Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

London Anarchist Bookfair 2022

Have a go at the easy-going people who are happy with a broad church and accept all applications based on comradely good faith and solidarity. The forgiving bastards.
Ah is "forgiving" what's going on here. Good to know. I thought it was "going round and round in circles being annoyed."
 
Tbh if it was me organising it I'd bringing in everyone I could think of from JSO to the RMT via Acorn and the hunt sabs.

Liven it up a bit.


So why are you excluding the Woodcraft Folk huh? Don’t you want to span the world with friendship?
 
Terribly sorry, if you'd like to send me some recommendations to help me understand the anarchist movement I'd be very grateful. And lol at 'knock anarchism', criticising other branches of anarchism is the specialist subject of plenty of anarchists, from the early years of the movement onwards. And rightly so, political back and forth is important, even though it might seem just like slagging things off I think it can be useful to help figure things out.

Anyway, haven't you spent a bit of time criticising the anarchists behind this event anyway, the same as lots of us?

If only there were a one stop shop type event you could attend to peruse and purchase a number of different anarchist groups’ books. In London.
 
  • buy some books
(Madness, I know... :eek: )

Yes, perhaps I should go to the bookfair.

Actually it's quite soothing to follow a dispute upon which you are unable to form an opinion. The most enjoyable parts of the Joe Rogan podcasts I've watched are when he talks about MMA because I know even less about MMA than I do about contemporary British anarchist groups.

And to be clear I'm not being dismissive of anarchism as a political movement historically, I'm quite sympathetic to some of the basic tenets of anarchism, it's just that I know nothing about modern groups.
 
Yes, perhaps I should go to the bookfair.

Actually it's quite soothing to follow a dispute upon which you are unable to form an opinion. The most enjoyable parts of the Joe Rogan podcasts I've watched are when he talks about MMA because I know even less about MMA than I do about contemporary British anarchist groups.

And to be clear I'm not being dismissive of anarchism as a political movement historically, I'm quite sympathetic to some of the basic tenets of anarchism, it's just that I know nothing about modern groups.
I wouldn't bother starting to learn about them now though tbh.
 
If you don't understand the anarchist movement then maybe you shouldn't be commenting so eagerly on a thread about the london 'anarchist' bookfair. Unfortuately certain people are only posting on this thread to knock anarchism.
Who are the knockers? Name Names!
 
The discussion around anarchy/anarchism and its relevance nowadays; the groups that call themselves anarchist, those that don't but have anarchist principles and sometimes politics as part of their practice, and the relationship between the movement/scene/milieu/swamp/etc. and other groups broadly on similar pages; and then the dynamic/relationship between those and social change and wider society is interesting though! (Sure I misused semi-colons there, but whatever... fuck your rules!)
 
it is smaller than it was before 2017.
Which was smaller than it had been pre-2012. When irritable types were making the same comment about it being a scene rather than a movement. Tbh the constant downtalking of anarchists by anarchists is one of the most pointlessly self-defeating things about the movement/scene/political agglomeration/bag of cats. As though there aren't plenty of people willing to do it for us.
 
Which was smaller than it had been pre-2012. When irritable types were making the same comment about it being a scene rather than a movement. Tbh the constant downtalking of anarchists by anarchists is one of the most pointlessly self-defeating things about the movement/scene/political agglomeration/bag of cats. As though there aren't plenty of people willing to do it for us.
Absolutely we need a bit more optimism and bada bing . Why doesn't someone make a list of achievements that the anarchism scene has achieved so we can big them up up.
 
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.
 
Last edited:
Absolutely we need a bit more optimism and bada bing . Why doesn't someone make a list of achievements that the anarchism scene has achieved so we can big them up up.

It's been a significant influence in pretty much every revolution, social movement and struggle for over 100 years in a bunch of places across the world. It was a significant force in union organising as has been mentioned (including obviously the IWW) and through that it can definitely take some 'credit' for the wins that has had. When not labelled as 'anarchism' per se it has had an even wider influence in the way plenty of action and campaign groups operate as has been mentioned above. Fucking loads basically.
 
It's been a significant influence in pretty much every revolution, social movement and struggle for over 100 years in a bunch of places across the world. It was a significant force in union organising as has been mentioned (including obviously the IWW) and through that it can definitely take some 'credit' for the wins that has had. When not labelled as 'anarchism' per se it has had an even wider influence in the way plenty of action and campaign groups operate as has been mentioned above. Fucking loads basically.
Should have stated that I meant in the UK and preferably a bit more recent than 100 years ago .The IWW were syndicalists and fair number of them joined the CP.
Probably wouldn't be allowed to have a stall these days .
 
Some anarchists criticise. Others are members of attempted syndicalist unions, and/or militant members of big ones. The only relatively unified view is a distrust of union tops.
 
  • buy some books
(Madness, I know... :eek: )
Standards are slipping, I can't believe no-one from the ACG has popped up to flog Cafiero's Compendium or anything. Does anyone want to have a go with that new book about doctors and that?
Yes, perhaps I should go to the bookfair.

Actually it's quite soothing to follow a dispute upon which you are unable to form an opinion. The most enjoyable parts of the Joe Rogan podcasts I've watched are when he talks about MMA because I know even less about MMA than I do about contemporary British anarchist groups.
Here you go, fill your boots:
Pretty sure that Monson is very much not an anarchist nowadays, another sign of the downwards turn or whatever you want to call it.
Absolutely we need a bit more optimism and bada bing . Why doesn't someone make a list of achievements that the anarchism scene has achieved so we can big them up up.
Interesting question - just thinking of recent British stuff and trying not to duplicate anything from above, I'd say Bristol 21/3/21 was probably not one we can directly claim credit for, but the legal support infrastructure that's meant people aren't facing repression alone is very much an @ thing. That fire round Bristol way in about 2013 and the cops' continuing failure to get anyone for it is entertaining at least. Infrastructure stuff is easy to overlook, but keeping the 1 in 12 going since the 80s, the Sumac, ACE in Edinburgh, Cowley and so on are achievements worth noting.
Lots of housing stuff - again, on a spectrum here, sometimes stuff has happened through Solfed, mostly it's been groups that aren't explicitly anarcho but have some in.
Workplace-wise, I suppose UVW, CAIWU, IWGB are all considerably less anarcho than the IWW, but I would imagine that anarchists are still probably over-represented in at least some of them? Does anyone know if there are any anarchists involved in the electricians/construction r'n'f, or is that an example of people organising along the lines that anarchists would recommend without any actual anarchist involvement, possibly like Amazonians United in the US?
Personally, this week I got asked to check the list of members that payroll send through as paying through DOCAS versus the list of union members we have as being the same so we could spot any leavers, and I thought it was gonna be a nightmare at first cos payroll's list had the names as a single column and the union list had first name and last name separately, but then I realised I could use the concatenate function to get the union list of names in a single column as well and that made eliminating duplicates loads easier.

Anyway, the above list may not be the most impressive thing ever, but then again it's not like the last decade or two has been an uninterrupted parade of glorious triumphs for the UK working class/pro-working class politics or whatever you want to call it either?
 
Last edited:
Some anarchists criticise. Others are members of attempted syndicalist unions, and/or militant members of big ones. The only relatively unified view is a distrust of union tops.

I’m in the RMT and definitely at the libertarian end of communism. I’m happy for a person to represent me who wipes out the interviewers like Lynch did. He isn’t giving us orders. We voted for it.
 
Back
Top Bottom