Letter in 'Weekly Worker'

 N.V. Editor:  The Weekly Worker this week carried a letter from Danny Daly, which questions the absurd logic of some narrow-minded anarchists who reject the historical 'melting pot' approach of the successful London Anarchist Bookfair that has been going for 35 years.  Particularly loud in calling for disassociation from the traditional London Anarchist Bookfair has been elements within the Anarchist Federation tendency such as 'AFED TRANS ACTION FACTION', 'Edinbugh Anarchist Federation', Liverpool A.F., and South Wales A.F.   We publish the letter below because it chimes with what Dave Douglass has said in his statement.  We believe in the assertion of a positive freedom which removes those who seek to censor, gag and silence others.  We want a policy of diverse views and differences which in recent years has been undermined by certain orthoxies which are now violently intolerant of views they disagree with.

Safest space

AND so we bid farewell, for now at least, to the Anarchist Bookfair, London’s only major anarchist-orientated event for the last 34 years. For those who don’t already know, the Anarchist Bookfair collective this year won’t be attempting a 35th year, following threats of a boycott and active picketing by certain groups and individuals.

This is due to a small group of radical feminists handing out leaflets opposing changes to the Gender Recognition Act. This caused quite a stir among the trans activists present, who surrounded those handing out the leaflets and demanded their ejection.  When bookfair collective members such as Helen Steel attempted to intercede to stop what was likely to spill over into violence, she was herself surrounded and called names such as “ugly terf”, “terf scum”, “bitch” and - most amazingly -
“fascist”.  This was all justified on the basis of demanding a safe space for trans people to express themselves.  As far as Helen Steel or the collective were concerned, the bookfair attempted to accommodate both groups to put forward their positions.   But, as far as I’m concerned, nobody was being threatened by a leaflet debating a big issue for many feminists.

Of course, the groups who denounced the bookfair did not see it this way.  The logic of safe spaces in this particular instance seems basically to destroy the very essence of the bookfair itself: namely a space for all ideas to be exchanged and argued out.  But it seems that name-calling, physical confrontation et al do not challenge safety at all - as long as only the correct positions are allowed.   A Strange logic indeed.

The bookfair has always been an eclectic mix of political causes and positions, all loosely orientated around the broad organisational and historical traditions of anarchism.  All the way from anarchist communism to full-on anti-collective individualism.  You would often see Catholic worker or other Christian anarchists mere tables away from an old punk with a banner proclaiming all religion as murderous and bigoted.  The understanding obviously being that this was an open platform for the exchange of ideas, a forum to find common ground for struggle in the future.  And many initiatives were indeed sprung from this melting pot over the years.

I look forward to the new and ‘completely safe’ incarnation of the bookfair in the coming years, as seen by those who opposed its previous model.  Without the messiness of the plurality of positions, those left with the right politics will be able to really buckle down to the serious issue of winning the hundreds of totally separate campaigns brought into focus.

And so now the anarchist movement finds itself in a position where it no longer needs to worry about differences of position or orientation of activity.  Every group and individual can have their own complete anarchism without fear of challenge or debate, with all the anxiety-inducing rage such ‘liberal’ concepts seem to bring up among younger comrades these days.  For, as we all know, the safest space is, of course, no space at all.

Danny Daly
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