'Is this York Free Press?'

York Free Press: IS THIS YFP? – I’ve Come to Register a Complaint! by Christopher Draper

York Free Press No.31, 1979 (C.Draper)

THAT was my introduction to “York Free Press”, one of the best and most enduring of the “alternative newspapers” that for a decade or two enlivened Britain’s culture and politics.
It was 1976 and I was an idealistic young teacher living and working in York and aggrieved at an article I’d read in a recent issue.  York’s selective school system was about to be “comprehensively” reorganised but the YFP article argued for incorporating six-form colleges which I considered a device for keeping an A-Level elite away from less academic plebs. YFP claimed to be open to everyone and advertised weekly meetings upstairs in the Lowther on King’s Staith so I turned up one evening expecting a row and instead was welcomed in and invited to write a rejoinder.  I was utterly disarmed, it wouldn’t happen at Socialist Worker!  I was already a libertarian socialist but this bunch of scruffy student hippies turned me 100% anarchist and so I’ve remained.

Actually they weren’t all scruffy hippies,  Vaughn Harvey was but Tony Zurbrugg (who now runs Merlin Press) was already a serious-minded libertarian-communist permanently clad in an RAF greatcoat, Danae and Howard Clarke (later of “War Resisters International”) were smart-casual and always smiling, Danny Golding “The Ayatollah” (nowadays Labour loyalist) was too humourless to qualify as a real hippy but there was always a supporting cast of “occasionals” who couldn’t be asked to turn up every week.   That was an attractive feature of YFP, you helped at whatever level you felt comfortable with.  Most political groups demand so much that they retain only fanatics.  YFP enjoyed regular “bring food and drink to share” socials so less active supporters kept in touch and made friends with regular “collectivists”.

Around 1978 we organised a national 'PAPERS EVERYWHERE!' conference-jamboree weekend at York University.  We invited every community paper we could think of and people from about eighty titles turned up.  It was wonderful exchanging papers, experiences, ideas and what little technical expertise we’d acquired. I was especially impressed by a rather posh Sheffield guy who single-handed ran The Totley Independent, which he gave away free and financed by taking ads from small shops and tradesmen.  He stuck out like a sore thumb amongst an array of vaguely alternative-socialists but was content to paddle his own canoe.  It showed the potential of the format.  Some titles such as Islington Gutter Press and Rochdale Alternative Paper (RAP), which I believe sold 8,000 copies per issue, were real big hitters whilst others, like the Totley,were happy to nurture community spirit and less intent on exposing scandal and corruption.  RAP revealed Cyril Smith’s dirty deeds forty years before the commercial press dared touch the story.

I think two things sparked the birth of the alternative press, the “swinging sixties” do-it-yourself politics and certain technical developments in printing.  Lead-typesetting was no longer involved and the new process required less skill and cost.  Like other papers, at YFP we used ordinary typewriters to produce the text and trimmed, then glued the result to a large sheet of cartridge paper.  Other articles were stuck alongside the first to build up a newspaper page with spaces left for photographs which had to be “screened” and treated separately. Headlines were the real pain – LETRASET!

Headlines were produced by a sort of transfer process.  You bought these rather expensive “Letraset” transparent plastic sheets with individual black letters affixed to the undersides.  By scribbling on top of the required letter it detached from the sheet and adhered to the paper placed underneath  You had to build the headline a letter at a time, any misspelling meant you must discard your first effort and start all over again and keeping it all level and evenly spaced was a tedious task.  Sometimes we had lots of tables and space to lay out the paper but often we managed in someone’s cramped bedroom with people coming and going and ideas, jokes and arguments flying back and forth.

YFP was a monthly with a price of 2p and 1,000 print run, sold door to door with a network of local shops selling on the basis of sale or return. It was a struggle to keep it going but the paper survived long after I left York.  I was always a bit of a populist, keen to present the politics in an attractive wrapping and my favourite all-time article was, “The Great York Fish and Chip Survey!”   Every Thursday for three months we’d sample 3 or 4 different local chip shops, weigh the portion of chips and the fish and then assess the price, quality etc.  Finally we tabulated the results and published a league table to great reader acclaim! Is that petit bourgeois politics or anarchy in action? Every article was subject to the deepest of political analysis – “Is it ideologically sound?” – was the inevitable dilemma.

