Tameside Council accused of political censorship over 'Che' poster!

Geoff Oliver and wife Maria who run El Cuba Libre

AS we recently reported, a furious row over civil liberties in Tameside, has erupted after a Greater Manchester GMP licensing officer, last Friday, visited the Sportsman Pub in Hyde, demanding that the pub landlord, Geoff Oliver, remove from his pub window a Cuban flag with the image of the Cuban revolutionary, Ernesto 'Che' Guevara emblazoned across it.  The pub provides Cuban food in its restaurant known as 'El Cuba libre', which is run by the landlord and his wife Maria, known as Cangui, who is from Cuba.

Although the landlord says that the flag has been on display at the pub on and off for five years, he says that the GMP licensing officer told him to remove it and warned that there could be serious consequences if he refused to do so, warning him that it could be recorded as a crime.

Mr Oliver told the Morning Star newspaper that he was woken up last Friday morning, by the local police licensing officer, who told him that complaints had been received about him displaying a photograph of a 'terrorist' in his pub front window.  He says that he was told that he could display the flag inside the pub but not from the front window and that if he didn't remove it, the officer would submit a crime report that could lead to a formal criminal investigation.

Guevara, is an iconic figure and a role model for  many revolutionaries on the left and was part of the 26th July Movement that launched a rebellion to overthrow the former Cuban Dictator Fulgencio Batista, that led to the Cuban revolution in 1959 and a Communist government led by the former president of Cuba, Fidel Castro.

Geoff, 65, from Glossop, has described the incident as attempted 'political censorship' and has refused to take down the poster. He told a local newspaper:

'I just find it unbelievable.  Every day people including many of our customers, walk round with Che Guevara's image on their T-shirts and other memorabilia. In Cuba, he's a national hero and one of the founding fathers...'

Dai Morgan, a regular in the pub, said:  'This is a disgraceful attack on free speech and no laughing matter. Who is this shocking ignoramus. Che stands with Mandela as one of the great fighters for freedom in the 20th century.'

A source told the Manchester Evening News (MEN), that the licensing officer had merely paid a visit to the pub on behalf of Tameside Council to make the landlord aware of the complaint and to 'ask if he would consider taking it down.'   According to the MEN, both Greater Manchester Police and Tameside Council declined to comment.

This type of incident is not unusual in the UK, in spite of the fact that Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998, guarantees the right of freedom of expression. In 2010, David Hoffman, a photojournalist, from Bow in East London, was threatened with arrest if he did not remove from his front window a poster that said 'David Cameron is a Wanker!'   In 2012, he received an apology and compensation from the police after they admitted it had been unlawful to insist that he remove the poster from his window and that this and other illegal actions by the police on the day, had amounted to 'unlawful interference with his Article 10 right to freedom of expression.'   Mr Hoffman, later displayed the letter of apology from the police in his front window, along with another poster that read -  'David Cameron is still a Wanker!'

David Hoffman's view of Andy Meinke

David Hoffman said...

More of the same old Meinke wind. Nobody protests louder than someone who knows he's screwed up.

I've never had, asked for, wanted or been offered any protection by AFA, Red Action or any other group. But I've often been threatened and harassed by them, as have many friends and colleagues. My close protection, rarely needed, has been by professionals. Mostly it's tradecraft that keeps us safe, not the unwanted attention of a bunch of untrained fantasist goons.

And if Freedom had felt that they had a moral case for freebies they would just have asked me for the photos (which had my name and phone number as well as a copyright notice on the back).

Instead they took advantage of a guy with serious drink problems to steal the prints, then published them without even a credit, lied about the whole affair from start to finish and organised a character assassination spree against me to divert attention from their theft of my work, their wrecking the paper, their waste of Freedom's money and the total incompetence of the whole sad bunch of armchair anarchists.

The building's worth a million or two. I just wish they'd get off their arses, sell it, buy a place somewhere more politically fertile and get on with some real street politics.

Andy Meinke View on Mr Hoffman

andy meinke said...

Thanks for another credit Brian.  My view on Mr Hoffman was that he was able to take the pictures he did because he was protected from fascists by a number of very brave people over the years and morally he should have donated the photographs to a book recording those events.  Legally of course Hoffman was perfectly within his rights, that was a fuck up by the Freedom Collective.  A lesson not to trust so called comrades not to go running to the state when they think they can get their grubby paws on some money.

Shy Simon Saunders' Long Goodbye

ON Wednesday, the 16th, July 2014 at 15:00:27 Simon Saunders, one-time editor of Freedom newspaper which went belly-up in April 2014, wrote the following e-mail:

'I'm not interested in engaging with you further Brian.
'S(imon)

Only this month, the same Simon Saunders wrote the following on the Northern Voices Blog 'anonymously' addressed to me, Brian Bamford:

"statements about the ‘Friends of Freedom Press’ that are inconsistent"

'There is no inconsistency. The Friends' support for the Collective is not a formal tie but an aspiration expressed in their documentation. Hence "want to." If you were "gratuitously" abused (given your rather unpleasant history in this movement I'm very sceptical it would be any such thing) that's unfortunate, but arguments you've gotten yourself into in your everyday life have no bearing on how matters arise in formal meetings. Rest assured Brian, visitors to meetings are quite safe. The "anarchist movement" is not formally defined by Freedom, but culturally we accept pretty much any view that favours non-hierarchical organising, excluding capitalists. I must say that you personally, as someone who has consistently defamed comrades, attempted to undermine the organisation and published personal details without people's consent would probably be asked to leave, as would Chris, but this is a problem related to on John Desmond Answers Anonymous:'

He addresses his comment to me personally although the post that he is commenting upon was actually drafted by one John Desmond.  Mr. Saunders, as well as being somewhat shy is clearly an aspect blind individual who wants power without responsibility being associated with Freedom for all of a decade, and he clearly thinks that this gives him great authority to patronise others who may have somewhat longer seniority in both the history of Freedom and anarchism generally.  By his own admission Saunders was what Northerners would describe as 'Three Sheets to the Wind' when he first took to selling anarchist literature not knowing the meaning of the word 'syndicalism'.  For my part I joined the Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF) around 1960, when Ken Hawkes asked me to join following my involvement in the national strike of engineering apprentices in May of that year. 

Beyond editing Freedom for a few years and later becoming a reporter on the Morning Star, I don't know what Mr. Saunders has accomplished or done in the last decade or so as Freedom has declined in stature.  Mr. Saunders has written elsewhere that I have had no role in Freedom in his decade with the paper, but perhaps he does not recall my part in trying to negotiate with David Hoffman in 2012 over the copywrite issue which ultimately cost Freedom Press £4,000? 
It just seems to me as an outside observer in the North that the people in London at Freedom Press have not covered themselves with much glory since the turn of the century.  As I recall during my negotiations in August 2012, on behalf of Freedom and Northern Voices with the photo-journalist, David Hoffman, negotiations which Simon Saunders encouraged, Mr. Hoffman a one point declared that the individuals at Freedom around 2012 did not match quality of those of an earlier era at Freedom Press. 


Simon, who seemingly likes to operate as a back-seat driver, was at the time advising that to help Freedom that I engage with Mr. Hoffman in a phone call that was to be taped recorded?


