'Free speech for presidents' by Philip Dickens

by Philip Dickens Comment, on the FREEDOM PRESS WEBSITE Jan 12th

Editorial Note: We are publishing below a post by Philip Dickens from the anarchist Freedom Website. In it Phil Dickens mocks the blog 'Spiked' edited by Brendan O'Neill as representing the 'reactionary fringes of the mainstream discourse'. It is worth noting that not only the American Civil Liberties Union has warned about the unchecked power of platforms like Twitter and Facebook to remove people from the forum of everyday discourse. I say 'everday discourse', but of course many people, including me, do not use either.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Mr. Dickens sneeringly jumps up and down announcing: 'Predictably, this led to #thisis1984 trending on Twitter, with the right decrying the ban as Orwellian.'

And yet Dickens is right to argue that there is a 'legitimate debate about the impact of corporations on freedom of speech and expression, but it doesn’t rest on the right of a US President to Tweet'.

Nor is this a novel problem of the internet era. Indeed, Orwell noted in 1946 in his essay 'The Prevention of Literature' that: 'Any writer or journalist who wants to retain his [sic] integrity finds himself thwarted by the general drift of society rather than by active persecution. The sort of things that are working against him are the conceration of the press in the hands of a few rich men, the grip of monopoly on radio and the films, the unwillingness of the public to spend money on books, making it necessary for nealy every writer to earn part of his living by hack work, the encroachment of official bodies like the Ministry of Information and the British Council, which help the writer to keep alive but also waste his time and dictate his opinions... Everything in our age conspires to turn the writer, and every other kind of artist as well, into a minor official, working on themes handed to him from above and never telling the whole of the truth.'

Dickens knows all of this, as he himself suffers from earning his living as a tax inspector. At one time the left were the main advocates of free speech, but because of the cancel culture campaigns etc. this ground as the novelist Margaret Atwood has recently argued, has been largely surrendered to the right. The FREEDOM WEBSITE despite its anarchist pretentions has in the last two decades fallen short as a defender of liberty or free speech; its current editor in 2016 even put up a blacklist of four people he didn't like who had the audacity to apply for positions on the FRIENDS of FREEDOM PRESS committee. Dickes approach suffers from being too simplistic as shown were he writes that 'private ownership by the capitalist class is protected from dissent by the state and its monopoly on violence.' Dividing politics into a left / right dichotomy is of questionable application today, especially in relation to Trump who was generally recognised to be an unconventional president.

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'FREE SPEECH for PRESIDENTS' by Philip Dickens

FOLLOWING the short-lived occupation of the US Capitol building, Twitter and a number of other social media platforms have banned US President Donald Trump.

Predictably, this led to #thisis1984 trending on Twitter, with the right decrying the ban as Orwellian. Brendan O’Neill of Sp!ked – the publication which leads the advance of terrible opinions from the reactionary fringes into the mainstream discourse – declared this “a chilling sign of tyranny to come.” This is, he says, “a very significant turning point in the politics and culture of the Western world” as it sees “exceptionally wealthy and aloof elites determining which elected politicians may engage in online discussion.”

This isn’t a position confined to the right, however. A member of the American Civil Liberties Union’s legislative counsel has said that “it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier.”

There’s a legitimate debate about the impact of corporations on freedom of speech and expression, but it doesn’t rest on the right of a US President to Tweet.

Yes, a few companies in Silicon Valley control the whole social media landscape and have undue influence as a result. That’s not a unique or historically unprecedented phenomenon though: it reflects the balance of power and ownership in both the traditional media and physical spaces.

What O’Neill calls the “powerful, unaccountable oligarchies of the internet era” are mirrors of the media barons who dominate print and broadcast news. However, the almost unmoderated right of reply that exists in social media is absent, and instead the discourse both reflects and directs the ‘Overton Window’ of acceptable opinion – with what is acceptable defined not by popular or democratic will but by who owns the press and by the fact that it doesn’t sell news to an audience but an audience to advertisers. In other words, just as O’Neill says tech companies are doing, media owners and advertisers have long been “exploiting their monopolistic power to dictate what political opinions it is acceptable to hold and express.”

In physical spaces, from the workplace to the public square, private ownership by the capitalist class is protected from dissent by the state and its monopoly on violence. Anti-strike legislation limits the extent to which workers can stand up to their bosses, whilst a tangle of laws serve to restrict the conduct of protests and criminalise protesters in a myriad of ways.

The media commentators who see unprecedented totalitarianism in Trump’s Twitter ban have no qualms over any of the above. Instead, they view any kickback against that monopolisation of discourse as the real threat to free speech. This is why they have been vocal in opposition to the Stop Funding Hate campaign, which seeks to redirect advertising influence towards making (for example) media demonisation of migrants unprofitable. It is why all of the furore around ‘cancel culture’ is centred on the defence of those with a considerable platform and privilege from any consequences for their words yet they will say nothing when Julia Hartley-Brewer, a member of the Free Speech Union’s PR/Media advisory council, threatening to get a man sacked for challenging her Covid-denying propaganda against the NHS.

