London Anarchist Bookfair

NORTHERN VOICES at London Anarchist Bookfair

Stop Press: SEE NEW URGENT UPDATE OF NAN STALL AT BOTTOM OF THIS REPORT - We are sorry to disappoint our loyal readers

THE first London Anarchist Bookfair took place at the autonomy centre in Wapping. That was some three decades ago and was poorly attended. Now turn-ups at London Anarchist Bookfairs regularly attract 3,000 or more people. It is perhaps one of the most obvious success stories on the libertarian left.

The organisers of the London Anarchist Bookfair now argue:

'No one can seriously think that there is any future in the charade of parliament and political parties. Resistance is growing again on the streets, in workplaces, on campuses and central to it is self-organisation as it becomes clearer that wherever we need to fight we need to do it for ourselves.'

Last year at the Bookfair one speaker described 'the London Anarchist Bookfair as possibly the biggest annual anarchist event in the world'.

The Bookfair organisers wrote in a recent piece in the anarchist journal Freedom:

'More than anything the Bookfair is a chance to meet other people who want to build a new world. It's proof that anarchism doesn't have to mean lack of organisation.'

At this year's London Anarchist Bookfair this coming Saturday at Queen Mary University of London on Mile End Road, copies of Northern Voices No. 14 will be on sale as usual on the Northern Anarchist Network (NAN) bookstall (see Bookfair program), which is next door to Bob Jones' Northern Herald Books.  So if you haven't been able to get a copy at one of our 40 or more outlets in the north or beyond you should be able to get issue NV14 at the Bookfair.

Unfortunately, owing to illness, it may not be possible to open the NAN bookstall at this year's London Anarchist Bookfair.  But the current printed issue of NORTHERN VOICES No.14, is still available for sale at all our usual outlets in the North of England and beyond - see below. This issue  N.V.14 has a blow by blow account by John Walker (former editor of the Rochdale Alternative Paper [RAP]) of the antics of Cyril Smith and insights into how the estiblishment both nationally and locally covered up his crimes over the years; it has a Tameside Eye story about how Tameside has a history of involvement in blacklisting, it also contains an interview by Barry Woodling with George Tapp - the Salford electrician injured in May on an anti-blacklist picket. The Voices has been in the forthfront of the campaign against the blacklist since 2003 and the DAF dispute at Manchester Piccadilly, its editor, an electrician, was on the blacklist of the Economic League in the 1960s, and there was an attempt to blacklist him while he was working in Gibraltar in both 1964 and 1967, but at the time this intervention by the Foreign Office was resisted by the Gibraltarian authorities, and the Gibraltar Transport & General Workers Union.  The NV14 issue has our usual cultural coverage with 'Six o' the Best Northern Artists' by Chris Draper.  Because all these stories are ongoing NV14 has a long shelf life.

IF you can't get NV14 at the bookfair it is still available by postal subscription:
£5 for the next two issues (post included). Cheques made payable to 'Northern Voices' should be sent c/o 52, Todmorden Road, Burnley, Lancashire BB10 4AH.
Tel.: 0161 793 5122.
email: northernvoices@hotmail.com