In another 'anonymous' comment earlier this month the same Simon Saunders writes:

'...it might be worth noting that Chris and Brian have developed a very personal vendetta against Collective members who they feel (wrongly) are their enemies and as a result their roundups are often inaccurate, where they aren't deliberately misrepresentative. They haven't met most of the Friends or indeed most of the Collective, and do most of their writing from the other side of Britain. Other than the odd article from Brian, neither of them has had a role in the paper or the press for well over a decade.'

Simon claims 'Other than the odd article from Brian, neither of them (Chris Draper or Brian Bamford) has had a role in the paper or the press for well over a decade.'


Well, is Simon's memory now so short that he can't remember my help in 2012 and the disaster of the copywrite case with David Hoffman in that year, that cost so much, and all but destroyed Freedom then?

In another e-mail on the 19th, December 2014 Simon Saunders declares:
'Please take me off this mailout Brian, or I'll simply block the email and have nothing further to do with you. I have no interest in this vendetta you're running and have had quite enough of bilious updates dropping into my account. Honestly I hope you and Chris eventually row back a bit, get some perspective and refocus on doing something more productive, but I'll settle for not having the equivalent of green-ink letters batted at me.'

S(imon)  19th, Dec. 2014

Yet more coyness from Simon on the 21st, January 2015:

'Brian, I note that despite my request you have still not taken my real name down from comments on your blog connecting me to radical politics (comments under your "Anarchist Fed.: Under the Pavement P'            

From:	Simon S (saunders.simon@gmail.com)
Sent:	21 January 2015 16:07:54

And again on the 24th, April 2015 Simon is at it yet again:
'I haven't bothered reading most of the above, which appears at a glance to simply be a selection of yet more tiresome self-justifications and poorly-crafted insults. Don't contact me again until you've taken my name down, and if you choose not to do so, have a good life.'






Then again on the 24th, April 2015:

Simon Saunder's response to Iain McKay's e-mail about blocking our e-mail list:

'He's already in mine, so for the most part I'm spared having to put up with it unless people reply-all. Thanks for standing up for the work Freedom's done (and the hundreds of "useful idiots" who have written for Freedom since the turn of the millennium, from all kinds of backgrounds) but yes at this point it's probably best to just ignore them rather than fuel their misdirected fury. As always, apologies to all everyone getting these tiresome missives from Chris via Brian, suffice to say they are about as far from the truth as you'd expect from someone who hadn't spoken face to face with a Freedom editor for over a decade before launching into this strange tirade against AF conspiracies and dastardly reds. '

'My apologies to everyone included in this exchange for the wasting of your time, though for those of you involved in NAN, I do wonder why you keep this man around when his actions have shamed you so often and so thoroughly isolated you from the wider anarchist left over the last while.'S

What is interesting here is that there is no word for 'shy' in the Spanish language where anarchism made its greatest impression in the last century, and the nearest word in Spanish for this state of shyness is 'timido'.  This tendency among some English anarchists to adopt a shy approach to politics and disguise their identities seems to have grown up in the mid-1960s after the decline of the peace movement and shortly after the Spies for Peace incident in that decade.  Prior to this during a period in which British anarchism was at its most influential in the Ban the Bomb movement many anarchists were actively appearing in the courts and being jailed with their identities fully in the public domain.  Career anarchism came later for some people who wanted to lead double-lives, and Comrade Saunders seemingly is the latest product of that phenomena.
The most distinguished representative of this model is, I suppose, Christopher Pallis who was a leading figure in the Solidarity group founded in 1960, had been writing as, 'Martin Granger'  but in 1961 he was exposed by the press as a Hammersmith hospital consultant in neurology.   Thereafter, Mr . Pallis rendered his political writings and translations into the anonymous or signed them 'Maurice Brinton'.  A substantial selection For Workers Power, (2004 ) was published only on the understanding that his identity was not revealed.
Simon Saunders is no Chris Pallis, but he seems to take himself very seriously, despite the lack of any evidence that he has accomplished very much during his decade of activity working his fingers to the bone at Freedom Press as it sunk, and that in order to establish his credentials as an hard-man anarchist and at the same time to advance his career he wants to keep his name out of the public domain.  I came to anarchism and learned about syndicalism in my early twenties while involve in the struggles and strikes of engineering apprentice in England, and among the activities of Spaniards in Spain and Gibraltar in the 1960s.  Comrade Saunders for his part seems to have moved rapidly from utter ignorance of what syndicalism was all about, to something of an expert based on his bookish reading of the literature and later as a pundit on the Communist Morning Star.  He has even boasted to his comrades on the Freedom Collective that he has tutored Colin Trousdale, an highly qualified blacklisted skilled electrician with a long and distinguished grasp of politics, in the finer arts and mysteries of anarchism.   I'm sure Colin was flattered by the attentions of such great intellect. 

Who Killed Freedom?: an unauthorised history 3.

Talent for Trouble 

WITH only layout artist Jayne Clementson and cartoonist Donald Rooum remaining on the editorial collective from the old days it was no wonder yet another class warrior, Dean Talent of SolFed replaced Saunders. Having previously ousted FREEDOM loyalists Charles Crute and Kevin McFaul on the claimed grounds of economy and with the paper pleading poverty the collective curiously agreed to reinstate the stipend for Dean.

By 2009, FREEDOM had comprehensively alienated former supporters yet demonstrably failed to secure the support of a new network. Anarchists belonging to national organisations continued to prioritise the interest of their own organisations.  FREEDOM by then offered little to those of us with less narrowly defined anarchist outlooks who preferred informed and considered debate to hectoring demands and political posturing.  Nevertheless, when FREEDOM published a tendentious account of its history culminating in a panegyric to the Revd Toby Crowe I felt obliged to submit a comradely yet challenging alternative account. Predictably, Dean Talent refused to publish or even justify his refusal.

In 2011, Dean and the collective discovered they couldn’t treat everyone with such contempt and get away with it so easily.  Their arrogance and incompetence created the worst crisis FREEDOM had faced since the stick up of 1944.  Talent persuaded the collective to publish a book that had already been turned down by several other publishers (including the anarchist press, A.K.). 'Beating the Fascists' was the title and Sean Birchall the purported author, although this was widely held to be the alias of Gary O’Shea, leader of the now defunct Marxist 'Red Action' (R.A.).   Illustrated throughout with photographs of violent confrontations between fascists and anti-fascists the book presents Red Action’s version of how AFA (Anti-Fascist Action) physically fought the fascists off the streets. 

As soon as FREEDOM advertised the forthcoming publication they were, 'inundated with negative emails' and a blizzard of bad publicity; 'R.A. – a posturing bunch of macho bullies…shame on Freedom for giving them publicity';  'It is sickening to see Freedom publishing this inveterate anarchist hater';  'Why on earth are Freedom publishing this…would they publish Trotsky’s memoirs on Kronstadt?' 

Much of the criticism focussed on the character of the collective;  'A friend of mine emailed to see if they would be interested in publishing the first English translation of anarchist former prisoner Xose Tarrio’s book Hay! Hombre Hay!   She didn’t even get the courtesy of a reply, let alone the red carpet treatment Red Action have received';  'The stupidity of the current Freedom Collective…If they had any sense they’d have told R.A. to publish it themselves';  'Dean you are a fucking moron!”; “Freedom’s reputation has been very badly tarnished by all this'.

Anarchy in Action?