In other words, they’re concerned about defending the free speech of the powerful from efforts by the powerless to resist that through free association and action.

So it is with Twitter. The platform is genuinely guilty of arbitrary and questionable banning decisions – more often than not against small voices who challenge the powerful or the genuinely dangerous. That, under immense pressure, it is occasionally forced to follow its own rules and look at safeguarding and risks of incitement isn’t the problem. Rather, the fact that under other circumstances the power and influence those accounts hold would protect it and see instead the less influential who challenge them banned is the problem here.

Private monopolisation of what should be public spaces is the key issue. Within that, the fact that (just like in real life) the powerful are protected from the consequences of their actions except in the most extreme circumstances is the crucial point.

Anarchists recognise that genuine liberty and equality go hand in hand, and that we cannot have either if we fail to address questions of power.

Alongside formal hierarchies, such as those embedded in the institutions of the state and capital, this includes invisible hierarchies that inevitably grow out of supposedly ‘structureless’ environs. In a group without a formal leadership, those with the most confidence and the loudest voices dominate with no democracy to rein them in. In a meeting without a chairperson, the most brash can speak unhindered – but the consequence is that others in turn are silenced.

That’s why our primary concern isn’t the right of US President to a massive platform and untold influence, including the ability to incite (amateurish, incompetent) coup attempts.

Those whose only demand is that those already with a platform and influence are never deprived of that do not stand for free speech. They stand in defence of a fundamentally unjust status quo in which free expression is directly linked to power.

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WITCH-HUNTS! or WHICH-CUNTS?

Echoing Big Mick Bakunin, JOHN COOPER CLARK might say:  
'Distruction is a Creative Urge 
'Transgender is the way of the World! 
'August is the silly season,
'So do away with the patriarchal penis, 
'Cultivate a matriarchal cunny-become a Cool Dude!
'Distruction is a Creative Urge!
'So let's have a bit of a Purge!'
 **************
CONSTRUCTIVE DISMISSAL ON THE FREEDOM CENTRAL COMMITTEE
Trans-maniac Trauma Grips Friends of Freedom
by Brian Bamford

THE WEEKEND in the run-up to the Glorious Twelfth day of August, and the start of the shooting season for red grouse (Lagopus lagopus scotica), was this year a busy and anxious time for the secretary of the Friends of Freedom Press Steve Sorba.  On Friday  the 9th, August Secrretary Sorba sent out a message to all of his fellow directors urging them all to give some thought to some facebook comments of one of their colleagues which he thought 'transphobic'.

 Here Comes a Dynamic Duo: Batman & Robin

FREEDOM since the departure of the wayward, Andy Meinke last year, has been run as a kind of Sorba and Saunders' show, with seemingly Simon Saunders pulling the Director of the Friends of Freedom, Steve Sorba's strings.   They could be likened to Batman and Robin staring in a matinee Comic Opera, the problem for the average commentator is deciding which is which.  

It this latest case the allegations of 'transphobia' against the distinguished former militant miner, Dave Douglass, has been made by the posh East Anglian former public schoolboy (in the USA this means 'private schoolboy') Simon Saunders, who now presides over the so-called 'Freedom collective', which busies itself with day-to-day management at Freedom Press.  Some both here and abroad will think this odd.   On the 9th, August an e-mail from Secretary Sorba, based on a complaint from posh boy Simon Saunders, spells out the dilemma in Steve Sorba's communique to his fellow Freedom Friends of Freedom Directors: 

'Hi Everyone,'

'I have received a message from Simon [Saunders] that we may well need to reflect on over the weekend. Sorry for the short notice.

'Apologies to David as I would have liked to speak to him in advance but there is no time now so I pass it on below.

'I don’t pick up work emails at the weekend but copy me in using my personal email above if you need to.

'I paraphrase:

'It has been brought to my attention that Dave Douglas has made public comments supporting a pamphlet which is fundamentally transphobic (and in places homophobic as well). Describing trans people as "cocks in frocks", and all just men with mental health issues etc and describes their supporters as a "gang of ponces", which rather than encouraging nuanced or sensitive debate, actively undermines it. (https://tinyurl.com/y3msflq6 )

'The Freedom Collective has a public pro-trans position and has committed to defending trans people against what has become increasingly a form of moral panic where even rights which have already stood for years without comment are being attacked. Having someone who agrees with that pamphlet's approach, which blames trans people for the sum of recent bookfair confrontations and finds transphobic bullying funny elected to the board would place us in an extremely difficult situation.

'Dave's post has been picked up by trans people and he's been accused of having a transphobic position. This means that if he's elected to a Freedom-related post there is every chance the Friends will come in for a lot of criticism and it will stir up yet another useless argument to no good end that I can see. This topic is an extremely febrile one in the movement at large, and essentially by appointing him we'd be causing enormous drama that we (and probably Dave too) really don't need right now.

'No doubt David would like to reply to these comments as I am sure that he is being misrepresented.

I suggest that we await this reply and discuss the matter further on Monday when we all meet up.'

