How Danczuk Judges Others by own standards!

by Les May

DANCZUK's response to the story which appears in today's Rochdale Observer about a toilet block being named after him: 

'The publisher paid John Walker £250 in error,  it should never have been paid to him.  He contributed nothing to the book written about Cyril Smith.  It's not for me to pay for his flights to Gambia.'

is typical Danczuk bluster, displays a total ignorance of why the money was paid and is libellous by implication.  Clearly Danczuk judges others by his own casual approach to entitlement to expenses. 

When I put this to John Walker he replied:  

'And, of course the charity does not pay my flights to The Gambia.  I have never drawn a penny from it and it costs me, at a conservative estimate c £2k per year.' 

If you don’t know who to believe in this exchange you might remember that Danczuk has never told us how many men he interviewed before writing his book.  I wrote to him in 2014 asking him this very question and he has never replied.  When a Northern Voices editor put the same question to Danczuk and Baker at the Rochdale Literary and Ideas Festival in the same year he was summarily ejected by the ‘fragrant’ Karen Danczuk. 

When Danczuk and Baker’s book appeared in 2014 reviewers fell over themselves to denounce Smith and praise the book.  Almost the only sceptical note was sounded by Nicholas Blincoe in review in the Telegraph.  But Blincoe was from Rochdale and knew all about Smith from the story which appeared in May 1979 in Rochdale’s Alternative Paper (RAP).  Walker was one of the two co-editors of RAP.   As Blincoe said in his review. ‘Everyone in Rochdale read the RAP story.  I pored over it as a 13-year-old.’.  Which means of course that everyone in Rochdale over about 55 knows the just how big is the debt Danczuk and Baker owes to the dogged efforts of Walker and co-editor David Bartlett. 

Now I’ve ‘got form’ in attacking Danczuk’s claims about his book, but if you want an independent view check out the articles on the Zelo blog using the link I have provided below. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/10796249/Smile-for-the-Camera-The-Double-Life-of-Cyril-Smith-by-Simon-Danczuk-and-Matthew-Baker-review.html 

 

http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/danczuk-did-not-expose-cyril-smith.html 

 

http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/simon-danczuk-prizewinning-fraud.html 

 

http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/simon-danczuk-and-that-book-1.html 

 

http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/simon-danczuk-and-that-book-2.html 

 

http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/simon-danczuks-cyril-smith-book-3.html 

 

http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/simon-danczuks-cyril-smith-book-4.html 

 

"I don't understand why he has never written a book about this himself.

He's had plenty of opportunities to do so."

 

I consider the statement " It's not for me to pay for his flights to

Gambia." a libel by implication.

--

 

Andy Meinke upholds the honour of Freedom!

Curious comment from Andy Meinke on the Freedom Collective, Friends of Freedom & the OFIN program:

'THE Freedom Collective does not rent out any of the property. We're a Collective of Anarchists who work in the building and on various Freedom projects such as publishing, website, news sheet. Everyone involved pays what they can to keep the project going. Freedom is run by a Collective that has meetings every month open to anyone in the movement. You get to join the Collective by turning up and doing stuff. The 'Friends of Freedom Press' are a company who owns the building in trust. As you might guess from their name they are 'friends' (editorial emphasis in bold) of the Collective. Mostly former Collective members and generally good eggs. If we need a group called 'Annoying Dicks who want to fuck up Freedom Press' (editorial italics and bold print) we'll leave (sic - let?) you know on 'Who is David?' post below.'

NV Editorial Reply to Andy Meinke:

ANDY Meinke above writes:  'If we need a group called "Annoying Dicks who want to fuck up Freedom Press we'll let you know".'

CAN this be the same Andy Meinke, who in 2014, wrote in the Freedom free-sheet words to this effect:  'Kropotkin started it (Freedom newspaper) but we fucking finished it (Freedom)' ?

CAN this be the same Andy Meinke, who in November 2012, banned a northern regional anarchist publication from the Freedom Bookshop?