'Beating the Fascists' should never have been published by Freedom.  It is a paean to political violence.  Whilst some anarchists believe in going beyond defence to proactively seek out and attack supposed fascists most reject this strategy.  The former do not need Marxists to write the history of anti-fascism and the latter don’t want to promote such violence in any case. Although the collective voted only 5 for and 4 against publication FREEDOM went ahead evidently unconcerned that it is standard practice for anarchists to secure consensus before collective action.  Even that majority was questionable as Dean Talent was absent and voted by proxy.  A critical insider noted that, 'The four collective members had a choice of either supporting a project they disagreed with or resigning.  This is fundamentally un-Anarchist.  What kind of society do Freedom believe in if their collective is run in such a way?' 

The collective also gave scant regard to another traditional practice, checking copyright before publication.  Not long after 'Beating the Fascists' went on sale they heard from press photographer, David Hoffman that FREEDOM had included several of his pictures without permission, credit or payment.  FREEDOM initially refused to acknowledge their error, apologise or offer recompense. A political radical, sympathetic to anarchism, as a professional photographer, Hoffman nonetheless relies on the sale of his pictures to make a living and some of the included photographs even had his claim to copyright stamped on the back yet no-one contacted him pre-publication.  FREEDOM didn’t have a legal leg to stand on and as the book was being sold through commercial channels (Amazon etc) and bore the © Freedom Press imprint they had no moral justification either. 

In Hoffman’s experience the collective proved an extremely slippery customer.  FREEDOM either knowingly took a commercial gamble on overlooking copyright obligations or acted out of ignorance.  Either way once Hoffman showed up it was time to eat humble pie and beg for a low tariff on the pictures.   Instead FREEDOM tried to take the moral high ground, accused him of trying to unfairly extract money from an impoverished organisation and initiated a vicious hate campaign against him on the web.  Members of FREEDOM’s  editorial collective variously described Hoffman online as a, 'piece of shit', 'rat bastard cunt' and a 'piece of excrement'.

This debacle dragged on for another 13 months before FREEDOM finally handed over four thousand pounds to avoid court action (part of this sum was paid by Hoffman to the widow of Mike Cohen, whose copyright pictures had also been used).  Hoffman claims he would have settled for far less if the collective had acted honourably but:

'The greed and hypocrisy of the current incompetent collective has stained a previously respected organisation and it’s that issue that Freedom’s few remaining friends really need to address.'

The End is Nigh

By August 2012, FREEDOM was politically, morally and financially bankrupt.  The holding company still owned the building and Aldgate Press still printed the paper for free but the writing was on the wall, and the fate of Dean Talent?  In his own memorable words, 'I was slung out of the collective', so neophyte turned know-it-all Simon Saunders popped up to announce, 'Freedom Press is in some difficulty, both financial and in terms of volunteer labour – basically we need you…we are proposing to have a series of meetings…and discuss how we can drag the paper, the bookshop, the publishing house and the building out of trouble.'

Unfortunately this 'series of meetings' didn’t extend beyond London and the appeal soon proved entirely disingenuous. That very same month all copies of the popular magazine Northern Voices produced by a band of Manchester-based, unaffiliated anarchists were removed from the shelves of FREEDOM bookshop as the collective objected to an article it contained.

When, just a few weeks later, an anarchist was attacked at his stall at the 2012 London Anarchist Bookfair, and his publications stolen by a bunch of Anarchist Federation thugs the FREEDOM collective (which includes an AF faction) refused to publish an account of the incident.

The paper limped on with caretaker editors nominally in charge, whilst Saunders and chums remained behind the scenes, ready to tighten the leash whenever there was any danger of a politically challenging piece being published.  In January 2013 for example, editor Matthew Black promised (by email) to publish an article by anarchist Barry Woodling before being overruled by the ruling clique.  Unsurprisingly Matthew left before the end of the year to be replaced by an editor with even less knowledge or experience of anarchism than a freshly minted Simon Saunders.

Charlotte Dingle, a Green Party local election candidate was handed the, by then, poisoned editorial chalice.  She, no doubt, appreciated the editorial internship and political platform but her appointment only served to reinforce suspicions that the real power brokers had lost interest in the paper. Yet there was still time to squeeze in a bit more censorship. In October 2013, FREEDOM accepted a review from Northern activist Paul Salveson, with editor Charlotte Dingle confirming publication before being overruled by the ruling clique.

In the next installment Chris Draper assesses who is to blame  at Freedom Press, and asks if the asset strippers will take-over?

New Year 2013: A Decade of Northern Voices

Sir Cyril Smith, David Hoffman, Sophie Lancaster, the Bookfair Attacks, the Free Press & the Campaign Against the Blacklist

THIS has been probably been the most successful in the ten-year history of Northern Voices.  It has been a year in which Northern Voices made a serious breakthrough by being at the forefront and making inroads into some main stream media stories such as the Cyril Smith revelations last November.  In November 2012, the Northern Voices' Blog for the first time had a monthly page-viewing public that went well into five figures. Partly the reason for this was our exposure of the issues surrounding Sir Cyril Smith on the 13th, November, at 2.30 pm on the day in which the Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk, gave his speech in the House of Commons at around 4 pm, in which we knew he would would accuse Sir Cyril of child sex abuse. Paul Waugh, a journalist from Rochdale, as agreed had run the story at 10.30 am on his own site at www.politicshome.com  . The Cyril Smith post of the 19th, September 2010, now has the largest number of page-viewings, and it was this post that triggered the events that ultimately led to the events in November 2012. Naturally Northern Voices was involved in some important spade work in this regard in so far as we helped to find two vital witnesses, who were abused as young lads in the 1960s, who were now for the first time willing to go on the record. On Monday, last week, one of these witnesses identified by Northern Voices had his first interview with the main solicitor dealing with the Cyril Smith abuse case.

Throughout the Autumn of 2012, after the exposure of Jimmy Savile in the main stream media, the Northern Voices' Blog linked the cases of Jimmy Savile and Cyril Smith in several postings. All of these posts scored well in terms of page-views. And yet, when the Cyril Smith case is examined in depth historically there are so many loose ends that lead in political and sociological directions to issues of power; such as the relationship between institutions and elites that may be involved either directly or indirectly: our printed publication Northern Voices No.8 ran a story in 2007 entitled 'Was Cyril Smith Set Up?: Rochdale MP in Seventies Sex Scandal'. In Southern Europe political corruption is often more blatant and less furtive than it appears to be in England, but some aspects of the Cyril Smith case seem to suggest curious glimpses of political networking that operated beneath the surface of respectable political live.

In 2012, our N.V. page-views as whole almost tripled. The attack by the free-lance photographer, David Hoffman, on Freedom Press, in which he alleged the publisher had breach his copyright led to several posts that scored highly on the N.V. Blog. Our approach was to defend Freedom from the Hoffman claim for damages, because it seemed to us to threaten the freedom of minority publications to publish material and David Hoffman seemed to making a living out of demanding fees from publications that may have inadvertently used his photos.