 Readers must judge for themselves who is pulling the strings here?

********

 Saddle Skedaddlers Squeeze Thoughtful Analysis

THE significant paragraph (underlined by me) that gives away Secretary Sorba's own attitude and character is the next to the last one in which he shows his own clear lack of personality:  How can an anarchist with a true spirit of independence run away from a drama or a moral controversy, as Secretary Sorba is proposing here?  It is the spirit of the skedaddler rather than the political radical.  Sorba's own facebook interests show a fondness for cycling, which he shares with his fellow 'Director Friend' Carolyn Wilson.  The Saddle Skedaddlers, if you like are far from noble.

Ofcourse, Mr. Sorba is first and foremost a publisher, a businessman, and not an anarchist, his main relationship with Vernon Richards seems to have been that they both shared a passion for Italian opera.  Sorba  it turned out had the most to gain by the closure of Freedom as a hard copy publication and it is he who wants to keep the premises in Angel Alley as it fits better with his own business interests as a publisher

Posh boy Simon Saunders, who provoked the dismissal and no-platforming of Dave Douglass a retired miner from South Sheilds, has acted in a similar way to the recent pressure put on Hong Kong business community by China's ruling communist party in Beijing when on August 9th (the same day Sorba sent out his message) the Chinese aviation authority [CAAC] accused management at Cathay Pacific of not doing enough to discipline their employees who have been alleged to have been involved in the demos that have hit the territory over the last couple of months.  

The warning from CAAC came shortly after John Slosar, Cathay's non executive chairman, said the airline 'wouldn't dream of telling [employees] what they have to think about something' as it reported profits of HK$1.35 billion ($172m) after two years of losses.

The latest reports from Hong Kong suggest that the pilot, 30-year old Liu Chung-yin, who was arrested with 16 others for allegedly having participated in a violent demo on the 28th, July, has now been detained. 

“If you’re a boss, you’re thinking, ‘Oh my God!’” said Carol Ng of the Hong Kong Cabin Crew Federation, a union that represents airline workers. “‘I just want to do business here.  Now they’re screening my staff.’”

This kind of fear could do real damage to Hong Kong’s economy, Ms. Ng said, “much more than the protests or rallies themselves.” 

The attentive reader will detect the parallels between the Freedom episode with Dave Douglass, a tough northern workingman living in South Shields being witch-hunted and no-platformed by a self righteous middle-class southerner, to the mind control now being applied by the Beijing communists bosses on the workers on Hong Kong.  This may be giving Mr. Saunders at Freedom, a little too much credit, because he merely spends most of his time fiddling with his smart phone and going on Face book like some demented Internet Nosey Parker who is on record of creating a blacklist of veteran anarchists who he thinks should be declared persona-non-grata.  Yet he has been quick to complain when others have described him as a paid Morning Star hack.

I use these terms advisably based both on my own observations of Simon Saunders' body language behaviour when he aided Andy Meinke in bungling me into Angel Alley outside the Anarchist HQ, while the Friends of Freedom sat on their butts upstairs, on reports of his general attitude of entitlement, and overall pushy demeanour in which he comes over as a bit of a boss, and also as a conversational analyst I'm curious about his form of language.  But when considering the recent predilection at Freedom Press for appointing folk who to put bluntly are 'a slate short'.  Readers here and in the USA, should consider the history of Freedom as presented by Chris Draper in his history of Freedom*:  Toby Crowe took the editor's chair around 2000 when Charles Crute (apprenticed by Vernon Richards) was forced out, Mr Crute had looked to involve the Northern Anarchist Network in Freedom so as to broaden both the paper's geographical appeal or to as the anarchist Peter Neville said handing over part of Freedom to the writings and reports of 'Northern workingmen'.  In the end Toby, who was for a time Secretary of the Marxist Socialist Party of Great Britain soon fell-out with the NAN and the solidly northern writers like Derek Pattison; Harold Sculthorpe (a Friend of Freedom); me (Brian Bamford) who was at the time the Northern Editor of Freedom, and quite separately with Chris Draper in North Wales.  In truth Toby came over as a bit supercillious he'd been an infant school teacher giving stars to toddlers, and he eventually moved on and took to the cloth, perhaps the editors that followed Charles Crute felt a little insecure in the editor's chair because monomania seemed to become a feature of the these later editors.  They seemed to be uncomfortable in their own skin  Later when he realised that people in the Anarchist Federation like Gerry Spenser, a civil servant in Liverpool, couldn't deliver the reports or stories from the North he came back to me and begged me to send his stuff:  as Harold Sculthorpe told me at the time: 'Toby wants to be friends, Brian'.  Chris Draper had similar appeals from Toby Crowe to deliver him material. By that time we had lost confidence in him as an editor and Northern Voices was by then being produced by the anarchists up North.

