Salad (cream) days

For Five Leaves, this year's London Anarchist Bookfair was a great success. Aside from meeting many old friends, and sketching out a possible publishing project with Martyn Everett, this was was economically our best outing there yet. It helped having two new and relevant books, Colin Ward's Talking Green and this year's new journal, Utopia, hot off the presses. Thanks to Housmans Bookshop for helping us get the books there. The Bookfair seemed busier than ever and busier for longer and the average age seemed lower. I rather felt that the generation brought up on Colin Ward, Nicolas Walter and Albert Meltzer had passed. The stall was too busy to leave for long and, flying solo, I was unable to attend any meetings this year. Congratulations to the organisers for another great Bookfair.
But there was an unpleasant incident. Five Leaves stall was next to that of Northern Voices. Early in the day a small group from Manchester asked the one person at NV to leave. It was not clear to me at that moment why. It turned out that the magazine had some time ago written a rather unfavourable and, indeed, rather unpleasant obituary of the Manchester anarchist Bob Miller. Some time later in the morning a large group of people, from Manchester and elsewhere, returned to the stall, and when the stall holder refused to leave, wrecked it, stealing most of the material on display and covering the stall-holder and the stall (and one unrelated stall-holder behind NV) with salad cream. Though the stall-holder was uninjured, save for a bruised face when he fell and some irritation from the cream getting into his eyes, he was pretty shocked, as was anyone seeing the incident. I have no doubt that his original article was unwise and should not have been published - the best critique of it appears on NV's own rather good blog, October 4th at www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com - but a dozen or so people attacking one person and his stall (with little heed for collateral damage) was bullying.
I've mentioned in a previous posting (about David Hoffman vs. Freedom magazine) that when negotiations between injured parties break down that people must find a way of resolving their difficulties without going to law or, in this case, force of numbers and salad cream - ideally by arbitration. Fortunately this incident took place at a quiet time, in a quiet corner of the Bookfair. The Bookfair is one of the outstanding successes of the wider racial and alternative publishing movement. I would not discourage anyone from attending. The three or four thousand people there over the day happily debate, argue, buy books and socialise with a wide range of opinions on offer. I hope it stays that way.

London anarchist bookfair 2011

Because of the vagaries of train ticket pricing, it was again cheaper to travel first class to the London for the Anarchist Bookfair, but nothing's too good for the working class. Despite the competing attraction of camping outside St Paul's, the Bookfair was mobbed. Estimates for last year suggested around 4,000 people over the day. Were there more this year? The Five Leaves meeting - part of David Rosenberg's Cable Street marathon - was in the first set of sixty talks and discussion. Despite an early start 30+ people listened in respectful silence while Dave outlined the history and detail of The Battle of Cable Street - an event largely involving people from other political traditions (Communist Party, Labour League of Youth, Independent Labour Party). The only other session I attended, however, was a packed meeting on writing and reading anarchist fiction, which perhaps suffered too much from people being respectful when there were good arguments to be had. That session benefited, as did the day itself, from the increasing international presence, with writers from Sweden and Spain taking part. After last year's appearances by John Pilger and Paul Mason, this year's "outside" speakers included the Black activist Darcus Howe and Donnacha DeLong, President of the National Union of Journalists, which again indicates that the anarchist movement is starting to be taken seriously. [Later note - but read Donnacha's comment below - no outsider she!] I suspect, however, Darcus Howe attracted more people than the two hour session on "Tenants' movements in Poland - social resistance to neo-liberal housing policy", however important the latter is.

I squatted on the Housmans stall for most of the day, which did very good trade, especially with Verso books. People were taking their politics seriously. But not too seriously. The speaker at the anarchist fiction session, DD Johnston, read a hilarious piece from his novel, about the anarchist bookfair, seeming to prove the opposite of the quote from The Poverty of Student Life that "since the anarchists will tolerate each other, they will tolerate anything".

As I left at 6.30 - the fair still in full swing - I watched the wonderful French brass band Les Judas playing in the courtyard. Emma Goldman famously said* "If I can't dance I don't want to be in your revolution" and the band had many people dancing. What she didn't say was that you had to dance well!

* Actually, she didn't say that at all - see http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/goldman/Features/dances_shulman.html

All the fun of the fair

Book fairs are nothing new. Those of us close to or well into the bus pass years will recall the annual Socialist Bookfair and the assorted international and third world and black book fairs. The only survivor from that era is the Anarchist Bookfair, mentioned here before, doing spectacularly well, and now being around twenty years old. The next is on 22nd October (http://www.anarchistbookfair.org.uk/). The advance leaflet for this year's fair says it is the London Anarchist Bookfair. Has it said that before? I am not sure but it now does seem pointed since May alone saw anarchist bookfairs in Sheffield and - particularly well attended - in Bristol. Our Lowdham Book Festival has always had a book fair on one day, with many talks and lectures (http://www.lowdhambookfestival/) which became the model for States of Independence in Leicester (http://www.statesofindependence.co.uk/). This has become the model for an as yet unnamed fair likely to be on October 8th in Birmingham. Meanwhile the comic and artists book scene held a proletarian "International Alternative Press Fair" last weekend (http://www.alternativepress.org.uk/) and the Arnolfini in Bristol held a more middle-class, artist book, Bristol Artists Book Event (unfortunate acronym there). This advertised "prices starting from a few pounds" but on some exhibits you would have needed a mortgage. Up in Durham the date New Writing North is organising a Christmas Market over the first weekend in December. In short, as the high street struggles, independent publishers, from pamphleteers to purveyors of locked glass cabinet books are responding by organising a book fair near you. The more the merrier.