The year had begun with a debate with Dave Douglass on the N.V. Blog about Libya and NATO involvement, which Barry Woodling had originally introduced by at the Northern Anarchist Network Conference in Newcastle in November 2011. Barry followed this up with an interview in NV13 with Azeldin-El-Sharif, the Chair of the British Libyan Solidarity Campaign. The NV13 issue included a piece in the Tameside Eye column about Kieran Quinn and the Labour controlled Tameside Council flagrant awarding of contracts to the company that blacklists building workers – Carillion. Since Hull MBC has now banned companies guilty of blacklisting from putting in tenders, MPs are being urged by Unite to sign the Early Day Motion on Blacklisting, and the likelihood that a motion will be on the agenda at the coming North West TUC Conference in Manchester in March, Northern Voices' feels that its decade-long campaign with the Manchester electricians has been entirely justified. Northern Voices No.13 reported on Tameside Trade Union Council's success in getting Tameside MBC to award a Blue Plaque to the local Spanish Civil War volunteer who died fighting Fascism in Spain in March 1938.  The interview with Sophie Lancaster's mother, Sylvia, as a leading article in N.V.13, gained the journal much support especially at the showing of the play 'Black Roses' at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester, when we had to have a special reprint of the publication.  Sophie Lancaster was a 'Goth Girl' from Bacup in Lancashire, who was murdered in 2007 for dressing differently.

The attacks on Northern Voices' supporters at bookfairs in October in London and December in Manchester by members of a minority political body, the Anarchist Federation, has only served to stimulate interest in the N.V. publication and its Blog.  The journal is certainly better known now nationally than at any other time in its ten-years of life, and this is largely owing to the efforts of Sally Hymen/ Miller and her friend the Anarchist Federation groupie, Ron Marsden, who now does voluntary work for Alex McFadden at the Salford Unemployed Centre.  Northern Voices was also banned at Touchstones' Museum bookshop in Rochdale, because of an attack in the last issue by Debbie Firth, of the protest group Touchstones' Challenge, on the Link4Life company that runs the Museum.

Calamity Kate Caught With Her Tits Hanging Out!

A Free Press:  Are there limits to the Enlightenment?

IS IT a cruel irony that those who live by celebrity die by celebrity?  In an age in which Simon Cowell and the 'X-Factor' has replaced Hughie Green and the more homely 'Opportunity Knocks', are we now in an era in which Bread and Circuses rage, and one in which we snigger and sneer at inept contestants lured onto TV, we might well ask if the spirit of the Enlightenment has now overstepped the mark?  Each day the weight of evidence seems to grow:  with Kate Middleton caught on camera with her tits hanging out, Prince Harry photographed philandering with good-time girls while playing strip-poker in a Los Angeles hotel room, and now riots around the world following a feeble You-Tube film desecrating the good name of the prophet Mohammed.  Have we in the West, now indulged in too much freedom of choice in our consumer society?

As a poet said in the middle of the last Century:  'Property, property, let us expand soul and body without end!'

This is a serious problem for western intellectuals, not least those of us around the Northern Voices publication and NV Blog where we too are under criticism from a small local sect or at the anarchist paper Freedom in London, where they have been under attack from David Hoffman, the Copyright Kid, a freelance journalist who seems intent on suing almost everything that moves, and has been labeled 'writ-happy'.  The philosopher, Mary Midgley, has written (see her 'Evolution as a Religion' in 1985):  'Internalized in each of us is a voice which speaks with accents of Voltaire and Rousseau, of Mill, Hulme, Tom Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft:  a voice which says, "Was it for this that we defied the priests, the fathers, and the Kings?  Can anything be more important than individual liberty?".' 

The thing is that since the Renaissance, it may even have begun with the Greeks, it has broadly been the aim of western civilisation to free up individuals from the chains of their social backgrounds so as to help people to escape and stand on their own feet, free from family, the state, the Church etc.  Even western Christianity, with its focus on the separate, irreplaceable value of each human soul, helped to play a role in this flowering of the enlightenment.  In a way, this spirit of the Enlightenment has been the engine of all that is good and wonderful in western society today, and it is in the blending of liberalism and socialism that is present in the writings of such anarchist thinkers as Rudolf Rocker and more recently Noam Chomsky, the linguist, who openly describes himself as a 'Child of the Enlightenment'.

For my part, I confess that lately I have been regularly taking Mary Midgley to bed with me, and she persuasively writes:  'The careful separating out of each soul from its social background has of course been responsible for an immense amount that is distinctive and valuable in the achievements of our civilization.'  It has never been carried so far by any other culture,  and Mary adds that it is 'No wonder that to many people it never looked, until lately, as if we could have too much of that good thing, individualism.'

As I write this I have before me a copy of last Saturday's International Herald Tribune, with a headline story entitled 'A Parisian avenue far from romantic', in which the writer recalls that the French Culture Minister and novelist, Andre Malraux, in the 1960s told a journalist 'that the Champs-Élysées - then considered the most beautiful avenue in the world - had "an American basement".'  Today, we learn from the writer, Steven Erlanger, that America is no longer confined to the basement, 'but American business and its brands are prominently above ground on a Champs-Élysées that has become increasingly commercialized and globalized.'

What Mary Midgley said in 1985, was that while there were still tyrants, 'what [in 1985] chiefly confronts us ... is not an Easter Island row of ossified traditional patriarchs, but a chaotic mob of dollar-snatching cormorants, doing damage of an order undreamed of in previous ages.'  Indeed, there are many 'dollar-snatching cormorants' today, as the Duchess of Cambridge (Kate Middleton) was quick to point out this week, after the snaps of her were published, but there are also many genuine tyrants and enemies of freedom, not just on the right but also on the left.

I want to agree with Mary Midgley in everything she says about 'dollar snatching cormorants' and because she challenges the pretensions of some modern scientists like Richard Dawkins, but here Ms. Midgley is writing in 1985, at a time of the softening in the Cold War when Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachyov had just arrived in the Kremlin and before the fall of the Berlin Wall, and more importantly before the rise of Islam as an international political force, before the Salman Rushdie case and the burning of his book 'Satanic Verses' by Pakistanis in Bradford, before 9/ 11 and before 7/ 7 and other dramatic features of the post-post-modern era.  As I write this, I am listening to Andrew Marr interviewing Salman Rushdie on Radio 4's 'Start the Week', and Mr. Rushdie says that when we 'self-censor' to please a publisher or even a public 'a little part of us dies' inside.

Like Chomsky, we in the West are all 'Children of the Enlightenment', and this is a project that began even earlier than the Renaissance with the Ancient Greeks.  And yet, some of us are bastard children of the Enlightenment:  witness Adolf Hitler, of whom George Orwell wrote, that in the 1930s Germany represented a version of modern science in the service of ideas rooted in the Stone Age.   What protects us against this outcome, I would argue, is the presence of something that can be represented as a free media with all its faults and blemishes:  the likes of Julian Assange, and Wikileaks and even an old tin-pot anarchist publication like Freedom Press in Whitechapel.  If this means we have to put up with the Irish Star, Berlusconi  in Italy and 'Closer' in France so be it.  I don't want to appear pompous, but so long as I am an editor at Northern Voices, I will be anxious to oppose self-censorship and to stick to the Enlightenment project..