What followed the departure of Toby Crowe has been generally agreed to be a poor editorial effort.  So what began with Toby Crowe ended up with Charlotte Dingle as editor, who at one time boasted that she had 'a border-line personality disorder'.   One of the current Freedom Friends who knew her told me a little while ago that Charlotte was indeed really being modest in describing her condition as 'border-line'.  When recently I described Simon Saunders as having 'a totalitarian mind set' the historian, Dave Goodway, another Freedom Friend director, said: 'many anarchists have totalitarian mind sets'.  Simon too with the aid of his mum has used his somewhat disoriented condition to advance his career.  First at the Ipswich Star and later at the communist Morning Star.* 


During the Spanish Civil War the Spanish communists accused the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist CNT of admitting anyone into their organisation including Fascist sympathisers.  Well, after 2000 Freedom under the influence of Donald Rooum began an open doors policy which quickly led to its decline as a serious publication.   Vernon Richards who had retired to Suffolk told the anarchist carpenter Peter Turner that he was impressed by Toby owing to his IT skills.  These events have been well documented on the NV Blog by Chris Draper.**   

All this reminds me of what Malcolm Muggeridge had said about people like Kim Philby, the Russian spy, when he helped him get a job on The Observer in the 1950s. Of this the journalist Clive Irving wrote:

'Malcolm Muggeridge, a highly entertaining political commentator in print and on television, who had worked with Philby at MI6 during the war. Muggeridge advised Philby to contact the editor of The Observer, a left-leaning Sunday paper that, Muggeridge told Philby, “is that Salvation Army for the ideological drunks and bums of our time”.'

Has Freedom Press in the end become a kind of rest home for 'the ideological drunks and bums of our time'?  Andy Meinke memorably described Freedom as a 'hangout' declaring boastfully that 'Kropotkin started it (Freedom), but we fucking finished it!' 

Why is Secretary Sorba so enslaved by Posh Simon?

Why did he make such a fuss over 'a storm in a teacup'?

SECRETARY Sorba desperately wants to hang onto the Freedom property at 84A, Angel Alley because he wants an address in central London that he can use to promote own business interests in publishing.  Some would regard this as conflict of interest.  But unless one of the other Directors question this he is safe in his key position at the top.  Thus the Freedom show will stay on the road because there is no sign of any challenge from the rather subservient Directors.

None-the-less it is understood that a new Director Nick Heath failed to turn-up at the crucial Freedom Friends meeting dealing with Dave Douglass on the Glorious Twelfth, and it is understood that he stayed away because he resents how he was previously hounded-out as leader of the Anarchist Federation by his Trans community critics only last year.***

Furthermore it seems that three other Friends had concluded before the meeting the the whole complaint about Dave Douglass Facebook comment was 'a storm in a teacup'.  Yet the prime movers on this occasion challenging Dave Douglass was Simon Saunders and his Trans mates, and Steve Sorba wants to keep-in with Simon so what we had here in trade union terms is a case of 'Constructive Dismissal' in which Dave Douglass was elbowed out by Secretary Sorba who told Dave that he had 'Embarassed the Committee (Friends) by his "transphobic remarks".'

Dave in response said that he refuted the claim that he was not 'transphobic', but said that as he didn't want to embarrass the committee of anyone.  Hence he agreed to stand down.

    

*************

*  

https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk › news › my-struggle-with-adhd-1-110117

**

northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2016/08 › a-year-in-death-of-freedom

***
northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2018/01 › anarchist-federation-splits

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The 'New Offensive' on the Bullshit Generation?

&

SOLIDARITY STATEMENT from 'NEW OFFENSIVE'

Editorial note on background to 'New Offensive'

Constructive Dismissal at the Anarchist HQ:

'Murder in the Central Committee' (Asesinato en el Comité Central) is a novel by the Catalan novelist and Marxist writer Manuel Vázquez Montalban, who wrote the book in 1981.  The plot of the book is about  how during a meeting in Madrid of the Central Committee of Spain’s Communist Party a crime is committed when there is a brief power failure.  The lights are back on a few seconds later, but in that short span of time the Secretary General, Fernando Garrido, is killed, stabbed in the chest.  (1)

Who stabbed Dave Douglass?

 ON the day of the Glorious Twelfth of August this year a stabbing was enacted at the meeting of the Friends of Freedom Press Directors at Angel Alley in Whitechapel in London's East End; the stabbing was announced when Steve Sorba told the Freedom Friend's directorate meeting that the highly respected former miner Dave Douglass had embarrassed his fellow Director colleagues by favouring a booklet which questions some of the stranger aspects of gender politics and their censorious brethren; describe as 'Cocks in Frocks' in the contentious booklet.*

THE statement below from 'NEW OFFENSIVE' comes from one of the author of the controversial booklet 'Shit Wigs & Steriods'.  A recent consequence of this publication has been that the former public schoolboy Simon Saunders employed by Freedom had urged the Friends of Freedom Company Secretary, Steve Sorba, to ban a formerly appointed Friend of Freedom director, the highly respected ex-miner Dave Douglass from South Shields.  The reasoning for this effective constructive dismissal and no-platforming of Dave Douglass was that he had been accused of commenting sympathetically on this booklet.  In a panicky email issued on the eve of the weekend before the meeting of the Freedom Friends directors, Secretary Sorba was to declare to his fellow directors in an e-mail:  'It has been brought to my attention that Dave Douglass has made public comments supporting a pamphlet which is fundementally transphobic (and in places homophobic as well).'  **

Dave Douglass told Secretary Sorba that nothing he had ever said was 'transphobic' or 'homophobic'!

