Not sure if I am a radical booktrade historian, but happy to support this event

RED DWARF’S ROBERT LLEWELLYN JOINS NEWS FROM NOWHERE IN DISSENT

News from Nowhere, Liverpool’s unique Radical & Community Bookshop continues its 40^th Birthday celebrations with a one-off

WeBe40 Radical Bookfair & Spaces of Dissent

Sunday 1^st June at the Bluecoat, School Lane, Liverpool 1 from 11am to 6pm

There will be three Spaces of Dissent throughout the day:

• Poetry as Dissent at 12noon features Steph Pike & Clare Shaw, both powerful and uncompromising wordsmiths, who have audiences laughing, crying, enraged … and often all three.

• Radical Bookselling, Radical Times at 2pm features Ross Bradshaw, radical booktrade historian and Bob Dent, News from Nowhere’s founder, enlightening us on the way in which radical bookshops have interacted with and reflected the politics of the times.

• Fiction as Dissent at 4pm will feature Robert Llewellyn. Robert played Kryten in Red Dwarf and was the presenter of Scrapheap Challenge, but is now also the author of an eco-utopian trilogy, “News from Gardenia” inspired by William Morris’s “News from Nowhere” from which we took our name. In addition we have Desiree Reynolds, a Black British novelist whose stunning debut novel, “Seduce”, will amuse, challenge and delight with its Caribbean setting and wonderful patois language.

We also have Subversive Children’s Storytelling sessions in the Garden at 12.30pm and 2.30pm with Andy Johnson & Jennifer Verson.

Along with Liverpool Socialist Singers at 1.30pm, Sense of Sound Singers at 3.30pm, Stan the Harp and various theatrical interventions, a great day is guaranteed for all lovers of literature, culture and freedom.

In addition, the current Bluecoat display of News from Nowhere’s archives continues throughout the day, we will have projections from our Live Reportage artist Sam Galbraith, an interactive Memories of News from Nowhere game, and our famous Bolshie Bargain Bookstall will tempt the crowds in via the front courtyard.

Expect special offers, a cornucopia of words and plenty of dissent!

The whole day is free, but (free) tickets are required from the Bluecoat for the three Spaces of Dissent sessions.

Mandy Vere says:

“Central to Bold Street’s revival and a major tourist attraction with national and international visitors citing it as a crucial destination, News from Nowhere is proud to be a space of dissent in arguably the most dissenting city in the country. We will continue to assert that there is no glory ever in war, that the 99% should not be made to pay for the greed of the 1%, and will always stand firmly on the side of the marginalized and the oppressed, while celebrating the human and cultural riches of our proud city of immigrants.”

Further info: Mandy Vere, News from Nowhere Bookshop, 96 Bold St, Liverpool L1 4HY