Copyright Kid: The One That Got Away in 2006

'Baptism of Ire':

'With the aid of ... hindsight it seems obvious that any event bringing together Britain's most litigous MP and the countries most writ-happy photographer would be fraught with possibilities' 

(EPUK Editorial Photographers UK & Ireland:  20th, July 2006)

FREELANCE photographer David Hoffman has failed to win his business dispute against MP George Galloway, after he refused to pay for blurry pictures.  Mr Galloway failed to pay Mr Hoffman his £715 fee for photographs taken at the christening of the MP's granddaughter last year, claiming that the quality of the pictures was so bad that they left a 'scar on the memory' of the special occasion.  The 61-year-old photographer argued at Central London County Court that one of Mr Galloway's assistants had employed him with the brief of producing images purely to be used for public relations purposes.  Yet, Mr Galloway countered that it was 'inconceivable' that he would hire a photographer not to record the event as a cherished family memento.

Judge Margaret Langley ruled that Mr Hoffman had been in breach of contract, as he had admitted that, if his pictures were taken in response to a commission to cover a family christening, 'then they are inadequate, I accept that'.

Outside the courthouse, Mr Galloway said:  'Never can so much court time have been wasted on a vexatious claim.  Mr Hoffman should be ashamed of himself.  We are relying on throw-away cameras and pictures taken on mobile phones because of the inadequacy of Mr Hoffman's work.'

Businesses in Britain and Northern Ireland should make sure that any contracts they undertake are clearly set out, otherwise they may face a trip to the solicitors, which could be a waste of time if they have no written contract to make up their claim.  (From website of Wilson Nesbitt Solicitors, Belfast)

Rob Ray's Response to 'Tales of Hoffman' etc

This reply has been a while in compiling, as Hoffman has, for a man regularly protesting how little he cares about the opprobrium of the anarchist set, been remarkably hardworking in his efforts to send letters to pretty much anyone who will listen to him say what a great guy he is and how Freedom is basically Dr No's richer, more unscrupulous successor.

I'm dealing here only with direct allegations Hoffman has been making over the last couple of weeks, in an effort to clarify matters.  The issue of how the broader left deals with intellectual property, which is often the only way for writers, photographers etc to make a living out of capitalists but which also opens us to pathetic in-fighting over an issue that Proudhon pretty much put to bed over 120 years ago, is a much bigger argument which really deserves its own post.  That's something I can't dedicate time fully to now, as I have more practical matters around helping sort out the Press to attend to, but which I hope to come back to sometime.

In this case, the nutshell version of our position is: We got photos from the authors of 'Beating the Fascists' which they said were theirs and fine to use, which we believed.  We scanned them, gave them back and published. Hoffman then came in demanding the photos, which we didn't have, and the names of the authors, which we couldn't give as they were confidential sources who could be endangered if their names were officially linked to a book about street-level fighting.  Eventually, maintaining they had the right to them (fwiw I believe that although the law says otherwise they are probably telling the truth), the authors did us a favour and handed the folder over, though allegedly not with all the pictures. Hoffman responded by demanding we pay £4,000 and, not being able to afford a court case or put individual collective members at serious financial risk, we paid.

There is some disjointed and semi-repetitive stuff below, which is in the nature of the diverse sources from which it is cobbled, but hopefully it should cover the majority of the issues raised.  Other than for Hoffman himself as the person I am responding to, I have removed full names throughout, as is standard practice to avoid outing radical comrades permanently in the public domain.

Finally, as a little disclaimer, I'm only writing as an individual here.  As a collective Freedom has resolved to leave matters with the original statement and will make no further comment.

Quote:

'I have 104 items in my "Freedom" robbers folder, that's 10 times what there should be and that's because I bust my balls trying to find them a cheap easy way out.'

It is quite possible that other mistakes have been made over the last few decades of Freedom's existence, as of the many collectives which have kept it running only a limited number included people with the time, energy and expertise to properly check up on photos used. If there are a load of other copyright infringements in our body of publications, it would be good to know about them. However at present I have no idea what he’s talking about here.

Quote:

'It seems that the current collective hasn't sufficient conviction in their own case to allow any of this on their site.'

Actually he was offered the chance to send in to the collective for a decision on right to reply on three separate occasions (https://twitter.com/Freedom_Paper ) and never did so, to the best of my knowledge. I’ve only been able to respond to the points below, which are from an email Hoffman has been circulating to people making inquiries, because a friendly comrade passed it on.  At this point my guess is more people have seen his many, many posts on the matter than have actually seen our statement (not that he offered us right to reply...)

Quote:

'They are in no danger of bankruptcy.'

Actually we’ve been behind on our gas bills, the business rates and have been unable to pay for basic repairs to the building. We’re hopeful that donations we've been receiving due to this debacle will keep us running for now, but the only major assets we have are three rooms full of books, which sadly aren’t recognised as legal tender.

Quote:

'I'm told that FOFP has paid bookshop wages and met other expenditure. If true that would break their 'dormant' shield.'

I doubt anyone 'told' Hoffman any such thing, because it’s nonsense. All wages are paid by the Press via proceeds from donations, sales of books, papers and such. The collective also pays the balance of the rates that rent from other groups doesn’t cover, hence having had to put off things like paying for gas and electric recently, or our inability to replace broken windows, or the fact we’ve been unable to stump up a £365 bill to put an A-board out on the high street, or the pay cuts that our few remaining paid members have had to take.

Anyone who’s visited Freedom at any point over the last few years will be able to testify to the generally run-down nature of the building, the foreshortened store stock etc. It’s not because we like keeping it that way while we sit on a hoard of gold upstairs, but because we have very little money.

Quote:

'Freedom also owns a holding company with the building worth well over £1m (they deny that but had it valued recently - let's see the valuation?)'

The building is worth £400,000 according to an estate agent we got in in 2007 or so - they don’t give written valuations. The figure, which is lower than others in the borough, is due to its position in an industrial area and lack of planning permissions. It's almost certainly worth less now.

However, Freedom Press couldn’t sell the building if we wanted to, it’s owned by the Friends of Freedom, which is a different collective with a responsibility to not just the Press, but the other six or so groups involved and the wider London movement, which uses it for a huge variety of events and meetings. There is literally no way we could replace the building with something similar elsewhere and even if we could, it would have taken substantially longer to find somewhere else and get a buyer in this market than Hoffman is suggesting.

Either way even if we could sell the building to pay for his snaps, it certainly isn't his "ethical" right to demand the destruction of one of the few remaining bricks-and-mortar assets of the anarchist movement to pay for a single error by the 2011-2012 collective. Even if the 12 members of the current Press were Bane, the Joker and Ra's al Ghul rolled into one (we aren't), most of us will almost certainly be gone in a decade or less, as is always the case for volunteer-run organisations, and his only "victory" from it would be a legacy placing him in the unenviable position of having achieved what Combat 18, the combined efforts of the secret state and a grab-bag of other nasties have been unable to do.

Quote:

'There have been a few hints at much larger sums than my £4k going adrift in one of the threads I saw. Maybe M's Crow Kollective, not sure, they blocked me when I tried to post.'

This is just clutching at straws – M doesn’t take any money whatsoever and is simply a volunteer in the collective. I can understand Hoffman wanting to discredit him though, after his little stunt posting up a picture of a dead crow with a prominent copyright notice up on M’s Facebook page (M was the only collective member whose Facebook he was actually on) went so badly wrong.

Quote:

'Re your "it was a honest mistake on their part." that's not the case. The question of copyright was raised at the collective meeting that decided to publish the book and just brushed aside.'

Because as far as we knew the photos were AFA’s (Anti-Fascist Action's).

Quote:

'Sometimes they say "it was a honest mistake". Other times they say that they thought they had permission - if that had been so then how come they never even told me they were publishing or gave me a credit?'