Yet as Secretary Soba insisted that he had 'embarrassed the "committee"', Dave Douglass agreed to take the bullet as he didn't want to be on a committee that was 'embarrased' by him in such a way.  In other words just as in Vázquez Montalban's noir detective novel Spanish Communist Party's Secretary General, Fernando Garrido, is killed, stabbed in the chest so Dave Douglass wasn't stabbed in the back, but he was stabbed in the chest by Secretary Sorba acting at the behest of posh public schoolboy Simon Saunders, a Morning Star hack using his smart phone weapon he sometimes uses for blacklisting folk.  ***

Northern Voices believes that Freedom should adopt an approach which encourages free debate and we avoid a party-line in our columns.  How can an organisation that claims to be anarchist possibly uphold a postion that seeks to avoid drama and controversy?   Clearly Secretary Sorba is a businessman, a manager and a Director, but has not understood anything about anarchism.  Moreover, Secretary Sorba is short-sighted if he believes that he can have a quiet life by disposing of Dave Douglass in this way: does he not realise that by seeking to avoid complicated issues like this merely allows them to fester.  Dave Douglass is merely the canary in the coal mine for Secretary Sorba, Simon Saunders and Freedom Press.  We judge this by considering the statement of support for Northern Voices below; it states that those who are those who are attacking Dave Douglass, Helen Steel**** and those who support free speech will 'wipe the floor' with the enemies of liberty and free discussion.  

After the debacle that led to the closing of the London bookfair when Helen Steel was surrounded, bullied and intimidated for defending free speech, Freedom hesitated before finally adopting a stand supporting the 'Cocks in Frocks.  It seems now that they backed the wrong horse.

*  northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2019/07 › review-transsexuals-vs-cock...

** (https://tinyurl.com/y3msflq6 )

***northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2016/07 › pensioner-attacked-at-anarc...

****northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com › 2019/08 › helen-is-feminist-who-holds...

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Solidarity Statement for Northern Voices from 'New Offensive':

 I WANT TO STATE that the New Offensive Booklet: ‘Shit Wigs and Steroids’ is a series of short articles and it contains considerable references to more in-depth discussions around the subject of Transgender.  These articles are by Women, Lesbians and Gay activists, victims of male violence and many other critical thinkers on the subject of gender politics.  The gang of us who put it together are not connected with Northern Voices, so seeing the same tactics used on some of us used on yourselves, shows patterns of censorship that are in no way acceptable, fair, just or logical.

We are proud to have done this booklet and to see the positive impact it is having.  Our use of language, is the language that we use.  We are not conservative in our approach, nor approach issues touching us as working class people with the privilege of objective viewpoints.

Class privileges? we are exempt of!

We had proof readers and discussions covering all aspects of the booklet (yes there are a few spelling errors in spite of our abilities).

We are engaged with many people in this discussion, both in England and amongst other European working class radicals and anarchists.  We are very pleased to state we are in this (as always) for the long game.  We hope to force people out of their self identified ‘safe spaces’.  We will name and confront them if they have played roles in trying to shut down or discredit working class activists, or bullying them into silence.

Those of us who put the booklet together and stand proudly by it are not lightweights intellectually. We are seeing it picked up by all kinds of people that are open to discussion.  We understand Simon Saunders declared the booklet ‘homophobic’, considering it is in defence of  lesbian and gay identity, we do expect an explanation of  such absurd claims.  We are proud to stand our ground.  As working class people.

Basically we don’t give a fuck if you find our ‘crude’ language demeaning, abrasive, provocative, or threatening.  At ‘New Offensive' we still have a sense of humour, irony and determination to straighten out some bullshit.

We hope any future attention our publication gets will actually focus on the blacklisting of activists, the right to self defence, and the rejection of authoritarian and bogus ideologies etc. 

'Door policies' to publiseed events simply seem to protect a minority of people from ridicule, scrutiny and the harsh criticism of their Thatcherite indulgent identity politics. 

One point that is clear is that anyone looking seriously at gender politics, has to include prisons; Suicide rates; sexual abuse; health and inequalities; class bias; and the enviromental  brutalisation of the working classes.  To see gender politics, just being reduced to nothing in the hands of  the likes of Pablo, Steve Moss, Simon Saunders (public school boy) is beyond cringeworthy.  To look at Transgender as an issue without looking at 'De-Transitioning'; drug dependancy; the erasing of Lesbian and Gay identity; health issues; etc. etc. is irresponsible. 

So rather than being supporters of the issues surrounding gender and sexual politics, this group of wannabe gate-keepers, are silencing the issues on the very subjects they claim to be the champions of.   Thankfully the discussion does exist  outside of their declared safe spaces.   The discussion is now in full flow without them!! 