CAN this be same Andy Meinke, who in the Summer of 2012, verbally abused the photo-journalist, David Hoffman, over a claim he had raised with Freedom about the theft of intellectual property?  Resulting in Mr. Hoffman having to pursue a formal complaint the consequence of which was that Freedom Press had to pay him a large sum of money?

CAN this be the same Andy Meinke, who in late 2012, allegedly failed to pay the insurance on the property belonging to Freedom Press?  The consequence being that the insurance cover on the building ran out and some two weeks later a fire occurred resulting in extensive damage and further cost to Freedom Press?


Need we go on further?  What is the position pray regarding the insurance of the property now?  Will the building pass fire regulations?  Will anyone insure the property owing to the earlier mismanagement?  What happens if there is another fire at Freedom and it takes the Whitechapel Art Gallery together with the current Barjeel Art collection*, with it? 

HOW many tens of thousands of pounds will it take to bring the Freedom building at 84B, Whitechapel High Street up to standard, so that it meets all the regulations required of it?  Who will take responsibility?  The Friends of Freedom Press, or will it be Andy Meinke and his mates who turn up for a drink and enter the revolving door of the Freedom Collective?  As Andy apparently lives with his parents and is seemingly an employee who manages the Freedom bookshop, perhaps in event of a crisis he will escape legal liability.

*  The Barjeel Art Foundation holds an extensive collection of art from the Arab world.

More crappy conduct surrounding Danczuk

by Les May

The above image of the RAP front page is copyright

and Northern Voices has been given permission to use it.
******

TUCKED away in the 'Acknowledgements' section of the hardback edition of the book 'Smile for the Camera' by Rochdale MP, Simon Danczuk and his aide Matthew Baker, is a line crediting the Rochdale Observer for some of the photographs used in the book.  That's curious because there are no photographs in the book.  It seems that the authors were so keen to get the book out that they dropped the pictures.

The cynical amongst you might think this was to make sure that it appeared before the 2014 local election, and so give them a stick to beat the Rochdale Lib-Dems with, because until 1992 Cyril Smith had been the local Lib-Dem MP.  If it was, the plan rapidly backfired when it was pointed out that at the time Cyril was spanking bottoms at Cambridge House he was a member of the Labour party.  

This little mystery was solved when the paperback version came out in 2015.  Sure enough here were the photographs.  But amongst them was an image that was uncredited.  It was a picture of the front page of the first edition of the Rochdale's Alternative Paper (RAP) dated November 1971, which had a cartoon of a Cyril Smith shaped barrage balloon hanging over Rochdale Town Hall and the authors had not sought the permission of the joint editors of RAP, David Bartlett and John Walker before using it.

Unsurprisingly, John Walker wrote to Ian Dale, Managing Director of the book's publishers Biteback Publishing, to point this out.

'No permission was sought, or obtained, from the editors of RAP for such a reproduction.  I have been advised that this unauthorised and unacknowledged reproduction is a breach of copyright.  I am further advised that an appropriate reproduction fee for the use of the image - illustrative of much of the content of the book - would be £1,000.'

Now if you think that this is rather a lot money to ask for the use of an image bear in mind that Mr Danczuk appears to have made rather a lot of money from the reproduction of images of his good self, as well as from the Daily Mail serialisation rights of the book.  Also, bear in mind that the image had been published without permission being sought and that, as we shall see, Hell would have frozen over before permission would have been granted.

None of this money was set to go into the pocket of John Walker or David Bartlett.  The letter continued:
'My wife and I run a small educational charity in The Gambia ( see www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk  for full details of its activities, status and legitimacy).

'It would be my intention, that after agreement with my RAP co-editor, the reproduction fee should be paid to the Sohm charity, as indeed have other small fees for articles paid to me, relating to the story.'

The first response from Ian Dale was to claim that it was a newspaper masthead, and hence was free of copyright.

So John Walker tried again:
'Good effort for being dismissive and avoiding the substance of mine of the 4th.

'I can only assume that it was a desire to respond quickly that meant you didn't fully read my letter, nor refer to the image reproduced in Smile for the Camera, before composing and sending it.