Because we thought they were AFA’s, ie free to use however we liked. We didn’t credit the authors either as it happens – guess why? I’m not sure how more simply to put this. Our mistake was not to investigate further, and we’ve held our hands up to that.

Quote:

'The initial correspondence which would have settled it for a few hundred.'

Actually, as far as the person who was dealing with it at the time recalls, Hoffman took an extremely long time to even point out which photos were his, let alone put in a price. When he did so, it was on condition that we hand over photos we didn’t have and failing that, the names of the authors, which we couldn’t give as it goes against every journalistic ethic to out confidential sources who could face serious jail time as a result.

Quote:

'W claims I tried to make him reveal his sources but then little of what he says holds up to examination. I have an email from him asking if I am trying to get him to name sources and my reply saying that I am not.'

From a Trading Standards letter we got in April:

"Again as you are aware, Mr. Hoffman is demanding that the prints of the offending photographs used in the book, together with any others from the file to which he owns the copyright, are returned to him forthwith. However, to date, the authors have refused to comply with this request.

"Hence in order for me to further my investigation into this matter it would now seem necessary that I speak to the authors or those representing them. I am therefore formally requesting from you the names and contact details for the authors or their representatives."

Now not only does this bely his claim that W is lying, not only would doing so have potentially opened the way for court cases, this is documented evidence that Hoffman reckoned we didn't have the photos - making his "they could have settled early" claim utterly meaningless.

Quote:

'Left me looking for other ways to track down my prints - which required getting more info on the people concerned.'

Well that’s the crux, isn’t it. Hoffman was putting us in the invidious position of having to choose between ratting out confidential sources and paying out substantially larger sums of money than NUJ rates. What he appears to be taking an “ethical stand” on for not inconsiderable cash gain is his right to force radical publishers to break their codes of ethics (not to mention those of his own union (No.7)).

Quote:

'Since I'm being so widely monstered anyway I might find time for a bit more research and another claim or two. If it really is true that they've been ripping me off for 20 years then it's a tribute to their ineffectuality. I've been on dozens of demos every year and have never seen a single one.'

Or more plausibly, their story is pretty accurate and Searchlight originally gave the photos away so no-one bothered to track them, and it’s only now as Hoffman is approaching retirement and (so I hear) has managed to alienate pretty much every picture desk in the country that he reckons he has nothing to lose by cashing in as fully as possible. For a man as “ethically” litigious as Hoffman, it seems inconceivable that he would have simply not bothered to check up on a group that had actively stolen his copyrighted material for upwards of two decades, or even mentioned the loss.

Quote:

'Then it turned out that many of the photos in the book had been scanned from prints that AFA [our bold italics: Northern Voices] or RA had stolen from a magazine.  A worker there had drink and mental health problems and they'd exploited him.  That pissed me off and, more professionally, I wanted to recover those stolen prints (my property, loaned to the mag) to stop them being used again.'

Again, not the way they tell it, which was that the photos were in return for intelligence. Now I can’t say for certain who’s telling the truth, but again, why did no-one bother to go after the photos once they’d been “stolen”? And why would AFA even bother going after them in the first place if it was highly likely any publication using them would get into trouble for breaching copyright, as we did?

It’s the 20 years of total inaction that made (indeed makes) AFA’s assurances so plausible, while Hoffman seems to be suggesting he simply didn't notice that they were gone (which I can’t help but circle and link to other lines of his elsewhere about these photos being his much-cherished “life’s work”).

Quote:

'Freedom refused to do anything to help, claimed they had no idea where they were, couldn't contact the people etc.'

There’s no “claim” about it.  We didn’t have them as we’d handed them back, and weren’t about to turn over the names of the authors.

Quote:

'I was still keen not to issue a summons until everything else had been tried so I brought in Trading Standards as the lightest of my heavy weaponry. That brought about an agreement to bring the file of prints into the office for me to identify my ones and take them back.'

ie.  To spare us worse we were given prints to hand back.  And note the second part.  By Hoffman's own words he hadn't even identified which ones were his - surely a simple matter of picking up the book, given how important to him they are - until after he'd brought in Trading Standards [our bold italics- NV] to demand names and addresses.  Which somewhat undermines his claim that we were made a realistic offer early on.

Quote:

'There were many empty pockets that still had the marks of the prints that had been in them.'

Again, there may or may not have been missing shots but that's nothing to do with us, why would we hold back something we can’t use and which we’ve already admitted Hoffman has a legal claim on?

Quote:

(Hoffman’s “quotes”)

DH:  'Maybe you can put some pressure on them [AFA / Anti-Fascist Action] to come up with this file [containing the prints of mine that AFA had stolen] then?'

Collective member:  'I think we should. We made no effort to clarify whose photographs they were.'

What he’s done there is conflate the views that he says one member expressed with those of the collective. Even so, it actually somewhat corroborates our version of events, as his “insider” - indeed his one and only quoted source of information - suggests that we didn’t have the prints and thus couldn’t initially give them all to him in return for his “reasonable rates”.

Personally, I was under the impression that they were AFA’s, as was the rest of the collective. We have all since admitted that we should have checked further, but that’s far from the conspiracy to defraud and steal that Hoffman is accusing us of, let alone a justification for the punitively high damages he demanded.

Fiveleaves

Now, moving on to his somewhat shorter piece on  fiveleavespublications.blogspot.co.uk.  I’ve already answered most of his allegations there, and afaict the majority of the post is about how 'hurt' and 'betrayed' he feels (all of which would assume a deliberate malicious intent to steal on our part that, as I hope I’ve shown above, wasn’t there) but there’s a couple of new ones.

Quote:

'Several of the photos were marked clearly “Copyright David Hoffman”.'

The sub doesn't remember them having clear copyright notices but assuming they did, in any case this would ...

a) be irrelevant if ownership has been given away (as we were told it had been by the people actually holding them at the time),

b) assume that the layout person was checking for such (which they wouldn’t if they believed the pics had been freely given to AFA) and

c) suggest that we might actually decide to proactively put the real name of an anti-fascist photographer in the public domain - something which is traditionally rather frowned on given that naming journalists has historically often seen them targeted for reprisal. It may be his legal right to force us to stamp every single book with "some of these photos are by David Hoffman," but it's not normal practice.

Quote:

'I support anti-racist and anti-fascist activism. I make no money from that.'

Fact is he's made his living from photographing far right v far left for over 30 years, saying he "made no money" from it is farcical. And in this case Hoffman has walked away with around £4,500 from suing people who have tried to get important anti-fascist works into the public domain (and as he admits, we actually made a loss from doing so). I haven’t heard of that sum dropping into any anti-fascist bank accounts yet, though doubtless it would be much-appreciated.

Quote:

'Freedom spun that as me trying to get the “names of sources”.'

'Spin' would suggest that this is not in fact what the line in the Trading Standards letter saying 'I am therefore formally requesting from you the names and contact details for the authors or their representatives' actually means.

Hoffman: a profile

Now on to who Hoffman really is. I don’t think I actually need to use my own descriptive powers, or report what I’ve heard from his colleagues about his behaviour on demos, or on how he’s regarded within the NUJ generally – anyone with some mates in the union can ask around and get the skinny. I’m just going to post three links and let you judge the reality of this 'left wing sympathiser'.

