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Title: London Anarchist Bookfair 2012 Author: Antti Rautiainen Date: 29 October 2012 Language: en Topics: London, bookfairs Source: Retrieved on 3rd November 2021 from https://avtonom.org/en/news/london-anarchist-bookfair-2012
I was invited to speak, and I agreed immediately — LAB is the biggest
(or perhaps secondmost biggest, after San Fransisco) anarchist bookfair
in the world, could be also the biggest annual anarchist event in the
world. One may only crudely estimate number of participators, as
entrance is free. Free programs were handed out, with a suggested
donation of one pound. 2600 pounds were collected, which is a rather
good estimation of number of participators.
Event took place in premises of the Queen Mary University in the London
East End. Organisers paid a lot for rent — 6000 pounds, but commercial
exhibition centers would have been even more expensive. Besides rents,
also tickets of speakers and printing of propgram demands money. Event
is financed with donations, benefit concerts, both those willing to have
a table and those who want to organise a lecture have to pay a bit.
Event went on from 11 AM to 19 PM, there were 10 paraller lectures and
videos were constantly screened in one room, 3 different creches for
children and youth of various ages (from 2 to 8, from 8 to 12 and from
11 to 16 years), that means, event was much more short but also more
intensive that similar events in Russia. This was due to financial
restraints — an event of 2 days would have been two times more
expensive. University premises were obviously too small — biggest
auditorium had a capacity of up to 400, but some events were interesting
for much more people. Corridoors were at times jammed due to crowds, due
to overcrowding territory was heavily littered towards the evening.
Event really needs a bigger venue, but apparently it is impossible to
find one with any kind of reasonable cost. Apparently, London Anarchist
Bookfair reached limit of those possibilities, which are available for a
free event in that city, current market of venues does not allow it to
grow further.
Organisers made an effort to involve disabled — place was wheelchair
accesible, some lectures had translators to sign language or paper
translitteration.
Differently for such events in Russia, no food was served — apparently
this was a condition from the university. But around the university,
there were plenty of cheap pubs and ethnic restaurants.
As it took time to check stalls at I had two speeches to do, I could
only listen 3 events myself. First was Michael Albert’s “Occupy Vision,
Theory & Strategy”, my impression was mixed. Among works of Albert, I am
most interested about such economic stuff as “A Quiet Revolution In
Welfare Economics” with Robin Hahnel. But his topic was completely
different, basically a short introduction to his recent pamphlets,
published on the wave of the Occupy movement. It was kind of
introduction to his second lecture, goal of which was to recruit new
adepts to “International Society for Participatory Society” , , but I
missed that.
Albert has his own preferred economic model called “Parecon”, I would
say it is something between Market Socialism and Bakuninist
Collectivism, but that could be inaccurate. I am not that much
interested of this particular model towards which I am sceptical at
least, but Albert is an interesting speaker as one of the very few
people in libertarian socialist spectrum, who both understand economics
and may talk about it.
As for the rhetorics, Albert was not a bad speaker, but as far as the
content goes, it was 90% water on how bad is capitalism and how we
really may get rid of it if we want to. And also on why anarchists and
leftists have failed to get they point across. I was not in a need of a
motivational speaker, and thus I had problems to concentrate to get the
little substance there was around. But I invited him to speak in our
lecture series in Helsinki university via skype anyway, as a number of
people able to talk about economics in anarchist circles may be counted
with fingers of one lumberjack hand.
Next lecturer was Martin Wright from London I was promised “a pugnacious
attack on lifestyle anarchism, snobbery, rampart sexism, academics and
polyamory by a veteran anarchist”, and I was definitely eager to hear
that. Genre of the lecture was somewhere in a middle ground between a
serious talk and Stand-up comedy. Humour has always played a big role in
the movement of Great Britain, but for me it has a mixed record. Some
stuff meant to be fun is indeed fun, such as 1980’s Class War tabloid,
but pretty often also not. For example, in Norfolk, a “humorous
anarchist paper” Now or Never is being published, but I never found
anything fun in it. Wright was at times fun indeed, but also he was a
typical example of this widespread British analysis, according to which
main reason of unsuccess of anarchists are the other anarchists. Right
now Wright is participating to group ALARM — All-London Anarchist
Revolutionary Mob, . I liked their table, it had mostly posters and a
free xeroxed paper, which had only articles about MMA and trouble of
anarchists in Nizhni Novgorod in Russia. These folks have their
priorities right. Behind the table, some kids sipping British version of
Jaguar. That was all great, but still I was wondering, if punks liked
the lecture first of all because of it kind of justified ignorant
existence. You may never master mysteries of chessboxing, if you only
train chess, or only train boxing.