From us at 'New Offensive' it is time to call out these sponging bastards . When Rob Ray (Simon Saunders) comes to terms with the wider discussions around Transgender, he might also  take a look at his own class privilege and the way he is using that as a weapon to demonise, control and shut down working class anarchists.  So quite simply,   Solidarity with you at Northern Voices, we are proud to see you take this stuff seriously.  Shit Wigs and Steroids is us documenting the absurdity of the situation for the wider working class movement and for sincere discussion amongst  class struggle anarchists .

'WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO WIPING THE FLOOR WITH A FEW PEOPLE'.


(1)  Murder in the Central Committee (Spanish: Asesinato en el Comité Central) is a 1982 Spanish thriller film directed by Vicente Aranda. It stars Patxi Andión and Victoria Abril.^[1] The plot follows a private detective, an ex-communist and former CIA agent, who travels from Barcelona to Madrid to discover the identity of the assassin of the leader of the Spanish Communist Party who was stabbed during a blackout while presiding over a meeting of the party's Central Committee. The film is a thriller with ironic political overtones.
The script was written by director Vicente Aranda. It was based on a book of the same name by Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, one of a series of novels that featured the character of a hard-boiled detective called Pepe Carvalho. It was adapted for the screen the year after its publication.^[2] Asesinato en el Comité Central was Aranda’s first work shot in Madrid instead of his native Barcelona. The film received a cold commercial response.^[3]

 
'Murder in the Central Committee' (1981) has Pepe leaving his beloved Barcelona to investigate the murder of the General Secretary of the PCP and is a profound -- and often hilarious -- commentary on the changing face of post Cold War Europe.

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Freedom Press now participant in Spy-Cop Inquiry

 Police plant edited the anarchist newspaper Freedom
by Brian Bamford

Spy-cop Roger Pearce aka Roger Thorley

ON the 20th, March 2018 Sir John Mitting Chairman, Undercover Policing Inquiry, designated Freedom Press as a core participant in Category K of the purpose of the Undercover Policing Inquiry.

The 'person' categorised as 'Friends of Freedom Press' ('Freedom Press') did previously apply to Sir Christopher Pitchford, when he was the previous Chairman of the same Inquiry in October 2015, Pitchford then stated that he would keep under review the application of any person to be designated as a core participant who was not then so designated by him.

He at that time, declined to designate them because, on the information which he then had, it was unlikely that they were relying on a direct and significant role in the subject matter of the Inquiry

On the 23 January 2018, Saunders Solicitors Limited again wrote to the Inquiry to ask whether Sir John Mitting would now entertain a fresh application for core participant status by Freedom Press. 

Having considered this new request last week, Sir John decided: 

' I will designate Freedom Press as a core participant in Category K.  I do so on the basis of material which Sir Christopher [Pitchford] would not have taken into account when making his original ruling: Operation Herne interview notes, which suggest that HN85 became editor of Freedom Press in Whitechapel and in that capacity wrote virulent anti-police articles.  Accordingly, Freedom Press did play a direct and significant role in the subject matter of the Inquiry and it is appropriate that they should be designated as a core participant.' 

Exclusive report on 'Spychief infiltration'

 On the 24th, March, the Freedom website carried an unsigned article which it described as an 'exclusive' entitled 'The Met spy chief who infiltrated Freedom Press'.   In this post the Freedom Press author wrote:
'Earlier this week it was disclosed that Freedom Press would now be considered a core participant in the Undercover Policing Inquiry, following official confirmation that Pearce had operated as “Roger Thorley,” a former writer for Freedom in the 1970s and ’80s.'

The writer, who may well himself be a solicitor, says that after a comprehensive investigation of the Freedom archives and consultation with old comrades it is revealed that 'Freedom can confirm that Pearce, writing under the moniker R.T, penned a series of articles over the course of the period 1980-81 and then joined a fact-finding mission to Belfast, before disappearing from sight.'

Special Branch man becomes Freedom 'editor'

This weekend I spoke to several present and former members of the 'Friends of Freedom Press' (F. of F.P.), and they all say they didn't know Roger Thorley in the early 1980s.  I haven't as yet spoken to the present secretary of F. of F.P., Stephen Sorba, who may well have been around, but I was writing for Freedom in the late 1979s and early 1980s, when I believe my friend the carpenter Peter Turner was still associated with the paper.  Barry Woodling has just told me that he's seen reports and articles written by me in March 1980, after I had reported for the old Syndicalist Workers Federation (SWF) on the V Congress of the CNT (National Confederation of Labour) in Madrid, which took place in December 1979.



What is so noticeably about the old issues of Freedom edited by the police spy and future head of Special Branch, Roger Thorley/Pearce*, is that it is clear the quality of Freedom has declined immensely since the 1980s.  The analysis of the last signed article of Roger-the-Dodger suggests he is so insightful about the situation in northern Ireland, that it can only produce nostalgia in those of us knew the old Freedom.  The current production, whether on the website or in the occasional hard copies of Freedom, are so full of cookbook thinking, cliques and childish slogans as to reduce one to tears.



