Cable Street, ready to roll

We put in the final corrections to the last of our five Cable Street books tomorrow... two are back from the printers, two are in press, the promo leaflet is ready to print, the demo is on and the seven page colour programme featuring ALL the events can be downloaded from: http://www.battleofcablestreet.org.uk/anniversary.html. If you are coming to any of the events around the launch of our books - the launch itself, the lunchtime gig and the evening event with Billy Bragg, Michael Rosen and Shappi Khorsandi let us know as it will be rather busy on the day. Our books can now be ordered from www.fiveleaves.co.uk but very soon we'll post a special offer, 20% off for mail order paid with by old-fashioned cheques (that way we can avoid paying the credit card companies). The nice picture of a previous event is by Dan Jones.

Damned fools in utopia

Or to give the new book of Nicolas Walter's essays its full title, Damned Fools in Utopia and Other Writings on Anarchism and War Resistance edited by David Goodway. Nicolas Walter died in 2000, having been one of the most consistent writers for Freedom and its offshoots Anarchy and The Raven, as well as the atheist/freethought press. He was famed as a fierce reviewer and a stickler for details (he was, after all, the chief sub-ed at the TLS for a period). He also wrote a stream of letters the broadsheet press. His published output beyond the many magazines he contributed to was, however, sadly limited. On his death it was widely assumed that Freedom Press would publish a selection of his essays but they had "moved on". Other attempts to secure a publisher in the mainstream of the anarchist movement failed. Five Leaves stepped in eventually and a book of his historic essays, The Anarchist Past, appeared in 2007, edited by David Goodway. Too late, sadly, as, perhaps, there had been something of a generational change in the anarchist movement and Nicolas - perhaps also because he had little book-published work - was no longer well known. How quickly people forget. There were always two volumes of essays planned by David Goodway. I cannot now remember why I did not simply announce the second volume to appear under Five Leaves, especially as the content of that volume held more interest for me personally. Perhaps there were some issues, perhaps I was just too busy. Checking past emails I find that the editor asked our friends at PM Press in the USA to bring out an edition there. We discussed a joint edition but when PM opened a London office using the same trade reps as Five Leaves it seemed easier to leave the field to them with one edition for both countries. We're not short of books to publish.
Now that Damned Fools in Utopia has finally appeared with PM I regret not doing the sensible thing which was to have brought it out in 2008 or 2009 and let PM have American rights. It is - as it was then - a very good selection of essays, the heart being about Nicolas' work within the peace movement, and in particular the Spies for Peace. There are also very good essays on libertarian individuals - Orwell, Alan Sillitoe (who was an occasional contributor to the anarchist press), Herbert Read, the largely forgotten Guy Aldred and the "crank" publisher CW Daniel, the UK publisher of Tolstoy and health books (whose imprint ended up being owned by Random House!).
The selection ends with the short essay by Nicolas, "Facing Death" which was first heard on the World Service. Nicolas was, by then, indeed facing death, knowing, as an atheist, that there was nothing beyond. A fine essay which deserves a wide circulation.
Had we published the book I'd have argued with David Goodway about the title - I never liked it - but would probably have accepted defeat. But though I hope the volume is widely read I do regret that PM has set the price at £16.99 and used a white cover which is, after a brief skim through, already grubby. I've read the essays before, some in their original form and all in David Goodway's selection but there are many I will return to again and again, by which time the cover will be as grubby as the content shines.

Happy Birthday, The Bookcase

The Bookcase in Lowdham is 15 tomorrow. The shop is a village bookshop, about eight miles from Nottingham, the village having about 2,000 residents. It was a brave move to start a shop there but the owner, Jane Streeter, had worked in legal bookselling in London before moving back to Nottinghamshire where she had three children. She kept up her subscription to The Bookseller, with the long term aim of setting up her own shop. The rumour is that her accountant husband, Andy Streeter, worked out it would be financially better to open a shop than to have another child and a shop was duly opened. The first shop was very small. If too many customers came in, others would have to leave. But it thrived. A couple of years later - at our first meeting - we decided to start a book festival in the village. Book festivals were not as trendy or as numerous as they are now. We wanted to have a festival that combined the notion of a high quality book festival with the life and rhythms of the village - using venues like the Primitive Methodist Chapel and the WI. It worked, and continues, with some events attracting up to 450 people.