The balance of collective responsibility and initial initiative at YFP remained problematic.  When a character calling himself “Euston Arch” joined us he immediately began arranging music events in the name of YFP and only afterwards seeking collective approval.  When he signed us up to a potentially disastrous gig featuring “Wayne County and the Electric Chairs” at the Mecca Ballroom we accepted responsibility and survived but immediately expelled him from the collective.  After we printed a story by a guy who told us he was literally kicked out of his York bedsit by the landlord as a uniformed policeman stood idly by (illustrated by a cartoon of a cop shielding his eyes) I received a threat to sue from The Police Federation (my address, 1 Newton Terrace, was the published editorial address).  We agonised whether to apologise and “correct” the story or stand firm and take the consequences.  Fortunately, within days the local straight press published an account of the same landlord doing the same thing to someone else so we lived to fight another day.

Anarchism rather than socialism characterised the alternative papers movement.  Although lots of Marxists were individually supportive they tended to regard papers like YFP as trivial compared to their party newspapers whilst Tories and Labour Party types regarded us as scurrilous troublemakers. Although I wanted the paper to become a sort of local Private Eye, both funny and muck-raking, whilst at YFP I established an abiding interest in researching radical history. I interviewed a founder member of York Communist Party who claimed workers were more interested in politics in the old days and all he had to do in the twenties was ride his bike along a road, ring a hand-bell and people would come out of their houses and he’d start an impromptu discussion on socialism. He described how difficult it was to keep up with the ever-changing political line emanating from Moscow and how he’d finally been expelled from the CP when “I zigged when I should have zagged”!

In 1979 I researched and YFP published a series of articles on “Fascism in York in the 1930’s” which revealed a continuity of not only Blackshirtideas with current National Front candidates but the same local families were still organising attacks on socialist opponents. There were so many good stories and so many great times and in 1980 I was sorry to leave but keen to start another scurrilous rag elsewhere, but that’s a story for another day…

********

Free Speech & Humbug at Cocka Doodle Moo

by Brian Bamford

SIMON Danczuk earlier today threatened to pull out of a hustings event at a venue in Rochdale should any BuzzFeed reporter attend, following the publication over the weekend by BuzzFeed of a story about his election paperwork.
The hustings event, due to take place on Tuesday at Cocka Doodle Moo in the centre of Rochdale, is to be hosted by a local business networking group called #RochdaleHour.
The organiser of the event Damien Maddock initially withdrew his personal invitation to the #RochdaleHour business lunch, claiming 'his hand had been forced' after Danczuk said he would not attend if any journalist from the BuzzFeed organisation showed up, but reversed his decision after facing a backlash from the other candidates and local media outlets.
Mr Maddock was condemned for this by all the main participants to the event including Andy Kelly the Liberal Democrat, who told BuzzFeed News:  'I don't think it should be up to any one candidate to say which journalists should be at the event, and if the organisers want to let them do so I'm not interested in going' and 'I don't know if that will help me in the long run, but it's the right decision, a principled decision,' he added.
Rochdale Online editor Pauline Journeaux sternly said:  'Rochdale Online was attending but has now taken the decision not to do so in light of the ban on BuzzFeed. A stand has to be taken against this sort of anti-democratic behaviour.'
A Labour Party spokesperson told Rochdale Online:  'It is deeply concerning for a candidate to be allowed to prevent a well respected, bonafide news organisation from attending.'
Conservative candidate Jane Howard told BuzzFeed News it was 'unfortunate' that Danczuk had been allowed to dictate which media organisations could and could not attend.
She said:  'Any registered media outlet should be able to attend, and I'm disappointed that you're not able to do so.'
Robert Sharp, spokesperson for English PEN, said:  'These reports are very worrying. Political events should be open to all journalists, not just those who file positive stories about a candidate.  It is odd that this should be happening during a general election, when the political parties are surely seeking to broadcast their message to as many people as possible.  Candidates for political office need to reassure voters that they are open to scrutiny. Selectively refusing journalists access to events is not the way to build public trust.'
He added:  'If a politician thinks they have been unfairly treated by one outlet, then a better response would be to invite a greater range of journalists to cover future events.'
These are all noble sentiments by the parties concerned, and it is something Northern Voices would fully support given that we were politely escorted from a book reading by Mrs Karen Danczuk for questioning her then husband Simon too rigorously.
Yet still there is a whiff of hypocrisy about this outbreak of righteous indignation about democracy and free speech by the Rochdale political establishment.
In April 2015, at another husting for the 2015 general election at St Chads, all the parties fell silent as the National Front candidate Kevin Bryan was thrown out of the Parrish Church because the Church leaders felt that the far right party’s presence ‘may increase the likelihood of a breach of the peace’
On that occasion Northern Voices said:   'In doing this the Vicar of Rochdale defied the core ideas of the enlightenment and Voltaire, not to mention everyday democracy, by not giving the National Front an opportunity to present their views at an open forum in the Rochdale Parish Church.' www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2015/.../church-leaders-mr-bryan-noam-chomsky.h.  

