Anonymity for Spy Cops & Freedom

FREEDOM, the once famous fearless anarchist journal that was one of the oldest political papers, founded in1886, ran a story yesterday denouncing the decision of the Public Inquiry into undercover police surveillance to allow spy cops the avoid having their names revealed.  The Freedom story which was an article that first appeared in the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance

reported that:    
'The Inquiry has announced five new applications by anonymity from former undercover police officers. The police want the real and cover names to be withheld in all five cases, and the Inquiry intends to comply.'

Freedom on its website on January 10th, 2018, self righteously recites the contents of the text direct from the Campaign Opposing Police Surveillance statement.  This campaign declares:

'Without us knowing the cover names, we cannot check the veracity of their claims. It is the key prerequisite of us being able to get to the truth of what these trained liars did yet, despite proof of lying, the Inquiry is believing them and keeping cover names from us.'
The Campaign Statement continues:
'Once again we see inexcusable exceptionalism being granted to police.  No other group of proven miscreants gets their answers taken at face value, in secret, then used as the basis for whether their victims get told the truth.'
The Statement rightly observes:
'No other institution is allowed to be the custodian and archivist of the files that incriminate them. The Met are asked by a public inquiry to do searches and provide the results. It would be unacceptable even if there wasn’t, as in this case, a history of them destroying the files to avoid culpability.  But with the police we not only take their word, the Inquiry seeks to protect them from feeling upset at being caught.'
The problem here is that it is not the message that is at fault - no anarchist would disagree with the contents of the above Statement, but, in the case of Freedom whose current editor is apparently Adam Barr, it is the messenger.  Mr. Barr's name is in the public domain yet a predecessor of Mr. Barr on Freedom, was or is still a hack journalist on the Morning Star who insisted on anonymity to the point of an obsession.  Indeed ironically Freedom today has become one of the foremost defenders of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the managers of the Freedom HQ in Whitechapel, Friends of Freedom, will be meeting next Monday for their periodic get together.  This is a terribly fractous time for the anarchists with their successful London Bookfair closed down owing to tribal disputes between the feminists and Trans community, and the Anarchist Federation in bits and pieces.  Steve Sorba, the Friends of Freedom Press Secretary, will be presiding over next Monday's meeting and with the next Companies House statement due on the 4th, February 2018, he has much to worry about,  Interestingly, Freedom Press didn't get a place as a core participant in the Inquiry into police srveilance, but with the next statement to Companies House now due on February 4th, Secretary Sorba will have a lot on his plate.

See also: 

www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2015/10/chris-draper-anomymity-problem.html

Pale-faced Reply by Irrelevant Old Man!

Dear Adam Lawrence-Barr,

NICE to hear from you.  I only became aware of you after someone drew my attention to your spat with Nick Heath over your interview with the Catholic Worker.  I think he accused you of returning to the 'Big Tent' approach to anarchism, and you humbly said that Freedom had no intention of returning to the 'Big Tent' approach.  I don't know what the alternative is perhaps it amounts to proclaiming what Orwell called the 'smelly little orthodoxy' of left wing politics.  Whatever is the case, Northern Voices would be more than happy to publish your ideas on the NV Blog.

 You mention a few groups or tenants of Freedom that are doing 'work', implying that by offering rooms or collecting rents and standing in their shadows Freedom is somehow made more significant by its proximity to these bodies.  It's a curious argument to pursue, especially when at the last meeting of the Friends of Freedom you revealed that the inmates at Freedom had managed to 'squander' a large sum of money left to Freedom by a benefactor some 7-years ago.  You did say 'squander' didn't you?  And did you go on to absolve yourself by saying:  'It was before my time'?  Also, is it true that a member of the Friends has been financing the Collective out of their own pocket? 

None of these misdemeanours seems to inhibit you from taking that moral high ground in your e-mail and accusing Northern Voices an 'attempt to steal away the means of production from the workers using it by a bunch of old irrelevant white men'.  I'm glad you raised the matter in this for it suggests that you have not read a word of the Freedom archives or even of Northern Voices.  By couching your profound critique in such terms I suppose that you are claiming that you are more in touch with the shop-floor and the world of work?  And that your record in anarchist politics is somehow superior to mine and the other three supporters of the 'Modest program'?