'The image reproduced was not simply the  'masthead' of the first edition of RAP, but the full front page - featuring a magazine-commissioned cartoon, that is probably four times the size of the masthead.  Are you saying that you believe this is not subject to copyright?  A strange stance from a publisher, I would have thought.

'Had it only been the masthead that was reproduced, I think that, even by the slack attention to detail standards evidenced in the book, the caption writer to the RAP image would have managed to notice that the publication's title (as clearly shown in the masthead) was Rochdale's Alternative Paper.  It was not 'Rochdale's Alternative Press', as the caption, along with such other references to the publication in the book, has it.'

This produced an apology from Ian Dale and an admission of liability in the form of an offer of £75.

The third letter from John to Biteback's Managing Director, Ian Dale, explained why this sum was inadequate:    

'Thank you for your letter of 15 March, accepting that you have been in breach of copyright and face a liability over the unauthorised reproduction of the front cover of the first edition of Rochdale's Alternative Paper, in the paperback edition of Smile for the Camera.

'I have been in contact with lawyers and IP (ed: intellectual property) specialists who advise me that your opening gesture of a settlement is inadequate, for a number of reasons:

'Firstly, the right to use the image was neither sought, nor given, prior to publication.

'Second, this transgression is aggravated by the fact that if not you, certainly the book's authors, would have known that permission would not have been given for the reproduction, had it been sought.  I won't bore you with a tedious timeline of events, or supporting documents, if you don't already know the background, but I'm sure the authors will agree that there has been a considerable rift between us over rights and potential authorship of the book.  Even they accept, begrudgingly, and in a grossly understated way, my role in the book's gestation, in its Acknowledgements section.  Should you want full chapter and verse of my disagreement with them I will happily supply it.

'Third, the now iconic cover cartoon of the first edition of Rochdale's Alternative Paper, which you reproduced, without accurate acknowledgement of source or recognition of copyright ownership, is in fact, central to the claims made in the book about Smith's dominating and all-powerful role in Rochdale politics in the 1960s and 1970s.  This, in some ways, enables them to make some pretty far-fetched claims about Smith - unverified - knowing that readers would accept them because 'The Fatman' could apparently get away with anything.

'In these circumstances my advice is that a fee of £250 would be a reasonable one, made of course, to the Gambian charity, of which I have previously written (details below).'

Three weeks later with no response from Biteback, and no money put into the account of the Sohm school charity John Walker wrote:

'I note that you have neither replied to my letter of 3 April, nor deposited a payment into the Sohm Schools Support bank account.

'Out of courtesy, I must tell you that should there have been no response by the 1st, May, I shall escalate this matter.'

Ian Dale's initial view that the sum asked for was 'above the going rate' is seriously mistaken.  Had permission been sought first such a comment would have been in order because a market would have existed.  In this case he would have been free to accept or decline the price being asked for permission to publish the image.  The price could have been quite high because of the 'scarcity value' of the image there being no other supplier.  That is how markets work.  Simply taking and using the image means that no market exists and the question changes from, 'Is this a fair price?' to  'What is my lawyers bill likely to be?'

Taking and using an image without first obtaining permission amounts to theft of intellectual property, which is hardly something one would expect an MP to want to be associated with.  Both authors had a responsibility to alert the publisher about possible copyright issues.  As they credit the Rochdale Observer for some of the photographs they were clearly aware of this.

To his credit Ian Dale paid the £250 fee requested.  I hope that he recovered it from Danczuk and Baker because by paying up he 'pulled their coals out of the fire'.

If John Walker feels a bit aggrieved at the way Danczuk and Baker have written him out of the Smith story I can understand why.  This is what he told me in an e-mail, relating to the genesis of the Danczuk/Baker book in 2012:

'I tried to get the Smith case re-opened (ed: after revelations about Savile were aired in October 2012), and as a result met up with current Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk to suggest writing a book on the subject (me to write, him to front).

'He seemed very keen. We got to the point of me drafting a lengthy synopsis and meeting up with an agent, who ended up arranging for a publication.

