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London Anarchist Bookfair 2022

l'Otters said:
The comparison doesn’t make sense from the pov of organising an annual event though, the UFFC march being annually held on the same Saturday in October for years, vs protests in response to a killing which happened a couple of weeks beforehand.
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Yes and no, I suppose - I'm aware there are flaws in the comparison, which is why I hedged it with disclaimers, but from a punter's POV I'm not sure how much difference it makes, if I was in London that day (which I wasn't, so people can feel free to ignore my opinion on those grounds if they'd like) I'm not sure whether I'd want to prioritise the bookfair over the Chris Kaba thing. Or possibly one might be able to arrange one's day to include both, but then the same could be said for the UFFC thing.
More generally - I totally agree that the timing of the Chris Kaba demo was out of the 2022 organisers' control and so it'd be snide and bad faith to have a dig at them for clashing with it, so I suppose the question is whether the old organisers would have been able to arrange their event so it didn't clash with the UFFC march or any other event of similar importance, or if the many different factors that go into organising a bookfair would've made that impossible as well, which'd make having a go at them over that similarly snide. I tend towards thinking that, but others could disagree.
Although possibly I was in the wrong to dig up old beef on this matter anyway, since bookfairs and bookfair threads are meant to be a place where we concentrate on what unites us and look forward to the future in a positive spirit, maybe?
 
Pickman's model said:
If nato had been preparing for this war over the last 30 months let alone 30 years I'd have expected them to have materiel pre-positioned, wouldn't you?
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Not necessarily. But it isn't as if there has been no direct intervention in Ukraine by key NATO members since at least 2014.

If pushing NATO eastwards while knowing full well the likely reaction from Russia isn't preparing for at least the possibility of war, then I don't know what is.
 
RD2003 said:
Not necessarily. But it isn't as if there has been no direct intervention in Ukraine by key NATO members since at least 2014.

If pushing NATO eastwards while knowing full well the likely reaction from Russia isn't preparing for at least the possibility of war, then I don't know what is.
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You haven't read my posts on this subject or you're just a patronising cunt. Or maybe - and this is the view I lean towards - you're both
 
When someone is in favour of an increase in benefits do you say that means they completely support the State? Or if you are pleased the cops arrest a murderer then you think that makes you a full-on supporter of the police? Or are there sometimes some complexities and compromises between being pro and anti something on occasion? Facile examples I know, but it seems you just have 2 opposed settings dependent on a detached position that doesn't take into account complexity or reality at all. Same as others who then also look for information to justify their position: Ukrainian fascists, NATO started it, Russia's history made them do it, etc.

RD2003 I suspect you think you're somehow free and unbound to any ideological position, but to me you seem the most ideologically rigid and unreflective poster on this issue.
 
LDC said:
When someone is in favour of an increase in benefits do you say that means they completely support the State? Or if you are pleased the cops arrest a murderer then you think that makes you a full-on supporter of the police? Or are there sometimes some complexities and compromises between being pro and anti something on occasion? Facile examples I know, but it seems you just have 2 opposed settings dependent on a detached position that doesn't take into account complexity or reality at all. Same as others who then also look for information to justify their position: Ukrainian fascists, NATO started it, Russia's history made them do it, etc.

RD2003 I suspect you think you're somehow free and unbound to any ideological position, but to me you seem the most ideologically rigid and unreflective poster on this issue.
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I do take reality into account, and the reality is that this war, disastrous for all concerned, above all the helpless civilians, could so easily have been avoided.

What really is rigid and unreflective is to act as if this war was a given, and to see an answer (or part of the answer) as lying with those whose policies did so much to set it in motion in the first place (yes, Russia bears ultimate responsibility by invading, but they knew how Russia, especially with the current regime, was bound to react eventually. Not that they will have cared. NATO expansion means jobs for the boys (and girls), and the arms manufacturers are quids in yet again.
 
LDC said:
Bonkers for the talk to be refused I think, but par for the course it seems nowadays to turn things down.
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Which of the workshops on the programme would you have sacrificed so the CWO could have had a talk?

A lot of people seem to assume that there is infinite time/space/resources at events like these, whereas the reality is those things are often very limited and so not everybody who wants space can always be included.
 
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smokedout said:
Which of the workshops on the programme would you have sacrificed so the ICO could have had a talk?

A lot of people seem to assume that there is infinite time/space/resources at events like these, whereas the reality is those things are often very limited and so not everybody who wants space can always be included.
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Yeah I have said before I think it's OK and needed to sometimes refuse talks and stalls due to a lack of space and having to prioritise. From what people said though they weren't refused on space grounds, but content grounds? If it turns out they applied too late and missed the boat then fine. I still think not having a meeting on Ukraine is kind of ridiculous, and tbh I can see at least 3 meetings I think would be of a lower priority if it came to me having any input. The poetry one could fuck off for a start.
 