Well, that is interesting:  how long have you been involved in Freedom?  The problem is that you seem to be representing the Metropolitan elite, and apart from David Goodway from Yorkshire, who is on the Friends of Freedom to represent the provinces?  Your own name sounds like something from the Home Counties and the middle-class, it doesn't have a proletarian ring to it does it?  It doesn't sound owt like someone who has been apprenticed in a factory, or has worked in the shipyards in Gibraltar like me, or has been a weighman in a Lancashire textile mill.  Or someone who has done time in Strangeways, or been detained in a dungeon in the province of Segovia in the summer of 1963, before even Stuart Christie went to Franco's Spain.  I'll not mention about the interviews I did for Freedom during the pyramid sales riots in Albania in 1997, and in Belgrade during the general elections there in December 2000.  What today seems to be held to be 'irrelevant' on the left of politics is the concerns of the blue-collar worker:  take the lack of interest in many quarters in the recent High Court case over blacklisting - that is the elephant which has somehow been left outside the room.  Where are the representatives of North & South Wales on the Friends of Freedom?  Where is the Scottish connection?  Where are the Northerners?  Where are the genuine Proles and blue-collar workers? 

 Come-on Adam Lawrence-Barr, who are you kidding? 

 Kind regards, 

 Brian Bamford

Editor Adam Barr replies to Freedom's Critics!

Freedom Editor - Adam Lawrence Barr

Dear Brian (Bamford: an editor of Northern Voices),

Not that modest really (your Our Friends in the North program).  Just FYI the we've just raised the money for a website redesign and we should be receiving sketches and quotes today or tomorrow. What you are suggesting is pretty unanarchist, an attempt to steal away the means of production from the workers using it by a bunch of old irrelevant white men.  Judging by the content you put out on Northern Voices it seems your pretty out of touch with actual anarchist politics today.  I would direct you to the work done by Corporate Watch or Haven Books, or the Advisory Service for Squatters or any of the other groups who use the building to put further anarchist politics but I'm sure you wouldn't really care. I'd have been quite happy to discuss the problems with the website at the last London anarchist bookfair (which i believe you attended) but you didn't seem too interested on that occasion. I have to thank you for your donation for one of the freesheets we were distributing though! We got rid of all 1000 copies over the course of a month you'll be happy to hear.

Adam (Barr):  the latest editor of Freedom.

FREEDOM - 'A Mausoleum'!

by antigr0up:

JUDGING from everything written so far the collective seem to have lost any sense of perspective. Now Andy and Adam are deploying flimsy, baseless claims towards those who are understandably calling to question the collective's chronic negligences. 

Word is the shop struggles to get five customers on any given day.  By that measure Freedom is more of mausoleum than anything else. It certainly feels like one, but only more miserable.

Five customers a day won't even pay staff wages never mind any of the other bills.  The place must be losing money every week.  Considering this situation has been allowed to operate like this over years it can only mean Freedom must be eating into the last of their financial reserves.  Put this into context:

- The shop is losing money.

- The collective let out spare space upstairs to groups who are unable to pay rent.

- The collective seem incapable of carrying out the basic requirements of any form of book shop, never mind the compulsory condition of doing a on 'Andy Meinke upholds the honour of Freedom!'

 NV Editor: 
ONLY this week we have been told that it is Donald Rooum - the cartoonist - a former member of the Collective himself and now a Friend of Freedom Press, who is bailing out the Freedom Collective to produce the Freedom free-sheets, and that he recently covered them for a debt that they had run-up. 


It may be of some interest that Donald was never made a Friend, while Vernon Richards was around.  Donald will be one of those Friends who as required by the constitution (Memorandum of Association) to stand-down at next week's Annual & General Meeting of the Friends. 


Richard Parry, the solicitor, is another Friend who is having to stand-down, but in this case it would seem that pressure has been applied behind the scenes by one of the insurgent 'tenant groups'.  Mr. Parry, it would seem, has put up some of the backs of those associated with Andy Meinke and the Collective, and they have used some underhand strategy to oust him.  It would seem that Mr. Parry has been doing too good a job for the likes of Mr. Meinke and his 'hangers-on' who enjoy his company.