Solution to historical isolation of Freedom Friends

CHRIS Draper and his colleagues deserve the congratulations of all anarchists for their achievement in rejuvenating the ‘Friends of Freedom Press’.  Of course, the mistakes of the past will still need to be revisited, to ensure that they are adequately examined and lessons learned.  However, the focus of attention is now the new group of Friends and the challenges that they face.  Evidently, the new group is not short of problems to resolve.  Indeed, there are so many problems to resolve that the group will need to prioritize them. 

One problem to be resolved is the regrettable historical isolation from anarchism of the previous ‘Friends of Freedom Press’.  The new group can begin to resolve this problem by acknowledging and inviting feedback from other anarchists.  Unfortunately neither of these tasks can be undertaken though the pages of ‘Freedom’ newspaper.  However, the unavailability of this channel of communication should not prevent the new group from creating and maintaining an alternative channel to acknowledge and invite feedback from other anarchists.   

I will resist the temptation of suggesting which problems the new group should prioritize, and the order in which it should prioritize them, because any such suggestion might so easily be inappropriate.  Instead, I express the hope that the new group will be able to count upon receiving all the support possible, as and when the group might want it.  Which brings me to a practical possibility.  Perhaps the new group might welcome the facility of drawing upon a resource pool of anarchists to be available whenever particular types of support could be useful. 

If any of the ‘Friends of Freedom Press’ finds this possibility potentially helpful, I would be very happy to explain my ideas about creating such a resource pool.  

John Desmond

5th July 2015