LDC said:
Yeah I have said before I think it's OK and needed to sometimes refuse talks and stalls due to a lack of space and having to prioritise. From what people said though they weren't refused on space grounds, but content grounds? I still think not having a meeting on Ukraine is kind of ridiculous, and tbh I can see at least 3 meetings I think would be of a lower priority if it came to me having any input.
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There are for me two things here, a question of space and a question of time, and if other people nipped in before anything about Ukraine was submitted then tbh it'd be tardiness that prevented anything on the subject being raised. Should the organisers wait for everyone to apply for a meeting and then prioritise? For me first come first served seems a reasonable way to do it and I wouldn't be in the slightest surprised, nor would I hold it against the organisers, if that's the route they chose
 
LDC said:
Yeah I have said before I think it's OK and needed to sometimes refuse talks and stalls due to a lack of space and having to prioritise. From what people said though they weren't refused on space grounds, but content grounds? If it turns out they applied too late and missed the boat then fine. I still think not having a meeting on Ukraine is kind of ridiculous, and tbh I can see at least 3 meetings I think would be of a lower priority if it came to me having any input. The poetry one could fuck off for a start.
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The poetry happened in the passage outside Freedom where it was absolutely packed with people drinking, it wasn't part of the main workshop schedule.
 
I don't disagree with you about Ukraine necessarily by the way LDC but it occurs to me that it should ideally be hosted by Ukranian anarchists not the UK branch of the ICC (who I think is who we're actually talking about because I'm pretty sure it was them outside) and I suspect most Ukranian anarchists are quite busy.
 
smokedout said:
The poetry happened in the passage outside Freedom where it was absolutely packed with people drinking, it wasn't part of the main workshop schedule.
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If the organisers wanted some feedback, I'd suggest they need a single venue with enough capacity to run up to 4 parallel meeting streams, or at least a smaller venue with the possibility of somewhere close to add on if more capacity was needed. That would have been pretty much self funding as groups pay for a room I imagine. I know that meetings have been in other sites than the main bookfair before but I really felt it, having mobility problems, trying to get up to Whitechapel Gallery. I say all that having organised things like the Projectile festival in the past, so very much aware of the practicalities and competing demands.

But this isn't just about practicalities and organisational issues. If the organisers want to do something as significant as refusing longstanding groups from having a stall or meeting, it's partly about common decency - just drop them a line explaining the situation. I don't pretend that would be the end of the matter, of course, there'd be plenty of fallout. But just refusing to reply is even more destructive and just adds another layer on top of a movement that is falling apart. And what a time to fall apart. :(

(sorry smokedout that wasn't aimed at you, I'm assuming you were not an organiser, just latching onto your post)
 
Wilf said:
If the organisers want to do something as significant as refusing longstanding groups from having a stall or meeting, it's partly about common decency - just drop them a line explaining the situation. I don't pretend that would be the end of the matter, of course, there'd be plenty of fallout. But just refusing to reply is even more destructive and just adds another layer on top of a movement that is falling apart. And what a time to fall apart. :(
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Do we know that's what happened, I thought someone had seen an email responding to the ICC? There seems to be a lot of speculation going on and a real eagerness to throw out accusations of censorship without any real foundation.
 
smokedout said:
I don't disagree with you about Ukraine necessarily by the way LDC but it occurs to me that it should ideally be hosted by Ukranian anarchists not the UK branch of the ICC (who I think is who we're actually talking about because I'm pretty sure it was them outside) and I suspect most Ukranian anarchists are quite busy.
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Not a huge deal but we are talking about the CWO,who had a stall inside. Them and the ICC have virtually identical politics, but the ICC have a history of being a bit mental and calling people and orgs parasites. I think they have got better recently.

There is a more important point about space being finite, which is true, but there is more space available at Bishopsgate afaik because I have donated blood there in a large hall upstairs iirc. Also it was a multi-site event so it would have been theoretically possible to find somewhere else in the area. Of course there may not have been budget or people/capacity to do that.
 
Fozzie Bear said:
Not a huge deal but we are talking about the CWO,who had a stall inside. Them and the ICC have virtually identical politics, but the ICC have a history of being a bit mental and calling people and orgs parasites. I think they have got better recently.

There is a more important point about space being finite, which is true, but there is more space available at Bishopsgate afaik because I have donated blood there in a large hall upstairs iirc. Also it was a multi-site event so it would have been theoretically possible to find somewhere else in the area. Of course there may not have been budget or people/capacity to do that.
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If the CWO had a stall inside then why were they outside handing out leaflets and showing people emails that they'd been banned? I'm pretty sure it was ICC, I wish I'd taken a leaflet now so I could check.
 
smokedout said:
If the CWO had a stall inside then why were they outside handing out leaflets and showing people emails that they'd been banned? I'm pretty sure it was ICC, I wish I'd taken a leaflet now so I could check.
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I’m only going on what people have said on this thread about CWO members saying that a meeting had been turned down. And seeing the CWO stand inside.

The ICC were outside but I didn’t talk to them. They have been excluded from having a stall at the bookfair for many years including during the former organisers’ time.
 
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