The author of Freedom's socalled exclusive report writing this Saturday says:
'What can be confirmed is that when inquiry head Mitting defined Pearce’s writing as “virulently anti-police” he wasn’t exaggerating — and it was specifically in favour of the IRA. In one article, Prisoners of Politics (Vol 41, No. 22, Nov 8th 1980) the editors debate “R.T” over his demand that IRA detainees should have political prisoner status, noting that “all prisoners are political”.'



Meanwhile, the undercover policemen seem to have had a beano engaged in what my Dad use to call 'Bobbies Jobs'; employed in cushy numbers reporting on the activities and miscellaneous tittle-tattle of anarchists and trade unionists.  But with a job like that of Roger Pearce, drafting columns and perhaps editorials for Freedom in the late 1970s or early 1980s, it must have given him a glorious opportunity to hone his skills in spy craft; even with London Greenpeace it has been said that Bobby Lambert actually wrote the leaflet on McDonald's that ultimately led to the famous libel case..  I suppose that the conscientious policeman in his determination to do a decent job, will actually get a thrill out of writing and polishing up articles using anarchist analytical tools.  Both Roger-the-Dodger Pearce and Bobby Lambert seem to have been street-wise engaging in their workman-like operations, and moreover to have had a good deal more talent than many of the anarchists that they were spying on.

*   According to the website 'powerbase' which does public interest investigatuons -  Roger Pearce was appointed Director of Intelligence (SO11) on 2 November 1998 and held it until 4 March 2003.^[13] In 1999, Pearce was appointed head of Special Branch (SO12) and held both posts concurrently until his retirement in 2003.^[5][4][14] In this latter role he also had oversight of the Covert Operations unit SO10.^[15]. As Head of Special Branch he was:^[16] ... responsible for surveillance and undercover operations against terrorists and extremists, the close protection of government ministers and visiting VIPs, and other highly sensitive assignments... 

 

https://freedomnews.org.uk/roger-pearce-infiltrated-freedom-press/

******

Free Speech and Cheap Bigots

 by Christopher Draper

ANARCHIST beat-poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti warned us that, “Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality” and last week (5.3.2018) a gang of masked, black-clad thugs calling themselves London Antifa smashed their way into a meeting at Kings College London in a coordinated, violent, attack on “Free Speech”.  

With perverse irony, “FREEDOM” an erstwhile anarchist website celebrated this exhibition of “fascist mentality”; “Well done to London Antifa for taking action against one of (sic) major universities assisting an alt-right speaker in spreading hateful propaganda.”

The New Authoritarians

Fascist-minded “No-Platformers” claim a unilateral ability and right to distinguish “Free speech from Hate-speech” but there is no distinction to be made. 

As George Orwell said, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear” - regardless of how hate-filled the speaker may be. Noam Chomsky advises, “If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all.”

“Hate Speech” is the modern equivalent of “Blasphemy”.  In 1697 Thomas Aikenhead was the last man in Britain executed for Blasphemy.  In the 19^th century the editor, printer and publisher of The Freethinker were all imprisoned for Blasphemy and as late as 1977, according to the trial judge, “It was touch and go” whether Dennis Lemon, the editor of Gay News, would be imprisoned for Blasphemy (he was fined £1000 and given a suspended prison sentence). 

 

When the British State finally abolished the crime of Blasphemy in 2008 “direct-action” bigots eagerly adopted the abandoned role of punishing those deemed to “speak the unspeakable”.  All around us Commissars now claim the right to control what is expressed even in university halls and anarchist bookfairs.  Where the State formerly identified accusers and offered the prosecuted an opportunity of “due process” and an argued defence the new authoritarians operate in the dark, anonymous, masked and unreasoned. These new arbiters of the new Blasphemy don’t debate they assert and attack.

Free Speech - the Bedrock of Liberty

Northern Voices considers dissent inevitable, healthy and to be welcomed. We are happy to debate FREE SPEECH with anyone in any public forum but the authoritarians don’t respect reason.  Bans, censorship, blacklisting and physical attacks are their modus operandi.  Indulging in such antics lost the organisers of the Manchester Anarchist Bookfair their former booking at the “Peoples’ History Museum” and seems likely to lose their current venue, “The Partisan”, the financial support of local trade unions. 

 

Violent suppression of Free Speech caused the organisers of the 2017 London Anarchist Bookfair to abandon plans for a 2018 event.  The vandals have kicked open the gates and are rampaging amongst us.  Whilst FREEDOM applauds Antifa attacks on Free Speech and publishes books like “BEATING THE FASCISTS” its Board of Management (David Goodway, Peter Marshall, Ernest Rodker et al) timorously cower behind the barricades.  It’s time for all decent minded folk to come out of the closet and stand up for FREE SPEECH.

******

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

Freedom Press Cartoons at Bradford*

Freedom Press cartoons on exhibition in Bradford
from Donald Rooum (former Friend of Freedom Press)

THE Peace Museum in Bradford is currently hosting an exhibition ‘Cartoons For Peace’ including at least two Freedom Press books.

