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
email

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