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London Anarchist Bookfair 2022

Personally I'm gonna treat the London bookfair like I do all the others, and the London bookfair before it - I've got my criticisms, but I'm not the one doing it and it's ultimately up to them how they run their thing. They don't have to justify themselves to me. So if it's bad, it's bad. If it's not then great. Either way, it's better than tumbleweed.
 
Rob Ray said:
Workfare was a good one back in the 2010s, Palestine Action's been doing some cracking work in a non-hierarchical way recently and I'll say our more legally-minded wing has had at least some good influence on the new green movement/XR folks. Anarchs are also the main driver against HS2 and have been very effective in shrinking its scope (much to the chagrin of the unions/trad left types who've been all in favour of the jobs it generates). Radical Routes as well has been been quietly plugging away and while the mutual aid surge during lockdown was way too much for us to effectively politicise it was in and of itself a powerful phenomenon.

I'll also say that between the likes of Sparrow's Nest, Libcom, the Kate Sharpley Library, the Anarchist Library etc we're probably better served in terms of access to the movement's archives and classic literature than we've ever been, and have by far a larger publishing presence between PM, AK, Active, Freedom etc even before getting to the extensive academic work that's going on. Hell there's at least 15 of 16 books I can think of which are out of coming out in the second half of this year alone specifically about anarchism (eg these, Nick Heath's book, Freedom's upcoming stuff from Brian Morris, Camillo Berneri etc), let alone which are analysing topics through an anarchist lens.

One other issue with our general trend to negativity is that a lot of anarchist influence is often too diffuse and underreported as "ours" to properly lay credit for - or we refuse to do so/define it as non-anarchist when we could be doing so.
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What we don't have anymore is populist media. No Class War, SchNews, Indymedia, Undercurrents etc
 
Red Sky said:
What we don't have anymore is populist media. No Class War, SchNews, Indymedia, Undercurrents etc
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That whole thing is frustrating af and I've been banging on about it for ages where I can - the big trouble is that everyone mistakes having 500 people in a Facebook group who are active positive engagers with your campaign, or a couple thousand Twitter followers, for a genuine process of outreach. Which it ain't, it's echo chamberism. And it's screwing attempts to build sustainable indie outlets (Freedom included) that people can go to and find out about things which they wouldn't come across otherwise. It's also going to be an absolute bastard for future historians who'll simply not have access to the background info when it all gets deleted years later. All those photos, updates, videos etc from local Stop HS2 campaigns? Gone.

But we were talking about the positives ;).
 
I will probably go this year but it is disappointing the wonderful mix of previous years will probably be missing. I can remember seeing Dave Douglas haranguing his audience for not supporting coal and having a chat with another stall holder who agreed with my joke proposition that David Cameron's big society made him more of an @ than most of the attendees.
 
Rob Ray said:
I'd say the opposite with the CP - they had closet members and/or the ear of leaders in most of the major unions through to probably the late 2000s/early 2010s when the SP made headway with the new generation. They had a lot of good (and a fair number of not very good) shop stewards but they weren't in any way into flat union structures. They're still very influential within the RMT, TSSA and various others.
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Stewards committees were full of them 1970s and 1980s as were Trade Councils. The split in the CP/fall of the USSR and the wall and Thatchesr successful gutting of the unions put paid to them.
 
Magnus McGinty said:
Red Action, like them or loathe them, have written politics that we can refer to.
What about AFN?
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Where now the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.
Who shall gather the smoke of the dead wood burning,
Or behold the flowing years from the Sea returning?
 
It might seem trite. But given how the book fair doesn’t seem to know what it stands for, all we have is you pinning your colours to the mast.
 
Red Sky said:
What we don't have anymore is populist media. No Class War, SchNews, Indymedia, Undercurrents etc
Click to expand...
None of this was populist in any real sense. Probably 99% of the population had never heard of any of it.
 
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