First, this is a link to an incident in 2009 during the election campaign to decide on an editor for the Journalist, the in-house magazine of the NUJ:

http://jonslattery.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/nuj-left-accused-of-trying-to-take.html

Second, this is a link to Hoffman successfully suing a charity for use of his pictures, even though it was accepted they had done so in error, rather than deliberately:

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/news/2141623/photographer-wins-copyright-infringement

Third, this is a link to a conversation about Hoffman’s background. While it gets distracted a lot and is mixed in with some vitriol against his actions in suing Freedom, the explanations and observations on his potential motivations are, shall we say, interesting.

http://libcom.org/blog/freedom-must-be-saved-19072012

And that's it from me for the moment, if you made it this far congratulations. You're clearly made of stern stuff, because frankly if I hadn't had the motivating factor of putting right a laundry list of inaccuracies and self-serving paranoia I doubt I would have.

http://libcom.org/blog/lengthy-reply-david-hoffman-11082012
Posted By Rob Ray: Aug 11 2012 13:40

Tales of Hoffman: Part Two

FURTHER to our post 'Tales of Hoffman:  Part One' on this Blog last week, Northern Voices was sent another  commentary from the photo-journalist, Mr. David Hoffman, on his involvement with Freedom Press and his subsequent claim which resulted in Freedom paying him £4,000.   Here is what he has to say on reflection; in some of this he repeats what he has already said in 'Tales of Hoffman:  Part One':

Dear xxx,
'I found the [copyright] saga depressing, a Greek tragedy.  Entirely foreseeable, entirely avoidable and entirely inevitable.  If Freedom had had the respect that I might have expected for what is my lifetime's (well over 36 years so far) work against racism none of this would have happened.  Dozens of left publications ask me for my pics, pay at an appropriate rate and we all work together generously and honestly.  Freedom pissed in the soup to save a few bob and out of a feeling of arrogant entitlement.  Just like a banker.

'This is a roughly pasted together e-mail that I've been adding to, that's why you'll find it a bit disjointed.  At some point I might flesh it out with specifics like times and dates for the numerous attempts I made to get Freedom to settle for a few hundred (NUJ rates) and the return of my stolen prints used for a book.  And there's a lot more  that I did trying to avoid this slow motion train wreck.

'I have 104 items in my "Freedom" robbers folder, that's 10 times what there should be and because I bust my balls trying again and again to find them a cheap easy way out.  I've never worked so hard trying to save an infringer from its own death wish.  Freedom just ignored me, made promises they didn't keep, wasted my time, lied repeatedly and dug themselves deeper and deeper in their own poo.

'That's why it became so expensive.  Mind you, if it had been Getty's pics they'd nicked it would have likely been five times as much.

'It seems that the current collective hasn't sufficient conviction in their own case to allow any of this on their site, so I'll leave the handful who have been cursing me to get on with it on their own.  I've had my teeth knocked out by cops, had my life threatened by a (now serving life) BNP murderer (and by a dozen others from '70s NF to 2012 EDL) and I've survived every major riot in the UK in my lifetime.  I can probably cope with a few rude tweets from people who lack the courage to use their own names.

'There's a lot more to this than Freedom are putting into the public realm.  Unfortunately you are unlikely to see it, as a response alongside the allegations on their site would expose their deceit.

'I've been a fan and supporter of Freedom since 1970.  I've been asked to speak at the Book Fair and have been to many of the events in Angel Alley.  I've rather lost touch with them over the last decade as the collective has become inward looking, defensive and irrelevant.

'I put 3 months into trying to to get a cheap, amicable resolution.  Twice, neutral, independent friends of theirs tried to resolve this.  Both said Freedom should settle.  At the start it would have been a few hundred to cover the standard NUJ recommended fees and they could have had time to pay if needed.  They were ignored.  Freedom stonewalled, lied, obstructed, refused to make any offers at all, claimed they had permission, blamed others and accused good people I know of some seriously treacherous behaviour - all lies.  They left me no choice but to walk away or go in hard.  It was Freedom who ruled out an amicable solution.

'I'm not inclined to walk away from oppressive behaviour from the right or the left.  I put a great deal of time and effort into protecting the rights of my colleagues (and myself) and I'm not about to undermine that 30+ year struggle by letting a bunch of armchair anarchists deliberately pillage work that I have put together since the'70s often at considerable risk.

'Freedom also owns a secretive holding company with the building worth well over £1m (they deny that but had it valued recently - let's see the valuation?) plus significant other assets secret.  Just like the Barclay brothers.  They are in no danger of bankruptcy - other than moral bankruptcy.

'In any case the readership of the paper has been falling for years, long before this spat.  The collective has discussed whether they can or should continue to produce it on a number of occasions.  Pretending that the doubts over its future are down to this single payment is a deliberate deceit against its own supporter.

'The [Freedom] collective pretends that using my photos "was a honest mistake" that's not the case.  The question of copyright was raised at the collective meeting that decided to publish the book and [was] just brushed aside.

'Freedom are professional publishers with more than 100 years of publishing behind them.  They know about copyright.  They mark all their own books with clear copyright notices!  Some of the photos (prints stolen from another mag.) had my name and copyright notice and contact info. on but they deliberately ignored that.

'Sometimes they claim "it was a honest mistake".  But  other times they say that they thought they had permission - yet they never even told me they were publishing my work or gave me a credit.  Why?  Because they didn't want me to find out.

'There's loads more but I've wasted enough time on this.  I've been insulted and subject  to daft allegations for 30+ years.  Let them rattle on about how evil I am if it makes them happy.  Me, I'm happy to be judged on my record.

'And some of the £4K has gone to Kiva, some to the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture, some will go to other good causes and some is for me to take down to the pub with my friends.

'I might also have added that the collective were deeply split on whether to go ahead with the book (voted to publish by 1 vote).  And Dean Talent (the collective member who really pushed for publication) told me apologetically that trouble it had caused was his/ their fault.  Then they slung him out of the collective, they certainly blame him (see Dean Talent's comment disputing this beneath Tales of Hoffman:  Part One). 

'My recent claim is only the tip of the iceberg Freedom are sailing towards.  There are plenty of other photos infringed in that book and Freedom have made no attempt to head that off or try to resolve it.  There are many, many other books published by Freedom.  I'd be amazed if there were not hundreds more copyright infringements just waiting to fall in on them.'

regards,
David

'PS - The are currently 3 copyright infringements by the far right, one really major one that I'm working on.  Do you think I should just let them go?  If any of those end up in court my case would be badly weakened if it turned out that I am partisan about who I choose to take action against.'

Tales of Hoffman: Part One

Northern Voices promised to give Mr. Hoffman a fair crack, and an opportunity to put his side of the story in his dispute with Freedom Press (see post below), over their use of his photos without his permission.  Below are the ruminations and comments in an e-mail from David Hoffman about the circumstances of his copyright claim with Freedom.  Members of the Freedom Collective may well question some of his allegations here, but Northern Voices will refrain from further comment at this stage:

Sadster that I am - I am on the computer a great deal of the time.  If you wanted facts you could have had them in a 5 minute phone call.  Clearly you don't.  WGAF (Who gives a fig).  You might mention the Freedom have £1m plus asset squirrelled away in a holding company just like any City fat cat.  They don't need an appeal for money, they're just greedy.  But you won't.  You might mention that Freedom used stolen pics for the (rather crap) book ['Beating the Fascists'].  But you won't.