'It was at this point Danczuk ditched me and worked with his then press secretary to produce a book Smile for the Camera, published by Biteback Publishing.  It became quite a hit, and attracted a lengthy serialisation in the Daily Mail.

'I was more than a little upset that I had been cut out of this process and contacted Danczuk along these lines.  I suggested that by way of compensation he made a donation to a charity my wife and I run in The Gambia (Sohm Schools Support - see below for details).  He ignored this.'

Referring to the cartoon on the cover of the first edition of RAP, John Walker emphasised a point I have made repeatedly in my reviews of Smile for the Camera; that the majority of Danczuk and Baker's claims cannot be verified:

'It was clearly used to depict Smith as Danczuk wanted him to be seen, and implicitly acknowledged the source (RAP) of the ONLY independently verified bit of Danczuk's sensational claims in the book.' (see Les May's review of 'Smile for the Camera' on NV Blog)

John Walker had originally been in contact with Danczuk about making a contribution to his African charity at the time of the original publication of Smile for the Camera, in recognition of his role in its emergence.  He had suggested that if the Danczuk contribution were significant, it could result in a facility at the Sohm school being named after him, to reflect his contribution (e.g. The Simon Danczuk library, or dining room).  Danczuk ignored this, and made no contribution.

As it happens, a new toilet block is currently under construction at the Gambian school, partially funded by John Walker's charity.  With the approval of the school principal, this is likely to be formally named and branded the Simon Danczuk block, when next John visits the village

I'm promised a photo of it so I'll post it on the NV blog.

If NV readers feel they would like to make a donation to the new toilet block in recognition of Mr Danczuk's contribution to political life since he was elected MP in 2010, I am sure it will be gratefully received.  The web address is given below.  To make a dreadful pun:
'Don't just sign a petition about Danczuk, do something concrete'.

In my now distant school days it was common to hear a lad say he was 'going for a crap'.  No doubt in future, Gambian youngsters will be heard to say 'I'm going for a Danczuk!'. 
How singularly appropriate.
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/simon-danczuk-and-that-book-1.html
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/simon-danczuk-and-that-book-2.html
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/simon-danczuks-cyril-smith-book-3.html
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/simon-danczuks-cyril-smith-book-4.html
www.SohmSchoolsSupport.org.uk
http://zelo-street.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/simon-danczuk-twitter-meltdown.html

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.

Marx & Copyright Claim

HUNDREDS of works of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels has been taken down by the Marxist Internet Archive, a website dedicated to radical writers and thinkers, or the site was told it would face legal consequences.  The threat comes from the small left-wing publisher, Lawrence & Wishart, which has claimed copyright ownership over the 50-volume, English-language edition of Marx and Engel's writing.  The original German version is not covered by this ruling.

Some are suggesting that this is somewhat 'uncomradely', to use the law of intellectual property to deprive the left and other radicals of the writings of Marx and Engels on the Internet.  Ironically the deadline for complying with the order was on the eve of May Day (1/05/14) or International Workers' Day. 

The achive removed the disputed writings on time with a note blaming the publisher and a bold headline:  'FILE NO LONGER AVAILABLE'!

The International New York Times notes:
'The fight over online control of Marx's works comes at a historical moment when his ideas have found a new relevance, whether because the financial crisis of 2008 shook people's confidence in global capitalism or, with the passage of time, the Marx name has become less shackled to the legacy of the Soviet Union.'

It seems that Lawrence & Wishart, which has two full-time employees and two part-time employees and only just makes ends meet, publish journals like 'Anarchy Studies', and only about a dozen leftish books a year.   Curiously, some years ago the now defunct paper Freedom, the then anarchist monthly, was subject to a similar claim of copyright for the use of a photo in a book and paid-up to the demand of the left-wing photographer David Hoffman.  In the Lawrence & Wishhart case Peter Linebaugh, a professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio who has researched the history of communism, said:
'This is the triumph of capitalism, having the small fish biting at each other.'

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.