In the present case once BuzzFeed News was allowed back into the event, the Rochdale Online editor Pauline Journeaux said she would also send a reporter to cover the hustings, and Andy Kelly said he would also attend the husting 'do', due to take place tomorrow at the Cocka Doodle Moo in the centre of Rochdale, is to be hosted by a local business networking group called #RochdaleHour.

At 7.30pm tonight, Rochdale Online reported:

'The hustings organisers have posted that Simon Danczuk has now confirmed he will be attending - so his initial threat not to do so if a Buzzfeed reporter was allowed to do so was an empty threat clearly intended to put unfair pressure on the event organisers.'

Critiques of Free Speech & PEN

ON the 2^nd, May this year in Dallas, two Islamists tried to do a critique of Pamela Geller's 'Muhammad Art Exhibit & Contest' with assault rifles.  Dominic Green argues in the June issue of Standpoint magazine that 'The depiction of Muhammad is a test case for the practice of Western freedoms'.  If a guard had not suspended the art critic attackers' 'freedom of assembly' with a Glock pistol there would probably have been a massacre.  

Days later PEN held its annual dinner in New York at which the PEN board conferred its annual  'Freedom of Expression Courage Award' on Charlie Hebdo.  Six of the dinner's table hosts Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Rachel Kushner, Frances Prose, Teju Cole and Taiya Selasi, resigned, and Salman Rushdie twitted '6 pussies' only later to amend it to 'Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.' 

In an essay in January 1946 entitled 'The Prevention of Literature' George Orwell wrote about a meeting of PEN commemorating the tercentenary of Milton's Areopagitica  - a pamphlet in defence of freedom of the press:

'There were four speakers on the platform.  One of them delivered a speech which did deal with the freedom of the press, but only in relation to India; another said, hesitantly, and in very general terms, that liberty was a good thing; a third delivered an attack on laws relating to obscenity in literature.  A fourth devoted most of his speech to a defence of the Russian purges.  Of the speeches from the body of the hall, some reverted to the question of obscenity and the laws that deal with it,  others were simply eulogies of Soviet Russia.  Moral liberty – the liberty to discuss sex questions frankly in print – seemed to be generally approved, but political liberty was not mentioned.' 

Then with eyes and ears like a shit-house rat Orwell then discerns:

'Out of this concourse of several hundred people, perhaps half of whom were directly connected with the writing trade, there was not a single one who could point out that freedom of the press, if it means anything at all, means the freedom to criticize and oppose....  In its net effect the meeting was a demonstration in favour of censorship.' 

When the Salmon Rushdie affair first broke out in the late 1980s, I argued that writers ought to be prepared to take risks in the same way miners and building workers did everyday in their working lives.   Following the recent PEN resignations Salmon Rushdie said:

'If PEN as a free speech organisation cannot defend and celebrate people who have been murdered for drawing pictures, then frankly the organisation is not worth the name.  What I would say to Peter, Michael, the others is, I hope nobody ever comes after them.' 

In 1946 when Orwell wrote, it was not the fashion on the left to attack the Soviet Union, perhaps with the exception of the anarchists and some trotskyist groups; today even the anarchists are likely to embrace a sickly sophistry when challenged by the quandary of the freedom of the press.  With the Stalinists, the British trade unions and the main-stream left, free speech has often been a difficult concept for them to embrace wholeheartedly as Orwell discerned. 

