AF statement

[In Bloom]

you're just like the old left, & there is no excuse. Writing off everything that is not linked to the party without any knowledge is just plain wrong & ignorant. That meeting was full of practical working class revolutionaries, it was very good (ask Rod if U want a 2nd view). if you are at all serious U cannot dismiss it like that.

Ultimately, bookfair meetings are pretty useless for organisational stuff, if something useful happened at that meeting, I'm happy to be proved wrong. Either way, a meeting made up exclusively of anarchists isn't really the sort of thing I was talking about (even assuming that your version of events is accurate).

The anarchist bookfairs, while useful in some ways, are ultimately entrenched in the anarchist ghetto, they're simply not a priority for anybody who wants to make a serious effort to spread anarchist communist ideas. Preaching to the choir gets us nowhere.

And as for the silly jibe about me supposedly "Writing off everything that is not linked to the party", that's bollocks and you know it.

 

[Rod Sleeves]

Ultimately, bookfair meetings are pretty useless for organisational stuff, if something useful happened at that meeting, I'm happy to be proved wrong. Either way, a meeting made up exclusively of anarchists isn't really the sort of thing I was talking about (even assuming that your version of events is accurate).

I am sympathetic with your view of the bookfair, it is a bit of a ghetto event on the whole - but the postal workers meeting was excellent, involved several postal workers (at least six spoke I think) and several people went away planning to set up support groups in their areas.

While I was on a stall, various people came up and chatted, including trade union activists, NGO types and people who had just seen summat on the internet and decided to come along out of curiosity.

You can't write the bookfair off as a pure ghetto thing, though it does sometimes seem like a majority of the attendees (not the organisers or groups) would like to keep it that way.