0151 708 7270 07732 983477 mandy@newsfromnowhere.org.uk

London Radical Bookfair - past, present and future

A few years ago three grizzled veterans of the radical book trade, Andrew Burgin (ex-Compendium, ex-Canary Press, dealer in second hand radical books), Tony Zurbrugg (Merlin Press, ex-Africa Book Centre, ex-York Community Books) and me (Ross Bradshaw, Five Leaves Publications, ex-Mushroom Bookshop) and the not-yet-but-soon-to-be grizzled Nik Gorecki of Housmans Bookshop started discussing how to stabilise or revive the remnants of the radical book trade. The discussion was inconclusive, but some time afterwards the Housmans Board (which I was then on) decided to set up what became the Alliance of Radical Booksellers. Our discussions were joined by Mandy Vere, who has been involved with News from Nowhere for the best part of forty years and other bookshops responded enthusiastically.
The ARB was formed at a meeting in Liverpool, as a light-touch organisation co-ordinated by Nik, at a day event which included a presentation on the history of radical bookselling. We also launched the Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing. By this time there had been a couple of new shops opening and existing shops were reporting increased trade. Five Leaves did not yet have a bookshop but Ross from Five Leaves, Mandy and Nik formed the Trustees of Bread and Roses and the initial three years of the Award were underwritten by this firm.
David Graeber duly won the first Bread and Roses Award, presented at a social in a trade-union owned pub in London with his book on the debt crisis (published by Melville House). By the next year we were thinking of how to move things forward. It seemed obvious that with a captive group of speakers - those on the B & R shortlist - we had the core of a day event rather than simply a reception to hand over the cheque. Maybe we could add a few stalls? Six? Ten?
We'd noticed how the annual poetry book fair was developing and were aware of the longstanding, and very successful, London Anarchist Bookfair. Suddenly we were talking about a modest London Radical Bookfair, a bit like the Anarchist Bookfair but operating on a wider canvas. Andrew Burgin organised a decent room hire rate for Conway Hall and things were getting more serious. The organising group was to be Andrew, Nik and Ross. Andrew quickly found that he had to drop out as his small Left Unity project turned into a national political party of the same name. Ross had to drop out due to family issues, leaving Nik to organise the first London Radical Book Festival almost on his own, during which he realised that he could go into a zen-like trance and NOT panic about all the things that needed done... For a period it was not looking good. We were wondering whether many people would come, and, if they did, would we reach out to a wider radical community than we were used to. We did not want a radical re-enactment society. A last minute push (particularly a mass email from New Internationalist and Occupy London) brought in the people, lots of them. There were fifty stalls. Conway Hall was packed. Every meeting based on the shortlisted Bread and Roses Award was packed.
By now the Bread and Roses Award had produced an offspring, the Little Rebels Prize for the best radical children's book, organised by ARB member Letterbox Library. The winning adult book was Scattered Sand by Hsiao-Hung Pai (Verso), a book on Chinese internal-migrant labour. The first Little Rebel prize went to Sarah Garland for her graphic novel Azzi in Between (Frances Lincoln).
Looking down from the stage it was obvious the Bookfair had attracted a younger crowd, a wide range of radical people. Stalls reported good business. But it was too small. At its peak you could not get down the aisles. It was obvious there was a demand, and it was obvious we would have to move to bigger premises. The only, small, problem was an expected disagreement between some anarchists and the Socialist Workers Party.
Those bigger premises turned out to be Bishopsgate Institute, a radical library and continuing education establishment that faces into the City and backs on to Shoreditch. From our first approach, to Bishopsgate librarian Stefan Dickers, this was obviously the best choice. They had the space, they had their own mailing list and they wanted to bookend the bookfair with some radical talks and courses of their own. Perfect.
Except why stop at simply radical booksellers and publishers? Housmans had a good relationship with the Alternative Press Fair, an annual event run by artists, DIY publishers, zine producers. And there were three floors...
So now we had a big annual bookfair, a bookfair partner, links with the (younger and trendier!) Alternative Press Fair, a successful adult radical publishing prize and a new children's award. No money, no time, no staff... and while my family commitments had ceased I had a new bookshop to run on top of a publishing programme. Andrew Burgin was still off building a party. So that left Nik again,with the support of his colleagues at Housmans. At least it put the oldest radical bookshop in the UK, now well into its buspass years, at the heart of what is starting to be a thriving radical bookshop scene.
There were 130 stalls, attendance was up. Attendance was younger again. As well as the (packed) meetings about the shortlisted B & R books and a children's panel there were other events, including some aimed at the Alternative Press world, and a big event on the history of Black and Asian radical publishing and bookselling in Britain. The only, small, problem was another expected disagreement between some anarchists and the Socialist Workers Party. But that aside, Greens and alternative types happily rubbed shoulders with Marxists, anarchists with their other Trotskyist cousins, socialist historians chatted merrily to socialists who were too young to have any history. And, despite forgetting to bring the pop-up banner announcing our existence, Five Leaves Bookshop had its first London outing. All the shops did very well. I hope the publishers did too.
Bishopsgate people seemed very pleased as we spread over three floors. Nik looked Zen-like...
The winner of the Bread and Roses Award was Joe Glenton with his Soldier Box (Verso - winning for a second year). The award was accepted on his behalf by his organisation, Veterans for Peace, who reminded us that books should lead to action. Nobody would disagree. The Little Rebel prize went to After Tomorrow by Gillian Cross (OUP) which imagined a time when British people would have to seek refugee status, a book for 9-12 year olds.
So here we are. Little money, no staff, no infrastructure and a hit on our hands.
In concluding the bookfair Mandy Vere said that whilst bookselling was in crisis, the radical publishing and bookselling section was thriving and expanding. Indeed.
What next? I hope that we can return to Bishopsgate. I hope that the Alternative Press people liked the tie-up. We will aim to be repeat the whole exercise on the first Saturday after the May bank holiday next year. I hope we can pull in some funding to underwrite the prizes and the event. I hope that Nik has a day off next week and that Housmans will continue to be at the heart of this project. Small points? I'd like to see a take away brochure, like the one at the Anarchist Bookfair, though am aware of the work involved. I'd like to see the Bread and Roses and Little Rebels shortlist promoted more. I'd like to see... oh, all those things that involve more time and more money.
But when the grizzly ones had their initial discussions a few years ago we had little idea what would be the outcome. Steady as she goes.
http://littlerebelsaward.wordpress.com/
http://www.bread-and-roses.co.uk/
http://www.radicalbooksellers.co.uk/
http://londonradicalbookfair.wordpress.com/

