met on the night of the bookfair generally thought it was just a bit of a giggle and no-one gave us any grief.
the void: What about the coverage in the anarchist press?
Tarquin: I thought the schnews piece was hilarious (link below - jv), the piece in Freedom was inaccurate and a bit snidey, that's all I saw really.
the void: Do you feel in anyway responsible for those arrested or the people that got hurt?
Tarquin: Well I didn't actually see anyone get hurt. A women trapped her foot under a shop shutter, some way from the action, but this was entirely unconnected. Commendably, even amongst the madness, police and anarchists were able to co-operate to ensure she got treatment.
As to those arrested, I mean I sympathise, but we all know what can happen if you confront police in the street. You may well be illegally arrested, probably violently and often for no reason, it's a risk we take.
There was no compulsion to be there, we chose to defend those arrested, many more chose to go to a different pub and weren't affected at all.
the void: So how do you feel about what happened now?
Tarquin: In retrospect, it probably wasn't the coolest thing I've ever done, but it was good-natured, peaceful and harmless. I kind of thought that the Weatherspoons manager would have taken the path of least resistance and accommodated us. We could have had our own little crusty corner, after all, according to many on indymedia we should be big spenders. We've all got trust funds.
Thinking that seems naive now. But to get the thing in perspective, we only had the thing on for the length of one song, it wasn't even that loud (you couldn't hear it in some sections of the pub) and the incident was over by the time the police turned up.
The cops were so uptight and aggro that part of me suspects that anything could have lit the touchpaper that evening. And in any event we were just one link in a chain of events.
I hope that we could be clear, the responsibility of what happened lies with the police acting in a provocative, aggresive and - as ever - stupid way, and we as anarchists rightly responded.
the void: So any plans for this year then?
Tarquin: Yeah man, we got 15 k, can-can dancers and a laser ... er no, I guess I'll probably be a bit humble at the bookfair this year.
Annual Scuffle with the Met Marred by Successful Bookfair Schnews report
The sound system was eventually quietened (with some handy help from a comrade present in the boozer), and the protaganists left the pub.
Then the old bill turned up, ordered the pub to close and then needlessly arrested someone. What happened next is fairly eay to imagine as 300 mostly pissed anarchists swarmed out of the pub to confront the old bill.
This is what we know.
the void has been contacted by one of the sound system scamps and they have agreed to give an interview by e-mail. Asking only to be known as Tarquin, this is what they had to say:
(Tarquin has asked us to express that these views are his and his alone, he does not represent any group of individuals and may not exist altogether)
the void: so Tarquin, how did the idea to do this come about?
Tarquin: The night before a bookfair a bunch of us were sitting around bemoaning the fact that nobody ever seems to do anything anymore in London. The scene's been pretty stale for a while and people rarely take chances anymore, and when they do are often subject to trial by internet afterwards.
We began discussing the possibility of doing something around the bookfair .. I don't know, to liven things up a bit I guess.
Personally I felt somewhat galled by the thought of Wetherspoons (a company not far off McDonalds in terms of symbolising the worst of capitalism) making a fortune from beer sales on the back of the bookfair.
Wetherspoons seemed a natural target and we discussed the idea of taking a sound system into the pub, just to make a bit of a point I suppose, I guess we found the idea quite funny.
the void: Did you consider the views of the Wetherspoon's punters at the time?
Tarquin: Not really, no more so than the shoppers in Tesco's were considered the other mayday, or people driving home from work are considered when we block a road. Of course we never expected things to work out the way they did.
Our intentions were good natured and I for one hoped that the pub's regulars would see the funny side ... which initially some of them did (well, one or two).
But to continue, we made this vague plan, late at night after the drinks had been flowing freely ... don't think for a minute that alcohol didn't play quite a large part in the events that happened, because it clearly did.
The next morning, hung-over and a bit frayed the consensus seemed to be perhaps it wasn't such a good idea. Then we started drinking again, and then the subject came up again.
The idea developed a life of it's own, we had everything we needeed close by and after a while, well once something starts to itch that much you have to scratch it. We spoke to several people and sought their counsel at the bookfair itself and the response was actually pretty good, so eventually we thought fuck it, let's just see what happens.
the void: So what, in your view happened next?
Tarquin: Well we bundled the bits and pieces into the boozer and began to wire it together. Surrounded by people as we were, we were hardly discreet.
the void: So some people saw what you were about to, did any of them pass comment?