You might mention that I spent 3 months trying to settle this for just a few hundred quid but Freedom wouldn't negotiate.  But you won't.  You might mention that at the meeting where the publication was discussed (before they went ahead) they discussed the copyright position and knew they were ripping off myself and several other photographers.  But you won't.  You might mention that the (Freedom) collective were deeply split on whether to go ahead with this ripoff of our work (voted to publish by 1 vote).  But you won't.

I could go on but you've already decided what you want to write and have limited time.

If a handful of armchair anarchists want to be rude about me then I expect I can take it.  I've had my teeth knocked out by cops, had my life threatened by genuine BNP murderer (and by a dozen others from '70s NF [National Front] to 2012 EDL [English Defence League] ) and I've survived every major riot in the U.K..

Two more things - Jayne ... was one the best of the bunch, honest, open and a thoroughly decent woman.  And Dean Talent (the guy who really pushed for the publication [of 'Beating the Fascists'] told me apologetically that it was all his/ their fault.  They then slung him out of the collective.

To be biblical - (not my usual style) 'The giggles of fools are as the crackling of twigs under the cooking pot'.

Nobody whose opinion I care about will do anything but laugh.

David.

Copyright & the fruits of photographing Fascists

The need to defend Freedom

THE copyright laws and the theft of intellectual property, is a bit of a mine-field and is something that will trouble any publisher, but for a small anarchist publisher like Freedom Press or Northern Voices it could be fatal. In 2009, Freedom Press, the London publishing house in Angel Alley, Whitechapel, published a book 'Beating the Fascists' containing a number of photographs, and thus fell under the litigious eagle-eye of the freelance photographer, David Hoffman. Mr. Hoffman is a member of the NUJ and is apparently a distinguished photographer, who wields his camera in the radical cause on anti-Fascist demonstrations in our capital city, and until now has been so loved by the left that he has been protected on protests.

Explaining the consequences of failing to check out the copyright status of photographic material before publication, Freedom writes: 'When we published this book (Beating the Fascists) in 2009 it was illustrated with photographs supplied by the authors. Unbeknown to us, these included pictures by David Hoffman and were still under copyright. We ended up paying him £4,000 for the use of these pictures rather than face legal action. While this was a stupid mistake by us, it's very disappointing that someone who claims to support anti-fascist politics and made money from their photographs, while enjoying the protection from the far right on demonstrations, should chose to extract money from a radical publisher for a genuine mistake.'

Because of Mr. Hoffman's copyright complaint and the settlement, Freedom now says: 'The result is that we have had to reconsider our future ...', and 'we will still be able to carry on at 84b, (Whitechapel High Street) with the shop and distributing books and, other activities in the building (next to Whitechapel Art Gallery). However we are going to look seriously at continuing producing a hard-copy paper.'

Freedom has long been the only regular paper in the anarchist movement in London, and it has a long history going back to the 19th Century: as things stand the last hard copy version of Freedom will appear on its 125th anniversary this coming October. 

Why did Mr. David Hoffman, reputably a radical journalist, threatened to sue Freedom? Clearly Freedom was in breach of the law, but Freedom is a hard-up left-wing publication, not Rupert Murdoch or even Searchlight, the anti-Fascist journal to which Mr. Hoffman reportedly owes his allegiance.

When David Hoffman showed up at Freedom Press office in Angel Alley, Whitechapel, having already alerted the editorial collective to the copyright breach, he is alleged to have told the layout artist, who is originally from Yorkshire, that: 'Of course, I'll have to sue you, and you could lose your flat in Greenwich'. When this was recently put to Mr. Hoffman, he replied by e-mail saying that this quote is 'wrong'. Since then, despite several requests that he put the record straight as to what he said, if anything, he has failed to explain further what was said in this encounter. He has said that he is very busy and doesn't have time to write '1,000 words' giving his side of the story. Two weeks ago he did offer to answer any questions from Northern Voices over the phone, and even in a later e-mail suggested that we record the phone call to avoid any misunderstandings. I took the view that this was absurd and said that I didn't believe that it would require 1,000 words to clarify a quote of a dozen or so words or even for him to enlarge on the issues surrounding this case.  Mr. Hoffman forwarded a further e-mail:  'The quote without the context would mislead' and he added:  'If you want a rounded story I'll certainly help and tell all.'  For this reason I publish in full above the e-mail he sent to me dated 19th, July 2012 giving his 'rounded story' under the title 'Tales of Hoffman'.

It seems that David Hoffman has a history of putting in complaints and going to the Courts to seek legal redress. He successfully sued the police for some dental treatment after an injury on a demonstration, he won £10,000 in a case he took out against a government drug charity, and he received £390 off another journalist, Brian Whelan, when he refused to reveal some sources in his review of the book 'Beating the Fascists'. Why did David Hoffman and Searchlight, it seems, want details about the authors of the book? It may be a sad sign of the times in which we now live that some folk feel it necessary to operate in this litigious manner.

What are the likely consequences for small radical publications like Freedom or Northern Voices, of the people sifting through copy and photos in our journals as a possible income source? It will lead to a less free and less fearless left-wing media as editors exercise greater caution. Judging by the comments on one website it may serve to feed the left with a paranoid reaction and distrust of journalists in general. But it is not just the copyright laws that worry editors and publishers:  Northern Voices in its ten years of existence has been threatened more than once by folk complaining that they had been libelled; one of our complainants describes himself as an 'anarchist'. Then there are the threats from the authorities themselves; in 1944, during World War II, some awkward political minorities - pacifists, anarchists and left-wing socialists - were imprisoned or otherwise messed about by the police. Some political parties such as the Communists and the Tories, argued that in wartime, freedom to criticise and protest should be relinquished so as to safeguard the greater freedoms for which Britain was struggling. Others, like George Orwell and the people at Freedom Press held, according to George Woodcock, then an editor of War Commentary (Freedom): 'that freedom of speech and writing were the most important of the freedoms over which the war was being fought and that, once abandoned, they might never be regained.'

We ought not to be too surprised about the actions of Mr. Hoffman, who has links to the publication Searchlight, because there has always been on the British left a legalistic and authoritarian tradition. In the 1940s this was prevalent, and George Woodcock drew attention to this in his book 'The Crystal Spirit: A study of George Orwell':  'An agitation for discriminatory legislation against former Fascists had been going on in Tribune, and the Labour Party had embarked on a purge of Communists in the Civil Service, using methods of investigation which did not allow suspects to confront their accusers'.

The Freedom Press offices were raided by Special Branch in 1944. As a result, the Freedom Defence Committee was set up in the Summer of 1945, and this lasted until 1949. Its participants were drawn mostly from the arts and literary worlds; a few politicians took part like H.J. Laski, then chair of the Labour Party. Among the most active members according to George Woodcock, were E.M. Foster (novelist), Bertrand Russell (philosopher), Cyril Connolly (critic), Benjamin Britten; Michael Tippet, Henry Moore, Osbert Sitwell and Augustus John (artist), Herbert Read (art critic and poet) was in the chair and George Orwell was the vice-chair.

Now with sharks circulating it may be worth considering forming another kind of Freedom Defence Committee, to deal with attacks on our liberties from whatever quarter they may come.