"We were all medium size once"

Last night I ran a bookstall at the Nottinghamshire NUM 30th anniversary commemoration of the 1984/1985 miners' strike. The shop was particularly promoting Harry Paterson's book on the strike, published by Five Leaves. We sold a bucket load, particularly after Henry Richardson, former general secretary of the Nottinghamshire NUM (sacked by the working miners) said in his speech "This is your story. Every striking miner should have a copy of the book in their house to tell your children and grandchildren what you did."
I'd felt that the Nottinghamshire story had never previously been fully told. Keith Stanley from the NUM published a short memoir of the strike, Jonathan Symcox published his grandfather's diaries, Canary Press published some books at the time - all worth reading - but no book had looked at the background, the detail and the aftermath of the strike and explained why Nottinghamshire was so important to the Government, told the full story of the 1,800 men who stuck it out to the end out of 32,000 in the Notts coalfield, the secret dealings leading to the formation of the UDM and their ultimate downfall. That was the aim of the book, and I think we have mostly succeeded. I say mostly as since the book came out people who Harry interviewed, or others in casual conversation, have told us the most astonishing personal stories of the strike year. We're proud of the book, but will perhaps publish a later edition including more of these stories - of the picket line staffed, by agreement, one day only by women where the only men who turned up were police infiltrators who'd not heard it was going to be women only; of the Manton miner who was charged with attempted murder, sacked of course, only for the charges to be dropped later; of the local "major" picket set up by six people, and only for six people, to draw police away from Orgreave (which also proved that phones were tapped as the police turned up in droves thinking it was to be a major event)... I could go on. There were so many stories.
It was an honour to be there last night with the men and women of the strike year. All of us thirty years older, and some of us thirty years wider than before - XXL T-shirts ran out quickly (hence this posting's title). Most of those present were NUM or from women's support groups from the period, but we were joined by many from the Clarion Choir and friends from the Trades Council and UNISON. It was sometimes hard to hear the speakers or the choir as people had some catching up to do. There were a fair few Scottish notes in the bookstall takings as a number of ex-Notts people had travelled back for the occasion. Nobby Lawton came back from London and managed, the night before, to get a lifetime ban from his old Blidworth Miners' Welfare when he took over the mike to celebrate his fellow strikers! I think he might have been exaggerating to say he went down fighting, still clutching the mike and singing the Red Flag... but there is still ill-feeling in the coalfields between those who supported the Tory Government and those who supported their national union. In Harry's book he analyses the voting figures in Nottinghamshire, indicating just how many miners actually voted Conservative. Of course they were thrown on the scrapheap too.
Of those who spoke, I was pleased that Margaret Nesbit from the women's group in Ollerton spoke about Liz Hollis, who killed herself after the strike. So many people from the coalfields remember Liz with love and affection. Ian Lavery MP reminded us of the beatings people took at Orgreave, but demanded a wider inquiry into the state of siege that took place in Nottinghamshire. The very youthful looking Owen Jones provided the best crack of the evening, referring to himself as looking more like a minor than a miner. Owen was given a standing ovation and, interesting, given the ethnic make up of the coalfields, got most applause in his speech when he referred to the scapegoating of migrants and the National Front-style lorry touring immigrant areas telling people to go home.
The meeting opened with a minute's silence, for Davy Jones - killed on the picket line at Ollerton - and for other NUM members who did not make it through to the 30th, and supporters of the NUM like Bob Crow and Tony Benn.
At the time of the strike my main focus had been CND. I am proud that the day we held the biggest ever Nottingham Peace Festival we shared speakers and ran buses between our event and a major NUM rally elsewhere in the city. Our causes were one. Perhaps because of that most of those I knew personally from the strike days were women who'd been involved in the peace movement - Ida Hackett from Mansfield, Joan Witham from Newark, both now dead, and Pat Paris, now living abroad.
I think it was Henry Richardson who remarked that the NUM never lost, as the Big Meeting in Durham attracts more and more people every year to celebrate the NUM and the working class communities which it created and here, in Kirkby, in the heartland of the strike-breaking miners, it is the NUM that lives, not the UDM.
The evening was very ably organised by Eric Eaton and Alan Spencer from the Notts NUM Ex and Retired Miners Assocation.
Nottingham readers might want to attend the Five Leaves Bookshop commemoration on 25th April with speakers being Seamas Milne (Guardian associate editor), Harry Paterson, Keith Stanley (NUM), Bianca Todd (Left Unity) and Joyce Sheppard (Women Against Pit Closures). Full details on www.fiveleavesbookshop.co.uk/events).