Tarquin: If all the people who claimed to have been 'sat right next to us' afterwards on indymedia and elsewhere really were then the rest of the pub must have been deserted. But to answer your question, yes, several people saw what we were doing and no-one made any kind of negative comment.
the void: So you turned on the sound system?
Tarquin: That we did, and it sounded fucking dreadful. For the first few seconds people seemed vaguely bemused, even amused ... but then the bar stopped serving. Now that was a pretty obvious move that we should have anticipated, but there you go.
The crowd turned ugly pretty quickly and in the moment, with the whole pub looking at us it was hard to know what to do. Someone turned it off, one of us turned it back on again. Then someone smashed a speaker, we were still operational and had a back up, but I remember looking at one of my friends and one of us said something daft like "this isn't really working is it?"
We decided to leave.
the void: and what happened next?
Tarquin: We took the equipment outside and started to pack up. Then a cop car turned up. A couple of old bill were chatting to the pub manager outside. I actually thought that was the end of it, but I think it's pretty clear that this was when they told him to close the pub ... a fucking stupid decision.
the void: why?
Tarquin: They made the choice between having a bunch of happy drunken anarchists in a pub or 300 angry drunken anarchists in the street, and unless they were really looking for a scrap then that was a pretty stupid thing to do.
To carry on, another cop car turned up as people started to slowly file out of the pub. Some young guy shouted something at one of the cops, I didn't hear what and he was immediately quite violently arrested. That's when it all went off, an angry crowd surrounded the police chanting "let him go". Until re-enforcements turned up in the form of tooled up TSG, the cops completely lost control of the situation, attempting to nick anyone who moved and lashing out unscrupulously. Everybody knows how thing's went down from there on.
the void: So in the aftermath, how did you feel about people's response?
Tarquin: Well I'm pretty thick skinned, but there were many over the top things said, by people who clearly didn't see a lot of what happened. What did upset me, was the out and out abuse towards squatters and travellers, often under the ubiquitous banner of 'lifestylers'. At times indymedia was reading like the scum, circa 1987.
It made me realise that the there is a bigger schism in the movement than I imagined, and it distresses me to know that there are so many ingrained prejudices towards those who choose to adopt an alternative lifestyle, and by that I mean myself (though I'm pretty conventional these days) and my friends and family.
Having said that the people I met on the night of the bookfair generally thought it was just a bit of a giggle and no-one gave us any grief.
the void: What about the coverage in the anarchist press?
Tarquin: I thought the schnews piece was hilarious (link below - jv), the piece in Freedom was inaccurate and a bit snidey, that's all I saw really.
the void: Do you feel in anyway responsible for those arrested or the people that got hurt?
Tarquin: Well I didn't actually see anyone get hurt. A women trapped her foot under a shop shutter, some way from the action, but this was entirely unconnected. Commendably, even amongst the madness, police and anarchists were able to co-operate to ensure she got treatment.
As to those arrested, I mean I sympathise, but we all know what can happen if you confront police in the street. You may well be illegally arrested, probably violently and often for no reason, it's a risk we take.
There was no compulsion to be there, we chose to defend those arrested, many more chose to go to a different pub and weren't affected at all.
the void: So how do you feel about what happened now?
Tarquin: In retrospect, it probably wasn't the coolest thing I've ever done, but it was good-natured, peaceful and harmless. I kind of thought that the Weatherspoons manager would have taken the path of least resistance and accommodated us. We could have had our own little crusty corner, after all, according to many on indymedia we should be big spenders. We've all got trust funds.
Thinking that seems naive now. But to get the thing in perspective, we only had the thing on for the length of one song, it wasn't even that loud (you couldn't hear it in some sections of the pub) and the incident was over by the time the police turned up.
The cops were so uptight and aggro that part of me suspects that anything could have lit the touchpaper that evening. And in any event we were just one link in a chain of events.
I hope that we could be clear, the responsibility of what happened lies with the police acting in a provocative, aggresive and - as ever - stupid way, and we as anarchists rightly responded.
the void: So any plans for this year then?
Tarquin: Yeah man, we got 15 k, can-can dancers and a laser ... er no, I guess I'll probably be a bit humble at the bookfair this year.
Annual Scuffle with the Met Marred by Successful Bookfair Schnews report
Acting like a spoilt priveledged teenager does not make you a bleedin "anarchist". 