In a posting on the 'anarchist' libcom website earlier this year someone wrote:  'By the magazine's (Charlie Hebdo) own admission, the point was to offend and provoke anger.' 

The writer disapproves of this because '... by and large, here you're actually getting a reaction from a maligned and marginalised minority community, who already suffer violence and prejudice.' 

I suppose the National Front supporters who were banned by the Church elders from participating in the election hustings at St.Chads Church in Rochdale earlier this year, could equally claim that they too were 'a maligned and marginalised community'.   Though I doubt that libcom would want to defend them. 

Coincidentally, as I write these words an editor on our Northern Voices' Blog is currently facing a 'Rule 27, Panel Investigation' by a Unite union panel, based on a report that appeared in March about a meeting of the Local Authority Regional Sector Committee entitled 'Unite Committee Bins Motion on Blacklisting'.  As George Orwell realised the English Left, and I would say the trade unions, may call for transparency and openness when referring to others, but they often lack a robust ability for self-criticism and self-examination.       

In 1946, George Orwell complained:  'Fifteen years ago, when one defended the freedom of the intellect, one had to defend it against Conservatives, against Catholics, and to some extent – for they were not of great importance in England, against Fascists.  Today one has to defend it against Communists and “fellow-travellers”.' 

Now, not only do we have to fend off the Fascists; the Communists (if they still exist); tin-pot anarchists on libcom; and trade union bosses who are covering-up for those who colluded with companies who blacklist, but we also have to challenge trade union committees that are run like petty fiefdoms, and Labour Councillors who produce pious proposals to cover-up for Labour Councils that do business with, and give public contracts to blacklist companies. 

Naturally, none of this can be as challenging as having to confront the assault rifle analysts in downtown Dallas, but it does make for an interesting life.

Church leaders, Mr. Bryan & Noam Chomsky

CHURCH leaders in Rochdale last Sunday said that they had to exclude the National Front parliamentary candidate for Rochdale from the political hustings because of fears that the far right party’s presence ‘may increase the likelihood of a breach of the peace’.  In doing this the Vicar of Rochdale defied the core ideas of the enlightenment and Voltaire, not to mention everyday democracy, by not giving the National Front an opportunity to present their views at an open forum in the Rochdale Parish Church. 


In a statement before the event the Vicar of Rochdale, the Rev Mark Coleman said: 
'The Parochial Church Council of St Chad’s and I have decided to not invite the National Front to take part in the hustings event.  We do not endorse any candidate and have decided, on the impartial basis that the presence of the National Front may increase the likelihood of a breach of the peace, to not invite the National Front candidate Mr Kevin Bryan.'

At the event last Sunday, Mr Bryan criticised his exclusion, and he said:
'It’s not a full, democratic election if all eight candidates aren’t there.  I am totally disgusted with it.  I have got a lot of support from people, they might not agree with my politics, but they agree I should be involved with the debate.  There’s eight candidates and they should all be there on the day.' 


Mr. Bryan also claimed that he was a Christian and that it was disgusting for him to be excluded from the House of God.  Shortly after he made this statement the police were called, presumably by the Church authorities, and Mr. Bryan and some of his supporters were escorted from the Parish Church.
Northern Voices' would like to draw Rev. Mark Coleman's attention to the stand on the right to freedom of expression taken by the highly respected academic Noam Chomsky, who happens to be Jewish and who has claimed to be a kind of anarchist, in relation to what became known as the 'Faurisson affair'.  What follows below is taken from Wikipedia:
'The Faurisson affair is a term given to an academic controversy in the wake of a book by French scholar Robert Faurisson, a Holocaust denier. The scandal largely dealt with the inclusion of an essay by American linguist Noam Chomsky, entitled "Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression", as an introduction to Faurisson's book, without Chomsky's knowledge or approval. Responding to a request for comment in a climate of attacks on Faurisson, Chomsky defended Faurisson's right to express and publish his opinions on the grounds that freedom of speech must be extended to all viewpoints, no matter how unpopular or fallacious.'

I believe that those of us associated with the Northern Voices' Blog would stand by what Noam Chomsky has had to say on this matter.  It seems to me that it represents the height of English hypocrisy for all of the other 'respected' politicians to sit in the Church last Sunday, and to fail to speak up on behalf of free speech.