Dan Tunstall

One of the pleasures of being a small publisher is that you often get to know your authors well, sometimes making long-term friendships, sharing in their individual joys and pain as they do in yours. Sometimes the relationship is brief but intense, going quiet once the book or books in question are out of the way. Sometimes your authors die. Five Leaves has lost several writers and editors over the years. In no particular order these include Adrian Mitchell, Ray Gosling, Stanley Middleton, Walter Gregory, Richard Boston, Michael Hyde, Daniel Weissbort and Colin Ward. Leaving aside that they are all men, what they have in common is that even though some died before their time, and all are missed, none were young.
It was a shock this morning though when the agent Penny Luithlen rang to say that our author Dan Tunstall had died yesterday, it seems by his own hand. Dan had been troubled for some time, but we all hoped that he would pull through. He was only in his forties. It was a difficult conversation with Penny, who had done so much to try to help Dan. Agents, perhaps more than publishers, can get very involved with their clients.
Penny came to me some years ago about Dan. I knew her slightly. She wanted me to take a risk on a young, new writer with a challenging book about football hooliganism. I doubted we would sell a lot of copies but Penny persuaded me to take the book on on its value, but as a great agent she wanted to get Dan's career going and he needed that book to do that. In fact the sales were pretty good.
Being a book on football hooliganism it required careful editing and the three of us had great fun in a cafe counting each individual swearword and working out whether they were necessary. ("I'll trade you one XXXX for one XXXXXX."). We had to get this book right as it was his first book and because it was a difficult subject. That we did so was marked by Dan's Big and Clever being shortlisted for the Bradford Boase Award for first young adult novels. Joined by Carey, Dan's wife, we had a tremendous night out in London, which included Jacqueline Wilson being photographed with Dan, or was it the other way round? It was a real publishing highlight for us, though we did not win.
Dan's second book was Out of Towners, a young adult novel about a group of lads on their first holiday away. It was another great editing experience. We could not get the cover right, and eventually it was designed by Dan and Carey - Dan providing possibly hundreds of versions of the agreed artwork! By now Dan was doing school visits. He was particularly popular with teenage boys who could identify with his characters, and with Dan himself as Dan could with them. We were not surprised when his next book was for a bigger publisher and he then contributed to a four-author anthology with Alan Gibbons and others. Our job was done.
Though Dan continued to write, he ran into personal problems which he could not overcome, with the result we know.
Dan was great company, a talented writer and is a great loss. He was mentored by Bali Rai and had a number of other writer friends who tried, as much as they could, to support him through his difficulties which we all knew. Dan and Carey also designed the cover of Bali's book with us and Bali and Dan were close.
Most of the Five Leaves writers in the East Midlands knew Dan of course, and will join with Pippa and I in sending our condolences to Carey and the girls. This has been a sad day.