Meantime the shop moved to bigger premises, developed a school supply side and uses every opportunity to sell books. It is, and will always be, a shop orientated to the needs of the village, selling gifts, and tickets for any local shows. but it is a village that has retained its pubs, its post office, a butcher and a co-op, a very busy village hall and a great cultural life. Jane Streeter has engaged with the wider literature community, launching books by local writers, developing a dedicated local books website (http://www.nottinghambooks.co.uk/), running bookstalls and the shop now provides jobs for several other booksellers. Always active in the booktrade, Jane became one of only two or three women to become President of the Booksellers Association, and the first person from a village bookshop to have held the post. She is one year in with another to go, and she is involved nationally (and internationally) in every aspect of bookselling. The slogan "think global, act local" has been turned on its head to be "think local, act global". Congrats to the whole Bookcase team. http://www.thebookcase.co.uk/

Spitalfields Life

Our writer Gillian Darley tried to post a note on this blog about Spitalfields Life (http://www.spitalfieldslife.com/) following our last posting on the Brick Lane bookshop. She failed to do so, so I have. And can I say that the website is a must. The article from today is about one of the old Huguenot houses in Fournier Street, where the occupant found wallpapers going back to 1690 in various parts of the house, plus a treasure trove of found objects under the floorboards, and a sealed up medicine cabinet with poison in it. Anyone interested in the East End will immediately log it as a favourite. Thanks Gillian

Brick Lane Bookshop

Congratulations to our friends at Brick Lane Bookshop, formerly Eastside, on its new makeover physically and online (at http://www.bricklanebookshop.com/). The new look and name make much more sense in the heartland of trendiness that is the modern Brick Lane. Anyone visiting would also be advised to go to the end of the Lane - fighting your way through jugglers, fly-pitchers and crowds - to the bagel bakeries. The Brick Lane shop is particularly good on East End history, carrying most of our books in that field, and will of course be stocking our Cable Street books. It seems a long way from the old THAP bookshop of 30 years ago - in pre-Eastside days.

Cable Street march goes ahead - update

Five Leaves is one of 42 (no, this is not connected to Douglas Adams) organisations backing http://www.cablestreet75.org.uk/ in organising a commemorative demonstration in London on Sunday October 2nd remembering The Battle of Cable Street in 1936. Other organisations range from trade unions to the Jewish Socialists' Group to the Bangladeshi Youth Group. Regular readers will know we have five Cable Street books being launched that day as part of the general celebrations, of which more anon, as well as a general interest in the issue. As I write, the Government has banned an EDL demonstration in Tower Hamlets on September 3rd following petitions and appeals from those in the borough. It is worth noting that there was a great attempt to have the 1936 march by Oswald Mosley banned. The then government refused, leading to the mass turnout of people to prevent Mosley's Blackshirts marching through, which led to the Battle. The point of this post is to note that the EDL banning also includes all other marches in Tower Hamlets for the subsequent 30 days. It does, however, appear that the march celebrating the famous anti-fascist victory (October 2) is going ahead as planned, with police permission. All the other events planned around that day will happen as planned. I'll post a complete listing of all the other events soon.

Doomed, we are all doomed

Pritchard's of Formby, The Travel Bookshop of Notting Hill fame, the Harbour Bookshop of Dartmouth and Derwent Bookshop in Workington - all due to close shortly, all had their closures announced this week. All good bookshops, all doing the right thing with author events, all locally popular, and all, at least occasionally, stockists of Five Leaves' books. Who do they blame? Supermarkets, taking away the mass market; WH Smith undercutting them on price for mid-list books; Amazon; eBooks; greedy landlords (don't they know a recession is on?). Add to that library closures, cutbacks in school buying, the closure of Borders and whatever is happening at Waterstone's and we have to conclude that we can't continue as we have been doing. The staff at Five Leaves Towers will shortly be having a summit meeting to go through our future plans. The office cat has been warned that Whiskas will be changed to Kit-e-Kat or a Kwiksave own brand. It really is that serious.
Meanwhile, the number of people doing creative writing classes proliferates. Who is going to publish them? Who will sell their books?