The March to Death, a book of anti-war cartoons was first published by Freedom Press in defiance of war-time censorship in 1943. The drawings are by John Olday illustrating quotations chosen anonymous by Marie-Louise Berneri. The edition on display, with an introduction and notes, was published in 1995.

Wildcat Anarchists Against Bombs, by Donald Rooum, was published by Freedom Press in 2003 for the Defence and Security Exhibition International (arms trade) fair.

Anti-war and anarchist cartoons, by many artists from around the world include original drawings of Donald Rooum’s cartoons for Peace News in the 1960s.

The Peace Museum is at 10 Piece Hall Yard, Bradford BD1 1PJ,           

telephone 01274 770 241,  info@peacemuseum.org.uk
open Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, 10am to 4pm, admission free.
‘Cartoons For Peace’, a temporary exhibition, opened on 18 October 2017.
No closing date has yet been announced. 

*   The cartoonist and former Friend of Freedom Press, Donald Rooum, who sent us the above e-mail may not be aware that his colleagues on the Freedom Press Collective  issued the statement below on the 23th, June 2016.  This statement apparently drafted by Simon Saunders, the one-time East Anglian privately educated schoolboy, who now juggles his job as part-time Freedom Editor with his real career as a Morning Star hired hack,  attempts to blacklist the 'Northern Four', Martin Gilbert, Barry Woodling, Brian Bamford and Chris Draper, who are all heavily associated with Northern Voices.
This doesn't say much for the ability of Freedom Press and Simon Saunders to influence 'progressive outlets' yo ban us, or for the coherence of the comrade anarchists in carrying out Simon Saunder's wishes.

Freedom Collective Statement on Brian Bamford | Freedom Press

https://freedompress.org.uk/freedom-collective-statement-on-brian-bamford/ Their brand of disruptive, bullying, self-aggrandising tantrum-throwing is unacceptable and should not be given any support by anarchist or progressive organisations. In our view they should not be welcome in anarchist spaces nor published in the anarchist outlets – they are persona non grata in our eyes. We hope other organisations will support us in rejecting their toxic approach.

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Freedom's Metropolitan Bubble Bursts!

Anarchist Publishing House Broadens its Base
by Brian Bamford

LAST Monday at this year's Annual General Meeting, the Friends of Freedom Press have appointed two new directors from outside London.  In doing so, with the appointment of the former miner and trade unionist, David Douglass from Tyneside, and the writer, Peter Marshall from Plymouth, they have effectively broken the stranglehold of a metropolitan political clan which has continually served to castrate the publication of Freedom as a serious intellectual voice of radical anarchism.

News over the weekend came out that the Freedom Bookshop manager, Andy Meinke, is leaving his job, but it is still unclear as to whether he is leaving of his own accord or if he has been dismissed by the unofficial Freedom Collective, over which he had a degree of influence.  A year ago Mr. Meinke was questioned by the Metropolitan Police after an incident in the Freedom Press Bookshop in which he played a role trying to prevent someone from participating in last year's Friends of Freedom Press' AGM.

The story of the strange departure of Mr. Meinke came to Northern Voices on the evening of the 16th, June, when we got the following e-mail from someone unknown to us in London:
'Thought you would like to know I was listening to Dissident Island Radio earlier this evening. Andy Meinke, has a regular five minute slot on the two-hour show.  He said at the end of his usual schtick that he was leaving Freedom and there would be a farewell drink in the shop at 2pm this Sunday' 
Almost a week later this same source informed us:
'The edition of Dissident Island Radio I referred to last week is online.  The final section of Andy's slot where he mentions leaving has been removed and one of the shows sweary radio idents has been inserted to camouflage the edit.  Heaven knows what he's up to.'
Later, our informant further updated us:
'The situation has spilled over on to Facebook with Meinke and others, including that anarchist can't recall his name who works for the Morning Star (editor: this is presumably Simon Saunders, formally from Ipswich). Facebook is a no-go zone for me so I haven't followed it'
Our informant ends up with a warning by saying:
'I have no doubt your group's commendable actions precipitated this.  The only questions remaining are what carnage will be discovered in his wake, and if the place (Freedom Press Bookshop) doesn't collapse, who will replace him.'
Another metropolitan pundit writes today in response to the news of Mr. Meinke's departure:
'Good news for Freedom.  Maybe not so good for wherever he ends up next.' 
Ultimately. the Friends of Freedom Press (FFP) themselves, particularly the FFP Secretary Steven Charles Sorba appointed as secretary of FFP in 2002, should be asking themselves how they came to allow someone like Andy Meinke to be employed for so long, empowered as a virtual overlord to very dubious goings on, without the directors applying any obvious restraints. It may be just a coincidence but the decline of Freedom newspaper seems to date from 2002, when Harold Schulthorpe, then living in Hebden Bridge, resigned as secretary of FFP, and Steve Sorba took over.
Those readers interested in the details could do worse than read Chris Draper's accounts of the history of Freedom:
 northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2015/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-history.html 
northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-version.html
northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-history_6.html
 northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/.../who-killed-freedom-unauthorised-history_7.html