Freedom gives up on print

I haven't been a reader of Freedom since 1886, but it sometimes feels that, given there are samples of ancient back issues around the house and even some years of bound copies gathering dust. I started reading it in 1972, was an individual seller for a period and knew various contributors and editors including the late Colin Ward, Vernon Richards and Nicolas Walter, and the very much not late Dennis Gould. I particularly liked the magazine in the days when "Ian the Printer" from Margate would add his own column printed up the side of the back page, in those days when the late Arthur Moyes would also write incomprehensible art reviews. We go back a long way. I also own many Freedom Press books, one of which - Anarchy in Action - I refer people to in the bookshop if they want to read a primer on anarchism.

But all things must pass and Freedom is going online shortly. That one small magazine is going online is neither here not there in the grand scheme of things, but it is obvious from the bookshop that few people read the left press other than on line these days. I regret this immensely. I'm reprinting Freedom's statement. I guess it could easily be written by any small mag.

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Since Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism first appeared in 1886 it has been in the form of a newspaper to be sold. Now the Freedom Collective has decided that we shall move content online accompanied by a freesheet after publication of the upcoming second issue of 2014. We have come to realise that a sold hardcopy newspaper is no longer a viable means of promoting the anarchist message. Despite a huge publicity boost to Freedom following the firebomb attack last year (shop sales rose 50%) there has not been a corresponding increase in distribution of the paper. Only 29 shops, social centres and individuals now sell it and the number of paying subscribers has fallen to 225. As a result annual losses now amount to £3,500, an unsustainable level for our shoestring budget.

Readers will have noticed that the paper has struggled to come out on time for some while. An underlying problem has been a lack of capacity to sustain it. We had hoped that Freedom would be adopted as THE paper of the anarchist movement. Despite a great deal of goodwill from anarchist groups and individuals over the years, sadly this has not been the case. Although Freedom Press has changed from a political group with a particular point of view to a resource for anarchism as a whole, we have not managed to shake the legacy of the past and get different groups to back it as a collective project. We hope an online version and freesheet will make that possible.

Subscribers will be offered a refund or book in lieu but we are happy to accept donations towards the costs of the new project. Charlotte Dingle will remain as editor and of course the shop, publishing and book distribution will continue as normal. As will the use of Angel Alley for meetings, events, offices, postal address and drop-in protest advice.

The print version could not have continues so long without the generosity of Aldgate Press, currently amounting to a subsidy of nearly £10,000 a year. They have very kindly agreed to print a regular freesheet/news compilation to enable us to keep in touch with our readers who don’t have the internet, and a special final edition, which will be released for the London Anarchist Bookfair in October.

Sinking Under the Surface

I know that some people have been waiting on copies of Under the Surface, our anthology of mining poetry, which was to have included work by Maria Taylor, Steve Ely, Helen Mort, Jonathan Taylor and many more including the great Idris Davies. Unfortunately we have had to abandon the book and a batch of associated readings. The editor went AWOL several months ago and we never received the text or even a final list of poems that were to be included. Apologies to contributors who have not heard from Five Leaves - we don't know what poems or poets were agreed, or what rights had been secured, other than the basic original list and chance conversations with poets at events. Had we received the text or a list of contributors we could have done something, but, despite effort, we have been left in the dark
We'll be cancelling all the shop orders and pulling the book from our lists.
Apologies

Ebook bargains!

Five Leaves produces an annual spined journal on a particular theme. They have sold well in the printed version, but only recently have we made them available as ebooks. Here's the offer:

The Maps and Utopia ebooks will be on special offer as countdown deals at Amazon's Kindle Store, at 99p each from midday on March 24^th, £1.99 from 3pm on March 26^th, then finally £2.99 from 6pm on March 28^th, reverting back to their original price of £4.99 at 10pm on 30^th March.

Alongside this special offer, the Crime ebook will be FREE at Amazon's Kindle Store for five days from midday on March 24th.

Links:

Maps: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Maps-Ross-Bradshaw-ebook/dp/B00GUNUG1O/ref=sr_1_1

Utopia: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Utopia-Ross-Bradshaw-ebook/dp/B00GUNUEBQ/ref=sr_1_2

Crime: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crime-Ross-Bradshaw-ebook/dp/B00FRMUO20/ref=sr_1_1