Wherever you find many anarchists, there is also plenty of beef. Each
year, organisers are receiving a letters demanding to ban someone from
the bookfair. It is seldom that any of these propositions have political
grounds. For example, three years they got a long letter, relating to a
dispute dating back to 1985. Organisers wary about “policing” such
issues, anyone whose work or organisation accords with anarchist
principles can have stall. Obvious exceptions are green capitalists and
trotskists. This year some sad trotskists had a table outside in the
rain, apparently people felt too sorry to revenge for Kronstadt and
Makhno, and they weren’t punched. Someones stall was poured mayonnaise,
but I did not heard reports of settling scores more violently.
So, in the end all the kinds of types were around, from some people from
Dial House to insurrectionalists and adepts of especifismo. I did not
bought any books for myself, as I will have to carry 25 kilos of them
for Helsinki infoshop anyway. But I could not resist 12 pount Bakunin
hoodie, sold by the Anarchist Federation. Also, I was given collection
of bulletins of Russian Prisoner Aid bulletins fom 1923 to 1931, printed
by t, I love that stuff! It was nice to have a chance to thank in person
various people, who sent us stuff to Moscow for so many years, such as
KSL and Aufheben. I should have arranged paper orders for Helsinki
infoshop, but as I was busy with other things I forgot all that,
hopefully someone else from Helsinki did that as it was quite a many
people from the city.
Unfortunately, I did not saw any of my childhood heroes — neither Ian
Bone nor Stuart Christie.
It was a bit strange, that as far as I know nobody used the opportunity
to organise events in Friday or Sunday. Obviously, organisational group
had no resource for that, but I do not undertand, why no other group is
eager to use biggest annual concentration of anarchists in the city to
do anything else than parties or drinking. Apparently, most of the
London anarchists prefer hanging in their own circles to organisation of
wide, open events. The same in Moscow, with exception of Libcom 2011,
until this year only Autonomous Action has had interest to organise
meetings or infrastructure for wider anarchist movement.
After Wright, I had two of my own talks. First on anarchist prisoners in
Belarus. I was invited to replace some local Belarusian, who vanished
few weeks before the bookfair. I expected, that troubles of anarchists
in the potato republic would be of interest to maximum 3 people, but
eventually much more came. One of the good sides of the UK anarchists is
that due to imperial past, they consider most exotic places being of
interest, including places which are of interest to no-one else. I
shared a nightplace with an activist of Abahlali baseMjondolo from
Durban of South Africa, he was positively surprised for a small action
we did for them during football championship of 2010 . I missed his
speech but I heard it was well attended and liked.
My next speech was with Gabriel Levy about Pussy Riot and other
repressions in the former Soviet Union. Apparently, idea of the
organisers was to draw attention to other human right problems on the
wave of Pussy Riot hype, such as shooting of strikers in Zhanaozhen of
Kazakhstan. This was obviously a rather naive idea — when I had finished
my 20 minutes on Pussy Riot and Levy began his part on grievances of oil
workers, few dozen peoples immediately left the auditorium. I do not
understand, why oil workers, leadership of the “Left Front” which is now
facing a charges with 10 year penalty for “treason” in Russia, national
bolsheviks and tortured disappearing inhabitants of Ingushetia and
Dagestan do not want to position themselves ad LGBT or queer-feminists,
as that would guarantee a whole another level of interest to their
problems.
Last lecture I attended was “Anarchist Economy” with David Graeber,
Michael Albert, Iain McKay (not to be confused with singer of Minor
Threat) and some fourth dude (later I learned it was Joseph Kay from
libcom.org). Auditorium of 400 people was fully packed, people were
standing on stairs and it was hard to even get it. Apparently, queer
feminism has not took all of it over yet, and middle-aged men have still
their lebensraum in anarchist movement.
No surprise, there was no any discussion on economics, instead another
talk for 12 year olds on how capitalism is evil, accompanied with a sort
of competition of the most witty anecdote on the topic amongst the
speakers. In my opinion, Graeber won that one, even though he laughed
himself more than audience did. Few critical questions from the
auditorium and attack of McKay against Parecon managed to scratch a bit
the otherwise self-complacent atmosphere of dull consensus. Obviously,
current level of the movement and format of the event does not allow
anything more, but definitely we have something more to strive to.
Other events I did not attended were most various — some historical
(such as about Chartist uprising of 1839), planning of upcoming protests
against G8 the next year, “anarchism and spirituality”, “anarchism and
sexuality” and so on. Participators were most diverse, as I expected,
but good half were subcultural people, after all this was the city were
punk was born. But the dominant outlook did not influenced the contents
— biggest share of the workshops were on social issues, for example
against workfare, “housing estate is revolting”, “building a fighting
union with your workmates”, in this context I do not see reason to
always whine about prevalence of “lifestyle anarchism” in UK, maybe it
was some years ago the case but definitely not anymore.